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This one’s too long for a tweet, but that’s really all it is – don’t go reading into it.

I’ve been on and off about whether to password protect this post or not. For the time being, here it is. If you think I’ve made a hideously bad judgement call in posting it, please let me know.

This evening’s been such a rollercoaster of emotions. I’m struck by two completely different extremes; on the one hand, there are the people who inspire confidence in me to continue acting the way I have been, and then I hope I’m sort of making a difference; on the other, there are those who do something stupid and insensitive and ruin it. Not only do they upset others directly through their actions, they’ve effectively ruined that confidence.

The worst part. I have to do the work to try and undo all the crap they’ve just created. Not for their benefit, to try and salvage friendship and trust, and make sure that somebody’s OK. They’ll probably never read this, but that’s fine too.

I’m lucky in that I know so many people who are the former rather than the latter. I just felt the need to write about how angry I am right now, I apologise. For those who know me: the people who have pissed me off definitely know that they’ve done it, and I guess you’ll find out soon enough who they are. I won’t be talking to them again.

I’m actually stunned by the lack of sensitivity that two people have managed to display this evening. I could ask whether it’s a fault of the impersonal nature of the social networking software they were using, or a fault of the alcohol they were no doubt consuming, but it doesn’t matter now.

Writing this has helped. I know I shouldn’t have done it on the spur of the moment, but I don’t think I’ve jeopardised anything by doing so. It’s too general for that. Comments are apparently closed – that’s probably the only good call I’ve made in writing this. Thanks.

Today was the demonstration outside the Church of Scientology (by Blackfriars station, on the river). I’d say there were anywhere between 80 and 300 people there, though seeing as that range is probably incredibly inaccurate I’d appreciate a correction from someone who can judge numbers better than me.

A quote from textually.org: "The London protest is reported to have drawn in anywhere from 500 to 1000 people." I had no idea it was so many.

It was fantastic seeing all the Internet (digg, 4chan) memes in real life; there was plenty of talk of cake, traps, the current state of Tom Cruise’s sexuality and Soviet Russia. Longcat made an appearance (or several), which was hilarious.

 
Photos by Lawrence McGovern

I also love the fact that I get to ‘review’ the Met based on today. I guess they handled it well; I spoke to a police woman (and her horse) at about 12 o’clock and she said that it had been peaceful and there had been nothing much happening up till then. They did make a point of keeping everyone on the pavement, but I’m going to assume good faith on their part and blame the stupid, jumped-up bureaucrat who came up with the MPS’ "demonstration policies" (which are no doubt so much longer than necessary, a bit like this article).

Photo by Nic Walker

Of course, I had to leave pretty early, so I can’t comment on what happened after about 12:30. I did call up City of London police this evening (for the absolute hell of it) and spoke to the rudest guy ever, who wanted to know in detail exactly what my interest was in those demonstrations. I managed to wrangle out of him that there were apparently no arrests made all day and it continued to be peaceful. Internet organised demonstrations, eh?

 
Photos by Tom Scott

As always, Flickr and YouTube tell the story best, and here’s one more photo that isn’t CC-licensed. I’ve got a couple of videos that I’ll put on my YouTube profile when I can be bothered. Photos embedded here are of my choosing and mostly random, but if you look closely some of them might contain people I (or maybe you) know :-)

Photo by Tom Scott

Friday night (the 1^st of Feb) a massive group of us, about 10 in all, went down to Brixton Academy to see Paramore play with New Found Glory. We missed the first two supporting acts, Conditions and Kids in Glass Houses, but got there for the start of NFG playing.

Photo by phillyist

Honestly, I was a little disappointed by New Found Glory. Don’t know quite what I was expecting, or how it could have been better, but it wasn’t what I thought it would be. They were still good, just not the "me-bouncing-off-the-walls" kinda good.

As for Paramore; if you don’t know how I feel about them, imagine the happiest thing you possibly can and multiply it by a couple of million. That’s me when I’m listening to them. It was awesome, so so awesome. I have no clue how to review stuff, let alone a concert, so I’m not even going to bother trying. "I loved it" will have to do :)

Mr Moosey (I have no clue how to refer to people here anymore) was fantastic enough to share photos, so you should take a peek. And I’ve got no clue how you could watch videos of it to get a feel for the place, but maybe YouTube has a little something.