Revision guides
I have an empty section on the top bar, I’m writing a couple up at the moment and by the end of the month should have something uploaded. They will be on further maths topics for the mean time but hopefully if they’re any good I’ll branch out to the maths commoners.

Renaming
There may well be a domain change soon to something shorter, but I’ll renew thomas-reddington.com for another year (Sept ’12 – Sept ’13) and redirect to it so the seasonal hoards of A-level students don’t get startled and confused.

Running from the law
I got a PDF letter from Nelson Thornes requesting to take off the answers to the exam-style questions for physics by the end of the month or there’ll be legal action. In the next 24 hours I will have taken all the answers down as by the looks of it they will have to come down eventually. The exam papers, for now and hopefully for the future, will be unharmed.

Disclaimer: just to let you (but mainly companies with a wanted poster of me depicted as a question marked silhouette and fancy fedora in their offices — not reflecting a large ego of mine at all) know, this website does not make a single penny. It costs a certain amount a year to keep the domain(s) and if I’m not on Weebly Pro my hosting is provided for free by Weebly, costs that are not expensive but costs I do not get back. The only benefits I get from supplying third-party material to help pupils in their exams is a larger audience for my posts and a warm feeling inside akin to a nice cup of tea. Of course this doesn’t override a legal right for me to remove stuff, it’s just something to take into account if the warrant happens to be signed.

So I turned 19 on one of the Mondays between my last post and this one. It was marked by a beautiful sunny day and a 9:30 a.m. exam. I kept pub celebrations to one hour as I had another exam (mechanics & relativity) on the Wednesday, unfortunately that one hour was dilated to four hours outside the pub’s reference frame. So obviously I’ve been busy giving the impression that I’m putting in the assumed amount of work adequate for my incoming eight exams (from Wednesday in two weeks’ time to 15th June), after which I’ll still have two weeks of accommodation (as with everyone else on campus) so for my remaining tenure I’ll be eating my breakfast of barbecues and having my five a day via slices of lime jammed in Corona bottles.

Anyway, I realised it’s the middle of May and the A-level stuff section isn’t updated, so I’ll tend to it now. After today I don’t intend on updating it for a while, unless heavily badgered by you lot. Posts themselves, as they’ve been for the last year or so, will continue to be quite stagnant, but hopefully will flourish a little in the summer.

Toodle pip.

Let me first pleasantly inform you that my tantrum concerning visitors (or lack thereof) has come to an end, surprisingly and slightly ironically after finding out my three week >100 streak has come to an end:

Second of all, I’ve recategorised a few things. ‘Philosophy’ has died as it had a token post, while ‘school stuff’ and ‘graphs’ is living its first hour in the world (with ‘graphs’ being bottle-fed this post). At some indeterminate point in the future, I intend to have a good look and fix mistakes I’ve made and put everything in a suitable category, although four weeks into the summer (where I’m in a boredom coma) is a while away…

Last but not least, I’ve finally put an about section, here. I’ve put a self-description to cater to the needs of the stalkers, who should be rewarded for fuelling my urge for traffic in the first place.

Mechanics was yesterday. I did it and during the exam my opinion on my performance fluctuated quite a bit, at the end I was quite scared as the last question I managed to check appeared to be wrong. Leaving the exam, that question was right. All the others were wrong.

OK, not all the others, but enough to lose 90%, and possibly 80%. Aiming for 100% in this case wouldn’t be so damaging if I wasn’t arrogant at every waking moment and invested all my pride (and a bit of cash) on my performance. I’m not really angry at Edexcel, I just had a bad day. I’ve learned that arrogance is no virtue.

Why am I so sure I made a mess of things? Post exam discussions can be quite reliable, even though not exactly consented. What eliminates hope is a leaked copy of what appears to be a mark scheme:

If you believe in the saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ then stay away from that shit.

Ah well, there’s still C2. I’m just lamenting the loss of myself on the highest step on the maths podium, then moaning that I hurt my knee on the fall.

On an unrelated matter, I think I should mention the link to a ZIP folder concerning the Knockhardy presentations and stuff for chemistry I put up today, the link isn’t that noticeable in my chemistry section.

Weebly, the company that hosts my site, deserves my gratitude. It’s free, and it had no ads. These two premises together seem too good to be true, and to an extent you are right. A while ago they released Weebly Pro where you pay x amount a month so obtain extra features (to this day I wonder how they made money before the release…). Recently, they released some more features, including this poll you can see to your right, and sub-pages which will be helpful when I sort out the mess that is my A-level stuff section.

I don’t have much criticism, though it has had its errors and has lacked desirable features in the past (and will not shrug off the American dates), but not to the horrendous extent as Facebook. I am actually tempted to convert to Weebly Pro.

My point is, I have updated this site, but couldn’t help to make you acknowledge my sudden love for this place that has nurtured me for these 16 months…

This year I have four exams in January (i.e. maths, physics, chemistry and economics), that could have easily been five if a coin toss went the other way (but that’s a different story). Here’s my timetable:
9:00, Monday, 11/01/2010: Maths: Core 1
9:00, Wednesday, 13/01/2010: Physics: Unit 1
13:30, Wednesday, 13/01/2010: Economics: Unit 1
9:00, Thursday, 14/01/2010: Chemistry: Unit 1

Second of all, I’ve uploaded important files I have for physics, chemistry and economics that might be useful for those doing the same courses. You can find them here (they’re in the miscellaneous section).

I’m on my Christmas break now, if I recall correctly I post more during exam time (which shouldn’t happen) and I feel that will happen this time…