Saturday 29 October 2011

Cool things

1. My course! My MSc course is immensely cool. I am so enjoying being right at the edge of what I can do. I have found two people older than me now, a 36-year-old and a 40-year-old, so we can occasionally catch up and talk about ZX81s and such. A lot of the kids were still in primary school when I got my first degree. But actually they're a really nice bunch, and some of the ones who were annoying me at first by flaunting their understanding turn out just to be a bit socially challenged, and pleasant at heart. I have discovered that I have uncannily accurate gaydar: show me a young man, and if I find it easy to talk to him, he's gay. I think there may be other factors at work here though and not just my perception. For example, I give pretty good conversation about which is Britney's best song. (Just fyi, Toy Soldier has to be in the running.)

2. If you're looking for a mouse to use with a laptop this one is great:
Swiftpoint mouse review
It's designed to be used on the wrist rest part of the laptop, below the keys, so even if you don't have any other flat surface to hand you still don't have to use the trackpad. This is a relief for my RSI, which has been giving me twinges when I use the trackpad for six hours of lectures in one day.

3. I've been putting my ipod on shuffle a lot recently and rediscovering lots of brilliant songs I'd forgotten. Like this Cloetta Paris song, Broken Heart Tango. This is the sort of song you should only listen to when you're happy.


4. Victorians! I'm revising my opinion about the Victorians, but I need to post about this separately some time.

5. Plus I'm off to the Occupy London camp this afternoon to hear an old friend preach from the steps of St Paul's. He was the chaplain at Corpus when I was a fellow there, and I'm hoping he still holds the anti-capitalist views he had then, or it's going to be rather embarrassing... Go social justice! Not being more involved in social justice is just one of the many ways in which I am a bad Christian.

4 comments:

  1. "just one of the many ways in which I am a bad Christian!
    Never going to church is another.

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  2. I contest that! This week I went to morning service on Sunday and Christian meditation on Thursday. Perhaps tomorrow I'll go to morning and evening just to show you.

    Maybe I should start worrying about the state of your soul... (Thinly veiled threat: don't make me come over there and evangelise you!)

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  3. Really glad you're enjoying yourself, I think studying as a (proper) adult is much underrated.

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  4. A friend of mine says that university is wasted on the young, and I think that's going a bit far, but I am definitely getting more out of this than a lot of the youths. For example, we've had mock exams added to our timetable for the last week of term. My initial reaction was what a relief, and how kind of the staff to take on that extra work for us, while the young people were bemoaning it as just more exams. And they're wierdly rude about the lecturers -- they have a sort of them-and-us attitude. So it's nice to talk to the other two older people, and agree how incredibly lucky we feel to get all this excellent teaching. Which I can't really say to the young ones because they wouldn't understand. Go mature students!

    ReplyDelete