If you define "child" as ending when I turned 13 (and therefore into a "teenager") then my favourite book – which I read in P7 (when I was about 12) – was probably Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart (I saw the movie adaptation of it recently – it seems like so long since I actually read it…).

However, I also read Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses as a "child", and I remember that being one of my favourite books as well.

There was also another series of books, but I can’t remember the author’s name, the name of the books, or much else about them, so they’re not really worth discussing here.

If you take the definition of "child" back a bit further, though, I read the Secret Seven books (Enid Blyton) waaaay back, early in primary school. I never read the Famous Five books, and I still don’t know why. I suppose they could have been my "favourite" books (I don’t remember much else from back then, so I assume I liked them).

Oh, and the Murderous Maths books, which originally interested me in maths and all that stuff. I’m continually reminded of them when I realise that some of the stuff I learned from Murderous Maths isn’t "properly" covered by SQA courses until Higher Maths and, indeed, ADVANCED Higher Maths. It doesn’t go into all the Advanced Higher Maths detail, but some of the core bits of it were in the Murderous Maths series I read all the way back then.

I think.

Ask me anything

So far, it looks quite good.

Indeed, it has a feature which allows you to auto-submit everything in your feed to Digg, in order that it will appear in all the My News section of all your followers.

To activate this feature, you have to make a post to your blog with a key to verify in it, which is why I’m making this post.

If you have New Digg, why not follow me?

If I did know many, by the way, I’d just give you a short answer telling you who and why, but – as it happens – I have to sit here and waffle while I make some attempt at coming up with an intelligent-sounding answer.

As a regular visitor (and, very occasionally) to Uncyclopedia (http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com) I must at least mention Oscar Wilde, despite never having read anything that he actually wrote. Although I could justify wanting to meet Hitler like this too. That said, meeting Hitler could prove interesting: you could find out (assuming he allowed you to talk with him, and that you can speak German – which I can’t) what made him tick, and exactly why he did what he did.

Other than that (very unsatisfactory) answer, I haven’t a clue, because, really, I don’t know anything about history and I don’t really want to find out. O_o

Also, hi to anyone reading this on my blog (or Tumblr), since I’m syncing these answers over there now.

Ask me anything

CC BY: This photo was filched from conner395 on Flickr, because I'm rubbish with cameras.

So I’m back from my holiday in “somewhere near Inverness”. I say “somewhere” because in the Highlands of Scotland, you don’t get fancy placenames for everywhere, you just get rough placenames. And you don’t get exactly where you want with a satnav either. Just roughly.

I was in a set of lodges called the Kiltarlity Lodges. The Kiltarlity Lodges are actually a good distance from Kiltarlity itself, where I use “Kiltarlity” as a name for Kiltarlity Village, which is (according to the Kiltarlity Community Council) just what’s written on the signpost, and the village is actually called Allarburn.

Kiltarlity is apparently in Beauly, because all of the addresses in the area have the line ‘Kiltarlity, Beauly, Inverness-shire’ in them. But drive several miles down the road and you will be confronted by a sign welcoming you to Beauly itself. Hang on, you ask yourself, wasn’t I already in Beauly?

And so where exactly I was for the past week is a complete mystery. It’s pointless trying to pinpoint it exactly, so the closest you’re going to get is that I was near Inverness. That works.

CC BY-NC. From cradehall on Flickr, because I fail at taking pictures.

But yes, I was actually in Inverness at some point, at the Eastgate shopping centre. Amber recommended Ben and Jerry’s milkshake to me via Twitter (recommendations are a Very Good Use for Twitter, by the way) and I (eventually) went and bought one.

They cost £3.70, and they’re made by taking several scoops of your chosen ice cream flavour and blending them until you have one ice cream milkshake. And they’re very, very good. Very unhealthy too, I’d imagine, but when they taste this good, you really don’t care. I recommend that you have one: particularly if you live on an island with no Ben & Jerry’s and are going to go on holiday to somewhere that does have a Ben & Jerry’s. You can find one near you (assuming you’re in the UK) using their scoop shop locator. If you’re in the US, you can use this locator.

We also went to the Cairngorm Funicular Railway and went up the mountain itself. We were particularly lucky to get a lovely, clear day with good views from near the top of Cairn Gorm. I don’t actually have any of the pictures we took from the top here with me as I type this post, but I’ll try and post some at a later point so you can see what we saw. If you’d like to visit the Cairngorms National Park yourself (including Aviemore), they have a lovely tourism website. The area is particularly good for cyclists – almost the whole area is covered by the National Cycle Network - though I didn’t do any cycling there myself.

CC BY-NC. Inside the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre. This photo was taken by washuugenius on Flickr and not me. So you know.

Another destination was the 5-star Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, which contains a documentary lasting roughly 30 minutes on the subject of the infamous Loch Ness Monster. This documentary takes place in seven different “themed” rooms – you pass from one room to the next after each segment of the documentary – which immerse you completely in the information: almost literally in one room, which creates the illusion of being underwater. Naturally, we also drove past Loch Ness itself. And no, we didn’t see the monster.

Where else? Oh, just Beauly (I recommend the House of Beauly’s restaurant, by the way), Dingwall (I don’t recommend Dingwall at all – sorry to those who live there), and – on the way back north – Wick and Thurso. I was also in Golspie for at least a few minutes on a toilet break, which must count for something. If you want a recommendation for going to Golspie, then I suggest the Coffee Bothy. I haven’t been in there, but it’s fairly close to a public toilet and therefore is just about the only place in Golspie I’ve seen. No really: why not go take a look at it if you’re ever in Golspie?

Other things I can recommend after going on this holiday:

• Waterstones in general, especially the one at 69 Eastgate Centre. It may not be as cheap as Amazon.co.uk but hey – there are comfy chairs and many bookshelves, some of which contain books you’ll want to read! I’ve registered for a Waterstones Card, just in case.
• Landmark Forest Adventure Park in Carrbridge is a great day out for families. Especially the Fire Tower, if you can get over the fact that you’re on such a high, rather shaky wooden structure (no really – just walking around on the top will cause it to shake). Which I couldn’t. Cause I’m a wimp.
• And a special mention, at least, should go to Big City Network station MFR (Moray Firth Radio), but only because it’s about twenty times better than my local commercial radio station. That still doesn’t make it any better than BBC Radio, but hey – it’s OK. Sort of.

Interested? You can find out more about most of the places I went to on the VisitHighlands.com site. Or, if you’re new to Scotland in general, you can find more information at WelcomeToScotland.com.

–

Photos in this post were licensed under Creative Commons by those who took them. The photo of the Inverness sign is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0. The Eastgate Shopping Centre photo and the Loch Ness Exhibition centre photo are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.o. Want to license your work under Creative Commons? Visit the license chooser at creativecommons.org.

Unfortunately, I still have the default WP theme (only now it’s the new default theme). Fortunately, I like WordPress 3′s default theme more, and it might encourage me to post more often (though I will eventually make a theme of my own when I have the time).

Unfortunately, I will be rather busy soon, because – in addition to S6 in general, and some other stuff I’ve got planned – I need to create a website for a (recently founded) Young Enterprise company I’m part of.

Fortunately, this too shall pass. Or something.

And I don’t play FarmVille. Or any other games on Facebook.

I have a Bebo account (update: not any more), but I don’t use it at all. Other than to go and find one of those nice little quiz things to fill in, in order to fill my blog with something.

So here it is, The Ultimate Guide to Andrew Johnston (in Bebo Style).

Full Name: Andrew Nicholas Johnston

Age: 16

Brithdate: The 9th day of the 9th month (that’s September the 9th if you’re bad with month numbers).
Birthplace: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Mainly because the hospital in Orkney only sometimes handles births.
Current Location: Orkney, Scotland, UK.
Heritage: No idea. Given my last name (Johnston) I’d imagine it might be rooted in Scotland and Ireland. To be more specific, I’d say it’s Annandale, but I can’t be absolutely sure about that. I was never any good at history or anything like that.
Religion: I don’t follow any particular religion myself, but I don’t reject religious people, religion in general, or the things religion says. If you want this in one word, put me down as agnostic.
School: Kirkwall Grammar School, which isn’t actually a “grammar school” in the traditional sense, but retains the name for no real reason. I don’t like the school, but to avoid expressing my opinion on it, I will simply state that – yes, the school is indeed an SQA centre.
GPA: …isn’t used in the Scottish (or the English) education system, so I don’t have one.
Grade: Assuming you’re talking about the American term for what I call a “year”, I’m in S5, which is the Scottish education system’s term for Year 12 (if you’re in England) or 11th grade (if you’re in America or Canada).
Tattoos: None, and I don’t really want one either. It’s mainly the thought of having something that “permanent” on my skin. Yes, you can laser it off or whatever, but then I’d just have wasted loads of money, wouldn’t I?
Piercings: No thanks.
Hair colour: Brown
Eye colour: Hazel
Height: I have a height, yes. Don’t ask me what is, because I don’t have a clue.
Shoe Size: Fairly big. I’m nearly always wearing shoes which don’t say what size they are on the inside, so don’t ask me to check there. Also, I’m too lazy to remove my shoes for a blog post.

Favorites

Food: Pasta
Beverage: Coffee – we have a “Starbucks” in Orkney which isn’t actually called Starbucks but has a contract with them to sell Starbucks coffee, and yeah, it’s fairly good. I don’t know whether Starbucks themselves are good though. Maybe it’s all in the way you make it.
Movie: I don’t watch movies. Like, ever. But if you asked me to select one that I have watched from the, like, three that I’ve ever watched, I’d probably choose either The Day After Tomorrow or A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
TV Show: It’s a contest between The Office, Newswipe and Screenwipe. And by The Office I mean the UK version and not the American The Office, because the American one is rubbish.
Ice Cream: I dunno, actually – whatever happens to be around.
Restaurant: Pfft, no, I don’t go to restaurants. I spend my time inside on my laptop. I don’t go outside.
Sport: I don’t like sport, but if you’re forcing me, I enjoy swimming. Not competitive swimming, mind you. Just going for a swim. Sometimes.
Hangout Spot: Nowhere. I don’t “hang out”.
Store: Whatever one  sells things I want to buy at any particular moment in time.
Book: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I have all of them (minus the Eoin Colfer one) in one big book, and it’s almost, but not quite, exactly like a Bible.

In a Guy/Girl

Eye Color: Yes.
Hair colour: Yes.
Long or Short: Maybe.
Height: Yes.
Personality: Yes.
Hot or Cute: Define “hot”. Define “cute”.
Age: It doesn’t really matter. Probably within 2 years either way from my age if you’re forcing me to, because it’d probably seem weird otherwise, but.
Muscular or Skinny: Both of those. To be honest, I don’t decide any of the things you’ve asked in my head before I meet people in the Outside World. If I plan to meet “The Perfect Guy (or Girl)” then I’ll never meet him. Or her.

This or That

Family Guy/South Park: Family Guy, because I’m bored at about 23:35 each night and BBC Three can always supply something I don’t need to think too much about to watch. Also, I hate Viva, and it’s the only channel on Freeview that actually shows South Park.
Cartman/Kenny: I refuse to answer this, since I don’t watch South Park.

Peter/Stewie: Stewie. Why? I don’t know. I don’t even know why I watch Family Guy. Ever.

Pepsi/Coke: Pepsi, because it tastes better than Coca Cola, and you all know it. But in reality, my favourite is Ubuntu Cola, because it’s Fairtrade.
Sprite/7-Up: Honestly, I really don’t think there’s a difference between them other than their branding. Based on branding, I prefer Sprite, because they don’t have stupid cartoon characters drawn on their cans. But I don’t drink either of them much.
Mountain Dew/Red Bull: Haha, it’s “Mtn Dew”, not Mountain Dew! Nevertheless, I’ve never had either of them. I like the idea of Mountain Dew more though, because I hate Red Bull’s branding.
School/Church: School.
Love/Money: Love, because money is an artificial concept which humans created so that some humans could think of themselves as “better” than others for having more money (see: Conservative Party). Arguably, love may be an artificial human concept as well, but at least – I hope – we’re all equal in the eyes of love.
Homework/Test: Tests, surprisingly, because tests always have very clear directions and are very orderly, and I seem to crave order and erratic, unclear things like homework just interrupt my natural rhythm.
Movie at Home/Movie in Theater: I never watch movies, but if I did, I’d prefer them at home. But with a home system to rival the cinema. I don’t have the kind of money for that, but who said you have to take money into consideration for this quiz thing?
Comedy/Romance/Horror: Comedy. Horror movies scare me ’cause I’m a wimp, and…I don’t know, I haven’t watched enough romance movies to really judge.
Pants/Shorts: “Pants”, which in America means trousers and over ‘ere means what you wear under your trousers. I mean trousers, so you know.
Summer/Winter/Fall/Spring: Summer, but winter’s lovely for spending some time with the laptop, coding something. Though I do that in summer as well. And I have to point out that we call fall “autumn” here in the UK.
Christmas/End of the School Year: End of the school year, because it means a long summer holiday in which I can get stuff done that I put off because of school and revision and stuff.
Warm/Cold: Warm, especially in the morning, under my duvet, when I’m supposed to be getting up. That sort of warm is the best warm, even if it does turn into panic after a while since I always spend too much time there.
Italian/Chinese: Italian.

Love Life

First Love: Shh…be quiet, you.
Longest Love: Hmm…I wonder how many more questions there will be?
Person you like now: Several people. If you mean “like” (including the quotation marks), then that’s not really anything to do with you, is it?
Do you believe in the one: I don’t know.
Do you believe in love at first sight: Absolutely not.

First thing that comes to mind

School: Scottish Qualifications Authority.
Banana: Flamboyant.
Apple: Melon.
Red: Communism.
Winter: YouFail.org.
Church: Antidisestablishmentarianism.
TV: Kites, one of the BBC One idents.
Food: The strawberry sherbert boiled sweet thingy I’m eating.
Pop: Bubble wrap.
Cat: The XKCD theory.
Magazine: The Daily Mail, a “newspaper” which I hate.

Miscellaneous

Bedtime: Any point between 00:00 and 02:30. But “any point” can only be every five minutes. I can’t go to bed at 2 minutes past an hour, or at 18 minutes past an hour, for example.
Bed Size: I, for no reason, have a double bed, with only one person to sleep in it.
Have you smoked: No.
Have you drank: No.
Been stoned: Nup.
Last movie you watched: Don’t remember, actually. It’s been a while.
Last song you heard: According to my Last.fm profile, it’s The Everglow by Mae, but I wouldn’t trust my Last.fm profile, really.
Last person you talked to: My mother.
Last thing you said: “Yeah.” (it was her phone that rang)
Last thing you ate: I’m currently eating a strawberry sherbert boiled thingy.
Why are you taking this survey: Because I can.

There you go.

I’m currently working on a WordPress theme to go with this site – in the meantime, apologies for the default WordPress theme.

Built on the same foundations as Wikipedia itself, the open-source MediaWiki software, wikiRevision hopes to offer notes specifically targeted to those taking one particular course. At the moment, obviously, it will only contain notes for courses that I’m studying, but the open nature of the website means that anyone can contribute and help others on their course – as well as providing themselves with a set of notes “in the cloud”: you won’t lose your revision notes when they’re stored on the wikiRevision server.

It has provided me with an interesting look at the MediaWiki software, and building themes on it. At the moment the site is running a beta theme that I crafted by modifying the famous MonoBook theme that Wikipedia uses – I’m currently working on getting a slightly better theme made up for the site.

Of course, NaNoWriMo involves a lot of writing, and a lot of not-doing-other-things. That does mean that Andrewj.org might (still) be buggy by the end of the month. Of course, I will install security updates for Drupal – because otherwise it’d be buggy in the bad way – but there are a few design flaws which I haven’t ironed out (yet). Though some of it’s just in the administration interface which you can’t see.

If you want to see how I’m going with my novel, my username is andrewj. And it’s nice to see they’re using Drupal, just like this site (update: I run WordPress now).

Well, guess what? (And you know it must have something to do with the title)

It’s updated now! So you can find out all the things you never wanted to know about the person who writes these posts. As if you’d want to.

As if anyone reads these posts.

As if anyone really exists.

Anyway, more absolutely atrocious content soon, imaginary readers.

(See the amazing new about page here)