Cycestrian - cy-ces-tri-an / Pronounceation [sigh-est-ree-an]  / noun.
–noun 1. a hybrid of a cyclist and a pedestrian. 2. someone who travels either by cycling and walking

So, first things first, cyclists. Now, the last time I looked, bike lights are avaliable from many stores, Halfords for one, yet it would seem that 3/4 of the cycling population in Kingston have never even heard of them, let alone purchased one. Here’s my thing, driving along a road at night, and coming towards me, in the distance, is a shadowy figure floating towards me. No, wait a second, its a cyclist… with no lights. The amount of times I’ve come across someone riding a bike at night on the road with no lights is ridiculous. Now, with being only 30mins from Central London, you can expect the roads to be busy at pretty much any time of the day. Now to be riding a bike with no lights at night in Kingston is completely insane.

Now, its not like Torquay where there is 1 cyclist per 10,000 people, here it seems more like 9,999 per 10,000 people. (Well, that maybe a slight exageration - but you get what I mean). However, when you do see the lonely Torquilian cyclist, at least they have a light so they don’t increase the risk of death, whereas here they seem to have a death wish.

Now, onto the other half of the cycestrians - the Pedestrians. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a pedestrian myself obviously, but when you are walking behind slow walking people I just want to scream and/or punch them. It wouldn’t be as bad if they walked slowly to one side of the pavement, but its never that simple. Its normally in a large group of people all huddled around taking up 110% of the pavement space, the only way to get past is to walk onto the road and get hit by a bus.

But, it’s not just people who are walking in the same direction as you - but also people who are walking towards you. Again, in a group but also as simple as a couple or a trio of people, who seem to think that you are able to simply walk right through them as they fail to work out that if they are already filling up the pavement, they have to move in to let someone past. Arrrh!

Every time I come on here and write a blog post I am faced with a line of ‘drafts’. Blog posts which never quite made it to being published for whatever reason. They’re there, all huddled together in a dusty corner of a server rack - waiting to be posted… waiting to be shown the light of day… but… the chances are slim, and if they were people they would know it! So, lets get that feather duster and lets have a quick glance at the posts which you never did see….

 First, there’s post number 13, or at least what would have been my 13th post, no I’m not that superstitious… that would have been posted but it was just never was. So, June 27th 2005 was the first and last day that my 13th post entitled ‘Pondering’ survived…

Secondly, ‘The What If Machine’, written on 30th November 2005, yet again never saw the light of day… what if it had been posted? (See what I did there in my all amazingness way?) Well… one day a blog along this topic still might occur… might…! So keep your eyes peeled!

The blog post solely titled ‘Post #35′ comes in third… it was never even given a name!

Then follows a string of posts all written while in America last year, none of which were ever privileged enough to be given the publish treatment, one by one called; ‘For the wrong reasons?’, ‘It’s all good folks!’, ‘3000 miles away and it’s only just getting started’, ‘My Last Week’ and finally, ‘Sunday’.

And last but not least, ‘The parcel that never arrives’, written only a few hours ago in fact! What about? Well… parcels of course… what else would it be?

It’s up to you to ponder what they’re all about… hey! What if one was about you? Maybe Post #35 was… but… how would you know? Come on! I’m not that strange honest - they weren’t all written for the wrong reasons, some were truly all good folks… it’s just when the time came it just didn’t happen, maybe somewhere 3000 miles away it’s all just getting started and it may all happen again? From every Sunday to every Last Week - all over again - well - we can dream can’t we? Sometimes that parcel truly does never arrive…

If you’re like me and have a laptop (like my lovely Acer Travelmate 8104) which seems to like to melt itself internally when using graphic intensive software like Notepad (or the most awesomest new game Supreme Commander), then here are my six fool proof steps to getting you back on the road again!

 Step One - Move to a desk! There is no use actually trying to use your laptop as a LAPtop - it just isn’t going to work… well… unless you either want your laptop to melt itself to your legs… or your legs to actually melt off.

 Step Two - Still not working? We need to get some air under that thing… go into the kitchen and get the metal grate thing which is in the cooking tray… Plonk your laptop on top of that and hey presto - instant air!

Step Three - If you’re like me with your desk right next to your window - open your window! - Added air flow with help prevent you from those unexpected shut downs…

Step Four - We need to take some drastic action; go get your vacuum cleaner, and use the nozzle pipe to hoover your laptop - yes - hoover your fans and such and get rid of all that dust and dirt in your fan vents!

Step Five - Alright, this clearly isn’t working… pop down to a computer store and buy a notebook cooler to go under your laptop…

Step Six - What? You CLOSED the window!?!?! You fool - open it back up again! We may now have a fan system… but extra wind power is always a helpful bonus

Now you are set! You should now be able to play Supreme Commander or write in Notepad at your heart’s content!

Well it took over a day, but the website’s move to a new host and server is complete at last. After a few problems were over come and sorted, it was just a case of waiting while I uploaded my entire site to the new server in Linux’s crazy compression format and wait for for it to extract all the files to where they were meant to be!

So, if you had come across my amazingly cool and hip maintenance message over the past day you now know why! Hopefully everything should be working as it should - and other than yesterday and today, you shouldn’t even notice any changes! I get a bit less for my buck now, but its pretty decent and will do everything I need (for now!)

At the same time I also renewed my .com address for a further two years as it was due to expire in the next few weeks! So hopefully long live the site!

In other news (kinda), I’ve started to fix the problem with the gallery, it now looks a bit better than it did the other day, but still not 100% - I’ll keep trying to fix it though over the next few days.

The Ori, a group of ascended beings who through evolution became pure energy to form a higher level of existence of our own along with their Priors who have been dispatched to Earth…

…Now, at this point you’re either thinking… ‘What the hell is this guy on?’ - or you know what I’m on about - either way - they’re in Stargate SG1… a formidable enemy who plan to take control over the Milky Way by either making everyone pray to their religion Origin to give them power or destroy all non-believers.

They go about this by despatching Priors (believers who are given god-like powers) to worlds who either convert the world to Origin, or destroy them, one of which you can see below…

Now, after rustling through the various websites on my daily rounds today, one namely being the BBC News site, I came across this photo of Clint Eastwood…

Has Clint been prior-ised?!?!

So, 50 days and 3,000 miles later, here I find myself in a lecture room in Kingston, with all the characteristics of an everyday lecture back in Charlotte… other than the accents being different… oh and they spell colour correctly!! But, what else is really different from my American counterpart? Well… here it is… hopefully relevant for you folks on both sides of the pond… a little insight and run down on Charlotte vs. Kingston!…

Now, granted the University of North Carolina (UNCC), had many, many buildings, sports fields, residence halls - parking! everything, whereas Kingston Uni Penrhyn Road, in a nut shell is 2 buildings with 1 giant portacabin plonked next to it… here you can decide which one looks more inviting!…

The main entrance to Kingston University’s Penryn Road Campus with sign!;

UNCC’s entrance sign - and with thier big campus it can stand proud on its own!;

Kingston Uni’s main teaching building;

One of many teaching buiildings at UNCC; (much newer and nicer!)

Kingston Uni’s main… corridoor;

UNCC’s main… er… path?…;

 And finally, to get some scope on the size differences of these two campuses… here is a satelitte image of Kingston University, Penrhyn Road (in red);

Compared to the University of North Carolina, Charlotte’s campus below at the same scale;