9.6 seconds

I finally beat my original 2000m indoor rowing time today. After missing my lift from Bob due to a peculiar dream that kept me dormant until 1120, I eventually got to the club at 1150, after having some much needed bacon. Within a half hour, I was on the machine, and rowing the best I've ever rowed on one, cutting my time from 8:21.0 to 8:11.4. That's the 9.6 seconds you've read about.

In other news, my attempted install of Ubuntu server failed. This is due to a lack of support for my i686 infrastructure. I may have to use 8.04 or 8.10 instead. The ideal plan is to get a new build, then use this laptop to connect to the server, not as the server itself.

I've begun work on the Common Application today. That's America's answer to UCAS. It'll cover my Harvard, Princeton and Stanford applications, hence speed up my progress with the flowchart of academia, which now covers my entire whiteboard.

My mother certainly deserves commendations for another brilliant Sunday roast, with mashed potato, sausages and all. It's thanks to such a dinner – and my progress in rowing and completion of the flowchart's primary function – that overall, I'm in a pretty good mood today. I've been edgy as of late, for which I do not apologize. Edginess is a fine component of the human condition: a truly excellent defence mechanism.

Goodnight all!

Going with the flow.

Today, I made myself a flowchart on my whiteboard, with coding, multiple loops and a few of my Perl moves to boot. I do enjoy a good bit of Perl. This isn't just any flowchart, though. This flowchart has a time-frame of 11 weeks, several variables, four real-world processes – each of which can have up to 6 contextual meanings, dependent on the variables – and reiterative loops, as I said.

Besides being a good geek, I had to fill my day with some regular person stuff, so I went to a decent party, saw some people I hadn't seen in months, some I hadn't seen in years, as well as Niall, Stevo, Bobby, Ben, Saskia and Tom, all of whom I hadn't seen for a few days.

So, after reiterations, recreation and reminiscence, it's time for bed. Night froods!

Tynemouth Triumph/Sculling Success

Today's rowing regatta in Durham was utterly fantastic. It was thoroughly enjoyable; all the Tynemouth Rowing Club crews rowed well, picking up countless second places.

However, our 4X+ novice crew – the infallible Bobby in stroke, the enigmatic Tom in three, the handsome Niall in two, and myself in bow – was the best crew as we won our first ever regatta race!

Unfortunately, that first race was a heat, and, by winning it, we had to compete in the final against some not-so-novice machine-like athletes from Tyne United. Beating them really was impossible: despite rowing much better than we did in the heat, we still fell at least a boat's length behind.

The words "Durham Today/Argh!" and "We Won!" are now written in large friendly letters on my whiteboard, and will be for days to come.

Today really was brilliant - I even had a bacon sandwich, and I'm now eating custard. Good night folks! Have a great day.

To conquer Comic Book Characters...

To begin, I thought I'd share an article about the U.S. Air Force's ridiculously cool new program: BATMAN.

Like any decent day, today started with bacon. After bacon, I had possibly the most hilarious session ever with the lads at Tynemouth Rowing Club. You had to be there.^† We're not even close to being ready for the regatta at Durham this upcoming Saturday.

So, anyway, with a hey diddle diddle, a drill and a fiddle, I've finally got my 1.2m*0.9m whiteboard on my bedroom wall! Pictures to follow? Who knows?

Enough blogging today though, I'm going for an uncharacteristic early post^‡, I'm going to watch House on the Hallmark Channel and then I'm going for my dinner.

^†Okay, you probably didn't have to be there to appreciate the hilarity, but – as with all instances of "you had to be there" – it meant "I can't be bothered to explain why it was so funny."
^‡Although, it's more of an excuse to use future tense and make another footnote than anything else.

A film review and impossibilities.

Well, I'm reverting back to English today.

I've just finished deciding that the last question in my little sister's maths homework is impossible. Finding an nth term rule for the following:

2 9 17 27 39

Obviously, it was supposed to be:

3 9 17 27 39

making it a simple n²+3n-1. Anyway, after half an hour of obsessively finding differences of differences of differences of differences I finally came to the conclusion that if 0 occurs anywhere but at the edges of a differences of differences(...) triangle, an nth term using powers of n is impossible.

Now, the promised film review. I saw Grown Ups at the cinema tonight; true to form, Adam Sandler, Kevin James et al. guaranteed a laugh per minute. It was real easy-viewing stuff, recommended for anyone who just fancies a good laugh.

All of this, however, does not make up for the disappointing lack of post today. A whiteboard on Wednesday, a letter from Parliament on Thursday, yet nothing today.

The Lie-in, the Book and the Whiteboard

All right, so maybe 0800 isn't that much of a lie-in, but the C.S. Lewis reference wouldn't work nearly as well with anything else.

As for the book, that's real. I'm referring to the Harvard Prize Book I was awarded on behalf of the Harvard Club by my school today. No Small Matter by Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides. I also won the award for French in my year, and received the certificate for the Open University course I completed last year.

Finally - and, man, this post is short - I come to the 1.2m*0.9m whiteboard which arrived today! I bought it on Monday, on eBay, and it's ridiculously big.

I've got a month left to finish my UCAS application, due to the early Cambridge deadline. 108 days to go for MIT and Harvard.