- Speed. Over the last six months, I’ve found that speeds for anything other than standard HTML/Image files have decreased massively, and the load times for my (dynamic) blog have increased beyond what I’m happy with. I know I could have used caching and I will be on this host, but I didn’t expect to need to.

- Support. The MediaTemple support is *amazing*. I would still recommend them to anyone. Thing is, it’s slow. 24/7/365 support is all good, but with 18 hour response times, I’m finding it less easy to believe. Granted, I sometimes ask complicated questions, but a note that they’ve read my note and are working on it would be appreciated.

- Price. $20 a month (granted, I had a discount), is paying for stuff that I don’t need or use. My traffic levels aren’t massive; and I’m a student. All my income goes into my “uni pot”, so I decided that MediaTemple were too expensive for what I was looking for.

That said, I love MT. Their products are amazing (and I’m looking forward to seeing the CS product). I would recommend them to anyone; but the drawbacks I found after a year of service caused me to move on.

I don’t really remember the original animated series, it didn’t stick in my mind that much as a (younger?) child so I can’t really compare, but I absolutely loved the Hatter character – it was portrayed brilliantly- I think he must have been my favourite character in the film, it was just perfect. I wish he’d been in the film more though- he was maybe fourth character and a lot of the advertising media involved him.

Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum (characters of Matt Lucas) were amazing.

I’m no film critic, but I really enjoyed what I saw of the film (and I had great company), which made it a pretty awesome experience.

I’m looking forward to going back and seeing it in 3D – that should be even better. And 3D glasses!

Assuming I achieve the grades, I will be studying at Birmingham University on the F300 Physics Bsc course.

If I don’t, I’ll be studying at Cardiff, on the same course. (Assuming I get some basic grades).

As I posted before, I looked around both Uni’s and they were both amazing – both places I’d be more than happy to spend my three years on that degree, so  whatever happens I think I’m well set. Even better, I don’t need to deal with UCAS at *all* (I think) until August, when my results come out. .

I really enjoyed my time at Birmingham, I like the facilities, the department, and I got along well with the staff that I spoke too.

As Birmingham is also the higher ranked university; and the one with the higher grade requirements, it is pretty likely now that it’s going to be my first choice (firm) with Cardiff being my fallback.

That means that in as little as 8 months; I could be studying in Birmingham – a prospect I’m quite looking forward to.

The Birmingham Physics department I would definitely recommend considering, when thinking about a UK Physics degree (as would I the Cardiff department), their research grade is very high, and looking around their labs and such; there is a huge amount of equipment available for research projects (and some of the things first years were doing looked fascinating).

Its been a brilliant day, and I’m very pleasantly surprised that Cardiff has made me consider my previous decision that it would be my fallback uni, behind Birmingham. Granted, I have only so far been to Cardiff uni open day and the applicant day in next week, so I’ll compare the two directly, but I really enjoyed my time at Cardiff today.

The department looked great, the atmosphere was brilliant and I really liked that the department isn’t vast like Birmingham’s is, I like how personal everything seemed.
The facilities were also very good, and everything just seemed really nice, enough for me to sway from being definite about Birmingham for a while .

I also met an absolutely awe inspiring guy while I was there, on the same applicant day as me, called Glyn. I’m hoping to find his blog, and I believe I have his Facebook details but he was absolutely brilliant – him and catching back up with an old friend made the day for me.

Back on track though, I have Birmingham open day next Tuesday, and after that, now that my offers are all through, I can start thinking about my actual choices.

Interesting food for thought is that if I firm with Cardiff and achieve AAA grades (two A’s and my welsh bac) then I’ll automatically be eligible for a sizable grant, which I don’t think applies at Birmigham. I’ll find this out on Tuesday, though.

Well, I’m now about an hour from my train change for home, so I’m going to have a read.