Just finished my first wave of exams - next two won't be until next Monday! To celebrate I am drinking peach cider and watching Say Yes to the Dress. Yep. Watching women get bullied by their friends and family. Moms passive-aggressively sniping about their daughters' fashion choices. "It's just my opinion, honey." A girl that loves a dress one minute, listens to the peanut gallery and changes her mind. Ah. And then "I met my husband at the supermarket." "Ah, so that's the place to be!" SO CUTE.

Also upcoming
- get started on Season 5 of Game of Thrones!
- pastries
- the end-of-term dinner is happening!
- study
- production notes for Issue 5 of the IW.

Well, I can tackle the last one today.

PDF link

Issue 5 was difficult for several reasons. For one, it was super tight to fit all the content without cutting articles. To date the only article I've cut is my own on Tukka Wasp, and I'm pretty proud of that. Someone writes an article, you wanna honour that time and effort. Even if it's late.

Page 1. You will notice that this issue is in colour. As such I tried to maximize the colour usage by using loads and loads of pictures. However when you send the paper off to the printers the colour comes in "plates". So with one plate colour, the outside covers (1, 20) and inside spread (10, 11) are in colour. When I initially put this one together I thought it was 1, 2, 19, 20. Sigh. It wasn't. A lot of last minute panic over there with the publisher. In fall 2013 a reprint was actually needed - not because of colour, but because it looked like crap. But that's not important right now.

Also, the Dean was very disappointed in the results of the referendum and made her opinion known in an interview. "E7 is primarily an undergraduate space"? Hah. We know it's gonna be 70% mech, ece, and tron offices for grads and profs.

Page 2. Heartfelt letter from the editor. Sherwin won the Iron Pen (~12000 words written), and Nina and Bryan got the editor's awards for doing the crap I didn't want to do - namely, Iron Inquisition, copyediting, etc.

Page 3. Sherwin's article there was a surprise. Wasn't expecting him to write that. Totally transparent attempt to bolster his word count.

Page 4. Still a really good deal. And planned cities! Hope it works out for Qatar too.

Page 5. Dang it Sherwin.

Page 6. Mat's exec report is always the shortest. Very unimpressed. Also, Dr. West!!! <3 <3 <3. To quote his ratemyprof page, "A god amoung men. Possibly an advanced teaching robot sent back from the future. Also, Dan dressed up as him for Halloween. 5 firmly starched shirts out of 5." His teaching technique and note packages were perfectly suited to the material he had to teach.

Page 7. Melissa's tables are different widths and they look dumb. But no can do.

Page 8. PROFESSOR HULLS HAS 83 MILLION NEOPOINTS. Also man Filzah didn't get that article in on time.

Page 9. PICTURE OF A CAT to replace the "offensive" sex dungeon E7 article.

Turns out the dean was hurt and offended by the article - in terms of sexism, and the way that it poo-pooed the efforts of the team involved in getting E7 on paper. Nevermind that she specifically namedropped the previous EngSoc president, who himself was known as a politically incorrect renegade who just did stuff and couldn't care less about how people perceived him. Or that most the IW team is female. Though then the dean said that 15 people don't constitute an acceptable sample size for the 8000-person engineering undergrad body.

Doesn't matter though. The article targets E7, and by proxy the dean, so if she feels offended, that's the only opinion that matters.

Anyways we can't pull issue 5 from the stands, so it's been removed on the website.

Page 10. YANKY MCCRANKY 2T WANKY

Page 11. PINTSIZE!

Page 12. Okay THIS one was the last article in. NOT IMPRESSED. That's why it's at -60 kerning. ALSO BONDAGE. Dang, I'm cute. (background for the battle of the asians: the orientation theme for 2014 was Battle of the Ancients. So, la.)

Solid Tin Soldier overall. A little disappointed that it's not particularly outrageous or deranged.

Page 13. "Julius von Mayer was born in Heilbronn, Germany in 1814. He was a real party animal in university."

Page 14. I HAD TO TAKE THE PICTURES OUT OF MY ARTICLE TO MAKE THIS ISSUE WORK

Page 15. Hand-italicizing all the album titles was a pain but at least I got to use the sad frosh stock image again.

Page 16. "Trapped in the Leaf Blower" is the best article name ever. Just sayin'. ALSO LOOK AT ALL THE CONTINUED ARTICLES. AGHHHH

Page 17. "If, at your wedding, you notice a dog licking its own penis, that means your wife will cheat on you. If it poops after digging on one side of the house, that means that her lover is on his way. If the dog scatters food around the house, then the lover is also suspicious of her. Furthermore, if the dog goes to sleep on a pillow, that means that the lover will arrive that night. The verdict: Your wife is definitely cheating. Always. No exceptions." Thanks, Caitlin.

Also I don't know what David is trying to say.

Page 18. Yet again, Tim refuses to play nice by my space guidelines. Hence the cat picture.

Sheep probably go into making textiles for knight tunics, and sails, and furniture and stuff in Catan.

Page 19. Nina also plays Neopets.

Page 20. An ad. They didn't pay for the back cover premium but we had to put them there anyways to make the colour plates work.