Less than a month to go

Why can't I connect to anywhere today? Every website I regularly visit seems to have vanished, with the exception of this, TDC and The Sinner. Anyway, here's my exam timetable.

It's all a bit bunched up at the start of the exam period, unfortunately. Not only do I know nothing about what I'm being examined on, but it might also be an idea to find out where "Old Union Diner" and "Parliament Hall" are, never having been to either before.

Annoyingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, the DCS network failed again this weekend, meaning that the practical deadlines for both Al and Colin's practicals have been pushed further back. It really couldn't have come at a worse time. It is back up now, which is better than what most of us were expecting, but it's still vastly inconvenient when we still have so much work to do for the end of the year. I was there yesterday as usual, attempting a practical about NP-completion and other such nonsense.

The Thorntons toffee which Jamie gave me last month for my birthday has melded in to one gigantic mass at the bottom of the box. It positively needs a hammer and chisel to get through it, and it's doubtful that I'll manage to get through it before Christmas when another box will doubtless arrive. Goodbye, teeth.

And apparently I have a reputation on The Sinner for posting bizarre things. It's nice to have some recognition.

Prince of Persia in 20 minutes

As the result of a couple of hours of messing about with video capture software (or, as some might put it, a completely wasted evening) I'd like to show you this video - a run-through of the original Prince of Persia in less than 20 minutes.

Here's the file (DivX video)

If you're somehow inclined to download and watch that, I might as well give you some more details on it - I stuck it together using Camtasia, which seems to be like a more functional version of Windows Movie Maker. The encoding quality could probably be best described as "pretty horrendous". It wasn't taken from a nonstop run-through, instead being a compilation of my best times for every stage - but only the in-game save was used, so the time given at the end is genuine. The cut-scenes have been cut out to keep the size of the video to an acceptable level (although having said that I'm very grateful for this WiredSoc account, as it's 26.4MB).

The time measured by the game (41:47 remaining, so 18:13 taken) is less than the time of the video, as the timer stops when Jafar is killed rather at the very end. The use of DOSBox also seems to slow down the game very slightly. No cheats were used, but a couple of unintentional shortcuts were taken - the most blatant being on Level 7, which you'll know when you see.

As you can tell by the fact that I had the time to do that, things are looking good - there just a couple more bits of practicals to go now and I'm home free until the exams.

I had a dream last night about playing paintball inside my house with Steve Yorkstone and the Lost Vikings. Sounds like a band from the Seventies.