[19:53:22] Premasiri: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/may/20/starcraft-2-greg-idra-fields
[19:53:37] Brosencrantz: “the bad boy of pro-gaming”
[19:53:38] Brosencrantz: ahahahaha
[19:53:41] Brosencrantz: this will be hilarious
[19:53:55] Hovercraft: “One day videogames will be an Olympic event.”
[19:53:56] Hovercraft: no
[19:54:13] Premasiri: It’s purple and patronising and written by someone with apparently little actual understanding of esports, as can be expected
[19:54:20] Brosencrantz: god I hate journalists
[19:54:25] Premasiri: but it’s also in the guardian, and at least attempted thorough research
[19:54:48] Premasiri: so while it’s a poor representation, at least it’s a public representation
[19:55:48] Demsale: ” but was one of the most dominant Zergs in Starcraft II.”
[19:55:51] Demsale: he fucking wishes
[19:56:00] Premasiri: no
[19:56:08] Premasiri: that bit’s not exaggeration
[19:56:23] Premasiri: it was a shortlived and mainly down to the lack of competition rather than his own brilliance
[19:56:30] Premasiri: but for a few months he was the best
[19:56:36] Demsale: …early beta?
[19:56:37] Brosencrantz: you know that epiphany moment you get when you’ve spent a childhood reading newspapers you found randomly and going “oh man I’m so informed this is so cool and authoritative”
[19:56:45] Brosencrantz: and then for the first time
[19:56:56] Brosencrantz: you read a newspaper article on something you actually know a lot about
[19:57:04] Brosencrantz: and you’re like “but that’s WRONG you fucking STUPIDHEAD”
[19:57:28] Brosencrantz: and then you realise that almost all journalism is of that standard
[19:57:28] Premasiri: yeah
[19:57:54] Brosencrantz: because it’s written people who know about newspapers, not about the actual topic
[19:58:02] Brosencrantz: it’s people trying to be jacks-of-all-trade at knowledge and almost always failing
[19:58:04] Brosencrantz: fuck journalism
[19:58:38] Premasiri: but then on the other hand, even more specialised stuff, such as slasher’s esports journalism, where he IS an expert on what he writes about
[19:58:43] Premasiri: is no better
[19:59:12] Premasiri: so yes, fuck journalism, but not fuck journalists just because they’re not experts on what they might be paid to write about
[19:59:31] Demsale: http://pokemon.alexonsager.net/46/58 jesus christ
[19:59:46] Demsale: http://pokemon.alexonsager.net/42/15 JESUS CHRIST
[20:00:32] Premasiri: you need to get off the internet
[20:01:31] Brosencrantz: well yeah, and most expert scientific stuff or other esoteric, specialised opinion is mostly written by myopic fucks incapable of seeing that any field other than theirs can have any salience
[20:01:33] Brosencrantz: cf: me and war
[20:02:51] Brosencrantz: clearly, the only solution is to not believe anything you read and go instead with your own knee-jerk/gut feeling which is naturally based on your own specific and largely skewed life experiences and the ingrained prejudices of the culture that raised you
[20:02:59] Brosencrantz: brb starting a social commentary blog
[20:03:28] Premasiri: better hop on the fixie bike to get to starbucks
[20:03:33] Premasiri: can’t write it on my macbook till I’m there
Category: Uncategorised
“on a frolic of his own” (3/6)
The number of great bus-themed stupidity torts that came up in Employer’s/Vicarious Liability is amazing.
Beard v London Omnibus – conductor with delusions of grandeur running over pedestrians.
Limpus v London Omnibus – bus drivers drag racing.
Keppel Bus Co v Saab Bin Ahmad – bus conductor twats a passenger over the head with his ticket machine.
…after exams I’m going to watch On the Buses. By which I mean watch about half an episode of On the Buses, realise that absolutely everything about it is rubbish, and go and rewatch The Wire instead, because it’s been too long.
The original plan was to go home and revise in the afternoon after each exam, giving us a day and a half of straight prep for each, but we found we were both much too knackered after Con & Ad to do more than an hour’s work, so didn’t even try after Contract, instead going off to the cinema to watch Star Trek: Into Darkness with Misha. (Verdict: like its 2009 predecessor, fun and glossy but not intelligent. Lots of bitty little gifset moments, lots of minor character flourishes, lots of silly plotholes and overwrought scenes, but ultimately the same dumb extended-chase-sequence plot as every generic movie ever. Though Benedict Cumberbatch did the whole “contemptuous ubermensch” thing jolly well; I hate to be One Of Those People, but he’s actually quite a good actor. If you want a proper review, Mr Reeve wrote a good one.)
That aside, it’s been a mess of cramming, flashcards, cabin fever, overeating, chuckling at lines on this page, and mispronouncing case names til we laugh ourselves sick in fits of law student hysteria. (“Cuwwoden?” “Wiwwiams.” “Damn, that was a good move. I’ve got to… no. Fuck. Checkmate :(“) It reminds me of the adrenaline mess that was first year’s exam period, before I learned to confine the panicked pressure-rush to the schwerpunkt of the actual exam paper and got to basically relax for the entirety of third term.
It’s still strange, picking out topics and cramming a few very specific until I know them back to front and in my sleep to the point that I get nightmares about Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball. It all puts the rest of the year under a doubtful light, all the book-grinding and shamming and and uncertainty in class. But I suppose if I’d been told that I was only doing these three subjects for the exam, it would make no difference, because I want to know the law – that’s half the point of the course. And boiling it all down into just eighteen hours of exams (plus the take-home coursework, the MCT, the CAT, the SAT…) is a necessary compromise for a one-year course; no human could actually learn all our topics to assessment-grade quality; just eighteen is a hell of a stretch. And from what I gather, actual three-year law degrees don’t get assessed much more completely than this.
Contract… Contract went alright. I think. I didn’t really shine anywhere, and while Remedies and Terms & Exemption Clauses were perfectly competent I think I messed up Offer & Acceptance a bit. Again, I’m absolutely positive it was pass-worthy, but no idea if it was worth 65% or 45%. For Tort on Friday, I’d bet my first two answers actually were commendation-tier, so slickly and completely did the parts prepared in my mind fall into place for Employers’/Vicarious Liability and Nuisance, but I still wouldn’t bet on anything given my answer for Occupiers’ Liability, which was as mushy and disjointed as a pileup in a trifle factory. So I’m still a bit all over the place, in a weird sort of ambition-limbo where I don’t know at all if I’m getting a pass or a commendation, so half the time I’m filled with “YEAH I CAN GET THE COMMENDATION, LET’S DO THIS” drive and half “meh, I’m definitely good enough to get a pass with what I’m doing, why stress myself out by burning the candle at both ends? this qualification is a box-ticking exercise.”
It’s a funny old conflict of pride and passivity, and it doesn’t really matter either way: I already have the degree and the CV brimful of the shit the HR people say they like; I don’t need more ammo for the job applications, because the problem isn’t a lack of good-quality munitions, it’s that the targets are bulletproof.
The box is halfway ticked now, and I’m on the upstroke. Eleven days to go.
making 90mph like I’m blitzing into poland (1/6)
Constitutional & Administrative was today, the first of the six “serious” GDL exams (Con & Ad, Contract, Tort, Equity & Trusts, Criminal, Land. We also have a Case Analysis and Statute Analysis, which aren’t particularly serious) Revising for it was slightly less of a Russian roulette game than the other subjects: we know there’ll be one essay on a Constitutional topic, one Human Rights essay-or-problem-question, and one Judicial Review. As with most subjects, we studied three topics, our choices being guided by a) careful statistical analysis of past papers, b) our tutor dropping heavy hints as to what would come up and c) further to b), some of our comrades got him drunk and asked him nicely what to revise. So we were fairly sure Parliamentary Sovereignty, Article 8 and Illegality were safe bets, and if not, well, we were fucked. I hadn’t realised quite what a weight of worry had built up until I opened the paper and found that the right questions were there.
Parl Sov went alright. As law goes, it’s nicely waffly and theoretical, always assessed by essay, with a set of obvious points to include (Dicey’s precious, specious theory of PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY, and the principal challenges to it: the EU/Factortame, Human Rights, Jackson) but sufficient leeway for my inner Arts student to pontificate and bullshit and bring in other arguments where available (ie: as a purely legal theory which doesn’t take into account practical or political factors it’s inherently irrelevant to the real world.) It went alright, I think.
I was somewhat worried about the Judicial Review problem question. In most problem questions you have a sort of sequential process, lots of principles which you apply one after another, and while you need to remember a case for every authority, it is possible to miss authorities as long as you remember the principles. Whereas for Judicial Review there are like fourteen different parallel principles which you have to apply to the facts at the same stage – so some minister acting out of turn can be done for ultra vires, and mistake of evidence, and relevant/irrelevant factors, and all sorts of other stuff, in a hundred little mini-sequences like legal whack-a-mole, and you never think you’ve got all of the buggers. (One of our authorities is a case from 1925 which says that public authorities have a duty to pay their employees as little as they can get away with.) But I remembered the prelims, I hit the obvious bases, I think I had the correct authorities – it was more right than wrong.
Article 8 – the most conventional problem-questiony answer of the three – was not my finest moment. I’m sure it was passworthy – the pass mark for Con & Ad seems to be “come in, write your name and a couple of random cases, 40%” – but I wouldn’t like to say beyond that.
I have no idea, overall, if that paper was commendation-worthy or just a pass. In this, it mirrors my entire GDL experience so far. But I guess I win either way: a mere pass on the GDL (and I am going to pass) is a qualification with significant academic street cred, a commendation is just that but better. (A distinction? hahahaha piss off.)
Contract on Wednesday. Onwards and downwards.
ENOUGH WITH THE BUGS, DUKES
Addendum: I have good bros.
Also, while I’m posting screenshots, here’s one of the BBC News front page during last week’s elections.
HEAVYWEIGHT, FISTS-FLYIN’ HOTSHOT!
(click to make it less blurry)
The other week, I delved into my old screenshot/image folders in an attempt to find a joke about Frenchmen playing D&D (which I did locate, and was just as good as I remembered). The signal/noise ratio is fucking terrible, and I took the digital pruning shears to the entire folder, but when there was signal it was fantastic, as with this gem.
Entirely unrelatedly, this is my new Skype profile.
a plan, and not quite enough time
It turns out that with a deadline, a bro, and the summed might of BPP Law School’s teaching-to-the-test resources, revision isn’t all that hard. This is a lesson I sort-of learned with Louis a year ago, but I did jack-all revision for my other subjects and came out with flying colours regardless, because you don’t actually have to know anything for a History degree. Law is different. A few weeks ago, if you waved a GDL exam question at me – any subject except maybe Criminal – I would turn white, maybe stutter something, and run away. Legal problem questions require a systematic approach, totally unlike my stream-of-consciousness history-writing style; they need actual knowledge of the relevant facts and processes at each and every turn. Each topic requires its own combination of detailed case/statute knowledge and a particular structure with which to apply it. And I need to learn eighteen of them.
So, in the mornings, I trot down to Mikhail’s flat at the bottom of the hill my house is on; we work separately on our notes, grinding through our manual chapters and the overpriced, semi-accurate but still quite useful “GDL Answered” guide. At 4 we run through our flashcards on Mnemosyne, have a meal, and take on some practice papers together. Somewhere between 7 and 9, I roll home for some non-challenging computer games and a night of being chased through my subconscious by the British Constitution, as it flashes in and out of codification like Schrodinger’s nightmare.
I spent the weekend at Sam’s down in Exeter, which as usual was stunningly picturesque (I seem to have good luck with the weather down on the south coast), doing the same routine, with a break on Tuesday to ride a wheezing old DMU down the estuary to Exton on a little branch line (with request stops! how darling!), for a pricey but delicious lunch at something called the “Puffing Billy”. I like the south coast a lot; maybe I’ll retire there when I’m old and fat and worthless. The hours were long, but productive; I work fantastically to a deadline or when there’s an external expectation, but without it I’m very bad at self-motivation, so having someone around that I need to work with and impress is the perfect way of getting through the obscene volume of law. I don’t think I’ve ever worked quite this hard, though that says more about me than the work.
Back in Bristol, alongside the revision the GDL crowd had a great shining glimmer of false hope in the form of a rumour that BPP might pay for the next stage of law school, in the rather likely event that we don’t land training contracts. Unfortunately, the article is wrong (presumably some abused, unpaid intern got the wrong end of the stick – ah, journalism, where it doesn’t matter if you’re right so long as you’re fast) – the offer only applies to people who’ve paid for the LPC out of their own pocket. I’d raise an eyebrow at anyone who does, and both eyebrows at the idea that law firms will find that a compelling reason to hire them – you have to balance “prove a commitment to law” against “prove that you’re financially irresponsible and desperate enough to spend a year of your life and a staggering amount of money on a largely worthless and widely derided vocational qualification with extremely limited chances of a return on it.” Or maybe I’m just bitter because I can’t afford it.
A genuine silver lining was the slightly surreal “Speed Networking” event at BPP on Thursday – speed dating with law instead of romance. I enjoyed two-minute chats with all manner of legal types, including an Ashfords trainee who sold her firm rather well, a cool ex-Army BPP chap who runs the accountancy section, and a nice barrister. And, of course, got to see Higgins and Leyanda again, which is always fun.
Exams are a week today. I’m not feeling optimistic – that’s the wrong word (it usually is) – but I’m feeling prepared. How’s that line go? “When retreat is not an option/and remorse just ain’t your style…”
conquerors and concubines and conjurers from darker times
The first username I ever really had on the internet, from ages 14-17 (so everything associated with the name is loathsome teenage crap and I refuse to stand by it) was Wraithlord42, the first part of which is a Warhammer thing and the second part of which is not a Douglas Adams reference but a reference to The Sum I Got Faster Than Everyone, 6*7=42 (we played something called Maths Gladiators in primary school, and that was the one I always got faster than anyone.) That served on my LJ and various other places for a long time.
Running largely alongside that was the even more embarrassingly terrible “Sausageman10”, which was my Runescape account name back in the day (my little bro came up with it; I usurped the account from him). Playing Runescape with my old clan, TBE (which is, amazingly, still alive) everyone just called me “Sausage”, and I tended to play very tankishly. At one point someone called me “sausagetank” and I for some reason translated that into German to yield the much less ridiculous-sounding “Panzerwurst”.
In 2007, thoroughly sick of both the Livejournal name “Wraithlord42” and all the daft teenage bullshit I’d now associated with it (including the fanfiction.net account through which I got that glorious hit of validation from someone liking my writing, and where I met the lady who’s now my girlfriend, and the livejournal account through which I made some of my best and oldest internet friends) I changed it. The desire to Not Have This Name was far more evident than the desire to have any other name in particular, and the replacement – “Odontomachus”, part of the Latin name of the trap-jaw ant (one of the coolest ants in creation, something I became aware of through the National Geographic back issues we had lying around in my primary school library). It was never really a satisfactory name, and I always wanted to change it. I dabbled in being LBO/Largebluntobject in 2008-9 on TV Tropes and GiantITP, but I’ve left the name – and those sites – behind, without regrets and without nostalgia.
Then, in mid-2010, amidst the gathering storm of hype for Portal 2, Bill (Havokroft/Hovercraft) and I – who had over the previous couple of years gradually become COGS’ premier power couple – watched a video talking about the two robots in the co-op mode, which described them as “like a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pair, popping in and out of the action”, and-
*[COGS] Panzerwurst is now known as [COGS] Brosencrantz
*[COGS] Havokroft is now known as [COGS] Guildenbot
Which wasn’t the first of our many novelty names – (0v0) Ace Blackvest and (0v0) Beard McOldman, (cO/) Teasencrantz and (cO/) Havercuppa*, Mavercraft and Goosencrantz, Sweet Brosen and Hover Jeff, to name but a few – but it just stuck, from there to Tumblr to here and now, and I like it.
* It’s a teapot.
h company has only liberated the cafes
[23:33:42] Brosencrantz: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Free_Door_Gunner.jpg proof that it’s still possible to look like a massive dork even while holding a machine gun and hanging out of a helicopter
[23:33:51] N_1: is that a selfie
[23:34:57] Brosencrantz: I should kill you where you sit for implying I would ever wear fucking hipster glasses
[23:35:09] N_1: and take selfies
[23:35:28] N_1: this is my rifle, there are many like it, but I liked this one before it was popular
[23:35:42] Brosencrantz: <3
underneath the open sky 
