Technically last year was year one, but if the gubmint can describe it as year zero (thus causing an imbalance in the Force that results in me getting my bursary payments two months late, damn their eyes), so can I.

I got 84% overall. This has made me very happy. Part of that mark was 95% for a presentation on the Cambrian explosion, probably my finest hour (6 minutes, actually) this year. Sadly none of this counts towards the final degree, but I was pleased to have made the effort when I saw a notice for 2nd years advertising work studying insect immune systems that ended - “email me if you’re interested, including your first year score.”

Anyway, that’ll do, best not to get too wanky beyond that quick summary. If the planets align correctly, I might even post more regularly over the summer.

Would you believe it? You wait over a year for cricket on the Wii and when it does turn up, it’s by this bunch of jokers and thus guaranteed to be utter bobbins. Codemasters or EA need to pull their finger out, there’s clearly a blinding Wii cricket game to be made, even more so now than when it was released - using the balance board to register front or back foot shots, anyone?

Oh god yes please.

Again - spoilers. Fairly warned be thee, says I.

Steven Spielberg only directed the first 30 minutes of the latest Indiana Jones film, that’s what I reckon. It was enjoyable enough but the plot was a mess and the dialogue forgettable, which is a bit of a killer for a series that trades on snappy exchanges almost as much as action sequences (you could take the tank and boat chases out of Last Crusade and it’d still be worth it for the father/son sniping - “How’d you know she was a Nazi?” “She talks in her sleep.”) The climax just seemed to be a game of ‘follow John Hurt as he bumbles his way through the puzzles, and if in doubt thrust the skull at whatever’s in the way’, and made no sense as far as I could tell. There was a whole ‘Indy as a suspected Red’ subplot that just popped its head round the door near the start and was resolved in the last five minutes, and the return of Marion was mostly wasted. And I just find it hard to believe that Spielberg directed that jungle chase - it’s all over the shop.

First 30 minutes though. Iconic introduction for Indy; Ark warehouse!; Spielbergian touches (you know - champagne glass shadows turning to tell you the blimp is going back to Germany) like the lamps pulling towards the crate; Indy gets the shit beat out of him; nice bit at the college and after with Jim Broadbent; decent intro for Share The Beef and a good motorbike chase. Then it all goes a bit funky, unfortunately, and the annoying thing is that you can almost see a really cracking Indiana Jones film trying to surface.

Still, Ford still does the business perfectly, and like Andrew says - Jim from Neighbours. I’m sure they only keep casting him in stuff to trigger that response in people.

Here’s what faith can do.

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror… She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her. Her death, on 17 May, is the shocking denouement to a tragedy which had its origins in an innocent friendship.

The final sucker-punch in the story of Rand Abdel-Qader, the young girl murdered by a crowd of bloodythirsty scumbags for liking a British soldier. Leila was brave enough to leave her husband and went to an organisation in Basra that campaigns against honour killings - it shut down after she was killed. One of the campaigners recently received a note that said “Death to betrayers of Islam who don’t deserve God’s forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.” Lovely, someone tell Tony Blair.

Tony Blair wants to unite the faiths. Go, Tone, go! You eminently slappable berk.

“If you got churches and mosques and those of the Jewish faith working together to provide the bed nets that are necessary to eliminate malaria, what a fantastic thing that would be,” he said.

“That would show faith in action, it would show the importance of cooperation between faiths, and it would show what faith can do for progress.”

It would indeed be fantastic. Mind you, faith isn’t actually a requirement in this scenario, is it? Not sure it really would be ‘faith in action’. Just, like, kindness, decency, that sort of thing. Not so much ‘look what faith can do’ as ‘look what people can do when they aren’t being arseholes’.

At midnight tonight - and barring freak accidents - I will have gone a whole four weeks without alcohol, a Herculean trial that I adopted partly to assist in a fitness campaign*, partly to optimise revision skillz for the impending exams and partly out of curiosity. I can confirm that the rumours are true - you feel better, sleep better, and don’t miss it as much as you’d expect. Although today did test my resolve somewhat - an examination containing multiple choice questions with no right answer and a fire alarm with 20 minutes remaining will do that to a man.

The last exam is on Monday, and then? Oh then, my green-labelled love, you and I will be reunited.

*10lb in 5 weeks, stats fans, other contributing factors being under house arrest and so out of the vicinity of anywhere serving curly fries; restarting my oft-restarted jogging regime; and - yes! - Wii Fit.

I bought the bundle of glory that is an iPod Touch a while back and, having no music I wanted but unable to resist the urge to blag something from the iTunes store due to New Toy Syndrome (a condition that also explains why I own this), I downloaded the audiobook version of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. It had an unfortunate narcoleptic effect on me - nothing to do with the book itself, which is fantastic, but something more akin to a bedtime story. I’d press play and be depositing drool down my t-shirt within ten minutes, which made listening to it on the bus something of a gamble. It was also a bugger that, naturally, it would carry on playing after I’d dozed off and I’d wake up with no idea where I’d got to, and have to rewind randomly until I heard a bit I recognised. The next software update better include a snore-recognition capability or I’m having words (I’d settle for an saliva triggered auto-off).

Anyway, a combination of 8 hours sleep a night and placing Anna under strict instructions to prod me every 9 minutes and 30 seconds sorted it and I finished Small Gods, and decided I liked this reading-without-having-to-read malarky. So much so that I bought another Pratchett book, Reaper Man, and immediately hit a stumbling block that can be summed up like so - Sergeant Colon is not Irish. I don’t care if someone can produce a quote from Guards! Guards! that starts “Sergeant Colon, his strong brogue evoking the rolling hills of the Emerald Isle,” the man is not bloody Irish. Except that Nigel Planer, the audiobook reader (and, yes, Neil from the Young Ones), thinks he is, and voices him accordingly. He also gives the Bursar a speech impediment, maintains a doddery old voice for Windle Poons even after his undeadening and gives Mustrum Ridcully a soft, posh voice entirely unsuited to bellowing at things he doesn’t understand. It is, any right-thinking person will agree, a series of outrages that simply will not stand (Miss Flitworth is wrong, too, all reedy and shrill). EDIT: I should add that the voice acting for Small Gods is really good - Vorbis in particular is perfect, and giving Didactylos a Scottish accent works, somehow. Not sure about Om, mind you, especially when *SPOILER* he keeps the same grouchy old man voice even after everyone starts believing again.

It’s unavoidable, I suppose - the reader has to distinguish between speakers somehow, and avoid droning. And it’s hardly new, as anybody who’s ever watched a film adaptation and howled (f’r'instance) “Is that fucking pleb supposed to be Batman?!” can attest. It’s pretty much put me off buying any more Discworld novels though, I’m not sure I want to know what Carrot or Gaspode the Wonder Dog sound like. Anyway, silver linings and all that - it gives me more free time to write pointless blog posts.

In honour of the Government’s latest struggle with reality, allow me to relate to you my favourite ever conversation about legalising cannibis.

A certain person who shall remain nameless: So, you think it should be legalised?
Me: Yeah, I think so.
Acpwsrn: I’m against it, that stuff fucks you up. Just look at the state of Alkie Malc, he smokes cannabis.
Me: Alkie Malc?
Acpwsrn: Yeah, I’ve seen what that’s done to him, he’s messed up in the head.
Me: Alkie Malc?
Acpwsrm: Exactly.

This is lovely.

I have a theory — probably incorrect, but that’s never stopped me before — that Steven Spielberg regarded this character as the bad-guy equivalent of Indiana Jones. A ballsy, resourceful hero who just happens to be working for the wrong side…as he crawls across the roof of the caboose, Spielberg lingers on a shot in which the officer’s hat gets blown off by the wind. Of course, a frequent motif throughout the whole series is Indy losing his fedora during action scenes, then triumphantly regaining it.

In an entirely unrelated matter, I have come to the conclusion that watching someone play a 2D Mario platform game without using the dash button is possibly the most frustrating experience in all existence.