The aim of this song is to make something chilled out but not boring, yet quite simple. At some point, the talented Mr. Decent is going to be flowing some sweet lyrics over the top, but until then, use your imagination, or even beatmatch in some Hilltop Hoods - it sounds HEAVY. Trust me, it could turn Hare Krishna into a badboi.

• Fresh Jazz Kill - Where are you? (5m30, ~7.5MB) (WMA/MP3)

Current version of the song has just had its mix improved, and parts of it simplified to be ready for lyrics to be put in. Enjoy!

For a start, the location is absolutely beautiful. The campus is slap bang in the middle of South Kensington, one of the most affluent areas of London, a stone’s throw from such attractions as the Natural History Museum, Science Museum and the famous Hyde Park. My halls are located in Chelsea, which is possibly even more affluent than Kensington, and it really shows. As I’m sure you will know, I am a petrolhead, and as a result I have a love for fine automobiles, but living here is making me start to feel almost saturated by them. If you’ve ever visited the Vatican, you’ll be able to draw a parallel here - there’s only so much fine art you can see before you stop noticing it. Looking out of my bedroom window, the cheapest car I can see is a Mercedes A Class; on a typical walk from here to campus I normally pass 2 Audi RS4s, a brand new Jaguar XKR and at least one Aston Martin DB9.

I’ve only had a couple of lectures so far, but I’ve been amazed by the quality of the teaching here. The lecturer I’ve seen so far is Tony Fields - a man who genuinely loves his subject and delivers his content in a lively and exciting way, and somehow manages to keep everyone interested despite the skill range of his audience reaching from ‘What’s programming?’ to ‘I have run my own software company’.

The main thing that’s struck me about this place though, is that it is incredibly refreshing to be surrounded by people who have a genuine passion for what they are studying, have a thirst for knowledge, and are interested to know what interests you - basically geeks - and it means that I’ve found a place that I can call my home.

Still, for some reason I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m trying to get this summer out of my system still, or if I subconsciously miss my parents/friends, or if there’s something wrong with my health. It could be all of these things, or none of them, but what I do know is that I need to sort it out soon before it affects my study - I can’t keep relying on exhaustion to send me off at night. Right now it’s 3:45am, and I don’t even remotely feel like sleeping, yet I have a lecture at 9am.

In other news, the Scottish judicial system has decided in its infinite wisdom that a guilty plea and a means assessment isn’t enough to reach a verdict as to how sodomized I’m going to get by it’s long, hard dick. So, I have been summoned once more to Peebles court. If I can’t get the case transferred to a local court, then I’m going to have to somehow get from London to Scotland ready for 10am on Wednesday the 22nd, following a 6pm finish at university the previous evening.

Given the new amounts of free time I’ve acquired as a result of starting at uni, I actually believe I stand a chance of finishing it this time. The downside is that I do need to design a new skin, and write a shit load of code, but I’m prepared to do all of that.

The whole thing is an exercise in abstraction and good, clean code writing. If you have any suggestions as to what I should include on the site, please let me know.

Watch this space!

He could feel these vibrations making his eyes wobble about in his skull a little bit, so that the world had a soft edge to it, making it look that bit more comfortable and warm. He turned the heating down a notch or two and adjusted himself in his seat, trying to fit into the right niche in his habitual comfort zone that he knew so well. Settling, he changed up into fifth gear, the rain silently diffusing the view until the wipers made all clear again. Despite its valiant efforts, the rain wasn’t going to win this battle. Especially when they sent in all their wimps, they were easy picking for the wipers, no matter how weak the wipers were themselves. He chuckled to himself and pulled his hair back from his face again.

He was feeling good. Really fucking good. Just like that scene in Trainspotting when Renton tries heroin for the first time after getting off the stuff. That’s a really fucking good film, but he couldn’t stand to watch the part where Renton was going cold turkey after his overdose, it just weirded him out too much, that was all. He could remember the time his dad had first shown him that film, in a rather vain attempt to put him off drugs. He’d always been a druggie at heart, even before he ever started using them. The drugs were in fact a mere finishing touch to the druggie look and mentality he’d managed to develop over the years without meaning to.

Despite all this he was always impressed with the fact that he was still clever enough to do his job to a good standard and have ambition to take things further. He knew that everyone looked at him as some stoner kid, but he knew in his very inner cores that he was destined for something successful. Quite what success was, he wasn’t sure yet, but he was planning to find out as soon as he could.

As he pulled up to the junction, the street lights began to illuminate everything slowly, and he realised that the car behind him was a police car. He had been slowing down for a while, just coasting with the clutch down, knowing that the road was slightly down hill. He pulled out onto the main road with added caution. As he continued, he calmed down slightly, and then the police vehicle flashed his lights and signalled him to pull over. His heart sank - he couldn’t go through this again. The last time it had happened he’d thrown up minutes afterwards. With a shaking hand he slowly pushed the button to wind down his window. The policeman stepped out of the car and walked towards him. Time seemed to slow right down. Every footstep the policeman took, he felt years crawl past with agonising lethargy. Suddenly, he snapped to, and the policeman peered in the window.

The thing about adrenaline is that it fucks up your brain so you can’t think. You feel scatty, like you’ve had too many cups of coffee at work, and you can’t focus properly on one thing. The policeman said something, presumably to step out of the car. He stepped out, wondering how on earth his legs were still managing to work, despite being apparently made out of soup. His heart was visibly beating in his narrow ribcage, his hands trembling meekly inside his sleeves. The policeman told him he’d been going too fast, and he nodded, and for some god-unknown reason tried to deny that he’d been going that fast. The policeman refuted these claims, and asked had he been drinking. He said “no”, quickly, in a way that only someone can say when they’re nearly pooing themselves. The policeman mumbled something into his radio, and pressed his finger to his ear. He apologised, and asked again if the young man had been drinking. Again, he said he hadn’t. The policeman pressed his hand to his ear again, listening and frowning. The policeman wandered round the car, checking it over. The young man was noticeably scared, he hunched himself against the cold and looked up, terrified. The policeman wandered back to the police car, told the young man to take it easy, and drove off.

The young man took a while to comprehend the previous three minutes as he sat in his stationary car. Slowly, an elation floated up through him as he realised that he was off the hook. He was free. It was all OK. He began to chuckle once more, and started the engine. By the time he’d driven a mile, he was laughing away to himself, unable to contain his stoned glee. He phoned his mate, to whom he described the situation. His mate laughed, and then hung up.

True story.

Srsly.

Anyway, back to using my blog. I’ve now moved out of Cambridge, and am residing at my parents’ house, but I haven’t so much moved in as dumped everything I own on my bedroom floor and picked bits out as required. On Thursday night I finished loading all of my stuff into my dad’s car (with the help of Dave), and cruised back to Tring to get completely off my tits. Moving out of a house is one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done, as well as tiring. It didn’t really put me in the best of moods for the start of my weekend.

So, on Friday morning, I picked up Lemming and we headed up to Edinburgh to see Ellie and Toby. They’re doing really well up there - they have a really nice flat a short jaunt from all the action, which, seeing as it was the start of the legendary Fringe that weekend, was pretty cool. Me, Toby, Lemming and Ned (Toby’s brother) went to see Ed Aczel doing one of the most peculiar stand-up performances I’ve ever witnessed, but one of the funniest. If you’re not familiar with his work, I strongly suggest you check him out.

On Sunday morning, feeling absolutely hideously ill, I hopped onto Facebook to see what was going down with my bre’ars. Before the next part of my story, I should provide you with a little context - for the previous 2 weeks I’d been getting increasingly close to a girl who I’d liked for a long time. Said girl, according to Facebook, had just started going out with someone else, after deciding I wasn’t really her type and not thinking it a good idea to let me know about it. Meanwhile, I had been slowly piling all of my proverbial eggs into a single, lonely, proverbial basket.

So, you can imagine the absolute joy I felt, when driving home on Sunday night, I looked in my rear mirror to see a police Volvo T5 flashing its blues at me and signalling me to pull over. Oh shit, I thought to myself, I was absolutely missioning it just then. Given that the national speed limit in Scotland, as it is in England, is 60mph, it seems that the police were none to happy with the fact that I’d done an average of 118.9mph across their well-placed trap on a beautiful straight on the A702, heading South. While what I had done usually carried a charge of dangerous driving, the officers who pulled me over in all their wisdom decided that I hadn’t actually been driving dangerously, just speeding.

As it currently stands, (and this is the pisstake), I am due to appear in court in Scotland, where I will most likely be disqualified from driving for 3-6 months, and receive a fine of several hundred pounds. All credit to Lemming from stopping me from completely losing it on the rest of the way home. Driving 300 miles when you’re pissed off and afraid of breaking the speed limit but desperate to get home is difficult unless you have someone to reassure you and play some phat jungle beats.

So, for the past 4 days (I think), I’ve been consistently alternating between being high as a kite, and working from home, with the company of various friends, mainly Farrar and Dave who’ve stopped me going completely nuts, as well as visits from others - notably Becci, who offered to help me tidy up the place (which ended up as her tidying up the place while I stood around being useless).

All in all, things haven’t been going that well for me, and they’ll probably get worse once I have to pick my parents up from the airport on Tuesday, when I have to explain to them why I need to go to Scotland again. But never mind, for I have my health and a nearly cheery demeanour, so I mustn’t complain.

Night night, chow heads!

In other news, it’s almost a year now that I’ve been living in Cambridge and working for BWS, and in 3 weeks’ time I’ll be moving back to my parents’ house as my tenancy here expires. On that note, I need to throw a wicked party here before I go, and I’m shit at planning things, so if anybody has any ideas, lemme know. I’ll certainly be sad to leave here, I’ve had a hell of a good time, and have had the honour of meeting and working with some of the smartest and most fascinating people I’ve ever met.

While I don’t really like Cambridge all that much as a city - the abundance of cyclists and lack of good driving roads makes it a bad place for a petrolhead - I’ll certainly miss its quirks. I’ve had numerous good nights out here, and there are some excellent drinking establishments around, although unfortunately the sheer quantity means that there are a number of utter dives around, and living on the cheap side of town, it ultimately means that they seem to be in congregation around my house. Having said that, a 20 minute walk will have me in the centre of town where I know many a watering hole in which I’ve enjoyed many a libation.

The fact is, however, since I’ve broken up with Caley I’ve been bored out of my mind. Living with Chris is neither entertaining nor fresh-smelling, and when most of my work mates live a fair distance away, finding something to do in the evenings is pretty difficult. And, given my lack of enthusiasm to do anything except for sit around on messenger and Facebook drinking more beer than the NHS recommends (I mean seriously, 3-4 units a day is apparently a lot), finding a hobby is not something that I plan to do. So, in the meantime, I’ll keep writing this blog.

Over the past hour in which I’ve been slowly writing this, I’ve realised that this house is far from ideal for a party. It’s small, has limited sleeping room, and the kitchen is smaller than small. Still, given a bit of rearrangement, it could be a pretty nice pad. It just needs to have the area that Chris sits fumigated and shampooed, and we’re in business. And then febreezed. That stuff smells fantastic. Like parma violets!

I have changed. I really have. For the first time in my life I’m trying my hardest, and this time round I’m too quietly proud of my achievements to stop myself.

So, with the exception of financial security, I feel as though I have ‘arrived’ as it were. It’s taken me 6 months of being here, but I’m finally content with the way things are. I’ve realised that I am happy in my job as a developer, and I’m thoroughly enjoying my work so much that I’ve started throwing myself at as many tasks as I can possibly manage in the time I have, and I’m feeling more and more rewarded by it. The beauty of working for a small company such as BWS who have a large market footprint is that you can see the things you do well making a difference to people. The software that I write, improve and debug, the design work that I do, and dealing with support calls - all of it goes towards driving the company forwards, all giving me positive feedback. A good example of this is that the new website that me and Liz have been working hard on has more than doubled the number of incoming leads to the sales department since its launch a couple of months ago.

On top of enjoying my job, I feel that I’m really starting to fit into the company. I know the people there well, and we have a good time working together. And, what’s more, I feel respected for what I’m doing.

It’s a good feeling.

Just for a bit of background, I am currently working a Year In Industry placement in Cambridge, and live with a schoolfriend named Chris. Chris is, for want of a better word, a geek. When I told my parents about my plan to move in with him, my Dad told me that I was making a big mistake, and that I’d regret it. Well, as ever, my dear old Da was right.

The reason for me writing this rant is the culmination of everything that has angered me since August when I moved in with him, and peaked tonight, when on his turn to cook, he managed to ‘forget’ to start cooking until about 10 minutes ago (11:20pm).
While this indeed is an extremely bad incident, it is a fairly common one. Quite usually, thanks to his social anxiety-induced dependance on World of Warcraft, dinner won’t happen until 10 o’clock.

There are hundreds of other things that wind me up, most of which include an inability to tidy things up, especially the incredibly easy-to-tidy things, such as tidying an empty pizza wrapper from the kitchen worktop into the bin (at most a metre way in our kitchen), or taking a used plate/bowl out, rather than putting it on a chair next to you and leaving it there for 4 days. The other thing is that I have to either wear my broken headphones (which are incredibly painful after more than an hour’s wear) or put up with whatever album he’s listening to, along with his WoW guild talking about utter shite, because he uses speakers and refuses to wear headphones.

The thing that pisses me off about my situation the most, however, is that I don’t stand up to him enough. I don’t have the strength to put my foot down and say these things until it gets to breaking point, and then I don’t say things for fear of startign an argument because I’m so pissed off.

The fact of the matter is that I am far too kind to him. A good example is today, when I found out I was gonna have to stay a few hours after work to get stuff finished off, I offered to drive him home then come back to work. And I did. Now I’m asking myself why I’m eating a cheap crappy dinner at midnight that took absolutely no effort to produce. While I don’t claim to be a master chef of any kind, I put a hell of a lot of effort in trying to make the dinners I cook as tasty as possible, and try new things now and then, such as frying mince in beer when making spag bol (which is awesome btw), and experimenting with different sauces.

I am just completely and utterly fucking fed up.

And, to top it off, I’m completely and utterly out of alcohol.