Eine kleine gute Neuigkeiten, meine Freunde (a little good news, my friends). My OU result has come, and it turns out that I passed with 62%. No real surprise, because I was expecting to pass; but to get this score, I've calculated (perhaps incorrectly, mind you) that I must have got 86% for the final, timed TMA. This seems a bit optimistic, to be honest, because I didn't feel I did that fantastically on the assignment (and remember, you are still free to vote for it to be posted on here), but I should soon get it back with the tutor's comments, so I'll know for certain then. The upshot of all this is that I've done a textbook U-turn from my conviction never to study again with the Open University (or any (closed) traditional universities, colleges, private tutors, or any other formal educational establishments) while I live under this roof - preferring to further my learning through books, musical practice, and this trusty computer at which I now sit - and have decided that I will go on and study another course with the OU. It'll be a Level 2 course, but I am still to decide exactly which one of the many I'll plump for. I'm currently leaning towards the English Language course, but even the Latin Studies one appeals, as does the Philosophy. Some studying of the prospectus is needed, and once a decision is reached the application will be sent off, and the wheels should be in motion (i.e. the course will have started) by the beginning of October.

So, there we go. A little good news. And to top it off two records have recently arrived - Shellac's newest creation Excellent Italian Greyhound and one of the phenomenal set of remixes of pieces from Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die, called Rivers, with remixes of 'Along the Banks of Rivers': Spring Heel Jack's 'Galapagos 1' and Jim O'Rourke's 'Reference Resistance Gate' - as well as Ad's and my tickets to see Slint perform their phenomenal Spiderland in two weeks (you'll forgive those links to seemingly unconnected places). Furthermore, I've been working away doing a serious spring clean of my room, so that's much fresher and healthier, and I've started using on my computer the wonderfully light-weight and efficient (one could say transparent, and beautiful wouldn't be far off the mark) Fluxbox. That screenshot shows my whole screen, as I'm writing this, with no clutter; an undecorated xterm to the left; an instance of leafpad to the right - into which I'm paste and saving this as I go along, just in case of disaster - (also note the slight transparency on leafpad, courtesy of xcompmgr - installed with a simple yum install xcompmgr in a terminal, viz. xterm) at the very bottom you can just see the edge of the hidden panel, which appears on mouseover; and you can see that Shellac's 'Doris' from their Uranus 7" has just started playing in Amarok. Not much to get excited about, you may think. But, there we go. The rest of my family are as free as birds to continue using KDE (for such is one of the beauties of Linux, that the environment can vary absolutely from one user to another) but for me, Fluxbox is too inticing a prospect to abandon.

However, all this excitment has paid its toll on me. You may know someone addicted to heroin, and perhaps witnessed them go from the euphoric state induced by the drug to the plummeting depths after the effects have worn off. If not, picture yourself in a swimming pool. You're there with a friend and a tennis ball, throwing it to each other across the vast expanse of the water. You throw, but it's much too far to throw it all the way. The ball soars some way through the air, plummets into the water, swims down a few metres, still on towards your friend, and comes bobbing back to the surface just in front of him/her. You picture the journey the ball took? Sort of like an elongated sine wave, no? Such, I feel, are my emotions. They can get high, but they must come back down again. Moderation is the key. If I can keep my emotions at a moderate level, continually striving to rise the water-level (i.e. the default emotional state), then I may be on to a winner. Answers on a postcard if you have any other suggestions. Cheers!

Word of the Week

Malleable

malleable adj. 1 (of metal etc.) able to be hammered or pressed permanently out of shape without breaking or cracking. 2 adaptable; pliable, flexible.

Definition courtesy of the Concise Oxford Dictionary