Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Right, before I start wittering on, first let me apologise to those of you who have subscribed to my ramblings by e-mail.  Just over a week ago I published a little rant about the lack of scholarship support for mature students  but, for some reason, the e-mail that went out was for a post I made over a year ago! I'm not entirely sure why this happened but hey ho, that's life.  So if you feel like you've been missing out on something (you really haven't, you know), you can go and read the last post here .  If you just fancy a summary, then I've tried to summarise below - believe me, it is still shorter than the original posting!

The more I understand about Uni life as a mature student, the more I realise I had my head so far up in the clouds it was practically in orbit when I quit my job and applied for academia.  Okay, I guess I knew that anyway, but recent events have emphasised this. Just to be clear, by 'mature student', I don't mean those of you who hit twenty and now think you're a responsible adult (believe me, you have far more to learn than you realise), I'm talking about those of us that have spent a number of years working our backsides off and who have qualifications so out of date that entry to university means you fill a quota for a minority group.

Somebody once told me that university is fun and that you spend half your time having a laugh. She lied! I've had jobs where I've worked twelve hour days for months at a time which look like part-time jobs by comparison.  Unfortunately, the amount of work we've had to do has meant that there are so many people I haven't seen since before Christmas and, thanks to closing my FarceBook account, people whom I have unwittingly lost touch with.  So, when an opportunity presents itself to see everyone all at once, it's hard not to take it and is certainly one I was looking forward to tonight.

Buying new gadgets is easy ... at least, that's the rumour going around and we all know to take rumours with a pinch of salt, don't we? When the iPad was first released, I was quite anti the idea as I couldn't see what use it could possibly be beyond being another glossy toy for Apple geeks to spray over.  Don't get me wrong, I admire Apple and their incredible success at taking an existing idea and making it their own; they believed in the product and their customers believed in their marketing.

I'm not usually one to make a fuss in a public forum, but reading today's story about Richard O'Dwyer's extradition has gotten me a bit keyed up. Okay, as per usual this is a bit of an emotional reaction and I am perhaps not aware of all the facts, only able to go by the news stories being posted ( BBC , Orange , Telegraph  and other such sites ), but it seems to me that this is the usual UK roll-over to US dominance that is in serious need of being addressed ASAP.

Over the years, my Sis has proven that she has inherited my Mother's ability to say or do just the right thing to put a smile on my face when I'm having a bit of a naff day. For example, when we were teenagers, she went on a chocolate hunt but was unable to find anything, so I suggested she try eating the cooking chocolate from Mum's baking cupboard.  "I can't eat that," she replied, "it's still raw so you have to cook it first!" I may have laughed a little too hard at that one. Or the time she decided to show off how high she could kick her leg, forgetting she was wearing a straight skirt and succeeded in taking out her other leg in the process. I laughed hard at that one, too. Or the time when we were walking a neighbour's black labradors in the local parkland and one of them spotted something worth chasing, so took off across the park dragging my sis behind him like a squealing human sled. Shame I didn't have a camera for t...

Either my blog has suddenly become interesting or there is something wrong with Blogger stats... My posting has been sketchy at best but according to the stats that doesn't really matter as I've had nearly a 2500% increase in pageviews yesterday alone, presumably by people panicking about the title of my August 2010 post title Facebook RIP ! However, according to Google Analytics, nobody has set foot here since 15 November - about the time of my last post - and even then, it was fewer people than were interested in the Snap Your Chap exhibition, though I'm not sure that's entirely surprising. However, never fear, people, FarceBook is still alive and kicking ... though I have a challenge for each of you: For a period of 30 days, deactivate your Facebook account and do something interesting I dare you...