23rd March 2009 - 16:55pm

Today's weather could roughly be described as a mild hurricane as I walked home from my final lecture. Walking the other way was a young girl with a very (/very/) short skirt - though I may just be giving her belt a little too much credit. Due to the high winds she was somewhat struggling to hold said garment down, which I found amusing; I thought the whole point of them was to show your underwear to every man, woman and child walking past? (I could be wrong however, I'm not very well versed in 'proper' women's clothes.)

I always did wonder about the massive interest (read: obsession) the human - especially female - population seem to have in clothes and fashion. To say I don't quite get it is putting it a little lightly. Why do people go and waste hours in hot, busy shops only to end the day with a £150 lighter wallet and something that looks vaguely like a chopped up curtain to show for it? Give me that £150 and I could find you and awesome graphics card for that mohonies.

Obviously, I understand it's all about perspective and people having different interests, but why is the whole concept really /that/ important beyond ensuring one is comfortable? I can understand people want to look presentable, but some people take it way too far, don't they? (Just walk past the union on a 'student night') It seems the more you spend, the less actual clothing you get. Just take a quick scan around any women's clothes shop (and trust me, mine are super-speedy, those places scare me >.<) and you'll see horrifically priced low-cut/high-cut/backless/frontless/string-like clothes, and they cost a small fortune! Too many times I have passed people wearing this small piece of curtain in the freezing cold and been tempted to say 'Seriously, put on a hoody.' But at least I'm comforted to see these people tend to grow out of it by the time they're 30ish. Well, ..most of them (/personal gripe).

22nd February 2009 - 10:05pm: 'You don't know you're born'

...sings one Mark Knopfler, and he's certainly got it right. Just turn to almost any page in, say, an Argos catalogue and you'll see most items have been invented with the sole purpose of 'making life easier'. People are lazy and this is universally accepted, but blimey we really know /how/ to be lazy, don't we?

Once someone has invented something once, they don't even stop there, it's then constantly tweaked it so it eventually does everything you need it to do, along with another 50 functions you'll never use.

All these 'conveniences' and lack of hard graft in life means people have seriously lost their grip on reality. I lose the count of the amount of conversations I'll overhear/somehow be included in about something that, on the larger scale of things, are so pointless. ...And why do people assume I care what they have to say anyway? No, I couldn't give a monkeys what pair of shoes you bought or what randomer you slept with last night, if it's not educating me about the world, testing my brain or a lesson to be learned, I don't want to hear it. I'd rather keep my mind crap-free.

Just once in a while, I would love for someone educated to strike up a conversation about politics, the arts, world culture...something that I might not necessarily know much about, but that my mind can enquire into and join together the pieces of information to form its own opinions on the world.

The fact that education and knowledge are essentially free, yet priceless, makes it on of those rare things that people just don't strive enough for to own; and it really is 'owned', because once you have it, no one can ever take it away from you...which is more than can be said for the very conveniant car sitting on your drive, or the electricity fed into your house on a 24/7 basis that should they be taken away, you'd be-in a word- 'screwed'.

28th January 2009 - 2:30am: I Dare You To Move

People who aren't afraid to show emotion will always have my respect.

In this day and age, to give someone even an inkling as to what you're thinking can be incredibly dangerous. But to me, it shows strength where others may see weakness; to bear one's soul in a society which is otherwise snide, cruel and lifeless, is to stand up and say 'I am not afraid'; it shows that you are still passionate, that you refuse to be suppressed by the majority telling us to cut ourselves off from everybody else for 'our own good' (thus rendering us far weaker than we would ever be in a collective group).

I don't even just mean love, regret, or upset; I mean anger, guilt, pride, faith....I may not always agree that what you feel is right, but I'll hold you in far higher regard than were you to hide away for the sake of 'saving one's feelings' or 'making things easier'. Especially if it was to the eventual detriment of a fellow human being.To admit what you feel is to open yourself to manipulation. But to open yourself is to place a trust in someone that is to be respected, and admired.

I like to believe there is a bit of good in everybody; often, events will occur to make me seriously re-consider. But every now and then, you do see a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, one is capable of doing something truly selfless.

30th December 2008 - 2:05am

What the hell is up with the 'People you may know' tool on Facebook? Its either full of people I don't know or people I don't want to be associated with.

You know, the kids (mostly girls - you know who you are) that picked on you for the entireity (sp?) of your earlier years at secondary school because you didn't have the right hair, or the latest fashion accessory, and then one day, 4 years down the line were your best mate because suddenly you had something they wanted - brains, mostly.

Well to them, I say: you can f**k right off. You think I'll accept you because you said 'Hi' to me once in a corridor? Yep, that's a best mate right there. Or, if I spoke to you more than once (preferably double digits), and god forbid I accept you, I am well aware that you'll probably never actually speak to me. Nor me you. In which case, rest assured you'll also be deleted again pretty sharpish. So if you're considering clicking that 'Add as Friend' button to up your *awesome virtual popularity* that really has no physical bearing on life, please, don't. This means you.

I do actually genuinely 'lol' sometimes when I see friends' 'friend' numbers. Some going into the 700s would you believe (in fact, I think the '[Name]'s friends' box should actually be renamed 'People you may know'). No way is it possible to /know/ that many people. Unless you're famous, in which case who cares; you're probably an arrogant git anyway.

Ok, so I'm in a bad mood. 10 points for working that out. A bonus 10 points if you're the guy that told me (last year, during that crappy November) that it's better to have a small group of close mates than to have millions of 'friends'. You sir, are a saint.

28th December 2008 - 16:20: Pie Vs. Cake

Its incredible what a bit of maths revision does to you.

Or rather, how much it screws with your thinking. During a 'break' from revision (though as usual, break time > revision time), I reverted back to my trusty friend MSN, where I engaged in a rather peculiar conversation with a mate, which resulted in the following conclusion:

Cake and hugs are appreciated by everyone. To some people (like me!), so much so, that cake and hugs are everything to them... (stay with me here)

This can be represented as cake + hugs = everything.

To me, to encompass everything in life would be to encompass infinity, therefore everything = infinity.

I.e. Rewriting this, cake + hugs = infinity

It could be argued that cake is just as important as hugs, i.e. cake = hugs

However, unfortunately in this life, hugs and cake are only finite. I.e. Infinity - hugs = Infinity - cake = Infinity (To those not taking some form of maths subject, just trust me on this)

Re-arranging these first two equations, we get:
Infinity - infinity = hugs and infinity - infinity = cake

Thus, cake = hugs = 0.

So one could derive from this that cake and hugs are nothing.

.....which, presuming Pie > 0 (maybe 3.141?), settles the whole Pie Vs. Cake argument.

(To you mathematicians, I do of course realise this is actually only half the 'proof', ...and to the rest of you, I realise it all is complete and utter nonsense :P)


P.S....Do you like the new website design? :D

19th December 2008 - 22:30

I reached the epitome of laziness this evening. On hearing the wind roaring outside through the window, I was curious as to whether it was also raining or not (oh how you must care..), but rather than go outside to find out, or even to merely stick my head out the window, I instead fired up google and visited trusty bbc.co.uk/weather and asked it to tell me. I fear the eventuality of us all ending up like the people at the end of the film 'Wall-e' is becoming more and more of a reality ...except probably without the cute little robot to comfort us.

I was also 'lucky' enough to visit a 'Private Hospital' earlier this evening (i'm fine, thanks for asking), and my god are they efficient. Then again, when motivated by lots and lots of monies, who wouldn't be?

On arriving *cough*.. over half an hour early..*cough* to my appointment, I must have been waiting no longer than about 5 mins before they called me in. So, clutching my mums arm (and, regretting that I hadn't noticed the toy section of the waiting room on the way in) I was directed through a corridor filled with pretty christmas lights, into the doctor's 'office' which was literally 4 times the size of my uni room (for those of you that don't know, large). 10 minutes in, he pulls out the most horrifying looking metal implement to which I, of course, freaked out and did what most people of my stature would have done in that situation - cried like a baby. Aww. To make me feel worse, he flicked a little switch and it just had a frickin' LED on the end of it. Felt like an idiot? Yep. Then he told me the usual - i'd need blood tests etc., to which I innocently asked when I should come back for them. 'Come back?', he asked. 'No no, we're doing them now'. The NHS really have no idea.

18th December 2008 - 21:40

So I finally swallowed my fears and bought a domain - awesome :) (or B-some, depending on what rodent dialect you speak)...and decided to spend the last 4 or so hours building a website as opposed to doing some much needed revision. During this time, lots of randomly, vaguely interesting things popped into my head to put as my first paragraph of said site, however all of which have now escaped me.

During one particularly slow half hour of programming, one (of the many) random thoughts that presented itself was....who owns the domains of domain-selling sites? Is it like hosting where you can host your own? Or is it some cute little loop where they all own each other, and thus in theory, everything is owned by no-one? I think i'm just severely un-educated in this area of the 'information super-highway', but it could be useful in confusing a certain OSNI lecturer...

Back on the topic of programming, I did have one minor amusement ('programming' and 'amusement' in the same sentence?) while designing the logo; I was struggling to think of some form of phrase to place under the logo, so I decided to just put the title of my current favourite song (lame), but then giggled at the irony when I realised that my website is all grayscale. Well, it amused me anyway ^.^