Adventures In SAT Prep

SAT – possibly the most feared empty acronym of all time (at least for a high school student).  Ordinarily, as an Irish student, there’d be no need for me to go anywhere near the College Board and the SAT exams, but I had to be difficult and set my sights on America for college.  Why? you ask.  I’m not entirely sure.  It’s mostly to do with the breadth of the range of courses available in US colleges, and the fact that I wouldn’t have to tie myself down to one area in particular.  My plan at the moment is to concentrate in Applied Maths, but the beauty of the US system is that I wouldn’t have to give up other interests, like languages, at college level.  I have a fairly broad appetite when it comes to learning, and so far I think I’d be more suited to that system than the narrower Irish third-level system.

But all that aside, before I get anywhere near being accepted to (or, more likely, rejected from)  any schools on the other side of the Atlantic, I have to jump through a few standardised test-shaped hoops.  The SAT Reasoning Test was my first big obstacle, and I managed to overcome it last May.  With about a month of self-study I got a score that put me well within the average score range for the schools at the top of my list (Harvard, Yale, Brown…what?  I’m nothing if not ambitious, you know me).  As I had to explain to my classmates, that doesn’t mean a whole lot yet.  It’s a good first step, and I’m more than happy with my score, but it’s only one piece in the 1000 piece jigsaw that is the college application.  I think I could have done better in the Maths section, but I don’t think it’d be worth resitting the whole thing just to push it a tiny bit higher.  I’d be at a higher risk getting a lower score, if anything – and not all the schools I’m looking at allow you to ‘Super Score’ (that is to take your best scores from each of the three sections in separate sittings).

In June I sat the French and English Literature Subject Tests.  The Subject Tests are more specific than the Reasoning Test, and you’re supposed to study more for them because they test actual knowledge as opposed to reasoning skills.  I say ‘supposed to’ because the reality is I didn’t open a book for them.  The exams were on the Saturday morning at the end of my 5th Year house exams, so I had a fairly valid excuse.  I still (somehow) ended up with 700 in English Literature and 780 in French, and I’ll admit that no amount of study would have brought the former up because that exam was dire.  My main reason for taking those two was to bolster my application.  I knew I had a fairly good shot at breaking 700 on both of them (French especially), so I could afford to do them at the end of 5th Year when I had better things to be studying for.

The real challenge of the SAT Subject Tests is still to come.  Maths Level 2 and Biology (specifically needed for MIT applications, but none of my other colleges) are on the cards for either October or November (most likely October).  I’m telling you, I’m terrified.  The Maths is quite a bit different to the stuff we cover in class over here (multiple choice question formatting is literally the bane of my existence at the moment).  As for Biology?  Well.  All I can say is the content of the Barron’s prep book makes Leaving Cert Biology look a bit…”Mickey Mouse”.  I spent a good portion of my holiday in France plodding through biochemistry and molecular genetics and taxonomy and evolution and basically everything on the Leaving except in more detail.  But I’m determined to get something around 720+ in the exam – and the same goes for Maths.

I didn’t go to great lengths to acquire this masterpiece of hand-held calculation to not do well on the Maths SAT, did I?

Yes. That is indeed a colour screen.

I appreciate that I’m a bit pathetic that the highlight of my Summer was getting a TI Nspire CX CAS calculator but come on, 2 years of blogging later do you really expect any better from me?  It’s also a little bit scary that this calculator can do all the calculus I know how to do so far (and a whole lot more) but, rest assured, horrified teachers of Ireland, it’s not permitted in the Leaving Cert.  Ha.  Not by a long shot.

I have a very long way to go before I’ll be happy to sit down and sit either of those subject tests, though.  There’s a great deal of self-study involved, and more practice than I would ever want to inflict upon myself, which is why I took the summer (and a month or so after) to prepare for them.  My two more than satisfactory results on my previous tests already fulfil the subject test requirement for my other applications, but I’d like to take more scientific exams to show, I dunno, more facets to my ability.  Or whatever.

You know, every day the US college application process makes me appreciate the simplicity of the CAO more and more.

Hello WordPress, My Old Friend

This is my 3rd post of 2012, and it comes just under 3 months after my 2nd.  Whoops.  Well, there was no obligation to keep blogging after 2011 ended, in fairness.  And I’ve had plenty to keep my occupied for the last few months.  Fifth Year, especially post-Christmas Fifth Year, is an all-consuming monster.

So what have I been up to for the last three months?  Among other things, like drinking far too much black coffee than is probably healthy and sleeping at every opportunity (you wouldn’t think those two went together but yep apparently they do), I’ve been studying hard, fretting over History, and planning my college applications.  An interesting life I lead, I know.

I sat my first SATs on the 5th of May.  I started with the Reasoning Test, the big guy.  I was more than happy with my scores when they came three weeks later.  I’m going to write a separate post about the SATs at some point soon so I’ll divulge the details then.

I started cycling to school (and basically everywhere) around Easter.  There were a few reasons for this: firstly, I needed more exercise.  There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to fit in a proper cardio workout so why not make my trips to and from school a slight ~workout?  Secondly, it always took too long to get to and from school.  Walking takes about 25-30 minutes, depending on my mood.  Getting to school by bike, on the other hand, takes me 7 minutes on average.  Because my cycle home is mostly downhill that time is reduced to as little as 5 minutes for the return journey.  The daily cycle has made me a lot fitter, and makes it possible for me to cycle to my Japanese classes, or even further on into the centre of town, with little effort.  It’s nice to have that independence, and not to have to pay for the bus half as often either.  I also happen to just really like cycling.

All that aside, school was pretty good for the last term.  It flew by, which was both good and bad.  The positive aspect of getting through it all quickly is pretty self-evident – even I’m partial to holidays.  The slightly less appealing part of it is that I didn’t notice the time going by so I realised probably too late that I needed to start studying.  The same thing happened on a smaller scale every evening, as the sun set later and later; I was used to having a feel for what time I needed to hit the books by how bright it was out.  My stupid brain forgot to take into account the whole ‘days getting longer’ thing and sure most evenings it was half eight before I copped that I had homework.  Next year I’ll give precedence to my clock.

I’ll probably devote another post to my experience of 5th Year in the next while.  I feel like I can’t have closure on it until I sum it up in a blog post that no one will read.  Not that I’m making any commitment to blogging again, but I have more time on my hands at the moment, and now that I’m finished school and finished catching up on Sherlock (there’s another post for yet another day), I have significantly more time on my hands.  I might as well do something constructive with it.

That’s all for now, I guess.

Long Time No Blog

It’s been over a year since I could say ‘I haven’t blogged in a while’.  While I feel moderately guilty for my lack of input to this blog over the last two months, I must admit it’s a little freeing not to have to write here every day.  And I know I’ve barely had time to sleep recently, let alone write!

It has been a busy few months.  I’m doing the SAT in May, so I need to do some study for that.  I’ve been involved in organising Inter-House debating in my school this term.  I took part in an Applied Maths quiz last week (and we came ~7th I think), because I’m cool like that.  I’m starting my History RSR soonish (I am 99% sure of my topic).  I’ve had a mountain of homework every weekend, and I need to start studying for my 5th Year exams shortly too.  5th Year is wonderful, guys, it really is.

So, other than school work, what else have I been up to?

Well, I’ve been listening to Houdini by Foster The People a lot (550 plays in my iTunes since January 12 what).  In fact, this live version is even better:

I went to see The Hunger Games yesterday.  The movie was excellent, even if I wasn’t as overwhelmed by the books as everyone else appears to be (review).  I liked the cinematography, which captured the mood really well, and the clever absence of a score at certain crucial moments (the silence at the Reaping was unnerving, in a good way).  Plus Jennifer Lawrence was a perfect choice for Katniss.

Also, the Mahogany jokes are just not going to get old.

Other than that?  I haven’t been up to much lately.  I’m not even sure who I’m addressing this to, as I’m unlikely to have any sort of an audience anymore.

But hey, this is the Internet.  As long as I have a keyboard, who cares if anyone’s listening?

Rethinking It

There’s been a lot of talk in the last week or so about the Internet, copyright and personal freedoms.  I’ve been giving it all a bit of thought – that’s from SOPA, to ACTA to the proposed anti-copyright legislation in Ireland – and here’s my two cents on the matter.

I’m 17, and in truth I’ve never really known a world without the Internet.  I probably started using it on a regular basis when I was about 9 (Neopets…), and since then it’s been a major part of my life.  Rare is the day that I don’t check Twitter, or Tumblr, or access the Internet in some way – it’s almost always when I’m out of the country.  Roughly 90% of the non-academic information I consume in any given day is fed to me via the Internet, and that’s true of a lot of my generation at the moment.

When I was a child, music was bought on CD, but cassettes were still around.  I can still remember clearly the first DVDs we bought – Tarzan and The Iron Giant were among them – because I was about 6 years old then.  I remember the first iPod, using iTunes for the first time, getting my own iPod, using the internet on my iPod Touch, downloading my first song from iTunes (with the aid of my Dad and his credit card, naturally).  The Internet itself is something which has only become widely-available and widely-used in my lifetime.  It has changed forever the way we regard and consume media of all kinds, in a terribly short space of time, and it’s easy to see why the people who own the copyright are becoming increasingly nervous about it.

Copyright is tricky in this age of the Internet.  Illegal downloading has become a social norm, particularly in the music sector, and most of us don’t even bat an eyelid at paying for nothing for an album or two.  We know it’s wrong, and yet we do it anyway because we can.  Personally, I think something needs to be done about illegal downloading, but simply cutting off all access to copyrighted materials online is not going to do the entertainment industry any good.

In many ways, the Internet is the best thing to have ever happened to the entertainment industry.  It’s given music artists a bigger audience than ever before and it’s given rise to the speediest method of word-of-mouth (technically) ever known to man.  The Internet is easily the best form of free advertising when it comes to music and film.  I can’t count the number of artists I would have never discovered were it not for the Internet – Foster The People, fun., Bon Iver, Coeur de Pirate, just to name a few – and each have benefitted financially from that.  Similarly, I would have never gotten into Castle had I not been able to watch it online, simply because it was aired at awkward times on RTE, but I have since become a big fan of it, and bought the three novels and the first season on DVD (and intend on buying the second, third and fourth when they finally become available in Ireland).  Hey, my family pay UPC and a TV license, and I watch Castle on TV too a few months later anyway – where’s the harm, really?

A little bit of creativity is what’s needed to address copyright infringement online.  The Internet is a fantastic means of sharing culture, and certainly exposes more people to more media than ever before.  Business models in the recording and film industry need to be re-thought to adapt to this new technology, because clearly it’s not working for them, and clearly people will not stand for sledgehammer legislation which curtails their Internet freedoms.  iTunes and Netflix are examples of brilliant, innovative services which have adapted well to the entertainment consumption habits of the 21st century.  I still think individual songs are much too expensive on iTunes, considering how direct a service it is, but at least they’re embracing technology instead of condemning it.

I won’t deny that copyright infringement is rife on the Internet, and it’s getting out of hand, but it is also true that not all of it is bad for the industry.  The Internet is truly the home of the ‘fandom’ – the community of users who share a love of a particular film, artist or TV show – and that’s what creates wider brand awareness.   That usually involves some form of ‘copyright infringement’, in the form of fanart, fanvideos and fanfiction (I don’t know how they’ll be treated under ACTA, etc), but wow do those things contribute to and foster fanbases – undoubtedly the most valuable asset any film, artist or TV show can have.   If people can share in their excitement over something they love, they’ll be more likely to keep interested in it, and other will be more likely to discover it, and pay for it.

The Internet has already proven its potential for good, what needs to be addressed now is its abuse.  It desperately needs regulation, but the way that’s being approached at the moment will only serve to suck all the goodness out of it.  Perhaps it is naive of me to suggest this, as I know what the people with power in the entertainment industry are interested in is money, but a broader understanding of how the Internet is used is necessary before major decisions are made, decisions which would certainly have implications that reach farther than just the entertainment industry.  Unfortunately, I doubt that these things will be taken into consideration, because art seems to come behind profit margins, but I do hope in the future they will be recognised.

Best Of 2011: My 2011 [Part 2]

July

At the beginning of July, I came back from France (sadly) and the proceeded to do another week of work experience in TV3.  That time around, I was working with the news crews, going out with them to cover stories.  Again, it was really interesting.  I’m not sure I’d consider it as a profession, but it certainly gave me a unique insight into how the news we watch every day is produced.  Other than that, I don’t think I did very much in July (except for flailing about how close Fifth Year was to starting…)

August

In August, I went to Spain with Fiona Caverly, her family and her friend Sin Ki.  It was a contrast to France, where the weather had been pleasant but mixed; it was a lot hotter than any holiday I’d been on in recent years!  I had a great time, and it was quite a relaxing holiday.  Towards the end of August, then, I got even more excited for going back to school, and not just because I missed school in general.  It was my first Summer without Facebook, and I actually missed talking to people.  School started in the last few days of August, and it was certainly nice to be back.

September

September wasn’t a month where anything of any particular significance came to pass.  I got back into the swing of school work (so much of it) and allowed myself to gradually get excited about going to Italy in October.  I started my Japanese classes with Eleanor, Sadhbh, Emma and Alice (and a whole bunch of other people like) on the 10th, and it’s been going great ever since.  I don’t even consider Japanese my ’9th’ subject anymore, because it’s a lot less work (and easier) than Music and History…if that makes sense.

You wish your flashcards had this much swag

October

The highlight of October was easily going to Italy with school.  We spent five days there, staying on Lake Garda and visiting such places as Venice, Milan, Gardaland and Verona.  Yes, my precious iPhone went missing in Gardaland and I never got it back, and yes I did let my anxiety get the better of me thereafter, but it didn’t quite ruin the trip for me.  I still had a load of fun on what felt more like a holiday with ~60 girls and 6 teachers, than anything else.  We had a lot of free time to enjoy the beautiful places we went to (plus to do some shopping), and had some memorable bus journeys in between, too.  It was a lovely trip, and I wish we could do it all over again (perhaps leaving out the losing of the phone part, though).

November

I didn’t do much in November apart from study, study, study.  I don’t regret that, because it paid off in the exams, which were the last week of November, but it was sort of a downer that my social life went to ruin.  Oh well, things seem to picking up lately, now that school is over for Christmas.  I actually have plans for New Years, if you can believe that.  I also turned 17 in November, which was nice, though I didn’t make any huge effort to mark it for the aformentioned reasons.

December

Ah, the last month of the year.  With exams over and the Carol Service in a few weeks, school was much more easy-going.  We kept up the work, and got our test results back little by little, and awaited the snow which never (really) came.  The Carol Service was really nice, but I regretted the number of classes I had to miss for it.  I have yet to catch myself up on a lot of the lessons I missed…

Of course, the highlight of December had to be Christmas.  I didn’t ask for much this year, as my new iPhone 4S was basically a combined birthday and Christmas present.  I won an iPad a few weeks earlier, from a blog writing competition (see?  Blogging does pay off sometimes) and got a keyboard case and stylus for it, among other presents including Castle Season 1 on DVD.  On Thursday, I watched a few episodes of it with Eleanor and I’ve decided that it will just never get old.  I’m tempted to order Seasons 2 and 3 from Amazon.fr, because they’re not available on the UK site for some strange reason.

So now, there’s only a few hours left of 2011, and my daily blogging has (finally) come to an end.  It’s strange, isn’t it, that this is my 365th post this year.  It doesn’t feel like it.  Wait, no actually it does.  It’s been a long year, and writing a blog every day has been…demanding, at best.  However I can’t deny the opportunities it afforded me, and as I look over at that white iPad 2 I have admit it was definitely worth it.

4oD app = beautiful alternative to television

What next for La Vie En Ross?  Well, I’m not going to be giving up entirely.  Expect a blog per week from now on, hopefully of a much higher standard than I’ve been churning out recently (this past week not really included).  Writing every day was nice, but I’m also quite glad not to have it hanging over me anymore.  I’m going to enjoy not feeling compelled to write something every evening, but I still enjoy writing when I have something to say.

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my blog this year.  So long, and thanks for all the – wait for it – hits.

(Please don’t judge me for that terrible pun)

Best Of 2011: My 2011 [Part 1]

2011 was a great year for me.  My life was chronicled on this blog for the last 364 days, and I’ve probably written about the highlights already this year, but I feel a two-part recap wouldn’t go astray, especially for my last two days of blogging daily (!)

January

I suppose the most notable thing I did in January was go to “Science Boot Camp” as I liked to call it.  It was the training for the European Union Science Olympiad, following on from my gold medal in Biology at the IrEUSO the previous November.  I didn’t make it onto the team, but I think in hindsight that was a good thing.  Attending the two days of training in DCU taught me at least one valuable lesson: science probably wasn’t the road I should take.  I knew almost immediately that working in the lab just wasn’t for me.  I’m not actually a big fan of practical lab work in Science (and now in Biology).  I’m impatient when it comes to the fine details and measurements, and it doesn’t light the fire in me that I expect something I want to pursue for the rest of my life should.  Indeed, it bored me.  So I didn’t go to the Czech Republic, fine, but lots of important decisions I made (and will make) were affected by the experience, not least of which my subject choices for Fifth Year.  I’m still doing Biology, and of course Applied Maths, but turning against Science also gave me the opportunity to explore the other options for college, which led me to take up History.  As it happens, I’m currently leaning towards Maths or Computer Science + French, which aren’t a million miles away from Science, but I’m sure I never would have considered anything other than Science or Medicine had I not had that experience.

February

If I had to choose a highlight for February, it’d probably be the nomination for the 2011 Irish Blog Awards (which came on the 28th).  That was good, considering I’d only been actively blogging for two months.  Other highlights included seeing Confessions for the first time – it was just stunning – and, eh, dissecting that rat.  Sad as it sounds that was actually kind of great.  Other than that, February wasn’t the most eventful of months, it seems.  My lacklustre blogging for that month seems to agree.

March

A fair few things happened in March.  Firstly, we staged our TY musical.  I made no secret of the fact that I hated 90% of the preparation for the musical, didn’t want to be on stage and disagreed with the fact that it was compulsory, but when it did finally go to stage I think we all enjoyed it.  The best part of putting it on was knowing that soon it would all be over.  And I have never looked back.  Musicals just…they aren’t my thing, okay?

Secondly, I went to the Irish Blog Awards.  I didn’t win ‘Best Youth Blog’, but it was a good night regardless.  It’s unfortunate that there won’t be another such ceremony next year, but I probably wouldn’t have much to do with it anyway as I’m going to be cutting back on the blogging significantly in the New Year!

April

Where to start with April?  I did two weeks of work experience for the two weeks before the Easter holidays.  The first was in the DCU Library, and I really enjoyed it.  The week flew by and I really learned a lot.  The second was in St Nicholas Montessori School – my own primary school – where I was working mainly in the 3-6 year old classroom.  That week was definitely more tiring than the previous one, but again it was fun and an interesting experience.  Probably the really highlight of April came at the end of that week, when I interviewed An Taoiseach Enda Kenny at a conference in Dublin Castle.  Kind of hard to trump that, alright.

(Photo: John Shiels)

May

May was the month when I finally said goodbye to TY.  Even though I’d gotten a lot out of the year, I was glad when it ended.  I was ready for a bit more work, more focus, all of which did come in FifthYear.  While now I look back and envy my TY self for all the time she had available to her, I still understand why I wanted the year to end so badly.  It was also in May that we found out about our Fifth Year trip, which ended up being to Italy in October, and made our Leaving Cert subject choices (I picked History, Music, Biology, French and Applied Maths in the end).  Exciting times.  Oh, and we also went on our Gaisce hike on the Wicklow Way.  That was fun.  I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did, and I’m already a little stoked for the Silver hike…

Best photo I've ever taken

June

June began with the end of my TY exams, shortly followed by a week of work experience in TV3.  It was fascinating, to say the least, and I returned for another week in July.  Then I headed off to France with my family, and fell in love with the lake we were staying by, Lac de Chalain.  It was near the border with Switzerland, in the Jura region, and I just really want to go back there sometime.  It was simply gorgeous, particularly at sunset.

Ok, that’s the first six months of the year covered briefly…tune in tomorrow for the latter half of the year :)

Best Of 2011: TV

It’s been a good year for television – isn’t every year, though (save for 2008 when the Writers’ Strike just brought everything down)? I don’t watch a whole load of actual television, on the TV, mostly because I don’t get a chance to. Instead I follow my programmes online, whenever it suits me to. It’s not ideal, but I hate waiting for US TV to be broadcast over here anyway. So this is isn’t really a comprehensive list of the best TV of 2011, more an account of both the highs and lows of those shows I was actively watching throughout 2011.

[Spoiler Alerts abound for the latest seasons, which may or may not have aired in Ireland yet, guys]

House – Disappointing

Season 7 of House was really underwhelming.  I quite liked it when House and Cuddy were (finally) in a relationship, but when that went southwards so did everything else.  The finale was ridiculous, and didn’t motivate me to come back for Season 8 at all.  It’s as if they just ran out of ideas and decided ‘House be crazy’ and had him crash a car into Cuddy’s living room.  Cuddy was unnecessarily harsh, sending him to the wrong place for dinner, but that just didn’t fit with House’s character development at all.  And he was always supposed to be a nice person under that acerbic outer layer, right?  Oh well, I may yet go back to watch Season 8 but I don’t really feel compelled to.

Bones - A Let Down

I’ve been saying it for a while – Bones has been steadily declining in quality since about Season Four.  In my opinion, this was due to a poor combination of trying to be the comedy it never will be, and delaying the inevitable relationship between Booth and Brennan.  I used to be quite invested in the show, you see.  At the end of its sixth season, in the penultimate episode, the two finally slept together.  Or at least that was what was implied, because it was never explicitly stated, nor were we given conclusive visual indication of any sort.  It was confirmed in the finale, set about a month later, when Brennan announces that she’s pregnant in the last twenty seconds.  Yep.  And you know it was only written in because Emily Deschanel was pregnant in real life.  Six seasons of pussyfooting around the issue (really quite badly) and then – as Booth unwittingly put it – “Bam! Mama Bones!”.  Yeah, it was as bad as it sounds.  I know the two of them were basically dating for a few seasons, but then again they really weren’t.  I think the time has passed to draw comparisons with Castle, but one thing watching that show has demonstrated to me is that your characters can be much flirtier and overt about their attraction while still keeping up the suspense.  They can address the UST without resolving it, and still be entertaining.  Bones failed to do that, and tried to make up for it by throwing them in at the deep end of a relationship at the beginning of Season Seven.

Brennan tells Booth she's pregnant. That shouldn't be the first confirmation an audience gets that they're together, really.

Season Seven picked up in the fifth month of Brennan’s pregnancy, and it’s going marginally better (even though we missed the parts where they have to break the news to everyone else, which I was looking forward to).  I’ll never abandon Bones the way I let House slip away, but I’d be satisfied if this were the last season.  The writing-acting combination is a bit boring now, and I’m just not as interested as I used to be.  2011 definitely was the year that I finally decided Bones was just not good anymore (probably later than I should have admitted that), and I suppose that’s sort of sad.  At the same time, these things do have to just run their course, don’t they?  I just wish it could have done its (very loyal) fans a little more justice, is all.  And this isn’t even guaranteed to be the last season…

Glee - Impressive

The Christmas special was so terribly cheesy it was good

I gave up on Glee towards the beginning of Season Two – around November 2010 – because  I felt it had really lost its spark.  There was no continuity, the plots were boring, it just wasn’t drawing me in like it used to.  So I stopped watching, and then suddenly everything got better.  Go figure.  I picked it back up again in August, when E4 was rerunning both seasons, and I’ll admit I actually really enjoyed it.  Rachel and Finn continue to bore me to tears (they’re just so uninteresting it hurts), but characters like Santana, Brittany, Kurt and Blaine make it worth watching.  It’s still a musical soap opera, and it’ll never be the pinnacle of television, but I still get a kick out of it.

The Warblers, led my Blaine (Darren Criss) had some of the best numbers in all of Season Two

I liked the introduction of Blaine and the Warblers, how they dealt with Kurt being bullied, and how they developed Santana from a generic, sassy bitch into a layered, complex character.  Maybe I wasn’t wholly convinced by how they handled her coming out (‘I Kissed A Girl‘?  Really?  That song completely flies in the face of the point they were trying to make), but at least they’ve made an effort to give Naya Rivera the screentime she deserves.  Santana really did have some of the best lines (along with Brittany) – anything to do with Lima Heights just had me in stitches.

Santana (Naya Rivera) shone in Seasons Two and Three

Either way, I’m definitely sticking around for the rest of Season Three.

Modern Family – Best Comedy on TV

No show makes me laugh the way Modern Family did in 2011.  It’s really the single funniest comedy I watched this year, with the best ensemble cast of any show.  Not one member of that family (and there’s 13 of them) doesn’t have their moments.  The lack of a laugh track and the use of mockumentary set-up is really effective, and I find myself laughing at episodes I’ve already seen.  I think my favourite character has to be Gloria, played by Sofia Vergara.  She’s just…hilarious, no two ways about it.  And her accent just adds to that.

And Cameron is just the best stereotypical gay man on TV

But really, the whole show is just brilliant.  I’ve been stockpiling it on the DVR for weeks now and I’m looking forward to rewatching it all.

Castle - Exceeds Expectations

Castle professed his love for Kate when she was shot in the season finale, but she pretends that she didn't hear...It's less like a soap opera than I'm making it sound, promise.

Castle shot up to being my favourite show at some point this year.  I mean, it’s always been up there (since, you know, late 2009 when I started watching it), but it really came into its own in the third season, the first I got to watching entirely week-to-week (I caught up on most of Season 2 online, so it wasn’t quite the same).  In sharp contrast to Bones, which like I said isn’t that similar but shares some common elements, the unresolved sexual tension between Beckett and Castle has been developed really well and with great continuity (really great continuity).  Yes, in its fourth season they still aren’t together, but they’re inching in that direction.  And they have legitimate reasons to not be together, plus secrets which have yet to be uncovered – and promise to cause ructions later this season.  Castle, its writers and cast have managed to carry it all off so well this year, and it makes for entertaining viewing.  It’s a shame that the show isn’t more popular this side of the Atlantic, and that’s purely because it doesn’t get the airtime that more well-known shows do.  It’s shown on Alibi, which isn’t a mainstream channel, and Season Four won’t start here until March.  It’s just a pity, because I think Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic (as well as the rest of the talented cast) are just doing a great job and look to continue as such.

Personally, I think Stana Katic deserves an Emmy for her performances this year...

[Best moments on Castle this year summed up in a montage of GIFs]

So yeah, here’s hoping to some more brilliant television in the New Year.