This past week seems to have had three things happen apart from the usual life in and outside of university surroundings.

First of all, last Tuesday (19th Feb) I was in Uni at about 10:30am ish watching fellow course mate Jon doing his presentation on Eric Steele. We were both down for doing our presentations for this day because for some reason we were both unable to do them on the original day. So there I was watch Jon doing his presentation, already spending much longer than he should have done, so by the time he had finished it was about 10:50am. 20 minutes past the time I was supposed to start mine.

Normally we have a lesson at 11am - the dreaded IT lecture, but Richard, our tutor said I could say and do mine and he's let the IT tutor know why I wasn't there. I didn't mind.

Anyway, I set up my PowerPoint presentation on the laptop, get it all sorted projecting on the screen etc, and then start doing it when just before 11am, a tutor comes in and says they need to use the room because they have lessons in there. So Richard and I collect up everything to move to another room when an alarm sounds. It's the fire alarm which meant everyone had to evacuate from the building into the car park.

We were out there for about 20 minutes, in what must have been the coldest day of the year so far - typically, before we were allowed back in. I managed to complete my presentation and got a good grade for it, which I was pleased about. But it's little things like that which makes Uni life all the more interesting and exciting - well to me anyway.

The last time I remember a fire alarm going off was when I was staying in the Holiday Inn hotel in Liverpool and it went off early in the morning, and so everyone had to evacuate in their pyjamas. And it was all because someone was smoking in their room, which reminds me, I never did find out what the alarm in Uni was all about. Hmmmm.

The second 'thing' that happened is probably more miniscule than the fire alarm, but the other night I was sitting here on the computer when all of a sudden I was plunged into darkness for about 5 seconds. Everything went off, lights, phones, fridges, cd players, computers everything. Then just started up again. About an hour later it did the same thing again. How odd. I found out the following day that it was a power cut that affected certain areas of my home town, and some people had it off for quite a while.

Then thirdly, was last night's Earthquake. How weird was that? I was fast asleep in bed when it happened and I woke up to the whole house vibrating and rumbling. And do you know what my first thoughts were? I thought it was the monster from Cloverfield roaming around outside. Although I was half awake and half asleep so could be a dream I was having or something. It was scary though, and according to the news was 5.1 on the Richter scale. I'm just glad I don't live in countries that have it happen a lot.

Apart from those three things recently, all I've been doing is Uni work, going to meetings to plan things, and working at various Aimhigher events. I'm practically working every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday now up until Easter, to save a bit of money for going away.

As usual the website continues to be updated, mostly with the Doctor Who section, but updates are coming for some other areas, along with the full launch of the Creative Works part.

Simon.

Is it just me or is everyone getting more and more thick and stupid by the day?

I was in town the other day and it seemed everyone I came across was thick and stupid.

Went into Marks and Spencers to look for shorts to take on holiday with me - couldn't find any so asked a "Customer Assistant" - "Have you got any shorts in?"
She replies - "In where?"
"In this shop! Have you got any shorts?"
"Shorts...shorts..." *puzzled vacant face* "shorts...what are shorts?"
I stand there thinking - please give me strength to deal with this incompetant fool.
"Shorts - they're like trousers but cut off about the knee, hence why they are called shorts."
"Oh, I know" she replied with a smile on her face and lightbulb just above her head. "You mean shorts!!!"
I think I just screamed inside my head. I took a deep breath.
"Yes. Shorts. Have...you...got...any?"
"No - not yet."

Afterwards I went into Next to look for some new jeans for myself, and whilst I was trying them on, I came out of the fitting room to show my mum - just for a second opinion of course. And a great big fat black woman is standing right between me and mum. I try to look round her and say to mum "I really like these - they fit really well." and before mum could respond the black woman says "Yes, they do."
Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!

Later in Burger King, I had trouble getting across what I wanted to eat to the woman serving, but got there in the end.

Finally, the last instance of stupidity was in Ben and Jerry's by the side of Vue Cinema where I saw Cloverfield (which was amazing). I asked for a Core Sundae (being greedy) and said my first flavour - Chocolate Fudge Brownie. The woman says "which one is that?" so I had to literally point to where it was, and then had to point to everything to get it across what I wanted. When she came to charging it on the till she only charged me for the price of two scoops and no toppings even though what I had got was two scoops and two toppings. A Core sundae is £3.50. She charged me £2.85.
That's the only redeemable thing about the whole experience.

Grrrrrrr!!!!!

 HELLO! Faithful readers!

Yes, it's Si here once again, and may I just say a belated Happy New Year as I didn't get to post around New Year due to me being busy...again!

So here we are in 2008 already, and I'm back in the thick of things at University. I had to give a website demonstration last week as part of the IT module, showing what I had learnt to do with CSS. To be honest, unless it's just the way I've been taught it, I don't like it all that much. Seems a lot more performance into coding and editing pages.

Also last Thursday and Friday I was in director mode, as I was directing my latest masterpiece of a film. This is another Uni project, to create a 5 minute film, and so far it looks amazing. Had a great time filming it, plenty of laughs and outtakes during the making of it. For one major scene in it, we had to create a "fake" party atmosphere, so it's like there's a house party going on, but we filmed it in such away so you don't actually see the party room, due to the lack of people we have. But with all the lighting effects, loads of empty beer cans scattered about the place and Oscar-winning performances I think we managed to pull it off. Just got to edit it now.

Outside of Uni life, I organised a New Year Fancy Dress Disco for the Youth Club I help with, which would involve games and a disco too. When it came to the actual night though, I ended up being the only one who turned up in fancy dress. Typical! I went as Captain Jack Sparrow and photos will be up very shortly on the new photo page "Snap! Camera! Action!" on your left.

Talking of this site, I've just changed the menu slightly. The Sound Station is now gone forever, I don't really have the time to continually update with the ever changing music scene, but the two fan sites to do with McFly and Tabby will still continue and be updated soon. Also, a new section will be coming soon called "Creative Works" this will feature stories, poems and drawings, videos and any oddments that don't really fit anywhere else.

I'm also working on other areas of the site, mostly the Doctor Who area to get more stuff up there too.

Keep checking back for more updates soon!

Si.

Ok, so it has been a rather long time since I last posted on here. I didn't mean it be so long but with one thing and another this ended up getting left behind.

The past couple of months since I started Uni has been mad. The course I'm doing is BA Contemporary Media and covers video, photography, internet technology, sound recording and production and politics, history and culture. Next year we get to do radio too.  It started out as having 6 on the course, then another girl joined but turned up a total of 5 times in 8 weeks so she dropped out, and now apparently someone else has dropped out too, so there's only 5 left. I think there's only a small number because of it being a brand new course.

Some lessons I like better than others, which is probably to be expected. I can't say too much on here as I know some of my lecturers know that this site exists and after seeing a programme on BBC2 last night about Facebook, I don't want to say something on here which could get me into trouble. I doubt my lecturers probably look at this anyway, but best to be safe. Hello to you if you are though!

As part of Uni life I've made loads of friends. Quite a few have come from work. Yes, you read that right! I now have a job. I work for a company called Aimhigher which is associated partly with the University. Basically what they do is promote University life, some times groups of people come to the campuses or some times we go to places like schools etc. It's good fun as you get to meet lots of different people. This week we had a 130 year 11 girls from the Girl's School come to visit and hear talks.

During the term at Uni, we got a trip out to the Media Museum in Bradford. I've been there a couple of times before back when it was called the museum of Film, Photography and Television. It's a really good place with lots of things to do. I particularly like the area where you can watch old TV programmes. When we went we also got to see two films in the IMAX cinema there. One was a short documentary about Dinosaurs which was a little boring but the second film we saw was Beowulf 3D which is the new Robert Zemeckis film (director of my favourite trilogy - Back to the Future) and uses the same Motion Capture technology as seen in The Polar Express (also by Zemeckis). That was amazing. Very deep, scary and weird.

Last week was the last week of the first term of University, and typically, I was ill. I had a nasty chesty cough and cold and high temperature, which stopped me from being able to complete some of my work. I had done 2 out of the 3 assignments, but there was one I hadn't finished, but I given a mini extension to finish it off which was good.

Even though I broke up on the 14th, I still seem to be madly busy. On Monday I had to go a NMYF meeting. NMYF is the Northampton Methodist Youth Forum which organises events for the youth in the circuit. Our next event is at the end of the month and is a Quiz afternoon, food and evening service. Anyway, on Tuesday I was working most of the day. Wednesday I went to town and saw our pantomime here Peter Pan starring David Essex as Captain Hook. It was alright, not the worst I've seen, but far from the best. Certainly not as bad as the one I saw in Peterborough last year.

Some bloke called Fogwell Flax played Smee and he really got on my nerves making rubbish jokes, doing embarrassingly bad impressions which sounded nothing like the people they were supposed to be, and then there was loads of pop culture references shoehorned in to appear cool. Like the crocodile spouted every Little Britain catchphrase possible in the space of 2 minutes.

Then on Thursday I had my hair cut, it's a lot shorter than what you see in the pic above. And on Friday I lead a youth group for 8-13 year olds which a simple faultless plan rapidly turned into chaos.

So as you can see I've been rather busy. As I'm writing this it's only 3 days until Christmas. I love Christmas! It somehow makes me feel like a little kid again. It snowed here a few weeks ago in the evening, and when it did I shouted at the top of my voice "IT'S SNOWING!!!" and started getting all excited and singing christmas songs at the top of my voice. Yes, I am that sad!

Anyway, I'll finish for now as it's nearly time for Casualty on BBC 1. I'll post again soon.

Simon.