Musings of a perturbed rationalist...

Eurotrip 2012: Preikestolen

2011-06-08T20:11:00.000+01:00

I said I would do some articles on the places that we plan to visit during the epic trip around Europe next summer, and this is a continuation of a large collection of posts.

Preikestolen

Wow. This cliff is awesome, mainly because of the almost perfectly square surface on top. It's 604 metres (1982 feet) above the Lysefjorden (the lake, or fjord), in Forsand, Ryfylke, Norway.

In English, the name translates to 'Preacher's Pulpit'.

Visitors and tourists have to hike about 2.4 miles to get to the cliff, and it is all included as part of a tourist attraction. Infact, it is the most visited natural attraction in Norway.

As you can see, it's a pretty good place for base-jumping! I would like to look over the edge, and then if I'm feeling brave enough, I want to get a photo on the boulder:

Craaaaaazy mofos. I must do this too.

Apparently, the best season to hike the trail and make your way to the clifftop is from April to October, and We'll be there at the end of June - smack bang in the middle. Can't wait for this one.

Eurotrip 2012: La Tomatina

2011-06-07T19:30:00.000+01:00

I said I would do some articles on the places that we plan to visit during the epic trip around Europe next summer, so let's start off with an amazing festival in Valencia, Spain.

La Tomatina

A festival where participants throw tomatoes at each other!? Awesome. It is always held on the last Wednesday in August in the town of Buñol, Valencia.

It just so happens that we'll be travelling through Spain in the last week of August. It was complete coincidence too. I had no idea what time of year that La Tomatina took place, and when I stumbled across it again recently and saw the date, an idea began to form in my head...

An idea where me and my best friends in the world, surrounded by thousands of people, become French fries personified - and covered in ketchup. Pretty weird really, considering that I prefer mayonnaise on my chips.

I'm going to be pretty scared to get my camera out to take photos when I'm there, just in case it gets drenched in tomato.

An interesting sentiment.

2011-06-06T14:49:00.000+01:00

When the first living thing existed,

I was there waiting.

When the last living thing dies,

My job will be finished.

I'll put the chairs on the tables,

Turn out the lights,

And lock the universe,

Behind me as I leave.

- Death

Exams are over, time to graduate!

2011-05-30T13:05:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in my 2 down, 2 to go post, I had 2 more exams to do: Small Real-Time Systems and Intelligent Robotics.

SRTS was on Thursday morning and it went well; I could answer almost every question and grabbed as many marks as I could.

Intelligent Robotics was Friday afternoon, so I didn't have much prep. time for that one! I loved it. I actually loved an exam - what the hell is wrong with me!? For an exam to be that stress-free, and to be my last exam... I don't know - I just had the biggest smile on my face afterwards. - I ~~raped~~ demolished it, let's just put it that way.

A few commenters were wondering what the Intelligent Robotics exam entailed;

Movement and Locomotion
Autonomy
Sensors and Perception
Robotic Manipulator Arms
Control Paradigms
Reactive & Deliberative Systems
Biologically Inspired Robots
Accuracy, Precision and Repeatability.

Here's an example of a biologically inspired robot, Whegs II - which is based on a cockroach:

Needless to say, after that exam, I went straight out to a few bars and gave my brain cells a good send off for all the hard work they've been through.

Graduation in July.

Exams: 2 down, 2 to go.

2011-05-24T18:43:00.001+01:00

My first exam was last Monday and was on Professional Issues in Software Engineering. Fun. It went really well and I already got a high mark in the assignment which counts for 50% of the module.

Today I had my 100% exam paper on Internet Services Administration and I did... okay. For me, it's the hardest module of the four because the module covers a load of topics...

Email Services, Naming and Directory Services, File Storage, Server Admin, Services and Process Management, System startup/shutdown, Remote Access, Management of Webservers, Current and Future Issues, File Services (Backup, Support and Restoration), Network Security, User Requirements, Cryptography, Steganography, Firewalls and Regulations

...all in one exam.

On Thursday I have my 100% Small Real-Time Systems exam, and Friday afternoon I have my Intelligent Robotics exam. I've already done well enough in my previous semester to pass my total degree, it's just a case of striving to get the most marks that I can.

I'll be honest - I wasn't expecting to have to do much of the above content considering that my degree is supposed to be about Vision, Visualisations, Graphics and Games - but that's computer science for you.

After Friday... I'm done. Bliss.

Let there be light...

2011-05-23T16:13:00.001+01:00

Referring back to this post about the projectors involved in the whole man cave idea, these are the beauties being tested out before we move into the new house:

Mr. Bean on the big screen!

My dad has Macular Dystrophy and uses a screen magnifier.

Otherwise the sofa wouldn't be this close to the picture.

The 'design'... Hopefully we'll see it through to fruition!

Makes a 50" screen look pretty small in comparison.

We move into the new house on the 1st of July and work on the extension starts about a month later. It's still completely undecided what we're going to do with the projectors and which rooms to put them in.

I'll be updating you guys with news about the house when and as it happens :)

Eurotrip 2012

2011-05-22T16:03:00.002+01:00

This is something that I'm looking forward to so immensely that every time I think about it, I splooge a little.

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Just a heads up, Paint is not better than Google maps for route planning.

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Six of us plan to make the journey in a motorhome/camper van. Heading north first of all and sweeping the Mediterranean on the way back. It's about 11,000 miles (17,600 km) and we visit 31 countries:

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UK, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Czech, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Switzerland and Spain.

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It would be a lot easier to travel by train but with an InterRail pass you get a lot less freedom. With the camper van and bicycles, we can go pretty much where we like!
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I'll probably update the blog in the future with places that we're going to visit; the Plitvice lakes, the Verzasca dam, the Millau viaduct etc.
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Project Aura

2011-05-21T14:20:00.001+01:00

I've started getting loads fitter over the past year because of the hardcore cardio training involved in doing P90X. After seeing a friend posting his bike rides on Facebook with some random training app, I decided that I'd start incorporating some cycling in my daily routine. We have an exercise bike in the gym now after buying it off of my grandparents. I did 2km on it and felt pretty tired (I'd just woken up and not had breakfast!), so I'm going to train up and do some 10-20km rides this summer on my dad's racing bike.

I found out about Project Aura, and I now I really want it for the bike as riding in the evening will be much better because of reduced road traffic.

Project Aura: Bicycle Safety Lighting System from Project AURA on Vimeo.

Obviously, I'll need to add front and back lights too. The cool thing is that it can change from red to purple to white depending on how fast the wheels are going.

Need/Want!

The Mini-ramp

2011-05-19T22:28:00.000+01:00

A friend of mine recently dug up some old photos of when we built a mini-ramp in my back garden. A mini-ramp is basically a much smaller and shallower version of the vert ramps that you see in competitions. They're great for learning basic tricks, as well as getting used to the transition from flat ground to steep ramp.

3 of us each shelled out £100($162) towards this beauty and it lasted us about 2-3 years. Aged between 12-16 at the time, it was a lot of money and a rather large commitment. We also had to get permission from my dad. He was on holiday at the time, so I rang and asked him if we could build it. He quite happily agreed (he skated in his youth too), but was totally shocked when he came home as he wasn't expecting a ramp as big and as well-made as this.

The 'vertebrae' of the ramp, made from 2x4s.

After 2 days and spending approximately 24 hours total working on it, all of the woodwork was done. This was great going, but we still needed the metal coping as the icing on the cake.

There was a construction site about a mile up the road where they were building some new flats. I suggested we head up there to see if they could spare us a scaffolding pole. Turns out that they were really nice guys and they gave us a 12ft pole!

We walked into town and took the pole to the nearest Jewsons, which is a building merchant company, to see if we could get the pole cut there. One of the men behind the counter said he'd pop outside and cut it for free! People can be so damn awesome sometimes. He used a diamond-tipped circular saw to slice the scaffold pole in half and we walked home with our two 6ft coping rails!

I then drilled holes in the rails so we could screw them securely into the wood and voila:

That's all well and good to be able to skate on it in the daytime, but we didn't want to stop just because the sun was going down...

Nightlight!

We actually made a load of ramps and rails and various obstacles over the course of our skating lifetime. Here's a kicker that we made with some scrap wood, and a rail that my dad welded from the legs of a classroom table:

Nostalgia can be a bitch sometimes.

300 Followers!

2011-05-18T20:24:00.000+01:00

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Awesome, thanks guys!
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Here's a picture of me showing my appreciation!
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Hint: I'm not the old guy in the background.

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Diving to the centre of the earth?

2011-05-17T17:19:00.000+01:00

I recently saw an article on Digg about a British diver venturing in between two tectonic plates. Considering all the tsunami talk in recent weeks, I thought that it would make an interesting blog post.

Alex Mustard, a 36 year old diver from Southampton, dived 80ft into the crevice between the North American and Eurasian plates near Iceland to capture these awesome photos.

The clarity of the water is amazing, and yes - it's freshwater apparently.

I've never been scuba diving, but it's something that I'd love to do in the future. Definitely got to visit this place, and the Great Barrier Reef too. I have this weird determination to visit at least 100 countries, go skydiving, scuba diving, and some other awesome things in my lifetime.

This looks like it just made the list...

Photos of Aberystwyth...

2011-05-09T16:17:00.002+01:00

I've been going to university in Aberystwyth for four years now and, despite the fact that I can't wait to go back home, it is a really nice place to live. It's a typical British seaside town, with average beaches, seagulls, and a big promenade.
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It looks much nicer on a sunny day, and I have photos to prove it, but for now I will upload some photos I took on a... not-so-nice day:
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Also, I finished my dissertation and handed it in. It was the sole reason for the lack of updates recently, and it was pretty difficult to get it in a state that I was happy with due to my short attention span, but I managed. 63 pages, 14,000 words.

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But hey, just because I have a short attention span, doesn't mean I

Amateur Photoshoot...

2011-05-02T00:37:00.002+01:00

Last summer, I invited a few friends round with the premise that I could take some photos of them and test out my camera and a fairly basic amateur lighting setup.

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Here are the results, none of which have been altered from the original take:

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I'm not a professional photographer, I could barely be considered an amateur, and despite Carl's (the one with the tattoos) great modelling skills, these guys aren't professional models either, haha!

I may try seeing what I can do with them in photoshop (or lightroom - thanks ed) at some point, but for now - back to my dissertation :(

Photography and Archery...

2011-04-29T20:04:00.003+01:00

...two hobbies that I haven't been able to do much of recently.
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I am about 7,000 words into a ~15,000 word dissertation for my degree, I am pretty much eating, sleeping and working on the damn thing. It's due in a week's time, and I'll have a few days breathing room before I have to revise for my four exams ...maybe I'll go take some photos then.
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These photos are from a day spent in a field last June. I took a few random photos of the abandoned industrial farm equipment and other surrounding objects, and a friend of mine took photos of me shooting:
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I started archery about 4 years ago as it was one of the only university societies that interested me at first. It was exciting and had a fairly challenging learning curve, not to mention that my dad had a very nice professional bow for me to use.
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I will upload some other photos in some future posts.

EDIT - In response to Xiism's comment :)
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Feeling anxious, insecure or hesitant?

2011-04-27T18:48:00.001+01:00

Feeling insecure about an aspect of your life? Having trouble mustering up the courage to do something?
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Then let me tell you something.
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You are the successor of hundreds of generations of humans who have all managed to successfully survive and pass on their genes to you, meaning that survival of the fittest has resulted in your creation. You are the current generation of a line of humans who have out-lived millions of others.
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Out of approximately 40 million sperm, all of which have the possibility of creating unique individuals who aren't you, the sperm that became you was the fastest. You came first in a life or death race out of ~40,000,000 competitors. That deserves a pat on the back.

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Still feeling a bit down?
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You, yes you - reading this extremely insightful blog post, are the result of around 3.5 billion years of evolution. Species have come and gone, adapted and changed, but you are currently the epitome of evolutionary success. yahoo domains chicago lawyers law firm accident yahoo domains lemon personal injury attorney

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So in conclusion...

You are the result of thousands of your ancestors surviving and passing on their superior genes to you.

You are the result of the strongest and fastest sperm cell.

You are the result of ~3,500,000,000 years of evolution.

Now fucking act like it.

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The art of the man-cave...

2011-04-22T02:29:00.003+01:00

Right, so we're moving into our new house in a few weeks and for the first time in a long while, I have the opportunity to customise a room dedicated to games, TV and drinking. I frequently have anywhere from 2-8 people round for epic sessions so I've been thinking about it and have a few ideas.

Cinema style sofas:

Construct a foot-high platform and put a sofa on top of it, throw another sofa in front of that and you get an awesome stacked pair of sofas with a decent amount of storage space underneath the rear sofa. Maximum view for maximum gaming and maximum comfort for maximum people... to the max.

7 foot projector screen:

Oh hell yeah. We've got hold of two ex-education HD projectors that work really well. They were probably stolen from a school or something, but that's not for me to worry about! Bolt a cabinet with a projector above the rear sofa, make a few adjustments, and voila:

Looks pretty epic, let's face it.

Include a mini-bar with fridge, a decent surround sound system and a media centre - and this might just end up being my favourite room of the house. Summer is BBQ season, so I'll be having a few of those, then retreating back to this room in the evening. Perfect for an immense gaming session and a chilled out film... or a chilled out gaming session and an immense film!

If you have any suggestions, let me know. We should be moving in at the start of June and if something like this goes ahead, I'll be documenting its creation.

A Culinary Masterpiece...

2011-04-18T16:00:00.001+01:00

I've been working pretty hard on my major project for university recently and my blog has definitely been pushed to the sidelines.

Today I found God. I found God, and he was in the form of this mouth-moistening, penis-hardening, delicious invention. The father, the son, and the holy toast:

To make this sexy, seductive, gooey piece of Heaven, you need the following:

2 eggs, 2 slices of bread, a few slices of (or grated) cheese, some oil, a mug, a plate and, of course, a frying pan.

Start by pressing down on the bread with the upside-down mug to make some holes. Heat up a teaspoon of oil in the frying pan while you are doing this. Boil the kettle and wipe the mug clean for a nice cup of tea in the meantime.

Put the holy bread into the fires of Hell (the frying pan), and press it down so that when you crack the egg into it, the egg doesn't seep underneath. Crack the egg and gently drop it in the middle. You may want to pop the yolk to prevent the end product from being too messy - I didn't, because I like to live on the edge.

If you want to add seasoning, now's the time. I always add a bit of salt and black pepper to fried eggs. Do the same again for the second slice.

Put your cheese onto one of the slices and let it melt a little before you cover it up. Grated cheese makes the cheese a little more bubbly due to air pockets (a pro-tip from my buddy, James Allen). Go with whatever you prefer.

I broke the yolk on the second slice because two unbroken yolks in one sandwich is just plain crazy. Place the second slice on top and cook for another 2-3 minutes on a low heat.

Cut that bad boy into diagonal slices, because there is no other way to cut a sandwich. Enjoy with a nice cup of breakfast tea.

Beautiful.

It ends up being approximately 750 calories, with 55g of fat. Worth it though.
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Mistakes I see and hear every day...

2011-04-07T20:30:00.001+01:00

...or have just noticed recently.

The English language is a tough one. It is a fusion of a few different languages; Latin, Greek, Norse and Norman-French to name a few. Britons should consider themselves lucky that they were raised learning English because it's one of the hardest languages in the world to learn. Despite the fact that it is 'our' language, I still notice mistakes every single day, some of which I've been guilty of too.

Bought/Brought
‘Bought’ relates to buying something. ‘Brought’ relates to bringing something. For example, "I bought a new donkey and brought it back to my farm." The easy way to remember which is which is that ‘bring’ and ‘brought’ both start with ‘br’. ‘Buy’ and ‘bought’ start with ‘b’ only. This is one of those awkward ones that a spellchecker won’t catch. - Also, I realised I don't actually own a farm, so does anyone want this donkey? I named him Dave.

Your/You're

This one grates on me like a chalkboard being scratched. I find it so simple, yet I see it on Facebook and MSN all the time! ‘Your’ - belonging to you. ‘You're’ - You are. "You're your father's son" or "You're going to annoy me if you can't get your ‘your’s and your ‘you're’s the correct way around."

The thing that makes me lose faith in the educational system is when I see kids typing ‘ur’ and ‘ure’ and still getting it wrong!

Affect/Effect
When people get grammar or words wrong, it has an effect on me. How does that effect affect you? Well, you end up reading this blog post for one. ‘Effect’ is almost always a noun, and it is the result of something. To ‘affect’ something is generally a verb. The effect is the change, and affecting something is the process of changing or influencing something.

Accept/Except
This is a minor one, but not many people realise that they're doing it. You may be thinking to yourself that you never get these two words mixed up, and you may be right. The reason that they're on my list is because of the way that a lot of people pronounce the word ‘acceptable’. I hear it pronounced ‘exceptable’ all the time, which is not a word. Try saying both versions out loud and determine if you're one of those people. Broken down, acceptable becomes ac-cep-ta-ble, and due to the ‘ac’ and ‘cep’, we get a false ‘X’ sound. It's the first ‘ac' sound that makes all the difference. - Pronouncing it as ‘exceptable’ is unACceptable!

Lose/Loose

An understandable one, this. In our language, a single ‘O’ makes an ‘oh’ sound, whereas a double ‘O’ is pronounced ‘ooo’. The way that ‘lose’ is spelled, implies that it should be pronounced ‘lohse’, and I think that's why many folks get it wrong. ‘Loose’ is an adjective, meaning the opposite of tight, take away one ‘o’ and you get ‘lose’. - The modelling agency told me to get lost because I needed to lose some weight. I returned in a month to prove my weight loss by showing them that my trousers were loose. They told me I was too ugly anyway. Their loss, losers.

Its/It's
Guilty. I make this mistake often, despite knowing the difference between them both. ‘It's’ means ‘it is’, while ‘its’ is a possessive pronoun. The reason that this sometimes catches me out is because usually when something belongs to a man, it's the man's possession (notice the apostrophe usage), but when something belongs to ‘it’, it's its. Oh well - if it wants its own section in my blog, it's going to get it.

Alot
...is not a word. - I still see it a lot though.

Literally
Right, this one is a bit different. It is used wrongly so often that we've forgotten its actual meaning. ‘Literally’ means "it really happened". So when you tell me that your dad literally exploded when he found out you were having sex, and that he literally flew out the door to go to your boyfriend's house, I find it hard to believe that he could fly, especially after having just exploded. What you mean to say, is figuratively. - Unless of course, he literally did explode for some reason and the explosion caused him to fly out of the door. Nope, probably not.

Desert/Dessert
I don't really blame people for getting this one wrong. Words like ‘desert’ have only one ‘s’ in them and it's normally pronounced like a ‘z’. So why then does ‘dessert’ have two of them and yet still they get pronounced like a ‘z’. Are we being purposely confused? Who thought that was a good idea?

Two/Too/To
Two turtles went to my house. Two toucans went to my house too. We should all know these by now? Surely? No? You're a lost cause.

Crotch/Crutch
This one annoys me. You walk around with the aid of crutches. You can kick a guy in the crotch, not in the crutch - unless he's been maimed, uses crutches and you want him to fall over, you evil person. The word ‘crotch’ gets confused with ‘crutch’ because crutches were fashioned from the crotch of a tree, which is where its limbs divide (the same goes for our bodies).
After searching for images relating to this confusion, I found out that there is such a thing as a crotch crutch:

Wow.

Accidentally

A lot of people write this as ‘accidently’, which is wrong. The way to remember the spelling of this word is thinking about the root word: ‘accidental’. The same goes for a few other, similar words. He said he did it accidentally. Incidentally and coincidentally his friend said he did it unintentionally too.

Receive, Relieve, Believe etc.
"I before E, except after C" seems like a good rule to live by, but then you grow up and realise that actually... your teachers set you up to fail in that regard. There are actually hundreds of words that this rule does not apply to; deity, foreign, science, height, beige, society, veil, weird, seismic, neighbour, seize, protein, either, forfeit, feisty are quite a few examples. This isn't counting the plurals of many words ending in ‘cy’, such as; frequencies, fallacies, vacancies and indecencies.
I still have to double check after I type a word like ‘receive’ or ‘believe’. I propose a new rule: "I before E, occasionally".

Irony

You all have Alanis Morissette to blame for this one. When something is ironic, it is unexpected. It's that simple. Alanis Morissette had no clue when she sang "it's a free ride when you've already paid" or "it's like rain on your wedding day". This is not irony - it is misfortune or coincidence. - A traffic jam when you're already late... to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city's automobile congestion by 70 percent. Now that's irony.

This is but a select few that I can be bothered to write about today. There are a lot more though, feel free to let me know which ones you notice the most. Also, bonus points to anyone who finds errors in my post, it would be quite ...ironic.

You can chase a dream, but you'll need to run hard to catch it

2011-04-05T12:05:00.002+01:00

We've all seen the pictures, posters or inspirational speeches; 'Change your life', 'Make your dreams a reality'. It's all very well reading these and embracing the next fantastic ten minutes feeling motivated and energised. Some of these pictures make me feel that I'm so awesome that I could walk up to a bear and punch it in the face.

After that though, it's not long before we slip back into the proverbial coma that is the norm. A good friend of mine once taught me to change my patterns often, because if you don't, every day becomes similar. If I follow a pattern day in and day out for a year or so my recollection of that year can become blurred instead of clear cut, separate memories.

Everyone has a dream or goal that they want to achieve, and I will say now that you aren't going to just stumble upon it - you need to create it for yourself. You are in charge of your life, as cheesy and forced as it sounds, you can mold it and shape it into what you want.

The problem I have with these inspirations is that they're so far from realistic, that they end up negating any long-term positive effect they might have had on the reader. You generally can't walk out the door and change your life, despite what they tell you. It doesn't happen like that, and reality will quite happily waltz in and slap you in the face before you get off your driveway. Most plans require time, effort and money.

It's pretty easy to want to change your life for the better, it's simple to know what you want to do or where you want to be. Getting there though, taking the first step - that is the part that a lot of people seem to find difficult. The best part is; once you have taken that first step, you're already on your way. Think about that for a second.

You get one life to live, figure out what the most important things are, figure out what experiences you want to have, figure out what you want to achieve... and think about how you're going to get there. Tell your friends and family, they will help you.

The first step is to have a plan. Make one, take that first step and you'll only be moving forward after that. "Do, or do not. There is no try."

A lie we have all told

2011-04-01T23:14:00.001+01:00

"I have read and accept the terms and conditions"

No, you haven't. You haven't read clause 2.5c stating that you will donate your first born to Bill Gates if you don't want your PC to bluescreen. You haven't read clause 1.2.6 of Apple's T&C stating that if you purchase a Mac, you must worship Steve Jobs like he's an omnipotent bearded deity. I can imagine the Westboro Mactist Church holding picket signs telling PC users that they're going to hell.

Nobody except lawyers read these things, yet we accept the conditions that they offer because we want to access the damn product. It's similar to when we're installing a program and the 'Back' and 'Cancel' buttons feel rejected while the 'Next' button is getting physically abused by our cursor. We don't care about the finer details! We just want to access our freshly made Gmail or Ebay account, or play the new game that we've legally downloaded. I would definitely struggle to recall the exact number of terms and conditions that I have accepted this year. Anti-virus, online games, the census, forum accounts, random software downloads, and of course - my new blog. I probably can't remember half of the times because it seems to just blend in with the process.

The thing that amuses me when I do actually glance at the T&C is the language they use - it's total legal jargon. I love the way that they try to cover themselves for almost any eventuality. They are not at fault for anything and/or everything that someone, anyone or everyone may or may not have possibly caused. Wait... what? If you are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about - go and read one.

No... actually don't, just accept the conditions and move on with your life.