Well, yesterday (Thursday by now) I had an OK lecture, followed by ice skating (saw the most beautiful figure skater I've ever seen - not that she was the prettiest woman off the ice, but on the ice she was the most beautiful thing I've seen all year). Then as I wasn't formalling, I microwaved a ready meal, and killed time. Then on the way back from getting eggs to make a cake for Amanda's birthday today (Friday), I saw Amanda coming out of the house on her way to an obs session (talk about good timing!). Made the cake, iced it once it had cooled, and put it in the cupboard. Got into re-reading Thunder and Lightening (spelling of Lightening intentional, in case you were wondering), finally gave up about 2.

Got up this morning early intending to work for the midday class. Didn't happen. Didn't understand half of the class (knew I should have done the work for it - but will I learn?). Spent most of the afternoon reading Thunder and Lightening, then met everyone to get ready to give Amanda her cake. 19 candles (and only one splash of wax on the cake! Oops!). I think she liked it; she's certainly good at making you feel appreciated if she didn't. I'm guessing the former, I don't think Amanda could be insincere.

I had to dash off to get to Wyrd Sisters at the O'Reilly (Keble). It was damnably funny, and well done. Nothing like how it was described by the OxStu (well, if you're going to send someone who doesn't understand Pratchett humour to review a Pratchett-based play, you're asking for a crap review). Upon getting back, I got straight back into Thunder and Lightening, which I've now finished. Lazlo claimed that this was the edited version with fewer errors (he's been editing it with Drakhan). I can't say I'd noticed that many errors last time around, and there were certainly still a few left. Lazlo has a habit of saying "loose" when he means "lose"; I might let him know about that.

As soon as this MSN transfer completes (damn bandwidth throttling!), I'm going to bed. Ah, it's finished. Good night, all!

I said I'd had a bad hustings. Ah well. I was feeling quite indifferent before the results, but now I'm feeling quite bitter about the whole thing. I guess I'll see how close I was when the results come out. Had really good pizza for dinner. Slightly burned, because our oven is too fierce. Beats Cold Buffet night any day. (Why am I writing in fragments today?)

Added two new tutorials, one of my own and one of Brian's. Spent an hour or two getting internet and web to work on my Windows 3.11 VPC installation. Ooh, and bought my tickets for the MVP Summit! (Travel insurance is a bitch - that, postage and card surcharges brought my costs from £432.40 to £477.77.)

Started working on a past CP3 paper - I want to get as many done as possible before attempting next week's tute one under exam conditions. Got distracted by email and Win3.11. Had quite a good Complex f(x) lecture; halfway through I worked out why questions were being done the way they were, and the light bulb of understanding flicked on. Hopefully that means I'll be able to do the problem set. We shall see.

Clean sheets! That's the day in roughly reverse order (apart from the tickets, which should have been a lot closer to the top).

I've just written a tutorial on converting a PDF file so that it can be placed in Publisher. Let me know if there are any mistakes, and I'll do my best to rectfy them.

Brian Kvalheim's tutorial on setting text defaults using normal.pub is now online at its new home. This saves it from its former state of languishing in Google's archives. Enjoy!

I have exams in 3 weeks!! That is scary. I don't even know my exam dates yet. Damn schools. Yesterday I finished work at midnight and then read two new chapters of online stories, and was too tired to blog. Tonight I've no idea while I'm still up, as I've not been working. Will go to sleep once I've finished writing this.

I could have booked myself a ticket to the MVP Summit this evening, if I'd known whether or not I have travel insurance (or want it from the airline). I've found a reasonable set of flight dates for only £430ish. Hopefully those won't have all gone by the time I am able to find out the details I need. I now have my new passport, so I'm legal to leave the country again! (Thanks to the advice not to buy travel tickets until you have a passport, I'm now paying probably a hundred more than I would have for my flights.)

I had my last revision lecture today. Three more lectures this week on my short option (Functions of a Complex Variable) and then I'm done with lectures for the year. Two weeks of solid revision (hopefully, more likely to be procrastinating, though, if I'm being honest) later are my Preliminary Examinations. I'm repeating myself. Meh.

This week's new Strong Bad Email is hilarious. I highly advise watching it.

I think I'll go to bed now.

JoAnn's tutorial on sending a multi-page newsletter as the body of an email is now on the site. JoAnn has said she'll try and grab some screenshots at the weekend.

Going into town to meet Nat (who never rang, as she'd promised she would, so I didn't meet her in the end) and JCR Election Hustings (where Vad stole the limelight, so perhaps my lack of coherence wasn't noticed so badly) took up a lot of time today, so doing the problem sheet for 8am this morning got pushed back and back. So here we are, having walked it over to the DWB at half one. I could have walked it over in the morning, but it would have required getting up earlier (and the route is much more pleasant at 1:30am - jaywalking is fun!).

I'll leave it there tonight - I would describe hustings and my upsetness about Nat not ringing me in more detail, but frankly I just want to go to bed.

Well, I've figured I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well start diary-like blogging once more. There may be some useful tidbits of computing-related information included, and there will probably be a lot of things you'd rather you hadn't read. Hopefully not too many, though.

Today started at 11, after I discovered my alarm clock hadn't gone off at 10:50 to wake me up. Either that, or I had just turned it off without realising it and dozed back off. Had my first can of Pepsi of the day. I then proceeded to check email (and newsgroups, and Facebook, and OxGoss, and OxRo, and Boso; consider that an abbreviation); had a shower, then slowly consumed one of the two 150g bars of Fairtrade chocolate I got at the Coop last night. Checked the pidge (nothing had come for me, surprisingly enough), and went back to my room.

Natalie rang; I went over to Trinity to meet her and Alex. We proceeded to the Fowl and Foetus; I had a Diet Pepsi, Nat had Coke, and Al had Strongbow (most ladylike!). We chatted, and eventually decided to get food. At this point I got myself another Diet Pepsi. After a while, my sausage and mash came (very nice). We chatted for a while afterwards; my love life came into the discussion. Alex suggested numerous ways for me to pull, all of which seemed to involve drinking. After each I reminded her that I didn't drink, but the conversation kept coming back to Alex suggesting another activity that involved me drinking. Clubbing without drinking also came up, but to be honest I think I'd enjoy cutting off my own toes with a rusty blunt axe more.

No one seems to understand that I can't dance. Lots of people say that, but I'm certain that I'm different. (But then, who isn't?) The usual reply is "Neither can I, but I do", or words to that effect. I can't really put into words (might do later in an edit if I work out how) why this is different, but it just is. When I'm on a dance floor (which is rare enough), I'm paralysed: I cannot move. Having "GO ON, DANCE!" shouted at me doesn't really help this. I blame dyspraxia (but I do that for most things, makes me seem like I just want a scapegoat rather than solving my problems). Maybe I should take dance classes.

Might be going to G&D's tomorrow with Nat, depending what she decides when she leaves Al (Al has to go rowing). After getting back to college from the Bird and Baby, I had my second can of regular Pepsi of the day, after which I killed time online and then built myself a 6-tier can tetrahedron (of which I'm most proud, despite it being rather sad - picture below [yes, my room is messy, and the photo is blurred {and yes, I do like nested brackets}]), having amassed enough cans to do so. Then went to watch Doctor Who.

Thanks to the FA Cup Final going to penalties, Doctor Who was 20 minutes late starting. The residents of the TV room were most worried that we'd got the wrong channel or something, until we worked this out. Doctor Who was well worth the wait, though, and was quite scary, ending with a cliffhanger (being the first two-parter of this series). I won't give any spoilers away, but it has zeppelins. Everyone loves zeppelins. Anyway, upon the conclusion of that, I came back here and drank my third can of Pepsi and devoured my second bar of chocolate (making a total of 300g consumed today). And now my eyelid is hurting - most annoying, as I'm not even tired yet (the only cure I've found is to sleep). Maybe I'll have to see a doctor about it at some stage - it's only ever my right eyelid, and always roughly the same place on it. And always in the evening. Most odd.

Sorry if I've bored you. You didn't have to read it, though.

Amongst the blazing fanfare of piccolo trumpets and bugles, the new site is finally approaching completion, after a 2-year complete lack of updates. Static content is yet to have a navigation mechanism added, so sit tight.

All old blog entries have been ported over, but comments have not. Sorry if you were fond of them.

I'll post back once the site is finally finished (if that happens - which it won't, knowing what I can be like).

Edit: I think I've got the nav working properly now. Leave a comment or email me if you find any broken links (high likelihood) and I'll try to fix them. I know about some of the add-ins, and am working on them.

Edit2: OK, I think I've got the add-ins done now.

Edit3: I've now configurated some redirects from the old site (mvps.org/the_nerd) to the relevant pages on the new site.

OK, I just realised today that I had forgotton to release an add-in I wrote a while back. So the Default Zoom add-in is now available from the Add-ins page.

I apologise for the complete lack of updates in the last who-knows-how-long. I thought I had better announce that the blog, at least, is dormant, and will be replaced by a complete redesign sometime soon, probably over the summer. It may be ASP.NET, it may not. Depends how I feel.
Anyway, the main point of this post is that there is a new Default Layout Guides add-in available in the Add-ins area

EDIT: The link now works

2006 Edit: The link now works. Again.