Zoom zoom zoom

I know that was a very very annoying advert, but i couldn't be bothered to think of a better title! Before i begin, may i first hand the worlds largest slice of humble pie to our dear friend Oli, who yesterday wrote his first blog-type thing on facebook! Something i thought i would never live to read!

Anyhow, term is well and truly underway, and although i have only had a little under 2 weeks of lectures, it feels as though term started ages ago! I will never quite get used to this time thing. The way 2 minutes ago i was 13 and in another 2 I shall probably be 40!!! No matter how good things are right now, I am faced with the simple truth that i do not want to grow up. I don't want my parents to get old. I don't want to be an adult with a job and responsibility. I don't like the fact that i can fast see my teenage years disappearing and with them, a simplicity that comes with being dependent. But then again, i love being independent, i want my own life, and having a job would be quite exciting....I guess what i really want is for me to change but everyone else to stay the same! Lol.

So i converge to this...'Carpe Momento'. For as it has been said, a day is simply too long a time period to seize. Can't stop life so just make the most of it while it is here!

Thought for the Day: Is mathematics the model applied to the world, or the law by which the world abides?

Of Early Mornings and Messed up rooms

Why oh why would anyone ever decide to hold a lecture at 9:00am? And why would anyone inflict 2 9ams in a row on me! This is the question i am left facing. I have spent the whole day practically on the science site, having woken up at a somewhat ridiculous hour, in order to get to a lecture, which it turns out confused me. This only improved with the later lecture which may as well have been in Ancient Greek, because i did not understand a single word of it. The saving grace-two hours of easy peasy maths inbetween. And while i while away the hours in Chem. Cafe, my room proceeded to messy itself.

Or maybe this is merely a distortion within my head of the fact that i myself have through negligence and pure apathy let my room get into a state whereby i would find it difficult to tell if i had been burgled! Actually thatb is unfair. I just have a lot of random half dried objects floating round mixed with various shoes, money keys etc etc.

So this is life for me at the moment. I must away now to my bed, in order to restart the cycle at 7.15 tomorrow morning. So Long!

Thought for the Day: Isn't it ironic...I just love irony, especially that song!

Parties and all that jazz

Last night was Party Night at No.5 We piled into the living room with drink and food and drink and lots and lots of people, and listened to lots of super cool music and even danced a little! Twas a good night, and a bad morning/afternoon followed-the house is a tip!

Time to go and hoover!

The twisted and tangled knot of life spins on

hello hello from sunny durham, where the sun is shining and the sky is blue, and where life continues much as it has done for the last age. I have now been here nearly two weeks, though it seems a lot longer. the year is properly underway now and i feel settled into my house.

It's a strange thing life. the other day i happened to be watching the Jeremy Kyle show, and there was a guy who had become a woman on, who was in a lesbian relationship with a younger woman. The problem wasthat the younger woman wanted to become a guy...The older woman had a friend who's husband had decided to become a woman a few years ago ad was advising them both. The problem was that the older woman wanted the younger to have 'their' baby before she became a man. The really weird thing is that if she did go through with the operation, they would be a hetrosexual couple!! very weird and strange stuff.

Everyday i realise more and more that we are all part of a complex web of friendships and relationships, of situations and events, and no matter how hard we try we can't escape. In fact often the harder we try the more stuck we become. Like thrashing around in sinking sand and slowly drowning. So why am i saying this.? Well i have decided that there is no point trying to remove yourself from the web-all you can do is try and stay untangled as possible!

Thought for the Day: This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Hooray for student life!

Bonjour bon soir and all that lies between. It has been a very strange and busy few days hence very few posts. I am now back in Durham, in my very own house (well i own part of it!) cooking eating and sleeping in varying amounts. All is going well and the terrace is starting to feel like home.

Yesterday we bought a TV which was very exciting, and we played various card games today, as well as rubbish computer games such as Ski Free and rodent's revenge! (and vickys favourite, rattler race!)

I really am not selling this very well...ok, so its hard to describe days in which getting up to make a cup of tea counts as exercise, but the truth is-I'm loving every minute! Long may it last

Thought for the Day: People shouldn't be scared of the government, the government should be scared of the people. (V For Vendetta again...)

142...hrmmm

There is something special about that number-i just can't recall what...any suggestions welcome. But no linguists suggesting that it is prime, the answer to life the universe and everything or the first three Fibonacci numbers will be tolerated! I mean there's ignorance and then there's linguists. I don't quite know why the attack on linguists by the way, and i do apologise to all linguists who may be offended. I dunno, this is the way society has gone, that as soon as i insult a certain group i feel i have to immediately apologise. Just like old popey...

Popey is hardly my best friend (And i would like to take this opportunity to point out that he is NOT a representative of Christianity, merely Catholicism), anyway, there are plenty of reasons i could dislike him. Reasons too numerous to mention in fact. However give the poor guy a rest over the whole remarks thing. He quoted a very old person (not actually still alive, what i mean is he lived a long time ago) in what appeared to be a context which was misunderstood. Very few people even heard his speech, and yet after the media latched on, are now burning figures of the pope!?!

Has everyone gone insane? Can no one voice what they think these days? So second challenge of the blog...insult me!! Leave a comment insulting me. Don't worry i wont burn effigies of you, because i am an ADULT, i can cope with people disagreeing with me. Unlike the rest of the world it appears. We could even start something where you insult the person who left a comment before you...a kind of chain insult-revelling in our free speech-go on give it a click!

Right few explanations to finish. Firstly this is the 142nd blog, hence the number which i still haven't figured out...and also i did very little today, but i did watch V for Vendetta which is a very good film!

Thought for the Day: A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having!

schllluurrrp

That is the noise of me licking an envelope. For today i have 'licked and sticked or 'luck and stuck' roughly 200 envelopes. Unfortunately for you this does not mean lots of letters to my lovely friends. Instead it was merely some admin work for my dad. It was two hours work sorting named letters into named envelopes, which as you can probably guess was greeaaaat fun, and landed a £10 in my back pocket which is always good.

So the tidying went ok today. The packing i'm afraid hasn't really started. But...i still have at least 48hrs so i am absolutely fine! No need to panic at all! I also now have a scanner which is highly useful as well as being very entertaining, scanning all kinds of things-just because i can!

Hi Griff! Just wanted to say a quick hi to my newest reader! That's all i have to say for today.

Thought for the Day: Today is a new Day... (chicken little)

You've seen the film, now read the facts!

Ok, firstly i apologise because these last two blogs have been a bit serious. This is not intentional, merely happened that these thoughts entered my head these last few days.

So firstly in response to a certain comment from Tajudin Abdullahi-named and shamed! lol. No, i think he makes a good point. It's very easy to say we should change, and to even want to change. However to actually go ahead and change is something very different. BUT, it is something we really must consider even if it means giving up one or two of our home comforts. So, just thought i'd say what i aim to do: avoid using air travel, buy local produce where possible, cut down on the amount of meat/eggs/dairy i eat (not massively, just making sure i don't eat too much), try to walk where possible, and try to stick an extra jumper on rather than use extra fuel heating the house. There you go, a few of the things i am going to try and do...

So the title of todays blog refers to The Constant Gardener. I don't have much to say about it. Except if you have not seen it-see it, and if you have seen it check out some of these-scarily similar facts. (I mention this because i watched it again a few days ago).
What the movie missed
Drugs testing

Ok, serious stuff over, jus a quick note to say Happy Birthday to Katherine, 21 today, and in a retirement home tomorrow. Tehehe. I promise the blog will have a lighter topic tomorrow!

Thought for the Day: As the film says...'Big pharmaceuticals are right up there with the arms dealers. It's how the world f***s Africa.

A comment on Sustainability and Global Warming

You’ve heard it all before: Ice caps are melting, the oceans are heating up and within the next few decades many animals will become extinct. All in all, a big bunch of bad news. Of course we are fully to blame, with all our nasty fossil fuel burning power stations, which in the end will be responsible for the extinction of the human race…or is that really true?

In Al Gore’s recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, we see pictures of glaciers and ice sheets 30 years ago and then today. Audiences gasp as they see just how much ice has disappeared. But is this really due to us? The problem is that if you’re going to understand anthropological climate change (caused by humans), you first have to understand natural climate change. The fact is that over the last 60 billion years the Earth has been heating up and cooling considerably. If we take the last 2 million years (known as the Quaternary) we can see that the Earth has been alternating between glacial and interglacial periods (lots of ice and then very little ice). No prizes for guessing then that we are in the middle of an interglacial. These are periods of time characterised by melting ice, and guess what…global warming!

It is this global warming over the last 20 000 years since the last ice age (glacial) that has enabled the Earth to sustain human life. So, given the temperature graphs for the last few thousand years, how can we begin to analyse the extent to which global warming is natural, and the extent to which we are causing it. The truth is that it isn’t really of much relevance.

You see, the main problem is with our perspective. Humans have never been good news for the Earth. In the short time humans have been around, they have had a massive effect on the Earth. We do not fit into a natural food chain; we do not live within a natural ecosystem and therefore we are the equivalent of a virus/cancer on the Earth (very similar to what Agent Smith says in the Matrix). That’s not true I hear you cry, but look around you-our idea of nature is an area of cultivated land, covered with one species of cow, with fences and walls, and perhaps the odd windy road. When was the last time you saw ‘real unadulterated nature’? (Probably on 'Walking with dinosaurs'). Now of course this all sounds very depressing, but it is the necessary background on which to base our thinking.

Living in perfect harmony with the environment may be impossible, but achieving the best balance possible should be our aim. In other words, minimising the impact we have on the Earth. This way, we are managing cause rather than effect. This is where our current approach goes wrong-we look at the effect we are having and then decide what to do. There are two main flaws with this approach. Firstly, as I have mentioned, it may be the case that some of the effects we are seeing are natural and not a result of human activity, and secondly there may be problems which are equally as important but less evident currently, which are paid no attention.

The solution? Global footprints. This is no new idea of mine; it is a widely known but not largely recognised method. Basically it involves considering the effect we have on the Earth by measuring it as a footprint, left on the Earth. For example a carbon footprint is often measured as the amount of trees that it would take to absorb the CO2 released by us. The focus is therefore on limiting the overall effect you have on the Earth. There are various ways of calculating such footprints, and the results are often very scary

So how is this approach different? Well it calls for an understanding that global warming, ecosystem management, water management, agriculture, pollution, waste, deforestation, land use, development, diversity, food production, energy sources etc all require consideration..

For example, current thinking is that burning fossil fuels = bad, hydroelectricity = good, because there are no emissions. But few people stop to consider the negative effects of building a dam, on habitats, local climate, water distribution, etc. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea-but it is important to take every impact into consideration.

The Keyword here is sustainability. Sustainable development is defined as ‘Development that meets the needs and aspirations of the current generation without compromising the ability to meet those of future generations.’ This definition is as old as me, so how comes in 19 years it has not been implemented on a macro scale? Sustainability is about limiting our effect on the environment, and managing social footprints too (the effect we are having on peoples lives i.e. Exploitation of 3^rd world).

So forget the hype and drama. What we need to do is change our lifestyles to minimise our global footprint, and then leave the Earth to do what it will.

Spot the Difference (and no it's not the clothes!!!)

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Well, gone today actually, thnaks to a very traumatic hair cutting experience. My hair is now officially short once more! Oh yes, no more curls verging on mullet it's back to spiky short hair. Although this change is good, it still seems sad to part with my hair, which officially was left uncut for a massive 23 weeks and one day. So i didn't quite make half a year, but wasn't far off!

I will post another spot the difference tomorrow so you can all marvel at the change-or just scream as once again you are forced to see my face! And ears, which strangely enough have been covered for a good few months now. I may also post some Svedish piccies too.

Today i successfully went present shopping. This is a rare occurance for me. I tend to be the one who spends hours choosing what turns out to be the wrong present, which is followed by that really awkward silence post-giving. Still, i find a quick humming rendition of 'Raindrops keep falling on my head' goes a long way to solving the uneasiness, and quickly diverts attention away from the pile of rubbish i have just given someone on the most important day of the year! Is it just me that has that problem?

Anyway, i feel i am in need of a more thoughtful blog, hrmmm perhaps i will do one tomorrow, when i have a bowl of ice cold water to dunk my head in afterwards to let my brain cool down. Oh and by the way, 'ice cold'-what's that mean?? Soft drinks bottles often claim they are best enjoyed ice cold. Well unless you have added substantial amounts of salt to the drink (hence lowering the freezing point), your drink will be frozen in the bottle if served ice cold, and personally i find this quite a difficulty when trying to drink.

Thought for the Day: Why do we never say 'Best served steam hot'

Passing time

Operation Durham has begun! I am now back from my travels, after a lovely trip to Sweden. The boat was great, and though our cabin was small, and i mean the size of a shoebox! (well obviously i don't because that would be verging on the ridiculous) but it was very small! Lots of nice photos of sea, sky and gothenberg.

So now i am back, with just over one week until i return to Durham and i have a fair amount of ends to tie up before then. Tidying my room, buying stuff for this year, chatting to those friendly guys at npower, buying presents, getting my eyes tested, getting in touch with college daughters, course reading as well as sleeping eating and all the formalities. I appreciate this may not sound busy to you, but to a guy used to doing virtually nothing it seems like a lot!

Thought for the Day: Humility is like underwear. It should always be worn but never be seen.

We are sailing...

Tomorrow i set sail! I'm off to Sweden-yay! Me and Katherine are going on a lastminute.com cheapo trip to Sweden for 4 days. Now when i say Sweden, we only actually spend roughly 4 hours in Sweden. The boat sets off tomorrow afternoon, and arrives in Sweden at 5pm the next day. We then spend Tuesday evening in Gothenberg, before returning to the ship to sleep. Then wednesday morning we set off again and arrive back in Newcastle Thursday morning. All in all, a big bundle of excitement, at mithes prithes! (esure mouse advert)

So, that is where i will be for the next few days. Now just a brief update of the last few days...Last night i went to see Paddy McGuinness live, which was fantastic and really funny! This weekend a family friend from London was up for the weekend which was also cool. So yeah, a good, pretty uneventful few days. Hope all is well elsewhere in Blogland where the updates are less frequent!

Adios!

I need trance!

So here i am, sat in my room on a Friday evening, checking my imaginary cricket team online...Something is seriously wrong. Then as if from nowhere, hidden deep within the endless playlist of cheese, rubbish and pop...i hear the all too familiar intro...in disbelief i look around me-the pens don't respond, in desperation i search for some response, alas not even the bedside light flickers....now the lyrics come in...'Coming out of my cage, and I've been doing just fine'...and all of a sudden i get a flashback, no wait hundreds of flashbacks, to pubs, clubs, corridors!?! Cd players with 16 speakers...and Planet of sound! Ooooh yes i have many memories of dancing around stupidly (i find it difficult to dance sensibly) to Mr Brightside in the cheese room at Planet of Sound.

Ahhh now there's a way to spend a Friday night...locked in the ecstacy of trance and cheese, with sweat dripping from the walls, and girls dripping over Ditt...Well allegedly...that's me covered! There really is nothing quite like a good student night out in Durham-Especially if it has Mr Brightside AND trance! Now at this point the readers will be split into two groups-the group who are staring quizzically at the screen wondering quite what i am talking about, and the other group staring absent mindedly at the wall, druelling slightly! Well the good news my friends...is that in 3 weeks time-that's where I will be! Dancing my shoes socks and every-other piece-of-clothing-that-does-not-threaten-my-decency off and revelling in the madness! Join Me!

But for now, i will just have to sit here and dream!

Thought for the Day: If life is a highway, then i must be stuck in a traffic jam

Insensitive...probably

Apparently recently during an interview, Steve Irwin was asked what his favourite children's tv program was. He replied ' Well, I've got to admit I love Thunderbirds, but there will always be a special place in my heart for Stingray'

Ok, yes it may be slightly black humour-But i laughed. Perhaps i ought to clarify that i was a big fan of Steve Irwin too, and in no way am insulting his memory etc etc (you get the picture).
It's funny how some things people just don't laugh at-even though sometimes they are funny. I hope i die in a really amusing way so that whenever someone tries to tell someone how i died, they can't help but burst out laughing...mind you knowing me, i suppose it's not altogether unlikely...

In case you hadn't guessed-nothing happened today-absolutely nothing.

Thought for the Day: It's really annoying when people don't finish the

A drop in the ocean

I read today. To say i read would be an understatement. To say i read all day would be an overstatement. You choose, i guess it's one of those glass half full or half empty things. Personally the liquid never stays in the glass long enough for me to have such a dilemna! It's like saying person half dead, or half alive-it isn't as though you'd stop to consider the philisophical reprecussions of that now would you.

Nevertheless, i did read quite a large amount today. To be precise i read roughly 70 pages (spot the oxymoron). Furthermore the subject of my reading was glaciers and glaciation, and as interesting as the topic is, there is a limit to the amount one desires to read about pre-quaternary glaciations or glacial mass balance for that matter. Still having read 90 pages i feel i have achieved something. Mind you seeing as the book has 624 pages it's just

Newsflash: Contraceptives failure

Yes it appears that 9 months ago there must have been a dud batch of condoms or something circulating because it would appear a large number of people have become parents today. What makes this stranger is that the person to deliver all these babies was none other then Neil Crimes himself...hrmmm

Anyway, i have two brand spanking new children! Two lovely girls called Sophie and Helen. Of course these are not real children, rather my adopted college children ( i hope that explains the first paragraph to all who may be confused!) So yes i have two little freshers to write to and be generally nice to! Which is all rather exciting and reminds me that i am going back to Durham soon. Yay!

Other than that very exciting piece of news, today has been rather boring. I have a read a little, and mooched a lot. Tomorrow i must make an effort to get up early and kick myself into gear! Perhaps reverse would be a good place to start!

Thought for the Day: There is no such thing as luck. Everything happens by chance

Have you ever watched a hamster run in a ball??

Possibly the funniest thing in the world, except perhaps a pigeon running in a ball, which would probably be so fun, that i would die, from laughing too much. Another thing that is funny is comedy. Something that isn't comedy is Four Weddings and a Funeral, and that is something which unfortunately i watched this evening. This evening is coincidentally nearly up, so i wont dawdle!

Today i 'did'. Suffice to say, i carried out several important tasks, none worth a particular mention, but together, culminating in a rather significant part of the day. The rest was spent at Katherine's doing little more than 'did' in fact possibly less. Today was her day off, so she 'did not', though worryingly her 'did not' is still far busier than my 'did'. Was all very good fun.

Tomorrow i shall do something, which hopefully will provide a better read than todays endeavours. Til then, i shall stare at my eyelids.

Thought for the Day: Why did someone go to all the trouble of even bothering to make that film...

Terrorism and poor working conditions-Brilliant!

Global warming...a massive problem with no solution...or is there one? As sick and twisted as it is, i have observed that terrorism is quite a handy solution. What is the main source of emissions...you guessed it-Air Travel!! What decreased by an enormous percentage after the terrorist threats...Tada! That, thrown in with baggage handlers striking, has significantly decreased air travel over the last month. So how long will it be before the conspiracy theories start emerging, that Al-Qaeda is actually run from the Uk branch of greenpeace??

Right, anyway this was supposed to be about my holiday! So what did i do for two weeks. I heard lots of bagpipes!, walked around a lot of coastline, went to Ireland for the day and saw the magnificent Giant's causeway! (see emmas blog for details). I also went to some little tattoo thing in a small town which involved more bagpipes and some dancers...and i also looked round several towns, and saw a biiiig stone thing called Bruce's stone. For those who do not realise, Robert the ruce is actually an ancestor of mine, so was cool! lol. Went through a town called Marjoriebanks!! How amazing! And even found some random grave of someone of the same name. I should say with a name as uncommon as mine, these things can be quite special!
I am not sure we did anything else of any significance. It was very much a relaxing holiday not doing much at all

And for all those fearing about the whereabouts of Sweden...it is still there and i am still going there-it just didn't get from my head to my hand whilst blogging yesterday! Right well i'd best finish off there. More fantastical tales to come tomorrow no doubt!

Thought for the day: Life is like an egg, it can crack so easily

Bonjourno!

I'm back! Finally after roughly 4 weeks of being here, there and everywhere inbetween, i have touched back on terra ferma, not that i actually left, but what i mean is that i am home! Today i got back from two weeks in scotland, during which i encountered many exciting geological features, as well as ORANGE SHEEP!!! It was quite disturbing. Anyway, i will post properly later, but just a note to say hi! and for anyone wondering where i was, or even doubting whether i still existed-I am officially here! For 3 whole weeks, before i return up North to Dunelm for more fun and games! Tara!