Jake Dubber » Work

Exams and Cubes

Jake — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 23:19:50 +0000

I haven’t blogged in a while. Not since I started college actually. Since then a lot has happened – I made some good friends, drummed in what can only be described as ‘Shakespeare in Space – The Musical’, enjoyed some hardcore studying, learned how to complete the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube, went to Prague, hung out with my Aunty Kelly (who’s leaving tomorrow), played computer games, been snowed on (left), argued ethics, bought a laptop, had an exam and rearranged my room. This post is about only about two of these things, namely my exams and my conquering of the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube.

My study leave started yesterday, Monday the 11th, and was the day of my first and only exam (meaning my ’study leave’ is effectively just a week-long holiday). It was in English Language and although I was nervous, I’m actually pretty confident about how I’ve done. The test is divided into two parts – Section A and Section B. The whole exam’s about text analysis, but the first part looked at how the texts conveyed information to their intended audience. The second part is all about bias. How the author uses rhetoric devices, semantics and register to convince the reader that the author is right. I’m confident because of what the texts were.

Section A was based around two texts, one a newspaper article and another an eyewitness account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. I figured they’d be really boring, but were surprisingly graphic. For example, despite being shot in the head, it took Lincoln like 10 hours to die. I especially liked the over usage of the word ‘oozing’. Nice. Section B was a review of a Star Wars toy, the Ewok Village. Just awesome. In GCSE we got given a story about a tall woman married to a short man and the wacky fun that ensued (not wacky at all!). For AS we get gory assassinations and Star Wars! I love college.

During my free time I usually practice silly hobbies like juggling and balancing. Well, I have a new one. I was taught how to complete the 3×3 Rubik’s Cube by a new friend at college called (Crazy) John a few months ago. It took me weekend to learn, but I’m still getting time down. I started at about three minutes, but my record now is one minute and nine seconds, with an average time of roughly a minute and a half. I’ve started recording myself solving it everyday and putting it Vimeo. The first of these is below. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to blog with all my college work, but I’ll try to do one at least once every few weeks from now on.

1 minute 23 seconds

Away With The Fairies

Jake — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:47:53 +0000

My dad helped me get a job recently. I’m quite happy about that, as my dreams of owning my own laptop have been getting dusty and need looking after. I’m designing a website for the band Muchuu. They’re a bit full of unicorns and happy-happyness, but I think they’re really good. Hannah loves them.

Dad got me the job through John Mostyn, a friend of his. John manages them and they wanted a website done before they go on Radio One, so they have something for interested people to look at.

I’m really enjoying making their site. I’ve learnt a lot to do with CSS and HTML code, like making new page templates and how to do this:

Hover your cursor over me

Muchuu had an awesome party a few days ago. Invitation only, and Hannah and I were invited! That made me feel a bit special. They played some great music (apparently their first gig, but it didn’t seem like it) and served some amazing cupcakes. Like, 50% icing cupcakes! So cool…

I really enjoy this kind of work as you meet nice people, have a good time and make some money while you’re at it. Bonus!

Work and The End Of An Era

Jake — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:42:46 +0000

I’ve recently made friends with the brother of a dude I go skating with occasionally. His name’s Joe (the brother of the dude, the dude’s name is Tim) and he’s in a band called Recoil. They play metal and it’s actually pretty good.

Joe and I were messing around on the computer and I showed him some of my Photoshoppery. He was pretty impressed (and I was flattered) and asked me if I could do a logo-type thing for Recoil. Above is what I came up with. It ended up being an album covery thing, and hopefully (with the approval of Sam the guitarist) it’ll be their demo cover.

I love doing work like that. It’s pretty easy, enjoyable and a good excuse to hang out with my mates. It’s also just really good practice.

Also, I have just finished a job sound engineering for a double-weekend seminar on Islam called The Shepherd’s Path. It was really interesting, and I get some money for it so that’s cool. I met some really nice people there: Majid, Faraz and Baz are awesome people, but everyone was really friendly.

The last few weeks have actually been really hectic. I had work on the weekends and had Music BTEC lessons on some days and the We Will Rock You show (see previous post). Now this week I finish my Music BTEC in a crazily busy fashion. This week is as follows: Tuesday – setting up for concert (9am-4pm), Wednesday – sound or light engineering a concert (12pm-5pm) and Thursday I have my evaluations to do (3:30pm-5pm). It doesn’t sound too bad, but for a holiday it’s quite sucky.

After this week I’m officially off school and have finished all of my lessons. The next time I have to go into school is results day. Woo!

Drag Me To The Textbooks

Jake — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:43:13 +0000

This week has been full of revison. Like, uber amounts of revision. I did 8 hours on Tuesday, 5 hours on Wednesday and was allowed out after to see Drag Me To Hell and Fighting with Ethan, 8 hours yesterday and 8 today. I am officially knackered…

Mostly I’ve been making mindmaps. Dad bought me a giant pad for doing them in. I’ve done about 15 so far ranging from the Nazi’s rize to power in Germany (History) to evolution and the environment (Biology). I must note that one ‘hour’ is actually 45 minutes revision, 15 minutes break. This means my 8 hours of revision is actually 6 hours (a normal school day including lunch-time).

Drag Me To Hell was terrible and ridiculous, in an awesomely Sam Raimi way. It really reminded me of The Evil Dead trilogy, especially Ash gone crazy (left). Try to imagine a horror version of Road Runner, with special effects, ACME anvils and all. Fighting was pretty cool too.

Exams!

Jake — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:05:22 +0000

I’ve finally started my GCSE exams. I just want to get them over and done with because after them I get a really long holiday. I can’t wait!

I have just finished my art exam work. I completed two sketchbooks, two sculptures and a canvas painting. The sketchbook work consisted of an artist study, some paintings, some drawings, a collection of pictures I drew in Photoshop and other such pieces. That’s hopefully enough to get me a B grade, which is only worth 40% of my final mark. The other 60% is coursework. I also have sixteen other exams to study for. Oh dear…

I really hate exams. I think they should be abolished. 100% coursework is the way forward to a better tomorrow. It tests your knowledge on whatever subject you’re studying, but I think it takes a lot of the pressure off kids like me.

On a better note, I’ve finished all of my History coursework. I got an A for those which was cool. I like my History lessons.

Some of my Art exam work:

Click for bigger images

My Pressure-Sensitive Birthday

Jake — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:32:13 +0000

Oh yeah, it feels good to be 16. I’m all old, manly and cool. Well, old and manly. Well, old. But the point remains, I’m 16 and it rocks. I’m also sick and can hardly speak, but I comfort myself with the knowledge that I’m now one of those guys that I used to look up to and say “Wow, I wanna be like him! Older and responsible. He has HIS OWN fish and a phone!”.

Speaking about things that are mine, I have the coolest birthday pressie ever. My new Wacom Bamboo pressure-sensitive tablet is amazing. The cartoon above was drawn by me, on Photoshop! It’s so freaking cool! I haven’t used a mouse since. Buy one!

Ethan bought me a professional dartboard so we can play. I haven’t played properly before, but it’ll be a cool skill to have when I get a bit better. Sam got me a cool leather wrist band and two surfesque necklaces. They’re pretty cool. Hannah painted me some awesome paintings. The Superman logo, the Batman logo and some other indescribable thing, it’s pretty cool. Photos shall be uploaded soon.

I’ve also recieved a drum kit which is just amazing, but I doubt I’ll be getting any presents again until I’m 18. It’s a red Yamaha Stage Custom and it just sounds so good. My new drum teacher (he’s my sixth!), Nobby, has taught me how to tune the drums, another cool way to set up the kit and a couple of beats.

Last night Mum, Dad, Hannah, Ethan, Sam and I all went out for dinner at Frankie and Benny’s, then had a couple of games at the bowling alley. I won the first, but absolutely lost the second. This weekend I’m having a party (PARTY party, not dinner party) with some friends of mine. Leah’s birthday is on the sixth so we’re having a joint party. It’ll be cool.

I’ll stick a blog post up about it on Sunday. Until then…

Dear God It’s Back!

Jake — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:23:12 +0000

As you can see, the blog has been revamped (made a vampire again?) and I’ve started blogging again. I don’t really have a great excuse as to why I haven’t blogged except suddenly receiving 4635 comments linking to rather rude sites (spam perhaps?) and not being bothered to get rid of them.

I haven’t been up to much really, I’ve been playing around with Photoshop CS4 (see some of my stuff here) and I got a girlfriend (Hannah). Actually we’d been going out before I stopped blogging, but I just hadn’t mentioned her. Well, there you go.

Ethan too has received of the girlfriendy goodness (Samantha, Sam for short). I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned her before, but either way she still exists so recognition is required.

I had a lung infection for a couple of weeks which was really unpleasant but got me time off school so I consider it a win (although catching up with schoolwork was difficult). Nice punctuationless sentence there.

I still haven’t got a job yet, but to be fair I’m not 16 yet so I can’t really legally work anywhere. Looking forward to when I can though (next Tuesday, yay!). To rub it in Ethan has two jobs which would theoretically make him ‘Mr Money-Bags’. Unfortunately not, but he has managed to drop out of college which kinda sucks, but means I’m friends with a drop-out, a homeless guy, a drug addict and a homeless drug addict which I think makes me look pretty good. Well until you meet them all and find out that they’re still cooler than me. Ah well.

Germans

Jake — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 20:26:04 +0000

Two weeks ago I went on a German exchange trip. It was the third time I’d been on this trip because it’s really fun. This was the first half of the trip, so the Germans came over here for a week, staying at my house on the last night. In October (I think) We go to Frankfurt am Main. There are multiple Frankfurts, with different rivers going through them (the river Main being one of them).

The three Germans assigned to be my partners were Martin, Micah and Samantha. Martin was 18, Micah and Sam were 17 and they were really cool. Normally I got assigned 12 year-olds, but I was the oldest ‘English’ person on the trip apart from the teachers, so I became a helper. I just had to do head counts and make sure people didn’t mess around. That’s what my partners were doing on the trip, so I was assigned them.

Throughout the week we went to the National Sealife Center, my school (we did karate workshops and a tour of the school), Black Country Living Museum and we went to the town hall and met the Lord Mayor. The current one is the third Pakistani Lord Mayor, so that was cool. We were given soda water, orange juice, tea and sandwiches. How very English of us.

At my place we had Indian takeaway for dinner and played cards until the early hours. It was a game my parents and I had never heard of, Micah had brought it along with her. It’s called Phase 10 and we liked it so much, we ordered it from Amazon immediately. Eventually we all got too tired to play properly so my parents, Juliet who was playing with us, and the girls went to bed. Martin and I went on the computer and watched Batman Begins. We fell asleep about half an hour from the end. Our plan was to watch that, then Donnie Darko, then Transformers and Forrest Gump. Wake everyone up at about 8, have breakfast and go to the airport. Oh well…

Under Construction

Jake — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:18:41 +0000

I have quite recently upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress. As you can see, there are a few bugs to do with the sidebar. I have been informed that this is only to do with the theme I am using now – K2 – and so my blog is going to change it’s look for a while.

I have to find a similar theme that works and make everything in my old sidebar work in the new sidebar. I doubt it’ll take too long, but don’t be surprised if it does.

I will blog about my German exchange trip (the German kids came here, we haven’t gone to Germany yet) once my blog is fixed.

I’m too young to be this busy!

Jake — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 17:50:46 +0000

I don’t like growing up. This much I know. My knees hurt, I sweat too much and girls are frustrating and evil.

However, I have discovered what I really don’t like about growing up. Work! I’m writing immense amounts of nothingness to please a scary, 50-something Jamaican lady (My English teacher). I am building a website for a super-famous band signed to Universal, whilst managing mine and Granddad’s as well. I am in the process of making the coolest hat in existence. I am doing work-experience at a punk record label. On top of all this I am attempting to stay alive with my best (and only) friend – Ethan – in a school which 98% wants to kill us.

This is how I spend my free time:

I’m tired…

Oh yeah, and I’m playing Second Life. Making a box say ‘Hi!’ is harder than it sounds.