Night mode
Life gets a bit weird when you're semi-nocturnal. Yesterday, I woke up at 11pm, and in the space of an hour had to rev up from something resembling a hangover (but without the pleasure of having been drunk the night before) to someone capable of listening to loud music without wincing, and drinking champagne without falling over. I've been getting from two to six hours sleep a day over the last couple of weeks, usually somewhere around the middle of the day, and I don't think my body appreciates it very much. Coffee helps.
The one thing about not sleeping very much, however, is it gives you plenty of time to game. Having received Shogun: Total War and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom from Mike for Christmas, I've become totally addicted. I'm not sure whether to thank Mike, or curse him. I wonder how Kobolds Ate My Baby (which was my present for him) turned out.
Having played Emperor almost nonstop over the last couple of days, I needed something to do which didn't involve looking at a screen - namely, finally getting stuck into my Unread Book Pile, which is one of my New Year's resolutions (along with losing weight and actually working at Uni.)
I never thought I'd have an Unread Book Pile: as a kid, I used to go to the library with my library card, plus my sister's and mum's cards, entitling me to borrow a total of fourteen books. I'd come home with two carrier bags full of science fiction, and devour them over the next couple of days. The concept of abandoning a book halfway, or reading more than one book at once, was totally foreign to me.
And then I discovered the Internet. I'm fairly sure that it's reponsible for my loss of attention span - even though I'm not entirely sure how, given that I can sit on Wikipedia for hours and read about the history of small South American countries that I hadn't even heard of. I guess it's my equivalent of channel surfing: with a book, I need to make a commitment - "I'm going to sit down and read this book" - whereas with Wiki, or e2, or any other site which has lots of internal linkage, I can just surf randomly and read anything that catches my attention, which is usually quite a lot, given that I'm rather easily interested in random stuff. And then I discover that six hours have gone by, and the studying that I'd planned to do didn't get done, and so on...
And hence the Unread Book Pile was born. There's a quote floating around out there - I think it might have been Neil Gaiman - about setting your TiVo to record all your favourite programs and ones you might be interested in, so that you can not watch them without feeling like you've missed anything. The principle is somewhat similar.
The book on the top of the Pile happened to be Gaiman's 'Anansi Boys' - the signed copy I got in November, which is very pretty and actually has DVD-style extras in the back: a deleted scene, extracts from the author's notebook (his handwriting is worse than mine), discussion topics for readers' groups. It's quite nifty, and the author's afterword contains a shout-out to all the blog readers, yay. The story itself isn't half bad, either.
Next up are Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead', and 'Against the Law', which is an account by a man prosecuted for being gay in 1950s Britain. Both are quite interesting... but not exactly light reading, meaning that they've sat in the Pile for several months, half-finished. I can almost hear my younger library-going self yelling "Sacrilege!". I also have 'Dive Into Python' and 'Thinking in C++' to finish - and I might even get a little studying done, too.
Studying-wise, I suspect I should really just sit down and inhale my textbooks one of these days. I have about nine days til my first exam, then a week til the next one, then a few days til the third, so I'm not incredibly pushed for time. Unfortunately, I picked up less information from lectures than I'd have wished.
Anyway ... Happy New Year, everyone, and may we all not fail our resolutions the day after we make them...
The one thing about not sleeping very much, however, is it gives you plenty of time to game. Having received Shogun: Total War and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom from Mike for Christmas, I've become totally addicted. I'm not sure whether to thank Mike, or curse him. I wonder how Kobolds Ate My Baby (which was my present for him) turned out.
Having played Emperor almost nonstop over the last couple of days, I needed something to do which didn't involve looking at a screen - namely, finally getting stuck into my Unread Book Pile, which is one of my New Year's resolutions (along with losing weight and actually working at Uni.)
I never thought I'd have an Unread Book Pile: as a kid, I used to go to the library with my library card, plus my sister's and mum's cards, entitling me to borrow a total of fourteen books. I'd come home with two carrier bags full of science fiction, and devour them over the next couple of days. The concept of abandoning a book halfway, or reading more than one book at once, was totally foreign to me.
And then I discovered the Internet. I'm fairly sure that it's reponsible for my loss of attention span - even though I'm not entirely sure how, given that I can sit on Wikipedia for hours and read about the history of small South American countries that I hadn't even heard of. I guess it's my equivalent of channel surfing: with a book, I need to make a commitment - "I'm going to sit down and read this book" - whereas with Wiki, or e2, or any other site which has lots of internal linkage, I can just surf randomly and read anything that catches my attention, which is usually quite a lot, given that I'm rather easily interested in random stuff. And then I discover that six hours have gone by, and the studying that I'd planned to do didn't get done, and so on...
And hence the Unread Book Pile was born. There's a quote floating around out there - I think it might have been Neil Gaiman - about setting your TiVo to record all your favourite programs and ones you might be interested in, so that you can not watch them without feeling like you've missed anything. The principle is somewhat similar.
The book on the top of the Pile happened to be Gaiman's 'Anansi Boys' - the signed copy I got in November, which is very pretty and actually has DVD-style extras in the back: a deleted scene, extracts from the author's notebook (his handwriting is worse than mine), discussion topics for readers' groups. It's quite nifty, and the author's afterword contains a shout-out to all the blog readers, yay. The story itself isn't half bad, either.
Next up are Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead', and 'Against the Law', which is an account by a man prosecuted for being gay in 1950s Britain. Both are quite interesting... but not exactly light reading, meaning that they've sat in the Pile for several months, half-finished. I can almost hear my younger library-going self yelling "Sacrilege!". I also have 'Dive Into Python' and 'Thinking in C++' to finish - and I might even get a little studying done, too.
Studying-wise, I suspect I should really just sit down and inhale my textbooks one of these days. I have about nine days til my first exam, then a week til the next one, then a few days til the third, so I'm not incredibly pushed for time. Unfortunately, I picked up less information from lectures than I'd have wished.
Anyway ... Happy New Year, everyone, and may we all not fail our resolutions the day after we make them...