First day invigilating
May 17th, 2006 at 20:48

Today was my first day working in my old school as an exam invigilator. It was even easier than I had predicted.

I was invigilating a couple of GCSE French listening exams- both foundation and higher tiers. My first observation was that it was incredible just how different the two groups of students were. The foundation lot didn’t really attempt to follow the school uniform dress code, loads of them didn’t have their exam timetables, and the “mobile phone box” at the front (not “mobile phonebox“) was stacked full of phones that the kids had neglected to leave in their bags.

By contrast, the “higher” tier kids all behaved perfectly.

It was boring really- no one caused a fuss and everyone got on with it. I didn’t even have to hand out any extra paper or tell anyone to face the front. I wanted someone’s phone to go off so I could march them out and give them a bollocking, but, alas the most exciting thing that happend was collecting the papers up at the end.

Listening to the foundation exam first of all (it was played off of a tape, as it was listening), the thing that struck me was just how easy it was- three years after I took my (higher tier) French listening GCSE, I thought “this is easy”. It was reassuring as I thought my French skillz didn’t go any further than “Je voudrais un coca”- when in fact they extend as far as “I walk to school” and “I get up at seven o’clock”.

The higher tier paper was just 45 minutes of white noise, essentially.

I was doing literally nothing, though. I just stood at the front- I didn’t have to pace around looking contemptuously at the kids. I got paid about twelve english pounds for standing silently, attempting to keep an eye on the kids. I must have earnt a few pence by simply chatting to my mate JD, who works doing techy things at the school (I believe he has a salary and a pension and everything)- it was his job to press the “play” and “stop” buttons.
All in all: not bad. Hopefully next time I post about WORK, it’ll have a more exciting story attached.

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Abandoned
May 16th, 2006 at 22:25

I discovered on Sunday that my parents were going to Menorca for a week. From yesterday.

Well, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it was quite a shock for me to discover that my sister and I are having to fend for ourselves. To make matters worse, I’m not allowed to use the car for a week, so they’ve effectively broken my legs and taken the dishwasher (ie: my mother) with them. The plan is to buy some paper plates and plastic cutlery and cups. Or rather, I would, if I could drive to a shop.

Not satisfied with leaving their kids in the drought-striken famine-hole that is South Leicestershire, they’ve sent me a number of picture messages of them jangling my car keys, just to taunt me.

In retaliation, I sent them a picture message back of the wild teenage party we were obviously having in their absence.

Yes, that is a screencap from the BBC One “rave” ident, that I’ve cropped and made slightly grainier.

Other than this, things are going alright so far. I went to the University “workbank” today after seeing a poster (ie: analogue banner-ad) that suggested that they were looking for |33t h4X0rs like me, saying “We’re looking for people who know PHP/MySQL/Java/HTML/CSS/GNVQ/ICQ/AOL/WTF”. I went in and the conversation went something like (ie: exactly like) this:

Enter James.
“Hello, is this the workbank?”

“Yes”

“I saw a poster advertising for people with programming skillz”

“We don’t have any jobs in that field at the moment but we do have waitressing”

“I’ll erm… come back another day, then”.

James exits stage left.
I was annoyed by this exchange because the woman didn’t even humour me by tapping at her computer or pretending to check whether there was any jobs. She just continued to look at me in a patronising way and apparently just knew that there wasn’t any jobs.

Incidentally, I’ve got my first day as an exam invigilator tomorrow, which should be… interesting. Tune in tomorrow to find out how I get on.

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How to Spin
May 14th, 2006 at 13:14

Politicians these days love to fiddle with the news and try and make themselves look good. Everyday, you see Huw Edwards or Fiona Bruce saying “Yeah, Blair’s still in power, somehow”. This mysterious art of public relations or Spin isn’t as mysterious as you may think- even you can do it too! Just follow these simple instructions:

1) Rename everything bad. The Americans call car-bombs in Iraq “I.E.D”s. Apparently standing for “Improvised Explosive Device”- that sounds much less awful than a BOMB. Simply copy this technique when relating bad news to people. For example, instead of saying “bad” use the acronym “G.O.O.D”- it doesn’t matter what it stands for, as people won’t want to feel stupid by asking. “I have some G.O.O.D news!”, you can cry.

2) Pretend that what did happen is what you wanted to happen. “We wanted Iraq to descend into civil war as it shows that the Iraqi people are now free from Saddam and can express themselves creatively, as well as destructively”. “I intended to write off your car by hitting a bollard, as I know you want a new one, but you were never going to make the plunge unless I did something for you”.

3) Bully the media, so that they don’t report G.O.O.D (ie: bad) things about you. “If you print that story about Tony Blair kicking children in the face as a hobby, we won’t invite you to our exclusive press briefing and you’ll have no friends!” “If you tell David that story about me kicking children in the face as a hobby, I won’t invite you to my birthday party and you’ll have no friends!”.

4) Narrow the spectrum of thought and remove shades of emotion. Over time, remove words like “freedom” and “peace” from the dictionary- if people can’t express these notions, then you can have whatever draconian powers you like.

5) Lie.

6) Rotate really, really fast.

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Tillmonkey Reviews
May 12th, 2006 at 22:51

I’ve spent today mostly at home and slacking on the internet. No surprises there, then. I did spend some time coding some PHP- both directly useful PHP (ie: for my Pokémon website) and one of those pie-in-the-sky ideas I have every-so-often and then give up on because I realise they’re too difficult (in this case, a last.fm/amazon mashup that would link you, loyal readers, to buy music I listen to, giving me some commission).

I also spent some time in the garden, but gave up when I realised it was too bright, and I couldn’t really see my laptop’s screen.

But, yesterday! Now there was a day! I went to some shops for the first time in ages, and being a veteran of the retail industry, I’ve decided to review the tillmonkeys.

The Railway Station

He didn’t ask to see my railcard when I said that I had one- this was good as it demonstrates a degree of trust. No banter, as such, but very functional and polite. 8/10

Waterstones

For the first time in a few months, I bought some new books- a Chomsky and something or other about the Middle East. I based my purchases entirely on the cover designs, so they may well be rubbish.

The Tillmonkey was awful. I thought with it being a bookshop, the middle-aged, grey-haired, jumper-wearing shopkeeper would be up for a bit of a chat. He’d be the friendly sort of chap who’d be passionate and enthusiastic about books, and would have read the vast majority of the books on sale himself. Perhaps when he saw what I was buying he’d exclaim with delight “Wow! I loved this book, it was really insightful!”, or perhaps “You’ll love the bit where Noam Chomsky insults American foreign policy”, and maybe even offer a frank review of my purchases, telling me that he’s not sure I’d like one of them, and go on to recommend a better one that he’d make less money on- because he loves books.

Alas, I was wrong.

“Do you do student discounts?”, “No, not anymore”. I thought I’d try and expand this exchange into banter. “Ah, I guess you get a lot of students in here”, I said, knowingly, before adding “…so it’d wouldn’t be profitable”, to justify my assumption and the fact I was apparently thinking aloud to the tillmonkey. Rather than get a lamenting, yet friendly comment about the cutthroat nature of modern business, harking back to the “good old days”, followed by an upbeat “Oh well, I guess that’s the way of the world”, to leave the conversation on an upbeat note, I got a dirty look and a scowl. He literally lowered his eyebrows, opened his mouth whilst leaving his teeth closed, and glared at me.

He did bag the books for me, though. 2/10.

WH Smith

This tillmonkey was excellent- when I got to till I spotted the “half price Galaxy when you buy any newspaper or magazine”. Despite having already scanned my goods, she didn’t mind cancelling the till, and she didn’t expect me to put back the now redundant bag of malteasers. 9/10.

The Train Back Home

This bloke wasn’t strictly a tillmonkey, but the ticket man annoyed me. He waved his hand in a sarcastic way (yes, a sarcastic wave) across my field of vision to get my attention, and then proceeded to act a bit shirty. I produced my “RTN” ticket from my wallet, and he stamped it, but then reached across and pulled my “OUT” ticket directly out of my wallet- essentially putting his hand all over my property without asking permission. He then demanded to see my railcard, to prove I got the discount tickets. Clearly he thought I was the next Great Train Robber and was robbing Midland Mainline’s excellent services. This completely eroded the trust that had built up between me and the tillmonkey back at the station.

I am disappointed. 3/10.

Overall, a mixed bag. The bag contains four tillmonkeys of varying quality.

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Exam Aftermath
May 11th, 2006 at 16:38

As luck would have it, my exam was alright. Rather than watch the programme about Hitler I hinted at, I chose to revise by reading the ever-reliable Wikipedia instead.

I learnt all about the Congress of Vienna and the diplomatic conventions (you call a diplomat “your excellency”), the Franco-Prussian war, the end of the Holy Roman Empire, the fact that the House of Windsor used to be called Saxe-Coberg-Gotha, the Habsburgs, the fortification of Luxembourg that caused the aforementioned Franco-Prussian war (neither side wanted the other to control the excellent garrison), the elective-monarchy that chose the king of the Holy Roman Empire (and how he had to be crowned by the Pope to be official), and about what personal unions between states are- such as Austria-Hungary sharing a monarchy.

I think that’d make a pretty impressive list for a night’s revision if I wasn’t reading up on the wrong fucking century. I wish I was making this up, but I genuinely did spend last night reading up on the nineteenth century (and then, erm, a list of neologisms in The Simpsons).

Just as I was about to go to bed early (midnight), I discovered that a programme called 1945 was on UKTV History. I weighed up the pros and cons of losing an hour of sleep versus “revising” 1/100th of the module. I chose the latter.
The weird thing was, I found myself parroting lines almost directly from the documentary in the exam this morning, whether it was relevant or not:

• “The Big 3 at the Potsdam conference were really the Big 2, but were just paying lip service to the British”
• “and all Winston Churchill got was the empty promise of free elections in Poland”
• “Coming up next on UKTV History: What Adam Hart-Davies did for us”
• “Bang! And the dirt is gone!”

It wasn’t THAT bad, all in all though- for those Jamesomalley trivia nerds out there, the questions I answered in the end were “How was Europe pivotal during the Cold War” (So for some reason I described how the cold war started and ended, and didn’t mention the middle bit), and “After 1945, did transnationalism undermine the nation state?” (I wrote about the EU).

Thrilling-o-rama!

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Exam Panic
May 10th, 2006 at 23:28

It turns out I’ve got an important history exam tomorrow- about 20th Century Europe. This wouldn’t be such a terrifying prospect if I’d actually revised- it only makes up 40% of my final grade afterall!

The thing is, it’s a bit too late now- there’s no way I can bit 100 years of exciting developments into what is now just under ten hours. I’m planning to watch a programme on UKTV History in a few minutes about how Hitler came to power- fingers crossed it’ll use words like ideology, fascism and perhaps even context.

Of course, knowing my luck, it’ll be presented by David Irving.

My original revision plan consisted mainly of spending 24 hours on Wikipedia- although I’m not sure whether or not to do this, as when I told my tutor this, he appeared shocked, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s spent this evening putting incorrect facts onto Wikipedia’s pages, just to spite me.

Yeah, my failure of this exam will be everyone else’s fault.

The trouble with the 20th century is that so much happend- I mean, would it have killed them during World War I to go and actually occupy Germany? That’d save a few hundred hours of studying- I believe there was this minor fracas in 1939 or something that was a result of them not sorting out the first world war properly. I havn’t had time to study it, anyway.

My main concern is that I’m rubbish with names. I can do dates and describe events quite well (“in some year, something happend, like, you know, whatever”), but I can’t cope with foreign names. Of course, with eastern Europe playing a pretty major part in the 20th century, I’ve got to remember hundreds of names made up of seemingly random sequences of consonants, which were probably created when the a line of keys on a (typewriter) keyboard were pressed when typing the birth certificate. Ludvík Svoboda? WTF, more like.

I realise I sound like a horrible racist. I’m not racist, though. I just hate people with foreign names. And black people.

As I’m writing this late at night, chances are you’re reading this after I’ve failed in a both catastrophic and hilarious way. Wish me luck (retro-actively).

(Just to clarify: I don’t hate black people. I’m talking to you, Mr ‘Take what James is saying out of context’)

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Election Night Armistice
May 8th, 2006 at 20:53

I’m quite embarassed about what I’ve spent over 12.5% of today doing. I’ve been watching an election programme recorded nine years ago, that my, cough, corrupt uncle, cough, found on a tape in his attic, cough.

It’s a shame I was only ten years old at the time, as the programme was amazing. It was broadcast at the same time as the proper results programme on BBC One, only was a three hour “comedy” version starring most of the Day Today cast- including a brief appearance by an in-character Alan Partridge. Interestingly, “official” BBC astons flashed up real election news at the bottom of the screen periodically.

Highlights included an interview with former-BBC correspondent Martin Bell, who was standing for election after leaving the BBC, being asked if he’d accepted “cash for questions” to MPs, during his time at the BBC. Hilariously, at first he denied this. They had a “whore in a helicopter” who they flew out to the party headquarters of the first newly elected MP, to create the first scandal of the new government. A “spinning” game was played with spin doctors from the three main parties, where they had to spin quotes from politicans to make them look good. I realise this description of the programme tends to suck all life and humour out if it.

It was brilliant. It would have been more so if I’d seen it nine years ago when all of the topical jokes about the Tories (which I still “got”, oddly), were relevant. Why it didn’t return in 2001 or 2005 I don’t know, but it damn well should have done.

The annoying thing is, because I’ve found this “tape” so many years after it was first broadcast, and because it has never been shown again, I won’t be able to reference it off-the-cuff without getting and get a laugh, like when people say “Back of the net!”, or “Jurassic Park!”, referencing Partridge. I’ll never be able to develop an in-joke between my friends derived from it, or if I somehow do, it will distort to the point where watching the original joke that I stole will become cripplingly embarassing, because of how badly I’ve bastardised it.

Any BBC commissioning editors reading? You know what to do. (Get the queen to dissolve Parliament, literally if neccessary, then call a general election, then commission this programme).

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Bizarre Coincidence
May 6th, 2006 at 13:34

I went to some of the pubs near my university yesterday evening with JD and Mike. It was a bit strange, as the two of them had never met before, and I was seeing two people who I know from completely different aspects of my life in the same place, at the same time, communicating. This wasn’t the strangest thing that happend though.

We were playing on a quiz machine (again), playing “pub quiz”- and as usual, we were doing alright until the entertainment or sports rounds started. Whilst playing, another group of people in the pub started helping us on some of the questions- they were dead useful as they seemed to know more about pop music and entertainment than us. The weird thing was, despite never having spoken to or seen any of them before, I sort of recognised one of them.

“You don’t have a Livejournal, do you?”, I asked. “Umm… yes”, he replied, with a facial expression saying “WTF?”. “I think I read your blog! I even posted a comment once!”.

It turned out that one of the people helping us was ‘Misc DMU Guy‘ from my blog’s links section (which you can see to your right). I found his blog about six months ago, after searching Technorati for my university. Better yet, Jared appeared to already know who I was! “You’re James O’Malley, right?”, he said, and it turned out he’d read my blog (ie: this) too.

As if this wasn’t strange enough, it also turned out that we’d been communicating on my student union’s forums, where I’ve made some overtly-technical posts to try and sound impressive.

I don’t know what the odds are of something like this happening, but it certainly was unexpected!

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Nutter of the week
May 4th, 2006 at 23:32

I had an exam today, for the first time in nearly a year. Unusually, it was a “seen” exam, which meant I had 24 hours beforehand to spend on Wikipedia revising, so that what I would end up writing would be super-excellent. Instead of doing this, I spent the time refreshing my Google Adsense account to see what sort of silly-money I was making.

I was quite worried about the exam for one reason, and one reason alone. I hadn’t used a pen since that last business studies exam eleven months ago- would I remember how to hold it? Could I remember how to write? I had to fill in a form when I bought my laptop on Monday (for a Staples loyalty card)- it provided little boxes in which I could write each individual letter in my name, and even then my scrawl was practically indecipherable. And now I had to write an entire essay by hand.

As it turned out, I couldn’t actually read back what I’d written, and my handwriting seems to have turned into what looks like Hebrew, or one of those alphabets where each character is connected to a line.

As I’m now an invigilator, I was sort of hoping for an “is there a doctor on the plane?” moment. I wanted one of the people at the front of the room to cry, “Oh no! Our star invigilator is down! We might have to cancel the exam… unless… Is there an invigilator in the room?!”, at which point I’d leap up and answer the call of duty. Unfortunately the closest this came to happening was when I deliberately tried to trip one of the real invigilators up as they walked past me.

After the exam, myself, Mike and Rob, who you may remember from previous blog updates, went to Polar Bear for a few games of Pool. After I’d thrashed Mike a couple of times, and he’s got hilariously angry about it, I encountered my latest Nutter Of The Week.

Polar Bear, as you might have guessed by its hip name is a very studenty pub. In fact, it’s just across the road from my university. It has loud music, a quiz machine, pool, big TVs, a video jukebox, sofas, and very studenty branding. Everyone in there is under-25. Or so I thought.

A man who looked like he was in his 50s, who was wearing a fairly smart, light blue shirt approached us, pint of beer in hand, and introduced himself. “Hello, my name is John”, he said, shaking our hands. “Could I play pool with you?”, he quivered. He looked like a slightly creepier version of Michael Palin, with less hair.

There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to play pool with this guy- here was a man who was blantantly too old to be in a pub of this nature, as it just looks wrong. When I told my mum this story, she suggested that he might have been a paedophile.
Rob, Mike and myself looked at each other nervously, as if to say with our eyes, “how can we get this strange old man to go away?”. My eyes darted from Mike, to Rob, to John, whilst making “Umm…” and “Erm….” sounds, hoping that stalling would allow him to take the hint, rather than prolongue the agony. “I just want to play… because I love the game”, he said, pitifully. He looked like he wanted to cry.

After a lifetime of half sentences, such as “We were just about to…”, “I’m going to…”, “You’re a bit…”, he finally took the hint and sighed, and looked genuinely disappointed and saddened by our declination by proxy.
This didn’t deter him though- he approached the other two groups of people around the other two pool tables. The first seemed to handle it better than us, and got rid of him within seconds, and the second seemed to be having either an encounter as awkward as ours, or were having a chat with him. Either way, they didn’t end up playing pool with him.

On his way out, defeated, he walked past us again, asking for one final time, “So you don’t want to play pool with me, then?”. He’d turned away and started walking before we’d even opened our mouths.

Poor John.

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Underwhelming TV Shows
May 3rd, 2006 at 20:09

The Matrix trilogy is currently being shown by ITV on three consecutive evenings, and this worries me. For the first time in about ten years, there’s something on ITV that I might actually consider watching. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t watch The Matrix and Reloaded, and I have no intentions of watching Revolutions tonight, what with my TV elitism. I fully intend to enjoy A History of Paint Drying on BBC Four, or whatever else is on.

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t hate ITV without good reason. It’s just every programme they show seems to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, and doesn’t seek to challenge the minds of its viewers. Rather than go for critically acclaimed stuff, like The Power of Nightmares, they’ll go for shit that gets a lot of viewers- usually celebrity obsessed, reality TV, or formulaic dramas that star either Martin Clunes or Caroline Quentin. For the “ITV 50″ celebrations (which in some places was actually ITV 48 due to the regional nature of the original ITV network), following such successes as Celebrity Wrestling, and Celebrity Sitting in a Jungle, they even had CELEBRITY ITV NEWS. Seriously.

Whenever I look at the EPG on Sky, I’m consistently underwhelmed. And it got me thinking: what could ITV commission that would underwhelm me even more?

• Surprisingly dissappointing House, with Pat Sharp
• Diagnosis Perjury
• Primary School Challenge (the BBC actually commissioned this, and it was presented by one of my favourite celebrities, Danny Wallace)
• 8-week Makeover where the costs were underestimated
• Pop Idol Extra Extra
• Tonight with Ant & Dec
• A Touch of Cloud
• Cassette Tape: UK
• You’ve been framed… for making a granny fall over whilst dancing at a wedding again
• Loose Women

Think of any others? Comment below. Or better still, join the newsletter I’ve been ruthlessly promoting for the best part of a week.

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