The Bucket O' Nothing

First full draft of semantics dissertation done! Nearly. I have two paragraphs that I need an article for, and only two libraries in Cambridge have the journal it's in (and neither of them are near me). So on Monday I'll get the article from Experimental Psych and finish it. Until then, I'll use this weekend to write, sketch, and work on job applications and my Springboard workbook.

( o/~ These are a few of my favourite games... o/~ )

This entry's mostly about video games. I was lucky enough to find not one, but two good games in my local "these cheap UK and import games didn't fall off the back of a lorry, honest guv" shop - Suikoden III, and the US version of Disgaea. Now I have to sell my UK version to someone, because I've only played it once and won't ever again.

Enough of Disgaea, though. I got Suikoden III last Friday and then spent about 45 hours on it in just a week. I'm up to 51 hours now, after substantial amounts of subquests, collecting lots of extra characters and getting all sorts of new businesses set up in my base. theblunderbuss has mentioned that he likes Suikoden II more than III, and if it's as good as he says I'm going to have to look for it as soon as I can after I've finished this one. Despite occasional errors in the text (which any RPG will have - and four or five in fifty hours is not at all bad), and a combat system that's reasonable, but not the best, it's become probably my favourite RPG, or at least one of my favourites. So I'd like to see the game that can beat it.

(The best combat system is, of course, Grandia II. No question about it.)

( Fun games to play while you're falling asleep... )

( Also, dating sims in which you can suffer from a variety of weird illnesses. )

I'm also thinking of tidying up my NaNoWriMo entry from last year (giving it chapter titles, and so on), and posting it a chapter at a time on my LJ. Of course, since it's not finished, this may be a bad idea. I've got 50,000 words done, but I'm expecting to do another few ten thousand at least before it's done. It will be done in time for this November (otherwise I won't be able to concentrate on this year's NaNoWriMo, of course), but is it a good idea for me to post it while it's still a work in progress?

Today was probably the first day that properly felt like my end of year exams were over. My first three were last week, from Monday to Wednesday, each taking up three hours in the morning. One of the good things about morning exams is that I had to wake up reasonably early just to get to them (they're at 9am, which meant getting up at 6-7am in order to be fully awake), but there wasn't all that much time to sit around and worry about not having revised. Afternoon exams are 1:30-4:30pm, which led to me getting up early and then fretting about not knowing what to revise, and then finally giving up.

The exams themselves didn't go too badly, and it's rather a change from my maths exams - in the last two years, I've found myself running out of things to write down about halfway through the exam, because I can't think of ways to answer any other questions. This year I managed the required three essays on all of my papers except the third, which contained a rather difficult data set question that I know I didn't complete fully. All the other questions went okay, I reckon, but I have no idea how I did. The marking system isn't particularly clear, and seems to have been designed to be as vague as the examiners can possibly make it. Hopefully I'll manage a 2:1, but my grade could be anywhere from a low 1st to a high 2:2...

Thank goodness they're over now, though, and I can clear up the mess of linguistics notes left all over my room. To add to the chaos, I spent the money I got for that essay on a Playstation 2 that a friend was trying to sell. Now I'm £120 poorer, and have a new console (with installed mod chip - at least one of my favourite games isn't even available here, so I'd like to be able to play it) sitting on my bed. The next challenge is to find a TV or something to plug it into, because at the moment I haven't got anything I can play it on... or, for that matter, anything to play on it.

Oh, except Disgaea should be arriving in the next day or so. Thank you, Koei, for releasing it in the UK.

And also, curses and blessings to Buy Rite Games for having Tokimeki Memorial 3 in stock, so that I've now ordered that too - and the express UK shipping costs as much ($29.99) as the game itself does. Still, at about £32 for the game and shipping, that's still about the same price as a new game over here

Now for something completely different - a quiz result.

LOOK OUT! ïòð

bouteillebleu is a radioactive squirrel!!

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com

I am indeed a radioactive squirrel. I love that result. :D