Tonight is the longest night of the year. For the nothern hemisphere at least. Solstice occurs at 06:08 to be exact. It only gettings lighter from here people (although to be clear that’s not indefinite :p).
Disney have closed down ABC1. Having been flicking around for it last night and failed to find it I checked their website this morning to find the following message…
We regretfully announce that Walt Disney Television will no longer be transmitting abc1 on any of the UK TV platforms (Freeview, cable or satellite) after September 2007. Walt Disney Television would like to thank its viewers for watching the channel and interacting with the website. It’s been a great few years and we appreciate your viewership.
According to the company the reason it closed down was because they were unable to generate enough advertising revenue. ABC1 broadcasts 24/7 on cable and sky but could not get any of the limited broadcast space during primetime on Freeview so only broadcasted 6am-6pm.
No more Mental Mondays? You have to being joking! This is so much more of an injustice than the Iraq war! We should be out on the streets protesting this, it’s an outrage. I loved that night, it was never a bad atmosphere, everyone left peacefully, what was the problem?
Still while it’s goodbye to Mental Mondays, it is hello to a healthier looking bank balance. Having got paid today I checked my statement to find I was actually in credit! By around £4 but I don’t think that is too bad. I have my credit card to come out of what which is quite a bit but less than half my student loan which has taken the balance of my other account over £1,000. While it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to move £1,000 to my savings account as hoped I should still have some funds free to put away.
So, yesterday was the CompSoc EGM. It got quite an impressive turnout of 18 people which is quite an improvement on the AGM which all of 2-3 people bothered to turn up for. The (now) interim committee has made way for Sam as president, Norm as secretary, Martin as treasurer and Kieran as vice president.
So yeah, I lost out on president. Generally due to lack of support, the (to be as of two weeks) level 3 students consisted of myself, Kieran and Maths Chris. Though obviously not being in the room when the votes were cast I don’t actually know what went on. Maybe nobody at all voted for me.
It’s funny, when I was first offered the job as president, I look it relucantly as I had other commitments and was never really a big fan of CompSoc. But once I got into it I threw myself into the role and found myself with a new vibrant attitude towards the society. For the first time I really wanted to be involved in CompSoc, to give it a good future.
I thought I did to be honest. In the month or so we had the interim commitee we got events planned, we got issues sorted, we actually had a committee that wanted to run CompSoc. We had people excited about taking committee jobs. That’s the first time I’d ever seen that happen - the first AGM I witnessed saw people taking positions just because nobody else would do it. Ash wanted to be president everyone else just said “yeah, ok I’ll do it.” The second AGM, well, nobody turned up to it. Then, over summer, we actually had people wanting the jobs for the first time.
Today’s EGM was another apathetic wash-out. Kieran was unchallenged for vice president, nobody at all actually wanted to run for secretary or treasurer really, it was another case of “yeah, I might as well fill a committee place to make up numbers.” Sadly, it’s the same old story for CompSoc.
I’ve had a post entitled season 2 sitting in my drafts for a long time ago. Since last September I believe. The top paragraph of it it explains how this is a redraft because it’s been sat in there for so long. Well, I’m just rewriting it all from the start. With a whole new approach. I need I need a little more explanation.
After the success of my post, season finale which is one of three posts I am really proud of, I decided to continue the theme to look and see what themes we may see this year based on the second season of Dawson’s Creek.
The season is 60 seconds consists of Dawson and Joey getting together then soon breaking up again and ending with Joey’s dad returning from prison but Dawson finds out he is involved with drugs again and he ends up going back to jail with Joey blaiming Dawson. Abby dies, Andie enters the storyline and dates our renegade hero Pacey, Jack, the future gay guy and 5th main character comes in, Tamara briefly returns to remind us of the past.
I never got round to publishing the original post because I couldn’t really make the pieces fit. While Si really entered the storyline this year he turned out to be hetrosexual, or at least, hasn’t come out in time. Our will they won’t they couple never officially got together. Nobody died. The symmetry just wasn’t falling into place.
Then a few weeks ago I had a thought. A spark of possibility appeared before me. Perhaps the season didn’t have to run from the start of term time to the end of term time. Perhaps it ran from the start of term to the start of next year’s term - in which case it isn’t over yet.
If you include the summer period then a hole host of possibilites open up. Our will they won’t they couple have been seperated albeit under different circumstances. Break ups, make ups, sex, lies, the drama has flown thick and fast over the summer. All we really need is a season finale. Some big event to leave us on edge for the start of the new academic year. And we have two weeks to get it.
So why am I writing all this now? Why after all this time of the post sitting in my drafts is it finally seeing daylight? Well, I think I may have found one. Maybe, just maybe.
It’s August 27th! In 5 days it will be September. Where did summer go?
I still have loads of unsolved items on my to do list. My room is still a tip (not that it will be a major issue once I move out as it will all move out with me and I can sort it then). My server still isn’t working. The network in the house still isn’t setup properly.
I don’t know what the situation is really. Will I have more time during term time? I work 50-60 hour weeks at the moment. When term time starts again I’ll go back up to anywhere from 60-80 hour weeks so will I really have more time to solve things?
I’ve been working on some concept ads for Eurobeats. They aren’t amazing quality because I’m just using the sample images at the moment until I decide which one I actually want and properly licence the image. I’d appreciate on people’s feedback on them. I’m leaning towards the first one personally.
Well after Friday night’s activities I think we can conclude one thing. Michelle has now moved herself to somewhere in the middle of the queue… …to re-join the main queue :p.
Friday night was The Riley’s which are the unions awards for societies. Having burned it down to Bretton Hall and back to see Claire’s cool art displays we almost made it back on time. A-Soc was shortlisted for only one of the three awards we were initially nominated for (how could we not be shortlisted for best society?!?) and we ended up losing to Bretton Music Society (is anyone else thinking who?) so that was a bit of a bust. We were sooooo robbed.
Afterwards we headed into Fruity after picking up a John and proceeded to dance the night away in Stylus. It’s been ages since I’ve been to Fruity and so it was good to finally get another one in as it was a decent night in the end.
Having met Joanna who works at the chaplaincy during Rationalist Week I decided to take her up on her invite to come down to Skeptics Anonymous on Friday. It basically consists of having lunch and sitting round chatting about religiously biased philosophical topics. There was quite an interesting range of people there, indeed there were quite a few Christians. As seems to be the way with these events, the audience generally seems to be slightly eccentric postgrads rather than undergrads.
The conversation mostly followed the lines of going round the circle with each person saying where they stand. As points came up we would then drift off and discuss a point more in depth. All in all it was a slightly strange but never the less fairly interesting event and I think I will probably drop by again.