Letters and numbers.

When I was applying for university, I had to write a personal statement, detailing how absolutely perfect I was for academic study. I started mine off like this:

From a young age, I have always had an interest in mathematics. Some of my earliest memories include sitting with my father practising simple arithmetic, being in a maths lesson in primary school, and the Numbers Game on Countdown!

(Yes, I was a bit of an ass. But I was 17.)

I used to adore Countdown as a child. It was my favourite thing to watch. I remember being extremely small, perhaps 4 or 5. I would wake up very early on a Saturday morning, 6:30 or so, and I remember watching Barney (yes, the purple dinosaur) and Countdown.

Richard Whiteley was like a father to me. Obviously, he was only around for an hour or so on a Saturday morning, but he was so smart and kind and led the show so well. And, there was Carol. I really wanted to be Carol, for years. In fact, when they replaced her, I did seriously consider applying for it, even though the show is based in Manchester, and there'd be no way for me to be able to actually get there on a regular basis. :p

My love of Countdown continued right through my teens, until Richard died. When I found out, I stopped watching Countdown for ages. I watched his final episode, and then I stopped watching. I couldn't imagine a Countdown without him. I honestly grieved.

I tried watching with the replacements, but eventually I gave up. They were all wrong. Richard always got the balance right. Sure, he was witty, but he was never trying to be the star of the show. It was always about the numbers and the letters, and occasionally Carol. I found some of the other hosts tried too hard to be funny, take the focus away.

I watched my first full episode of Countdown in five years today. The current host isn't too bad. There was a Northern Irish kid on the show, who was just incredible. Reminded me of a friend of mine - although I'm not sure of how good his letters are, I have no doubt he'd be killer at the numbers.

I enjoyed the new Carol, I think her name is Rachel. She's a pretty blonde Oxford graduate.

So, I might be watching a little more Countdown in future.

Debate nerdery, at its finest.

So, just over a week ago, I went to an IV - this stands for inter-varsity, and it's what we call debating competitions. The fine institution of Cambridge was hosting this. They changed from open motions to closed. Let me explain to you what this means, for you non-debaters and noobs out there.

When we debate, we have two teams pretending to be the government in power, and two pretending to be the opposition. We speak alternately - prop, opp, prop, opp - until everyone has spoken once. We debate about motions, things that should be either put into law, or considered as a moral standpoint. The first speaker proposing the motion has to set up the debate. They clarify key words, if necessary, and then outline a procedure if they want to implement some sort of scheme related to the motion.

This is the type of motion you see in closed motion debates.

This House Would Legalise Drugs.
This House Believes That The USA Should Pay War Reparations to Vietnam.

The motion is clearly telling you the debate is about drugs, or Vietnam, and that is what you debate. If you're not debating that, you will not win. If the first proposition team decide they want to debate about monkeys and housepets, they will lose.

Open motions are another kettle of fish. You get almost non-sensical motions, such as:

This House Would Fear The Reaper.
This House Would Raise The Roof.

You're not supposed to literally debate reapers or roofs. If you are the first proposition team, you will have come to the competition with your favourite motion to propose. The motion is purposely vague so that the debate is basically about whatever the first proposition want it to be. In this case, if they want a debate about monkeys and housepets, as long as they can tenuously create a link between their motion and the "motion" set before them, they are good to go. (Of course, if it's a silly idea, the opposition should tear them to shreds, and the proposition will lose.)

For both styles, you are told what side of the debate you are on, and you have fifteen minutes from the announcement of the motions to prepare for the debate.

In closed motions debate, everyone has fifteen minutes to say, "This motions is about Vietnam and reparations, okay. Let's think about those things." In particular, opposition know what they are facing and can prepare ideas that will most likely be relevant in the context of what the first team say.

In open motions, the first proposition team have fifteen minutes to perfect their brainchild. The other three teams have fifteen minutes to grab some coffee, take a slash, flirt with the judges, and wonder what the frak they are going to eventually debate about.

What this means is that, in open motions, the first speaker for the opposition has the length of time that the first proposition speech takes up to prepare.

Some love the thrill of not being prepared and just running on adrenaline. Others dislike the inevitable drop in quality of debate (although some open rooms get fabulously zany).

So, some people liked the change to closed, others did not.

The general consensus was that Cambridge did it to improve the image of the IV from "fun open tournament" to "Worlds prep", where Worlds is the World University Debating Championships and is considered to be A Big Deal to debate folks like myself.

Coming in the next installment... how your intrepid author got a room with a Euros finalist, ignored the advances of a soon-to-be lawyer and got medical advice from a drunken med student.

Online punctuation.

When you are speaking, you don't think about punctuation much. You pause at the end of sentences. You pause in between items of a list or between phrases, but for a shorter time. You pause between words, so that you can tell what's being said. You raise your voice in certain patterns for excitement, puzzlement or questioning. It's instinctive for most, and you don't even think about it. That's why it's so hard for a lot of people to use punctuation properly when it comes to writing.

We have spaces, commas, fullstops, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, dashes, brackets and all sorts for written communication. When I say written, I mean formally written. Letters to your mother, essays for your tutor, resignations from your job as Head Fry Chef in Floppy Burger. In this context, you can't rely on instinctively knowing how long your pause should be, or what tone you want to convey. You have to select which punctuation mark is appropriate. It's usually pretty easy. Full stops for long pauses between sentences, commas for shorter ones in between phrases and items in a list. Question mark are for questions; exclamation marks are for exclamations.

When you write online, it's different again. You have the same rules as a written letter, except you have the instant conversation factor. It's the half-way house between a letter and a phone call. Unfortunately, it's instant like a phone, and impersonal like a letter - try raising your eyebrows with punctuation. So, punctuation becomes your sole medium for conveying tones and emotions, and with the instant receipt of your message, every dot counts.

(This is obviously only applicable to those who would use punctuation in the first place, and not the type of internet user who strips words of vowels and meaning, abuse exclamation and question marks, and generally make me want to ban them from using technology with keyboard-like facilities until they learn to follow the goshdarn rules. Grammar Nazi? Only a little.)

For example, I greet a friend on Facebook chat: "Hi!"

I use the exclamation mark to convey that I am pleased to see her online, as we haven't chatted in a very long time. She tells me she is busy, and she hopes to talk to me soon. I begin writing the "Okay" in response, but I hesitate before hitting Enter. What do I put after? A full stop is rather final. It might imply that I'm in a strop with her for being too busy. An exclamation mark is even worse. A question mark is confusing and inappropriate.

This is starting to become worse than trying to decide what to wear to work today if you're my mother. She could easily spend two hours before bed, and one hour in the morning, deciding.

So, I opt for nothing. I send the message, "Okay", with nothing at the end. Crisis averted.

In fact, the general etiquette of my friends is to either fully capitalise, punctuate and write formally, or drop the capitals and use punctuation for effect. So, the full stop instead of a blank, question mark instead of a comma, it's all a new type of grammar in itself.

Phew. Isn't it tough going sometimes?

Sigh.

I have work tomorrow. 10:30 start!

I also failed at "house, etc." I want to apologise to people, but feel it's not really enough of an issue to apologise. I feel a bit rubbish though, if that's satisfactory.

It's too hot.

I have a new charger. If this one breaks, I'll get very upset with the good folk at Maplins.

I wrote down all the Sims careers in my notebook, and noted the pay of the highest position for each. Hacker is the best. Also good are Music, Entertainment and Pro Athlete. Crime pays better than Law Enforcement (by a significant amount!) and the worst careers are Slacker, Military, Law Enforcement and Politics. Just like real life then. I'd like to be a Mad Scientist; they get paid $1000 a day!

Made the error of weighing myself. I am Officially Fat, like, according to NHS charts and whatnot. But, thank you Madame Heatwave for being too hot for me to exercise. Maybe I'll sweat myself thin.

There's far too many carbs in this house, and not enough meat or vegetables. We had a barbeque yesterday, so we've got leftovers from that; pasta, rice, chow mein, curry sauce, chilli sauce. There was quite a bit Vegetables Ahoy! left, so I ate that with sweet potatoes.

Bleugh... Wednesday!

Trois mots que j'aime, et trois mots que je n'aime pas.

Je n'aime pas:

Snogging. Ick. Just... ick. A kiss is something *nice*. Snog rhymes with not-so-nice words like fog, bog, and Balrog. [A Balrog of Morgoth... what did he say?!]

Messy. People at school said it when they were going to have a "great night out". This means vomit, tears, stolen boyfriends, girlfriends crumpled in corners with alcohol-induced grief, and a very light purse at the end of the night.

Rejoice. It's the juh sound right in the middle. That, and there's this hymn I sang as a kid involving saying rejoice so many times that you forget what it means, and saying it seems weird.

J'aime:

Awkward. Because it is a little clumsy, all consonants and corners, and it's so nice to say.

Ponies. I'm not really sure why. It's my Word of the Moment, and I just like to say it randomly, as an ice-breaker, silence filler, etc etc. I also like pwnies, whatever they are. I imagine them to be some kind of mythological intertube creature, hiding on blank pages and pwning them before they load, for they are fearless beasts that know no master but the Firefox.

Astute. This word is like... a pillar, when I think about it. A clean, tall, marble pillar in the centre of some ancient city, where the learned would gather and discuss the issues of the day, and wonder how the Powers That Be could screw things up more. Someone told me once that I made an astute comment. I was very pleased.

Blag blag, blag sheep, have you any wool?

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Yes, sir; an entire bag full of it.

I was tidying my room, and decided to make my mother's pink sports bag my knitting bag. [She doesn't use it anyway - if she did, she'd have asked for it back 4 months ago.] So, along with a few stray needles, I have more than 10 balls of wool; some small, some large, etc etc.

I threw away at least 10 that I knew I would never use. Heartbreaking, but necessary.

In other news, the dinner was fine! Didn't talk to her. Instead, played with the mind of my ex. We talked after about how he had no chance with me, ever. Full stop. And, he was a bit put out, but I told him the truth, so I did good. :p

I went to the hairdressers today. Meh. :)

I went shopping! Bought lots! There was a 20% discount in Peacocks for students, which pleased me greatly. And, I'm going to get my guitar strings changed for the first time in 25 years; it was my mom's guitar, she just abandoned it at her parents' place when she got married.

I got attacked by a fold out laundry basket. I wish that was a lie.

I beat my brother at chess, but it took far too long because he stole my rook when I was too focused on my queen, and I had to wait for ages to promote a pawn and avoid his plucky little rook. It was going to be my victory halfway through, but I was just really slow in actually getting on with it. I'm going to have to work on that.

I'm ending this post here; due to several things, I just feel quite low right now.

[/disjointed_post]

The obligatory first post.

*sigh* This is the part about blagging that I dislike. The First Post. It's never any good. It's never very informative, or interesting, or fun to write, for that matter.

But, it has to be done. Otherwise I'll never get onto the things I want to write about.

So, I guess I should say a few words. Hell, I've already said some! Let me say a few more.

1. I knit. I will talk about knitting.
2. I like maths, and numbers. I'm doing a degree.
3. I'm not as much of a nerd as I appear, sadly.

I guess you'll find out the rest as I go.