A Faltering Start

Already I'm confused. My first post; do I start with something that feels like a beginning, with a run-down of my life up to this point, or just start typing my thoughts and drip-feed the back-story as the blog unfolds over the coming months? I think I'll sit on the fence and do both. Incidentally, the only word that Firefox has highlighted so far as being misspelt is 'blog', a word which you might think would be included on a list of words for a spell-checker inside an application which will be used, by many people, to update their blogs. Also, that last sentence was a lie because by the time I had typed the phrase 'so far', the word 'Firefox' had also been highlighted. At least the creators of this browser are modest - if I wrote a browser, I would make sure that its name was immortalised in the spell-checker's word list, not only as a proper noun but also as a verb and an adjective, just in case. "Using version seven of the Mattatron browser, Matt Mattatronned several websites. The results were most Mattatronistic." In my browser, that sentence would be allowed. Oh, an update: the 'checker' part of the word 'spell-checker' has been highlighted as incorrect, although this may be because of the apostrophe and the 's' that follow it. Still, an internet browser spell-checker that has issues with its own purpose, the name of browser in which it operates and the word 'blog' does seem rather out of touch. Top marks for not pulling me up on my British-style spelling, though.

Sorry, that paragraph got out of control. It was supposed to be a short introduction to an introductory post. Now it's late and I'm going to have to compress my life story into one sentence because I have work tomorrow (well, today). Born in Birmingham, at age two I moved to Oxfordshire where I attended school until I gained good enough 'A' level grades to be permitted to attend Exeter University, from whence (can I used that word there?) I graduated this summer with a Master's degree in physics, despite spending much of my time trying to be a rock star. It's a little depressing that I can squeeze my whole life into a sentence, but then I suppose anyone could. Nelson Mandela got put in prison but then got let out and most people were happy. See? That was even shorter than mine.

Perhaps that will do for today. I'm not a regular inhabitant of the blogosphere (another non-existent word, says Firefox), but I know that I tend to ignore very long posts. I wonder if, as I post more, my style will progress from this slightly pompous and insecure pedantic-about-grammar-and-spelling-despite-not-knowing-that-much-about-it way of writing. I hope so.