Several months ago, a good friend of mine lent me a series of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I knew Patrick Stewart was in it, but that’s about all I knew. Quite frankly I was a little sceptical that I’d actually enjoy it, I’d seen a few episodes of the original Star Trek a long time ago and I remembered not having been very impressed, plus there was the show’s reputation as being that really nerdy thing which only sci-fi nerds watch.
    When I did watch it though, I began to really enjoy it and have since seen several of the Star Trek films and am soon going to try the Deep Space 9 series. What today’s entry is about, is not having the same mind frame I had about Star Trek, in others words, not thinking “I won’t like that, it’s too nerdy”. In my case, though it did stem from having seen some episodes when I was younger, it was an extremely hypocritical stance to take, I was basically thinking that Star Trek was too nerdy, but Doctor Who, The Legend of Zelda, Back to the Future, Torchwood, Donkey Kong Country, and all of the other ‘nerdy’ things I like, were not.
    It’s the idea that some series are only enjoyable to huge, stereotypical nerds is entirely wrong. Stereotypical nerds don’t even exist; there are just varieties of people who like varieties of things. Even if you might like to think that you’re above enjoying any of the things I’ve mentioned in this entry, think about some of your own personal favourites, I’m quite confident that at least one of them will fall quite neatly into the ‘nerdy’ category and be something which somebody wouldn’t watch, just in case they turn into a nerd.

_ For Creative Writing coursework I’ve made a website for pieces of writing by amateur authors. So far there are only three pieces of writing (by three different writers, including myself) here’s a link to it, please visit it and feel free to contribute your own pieces!

_ Recently, I’ve decided to take a risk and use the website Omegle again. Initially I was rather cautious, my previous visits had all lead to rather unpleasant occurrences, so for some time I’d avoided going back. But, a couple of weeks ago, I returned to this website, and I must say, it seems to be a somewhat reformed community. I’ll admit, I did bump into a couple of rather… ‘explicit’ people, but I won’t bother writing that up here because I’ve already written about some of my Omegle misadventures in the past and this would be more of the same. What I am going to tell you about though are two very nice people I met on there, one named Richard, another named Falon.
    Richard (a man aged either 28 or 34… I have both numbers floating around in my memory, but both of them may be wrong) spoke to me for quite a while indeed. He told me about his job and his life and kindly gave me some advice, based on his experiences at my age. Turns out he also happened to like Doctor Who, which is always a nice conversation topic. What was specifically noteworthy about Richard is the fact that he’s a male on Omegle who wasn’t secretly some weirdo searching for unsuspecting teenage girls.
    On the subject of teenage girls, we come to Falon, a 13 year-old girl who I also spoke to for quite a while. It was very interesting to talk to her actually, because she was the daughter of a man who had a job in the army and so had lived in many places across the world. It was very interesting to learn about her life, which was vastly different from my own. I guess she also proves that travel does broaden the mind, because she seemed to be rather intelligent for a 13 year-old.
    But yes, I thought I’d just tell you about Richard and Falon to show that the internet isn’t only full of crazy perverts. Also, I just realised, I gave each of them a link to my blog… I wonder if they still read it now? If either of you are, please leave a comment 😀

I must say, I don’t care all that much for Valentine’s Day. I do like the idea of a day that encourages people to confess their secret feelings to the ones they have romantic inclinations towards, that means lots of new, happy and, potentially, long lasting relationship. However, Valentine’s Day seems to be less about that and more about celebrating if you’re already in a happy relationship.
    Let’s try the same idea on different things: Good Health Day: a day where you celebrate the fact that you have good health and give cards to others who are in good health. I can’t imagine this would be very popular with people with terminal illnesses. Family Day: A day where you celebrate the fact that you’re family are all together and alive. You all give each other cards too. Won’t be very popular with families who have faced tragedy. I’m Rich Day: a day where you celebrate the fact that you have a lot of money. I can’t imagine that will be very popular in today’s economic climate. All of these days are celebrations of things you have, and Valentine’s Day is the same principle; people who don’t have these things will feel sad when others are overtly celebrating the fact that they do.
    Still, I’ll use this entry to say Happy Valentine’s Day to all of my readers, especially all of you who are single. If you’re feeling sad, I’ll say that my friends I know who read this blog are very nice and shouldn’t feel bad. Have a nice day! 🙂

_ I’ve been meaning to write about this on here for quite some time now, but I’ve always ended up writing about other things instead. Anywho, for today’s entry I’m going to tell you about a really rather clever idea of a good friend of mine.
    The idea I’m going to tell you about (if you haven’t figured it out from the title) is that of the ‘Smell Catalogue’. You may think that a Smell Catalogue sounds like a bit of an odd/silly thing, but I’d like to assure you that it is not. I’m sure you all know the pleasure of sniffing a rather lovely scent (that of a burnt sparkler for example) and my friend’s idea was to write down every nice smell you sniff so that you never forget any of them. I mean, if you smell something which is really, really nice, you’re not likely to want to forget it are you? So you write it down in your Smell Catalogue so that, should you so desire, you can find it and re-sniff it at a future date. Perhaps you’d like to start your own? I know I’ve been meaning to…
    But yes, I just thought I’d like to share with you this rather original idea of my friend’s.