The Atheist Blogger

This morning some friends of mine came over and started talking about weird séance-type stuff, which got me interested. One of my friends (Hay) suggested we hold one and use a Ouija board, just for fun. My other friend (Laura) didn’t think we should mess with stuff like this, and refused for it to take place in her house, so I suggested the most godless house in the area…mine. So we’ve invited a few other “spiritualist” people, including another friend (Ayten) who goes to have psychic readings (or “cold readings” as they are known to rational people) a few times a year.

As for the board, we plan to make one using a large whiteboard, and simply have a small glass as the pointer. The internet has a large number of websites telling us what to do, so it’s full steam ahead from here. My prediction? If everyone keeps to the pact “not to push the glass”, then we will be sat for an hour with absolutely nothing happening. If someone does push the glass, we’ll be in for a bit of fun. As the official skeptic of the evening, I won’t be breaking the pact. I might take some pictures if it’s worth it.

Has anyone else dabbled in the occult, if only just for fun? If so, have you got any suggestions or stories to share?

Tomorrow I officially start my second year of Computer Science with Information Security here at Royal Holloway, University of London. My timetable is actually a lot smaller than last years, but that probably means the workload is just going to be piled on top of us!

Monday

11:00 - 12:00 Object-oriented software engineering

13:00 - 16:00 Robotics Lab

Tuesday

12:00 - 13:00 Robotics

16:00 - 17:00 Object-oriented software engineering

Wednesday

10:00 - 11:00 Robotics

11:00 - 12:00 Algorithms & Complexity

Thursday

10:00 - 11:00 Algorithms & Complexity

11:00 - 12:00 Object-oriented software engineering

14:00 - 15:00 Information Security

Friday

09:00 - 11:00 Information Security

11:00 - 12:00 Algorithms & Complexity

So all in all, quite a good timetable for a first term. Friday mornings will be annoying, but at least I have an early finish. That said, I do not even want to think about the homework we’re going to get.

On 1st October, a load of our students are going to a “Microsoft Student Day” where we will be subjected to brainwashing Micro$oft propaganda interesting lectures on technology, as well as a speech from the devil himself Steve Balmer. Suffice to say, I will be sitting there with Gentoo Linux running on my laptop whilst Mr Balmer tries to answer my question about why anyone would actually purchase a Microsoft Surface computer.