I am a Half-Geek

I have decided that it is pointless pretending I'm not. That's not to say I am a whole one either, not through the supposed lack of street cred being a geek lands you with, but because I don't understand the technical stuff.
I love computer games like World of Warcraft and the Sims (in case you're wondering, I have both 2 and 3, but I prefer the second edition for its speed), I understand geek humour and I collect the occasional graphic novel. I sort of know what a QR code is, and I'm passable at Gimp.
On the other hand, I don't have any idea how to handle the technical stuff. Gigabytes, Terrabytes, whatever they're called - when people ask me how many megapixels the camera on my phone has, I just stop listening automatically. I'm only vaguely aware of what jailbreaking is, I don't speak binary and I know barely anything about computers. Before you say anything, I'm quite happy not knowing those things, so don't try to explain them.
The most technical I've ever been was when I changed the keyboard shortcut to my HP helpdesk so I could get my cheat window on Sims 2 to work properly (although I must admit I was pretty pleased with myself for doing that, even if I did have the instructions up in a separate window and it took me three weeks).

Even so, I'm perfectly fine with my geek side. I prefer being acknowledged as part of a collective where knowledge and how stupid you can make a cat look are power, as opposed to how many shades of grey your trackie bottoms come in and how many essentially identical R'n'B songs about the guy-who-loves-his-girlfriend-more-than-anything-and-has-done-all-his-life-but-he-cheated-on-her-and-she-cheated-on-him-and-it's-so-unfair-that-she-did-that-and-how-blind-is-she-to-ignore-how-lovely-her-cheating-boyfriend-is-and-even-though-he-loves-her-for-who-she-is-she-just-happens-to-be-a-supermodel-with-a-severe-lack-of-proper-clothing. When it comes down to it, it's geeks who will rule the world, and even though I'm half not-geek, I am also half geek. I have geek-itude.

Anonymous Hackers

I only heard about them recently - actually my Dad told me about them, because he was talking about how some security company or somesuch criticized them, and Anonymous took their website offline and put all the company's details in the public domain. I was just reading about them on Wikipedia (I know it's not entirely accurate, you can tell when they've made typos), and they sound pretty cool. I love that they've said "They decided to just rape his servers" and at some point in the Wikipedia article, someone said 'we did it for the lulz' (I think you'll find it's teh lulz. Jeez, learn to spell, Wikipedia people!). If I didn't probably have to show some proficiency and enthusiasm for maths, along with a longer concentration span than I have on a good day and the ability to hack into anything (it took me a week to fix my own Sims 2 cheat window when I had internet instructions up at the time, although it was a high point for my personal computer prowess) then I'd be a lot more interested in Anonymous stuff. As it is, if it doesn't have brightly coloured pictures and funny slogans, I'm not interested.

Freaky Things You Find in the Bottom of Your Enormous Notepad Box.

What do you mean you don't have an enormous notepad box? Everyone needs one - where else are you supposed to put your collection?
Anyway, I was clearing stuff out of mine, and I thought I'd show you some of the interesting stuff I found.

 this was a picture I drew while on a train in Japan. It's Lord and Lady Froggleton, and yes, the heat did get to me. This is what happens when you can only drink Calpis and Pocari Sweat.

 I went to a Summer school thing a few years ago - I think it was Summer 2006. Anyway, we did a production of Wicked and I was Ruby. It was that long ago that I can't remember the plot, but I did have lines - I know that much.

 This is a loyalty card. When I was in Japan, me and my mum went to a maid cafe (you might want to look this up - basically the waitresses are dressed as maids and treat you like the lord/lady) and I got this. Cool, ne?

 My school's Summer art camp '09. We had to create a little art booklet about our favourite song, and my favourite song at the time was Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk. There's other stuff in the booklet, but this and the front cover (which I didn't scan in because I got bored) are the only good bits really. Pencil drawings I can do, but give me a paintbrush and it looks like what would happen if you gave a toddler LSD. And not in a cool, abstract Impressionist way.

 This is a magazine. For those who can't read Japanese too well, the magazine is called SALA Po Ke. There was another one called Doki Poke (the Japanese would pronounce it as po-ke, like pocket without the 't' because it's a pocket thing. Like Pokemon is Pocket - monsters). Essentially, what you're seeing here is a Japanese male escort. They don't do the dirty with you, you just pay a load of money for a guy who looks like this to sit with you all evening in a bar and treat you like a princess - basically a male escort. You'll have a good idea if you've been watching the Justin Lee Collins: Turning Japanese programme.

 This is an advertisement from inside SALA Po Ke. It might be advertising the man, or maybe his clothes. Probably the man, I think, because the book is full of these guys and I picked it up from a stand in the middle of Kabuki-cho, Japan's most infamous red light district. No, we didn't know it was like that until we got there and I spotted all the escorts wandering round and had the joy of explaining what they were to my mum.

 A photo of me and one of the meido (maids) at the maid cafe we went to. The writing in the heart over my head says 'moe' (moh - eh) which means cute (like if you saw a little toddler you'd say, "MOEEE!!"). I wasn't already wearing the cat ears, and that's my braces, not missing teeth in the dark areas where I'm grinning.

So yeah, some interesting stuff I found in my notepad box.

Waiting for You

Here's a piece I did using my graphics tablet thingy. I was seeing how advanced I could get with it (yeah, I only used pencil and paint, but still).
It's more difficult using the tablet pen, so the proportions are a little off what they would be, had I drawn it on real paper, but I'm still quite pleased with it, simply because it took more than ten minutes and I actually finished it.
It's called 'Waiting for You'. I don't know if it's actually you she's waiting for, but it could be.

 I signed it too :D

Jeg elsker dig

I am showing a picture I created using Gimp and Google translate. I was gonna fill up the whole page, but I think it looks good this way too (I ran out of foreign languages that I could type with my keyboard, because it refused to let me copy and paste all the characters of the Thai phrase)

Oh God No....

Hello.... I'm still alive... I thought I might as well let you know I haven't been shot dead by the Mafia yet.

Today was my first day back at school. I'm a Year 10! I don't feel like one though. I'm not used to it.

When I got into school this morning, there was a sign on my form room door saying 'teachers with 2-5 years experience'. Come on, we're only bad if the teachers are nasty to us! We're not that difficult. Mind you, we've got a new person in our form and he is a bit difficult sometimes. He's all right with me though, as far as I can remember.

Alix was talking about the Muse concert from the other day - which I could have seen but I was in France! Dang it! Apparently they did the flashing lights and stuff just like Glastonbury and Fuji Rock festival, and Matt Bellamy wore his shiny red suit and the drummer dressed up as a space-age telly tubby again. He was wearing a sort of Vince Noir-esque disco-ball catsuit. Alix has died her hair jet black.

I went over to Chloe's new form room. Last year it was one of the science rooms, but now it's the geology room which used to be the sports science room. Keiley had some sort of accident on a bike over the summer, and when Chloe got in she was really really tanned. She gave me some castanets (is that right? I'm sure there's an I in it) and some magnets from Spain.

We've got Sackfield as our form teacher this year. I've never had her for anything before, but apparently she's going to be my German teacher now. Apparently she gives out cake at Christmas, which is fine by me.

We got these fancy new planners with transparent plastic covers on them, and fancy block writing saying 'student planner 2010-2011'. It's got these random bits of coloured card in it near the back. Also, we have to get stamps now, instead of merits. We're meant to get one every single lesson, and if we have less than 25 stamps at the end of the week then something is wrong.

Big P gave us a new reinvention of the same assembly he's given us the past two years already - you'd think he'd be able to think of a new one by now? He reminded us AGAIN of the school rules (which are in our planner, in case we're ever bored enough in lessons to want to be reminded of the etiquette for buses - when we're not meant to even look at our planners barely) and filled our heads with more Barack Obama quotes and pictures of Ussain Bolt and Michael Jordan, and some other people who've made something of themselves - all of whom are black. I'm just saying this to point out that he has a bit of a thing for black people.

Then we had English. I've got Boustead again! She's a great teacher. We had to rewrite the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme as a sort of article. My table - me, Chloe, Zaira and Sara - got do it as a magazine article. We called it 'Jack's Nob Job' (because of the 'Old Dame Dob did patch his nob/with vinegar and brown paper' bit).

Next there was Biology. Reedy stayed with us. We're looking at cells again.

After lunch, I had Spanish. Just me and Janneka getting taught by Crane. It's very awkward, but the work we did was quite easy, just saying stuff like 'Hola, que tal? Estoy muy bien. Me llamo Isobel y tengo catorce anos. Mi cumpleanos es el cuatro de enero. Tengo tres hermanos y vivo con mi madre.'

So yeah . . . that's my first day in Year 10.