Skin Of Stars

I was shocked to see a recent article by the Daily Mail which they claim finds that councils are abusing anti-terrorist powers to check up on average citizens emails and phone calls. It's like 1984 all over. At the end of the summer I plan to move all my email correspondence to encrypted formats. I'll post between now and then with advice for all others who would like to keep a little bit of privacy in their lives before we are all routinely monitored.

I write this through blurry vision having just had an injection into my eyeball. It seems I've been unlucky enough to be one of the few young people to have developed Macular Degeneration in my left eye. Seeing as I'm still reasonably young at 28 I decided to go for one of the fancy new unlicenced injections, my drug of choice in this instance is called Lutein. I'm happy to say that the eye hospital in Oxford is excellent and the doctor treating me is one of the best in the country.

Just thought I'd mention the small feeling of sorrow that I have for the loss of Arthur C Clarke, a childhood hero of mine. I'll append an image from xkcd which I think shows this feeling a little.

It would seem that Peter Checksfield has made a real impact on the local press and people after a skim through Thanets raciest paper, the TT. Now it would seem to me that people do get the most worked up over a bit of nudity

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

I'm terrible at saving numbers in my phone, mainly because my phone is so awkward to use, but normally because I think 'I'll do it later'. Surely it would be better if each phone had its own ID that the user sets which when you call someone it comes up as you ID/name. This avoids all those confused times of asking who it is when you don't recognise the number, or in some peoples cases, not answering at all.
That is all.

Got far, far too drunk last night and I'm suffering now. Hell of a party though, we got the dancefloor packed and everybody was going wild. Pretty good going for a quiet campus on the hill. :)

Tonight is my long deserved break. Tonight (all be it a bit late) is our Halloween party. Halloween is my absolute favourite festival of the year. It includes fancy dress, goth overtones and none of the pressure of Christmas or New Years. Of course, I'm not really likely to get a real break as I'll inevitably be sorting decorations, working the door and having to answer all sorts of questions even though its not me organising this party... Don't get me wrong though, I love this kind of stuff. I'd be miffed if I was just sitting in the corner all the time and not being involved.

Collaboration not competition... Jeez, I'm such an OS geek sometimes.

It looks like I'm now going to be sitting on two academic committees as a student representative. Firstly, the Quality Assurance Standards Committee; this is where we discuss possible future courses and ensure that they meet an acceptable standard. Secondly, the Learning, Teaching and Taught Programmes Committee; where the actual standard of teaching is assessed as well as the methods used. I felt that these two were so intertwined that I should probably sit on both.

Ok, enough of this, to the party. Also, as a party worker I get free drinks and we have new ale on that I'm looking forward to trying. Thankfully we are moving out of the summer pale season, which I was becoming a little sick of, this looks like a nice amber type, hope it tastes as good as it looks.

p.s. This Firefox2 has an awesome inbuilt spell checker for forms, I recommend the upgrade. Just need a good grammar checker now. You will all soon be forced to upgrade to IE7 soon anyway which is bloated and ugly, Get Firefox2.

About time for a blog post I guess. Not that I'm forcing myself, I just feel like these are now more letters home. Perhaps I will get more readers where I am, but with the million plus blogs that are available I hardly feel I have enough to say to go out looking for them.

I am now a student rep for my course. I put my name down to be a school rep, only five of us, but I lost in the election. It was hardly surprising though, seeing as I did zero campaigning. The person who won was the one who went round the blocks telling people that there was even an election on and should vote for them. I'm totally happy with the outcome, I have so much work to do and with all the extra events organising that I do for the SU bar I don't really have the time to take on extra responsibility.

I was shocked to see one of my current favourite bands, The Knife, played on the TV tonight, all be it in the background of some drama scene. I know not what programme it was, I don't even have a TV myself, just it was on in the pub. Funnily enough, most of you will know the band, all be it indirectly. The sony bravia advert with the bouncing balls had music from Jose Gonzales. Well, that was actually a cover of The Knife. I'm happy to say that I went down to London the other week to seem. I got soooo excited and had so much fun I was jumping around for ages after :)

Anyway, here is Heartbeats by The Knife for all to enjoy (updated to better sound quality):

Cripes, I almost forgot. Blog my day.

Today I had a lecture in Structured Programming. We examined the use of FOR, WHILE and REPEAT loops in the pascal language. Not very exciting really, but it was a step in learning.

I had a problem with my bus on the way home, we have alot of bus problems here. They are normally several hours late and have a tendency to make you miss lectures (unless your determined like me and arrive hours early). Today though I was waiting to get on my bus home when I turned to speak to a fella next to me. I turned back to see the doors closing. I taped the door and the driver just waved at me and drove off! Talk about adding insult to injury!

Otherwise, I ran around for the evening collecting names for tomorrows pool comp in the SU bar. Since I organised it I'm going to take on the role of referee. I hope to get some white gloves and a bow tie. ^_^