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It's been in the news over the last couple of days that Oxford University are looking at making it a contractual obligation for students to attend lectures. This whilst good for getting students to attend lectures might be a bad idea. Students are notoriously lazy, my theory is that this is because of the new found freedom most of them tend to enjoy away from home. But surely there is a better way of encouraging lecture attendance than taking people to court if they don't.

The Oxford Student writes (Full article here) that
"…the contract has been approved by a university-wide body, the Conference of Colleges. This has been done without any consultation of student representatives."

This, however good the intentions of the university are, is quite unfair to say the least. If it was implemented here, as a student I would be a bit peeed off as i'm admittedly not the greatest student at making lectures ever. So in addition to not turning up to lectures and missing important work, students would also be in breach of contract? A bit heavy handed in my opinion.

In other news, my insurance company are trying to screw me! I got a renewall quote for £655.85 yet found the same amount of cover with the same company for £410.43, cheeky gits. So iI'm going to call them and kick some arse… as soon as I get back from my lectures

I'm going back to bed, I thought it was monday today, I could have been very confused indeed whilst waiting for my lecture.

Well, this weekend has been Fun. The 'Family' went out for a meal on Friday to celebrate my mums 40th birthday. A big thanks to Steve for taking care of it all. I say 'Family' because our family always encompases circles of mine and my siblings freinds. We have a very open family that other people love to be a part of, which is fantastic.

Anyway, we went to the Moti Raj in Ripon which does some fantastic Indian dishes, the best i've had anywhere, we had a takeaway from there on Monday. However the service was, if i'm honest, very poor, the food came in stages, where half the table were sat waiting for thier food to arrive whilst the other half were eating, the food, and I speak for myself on this count, was also not nearly warm enough. There wasn't enough staff and the ones that were there couldn't pull a pint of anything without serving a head that required a spoon and a flake to eat. So apart from that and three errors (to my count) in the order taking, the night was very good. It just proves that no matter what the food and service is like you can have a good meal, something i've always been sceptical in suggesting. I guess it really is the company. That being said, it's still no excuse.

On a much nicer note but still relating to food, myself, my mum, Steve and Claire went to Dishes (you could visit the site if it was there!! James, get your arse in gear!) for some breakfast this morning and boy was it nice. Now I know I may be slightly bia having worked there but Dishes is great. I've not managed to get into Dishes for a meal in the evenings, only days when it's a cafe but it's always fantastic. If anyone wants to try a proper cooked breakfast, go to Dishes.

So after this weekends mixed culnary experiences we decided that I should do a monthy blog entry on restaraunts. Now I know i'm not food critic but I think it could be very fun. So me and Claire have decided that we will make an effort to goto at least one restaraunt a month and I'll then write my own review of experience.

In light of Claire, Mums and Steves bright new idea i've figured out I now need (or at least want) to reprogram my content system. Grrr. I am happy with my current one but I want to make anouther capable of bigger and better things which means a complete rebuild This however I will save untill I have finished my degree and can be a project for the summer to brush-up and heavily improve my PHP and MySQL skills.

Oh and on another note, I love Top Gear!! I sat and watch nearly 3 hours of it this afternoon on UKTV Gold2. Woo!!

Today I've been working on my final year project and i'm not having fun. It's come the time when I need to put it all together and this is the point when trouble occurs.

At the moment I have a backend and I now need to make an interface so a user can control the backend. Kind of like building an engine and then a car around it. I am making progress but the wheels keep falling off!

On a more serious note, I'm giving serious thoughts to doing business management MA/MSc at the Hull University Business School. Seeing as I know I'll have my own business at some point I really want to do this. Anyone want to sponser me and then hire me?

link

Today one of my favorite web comics Faulty Programming has been put on hold. Nooo, I understand that people dont always have time for things like this and the author has explained he's busy but DAMN! I do like this comic.

In other news, Me, Paul, Kwame and Naomi went to Pozition in Hull last night and I don't know about them but I had an awsome time. Was hella good fun. I think I must have needed it to be honest. Plans for today are to get fully out of bed, goto the gym and then work lots on my final year project. Ahhh, the student life shall be missed!

Also I just wanna say that [url=http://www.last.fm/music/Pharrell/_/Frontin%27+%28feat.+Jay-Z%29]Pharrel - Frontin' (Feat Jay-Z)[/url] is still as awsome as whe I first heard it. Am listening to whilst writing this.

… to my mum for reaching her 40th birthday. We had a lovely indian takeaway as a little celerbration and were having a proper meal on friday too (anouther indian(same restaurant?!?!?)?!?!?) I've got back after setting off from Ripon a little later than I wanted too, oh well, at least i'll sleep. I also attended a funeral today in Harrogate. My Great Auntie Anne died earlier last week. The main memories of her were when I was at primary school, we would frequently kick the football into her garden (it was at the top of the playing feild) and she would come out, rescue it from her dog Monty and throw it back to us. A very sweet old lady indeed.

A big shout out to Dishes' crew over in Ripon. I bumped into Tom who I worked with when I was over in Harrogate today. I hear that Dish himself is a fan of this little blog. woo! On his website (The Dishpig Experience) he invites people to spam me senseless. So to return the favour can someone DOS him? i'm sure I must have more readers than him At least he has me in the "funnies" section.

Urban Dictionary Entry For Greeny

perhaps not a good idea to publicise it?

The world seems like such a nicer place after some sleep! I got everything handed in on time and am pretty happy with what I submitted. So since yesterday morning I went to a lecture then came home and slept for a few hours. Then last night Claire came over, yey! She hasn't been over for 2 1/2 weeks, a very long time as anyone who knows Claire will agree.

In about 30 minutes everyone in the house is going up to the Sanctuary for a nice leisurely afternoon drink, one of Adams better ideas ;). Oh while I remember, if you didn't watch the eleventh hour with Patrick Stewart then you should defiantly catch next week, it might be the best new drama series on terrestrial in a while.

I have finally finished my strategic planning coursework and am off to bed… for an hour and a half. grrr. damn my body clock!

Nighty!!

What makes a good blog? What makes someone read a blog day after day? Well, I generally tend to read the blogs of people that I know or have some sort of affiliation of. Such as university collegues, friends from uni and lecturers. These are the only type of blogs that make my blog role. I was pondering during a lecture why that is? Is it because i'm nosey? I don't think this is the case, so what then? I would like to think that it's because I like to have access to information and stay well informed.

So with this in mind, why does anyone read this blog? Well, I know of only 2 maybe three people that actually frequent it and I get the feeling that it's through RSS aggregators as opposed to actually visiting the website. This doesn't bother me as such but people always seem more inclined to leave a comment when visiting the website than when they read in a aggregator.

So if the 3 people that read this are doing so, why do you read blogs? what type of blogs do you read? and why do you read mine?

I also want to wish a friend from University David Morris a happy 22nd Birthday. Gratz mate