Spare a thought to thwarting ThWART!
The Isle of Wight is a lovely place, but it’s residents are largely old and set in their ways, it has often been seen as the perfect sight for wind turbine development, something that would help our country get off its addiction to foreign gas and oil, and also add a new aspect to the beauty and reputation of the Island.
Unfortunately for too long the older residents of the Island have been able to voice their backwards opinions at meetings and to our local paper, the County Press, making it seem like the entire island hates the concept, now I don’t know about you, but every young person I’ve talked to would love to have wind turbines on the Island, and the same goes for me.
The existing anti-turbine group on the island is called ThWART (The Wight Against Rural Turbines), and has gained way too much publicity for it’s few members, and finally an Island born initiative for the young and pro-Island turbine people has reared its head! The group is called ‘Thwart ThWART’ but run by the Island Turbine Action Group and was started by one of my friends on Facebook, and is rapidly gaining membership!
Please join (even if you’re not an islander!) and see if you can help! The group can be found here or search for “Thwart ThWART” on Facebook.
Also, even if you’re not on Facebook, you can sign the teams petition to Number 10 here. Don’t forget to check your e-mail to confirm! Thanks!
Facebook want to launch an IM service. D-Day for MSN?
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According to TechCrunch, Facebook want to launch an instant messaging service, now I know that almost everyone I know is on Facebook, and as such the service has the potential to completely change my online social experience.
According to TechCrunch, the service will be embedded on the Facebook site and available as Jabber chat for programs that support it, like my personal favourite Adium but I happen to know everyone I’ve ever met has used Windows Live Messenger, and as we know that doesn’t support plugging in anything really.
So this could end up being as lame as GTalk (no friends on GMail), MySpace IM (Came too late and was Windows only), or it could be something new, revolutionary, and exciting. It will be interesting to see if people can cope with an instant messenger in the browser (since I doubt many people are going to know how to plug into its jabber capabilities).
We’ll see.
In other news AOL, who just bought social network of-two-years-ago Bebo.com have announced they want to integrate their Instant Messenger AIM into the service. In my opinion it’s a bit late to start invading Europe with your messaging service.
Diary: Life, Learning, Bowling, Love and Long Bike Rides
Well life has gotten a little easier since finished my first week back at university, buried under assignments. Though there is a looming exam which I can’t revise for right now because, we L just can’t find my folder. At least that’s my excuse. I did ok last time, hopefully it’ll be ok this time as well.
Thursday was an interesting day, with my usual selection of excruciatingly boring design lessons, where the design teacher falls head over heels with the most undesirable piece of work I had done in the past 2 weeks, every time. This day I was also reminded that I need to be looking for a house or flat, as to paraphrase one of my classmates “only the shit ones will be left in March”
In the evening, I went bowling for another classmate of mine’s birthday, you know, it’s not usually that you get to celebrate an attractive popular girl’s 20th birthday by going bowling, and it made a great change, and wasn’t lame, well I was, I wasn’t quite last though.
So that finished, a few went to the union to party afterwards, but I was with a group who were decidedly less enthusiastic, so went back to my flat, only to arrive outside and be dragged 
back into another taxi for a night at “road mender” which was absolutely terrific, I met friends from my course, found that my flat mates were more connected to them than I would have ever realised, and I even met a girl who was nice, though her facebook implies, as ever, that she is not available. What a wonder this connected world is.
Getting back at around 4am with no reason to get up in the morning has a side effect, you don’t wake up until 4pm, or when your flat mate randomly knocks on your door at 2pm. I got dressed, hopped on my bike had a meal at a supermarket, got some supplies, and somehow found my way eventually to the cinema.
I had intended to either see Sweeney Todd, or Cloverfield. Both movies I’ve been looking forward to for some time. I arrived to find that despite evidence to the contrary I had seen on the (American) Internet, that as with Sweeney Todd in December, Cloverfield isn’t even out for another month. To make matters worse, Sweeney Todd wasn’t even on until 3 hours time.
A compromise needed to be made, so I saw Charlie Wilson’s War.
Charlie Wilson’s war is based on an “unbelievable true story” which turned out to be a pretty cool movie, how one (woman obsessed) man turned Afghanistan into a secret fighting machine and helped end the soviet empire, almost single handedly. Though without spoiling the ending, which you kind of already know, it’s not all happy.
As one reviewer said, it’s definitely the film you’ll want to watch again. After a long cycle ride back home I argued with my mother who insisted the only reason this Texan must have cared about Afghanistan is oil. Which the film, and his back story, seems to indicate is an ill informed assumption. Though perhaps not for the current administration.
So I find myself here, a day later, without a folder, not doing revision, for an exam on Tuesday. Great.
Christmas Cometh… a random post.
Well Christmas will be here for me in less than a week when I return home for the longest time since fist leaving for University. University has been somewhat of a large disorientating spin into confusion for me, meeting people was fun, being buried in 12 metric tonnes of paperwork and given a light beer was not.
You don’t really know who you care about until you move away from them, I find, and as such it will be good to get home, and you also don’t learn who cares about you the most until you move away from them.
Lots of people keep going on about ‘Christmas doesn’t come until the Coca-Cola advert is on TV’ there are countless facebook groups uttering this same message, personally I think it’s awful if we define a festival by the advertisements of a soft drinks company. If they stop advertising, how are we supposed to know when to start celebrating??
And is vegetarianism for me? Afterall, animal ingredients are used in the making of film, and I love the cinema. Jesus, send help.