It all started earlier. I was walking through town (very boring, but hey, listening to music makes it a tad more bearable) when suddenly my music was interrupted by the familiar SMS Chime, which is also used when iTunes finishes ripping  CD or an application finishes installing on my iMac (not that you needed to know that). Anyway, I pulled out my iPhone and looked at the screen, half-expecting it to be a message from my girlfriend telling me about the fun time she’s having away from me (Ok, I jest… I’m just a little bit jealous that she’s away and I’m stuck here in normal, old, ordinary life).

Anyway, I looked at my phone and, to my surprise, it was a message from the NHS. Grrr… Who gave the NHS my number? After the twelve messages they left on my answering machine WHILST I WAS VISITING MY FAMILY, I thought it was about time we took a break. But alas, it was one of those typical “Work, not fun” messages informing me that I had an appointment with a Endopodite- No, wait, that’s the name of the “internal or principal branch of the locomotive appendages of Crustacea” (basically a crab’s leg… See, I am clever really). It was an appointment with something beginning with an E, though. This struck me as odd, because I had not previously booked an appointment with an appendage -let alone the appendage of a crab- and as far as I was aware, my blood test the other month said that I was completely healthy (as far as the things it tested me for went). Then I noticed a cunning, yet predictable plot twist.

The said appointment was an appointment at Derby County Hospital. What!? I don’t live in Derby! So I automatically passed it off as a wrong number… until I was telling someone about my mysterious message via Text and my phone tried to auto-correct “given” to “HIV“… H I V … How often do I use that in a sentence? How often does the phrase “HIV” crop up in conversation?! Honestly! I swear my phone is telling me something. It’s bad enough that I’ve been receiving Viagra emails in it’s Mail client, let alone all this! It seems tha the phone is slowly taking duty upon itself to tell me I’m in need of medical help… possibly to do with my genitalia? I don’t know, but it’s quite scary. I know my phone knows quite a lot about me – possibly more than my own mother (watch the video to get the reference) – but how much does it know? I guess time will tell. Until then, I’m going to go and eat Pickled Eggs. Why? Because they give me wind, which I often find useful. Om nom nom nom… *wind*… nom nom nom…

Today, Jimmi and I decided to go busking for the first time in our lives. Why? To prove that we could do it. So we did. We originally went up to sit outside one of the busiest areas of town, but it was too crowed. Instead, we settled for a more gentle area a little bit further up from the main shopping district, towards the Cathedral quarter of town.

We found a nice bench and set up there, taking our acoustic guitars out and putting the cases behind us. With a quick tune up, we were away and playing. Halfway through the first song, a young boy (about 5 or 6) came up to us and gave us £1.25, which was really kind of him. We thanked him and played another two songs, before the inevitable happened and we saw a fluorescent jacket in the distance. So we packed our bags and ran away before we got caught, since busking without a permit is slightly illegal.

Anyway, we walked around a little and set up in another spot where we played for another half an hour. Unfortunately, there was a homeless guy near by so we were fighting for people’s support. But we weren’t there for the money. It was good fun and we plan to do it again. The highlight (after being given £1.25, which we spent on cake lunch) of our playing being a young toddler head-banging as she walked past. All in all, it was a good day.

Until about 1:18, that’s exactly how I imagine my Step-Father in Law (to be) at my wedding… Not that I’ve ever really met the guy. But from the sounds of things…

After 1:18, the rest of it just turns into a painful edition of “Why people with too much money, ego and the lack of sense shouldn’t get married“. Guest starring Soulja Boy and his inexplicable turd- I mean, dance routine. Maybe they should also get that cassette player fixed while they’re at it? Maybe it won’t play such horrid music…

I want to know why they didn’t just use the elevator instead though.

A typical Wikipedia page

Wikipedia. Millions of people use it everyday, and it’s one of the most easily dependable websites to rely upon… which, in itself, is a huge problem. Most Schools, Colleges and Universities don’t accept Wikipedia as a reliable source of information because it can be “Edited by anyone”.

Somehow they seem to think that being publicly editable and being wrong are the same thing… which, in itself, is misguided and stupid. Have you ever tried to edit anything on Wikipedia? I sure have. The moment I changed it, it was changed back. It was something entirely correct, too (I wrote “Microsoft does not publicly plan to release a Mac version of this software” on a page about Microsoft Communicator 2008, or something similar). Or at least it was under my impression that it was correct; if there was to be a Mac version, it would have been listed on Wikipedia. I think the only few contribution I’ve made on Wikipedia that hasn’t been removed is a photo I took of punk-rock band “The Offspring” at Download Festival 2008. Everything else is gone.

So for this magical “anyone can edit it” website, I sure can’t edit it, and I’m one of the people they’re referring to… Unless you have strong evidence of what you’re writing that is. And what’s classed as strong evidence? A website that has at least 90% accuracy on the subject, and is registered as a reliable source of information (not just any old person’s thoughts. For example, I could publish an article on this blog saying “Britney Spears has had another child” and it wouldn’t be accepted as evidence. Something like BBC News, for example, would be).

Anyway, what I was about to get onto was that there is any easy way to still use Wikipedia to do your research, but get around the stupid idea that Wikipedia is unreliable. Drum roll please…

Wikipedia pages' references

At the bottom of almost every Wikipedia page is a list of references that make up the wikipedia page. Wikipedia is basically just those sources combined together and written in a different way. Every page has them. Even pages about, well, anything! But if you’re not allowed to list wikipedia as a reference, you can use Wikipedia’s references. Most people don’t think anything of them and just overlook them, or don’t even scroll down far enough to realize they exist. They don’t really make sense to anyone… just a list of unrelated links. But they’re not, and if you see the little links with a number in next to what you’re reading, click it and you’ll be taken to the reference. Just go to the website, print it out, link it, whatever. You now have a valid reference with literally the effort of going to Wikipedia and searching for what you’re looking for. It speeds up a lot of time and gives much more reliable results.