Another Pair Of Eyes

Writing

Inspired by Hannah’s blog entry on handwriting, here is a sample of my own, rather less tidy handwriting for you to analyse and decide my personality on. I’m not sure how much stock to place in handwriting as a measure of personality, save that it does seem that some handwritings associate themselves with professions – the most obvious, of course, being the “doctor’s handwriting’ which involves few, if any, readable words and the guarantee that chances are if you find some readable letters they’ll be part of some horrendous word which no-one can pronounce anyway. As a sweeping generalisation, I also note that on the whole girls have much neater writing than guys, but whether that is due to more care taken or a different personal approach to life is unknown to me..

My lecture note-taking…messy!

…and my written notes. Messy, but readable. I hope! If not, blame the compression.

Also, in the course of scanning in my writing I found a ten pound note in the scanner. This indicates one of two things:

1. I needed a place to conceal £10 from obvious view, so I put it in the scanner.

2. One day I decided to become an illegal money printer, scanned in some notes of the realm, printed thousands of pounds of raw cash, took it to the Southampton casino and blew it all on drink and gambling, was arrested for illegal cash-copying by the police, got a deal whereby I infiltrated an infamous ring of money launderers in prison, got out early and had my slate wiped clean and then suffered amnesia about the whole experience.

Guess it’s obvious really.

EDIT: For the interested/nosy amongst you, here is the translation for the lecture notes above:

Time

Time flies, and it flies increasingly fast the older you become, it seems. It seems like only weeks ago that I started university, and yet I am only a month or so from the end of my first year. Madness.

A year seems an awfully long time when you’re five. Told to wait an hour for something? Might as well be imprisoned for eternity! Now the hours just blur by, and the days and the months and the years and it just seems to cascade ever faster in a raging waterfall of seconds.

Sometimes I feel like I’m crashing headlong and I don’t even have time to breathe in the sights of one moment before it flickers away. Other times I feel I’m on the ride of my life.

Pun intended.

Also, excuse the flowery phrases. Spent three hours writing poetry today for our Medical Humanities unit. Can’t seem to shake it…

Alphabet

What’s in a name? First impressions, sure (“Oh, you DO look like a Laura/John/Katie” – never understood this one), maybe if you have an unusual one you get used to correcting people (“no, it’s A-N on the end!”) or people use it as a conversation starter (“Is that a, er, …Hollandish…name?”)

Well, judging by the friends I have on my course, there’s definitely something more to it than a title. I noticed this the other day – the majority of my medic friends have surnames beginning in the latter half of the alphabet (and I mean a good deal more than half my friends, for the statisticians out there). The reasons for this are obvious: we are put into groups according to surname at the start of the year (although ironically one of my best mates here I met randomly outside of lectures and yet he still has a surname a mere two people away from mine).

Still, it makes me think – what impact does the alphabetical sorting-by-surname have on your life? I certainly remember being frustrated with having to go near the end of everything in junior school when people were released by name (it didn’t help that my birthday is in December, so I got last on that one also), and I wonder how often the university phenomenon of register friends occurs. I’d imagine that there is a strong correlation with course intensity in groups for this: I’m with the same third of the year for anatomy practicals, physiology/pharmacology/anatomy/pathology tutorials, and coincidentally, the medic’s badminton team.

How many of the people on my course I get on with here at uni would I know if I’d had a different name? I’d certainly not be living with the same people next year (all surnames in the latter half of the alphabet, except for one who dropped out), for one. It doesn’t really make much of a difference to my life now, but it’s food for thought nonetheless.

Facebook

Facebook is slowly losing it in the ever-going quest to ‘make stuff better’, to the point that it is becoming positively invasive. First it was the ‘People you may know” box on your profile, just in case you didn’t actually know who your friends were/needed new ones. Not only does this devalue the already-valueless ‘Facebook Friend’ further, but it also means that if you go pruning to remove all the people that you met once through some other friends and didn’t really talk to, that your name appears in their “People you may know” box, and they add you right back. Or get offended.

Secondly, there’s this new instant messenger. This is another thing I liked about Facebook – the fact that it was a website, not a IRC. If I wanted to speak to people, I’d sign in to msn/skype. chances are when I’m not, there’s a reason for this. It’s clever coding and all that, but I feel that Facebook is beginning to lose sense of why it started – a network for your friends. No associates, not randomers, and certainly not ‘friends’ you make on Facebook recommendations.

Facebook don’t know where to stop.

Site

So, this site is pretty much up and running, although there are a few little issues still kicking around in the shadows – whether I’ll get around to getting these sorted quickly or not depends very much on my up-and-coming essay. We shall see – if you run into problems let me know and I’ll add it to my ‘to do’ list. The photo gallery is still a work in progress so ignore it’s faults for now.

Flix mentioned on a comment somewhere that discussions weren’t always easily managed through comments, and I’ve got the hosting space/bandwidth (I think!) to run a phpBB discussion board on here. Is it worth my while to set up or are comments good?

Finally, the lil’ emoticon faces are irksome. I shall disable them. Hope you enjoy the remake: makes a fairly significant change from the dark of before!

Undercover

Sunrise

Hello and welcome to the new home of the old blog, Mk II – the old one was a bit too limited for my tastes so it had to go, unfortunately. Setting this up has been a fairly steep learning curve but it’s going well enough at the moment – there are still major changes to occur with design (the background and all the colours will likely be very different by the time I’m through) and I’ve still to get the gallery up and running, so things will be hectic here for a while. Bear with me!

Here’s hoping for a merry blogging future.