One Day in History
I wrote the following for the History Matters One Day in History program. The point is to get "as many people as possible to record a 'blog' diary which will be stored by the British Library as a historical record of our national life." It's geared towards the Brits obviously, but I didn't feel like being left out.
It seems the intention of this project is that people in the future will be able to read back on what we have written as a broad illustration of what life was like for a slice of mostly British, mostly educated, and slightly skewed towards the financially affluent 21st Centurions. For those of you reading in the 22nd Century, I hope you have the flying cars that the movies continue to promise us.
My name is Rory Parle. I'm Irish. I'm 23. I'm in the final stages of a masters degree in Computer Science, a field which I expect to be over-represented in any Web-based endeavour such as this. By final stages, I mean that my thesis is written and ready to be published any time I feel motivated enough to go to find a printing shop. Other than that small remaining task, I'm essentially unemployed.
My day started at 1PM, and probably won't end until some hours into the early morning. I spent the early afternoon at my computer, reading emails and other communications.
I spent the evening at Trinity College Dublin's juggling society. I've been a member (though not technically, because I never attended the college) for four years. I spent most of the three hours teaching new members the basics of juggling, and catching up with friends who I hadn't seen for a few months, as this was my first session this academic year.
Boring details that might be of interest to future historians: I travelled to and from the juggling meeting on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit), an electric rail system. I occupied myself during the journey (of approximately one hour) by listening to a pre-recorded radio show on my portable music and video player (an Apple iPod). I didn't just teleport straight to the meeting, because we can't do that yet, despite what television would have us believe.