The Hox­ton Hotel (‘the urban lodge’) in Lon­don recently had a sale, where a lucky few could purchase rooms for £1 a night or £29 a night. Most came away with nothing, but Sam was lucky enough to not only get a room, but two con­se­cu­tive nights on the wee­kend of her birth­day! Fantastic!

Said wee­kend star­ted last Fri­day, we each took the day off and took our quick and usual route into the cen­tre; mee­ting outside Lei­ces­ter Square, cases in tow, ready to be tou­rists for a cou­ple of days. After apple juice and lunch in St James’ park we took the Northern Line to Old Street and chec­ked in, elec­tri­fied by the overwhel­ming tren­di­ness that is both the hotel and surroun­ding area.

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Ah, its been a week now since I retur­ned from the US, UTAH and the West­gate Resort in Park City. I’ve just about reco­ve­red from the 7 hour time dif­fe­rence, which was com­poun­ded by a 24 hour day of tra­ve­ling inc­lu­ding a harro­wing down the moun­tain drive in heavy snow, two flight con­nec­tions (Detroit and Min­nea­po­lis) and a 2 hour coach trip from Heath­row back to St Albans. I’m also not a Mormon.

Hea­ding over appea­red easier on paper, short flight to CDG, Paris then an 11 hour Air France flight to Salt Lake City (do not go to the Tra­ve­lodge near Heath­row and cer­tainly do not taste their food — if you must there is a nicer loo­king pub just around the cor­ner). Loo­king online befo­rehand we noted the movies we wan­ted to watch, etc. Unfor­tu­na­tely the flight was with an Air France part­ner, Delta, without a sophis­ti­ca­ted in flight enter­tain­ment sys­tem — ins­tead giving us in the aisle airings of the awful “Little Miss Pet­ti­grew Lives for a Day” and “Kung Fu Panda”, lea­ving 7 hours to spare. No doubt the com­pli­men­tary Kro­nen­bourg 1664 hel­ped the trip go a little fas­ter. All in all it felt like a short haul flight — just really really long. Lea­ving the dull Lon­don 12C we were trea­ted to a bas­king 88F on arri­val, where we pic­ked up our 4x4 Suzuki ren­tal and pro­cee­ded towards Park City in the mountains.

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Now that I have made my mam­moth 5000 word Greece holi­day post, which has been wai­ting around for a month or so to type up, I can move onward to new blog posts in this new and impro­ved MrFofR​.com blog, hap­pily within WordPress.

Impor­ting 5 years worth of posts from Blog­ger and then cate­go­ri­zing them was not a pretty task. Though I did notice a gra­dual des­cent into imma­tu­rity as I wor­ked back­wards. In cele­bra­tion of this achie­ve­ment, and brin­ging this blog inline with my other pro­jects, the site has chan­ged hosts and lives on its own domain as a sepa­rate out­let for unpro­fes­sio­nal blurbs, rants and what­not; www​.mrfofr​.com. The Mr. bit is new, I’d be pretty lucky to bag a four let­ter domain name.

After 5 years, my AMD Ath­lon 2700 XP with 1.5gb of RAM and LG 17″ screen was gro­wing weary. Time for an upgrade, and the new 24″ iMac model took my fancy — I grab­bed one from John Lewis in July and its now sit­ting pretty as the focus of my front room, coin­ci­ding with a big rea­rran­ge­ment of furniture.

Good timing really, con­si­de­ring that I had mul­ti­ple and simul­ta­neous hard drive fai­lu­res on my PC shortly the­reaf­ter as I tried to trans­fer 40gb or so to the mac.

Having been through the old posts, I noted that, in hind­sight, screenshots of my pro­jects are very help­ful for when the ori­gi­nal source mate­rial has since vapo­ri­zed into the mists of some inter­net pur­ga­tory. And on that note:

Here it is. My spangly new flat, com­plete with com­pu­ter desk and leather sofa…

… TV, Wii and plant …

… a table and another sofa thing …

… door and drawers …

… bedroom and dou­ble bed …

… a spangly tiled bathroom …

… and chec­ke­red floor for chess …

… kitchen with mic­ro­wave, toas­ter and washing machine …

… fridge, free­zer, cooker …

… and acres of work­top space …

… and finally my well cons­truc­ted desk!

Hoo­rah!

Well, that’s it, done and dus­ted. Uni­ver­sity life is now offi­cially over — I am no lon­ger a stu­dent. My four years stud­ying a Mas­ters in Elec­tro­nic Engi­nee­ring at War­wick Uni­ver­sity have come to a fruit­ful end. It’s odd thin­king of the very first day when I moved into Roo­tes with my big boxes, going up the stairs for the first time, seeing that awful bright yellow paint, unpac­king and chat­ting with Sam and Kayte for the first time. Good memories.

This final year was spent in Red­fern cam­pus accom­mo­da­tion, with old friend Ste­ven and new flat­ma­tes Jo, Madhu­mita and Robert. It has been a great year. Here is a short but happy-memory indu­cing list. Ten pin bow­ling — both real and Wii based, mas­sive marathon video game con­quests (Bur­nout Revenge, Kata­mari, Bom­ber­man, Wii Sports, Red Star), birth­day cele­bra­tions, the adven­tu­res of Bobby Green and Snowy Bob, tal­ka­tive fridge mag­net non­sense, watching Pla­net Earth, fridge and free­zer space mayhem, the rot­ting cele­riac, Madhumita’s bell rin­ging and supers­ti­tions, the donkey-film fiasco (and the asso­cia­ted eeyore jokes), New Year cele­bra­tions, Christ­mas deco­ra­tions, Madhumita’s quo­tes and blue tac sculp­tu­res, outings to Zizi’s and Piccolini’s “I could be a vam­pire — but you’re vege­ta­rian”, eating two meals at once in Wethers­poons after Oceans 13, sha­ring artsy fartsy films with Jo, going on walks around Heron­bank (to my sec­ret pond), taking trips to the per­fect Arts Cen­tre Cinema (£2.50 stu­dent tic­ket for films such as Zodiac, This is England, Infa­mous and others), buying bar­gain £3 DVDs from the now defunct Fopp, jug­gling in the kitchen (3 ball, 4 ball, mill’s mess, 5 on the floor), the faulty Xbox 360 issues, com­ple­ting that Mars EBM assign­ment, Future Elec­tro­nics “big time” and “for sure”, kitchen visi­ting spa­rrows, wood­pec­kers, rab­bits, squi­rrels and a sin­gle fox, War­wick Art Centre’s tuna jac­ket pota­toes with salad gar­nish, my inter­net ban and resul­ting scrubs marathon, base­ment lab conc­rete slab tes­ting for hours on end, pain­ful all nigh­ters on 300 page pro­ject report and pos­ter, my poor tummy and appen­di­ci­tis, rewar­ding revi­sion marathons (and mis­sing the Bris­tol Rovers pro­mo­tion), lear­ning man­da­rin chi­nese, the lunar eclipse on the night of Steven’s birth­day meal and wii com­pe­ti­tion, watching Liver­pool knock out Chel­sea on HD pro­jec­tors outside in the gar­den after feas­ting on a BBQ, rea­ding Graeme’s fri­day eve­ning “wee­kend joy” texts and laser/smell of bur­ning eye sto­ries, eating fresh French baguette and Camem­bert after retur­ning on a long hard bike trip to Tes­cos, the moun­ting rust pro­blems my bike suf­fe­red as a result of being left outside in the rain, the mag­pies attac­king the bin bags, the “cost-cutter” chime, the inc­re­dibly wet sum­mer, pla­ying Fris­bee on the green outside, watching films with the TV at the foot of the bed, watching the clea­ner rota­tion as ours was off sick again, buil­ding up recyc­la­ble skysc­ra­pers in blue bags, pla­ying corri­dor golf with the plas­tic golf set and Ste­ven losing his ball under my bed, pla­ying long range corri­dor darts and skitt­les, being solemn as Madhu­mita rushes away for the last time, doing that 1000 piece puzzle on top of my dra­wers, buying fans and crea­ting cus­tom made wasp nets, seeing Madhu­mita play Halo, boi­ling up the kettle and having a nice cof­fee and crois­sant break­fast before star­ting revi­sion, pla­ying Scat­ter­go­ries and LOTR Risk (too geeky?), rea­ring my grape found cater­pi­llar to a full fled­ged moth, indoc­tri­na­ting Sam in the ways of BSG, taking down my pos­ters for the last time, Jo’s regu­lar parsnip-carrot and mince meal, Steven’s toad in the hole and chips, Roberts plas­tic cut­lery and balloon antics (see: Madhumita’s cup­board), Madhumita’s smelly night time thing and yoghurts left in the mic­ro­wave, the 2 for £3 tesco piz­zas that got me through, wee­kend trips to Lei­ces­ter to visit Sam where we would shop at Fen­wicks or on the off chance go to Riley’s or cook something won­der­ful and ins­pi­red. And taking pic­tu­res for the last time as I pack up the car and pre­pare to go home.