1. Read for at least half an hour a day (school work excluded)
   I want to read more than I do but I simply don’t prioritise it and then run out of time every evening and end up reading virtually nothing. So, on days when I can, I am to read every night in some regard. So far I’m generally doing this, with obvious exceptions for when I can’t, such as last night when I was out at the Oxford Union debating competition
2. Drink some milk and eat some fruit every day
   I often forget to drink milk (though I like it) and my fruit intake is close to zero so I thought this might be a good idea
3. Keep a diary in [beautiful notebook]
   This was another spontaneous decision. While I have this blog, there are daily details and moments that I would like to write down that really would be completely dull and routine to anyone reading this blog. While I must admit that the main reason I want to write it is that I love writing in my new purple-inked fountain pen that I got for Christmas, it’s a constructive thing to do. Moleskine notebooks are amazingly nice to work with
4. Don’t put off until tomorrow something that can be done today
   A common phrase but one that I think rings true: if everyone did this, the world would run a lot more smoothly. I’m particularly prone to putting things aside and then not actually getting them done at all due to my poor memory, so I guess I’m trying to remember this more clearly this year
5. Don’t take on responsibilities I know I won’t fulfill
   I have a tendency to get involved in far too much and find myself then unable to keep up with everything. I’ve hopefully learned from this and I aim to notice it when it happens and do something about it: delegate responsibility, recognise my mistake and pull away and prioritise
6. Don’t worry about taking a long time to do things
   There’s no need to rush. It doesn’t matter that I’m slower than those around me. Just work at things at a reasonable pace
7. Write a blog post at least once a fortnight
   I must admit, I’m really not convinced that this one is going to happen. My blog ceases to be interesting and continuous if I wait too long between posts though so I do intend to try and write here more often. Hopefully my third resolution will not detract from this
8. Improve my mental maths and learn my times tables by the end of the year
   Like everyone else in my class, my mental maths is atrocious: we find ourselves doing sums like 24/8 on our calculators as a matter of routine (and far simpler ones than that). I’m slightly better on things such as surd manipulation because I don’t have a calculator that does this for me and I am very practised, therefore, at manipulating things about in my head. But when it comes to actual numbers I am slow and make many mistakes. So I am going to try not to resort to my calculator when I obviously don’t need to, to try and get out of bad habits. Learning my times tables, which I have never done, also seems sensible
9. Interrupt people less
   I do this far too much. Let’s see if I can improve.

So there we have it, some targets for the year. Wish me luck!

I did want to use gentoo but I don’t think I’m really good enough to get it working graphically without frying anything. So, I’m sticking with my current little setup for now and maybe the no root philosophy will grow on me!

The backend (i.e. the important stuff) is using SSI to include stuff. This saves time and means that I can change the navbar significantly easier. Wait you say, this blog uses .html extensions! Unfortunately, because I can’t rename the individual post pages it is going to stay like this with an ugly hack causing Apache to parse all pages for SSI stuff in the xyrael.net domain. Another thing – I’ve reduced the number of posts on this front page to two so I need to keep them long in order to stop the right hand column, which relies on a rather simple CSS floating method, from spreading out below the main block. If there is a clean way of dealing with this please let me know.

I need to reorganise my links on the right too. I’m attempting to get more into the blogosphere as I want other people to link to me and vice-versa to help the traffic of both. Hopefully I can achieve this by getting more people signed up to my feed, which seems to be occuring. There is an IRC bot on freenode that broadcasts into a large channel when I make a post Since FTP is working again, I can so easily update from school etc. As you can see, I’m ultra-enthusiastic about this blog (yet) again.

This not mean a lot? Unfortunately, this post was only really for me. Now, let’s see if the comments blow up…

On the subject of this blog, I’ve realised that I really am not going to get anywhere with posting real comments like all these hip blogs nowadays, simply because I don’t have enough time to read through everything in the newspaper. This is partly because I don’t have enough time in the library and also due to competition from others for accessing it. This is a serious disadvantage. Ah well, looks like my dream for this blog is far away :\ Additionally, I’ve been considering the possibility of once again expanding this site to contain things other than the blog. But, what? It’s difficult as I don’t want to break links so I think I’d have to make a new design and incorporate the blog into that, as I’ve had before. Or, I could dig out one of the old designs and use that. This time, I’ll go with a simple design that will actually work – right hand navbar, header, text or something. Usual CSS system, I suppose. It’ll be v3!

I recently started using a new mail signature on my e-mails, as opposed to my old one:

old

--    —Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty            sean@silentflame.com (PGP: 0x25F4EAB7) | xyrael.net

new

--—Sean Whitton (Xyrael) [sean at silentflame dot com]Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.

So, which one do you prefer? I think there are advantages and disadvantages to each but I’m sticking with the latter primarily because it doesn’t require me to type my name at the bottom of less important e-mails anymore and I think this looks neater, especially to mailing lists.

We’re started to put together our Records of Achievement at school which is an interesting thing to do. I’ve composed my personal statement and have filled in the usual default information, but I’ve also got Christel (I need to get round to blogrolling her) of freenode to write me a reference for my work over there. This is quite nice as it is something unusual that lists a variety of qualities. Otherwise, I’ve got to fill it with photocopyed certificates.

That’s the heavily condensed version, of course. What we did was actually far more detailed, but as I know this will start to ramble very quickly I need to be sure that the important stuff is here for people who just want a quick going over. Unfortuantely, photographs show me too much to be displayed. So, we set off at about seven thirty for the train, got it, and sat back for the three hour journey. It was ridiculusly busy, but we were lucky enough to have reserved seats. On arrival we checked in to the Travel Inn much earlier than we expected, fortunately, and were able to leave our bags. However, the room was just a double when we wanted a twin and so we had to ask to be moved, getting the correct one shortly afterwards. Then we headed to the British Museum.

There was a lot to see there. It really is a facinating place, with the new glass roof over a large part of the building and a very interesting library in the middle. After that we got on the tube and headed for the bookshops. I always find the Underground so much fun, it’s very exciting. It’s one of the best parts of going to London After wandering around said shops, we met up with Annie and Mummy for tea at a nice restaurant called med kitchen, and then we set off to see Blood Brothers at the very nearby Pheonix Theatre. It was a good play, and the music was well done, but I had heard it before. I notice that there was a rather big effect on Annie rather than me.

The next day we had arranged to meet up with Patrick Lewis, a barrister my grandparents know through friends of their family. He took us to the Central Criminal Court, and then to the Court of Appeal, and we realised how inaccurate the TV series really are. Barristers are calm in their cross-examination which is great. After this we travelled to the Middle Temple Inn of Court for lunch, which was a site to behold. The prices were reasonable and the staff were friendly (despite the fact I needed a tie – we had great fun trying to put it on), and the food was good. It was in an ornate pannelled dining hall. After that we saw the other Inns and Patrick’s chambers.

The main aspect here was the asking of many, many questions about a possible career in law for me. The main thing that came out of it was that in Patrick’s opinion it is far better for me to do a degree in something that I am interested in rather than law and then convert it with an additional one year course. All of this, of course, costs money – especially with the introduction of tuition fees for University, which I believe should be free as it’s not fair to bar people from education. I would use the Computer Science degree to earn the said money. So, there we are. I learned a heck of a lot about his job which is difficult to document here, but I still feel that it is something I want to do. The other issue is that I would need to have an area to specialise in, although obviously that’s not something that I need to think about yet. I’d want something where I could do the most socialist good.

So, a very successful trip. I’m glad that we took it.

This also means that I ought to rethink my security policy. At the moment, I use secure passwords (note the plural), but I’m starting to think about where I am typing them in. I have decided to try and use host recognition over passwords on my Wikimedia shell, but still there is an issue. I have to trust *someone* somewhere along the line. Luckily, a freenode staffer has been kind enough to offer me a virtual machine with which I can run my IRC client off and can trust significantly more because he has no want or reason of my access, as he has a lot of it himself.

The aforementioned shell on a Wikimedia server has let me run a new IRC bot that is linked to a web pastebin. When someone makes a paste, a link is broadcaster onto IRC and the paste is then accesable. Unfortunately, there is a lot of potential for abuse at the moment, and the method for tracking IP addresses is rather flaky. This means that I’m having to hope it will be used properly, and trusting channel ops to be friendly when removing it when it is being flooded. So far I’ve only had communication attempts through the bot, which isn’t too bad. Otherwise, it has remained idle for days at a time.

I’ve also started an initiative to try and make Wiki*edia chanops more friendly and kinder when invoking their powers – and perhaps doing so less, too. It is my hope that I can encourage people to be catalysts and improve the user experience in the channels. Obviously, trolls will always have to be dealt with but I think there are better ways of doing it. I’m attempting to open up discussion so that improvements can be made on what I suggested, but so far I’ve had little success.

Death is something that can strike at random. It can be expected, it
can be totally out of the blue. But it is unavoidable. Rob created
something wonderful, he had a dream and he fought for it. He poured
everything into freenode, and rallied people together for the goals of
the network. Now he is gone.

Rob was always courteous and kind, and willing to help out. I wasn’t
really involved in IRC at all until freenode, where I joined for
Wikimedia. Once there, I quickly became hooked. I became interested in
how the network worked, and got involved in supporting users. Through
all this Rob was helpful and kind, willing to explain things to me and
work out situations.

We must continue what was started. We should turn our grief into new
strength to journey on, and to make sure that Rob’s memory is
preserved and built on, pushing ever onwards and upwards. We can do
this together, and only when we succeed all expectations will Rob’s
death have not been in vain.

RIP, lilo – you were a good soul, one of the best