Times change, and thankfully exam seasons go with them.
I’ve been taking exams almost non-stop (or it felt that way) for the last 2 and a bit months and only now can I take a look back and breathe again.

As a result, blogging ought to resume, in the same way that my twitter feed has been – http://www.twitter.com/Will_Scott although I’ve got work experience next week, which whilst it should be interesting, doesn’t really facilitate the amount of tweeting that one can fit in.

Yet again, this post’ll end up being backdated as I get horribly distracted by my brother – off school sick today – and for that again I apologise.

I took delivery on Monday of a shiny new phone to replace my now totally defunct k500i. First of all, I was mightily impressed by Virgin Mobile’s swift service – I ordered the phone late on Saturday evening and it was in my hands by 1030 on the Monday morning.

I suppose I ought to present my reasons for parting company with the grand total of £92 (after a nifty £40 discount ) for the new phone. 1. It looks good. 2. It sounds good – all the reviews I read commented on the decent audio quality. 3. Opportunities for expansion – indeed, I’ve fitted it with a 2GB M2 card already. 4. I’m used to the SE interface – and prefer it to that of Motorola or for that matter Nokia.

**Update**
I’ve been using the phone for a good 3 weeks now and I have to say that it has totally exceeded all my expectations apart from maybe 1 field – the camera.
Despite the fact that it calls itself a cybershot, the camera is distinctly second rate and is by no means as adequate a camera as I had hoped.
On the other hand, I have bigger and better cameras anyway…

As it is evident, I have rather neglected this blog for the constant pursuit of academic success – although that is strictly not true, wordpress informs me that I have a total of about 15 draft posts over the last month and a half which are sitting waiting to be polished up and then eventually published.

If I do get round to doing so, there will be various continuation posts on the state of the Labour party, a post on age restrictions and maybe a couple of insights into the iPhone and the modern desktop.

For the moment however, this post’ll have to do.

So, the dust has settled after what is steadily appearing to be Gordon Brown’s last budget and people are starting to see it for what it really is – a cover.
However, the front to it is most definitely an attempt to drum up support for his campaign – especially in Scotland – his own people, where he is rapidly losing support ahead of the 3rd May elections.

I’d much rather have Miliband (either of them) as the leader of the Labour party – in fact it’d make me more inclined for vote for them, as I would probably have voted for Blair in the previous three elections, but there is no way on earth that I will vote for Gordon Brown.

Apologies for the slight hint of a rant, but at least I didn’t move on to our esteemed President and Lord of the Universe, George W Bush…

This is, quite clearly a hot topic – and I have tried to leave this for as long as possible before making a comment on it so I don’t have to either a) keep on editing the post or b) keep on posting updates.

Iran have got themselves and us into a bit of a fix. We’re both at a stage where neither of us can back down without looking weak. Quite simply – we’re stuck.
Neither the UK or the Iranian governments are going to admit that the other is right – no matter whether it is true or false – and I think that they are probably both at a stage in the preceedings where even if their data is fabricated (on either side) then they will start to believe it.
The communication from within Iran has been used totally ineffectively – starting a letter with:

Dear Representative of the House of Commons

– what kind of a brit would *ever* use that – and if they did, they’d fail New Labour’s citizenship test.

Therefore the demands within that letter – withdrawal from Iraq – cannot be taken seriously, however the opposite is true of the treatment of the soldiers as even if this was written by Faye Turney’s hand, it certainly didn’t contain her own words, therefore her own beliefs – and therefore necesarily the truth.

So, both in this post, and in the situation – we’ve got nowhere. The UN has proved itself to be useless – the EU is doing what it always does, offer mindless chatter but no action and meanwhile Mugabe’s Zimbabwe looks set to have to endure another half decade of violence, torture and general persecution because the African continent is afraid to stand up for itself.

As I’ve just expressed in this post on Twitter I’m a) not feeling great and b) not in a good mood (as a result of both that and also an argument in a restaurant earlier) so apologies for the slightly rambling nature of this post and as ever, I’m offering a vaguely reasonable excuse.

If you are intrigued as to why there are posts on here that a) predate the site going live and b) predate the site’s current incarnation then I feel I should explain.

The answer to a) is that even whilst the site isn’t publically available, I’ve still felt the duty to update the blog whilst adding content etc. – thus keeping it alive.
The answer to b) is that I’ve copied a handfull of posts (only the most recent ones) which bridge a gap between my old blogs (hopefully to be taken off the web) and this new one – and they also act as a good reference point for some of my current discussions.

Please excuse me for a rather large lack of updates – I’m going to attempt to explain what’s been up recently.

In the last month (since my last update), I’ve totally formatted my main computer, installed Vista, cursed Microsoft a few times (but that deserves another post), installed Ubuntu, failed to get beryl to work (and cannot understand why) – resulting in a bit more cursing, had a birthday, started revision, passed the ECDL (a rather pointless IT qualification) and finished all my coursework (for all subjects).

As a result of that, two things have happened:

1. I’ve increased my caffeine addition – to the point where I actually *need* it to last more than 3 hours
2. I’ve had little time to sleep and therefore little “free time” to do any sort of design work – however with Easter approaching, that should now change

I’m also likely to get increasingly political – I’m thoroughly fed up with Gordon Brown – and maybe techical – although possibly only from a web point of view.

For the first time this year, I was able to go outside for a stroll down to the station wearing jeans and a t-shirt – no sweatshirt or coat or anything. Even in the shade it wasn’t overly chilly and there was even the occastional person out in t-shirt and shorts!
And this is the middle of February.

If this is Global Warming / Natural Climate Change / a Freak of Nature (delete as appropriate) then bring it on! Hopefully by the summer we’ll be seeing temperatures in the mid-high 30s which will negate the need to go to Italy (which I’ll probably do anyway, even if it is just for the photographic opportunities)

Well, this post won’t actually be displaying on anything, but the thought is there.

This is just a heads up to anybody intelligent enough to get past my rather flawed anti-spying shields that development is going well (but locally so you can’t see it here) *but* my stocks of teabags are getting dangerously low…

Looks like a trip into the village is in order. Must… have…. tea…..

Well, luckily for me, for the train journey that I most frequently take hasn’t changed too much – the single has remained the same and the return is up by just 5p – about 3%.

I think we’ve been quite lucky – in fact the extended journey into town hasn’t gone up, but down…

However where I think I may be hit the most are the tube prices unless I give in and get an oyster card, although I believe you can just get one from a simple vending machine so it remains totally anonymous.