Blogger's Challenge - "Next Blog"

OK, I've tried this before and it may fall flat on it's face again, but I'll try and rope in the help of my fellow bloggers and we'll see how it goes. My aim is for bloggers to interact and basically to get people to actually read/comment on my blog!! And so I set out this challenge, to click the "Next Blog" button above whatever blog you're reading (presumably mine or yours) and keep clicking through the randomly generated blogs that appear when you do so to find ones that match the categories I set out. The categories are:

1. A blog written by a woman
2. A blog with a custom background
3. A blog from a foreign country (U.S. and U.K. don't count even if you don't live there!)

These shouldn't be too hard to find, I think I'll give it till the end of September for people to catch on. Once you've found your three leave a comment ;) on my blog and post up your results on your own. The winner will be the one who finds all three in the least amount of clicks. Before you get to it here are some groundrules that I'm making up!

1. You cannot filter through blogs you know - you have to use the "Next Blog" button
2. No backtracking - you can stop and start as often as you like, but each click counts
3. It has to be three seperate blogs, if one blog has one or more categories it can only count as one (however you don't have to categorise it immediately, you can wait to see what turns up)
4. If you like it then I'd really appreciate you passing it on and pointing people to my blog where it came from.

Happy hunting bloggers

Word of the post: Circumspect - adjective

1.	watchful and discreet; cautious; prudent: circumspect behavior.

Writer's Bloc 1 - Interesting Theory

Jus' keeping up the blogging. Well now that Uni's over I'm finding myself in the position of wanting to write stuff, but without the direct motivation of having to hand something in it's hard to get going. So I'm going to use this blog as a sort of journal and to keep a public record of my progress that will hopefully spur me on to complete the project. As of this moment I haven't written much beyond an opening line, and a closing line that came to me in a stroke of genius while I was asleep. I won't say much about it for now as there is still a risk of it being another aborted project. But I've been doing a lot of planning and research and part of the focus of this will be to post the stuff I discover whilst digging background info. All I'll say of the piece for now is that it's Sci-Fi, set in America and involves conspiracy theories which leads to what I'm about to pass on - in good ol' C 'n P style I present possibly the whackiest conspiracy theory I've met so far, though I expect to see many more.

Microsoft sends messages on Wingdings Font

The Wingdings Font included with Windows has a history of controversy. In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as Skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture. This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews, especially those from New York City.

Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. Various other combinations of Wingings characters are alleged to have special significance by conspiracy theorists, but these results are likely purely coincidental.

This theory and others came courtesy of This Site - one of the saddest I found was that Sept. 11th was orchestrated by the US Government (or the power behind it). I hope I'm not ignorant in hoping that the government wouldn't even concieve of such a plan. Well that's all for now i think.

Word of the post - Belligerent - adj.

1. Inclined or eager to fight; hostile or aggressive.

Graduation

Well the event itself has been and gone by a fair bit now so it's about time I got on and blogged about it eh? It was a good day and it felt good to have a formal celebration of all that hard work I'd done. The gown itself was fun to wear and made you feel silly and respectable at the same time! Thankfully there were dressers there to assit with putting on and the gown did not reach the floor so the risk of tripping up was significantly decreased. The hat however was much larger than I'd anticipated and wobbled somewhat- but hairclips were at hand to alleviate that problem. So everything was set and we were all ready. My parents and good friend Edd were along for the ride and after some mooching we got settled in. It was good to see my friends again and to see how they'd all gotten on since we left, reactions to the event varied from giddy excitement to wanting to get out of these silly clothes!!

Then came the two second wonder where I got up and shook hands with the Vice Chancellor, complicated by having to wait on a steep ramp that made you put all your concentration into not falling backwards. Then you were up, your name was called you shook hands, people clapped and it was over - gone in a blink, but nonetheless a great experience. Then we sat down for the rest of the grads from the ICDC (International Centre for Digital Content) and maybe somehwere else, it was interesting to note that for at least one course the entire year was made up of asian students. Then we had the honorary fellow, which in our ceremony was David Morrisey, star of Blackpool, Basic Instinct 2 and the recent series Cape Wrath. It was nice to have a famous face, though I was jealous of the previous day's graduands who had Brian May!!

Then there was a lot of standing up and sitting down again and clapping, we were handed the little JMU badges that are the official token of your graduation (I still haven't recieved my certificate!!) and then we were pronounced graduates of the university, class of 2007. Interestingly you remain a graduand (a term I didn't know existed until it was pointed out to me) right through the ceremony and it wasn't the clothes or thehand shaking that made you a graduate, but you only became one when the Vice Chancellor proclaimed you to be one.

Then I mooched around town for a while and hurt my foot from wearing formal shoes for too long!! Well that's enough for now - other than to resume my word of the post thingamy

Auxiliary –adjective

1.	additional; supplementary; reserve: an auxiliary police force.