Setup

I got bored of my old 19 inch monitor, I also got paid. These two facts mean only one thing; a brand new monitor. I wanted to go all out on this new one because I know that I’d need it for many things: web design, television, high definition films and usual computer stuff.

I decided to go for this ASUS which is packed full of features including a 26 inch screen running a 1920×1200 resolution, HDMI, DVI, VGA and RGB inputs as well as speakers and a webcam. The price may look like a little much, but when it’s in front of you it’s simply amazing; the size of it and how well it works is fantastic. Anyway, enjoy the poor picture below!.

Next month, iPhone! Steven, Administrator.

The Live Leadership Debates

After three debates on three channels with three party leaders, has this historical first changed anything? Some may argue yes because it shows that the United Kingdom is heading towards a more democratic approach to elections where the audience made up from members of the public, (albeit a heavily controlled and medically sedated audience, who could resist flinging their own excrement at David Cameron to see if it bounced off his head made from 50% tyre rubber?), can ask the three main party leaders a range of questions where they can receive in-depth responses.

However some may argue no because although it’s a step in the right direction; it excludes all other parties that although small, people do still vote for them and therefore have the right to appear alongside the three main parties. Oh and because of the heavily rehearsed and controlled environment it’s essentially boring, predictable and uninformative.

I for one however, don’t really care about their policies. I mean, I do care, but that’s not the focus of this article for two reasons a) I’m a political vegetable with limited knowledge, so I wouldn’t be able to draw up any accurate conclusions b) I don’t support any single party, my brain is essentially grey human sludge waiting to be moulded. Maybe in the future my grey human sludge brain will be of more use to society. In this article I’m basically just going to talk about how they came across – sorry if you thought it was something better than that.

To avoid any kind of perceived favouritism, the position of each of the leaders changed in every program; this is apparently because standing on the right side gives off the impression of being right, or something like that. I don’t know why they weren’t allowed to sit down, it was very eerie watching them standing up for 90 minutes crossing their legs while looking around the room like a meditating Buddhist keeping one eye open to see if anyone is secretly recording a video of them to publish onto YouTube . None of them looked good to be honest – Gordon Brown looked like The Joker trying to complete a difficult Sudoku, David Cameron looked John Merrick wrapped in cling film, and Nick Clegg looked about as useful as the camera on the iPod Nano. However, I can’t talk because I resemble a caveman carved out of boiled ham.

The first debate was held by ITV; the set looked very small and the leaders were within touching distance, by the half way mark I half expected the lights to dim and for them to break into song before the audience voted one of them to sing a solo to Alastair Stewart as they tearfully faded off into the distance à la Over the Rainbow, (or Over the Rainbow Coalition in Gordon’s case), but that didn’t happen. I don’t think many people expected the outcome that Nick Clegg, the underdog, would end up literally creating a band wagon big enough for The Guardian to change their political opinion a week before polling day. This first debate put the Liberal Democrats into the spotlight, a tactic which didn’t work out for David Cameron when people said he didn’t live up to expectations. Oh and Gordon Brown turned up.

The second debate was held by Sky News, a move that worried viewers so much that most people tuned in preparing to see the ominous Sky News Logo projected onto every available surface including the logos that were physically there in the first place. This debate only got around 4m viewers, a drop of 5m from the ITV debate. Nick Clegg started to show signs that he was running out of steam after suddenly appearing in the spotlight, (again, not a sign of a sing off in sight). David Cameron apparently won this debate, much to the bemusement of basically everyone who watched because he didn’t do that well. Oh and Gordon Brown turned up.

The third and final debate was held on the BBC, the only television channel where expressing a political opinion on air is punishable by death, or punishable by being forced to watch an episode of The Life of Riley without being allowed to close your eyes and pretending you’re watching My Family instead. This debate was held in Birmingham University which made the likelihood of a sing off even less promising than it previously was. It was however a much better set than the pokey ones given to us by both ITV and Sky News. The viewing figures were a respectable 9m, about 9m of whom were probably tuning in to see if Gordon Brown would call an audience member a ‘scruffy cunt’ under his breath, unknowingly forgetting that he was live on air and looking directly at the camera.

Regarding my previous comments about the likelihood of a sing off, I’m almost certain that within the next decade we’re going to have a political Big Brother spin-off where prime ministerial candidates have to partake in a task where they create a viral video from bits of Family Guy in order to win the respect of the moronic masses because that’s where this doomed society is inevitably heading: we’re all stupid.

There you have it, the first historical set of leader debates summed up in a slightly humorous, ill educated and un-biased way. The entire point of these debates were to ultimately change the viewer’s opinions on who to vote for. However it only made me think of one thing: if I were to turn this on and David Cameron had failed to turn up, I’d easily mistake it for a repeat of Brokeback Mountain with more sodomy.

Steven, Administrator.

Popularity

Popularity can be a tricky thing to comprehend; it can be difficult to know where you are in the social hierarchy, (particularly at school), and why you’re even there in the first place. While I was watching Glee, it made me think about all of the different social levels that there are and how desperate people can be to fit into these levels.

Obviously, most people aspire to be at the top level. If we put this into American-ism terms; this would be where you would find the jocks and the cheerleaders. From a British perspective, the top level would consist of the “hard” people, the kids who would play up in lesson, always had girls waiting to be wooed by them and they would somehow just appear to fit in. From the first moment you go to school, you are instantly aware of who is considered cool and who isn’t. How does that work? It’s not as if anyone tells you, it’s sort of like instinct.

For most of my school life, I would have considered myself to be one of the funny-but-cool kids. These kind of people mix within the cool kids, but are generally considered to be at the bottom of that level. It’s odd how I managed to fit into this group considering I have a stutter, I thought that would have made me a prime target to be pushed and kicked down to the bottom level. Maybe my school was just accepting, or maybe people managed to see past that, I’m not really sure to be honest.

Ever since Year 6/7, that’s where I knew I was on the hierarchy. However, during the latter half of Year 11 all of that changed. I’m still not sure what happened, but my friends had for some reason turned on me and instead of acting “cool” and letting it slide so hopefully things would go back to normal; I let them knew it was getting to me. And letting your friends know what gets to you is a bad idea, because they’re bound to repeat it because they find it funny, and maybe it is, but from the receiving end its hard not to feel hurt. I was no longer happy being where I was so I decided to abandon that group and fall right to the bottom level: the library kids. These are the kind of kids who spend their lunch times alone in the library reading books and browsing the Internet, just to pass time until they can go to class and ultimately go home. For a few months this is where I stood, I also spent mornings in the toilets just waiting for bell to go so the day could officially begin. It was horrible.

I do feel that being that left at that time in my life affected my exam results because for the last few months of Year 11, I had no friends and as you can understand, was very sad about that. I was really, really thankful when that year had ended so I could spend the next 16 weeks alone, by myself before 6th Form started. But I realised that I could not go another two years of having no friends and feeling that way I had done in Year 11 because that would not have helped me out at all. So, despite what I thought was “cool”, I made some new friends with people you could consider to be un-cool. It was hard for me to adjust to the sudden change of social status and the sort of people I was now hanging around with, however my opinions would soon change about this.

I’m nearly half way into my first year of 6th Form and I can genuinely say that I am happy being near the bottom, I am happy with the friends I have because I know that they care about me. I would rather be at the bottom and happy than be at the top and feel isolated.

I’ve never told anyone this because I thought it was embarrassing to admit that I had let my “friends” get to me so much, but watching Glee has made me realise that it doesn’t matter where you are as long as your happy, and this ultimately means it does not matter what anyone else thinks as long as you go bed at night and reflect upon the day as positive experience spending it with friends and feeling comfortable around them.

What do I consider myself to be now? I’m Steven Knight. I’m just myself. And that’s a brilliant label to have.

Steven, Administrator.

Twitty Gervais

Ricky Gervais was asked by the bosses of the Golden Globes to give a running commentary up to the event itself on the latest micro blogging website, Twitter. However a mere six Tweets later he wrote a blog essentially describing why Twitter is pointless.

As you may know I’ve stopped with Twitter. I just don’t get it I’m afraid. I’m sure it’s fun as a networking device for teenagers but there’s something a bit undignified about adults using it. Particularly celebrities who seem to be showing off by talking to each other in public. If I want to tell a friend, famous or otherwise what I had to eat this morning, I’ll text them. And since I don’t need to make new virtual friends, it seemed a bit pointless to be honest.

I suppose it was meant to be a bit of a marketing tool for The Globes, but they are watched by 25 million people in America alone and maybe 300 million people world wide – tweeting about it would be a drop in the ocean. Also I’ve got the website and I don’t have to restrict things to 140 characters. My tweeting was becoming like a tabloid version of this blog.

Ricky’s last Tweet for those of you who are interested.

I am sorry, but I am going to stop these tweets because I don’t see the point. Please follow my blog at rickygervais.com

Now, obviously Gervais is allowed to have his own opinion on Twitter, I just think he’s neglected the more important and substantial reasons to use Twitter. Disregarding it as "undignified" for adults to use it is a mere example of an uneducated sweeping statement, if we apply his logic to some powerful Twitter users then Gervais has called President Obama, Stephen Fry, Sarah Silverman, Rainn Wilson and Jonathon Ross “undignified teenagers”, which of course, if there’s one thing people associate with Stephen Fry is his undignified persona. His other negative statement suggests that Twitter is just babble from people talking about what they ate for dinner last night; and of course you can’t do that on a blog can you?

For those of you who share the same opinion as Ricky and have so far scoffed at everything I have said, then let me give you some reasons why Twitter can be regarded as important. It is a very powerful tool for the media, the first real example of this would be when witnesses to the Hudson plane crash in New York during early 2009 – where eye witnesses Tweeted about the incident, sharing pictures and details on the crash before any of the real news networks were able to get hold of the story. This prompted social media and news websites to adopt Twitter because it is a very easy way to claim the first report on an event, where developments can be updated in real time for people to read about.

Another aspect of real time news on Twitter is that important events quickly become trending topics, (meaning that a topic becomes one of the ten suggestions for you to look at), where a Tweeter can get the latest information on a news story from individuals and from news corporations. An example of this would be where the death of Michael Jackson quickly become the sole talking point of Twitter, where  you could quickly get the latest updates about the situation and peoples views and opinions on the matter, this may seem as an unimportant example of real time news but you can see how it would be effective for major events.

It is also useful for large business, where employees may use it to keep in touch with people in their project teams for updates on whatever it is they are working on, similarly, business can also use Twitter to keep employees updated with the latest information – this is slowly phasing out the traditional newsletter.

Maybe lesser down the scale of importance is how Twitter can be used as a simple yet effective way of keeping in touch with friends. Seeing as a lot of mobile devices support Twitter, keeping in touch with people has never been easier. It’s a lot more effective for “chit chat” that email is due to its accessibility. Celebrities can also use it to talk to their fans – this can be seen as an important aspect because it breaks down the social barriers between celebrities and their fans.

Some may still see Twitter as pointless and ineffective despite some of the reasons given about. I of course accept your opinion, (as you are entitled one), but at least give Twitter a go before you disregard it. Even then do you choose to ignore Twitter’s potential importance, then don’t bash the people who do use it with sweeping, uneducated, statements like our good friend Mr. Gervais has done.

Oh – and in case you do find this blog entry Ricky, (he seems to find many small sites that go against him), my name is Steven Knight; I know you dislike it when people bash you whilst hiding their identity.

Steven, Administrator.

S’crackin’ everyone?

After a good seven weeks of Sixth Form – which has filled up one whole lever arch folder- it’s time for the first half term of the year so far. So, what’s going to be happening for me then?

Well, besides the holiday homework that I’ve been set that ranges from writing up the first draft of my formal report for IT to creating an advert for Coke Cola in Media; I think I’m just going to be doing my usual thing of working on some new website ideas and watching new television and films.

Oh and today was a good day for television and film: there was a new episode of The Office to watch as well as new Peep Show, Have I Got News For You and Armstrong and Miller. I also watched Pixar’s new film Up on BluRay, they’ve done it again and have made an emotional and beautiful film.

As well as all of that, I’m going to be doing something right out of the ordinary for me: I’m going to a party, yes, a party. It’s just the Sixth Form Halloween social, it’s at nightclub in Wellingborough with over 115 people attending so a variety of things could and will probably go wrong.

But we’ll see when it comes to it. Have fun if you’re also on your half term.

Steven – Administrator