Jasmin's Magical Adventure to Induction

  Today was the day I finally start at uni, it's only inductions like, but at least it's something to keep me sane. I didn't actually sleep last night because I was feeling too creative and productive, and so decided to research Film Noir and the rolls of gender rolls/views of equality in the 1940-1950's for contextual research into the short stories by Roald Dahl I have to study, along with sketching and making notes on the text.

  As I did not sleep, I was obviously up and ready on time, and set off early enough to walk to the college.... So I thought... I may have been a little geologically misplaced and orientally confused, but I was not by any means, lost, as 40 minutes later I arrived back exactly where I'd set off, back at home. And so I tried again, taking the bus as I would only be a few minutes late at this rate, so no need to panic (I was stressing out and frustrated and teary). Or at least, not until the driver kicks you off the bus as it has gone past your stop and reached it's terminal (at which point I nearly cried at the poor driver who had so kindly waited whilst I ran for the bus earlier)... And so yet again I tried, this time getting on the underground, eventually arriving at my first induction lecture an hour late. Never mind, I didn't miss anything exiting in the end, apparently.

  After the induction, it was time for a lunch break, and that is where I made my very first friend, (and may have fallen slightly in love with him too). He was stood outside, flirting with the ladies when I first saw him, but he stopped to greet me with his big green eyes, and we sat in the sun for a while quite contently. His name is Muta, and he's a lovely big old cat.

  My day felt oddly Ghibli-esque after that, especially wondering around Shepherd's Bush markets with all the wonderful, colourful stalls. It's a shame Muta didn't want to come, but he was happy enough in his patch of sunshine out by the college entrance, and he was there when I got back. I didn't really engage much with my classmates, instead I was consumed by ideas and inspiration of things I could make, and so continued with some more brain storming and character analysis- this continued for another 35 minutes before I decided that the tutor was unacceptably late. And my classmates agreed. We're not paying £9000 a year to be stud up by our tutors.

  No trace of him/her was to be found, but we did get a run down of the IT induction from a technician, who kindly explained everything in just a minute, when it would have taken a mind-numbingly long hour to hear the same thing but dragged out with powerpoint presentations, so, all in all I suppose we did get the it induction to some degree and still got to go home early. Surely enough, Muta was swaggering across the street, wooing another group of young and impressionable girls, melting their hearts.

Stuff and Things for the Good of the Blog

Yo peeps. Imma split this post into 3 bits because things happen... Lol i have no idea what I'm doin'.

1. Music
I find it hard to write a post without mentioning music at some point and this one is no exception =P
The 3 week long playlist on spotify I mentioned in the last post has probably now become a 4 week long one... yes I have a months worth of music to listen to and on there there is only 1 album per band... that's a lot o' bands.

Anyway I have a lot to look forward to from various artists
Anubis Gate have a new album out early next year .
Dream Theater have just this week released their new album which I still haven't listened to.
Pyramaze have a new album out at some point either nearer Christmas or early next year
Headspace have a new album out early next year
Bad Salad have a new EP out early next year
Epica have their 10th anniversary live performance coming out on 3 DVDs and 2 CDs as a massive box.

I've also recently discovered the eBay of CDs and Vinyls, Discogs: http://www.discogs.com/
If it exists, someone will either have it on sale or it will have once been sold on there. My bro has bought some almost extinct Black Metal CDs from there for ridiculously cheap prices and I've just bought some album promos for less than £10 each and they're friggin gold dust. You MUST check this but be careful of shipping prices, they caught me out and ended up paying an extra £10 for some bits.

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2. Uni
FRESHERS WEEK YAAAAAY

Monday was the "Welcome to Sheffield. Feel free to explore as many pubs as you can tonight" talk and a pointless talk on modules because I don't get a choice doing Astro. I still don't know who the other peeps are on my course because they haven't dumped us all together in a room yet, but I'm sure they'll all begin to love me soon =P

Then there's the guy with the Dream Theater shirt I saw who's doing physics... he shall be mine...

I've got a Sheff Uni hoodie now too so I'm an official student. The card means nothing. It's all about the hoodie ;)

Anyway, Tuesday was interesting cos all I did (except me piano lesson) was go to the wargames society meet... funneh guyzzz. I took down some models cos I thought that not bringing models was like not bringing my deck to  Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. After being there 5 mins one of the high authority peeps let me join in the game they were about to start. As Mr Leggett knows very well I have a metaphorical boner for Terminators (big guys in big armour with big weapons that never frikkin die) and naturally I used some of them and some bikes as support too... The game starts and the evil ones realise theyve put the best guys at the front and the weakest at the back and the game rules state you have to attack the nearest model in a unit... do the Chaos Lord was driven over by bikers after being shot up a treat. Terminators were in reserve waiting to be beamed in from orbit Star Trek style. All the while I keep getting nice comments from random strangers looking at my models which was nice =3
Anyway back to the game; two of the guys offer a duel for fun and decide to pit the Terminators one of my ally's was using against the evil ones' grots (goblins with pistols basically), of which took a few turns to get going. In the mean time I was down to 1 biker and was about be be assaulted by Howling Banshees (they dance the dance of death and are like ninjas with two swords but all futuristic like) who are scary good in combat. I get my free shot off because they assaulted me and kill 1. He gets 24 chances to hit, then 8 chances to hit, resulting in 1 wound, killing the biker. I so wanted to survive that attack XD
Then the Terminators rain down and do bugger all for the first turn, only to be killed next turn by me rolling 5 ones out of 6 dice -_- never again... The big thing about this is not the shitty roll but that they were killed by the most gruntyest of grunts of gruntytown... even more gruntyer then guardsmen and lets be honest theyre pretty grunty. They were killed by Eldar Guardians. They literally punched them to death...
Dire losses aside, the other lot of my Terminators kill entire units without breaking a sweat... then DIE TO THE SAME BLOODY UNIT OF GUARDIANS!!! They deserved a promotion after that game.
Sadly the game had to be cut short there because we were already 45 minutes over the allotted time XD
Met all the people who run the soc and got a Blood Bowl friend too.

Wednesday was stressful... All I wanted to do was go and get registered but nothing is ever that easy is it?
I got up, got ready and then couldn't find any keys, not even mine. After 10 mins of frantic searching I find them and get going. I turn up at registration 10 mins early and hang around for a bit before going in, queue for about half an hour then get turned away because I didn't have my passport... Id've put money on it that they said that only international students needed it. I still don't understand why because they have me on the system with a picture of me... So I ring my bro who luckily hasn't gone to his lectures yet and is still at home, so I get him to find it and chuck it to me as his bus goes past. While I'm waiting for him, 3 hipsters pass me and wow they were the most classic yet extreme hipsters I've ever seen. The word faggot didn't do them justice, so I just thought they must be doing psychology. Anyway so my bro hands me me passport over the bus and I go back to register and it all goes smoothly. Then the worst part... HMV DIDN'T HAVE ANY ALBUMS I WANTED DX

I got my timetable too today so for those of you who want to know, I have stuff at these times:
Monday 11:00 - 12:00 and 17:00 - 18:00
Tuasday 9:00 - 10:00 and 16:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 11:00 - 12:00
Thursday 11:00 - 16:00
Friday 10:00 - 13:00
I'ts nice that I only have to get up early on Tuesdays =P

Thursday was the activities fair where we sign up to the societies. I am now a member of:
Minecraft Soc
Not Only D&D Soc
Board Game Soc
Card Game Soc
Collectible Card Game Soc
PokeSoc
RockSoc (Which is pretty shit so will drop it)
PhySoc
Wargames Soc

That afternoon I wanted to go to the card gaming thing but the booklet that it was advertised in said tickets were £3. That wasn't the problem... the problem was that the booklet said for some other events that you had to pre book, so I assumed the £3 tickets were to buy on the door... I was wrong... they had to be pre booked too... so I got there and was immediately turned away. Fun.

Friday I had the departmental talks about physics telling us about how not to fail, why failing is bad and how big and scary the books are. They said that in the £9000 fees, our textbooks are bought for us so we get to keep them forever =3. (Suck it up Baker 'n' Jake XD).

There was a guy there and he had a Tool shirt... like the Dream Theater guy on Monday, he shall also be mine... He looks like he's in his 30s tho...

After those we had a PhySoc gathering in the union bar (Bar One) and that was a weird experience. Everyone sitting round a table with a beer or cider and talking about how much 'fun' they have while they're drunk. So I was just sitting there thinking, in the words of Bill Bailey, ...Die...Die you smug bastards... It's really weird wanting to join in but then don't because you feel you have a better life choice than them...
Thats a bit harsh Tom...
It's true though Tom...
True, but you could've put it nicer...
Nobody needs to know... And stop talking to yourself
Ok Tom...

...

Yes so that was a strange experience but I did chat to some peeps that sadly do binge but are genuinely nice guys... outside the pub...

So overall for freshers... I've played 1 game of Warhammer all week... sounds a bit bad now I've put it that way, but there wasn't really anything else I wanted to do, except for archery which I did want to go to, but then I saw that they were using the Olympic-style bows with the counter-balances and all that jazz which to me aint archery. I think I'll start fitting in a bit better when we get into lectures and lab sessions.

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3. My RPG

OH... MY... GLOB
I'ts turned out 100 times better than I ever expected but I still haven't had the courage to do the feats yet XD
For those who haven't played it yet, its based on percentages for everything. Like in D&D you roll a D20 for everything, In this you roll a D100 and depending on how well you succeed depends on how effective your action is. The lower the roll on the D100, the better the result. For example if you're slapping a goblin (a favorite pastime of mine), you have a base skill with the weapon you're using and a strength modifier and there's the armour value of the goblin. Say the armour gives a 50% chance to hit. To that 50 you add your strength mod and the weapon mod to get a final hit chance. Lets say that chance ends up as 70%. You now roll the D100 and roll equal to or lower than the 70%. Each weapon do a specific die of damage for every so many % you succeeded by. Say you roll 50 and your weapon does "1D8 per 10% + 1". That means that against that hit chance of 70% you dealt 3D8 damage (difference of 20%,  + 1. The +1 is so that if you roll equal to the value you still do some damage). This means that criticals are easier to score against less armoured enemies but the only real problem is that it's delicate. 10% difference has made major differences to the outcomes of things so I need to be careful about the feat abilities. We don't want any wizards being tanks like they can be in D&D.
The steampunky bit of this is fun. I hope peeps like flamethrowers, tesla weapons and steam powered exo-skeletons and mechs because that's what there's gonna be. If anyone wants the rules for this I can give ya them and if peeps are ready we can do another beta testing sesh soooooon!

So there you go, an update of my life! You should feel privileged =P

Stokachu =3 

So, We Are NOT Bored, we meet again...

I think it'd be great to keep this blog up! We're all back off to uni/starting uni/starting gap years, we'll all have lots to tell, and it'll help us keep in touch!

I'll kick it off...

My gap year at the moment is with my local Church as a youth work trainee, which involves... youth work! And also studying the Bible, learning to give talks and trying to build my character. All of which I'm really enjoying.

The youth work is really interesting, there's four main things that I help at, two Bible study things (one just with y9s, the other with y7-y9) and two youth club things (one y3-y6, the other y7-y9). So mostly I'm working with people aged 11-14, which is the age group that I least know how to engage with! So that's challenging, but that makes it more... interesting! I'm getting much better with them quite quickly, though, which is good. Really interesting thing happened in a small group at the y3-y6 club, obviously I can't give details, but two of the kids in my group were absolutely hyper, and wouldn't stop messing around (in a bad way!), it makes you realise that you don't actually have any real control over them, your authority is superficial (save for being able to ban them from coming back, but we don't want to do that!). A lot of keeping kids behaving (in a good way!) can be an illusion act, a delicate balance between looking powerful and in charge, and being personal and fun. It was a little scary at the time, but enlightening in the long run. If any of you get involved in youth/children's work or teaching, remember that!

For the Bible side of things, I've been looking into how the Old and New Testament God is the same, a Trinity, relational God throughout, and how the Bible (looking at the OT bits mostly, though) provides evidence for this. Of course, I already believed they were the same, but it's fascinating looking at it in depth, the more I learn the more interesting it gets. Tomorrow I start a weekly thing teaching me to give talks, which will involve us (the trainees) having to present talks on passages to the rest of the church staff, which will be nerve-racking, but I hope to get a lot out of it, especially as I really have no idea where I'd start with a talk. We'll also be aiming them at the age groups we work with, so I'll be doing ages "11-14, which is the age group that I least know how to engage with!"... "but that makes it more... interesting"... :P

Stokes, as we all know, started work on his new Steampunk RPG, which is coming along really well. (We should all have another skype/in person game of that again!) I'm really impressed with how he sorted out guns to work with it, without making it insanely complicated. Keep that up, Stokesman.

Also, I broke my supervisor's wedding present wineglass... not a great start (;