The Onion: America's Finest News Source

The Onion is an American satirical newspaper that can also be viewed online. On the website they have radio clips and videos as well as their usual written content.

Sad Onion

I Stumbled Upon it some time last year and have since checked in every couple of weeks to see any new stuff they've put up - it's really funny!

There's also a Youtube channel for The Onion. It's hilarious so see some viewers' comments on these satirical videos - a lot of people think it's all true and can get quite frustrated...

College

I had my college induction the other day. I plan on starting an Access Course this September, which will carry on through to next Summer. It's the equivalent of doing A Levels in one year rather than two.

I have to stress, it's very important to me that I do well on this course and that I don't let myself get distracted. I've been to college twice already and left both times after four months. I wasn't ready for it then, but I am now! After college I'll be going on to University to do a Social Work Degree.

I decided to take Psychology, Social Work and English Literature. The first two will be pretty heavy so I chose English so I can take a breather now and then...

**March 2011 Edit: I didn't complete college, surprisingly enough... Oh well, fourth time lucky, eh?**

Twitter

Most of us have probably signed up to Twitter by now. People seem to either think it's a brilliant idea or a complete waste of time.

Both are right.

I signed up a few months ago and I think I've probably got the right balance between completely inane, pointless "tweets" and massively boring ones.

I have my updates protected, meaning that if someone wants to follow me then I have to accept their request before they see my profile or updates. I've had it like that the whole time because I heard about other people being followed by spammers who are just there to make money or advertise porn.

EDIT: I no longer have my updates protected - this means I can block and report any spammers who follow me. Ha!

It's not something I would recommend using as a "micro-blog", as some have described it. Nobody cares what you had for breakfast or which of your lovely cats has knocked something off the mantelpiece today. I think it's great just for being able to share links, anecdotes or little bits of information quickly and easily without all of the other crap associated with sites like Facebook or Myspace.

Social Networking

My Little Sister's Artwork

My sister's only 15 but she's turned inot a proper little artist!

I had a look through her GCSE coursework today and took some photos; they don't really do her work justice because I took them on my phone but you'll get the idea.

This first one is my absolute favourite - she really surprises me with her skills, especially when she starts using techniques on her work that I haven't even heard of...


Another three examples follow of her work on eyes - I think part of their coursework was to do studies on the different facial features and to use different media as much as possible.





This one doesn't look amazing because I went all daft for a minute and took the photo in quite a dimly lit room.... Anyway, it's some apples innit!



Finally, a self portrait. I was amazed when I saw this - there's no mistaking who it is! I'm so proud of her for what she's acheiving at the minute and feel very secure in the knowledge that she's going to carry on with what she loves.





**March 2011 Edit: My little sister is now 17 and still getting on with her art, she studies it at college now**

myLot

I've been using myLot for about a year now, on and off.

It's a great place to go if you want to talk to loads of interesting people who certainly have a lot to say!

Of course there are the odd few trolls about, the same as with any social networking site, but it's unbelievable how efficiently the user community bands together to get rid of them.

There are also people who join simply to add hundreds of friends and post one-line responses to thousands of discussions. The myLot admin soon catch on to this though and ban spammers very quickly.

By posting interesting discussions and useful responses to others' discussions on myLot you can earn money as well as great friendships. The amounts are tiny at first, but if you have the right attitude to the site then you'll soon see the money coming in. They pay via PayPal, on or before the 15th of every month.

The most important thing to remember is that myLot favours quality over quantity. It would be more profitable for you to post a couple of detailed discussions and five or six useful responses to others' discussions than it would to go mad and post 100 useless, one-liner discussions and responses. As I've mentioned, myLot acts quickly when weeding out spammers.

You should also try to get some referrals as you will earn a percentage of everything they earn (I think it's 25%). I don't have any because I've been lazy about it, but I know it would be very beneficial for me to get some!

Finally, all I can say is please don't post anything until you've read the Terms of Use, the FAQ and the Guidelines. They contain all the rules you need to keep to, such as not posting referral links in discussions. If you post a discussion that breaks the rules then it will get deleted pretty quickly.

After all that seriousness, you probably need to relax... so go ahead! Sign up, get posting and have a great time!

**March 2011 Edit I still love myLot and have recently returned there after a bit of a break! It's well worth it for anyone to have a look and sign up to myLot, trust me ;)**

I've Been Lazy

I've really been procrastinating recently. I haven't even written anything for the magazine this issue, that's very lazy...

I have been reading quite a bit though, I keep telling myself that's something.