I'm alive!
Jun. 30th, 2009 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpfAnd not a student anymore!
Well, officially still a student, I guess. But, I'm done. As of today. Many, many things went horribly, horribly wrong. I lost my nerve before the written exams. I got really sick for several weeks before the oral exams - lie-in-bed, cough-up-a-lung sick. I forgot to prepare for one half of one of my oral exams. (Yes, completely. As in: you enter the room and the prof says, 'We have two topics...', and you go, '... Wait, what?' My powers of repression are obviously prodigious. Seriously, anybody here ever *forgot* to prepare for an exam? I think that kind of puts me in a league of my own...)
But. Despite all that crap, it went better, way, way better than expected - all of it. Even the exam I forgot to prepare for went well (2-, for you Germans) - it probably helped that the topic I hadn't prepared for was one I'd done a heap of papers on over the years, so I still had some general idea of the main points. The thesis got a 1.0, which is basically as good as it gets.
The final average, for those who care (and know the German grading system), is a 1.4. I was a bit shocked to hear that, mainly because apparently I can't do even basic maths anymore - four of the five components of the final grade have been known to me since last week, but I must have added them up wrong, because I thought the range of possibility extended from 1.7 through 1.5. Good thing I'm not studying maths!
***
In other, more important news: I'm building a computer game.
Which is a bit of an exaggeration, really. I'm not building much myself, I'm just applying graphics (not made by myself) via an editor (also not made by myself) - but I hope I'm applying them in an aesthetically pleasing, and perhaps at least occasionally somewhat original way.
I downloaded this game, Knytt Stories, a few months ago. It's a platformer, a genre I'm not usually fond of, because I have the reflexes of a geriatric sloth, but I needed something to take my mind off uni for at least twenty minutes or so per day while I stayed at my parents' - something that didn't require an internet connection. So, eventually, I actually tried playing this game that had been sitting on my disk for a while, and liked it quite a bit. Unlike many platformers, it focused less on evading Death by Spikes or Death by Monsters or whatever, and more on exploring a fairly large and frequently quite pretty world. (Pretty in a 2D, stylised way.)
So, for a while Knytt Stories and its predecessor, Knytt, kept me entertained. But they're not that large, and sooner than I liked I had I finished them. Looking for something similar on one of my increasingly rare online forays I found user-made levels for Knytt Stories, and downloaded a few of those. But many of those are *really* short, and a lot are impossibly difficult and therefore do not appeal to sloth-like me, so that was a limited source of relaxation. So eventually, in between studying, I started playing around with the editor that Nifflas, the creator of the game, has generously included in the download package... and it turned out to be one of the greatest toys I've ever been given.
I'll post some images soon, when I'm back home with a normal internet connection (Friday, probably.)
Well, officially still a student, I guess. But, I'm done. As of today. Many, many things went horribly, horribly wrong. I lost my nerve before the written exams. I got really sick for several weeks before the oral exams - lie-in-bed, cough-up-a-lung sick. I forgot to prepare for one half of one of my oral exams. (Yes, completely. As in: you enter the room and the prof says, 'We have two topics...', and you go, '... Wait, what?' My powers of repression are obviously prodigious. Seriously, anybody here ever *forgot* to prepare for an exam? I think that kind of puts me in a league of my own...)
But. Despite all that crap, it went better, way, way better than expected - all of it. Even the exam I forgot to prepare for went well (2-, for you Germans) - it probably helped that the topic I hadn't prepared for was one I'd done a heap of papers on over the years, so I still had some general idea of the main points. The thesis got a 1.0, which is basically as good as it gets.
The final average, for those who care (and know the German grading system), is a 1.4. I was a bit shocked to hear that, mainly because apparently I can't do even basic maths anymore - four of the five components of the final grade have been known to me since last week, but I must have added them up wrong, because I thought the range of possibility extended from 1.7 through 1.5. Good thing I'm not studying maths!
***
In other, more important news: I'm building a computer game.
Which is a bit of an exaggeration, really. I'm not building much myself, I'm just applying graphics (not made by myself) via an editor (also not made by myself) - but I hope I'm applying them in an aesthetically pleasing, and perhaps at least occasionally somewhat original way.
I downloaded this game, Knytt Stories, a few months ago. It's a platformer, a genre I'm not usually fond of, because I have the reflexes of a geriatric sloth, but I needed something to take my mind off uni for at least twenty minutes or so per day while I stayed at my parents' - something that didn't require an internet connection. So, eventually, I actually tried playing this game that had been sitting on my disk for a while, and liked it quite a bit. Unlike many platformers, it focused less on evading Death by Spikes or Death by Monsters or whatever, and more on exploring a fairly large and frequently quite pretty world. (Pretty in a 2D, stylised way.)
So, for a while Knytt Stories and its predecessor, Knytt, kept me entertained. But they're not that large, and sooner than I liked I had I finished them. Looking for something similar on one of my increasingly rare online forays I found user-made levels for Knytt Stories, and downloaded a few of those. But many of those are *really* short, and a lot are impossibly difficult and therefore do not appeal to sloth-like me, so that was a limited source of relaxation. So eventually, in between studying, I started playing around with the editor that Nifflas, the creator of the game, has generously included in the download package... and it turned out to be one of the greatest toys I've ever been given.
I'll post some images soon, when I'm back home with a normal internet connection (Friday, probably.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 07:34 pm (UTC)Anyway, point is, I know it's huge amounts of fun! And if you ever get anything workable out of it, I'd be happy to test it for you :) (also I just stopped being a student, too. Free time is scary, huh? ;) )
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 07:37 pm (UTC)I've missed you a lot and I'm so glad to hear that you're doing better and that your exams went well. I knew you'd do good and had faith in you, so I'm not totally surprised by the outcome. :)
Sadly, I'm not coming to Frankfurt as soon as I thought I would, but that's because I'm already going to Spain twice (for business reasons) and then to London (for leisure) in the month of July, and it's hard to add another trip before the summer holidays. Anyway, a trip to Germany is in order before the end of the year, so I'll keep you posted on that.
Hope to hear from you again soon. Take care!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 08:32 pm (UTC)Well first off, I TOLD you that thesis was great! :D
And secondly, while I have vast amounts of sympathy for your various stages of panic, I'd like to point out that you should have trusted me when I told you you were gonna do okay. ;)
Cus, um, I have magic powers of precognition. Yeah.
Actually what I think I have are weird powers of quasi-telepathy. I didn't even find this post via my flist. I found this post because I said to Kev, over dinner, "I should email
So I came to check exactly how long it HAD been since you posted and BEHOLD. Crazy!
So yeah. Awesome stuff.
The game sounds really neat too. I don't have a lot of experience with that kind of thing though Kev used RPG Maker for a while to make stupid silly little RPG games until he realised he had issues exporting them to a format playable by others. A real shame since the first two levels of Bible: the RPG were hilarious. It had Lot's Wife in it. She joined your party and was a giant pillar of salt.
SOOOOO! It's so good to have you "back" for however long. I MISS YOU! You have no idea how much I wish I could afford to come to Frankfurt RIGHT NOW. :( If you are, by any stretch of the imagination, coming to the UK anytime soon, you know I want to see you, right?
Oh, also! I finished my insane, crazy re-editing project and I made like, proper DVDs with covers and manufactured deleted scenes and commentaries and a mockumentary and EVERYTHING if you want a set! Why yes, this was the world's...least sane response to fannish disappointment EVER, and I still can't really believe I DID it since OTHER people do stuff like this, but, um, it was a useful distraction technique in times of stress? o_O
And I think that brings you up to date with me? Stuff's pretty much the same as it was when we spoke on the phone a few months back, except now I have three-day-a-week employment which I think I didn't then? And seem to have developed an odd ability to get caught up in ridiculous quasi-dying-BSG-fandom wank. But aside from that...yeah. The same.
Sorry for babbling FOREVER, I'm just really excited to "see" you!
*GLOM*
P.S. Project of Doom prevented actual VIDDING recently, but I am, next, planning to make that Farscape vid about John and Gunz we spoke about on the offchance you remember!
no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-30 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 04:05 am (UTC)[...]
The thesis got a 1.0, which is basically as good as it gets.
*Does the happy dance*
So relieved and happy for you! :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 03:04 pm (UTC)GEIL!!!! Herzlichen Glückwunsch! Ich freu mich total für Dich, dass Du es erstens geschafft hast und zweitens so gut! Ich hab ja überhaipt keinen Plan von Deinem Feld und nach Deinen Einträgen konnte ich gar ix einschätzen, aber das ist ein super Ergebnis und ich freu mich echt für Dich!
Und viel Spaß und Erfolg beim Welten-basteln :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-07-02 09:18 am (UTC)=D
Date: 2009-07-04 09:33 pm (UTC)