"A NEW blog post you say?! WHAAAAA -" Autumn edition.

Yes, I have a new blog post. It's been a long time coming, as I'm sure many of my die-hard blog-fans were eagerly awaiting what wonders I have been up to during my Summer months off from uni (all two of you). 
In fact, it's been so long my laptop has forgotten what my default text style and size is for my blogger account... (and ergo, so did I). BUT YES! Here goes: a new chapter in my blogging "career".
To start with, a picture of a cat: 

Now that that's out of the way, I'll update you on how I spent the majority of my summer - (If you'll refer back to my earlier blog post entitled: "Summer - Not all sugar and rainbows..." you'll know I endeavoured to accomplish an exhaustive list of non-stop summer activities - three in total...).

So, appropriately, I realised three things:

This is how I imagine I'd look in my superhero costume - 
saving lesser beings from campers. 

1) I am awesome at COD: Not even in a way that most teenage boys can show off to uninterested girlfriends - not least of all because I'm neither a teenager, nor do I have a girlfriend - but in a way that means I fight with a degree of honour and righteousness (like a modern day superhero, trolling Xbox Live... THAT'S what I am...). My good friend Sebalicious can attest to my superiority on COD - I have no need to prove my point via a one-sided blogpost. 

This is how I felt when it happened...
I also tried growing my hair out for the summer. 

2) Pianos break. I don't know how it happened, either through overuse or intense use - but two of my keys are broken; namely the G# and A an octave above middle C. Weirdly enough, it started with the F# and G a tone below, but mysteriously "spread" to the aforementioned keys. Like some weird... piano breaking virus. On the subject, the neighbours decided to launch an official complaint regarding my "excessive" piano playing. I didn't realise 8:00 on  a Saturday morning would be a problem, but these neighbours are in a league of their own. The word on the street (literally; from our curtain-twitching busy-bodied neighbour Karen) is that they do drugs and all have ASBO's... so I'm guessing they were hungover and/or high on that particular Saturday morning (or planning their role in the London riots) Ahhh good ole' St. Albans... :') 

This is how I was. 100% accurate, even down
to the bloodshot eyes and blue-tinted skin tone. 

3) Blogging over summer is surprisingly difficult. Not because I didn't have a particularly uneventful one, but it quickly became tiresome and contrived. Moreover, it feels like the stuff that happens to me when I get back to uni is more blogworthy than telling strangers on the internet how I just owned several other strangers on the internet, via the medium of COD. There's only so many times you can brag about your incomparable K/D ratio, or that you've just covered that new Rihanna song on piano. 

BUT - with a new year at uni ahead of me, I'm more than confident that I'll devote myself more fully to blogging. After all - It is my duty to keep strangers on the internet informed of the happenings in my life. FOR THAT IS MY TRUE PURPOSE! XboxMan - AWAY! 

The real social network: Stalking - We all do it.

The ability to use the internet to find out information is an astounding thing. It has no doubt settled many a debate, query or concern for everyday internet-users. But is there harm in using the internet to find out information on people...? Be they your peers, potential colleagues, or possible love interests, the internet can be an invaluable tool for gathering personal information on individuals. 

This cat takes the internet seriously... should I?

And it seems to be something that is harder to admit, while in turn, becoming ever more prominent.

This sense of "cyber-stalking" can seem to carry a social stigma - in that, admitting to knowing information about a specific person (most commonly, via their Facebook page) requires you, successively, to admitting to having looked on their Facebook page - removing the anonymity the internet provides.

I, however, suffer no ill-effects of stalking, nor of being "stalked"... I have no problem in confessing how I know things about people from their Facebook page - it's on their Facebook (in a sense, it's their fault that I'm looking on their facebook page in the first place... :P). On estimate, I would say I source around 85% of my pre-existing knowledge of an individual from Facebook. Would I call myself creepy (most people would), or just an astute internet-user?

I also have no problem in people knowing semi-intimate details about my life. In fact, recently (without wanting to come across too big-headed) I seem to have acquired a few "stalkers..." That is to say, people who have - either knowingly, or unwittingly - found one of my online profiles and started "talking" to me as a result. As I previously mentioned in my trust post, I can only trust these people. What reason would I have to suspect any "foul-play?" (although, if they were to ever ask for my credit card details, alarm bells might start ringing... D:)

Moving on, if I were to think back to the days before Facebook, or even Myspace... (well, to be honest, my memory is SHOCKING, so I actually can't remember back to those days... :| and I never even used Myspace...), it's strange to think of a time when our personal lives weren't on display to the world... and our main method of finding out about people was good ole' fashioned conversation. Is this new-found "social-networking" just making us more... anti-social? 

I find talking to new people in person a challenge. Talking to someone over Facebook, when I don't have to worry about making awkward facial expressions, or over-exaggerated hand gestures (or, more appropriately, over-exaggerated facial expressions and/or awkward hand gestures... =/ ), is far easier to handle. But does that make me... lazy? And if that's the case, when would it stop? Would people stop showering if they knew they were able to avoid social interaction for a day?! (well... I would hope not...)

Are we all destined to turn into... THIS?! 

Personal hygiene = win.