School ramblings

Long time no see! I just remembered today that I have this blog and that I have been neglecting it rather a lot.

Today I'm just going to give you a quick update as to what's going on and also try and let off a bit of steam after something totally ridiculous happened today. I will have my first A-level exam on Monday, a history AS resit, which should hopefully not pose too many problems despite my horrendously effective procrastination which may have inhibited my revision. Nevertheless, I have a few days to cram in a lot of learning about the early Soviet Union - Lenin, Stalin, repression etc. Then I have another week before another history paper, but more of that in another post.

The main topic I wanted to talk about today was my school being totally and utterly stupid and ridiculous. As my yeargroup is formally leaving school for the last time to go on study leave at the end of next week, we're making a leavers' video, filled with little interviews and funny acts. At my school there is a tradition that whenever someone drops their tray in the lunch hall, there's a massive chorus of "wheyyy!!!!". However, the new headmaster we got at the start of this academic year decided that it is bullying to do so, and thus banned us from cheering. Anyone who has dropped their tray knows it's not bullying, but this headmaster is a complete clot. In a form of protest, someone volunteered to drop their tray at lunch today, and there was a rip-roaring cheer. Almost instantly, the two heads of sixth form and the deputy head were standing there, and they weren't pleased. As far as I'm aware, at least 10 people have been suspended for this. Someone on Facebook summed it up quite nicely: "I just think it's outrageous that people have  been suspended for being noisy in a lunch hall when people have the same punishment for beating people up in other schools." Furthermore, the head of sixth form decided to delete ALL the footage on the camera that we'd been lent by the school, most of which was perfectly fine footage of people talking to the camera. This means we're almost certainly not going to have a leavers' video, which is rather annoying as it's a great way to remember everyone. We've got a nice conversation/argument goin on on Facebook with many people saying we should boycott various events and then others (people who are perhaps afraid of standing up to authority/wimps afraid of nothing whatsoever) saying "oh we can't do that!"

On another related note, our yearbooks have been delayed because the company haven't got enough staff to process all the orders - if you're going to run a company and promise a delivery date, you should be able to fulfil it, and if not at least offer some form of compensation. You can't run a business like that!

Sorry if this post was a bit ranty, but I had to have some way of expressing my feelings, and as the old saying goes: better out than in!

Adios, until the next time!

Camera

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that my camera arrived a few days ago! I've been mucking around with it, trying to learn how to use it properly but I suspect that might take a few months! I'm going to make this a short post but include a couple of pictures for your enjoyment. 

Here is the camera - isn't she a beauty? (Ignore the messy desk)

A pretty gorse bush - good macro capabilities!

A fishing lake, shame the sun wasn't out!

I will hopefully continue to post photography related posts on here from time to time, and if any of you have an idea for a name for the camera, please feel free to let me know in the comments below! I have also subscribed to PhotoPlus magazine, which is a photography magazine dedicated to Canon camera - none of that Nikon rubbish :P Hopefully it will help me improve faster than I would on my own.

Camera and separate blog for fishing!

Hello there!

Today I just wanted to let you know that I've started a separate blog for my fishing exploits, and you can find it here. I hope you enjoy it - it's an offshoot from a friend's YouTube blog about fishing, which you can find here. 

I decided to take the plunge into the world of fishing blogging for myself because I saw that my friend was getting a decent amount of views, and was also getting some sponsorship deals coming his way, and I thought "maybe I won't get sponsored, but it will probably be fun just to see what happens". It also gives me an excuse to buy a camera of my own, a Canon EOS 60D. This has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with one-upmanship of his Sanyo Xacti!!!

This means that there will no longer be any fishing related stuff on here, but please do check out my fishing blog!

I will be posing some camera related things on here - mainly just trials of various thigns at the moment, and maybe at some point my thoughts on the 60D, but you'll have to wait to see what turns up on that front.

In other news, I finished the Far Cry 3 campaign yesterday! It's a really great game, and I will be doing an in depth review in a little while, but that will take a fair amount of time as I want to do such a great game justice. Brief thoughts on it are that it's a really awesome game with some of the best graphics I've ever seen along with a decent and not too restricting storyline, albeit with moments that let it down, such as unskippable cut scenes and strange (drug-induced???) hallucinations that end up killing people with no real explanation as to how it happened. But that is for another day, so I'll leave it here today. 

Just to finish off, The Lamy Vista is still going strong and writing beautifully, and it's a real pleasure to write in the Rhodia Webnotebook!

Fishing in the freezing cold

You're probably going to think I'm mad, but I'm out fishing tonight with my friend Merlin. It is very cold out here and I fully expect there to be a heavy frost in the morning. I've had one mirror carp of 6lb 10oz so far, but we'll see what the new day brings tomorrow.

I'm now going to concentrate on staying alive - over and out!

Pen and paper reviews!

Here is the review of the Rhodia Webnotebook and Lamy Vista that I talked about in the first post. I've been meaning to do this review for a while but only just got round to doing it due to lots of schoolwork and other things. I've done this review as pictures so you can see what everything looks like:

 This is a picture of the pen I used to write the review and that also features in the review.

Lamy Vista

This is the paper on which I wrote the review.

Review written on Rhodia paper

I apologise for my absolutely dire handwriting, I am trying to improve it - honest!  If you find you can't read some of what it says please leave me a comment and I'll be happy to tell you what is what. Furthermore if you have any suggestions as to what I should put in my reviews I would be really happy to hear them!

Euro Truck Simulator 2

I apologise for the fairly lengthy delay between the first post and this one, I just completely forgot to do something on here, but I've finally got round to doing it!

A few weeks ago a YouTube channel that I am subscribed to (Robbaz, a crazy and outright hilarious Swedish guy) had a video about a game called Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ETS2 for ease of typing). Now a few years ago I played a truck simulator called 18 Wheels of Steel Pedal to the Metal, which was set in America. It just so happens that ETS2 is made by the same people that made 18WoS: PTTM, namely SCS Software. This studio makes a whole host of different sims and to be honest I like them a lot! I therefore bought the game and ever since I installed it I've been enthralled by it - I've played around 40 hours so far!

The great thing about this game is that it's realistic while not being too boring. You can drive like a but of a loony and still get the jobs done. There is also a management aspect to it as you can build up your own trucking company, hiring and firing drivers and opening garages around Europe. You can choose a truck from a host of different models, and all the makes are fully licenced as of today (before there were a couple that were missing licences and therefore had made up names) because there was a patch that added licences, and fixes for various things, not that I've had any problems at all with the game - it really is a stable game! You can also infinitesimally customise your truck with lights, paint jobs, wheels, exhausts etc.

I've heard that there is an extremely active modding community that has produced some great mods like a snow mod, or a mod with trailers that have logos from real companies but I haven't tried these yet so I can't comment on their stability or quality but they are definitely out there!

Overall I'd give this game an 8/10 as it's really good fun and easy to get into, but can get a little repetitive and the AI drivers are sometimes a little odd. This is also not a game that would appeal to absolutely ever gamer, but it's worth a shot, as there is a demo version freely available on the SCS website.

Thanks for reading, and in my next post I will do a review of the Rhodia Webnotebook and the Lamy Vista!

Welcome!

Hey everyone, and welcome to my blog!

In this blog I intend to post a variety of things, but mainly the following: fishing, pens, and computers, with computers consisting of tech and games.

As you may have gathered from the above, I have rather odd and varied interests, but hopefully you'll find something that piques your interest. I'm also totally new to the whole blogging thing, so I hope if any of you read these first few posts that you can bear with me until I get into the swing of things and hopefully this will make for vaguely interesting reading!

I suppose I'd better tell you all a little about myself - I'm a 17 year old from Kent, England, currently in my second year of A-levels, hoping to go to university and study history after a gap year (for which I have very few plans - guess I should start soon eh?). I have 2 cats of which I'll post some pictures at some point. 

Now on to something related to the topics I promised I'd talk about earlier - pens! Yesterday I got a nice package from Cult Pens, which contained a Lamy Vista Fine nib fountain pen, a Lamy Z26 converter for said pen, an 80 ml bottle of Diamine Majestic Purple, and finally an orange Rhodia Webnotebook in A4 size. I hadn't noticed that they were offering a free Pilot V5 refillable rollerball, so I was happy to see it when I opened the box. I think it's quite a nice concept as a pen, but not sure if I'd buy them as I normally use the Mitsubishi Uniball rollerballs if I have to use a rollerball. The Vista writes really nicely, and when compared to the Medium nib on my Limited edition Lime Green Safari, it's quite a lot thinner - more so than I'd expected! The Rhodia paper is superb, there is simply no other way to describe it. It feels like a revelation to write on when compared to the Pukka Pads I normally use for everyday school work, and I will certainly be writing in it every day as my journal.

I'm going to say goodbye for now, but if you get a few minutes spare, check out my friend's fishing vlog here.

Leo