Rory Franklin

Member of public spends £4000 to get in the Big Brother house

I read this and almost cried. What an immense waste of money. It would be better to have donated the money to charity.

Well, i’m done with exams. They didn’t go so well though… hohum, I guess i will just have to wait and see.

In other news, I have a new house for when i start work (at least, we have a house on hold, not signed any documents or anything yet) which means i won’t see most of my friends properly for another year, as i start work quite soon after most people finish university. I can come back at weekends, as long as I have a car (otherwise it is reasonably expensive to keep on travelling back and forth - especially if i will be going out when i am back home). I am still going to stick around at university for a couple of weeks. I don’t have much else to do really, so I may as well make as much of the £900 rent count…

What else.. hmm, well i’ll be unsuspended from InvisionFree sometime today or tomorrow i think, will have to check in a minute. to be fair, it didn’t really help me all that much, as it was just frustrating to see things that I could not deal with, and also to get emails informing me that i had a PM, which i couldn’t check. Oh well…

Well, thats me out for another few weeks!

I arrived back in Canterbury yesterday afternoon after a 4 week Easter holiday. Wasn’t really too much of a holiday. Sure, I didn’t do a huge amount other than relax, but it was a very strange period.

It made me realise a few things about how things have worked out back at home (cryptic, eh?) and made me even more positive about what I want to do after university. Basically, move away from the country for a year or so - probably to America somewhere. I still have a while to think about it and plan it if I were to leave.

But anyway, yeh… exams start this week (hence why i’m absent from InvisionFree till 18th May) which should be fairly hectic. This week will be the worst week, with three of my hardest exams. After that it eases up a little and I have more space inbetween exams.

On another note, i’ve come to realise how much I dislike this layout. I still love the header image, it’s just everything beneath it that I don’t like, so I might rework it after my exams, and also get around to adding more layouts and getting the dark layout put online too

Well, bye bye for another few weeks probably… i suck at blogging.

Well, Good Friday was yesterday. I’m not a particularly religious person, so it kind of crept up on me. I had a strange little episode though, which I found amusing.

I was having a few people round to my house last night for some drinks and to play on the Eye Toy (Playstation game where you are put on the screen thanks to the magical wonders of a camera, and have to play various minigames). I didn’t have any drinks so went down to the local supermarket to buy some. I picked up two crates of beer and proceeded to the checkout. When it got to me in the queue, the lady serving me jokingly said “You realise this is supposed to be a religious weekend.” To which i retorted: “I’m a student, this is my religion”.

Just a random thing which made me chuckle yesterday. I then proceeded to get very drunk (first time in quite a long time) and have a good time!

Wooo!

I got a job with Merck Sharp & Dohme for my industrial placement year. I’ll be doing intranet/internet work developing applications in JSP.

Time to go learn some more about JSP then

Yeah, I didn’t get the job. So here starts the application process again for more jobs to see if I can get one.

Also, just had the word “throwback” pop into my head, and it has given me some ideas for a new theme and such. Woo… nice to see that even after rejection i can still think about random stuff!

Yes, thats me! I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to remember not to forget my new bankcard (which was sent to me in canterbury) when I come home for my easter holidays. Guess what I did? Ja, I forgot it. Now i’m back in London for a month with no access to any money because my old card expired at the end of March. Hmmm, looks like i’ll be getting a train back to Canterbury some time this week to pick it up. Whilst i’m there, I may as well pick up my PS2 + games which I also forgot (seriously, when I tell people that I have the memory of a goldfish, i’m not lying!).

What else is new? Well, last week I had my interview with Reuters for an internship. I haven’t heard back which does not bode well. At the end of the day, I tried my best and was mainly let down by nerves and lack of memory as I had a problem with a question of theirs in the interview. It’s no longer in my hands and if I get the placement then it will be fantastic news as I really would love to work for the company, but if I don’t get the placement then someone better, more suited to the job will have got it, which isn’t a bad thing (just for me!).

Anything else? Well, a while back InvisionFree announced it’s new name, ZetaBoards. Seth has done a great job with the logo and new layout for the site (you can see it in action at either Planet ZetaBoards (An aggregation [Right word? Feel free to correct me] of all the staff’s blogs) or over at the ZetaBoards Documentation Project. The Documentation Project is basically a set up which will allow us to provide users of the system a comprehensive set of documentation for setting up and using their message board. It looks very promising, and we have some great people in the Documentation Team who will be working on creating the documentation.

Mmm, what else? Not much I can remember…

These are awesome:
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Wow, I’ve not posted in a long time. I’m really bad at updating this place and getting stuff that I said i’d do done! Things have been busy recently, and the website has been pushed down the priority list till I can get everything in order.

I’m still looking for a job for my year in Industry, and I am really (by really, i mean really really really) looking forwards to my interview with Reuters which I have in two weeks time. That is the job i’ve been holding out for, but I know it will be ultra-competetive. It consists of 2 one hour interviews. The first is a web development test (that is the role i’ve applied for) and the second is a standard interview. Wow, I was so chuffed when I received a phone call from them offering me an interview.

Other than that, i’ve been busy with coursework and stuff like that. Term finishes on the 31st, so I have a months holiday after that. I say holiday, but what I really mean is revision for a month, as my exams start on the 2nd of May. The second day of term. These exams are going to be tricky, but with enough work done between now and then, I should be fine.

Looking forwards to going back to London to see all my friends again, definitly been missing some people a lot and it will be great to see them again.

Well, i’m sure you won’t see another post from me in the near future, so bye!

(oh, and also… when did FireFox allow you to move tab’s around and change their order? It’s fantastic and i’ve been wanting that feature for ages!)

Well, things have been kind of hectic recently, so not many updates. Just thought i’d say hi. I have various assignments for my course at university that need doing, so that is starting to take a lot of my time up. I’ve also been working on a portfolio script (reasonably basic, I don’t need anything too complicated) but that has been put on the backburner for a little while whilst I finish my assignments.

I also love America. Well, more specifically, a certain company who I recently bought some CD’s from. I have an insatiable urge to listen to music. I love it, and can’t get enough of it. However, I also like to support the artists who produce the music I so dearly love. This, understandably, gets expensive and being a student with not a huge amount of money (no job currently, so i’m living off fumes!) makes things harder. Recently i’ve been getting some money here and there from various sources (nothing illegal, just projects and web hosting etc.) which has mostly gone on buying CD’s. Back to the original point, I recently bought 5 CD’s from UndergroundHipHop.com which set me back just over $100 (around £58 with conversion rates). Seeing as one CD was a special edition, limited release (7500 copies), and some of the others were CD’s a few years old, I thought it was quite a reasonable price. I also got to choose a free gift (out of about 30 options - ranging from CD’s to posters) with my purchase. I chose a poster, because I thought it was quite cool. Now, international shipping takes 7-14 days so I was expecting about 10 days or so. It arrived today however, the 7th day since it was shipped, with everything I ordered, plus more! It came with two free CD’s (one of which is being advertised on the site as free with every order over $35) and two extra posters.

Result.