The Ranting Scotsman

Snack Packaging

2012-01-18T13:18:00.002Z

Crisps are (for some reason) sold in packs of six. I don't know why. There are 5 working days in a week, and 7 days total. That means you either have one pack too many or too few. Which is stupid. I have a pack every day at work, which means I have too many. That's not too bad really, and it'd take a hell of a long time to build up such a surplus that they were going stale before I got to them all.

But this post is about Rice Krispie Squares. There's no denying that they are delicious. The chocolate caramel ones are God's own snack. Jesus died for those tasty chocolate chunks and sticky caramel goodness.

So why do they sell them in packs of four? FOUR! What the hell is the point in that?

From a marketing standpoint it's genius. You need to buy two packets per week instead of one. Or pick up a single individual bar along with each pack. Which is not only silly but also more expensive. But from a "being sensible" perspective it's retarded. I don't want to have to do even primary school level maths in order to work out how many I need. I want to pick up one packet for each week I need. At least crisp makers reward me for this with what I consider to be a free pack. It all adds up. Probably.

So, Kellogg's, sort it out. Make it five per pack, stop the madness!

So That Was 2011...

2011-12-30T18:27:00.000Z

It has been a surprisingly eventful year, all things considered. Lots of stuff changed that I wasn't expecting, some good and some bad.

I got a new job. It's within the same company, but it's a lot better than the old one was and while I'm not singing and dancing on the tube ride in the mornings, I'm not cursing the world every day. Well, not as much anyway.

I split from my partner after 9 years and now live on my own for the first time. Wasn't a fun time and I'm sure it could've been handled with much more dignity than it actually was, but we all have 20/20 vision in hindsight. Being the ridiculously nice person I am I didn't go after her share of the debts (that's the last time I ever put stuff I don't want or use in my name!) and as such have been struggling a little bit more than I expected with money. However, I'm in a much better place now than I ever have been, thinking positively and being proactive about the things I want. Starting to date again was also weird, but I've been seeing a beautiful and charming woman for a few months and it all seems to be going well right now. We've been to Portugal, we've been ice skating, we're off to Somerset for New Year. Good times!

I got my driving licence back after an epic 18-month struggle with the DVLA. So that's improved my life enormously. As a result I was able to drive to Scotland and surprise my family for Christmas. And surprise them it did, since up to Christmas Eve I was telling them it was too expensive and so on. Insert evil genius cackle here.

The Albany Down album, South of the City, was finally released and you can now buy it via download or as a physical CD. You can get it from our website (www.albanydown.com) or from Amazon, Play.com or HMV. Well worth a purchase for the bargain price of £10. We're in the process of organising a festival tour of Germany next summer as well as a couple of weeks round Thailand at some point. The big old USA monster has reared its head too, but that is a huge gamble. But it's all getting better and better. I also had a go at a duo acoustic gig with a guy I went to school with and that was a really great experience which I hope to take up on a more regular basis.

So the year started off really shitty but is ending pretty great. I'm looking forward to seeing what 2012 brings. The Olympics in the summer and a zombie apocalypse in December. I know which I'm looking forward to more.

I hope you all got what you want for Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanza) and you get what you need next year. Have a great one!

Pimpin' Is Easy

2010-12-29T13:14:00.004Z

I haven't really been updating this blog as much as I should, but I think my blood pressure probably thinks that's a good thing. Until the next buttock-clenchingly stupid thing drives me to put virtual pen to paper in a furious psychotic scribble, here is some cheap promotion for my band, Albany Down.

We have recently released our debut EP, with a handful of tracks available to download for free. All you need to do is pop along to the Official Albany Down site and click the little link in the top-right corner. You'll have to register, of course, but it is worth it.

If you still need some convincing about how awesome Albany Down actually is as a band, you'll want to check out our debut video for the track "I Won't Wait" on YouTube. You can take a look at that right here.

You can follow us on Twitter (usually updated by our bassist but sometimes me too), Facebook and MySpace. And you should come to our gigs, because we are pretty awesome.

Snow Surprise

2010-12-02T10:31:00.002Z

Yes it's snowing across the UK.

This morning there were five different articles about snow on the BBC's "most read" list. Five!

Snow brings further travel misery
Is "working from home" a skive?
More snow as big freeze continues
In pictures: Let it snow
More snow disruption for England

Seriously, is that really necessary? Yes it's snowing. But it is December, traditionally the time for snow.

Christmas cards always depict snow, and those get sent around December (unless you're a fucking heathen and send them out early, in which case you deserve only death). Songs about this time of year always talk about snow. Find me a Christmas song that doesn't and I'll poke you in the eye with a stick. Twice. The weather reports have been warning us about snow for a couple of weeks. It is NOT shocking that it's now coming down.

So an article about it is maybe necessary, but that should be enough. Maybe two. Definitely not bloody FIVE of the things. What can they possibly say that the others don't cover?

Snow: it's cold and wet. Falls from the sky. Looks pretty when it's white, but crap when it turns to slush. Disrupts everything because people get scared and start freaking out like the complete morons they are. That last one is UK-specific, because people in Canada and Russia live like this for a lot of the year and they just get on with it. Hell, even in Scotland it takes a couple of feet before there's any major problems. That's why snowploughs were invented. Do they not have these south of the border? I know the government would just argue "saving money, not worth it, doesn't happen often enough to warrant it", yes it bloody does. They would pay for themselves almost immediately since you wouldn't have nearly the number of roads closed, cars wouldn't end up stuck so much, lorries would come off the road less, insurers wouldn't need to pay out as much.

When I'm king things will be different...

The Saga of the Office Mouse

2010-10-05T10:16:00.003+01:00

Our office has a mouse. This may not be a shock after the title of this post, but it does. In fact, a couple of months ago we had a couple of them. I guess it's not really surprising with the amount of food that gets left in drawers or on desks.

Now these mice had been seen by some members of staff during the work days, but it wasn't until one of them was blatantly sitting by one of the big coloured pillars that I saw them. It was a cute little brown thing about the size of a staple-remover (yeah, there's nothing else round here that makes a good comparison). Everyone, including the utter failures who call themselves 'men' were all flapping around as if it was suddenly going to go for their jugular. I picked up an old floppy disk box, sat down beside the mouse and prodded it on the butt until it climbed in. I then stroked it on the head until our Facilities guy came to collect it.

We thought that was the end of the story, but oh no.

Turns out the office either has loads of mice, or the same one keeps coming back. I like to think it's the same one with the single-minded determination of a cross between Jack Bauer and Family Guy's Stewie. I've decided to call him Chuck Dormouse.

A couple of weeks ago they set down traps all around the place. Little green ones. I don't know if they're poison or humane traps, but dozens of the damn things were put down, scattered around the office. No joy. Then they set down dye so they could find the paths the mouse (or mice) was (or were) taking. Then they repositioned all of the traps along these runs. Nothing. Except that now there's little mousey footprints skirting all around each one of the traps. Go Chuck!

I'm considering dropping some chocolate biscuit crumbs in my desk so I can keep him as a pet. I like the idea that it'd be him and me against the rest of the office. Maybe I could train him to do tricks and stuff. That would be sweet...

Charity Event!

2010-10-01T10:47:00.004+01:00

Because I love people so much (...) I have signed up to take part in a 24-hour video game marathon on October 16th. The proceeds all go to the Children's Miracle Network, which is a network of 170 hospitals around the world which research and treat children's diseases.

See, I might hate people with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but children don't deserve to get nasty illnesses. Adults? Probably. Kids, no.

If you stumble upon this blog and feel like donating, you can do so at this address:
Click Me!

The donation amount is in US Dollars, so make sure you've got a converter handy so you actually know how much you're giving!

You'll also be able to keep track of my slow descent into madness via my Twitter feed. Actually, I think that ship has sailed. My madness descent has well and truly bottomed out...

Countries Suck

2010-09-22T16:16:00.002+01:00

I've been watching the news today about the claims over ownership of the North Pole. This part I can't really say bothers me all that much - I have no plans to ever go to the place, there's no shops there and I bet the net connections are crap. What does bother me is the reason for the dispute - oil drilling.

Why is everyone still so crazy about finding the newest spot? It seems to me that the sensible thing to do in the most inhospitable parts of the planet would be build useful things that nobody really wants next door. And by that I mean nuclear power plants.

Think about it. In 50 years whatever oil is under there will be gone, no matter who owns it. All the while, reducing whatever ice they have around (allegedly) the pole.

Make it a habitat for a massive global nuclear hub, you have ready-made natural cooling. There's nobody around to kick up a fuss about having a plant built on their doorstep. A major accident (and this is what people are really scared of) is unlikely, but if it did happen then it'd only be polar bears at risk. But since the air is already like -30 degrees, the risk of a meltdown is reduced even further. Dig through the ice to the stone underneath, you get even colder because you're surrounded by massive walls of frickin' ICE! Less energy spent to cool your core surely means more to send down the wire.

Sure, laying cables up there would be pretty expensive as an outlay. But think of how much it'd help the world in general. And think how much it'll cost us all when an oil tanker inevitably hits an iceberg and spills oil all across the sea. Again.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "but what about the waste?". The average nuclear plant puts out just 3 cubic metres of waste per year after reprocessing. And the reprocessed uranium can be used for loads of other stuff. When these oil drills finally tap out, how much space will they take up? When we're all unable to do anything because nobody in the world has an actual plan for widespread renewable energy, how much space will any of us need?

Forward planning, people. The only good thing that could possibly come from the BP spill is people looking to other sources. Hybrid cars are already everywhere, so people don't need as much oil as they once did. Sure, I love a big roaring V8 as much as the next person, but less oil used on crappy stuff like keeping my lights on and my house warm means more to spare for fun things like car racing. IT all balances out.

Get In The Q

2010-09-14T15:36:00.002+01:00

I found out a couple of weeks ago that the brilliant musical Avenue Q is set to finish its run on London's West End on October 30th after over four years. If you haven't seen it already (and even if you have), I heartily recommend it. We've seen it twice, and both times we left with aching faces from so much laughing.

Yes, if it can make even a grumpy bugger like me laugh til my sides split then surely there's nobody in the world it can't tickle. Of course, if you have a problem with politically incorrect content, puppet nudity or Gary Coleman, you may want to stay away. But if that's the case then nobody will miss you anyway.

For anyone else, get in while you can.
The Avenue Q Website (UK Version)

People Suck #7

2010-07-27T11:14:00.003+01:00

They make me boggle, they really do.

It's not uncommon in this office for people to leave unwashed dishes in the sink. I can deal with that. The drain stinks, probably because so much food has been washed down there, but that's not a big deal. The dishwasher only gets put on at night so if you want to stop food turning into a solidified mess before it's ready then I suppose it makes some kind of sense.

But today I went to make my first cup of tea and found somebody had left 3 tea bags sitting in the sink. Why? The bin is right opposite the sink, about 3 feet away. You could literally turn round and drop the tea bags and they'd go in. Somebody took those tea bags out of cups and put them in there. On purpose. What were they thinking? Did they plan on coming back to them later? Wash the soapy water out of them and use them a second time? Do they have a collection of tea bags which require proper decontamination before they can go into storage? I mean you wouldn't want rancid milk in your collection, would you?

I just can't fathom it. We recycle a lot in here now (which I've been pushing for years) but even if you weren't sure which bin the tea bags should go into you'd look around to see what other people have done with them. You'd look in the 4 recycling bins and find no tea bags, then you'd look in the proper rubbish bin and see loads of them. Job done.

Sometimes I think they do it deliberately so that people have to ask.

I Aten't Dead

2010-07-09T16:13:00.004+01:00

Funny thing happened a couple of months ago. And by "funny" I mean "possibly the most annoying and scary thing to happen to me ever". Cue some flashback animation.

Few weeks back, my mum was visiting us. That's not the annoying and scary part. I thought I should point that out early since she reads this sometimes. Hey mum :) Saturday morning, around five o'clock or so, The Other Half is woken up by me rolling around making strange noises. She tried and failed to wake me. Worried that I was having some sort of fit and might choke, she rolled me onto my side. I continued rolling and ended up face down on the floor, cracking my head off the bedside unit on the way down.

Obviously a little concerned, she moved to pick me up. She picked up my head from the floor and was unsurprisingly alarmed when a load of foamy blood came out of my mouth. Turns out I'd bitten through my tongue when I hit the floor, but she didn't know that at the time.

She went to wake my mum in the room across the hall. My mum's been a medical receptionist for nearly 30 years and is about as close to a GP as you can get without an actual PhD. She looked at me and apparently my face looked as if I was having a stroke, so she advised The Other Half to call an ambulance, which she did.

The paramedics arrive a couple of minutes later (a very impressive arrival time, apparently) and start to get the questions out of the way. Any history of seizures, that kind of thing, I assume. I have no memory of this, so I'm going totally on what I've been told. I'm diabetic, so they were worried it could be a hypo, but Herself and my mum aren't convinced because the symptoms are a lot more severe and considerably weirder than any hypo I've had in the past. So they go to work.

Or at least they tried to. Apparently I was fighting the paramedics off. Not content with that, when my mum was trying to appeal to my better nature (I'm sure I have one somewhere), I was threatening her as well, pinned against the wall by her throat, Herself tells me. So they're totally failing to make any progress. 3 paramedics in the house by now (one came by car, the other two by ambulance) and not one of them could get me to calm down enough to take some blood.

In the end, they had to call the police. Paramedics don't have the authority to take someone to hospital by force, but the police do. So that's what they did. So, six in the morning on a Saturday, there's 3 paramedics, 2 police officers, Herself and my mum standing in our bedroom, with not even a partridge in a pear tree to round it off.

The police did eventually manage to talk me down, they tested my blood and it was a fairly un-hypo-y 4.1mmol/l (for the numbers geeks). So then the other questions begin. Somewhat predictably they were on a crusade to get someone to admit I'd done drugs of some kind, but obviously I hadn't. I don't do drugs, and I hardly think I'd be all about getting totally caned while my bloody MOTHER was visiting. But they wouldn't let it go.

I got a CT scan and was wheeled around from department to department all day with none of my tests showing anything other than "confirmed grumpy bastard". I eventually came back to the land of the living once we were in hospital and that's where my own memories of the day actually start.

Eventually they decided I was a lost cause and discharged me as "grumpy but more or less healthy" with nobody any the wiser about what actually happened. Our best guess so far is that although my sugar wasn't in technical hypo territory, that's what it actually was. As a result, I was having a bit of a spazz. When I fell out of bed I could have suffered a mild concussion (since I landed square on my noggin) and from there it sort of spiralled. The hypo then eventually passed and I went back to normal.

I've had weird episodes on that insulin before, and since then I've changed my prescription to a different regime (basal bolus, medical geeks) and a different brand (Lilly, in case they want to sponsor me). Since changing I've actually felt a lot better. Healthwise and actually considerably more cheerful. I'm not sure if it's maybe a coping technique after them taking my driving license away, but I'm liking it so far.

But of course because it was a suspected seizure, I was legally obliged to inform the DVLA who have now taken away my driving license until I get a clean bill of health. Now October 17th is D-day; the 6-month mark after the event, and by their rules if there is no repeat seizure during that time then I can apply for my license back. But I've been referred to neurology and they don't seem to think it was a seizure in the first place. If that's true, I'm going to have to work on the doctors using logic, since if it wasn't a seizure then the seizure rules shouldn't apply so I should get my license back early. We'll see.

Of course now I don't have the car I'm back on public transport, which is even worse than I remember it. Slow, crowded, annoying, stops miles away from where you want to go. The all-clear can't come fast enough.

So yeah, that was interesting. Definitely the most bizarre episode I've ever had. I have very little memory of the entire morning, with just flashes here and there. I remember hitting the ground with my face. I remember standing in my bedroom refusing to go with anyone. I remember sitting in the ambulance outside the house. But that's about it. Very strange indeed.

I do like to be special...

What is Wrong With You People?

2010-05-11T09:58:00.003+01:00

It's been a long time since my last blog entry, mainly because there's not been anything new to write about, but it occurs to me I'm on the verge of jumping around in the tube stations, shouting at total strangers about something they may not have even noticed they did. Probably safer to get it off my chest here.

Since I've been working in central London, I've been commuting in rush hour. It's as fun as you can imagine. Stuffed into a train with people's elbows in your face, stepping on your toes, kneeing you in the... you get the point. Not so great. But I can shut them out. I play music and games on my iPhone and I can be fairly oblivious. It's when I get off the train that the problems start.

Look Where You're Going
Eyes are useful on the front of your head, because that's the way our bodies are designed to go. So why is it such a surprise when there's an obstacle? You must realise that you're going to need your ticket at some point, so why wait until you get to the gate to dig around in your bag or pocket? My Oyster is always in my pocket, ready to be pulled out and scanned so that I barely have to stop moving. The reason there are queues are because people piss around at them. You've had the entire journey from the platform to get ready!

Plan Where You're Going
Related to the last one. Staircases are fairly straightforward, right? Wrong! So many people walk up them on the left side only to then have to fight through the crowds because they're heading right at the top. Why? Start heading that way on the way up, or join the staircase at the side you need to be at the top! You'll be happier that you don't have to cross the crowds, the crowds will be happier there's not some moron pushing through them. Everybody wins!

You Can't Invent More Space
When people are standing nose to nose on a train, pushing against them isn't going to suddenly create space that there wasn't before. People aren't standing that way for fun. I'm not standing on the train with some guy's armpit in my face just because I thought it was the best spot. Pushing against me won't help. Deal with it, accept defeat and get on the next one. Or move to a different place on the platform.

People Need To Get Past
On the other hand, if you're standing at an intersection of paths, don't be so surprised when people need to get by. They're not trying to steal your space, they're actually trying to get somewhere. If you don't get out of their way, the only choice they have is to push you, so don't look so disgusted.

Physics Apply to You Too
When a body accelerates, it creates unbalanced forces. This means a smaller body will be pushed in the opposite direction. So when the train leaves the station, why are you so surprised that you get pushed backwards? And then why are you shocked again when you're pushed forwards as it slows down? It'll do it every time, so there's no point acting surprised.

Stuff Can Go Wrong
When ticket machines go wrong and someone can't get through the barriers, that's not necessarily their fault. First of all, if you've just walked into them because you weren't expecting them to stop, that's your fault for being a retard. Secondly, thousands of people use the machine throughout the day, it's not actually all that surprising that there are hiccups every so often. It's not their fault, so treating them like they're holding up the line deliberately is uncalled for. And if they need to leave the queue, standing right behind them means they're going to have to push past you again. Give them some space, let them try again and allow them room to get out of the way if they need to speak to somebody.

Staff Members Are Not Your Slaves
The other day I saw someone calling for a member of staff to help him as if he was the fucking king. He wasn't; he was just some uppety cockney geezer with ideas well above his station. I'd have made him wait to teach him a lesson. Think of how many people they have to keep an eye on. You're just one of them, so if they haven't noticed that one of the few dozen ticket machines has stopped you going through, cut them some slack. And if it turns out the problem is actually yours then be prepared to eat some humble pie. And like it.

Other People Exist
This is possibly the biggest surprise for people in London - you are not the only person in the world. Hard to believe, right? But it is true. That means when you're walking the opposite way from me on the street and we meet at a narrow spot, we are both going to have to negotiate. I'll make the effort, but if you don't I WILL shoulder charge you out of my way. I'm sick of being the only one who gives ground in this damn place.

So I hope that somebody stumbles upon this blog someday and realises how much of an asshat they've been all their life and then chooses to mend their ways. If everyone was aware of what was happening around them, we'd all get through quicker, easier and happier. And my desire to execute every single one of them might dissipate a little bit. No promises mind.

Down with the Interwebs!

2010-02-03T11:26:00.006Z

Here we go again. This is another BBC article that I think misses the point. The claim is that internet use causes depression. Well to be honest with the number of pointless articles like this I'm starting to think they could be on to something.

The exact numbers aren't given, but of the 1.2% of people who claimed to be "addicted" to the internet (18 whole people), "many" of them were depressed. So to get the majority I'll assume "many" to mean "more than 9" but "less than all of them". Let's say 12 for the sake of easy maths. 12 people out of 1319 internet users are depressed. Brilliant. Let's blame the internet for that one.

I mean really. In fact, here's an interesting counter-statistic according to NetDoctor. 2% of people in the UK are depressed at any one time, so the article actually "proves" that the people in the survey have a LOWER rate of depression than average, so the exact OPPOSITE is true. People using the internet are LESS depressed than the general public! Score one for the online community!

Anyway, how is it fair to blame internet use when it was conducted via an ONLINE survey? Everyone who completed it was a net user, therefore their results are hideously skewed. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that people who use the internet to do surveys are just like me - they use the net a lot and want to make some money while they're at it. And people who have enough money to be comfortable don't need to do online surveys for money. So there's a huge potential area there for more unfair results.

I wouldn't even try to deny I'm a net junkie, but it is one of the ways I fight AGAINST depression. I can use it at work to read about things I like. I can plan what I'm going to do when I get out. I can read articles or look at pictures that make me smile and, just for a second, remove me from the mundane world of office admin work.

So according to statistics (which according to Homer can prove anything), the internet is actually able to lower rates of depression across the country. I rest my case. Free connections for all. Vive la revolution! We'll laugh all the way to the keyboard.

Showery with a Chance of Disease

2009-09-15T13:20:00.003+01:00

While I do usually like the BBC as a news source, this is the sort of scaremongering that really bugs the crap out of me. If you read it you'll find that showering is no dirtier than anything else. I shall now endeavour to explain why.

First of all, how long does the shower head need to go unused before there's significant build up of the bacteria in question? That is not addressed. If it goes for months (because you're a bather rather than a showerer-er-er - is that even a word?) then yes I'd expect some build up of dampness. But if it's used every day then surely the water gets refreshed regularly enough to prevent more than a handful of spores.

Secondly, an article quote:
Lead researcher Professor Norman Pace, said: "If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy."
Who in their right mind stands under the shower when they first turn it on anyway? You'd need to be fucking mental. What temperature is that water going to come out? You just don't know. Shower temperatures are Russian roulette at the best of times, the last thing any sensible person would do is stick their face in the path of potentially scalding hot water. Anyone who does that deserves any disease they get.

Thirdly, the overuse of "can", "probably", "potential" and "may" in the article means it's admitting to not having all the facts. It's skepticism based on an investigation which under certain circumstances might lead to some individuals being infected.

Fourthly, another quote:
"These bacteria, which belong to the same family as TB, can be found in the environment and occasionally in water supplies but rarely cause disease in healthy people."
Which means that the vast majority of people, normal people, most people in the world in fact, are not at risk from this at all. The rest of the population, that's folks like pregnant women and the elderly, should be taking care already, and not - for example - randomly hurling themselves under boiling waterfalls.

The article closes with the admission that they don't actually have enough evidence to be making wild claims like the article title does. So please, until you have actual insurmountable evidence, stop scaring people.

It's Always Good to Have a Plan...

2009-08-18T13:06:00.005+01:00

Just a quick note to say that I think this is the sort of thing we need to see more of:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8206280.stm

An actual study into the potential effects of a zombie apocalypse. With science!

That's just all kinds of awesome.

Scaremongering

2009-08-17T10:24:00.004+01:00

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I'm not at all worried about Swine Flu. In fact, I'm getting sick of the constant scaremongering that's going on throughout the world. Yes, be aware. But there's rarely any need to actively worry about these things. Swine 'flu, for example. They reckon it's no worse than regular flu. Which is what I've said all along. In an average winter, 8-9,000 people die of 'flu. On AVERAGE. The most was a few years ago where 21,000 died. And H1N1 has claimed what, 30 people? Ooh, scary.

I mean, for god's sake - we have notices up at work to show people how to correctly sneeze. It tells you to cover your mouth and throw away used tissues. No, really? So manners are apparently so uncommon that we now need actual written information on how to have them?

And now we have this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8202188.stm

So the warning is now "don't give this to your children because if they develop a severe lack of self-control in the future and indulge on an excessive amount, they might have an increased risk of cancer".

Several issues with that. The main one being that there's no actual direct link. It's the overeating that's the issue, not the meat. Yes, it's cured with salt, which can be bad, but only if you eat too much of it. Like anything.

Ridiculous.

People Suck #6

2009-06-26T13:05:00.002+01:00

You may have previously missed my feelings on this in the past, but people in this city piss me off.

I just watched, yet again, a police car being held up at a T-junction because the cars on the road were still trying to push past. It sat there, lights flashing and siren blaring, for around 20 seconds before it found a space to get in. And it was turning INTO the traffic, god knows how much longer it would've sat there if it had wanted to go right instead.

Why is it everyone here thinks that their journey is more important than the person about to assault your partner, rescue your children from a burning building or get your dying grandmother to hospital?

Do they not see them or do they just not care? The arrogance is astounding. Even with my stereo on loud enough to start the speakers struggling, I can hear a siren from about a quarter mile away. So why is it people insist on waiting until it's right behind them before they pull over?

Yet, I'd lay money on the idea that were the emergency services late to arrive to their incident because of traffic asshats, they'd be up in arms about it and we'd be expected to feel sorry for them.

Sadly, it seems like living in your own bubble and not paying any attention to anything until it hits you in the face is becoming pretty standard in this city.

I think all emergency vehicles should have cameras around them and automatically take pictures of any drivers who hold them up. Automatically send fines to the registered addresses the same way speed cameras do. Either that or give them bullbars and give them permission to push any blocking vehicle out of the way.

Pretty sure they'd think twice about ignoring flashing blue lights if one of them destroyed the side of their car and increased their insurance premiums.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2009-03-16T12:40:00.004Z

This seemed barely worth mentioning when it happened, almost made it into a Twitter post an hour ago, but it's grown into a full blog post now.

My job has me sending out emails to all and sundry, from people who can barely type their name right up to our "almost honourable" MPs. I have email templates set up to save myself work and I begin most of my emails addressing the recipient "Hi there,".

Well apparently this is not good enough for some people.

After looking into an order and replying to the customer, I received back an email including the response 'I also object to being addressed “Hi there” -- my name is available to you'.
I suspect this may be related to his title being 'Doctor' and his job being at Cambridge University.

Now some people may apologise and go grovelling at his feet, going "Oh I'm sorry Doctor, please let me kiss your ass for a while just in case you happen to be the second coming of Jesus himself, throwing miracles around the way you do, O lord al-fucking-mighty".
But I'm not like that. Doctor Cambridge (still ranked second to Oxford, cough cough) is nothing more to me than a bunch of letters at the bottom of an email and as such will be addressed exactly the same way that I address all letters at the bottom of other emails. The MPs don't complain, the hundred-million-pound-earning company CEOs don't complain, so little Dr C-word over there can deal with it himself.

Next time I'm going to address him as "Hi Philip" instead, see what colour he turns then. Because after all, "his name is available to me". Suck it up, bitch.

Screw Music

2009-02-24T11:24:00.003Z

A shocking US study has apparently revealed the "news" that teenagers want to have sex. No, really.

And for some reason they are relating this to "degrading" and "sexual" song lyrics.

Now just hold on a second here.
Teenagers have been having sex (and wanting to have sex) since their hormones first kicked in. Straight, gay, black, white, deaf, blind - all of them want to, some of them do. What exactly does music have to do with it? I've wanted to do it as long as I can remember, but I don't think listening to Steven Tyler's or David Coverdale's innuendo made much of a difference.

Did teenagers not want to do the nasty before mainstream music talked about it? I'm pretty sure it's age-related more than culture-related. I'm reasonably confident that teenagers have been getting busy from as young an age as they could manage for as long as there has been busy to get.

I might be pushing the old logic boat out a little far here, but could it possibly be that hormone-pumped teens want to have sex and are merely seeking out music that they can relate to?

Yet another (no doubt) expensive and time-consuming study that's basically shown nothing new with stuff that anyone with an ounce of common sense could work out.

Madness? This... Is... Irritating!

2009-02-20T14:22:00.003Z

So it's been a little while since the desk moves at work and as I've mentioned I don't like it at all. I'm not going into it again. I also have WhatsHisFace next to me with his annoying habits, but I may have found one that's even more annoying.

Dude sits across the other side of the room. No idea what his job is - could be anything. But every few minutes the son of a bitch rubs his hands. Not in a "my hands are cold" sort of way, but in a "let's annoy the crap out of Paul as much as possible" sort of way.

Every.
Few.
Minutes.

Loud hand rubbing. Possibly a little sweaty too, judging by the slappy sound it makes. Every few bloody minutes!

As a little test I am dedicating the rest of my afternoon to the study and will be timestamping each time he does it. Watch now as he doesn't do it the rest of the day.
I was about to mark the time the study started, but instead he rubbed his hands in a "start now" sort of way.

14:38 And we're off! [1]
14:41 He's got a drink now; that should keep his hands busy for a bit.
14:46 I think he knows I'm watching him. He's folded his arms.
14:49 That was a big one too. He'd obviously been saving it up. [2]
14:51 And another. [3] And a small one. [4]
14:55 This is starting to feel like stalking. I'm not stopping though.
15:02 Do it! It's been almost 10 minutes, come on!
15:05 Looking a bit nervous over there, sunshine. I know you want to!
15:08 Finally! I knew he'd cave first. [5]
15:09 That one barely qualified in volume terms, but it still happened. [6]
15:13 One more. [7]
15:14 That was a big one. We're back on track. [8]
15:30 Okay I was busy for a few minutes there. I must have missed a couple.
15:32 Phew. There's a relief. [9]
15:35 He's up the far end of the room now and I still heard that one! [10]

Okay I'm bored now, but you get the idea. Annoying as hell. If I could record audio or video I'd post that up too. Jeez. And he has dodgy hair. Grr.

Desk Moves, Twitter and Gigging (Oh My)

2009-02-11T13:40:00.004Z

As part of our move into Cable & Wireless territory, our building is being compacted. Not the building, obviously, that would involve engineers and scaffolding, but the floors the staff is distributed amongst. Instead of being spread over 4 floors, we're being moved into 2. It's not that big a deal, but it did mean we all got shifted around up here on the Seventh. It was a hassle and I lost the chair I wanted to keep (despite me going to great lengths to ensure it had a label!) but it's not so bad.
That said, I do appear to be sitting next to the most Obsessive-Compulsive person I've ever known. And I know ME. He has two lights on his monitor (which were shining in my face but aren't any more). He got his old monitor replaced by a newer flatscreen job because he "couldn't move the big one back far enough" and now he leans forward all the time. He also takes two cups of water to his desk (fair enough) which he places an identical distance apart every time. He moves his keyboard back to being square with monitor every hour or so. After he eats, he wipes his desk down as if it's a surgical implement. A sandwich does not spread that much! And he regularly checks his phone is not diverted; a process which requires the receiver going to both ears just in case he's suddenly gone deaf in one - I don't know, you tell me.

It is slowly driving me mad.

In other news, I took up the social networking thing and signed up for Twitter. It's actually quite interesting, getting real-time feeds of what people like Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross are doing; stuff that you might not hear about otherwise. We're also getting titbits here and there from Robert Llewellyn about the new Red Dwarf series (although nothing more than spoilerific than publicity shots so far). I keep pimping the band out as much as possible without risking Wossy blocking me, but you never know - he might give in and send an invite for us to play on the show. At least that's the hope. You can follow my updates in the Real-Time Rants section on the right.

Speaking of which, the band has a whole load of gigs coming up over the next few months. I keep updating the list on here, despite nobody actually reading the blog any more. Never mind, it gives me an outlet and saves a load of innocent people getting murdered.
Seems to be the Midlands mainly, with gigs around Leicester and Bedford already on the cards. The first one is this Friday and I'm looking forward to a fairly long drive since I'll be dropping off Stef at her grandparents on the way. Add to that I keep getting offers of extra work and you have a recipe for some good breaks from the norm and a bit of extra money in this time of need. Score!

News & Stuff

2009-01-28T16:03:00.002Z

I did finally pass my driving test. Thankfully. It's not had the chance to make my life easier quite yet, but it has allowed me to do a couple of things I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

Last weekend I had a competition audition in Bedford with the band. Not a big deal, since Bedford is only an hour or so away. The audition was in the morning, due to start at 9:30. Again, not that much of a problem. Early start, but doable.
However, I'd also arranged to attend a racing sim meeting outside Southampton that afternoon. The date wasn't my choice but had been arranged months in advance. Without the car I'd have had no chance. With the car? Piece of cake. A great first journey, taking in the M1, the M25 and the M3 in one day.

But this being my life, it did have a couple of nice surprises in store.

Woke up Sunday morning, got up and dressed and blearily stepped out of the house to find my nice little car sitting on a flat tyre. And I mean a REALLY flat tyre. Sitting on the rim it was. Not having a jack, that made me twinge a little.
I limped round the corner to a nearby garage to pump it up.
Of course I had to find about the only garage in the country that still charges for air. Charges. For AIR. AIR! Miraculously I find some change in my pocket and pump the tyre up, along with a little extra for the other one that looked like it could use it. No hissing, didn't immediately collapse, so I think fair enough. If I need to keep topping it up then it's not a big deal, but I am getting to at least the audition.

It lasted all the way to Bedford, we did the audition (and got in) and when I got back to the car it was still looking healthy. No signs of a puncture or anything, so I started the 2 hour drive to event 2. I dropped in to service stations at a couple of points down the motorway but the tyre was fine. Great, says I. Got to the event, good fun, didn't win. But then I know I suck at video games these days anyway.

After dinner I went to make a move. I'd told one of the guys about my tyre and I asked if I could borrow his pump to top up before the journey, which he was fine with. Went out to the car, attached the pump to the valve and suddenly we're hearing the hissing sound of Immediate Tyre Death. My little wheel gets flatter and flatter and there's nothing either of us can do to stop it. Fine, we say. Not entirely unexpected, we say. Getting the spare tyre on (which was a learning experience for me as it was) turned out to be a bit more of a pain than I was expecting.
First of all, one of the nuts to remove the wheel didn't match the others and we had to get another guy to bring his tools out as well.
Then they watched as I changed a tyre for the first time in my entire life, laughing at me when I realised I hadn't jacked it up properly and I could lift it because the car was still sitting on it.
Then they laughed as I struggled to pump up the spare tyre, almost dying of a heart attack from too much effort. Good times! Actually that wasn't my fault. There was a leak in the pump so I was losing half of the air that I was pumping and it took a long time to get it to the required pressure.

And this barely a week after I had to take the headlights off to try and discover why it was blowing fuses all over the place. For someone who knows nothing about car upkeep I'm certainly learning a lot in a short space of time!

At least it was all in good humour. It was a good day and I really enjoyed the drive. The open road, the squeak of the windscreen wipers, the rain battering off the car, the oil on my hands, the dirt on my trousers. Maybe not all of that, but I enjoyed it.

I have new tyres ordered that I'm going to have fitted tomorrow afternoon, but there's no point going into that much detail here since it's not a car blog. That said, if these things keep going wrong it may turn into a "ranting-about-car" blog...

Idiots and Cover Songs

2008-12-17T16:04:00.006Z

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that any band or artist who wants to cover songs should have to take a test to see if they have any fucking clue what the song's about before they're allowed anywhere near it.

Let's start with Mary J Blige's screw up of U2's One.
First of all, it sounds like she doesn't actually know the song and is sort of singing along behind Bono in totally the wrong tune with a complete disregard for the song's message.
This is not a long song, it's a song of peace. You shouldn't be singing it like it's to a lover; it's to an entire people.

Sheryl Crow's version of Sweet Child o' Mine is horrible. It's a love song for a woman, and unlike a lot of gender-free tracks, it just doesn't work with a woman's voice. And removing the one thing that defined that song (the big guitar riff) made it a complete shambles.

The same can be said about Madonna's take on American Pie. Now Madge of all people should understand music making by now. This is a sad song about Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens dying in a plane crash. The original has sad moments of contemplation and upbeat moments when remembering the music. It's clever. The Madonna version is completely bland and she's trying to make it all about her. Doesn't work.

Ronan Keating's Iris wasn't bad as such, it just lacked any of the balls that the Goo Goo Dolls original had. The percussion wasn't loud enough and his vocal felt a little flat. There was just something missing from that production.

And now we've got the new bloody X-Factor winner putting out an atrocity of a version of the otherwise beautiful track Hallelujah. The new one finishes with a key change and a gospel choir. A gospel fucking choir!
For anyone who doesn't know, this is a song full of hurt and irony. The lyrics talk about how God seems to have lost interest in us. The "hallelujah" part is mockery, not praise. So getting in a gospel choir is a complete disregard for what the song actually means!

I love gospel choirs normally. I want to write a song that uses one. They sound amazing and it adds a fantastic layer of emotion when done right. But it's not appropriate to have it in a song that is clearly about sticking a finger up to God. It just
doesn't
work.

The beauty of Hallelujah is in it's simplicty. It's sung quietly, it has a solo piano (or guitar) part. That's all it needs. It's melancholy and sort of despairing. Rufus Wainwright's version is my favourite, incidentally.
Normally I'm all about ending a song with a big section and I'm always trying to get the band to make our songs like that, but in this case it's not right.

What the song doesn't need is someone to try and sound sexy when they're singing it, constant money notes, a key change, massive ending and a complete lack of knowledge about what the song is about. I understand that reality TV show winners are merely puppets for the industry, but in this case the producer is as much to blame as she is.
I can't remember her name, I probably wouldn't bother writing it anyway. But this is inevitably going to be Xmas number one (they always are) and it's going to introduce a whole new generation of people to what is an utterly appalling version of a great song.

I only hope that the same thing happens with this as happened with Ronan's Iris - it caused far more people to pick up the original than bought the cover.

People Suck #5

2008-11-05T16:38:00.001Z

Jeez, has it really been that long since I made a post? Holy crap.
In that time I failed my driving test, traded in my Wii and said "humbug" about 10,000 times.

Which nice little preamble leads me nicely into the most recent rant - Christmas shoppers.

I've been lucky this year; my girlfriend managed to do almost all of our Xmas shopping online, so I've not had to fight against the cold and the morons to get at stuff. And that suits me fine.
Unfortunately she decided we should have a new tree this year, as the one we have is a few years old and looking a little... worn.

Woolworths. I used to like Woolies back when I was at school. The one in Lanark was well laid out and fairly open and had a good selection of magazines, games and of course pick 'n' mix sweets (even if we couldn't afford to buy them).
Saturday was like Pikey Central. It seemed like everyone had brought along 500 snotty, screaming brats and had told them to make as much mess and noise as possible. Even the adults were pulling stuff off shelves and just leaving it wherever they felt like.

Sadly, I can't even blame it on just Xmas. We used to go to Matalan for the odd piece of cheap clothing. Our nearest one had more stock on the floor than on hangers and it got so bad in there that I told my girlfriend I was never setting foot in that store again. And I won't.

I like cheap stuff. We went through a brief period of having a bit of cash to burn, but we're back to normal now and are trying to cut down on costs any way we can. I can appreciate wanting to get things for less money.
But I would never take something off a hanger and dump it on the floor. I'd never rummage through a bargain bin and just toss the things I didn't want out of the way.

People suck. They sucked in 2006. They sucked in 2007. They sucked in 2008 and they'll continue to suck in 2009.

New Car!

2008-10-21T08:16:00.003+01:00

It's always worrying when I don't have anything (new) to complain about for a while, but sadly that's the case at the moment. Just the same old crap that isn't worth posting about a second time.

However, I did finally get my car! It's a nice little 1996 Mazda 323. It has a couple of minor bodywork issues but as far as we can tell so far no mechanical issues at all. I can't drive it yet but it won't be long!

Of course the current issue is finding insurance for the thing. I have a few quotes and a couple of them are pretty good, but trying to find the lump sum is a challenge and paying monthly got me a lovely 25% APR tacked on, bouncing the price up a couple of hundred quid, which seems a little excessive.

And even more bizarrely, switching from a provisional license to a full license actually INCREASES the price! What's that about, huh? Madness.

Complaints & Comments

2008-09-17T12:13:00.004+01:00

Why is it we're all so eager to complain about stuff when it goes wrong, but we don't like giving positive feedback when it goes right?

I understand that's a very British thing, because Americans seem to be all about positive reinforcement. I can't speak on the rest of Europe though, but with their hugging and kissing I imagine they're far more likely to tell you how well you've done than here in the UK.

I mention it because of my experience with E-on last night (or Powergen for those who prefer that name). I'll brush over the story to give the history.
We moved house in December, and attempted a change of address. Several times, in fact. Turns out they all failed, both online and via the phone. As a result we didn't get a bill in the new place and a few weeks ago we got a "to the occupier" disconnection notice. When I called them up to tell them the problem they weren't all that helpful.
Until Sue.
Sue is our new saviour and I can't praise her highly enough. She investigated the issue and not only did she manage to knock £300 off the bill (which was sitting at £1100-ish before that), she also set up a repayment scheme within our budget. AND she called me back like she said she would!

So I went to the E-on website to make a comment about how pleased I was with the service from Sue. But there's no positive comments section at all. A massive section for complaints, with backup methods and the like, but nothing on positive feedback. Typical.

There was an email address for the Director of Customer Services, so I used that instead with a note to say that there is no positive feedback system on the site. But I felt that she broke tradition so much with actually being helpful that she deserves some credit for it. And now she gets a blog post and everything!
So hopefully that'll bring about some kind of cosmic or karmic justice.

I'm clearly getting soft in my old age...

Driving Theory Test

2008-09-12T10:22:00.004+01:00

Yesterday afternoon (about 12:15) I had my Driving Theory test. It was in Southgate. After that visit, I decided I don't like Southgate.

At first glance it was like any standard run-down high street. Graffiti, boarded up windows, etc. That's not a big deal, I grew up going to places like that. I'm looking at you, Hamilton and Motherwell. But the next part is "propa ghetto".

On my way to the DSA building, I saw a guy get chased down the street by a gang of other guys. At first I thought they were all just running for a bus or something, but when I saw the look on his face and the way they were chasing, I sort of worked it out. The policeman who made a call on his radio and joined in the chase hinted that as well.
I could have put Benny Hill music to it and had a massive YouTube hit, but I was in a hurry.

The building itself is conveniently located hidden down a side street with an unmarked door with roadworks signs around it. I must've walked past the damn thing 3 times before I started counting the door numbers. Thankfully I had the addressed letter with me or I'd still be there now.
Well, assuming I hadn't been killed in some kind of street shootout.

Inside the building wasn't much better. Classy hand-written A4 sheets adorned the walls (on top of the graffiti) informing everyone (who can read) that the first few doors you pass are "NOT THE DRIVING THEORY TEST CENTRE". Don't advertise which company you are, make sure people know which you're not. Y'know, that could make TV adverts really confusing.
"We are not Tesco, Asda, Morrissons, Sainsburys or Waitrose". Mmmmm, informative.
Anyway, I got to the 2nd floor (or 3rd, I've blanked it all out) and found a door which didn't say it wasn't the DSA so I figured that was the one. Love them double-negatives.

Inside the place was okay, although I think they were a little over-zealous with security. First of all, you barely get to keep the clothes you're wearing when you go in. Everything needs to go in a locker. And to stop people stealing the locker keys, or rather discourage them since I bet they still do, they are attached to massive flower-shaped plastic plates. So you need to carry that around with you all the time you're in the place. Ridiculous.

And while I'm on the subject, I have to ask - what exactly is the point of stealing a locker key? The only person's stuff that's in it is your own! You can steal the key, but all you get is access to an empty locker and the ability to put your own stuff in there! But then I think I'm missing the point; it's not about what you steal, it's about the stealing. Or maybe they want to store drugs or guns in there. Come for the test, stay for the firepower.

The test itself was an absolute cakewalk. I'd been practicing a bit using a program I bought online "Driving Test Success - All Tests" and a lot of the questions were word-for-word identical. Of the hour I was assigned for the multiple choice part, I used about 20 minutes - and that was only because this time I chose to go through the questions twice to make sure.
Hazard perception is the problem I've always had a problem with, a lot of the time because the test has a different opinion of a hazard to me. Sometimes I see one it doesn't and sometimes it sees one I don't think affects me. So that was the main reason I bought the program I listed above. I got my pass rate up to 70% in that over a few days though, so I figured that was enough.

And yes, I passed!

48/50 on the multiple choice (pass is 43)
52/75 on the hazard perception (pass is 44)

Now I have 2 years to sit and pass my practical test. I'm pretty sure I can manage that, right?

Right?

The End of the World (And I Feel Fine)

2008-09-10T08:32:00.003+01:00

Yes it's been a while since the last post, which is a good thing. Not that people aren't still pissing me off, it's just that they're doing it in a way I've already complained about so there's not much point saying it all again.

Today I'm going to talk about the Large Hadron Collider. For those who don't know, the LHC is an experiment in Switzerland where they're going to fire particles at each other in an attempt to... I've no idea really. I think it's related to creating mass or achieving Warp Factor 9 or something. Maybe they just want to cook food really fast.

For some reason, people seem to be under the impression that it's going to end the world. I'm not really sure why. They've said the experiment may end up creating tiny black holes when the particles collide, which I think has spooked the Fox News crowd who believe that everything is evil.

Now there is a small possibility that it will end all life as we know it, with the black holes increasing in size, absorbing the world and crushing us all into particle-sized mush. Well I guess if that happens the scaremongers can say they were right.

Personally I'm hoping for a resonance cascade like in Half-Life, because I really feel like grabbing a crowbar and beating some zombie aliens and headcrabs to death, and I'm not the only one. Apparently I'm not the only one either, because a magazine sent a care package to Switzerland addressed to Gordon Freeman with a crowbar included. That's classic!

I apologise to any non-gamers reading that last paragraph. Sometimes I forget that there are people in the world who haven't played Half-Life or Half-Life 2. Those people are clearly doomed as they will have no clue how to dispatch a shambler or what Ravenholm has in store.
Sucks to be them...

Under the Surface People Still Suck

2008-08-14T16:14:00.003+01:00

I've got nothing new, but it's been a while since the last post so this is it.

Albany Down did not get through the semi-finals of this year's Surface Unsigned competition. We lost our round because of the same old story - one band's fans arrived as they started playing, meaning they missed everyone before them and never even got the chance to be converted by our awesomeness.

But you see what I did with the post title? Clever, right? Man, I'm so great.

But we had fun up to this point, and there's still plenty more gigs on the horizon.

Nothing to rant about. Well, nothing new to rant about at the moment. I'd just be covering old ground. Same old same old.

Oh! Driving lesson earlier this week, some moron overtook me approaching a blind corner under a railway and miraculously avoided the oncoming cars by a gnat's ball. But I was sitting around 30 and I stayed calm, so fuck 'em. They can kill themselves any time they like.
I'm loving the driving, even though last week seemed to be the highest population of idiots in one area I've seen for a while. It was like people were actually trying to put me off or cause mistakes. They failed of course, because shockingly enough I actually appear to be quite good at this driving thing. And I love it, which is even better.

See kids? Video games help hand-eye co-ordination and racing simulators (simulators, none of your 400mph nitro cornering crap) help with spatial awareness.
And I've never killed anyone, surprising though it may be. Yet, anyway.

But let's be honest, they do ask for it.

People Suck #4

2008-07-21T10:30:00.002+01:00

This series is really running away with me. And my 3rd post of the month too - must be some kind of record. Let's get straight to the hate. Hey, that could be my new motto.

We get free tea and coffee here at work. Thankfully. Without my hourly cup of tea god only knows what kind of raving psychotic I'd be. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong - I do get worse.

So this much is good. But what is people's problem with leaving things the way you find them?

You got the milk OUT of the fridge, right? You poured it into your drink, right? You understand that dairy produce needs to be kept chilled or it turns manky, right? You have to WALK PAST the fridge again to leave the little kitchen area, right? So what is the mental block that means you can't put that bottle back in the fridge when you're done with it? For the love of all that's holy!

And if the bottle's empty, don't just leave it sitting there! We recycle here. Rinse it out and sit it in the crate. It takes 5 seconds to put some water in the bottle, shake it a bit and empty it out. 5 seconds! It won't kill you!

And recently there's been a few coffee incidents. I'm not sure how these happen, but somehow the sink ends up full of coffee granules. I'm not even talking just a handful that may have fallen off the teaspoon when you got it out, I'm talking a full tablespoon's worth. So how exactly does it end up in the sink instead of in your mug? I have no idea. Nobody's aim can be that bad, surely?
But that's not really the issue. The issue is that it just sits there, lining the sink. Why? It's SOLUBLE! If you turn the tap on, it will vanish! So fucking DO IT! 5 seconds! Clearly your mug is empty, so fill that up with water and slosh it into the sink, that'll clear up anything that the tap misses. It's SOLUBLE!

But no, it just sits there and stains the place until some muppet (i.e., me) comes along and does it for them. My OCD nature just can't let it stay that way. I'm not a tidy person (ask my girlfriend), but that kind of easily-cleaned mess just pisses me off. People suck.

Trolley Tetris

2008-07-15T10:34:00.002+01:00

This isn't a rant, but I think is well worth putting on here to try and inspire more people to do it.

While shopping with my girlfriend last weekend, we took bets on which aisle would we make it to before someone pissed me off. Stef said I wouldn't make it past the magazines (the first aisle, cheeky cow!) and I thought I'd make it to the cereals (about halfway). In actual fact we were both wrong and we made it to dairy (second lastbefore someone did something utterly retarded. It wasn't a serious thing though, and obviously shopping on a Friday evening is a good time to avoid the majority of idiots. There's no prize for this, other than admitting Ultimate Superiority for a few minutes.
In case you're wondering, we shop in reverse order in our supermarket because of the slightly odd layout this Tesco has.

Anyway, that's not the main reason for this post. I'm calling it the Moron Gauntlet now though, because making up games stops me hating the trawls quite so much. On to Trolley Tetris.

As we started our weekly round, I noticed that the few things we had in our trolley already pretty much formed a gapless space across the "bottom" row (closest to me pushing the basket). Being slightly obsessive-compulsive, I moved what there was to fill up the few remaining spaces. That and the fact that the mesh makes up a load of squares made me think of a game of Tetris. And if you don't know Tetris you can Google it right now before I find you and smack you one. I pointed it out to Stef (who knows more games than I give her credit for) and as a result we started messing around with the idea.

She'd place items at the far end of the trolley and I'd move them into the best position I could as fast as possible. See the challenge isn't just finding a space; it's finding a space either before moving to catch her up, or before walking into someone on the way. That rule isn't quite set in stone yet, but I prefer doing it before the move to prevent potential accidents.

The blips and bleeps I was making while I did it, and us singing the Tetris theme in duet is entirely optional.

So I encourage everyone in the world to do this. Not only does it stop me paying as much attention to the retards around me, but it also makes the time in the supermarket (a blatant misnomer) seem shorter.

People Suck #3

2008-07-08T16:55:00.002+01:00

The London Underground.

It's a fantastic system, over 100 years old and pretty much makes travelling by car in London pointless. The map might be confusing to look at, but in actual fact when you're on it it's not that bad. Unless you're claustrophobic, in which case I imagine it sucks balls.

Almost every Sunday I go to band rehearsals and to get there I take the Tube into Kings Cross. Kings Cross, regrettably, is always choc full of people. And people, as I may have previously mentioned, suck.

Why is it people always feel the need to suddenly stop without warning at the absolute busiest part of an already-packed and narrow walkway?
"Alright, I'm walking down the platform with 500 people behind me... NO! I must look in my bag right this second! My sandwich cannot wait!" Or whatever.

Even worse than that is people at escalators, stairs or at the ticket readers. You can see the things in front of you. You need to slow down to let the people in front of you go through or down them.
So why in the name of god do you always wait until you're at the top (or bottom) of the stairs, or blocking the way past the ticket machine to suddenly think "Oh yeah, I'm a retard, I'll need a ticket here" or "Y'know, the top of a massively busy flight of stairs is the absolute best place to stop and pick up my bag."

And at the bottom of the stairs they stop to put their bags down again. Blocking the same people two fucking times at one stairway!

I swear, if there was a competition for utter morons, there would be a lot of medals handed out in Kings Cross station.

What. The. Fuck.

2008-06-26T14:14:00.004+01:00

Okay, I just have no words to explain it, so I'll just link to the article and let you think of some of your own.

BBC Article

"Positive discrimination" they call it. Now there's an oxymoron for you.

If there is still an issue with employers and racism (and from my experience of minority people as doctors and council workers and such like I can't see that there is), is this the way to solve it?

Let's run some little examples here.

Example 1
Employer: I'm afraid we won't be choosing you for the role.
Applicant: Can you tell me why?
Employer: I can. It's because you're black.
Applicant: LAW SUIT!

Example 2
Employer: I'm afraid we won't be choosing you for the role.
Applicant: Can you tell me why?
Employer: I can. It's because you're Asian.
Applicant: LAW SUIT!

Example 3
Employer: I'm afraid we won't be choosing you for the role.
Applicant: Can you tell me why?
Employer: I can. It's because you're Latino.
Applicant: LAW SUIT!

Example 4
Employer: I'm afraid we won't be choosing you for the role.
Applicant: Can you tell me why?
Employer: I can. It's because you're white.
Applicant: LAW SUIT...wait, what? Um... But the other guys got law suits!
Employer: Yes they did. But you can't have one.
Applicant: Why not?
Employer: Well it's because you're white. You don't have any right to.
Applicant: I don't have any rights? You mean like I'm less than a human being?
Employer: Pretty much. See, the Government considers ethnic minorities to be better at this job than you.
Applicant: But I went to the same college as that guy. And we got the same results!
Employer: Ah, but you see we multiply that against the tone of your skin, and if you don't have any pigment then your overall Job Qualification Rating doesn't increase.
Applicant: You remember how black people weren't happy about this treatment in the 20th century?
Employer: Vaguely.
Applicant: What exactly makes you think it's fair to do the same thing but the other way round?
Employer: For god's sake man, you've had your run of the planet for the past 500 years. It's about time you got shafted!
Applicant: Well I guess when you put it like that, my life clearly means nothing to anybody and I alone must make up for the cultural deficit created by my forefathers for their own prejudices and misgivings, which I don't even share anyway, so that some kind of cosmic balance can be reached since it seems to be impossible to just TREAT EACH OTHER LIKE HUMAN FUCKING BEINGS.
Employer: Sucks to be you.

Now if I was in an ethnic minority, I would be deeply offended. I would want my employer to choose me because I had the highest skill of all the candidates, because my working ethic was flawless and my qualifications were off the scale.
Not because some government body decides that the most important qualification you can have is not being white. It would piss me off.

I want everyone to be treated equally. None more equally than others.
I swear there will be a revolution if this thing gets put through.

Current Zimbabwe Situation

2008-06-24T15:15:00.003+01:00

It's not very often I'll actively make a comment about politics, but I think the current debacle deserves something.

Firstly, I have to say that I was absolutely gutted when Tsvangirai dropped out of the running. I did a bit of reading and he started life as a coal miner and actually worked his way up the ladder by legitamate means, so he at least has some understanding of what the average people are looking for.
Mugabe on the other hand, is a complete nut job. Not only is he actively supporting guerrilla tactics, he has crazy paranoia about everything that's gone wrong with the country being a western conspiracy.

But what REALLY pissed me off about the whole thing is that the MDC actually won the last election yet mad Mugabe the crazy little militant asshat still refuses to give up his seat. Presumably because he knows as well as I do that without the military's backing he would get torn a new ass by the general public.
To call it a "democracy" is a slap in the face to everyone around the world who ever fought for the ability to vote.

There's a quote on this BBC website that says it all really:
"The BBC was unable to locate any pro-Mugabe bloggers or internet forums."

I'm not condoning assassination... actually yes I am. For god's sake, someone take him out. The country is in trouble and he refuses to do anything to help. The more he fights against everyone else in the world, the worse their situation will get. Trades need to be opened for the country's economy to flourish. They need more schools to stop kids getting indoctrinated into the military.
To be honest, I'm shocked there aren't already US Army snipers parked around his house 24/7.

With Bush about to leave the White House, seems to me he'd have nothing to lose by commanding the military to take out the crazy little monkey. At least leave on a high.

Wii Fit Apparently Caused £20 Million in Damages

2008-06-16T13:13:00.002+01:00

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph today, the average Wii Fit user in the UK has caused £6.55 worth of damage to things around their homes while using their Wii, totalling about £20 million.

Simple reason for this: they are fucking morons.

These are the same people who threw their Wiimotes through their TVs when the console first came out. Apparently now they have managed to knock over vases and somehow injure pets in the process. I'm not gonna ask. You'll notice I'm also not mentioning that it seems to be all women in the survey. I'm saying NOTHING.

Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but if you plan on waving your arms (and possibly your legs since Yoga is an option), would basic common sense not tell you to make sure that you have moved things out of the way? Not only because of the damage to objects, but because if it had been a granite mantlepiece instead of a vase, smacking your foot off it would hurt like a son of a bitch.

Is there some kind of test these Wii owners take when they buy the console, that basically works out how stupid you are and only allows you to buy one if you completely fail as a rational human being? Don't they know they have arms and legs? Don't they realise how far they can reach? How do they get stuff out of cupboards or off shelves?

So we could end up with a nation of really fit, flexible people, but they'll all have shredded feet from walking on broken ornaments and be brain dead from bouncing their skulls off counter tops. Awesome.

Nintendo and Me? Wii are Finished

2008-06-09T11:44:00.003+01:00

I've had enough with Nintendo now. I've put up with a lot over the past few months, but they have finally pushed me too far.

They have already released statements that said (paraphrasing here) "nobody is interested in games that take a long time to complete" and "we're not interested in hardcore gamers".
Now for someone who has been a massive Nintendo fan since the NES days, who spent countless hours in Mario and Zelda games in previous generations, these statements hurt. My support over the past 15 years means nothing to them. They're simply ignoring all of the people who helped keep them where they are.

This generation has been a tough one. I've had to deal with the Wii having inferior hardware, and I did. I've had to deal with no decent 3rd-party games being made for the Wii, and I have. Neither of these were easy, but there was no choice. Nintendo have kept balancing it out by making fantastic titles like Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart and Smash Bros.

But today was the final straw.

All gamers have accepted that the Wii has practically no storage space. That means they are seriously limiting what Virtual Console titles you can buy, and now with WiiWare it's even worse. In response, Nintendo Europe's head dude, Laurent Fischer made a statement saying that (paraphrasing again) "only geeks want the issue addressed".

Sorry, what? Does that mean you don't want people's money any more? Because surely you can't expect people to keep deleting and re-downloading every single VC or WW game they pay for? People like to KEEP what they buy, you know. And that costs Nintendo bandwidth as well, so it's not even smart from a web business perspective.
Once you're out of Wii drive space, that's it. You CAN transfer stuff back and forward between SD cards and physical memory, but since that process takes ages it's not practical. And since you can't run anything from the SD cards, it makes them more like an archive than a storage medium.

So that's it, me and Nintendo are now officially done.
I cannot continue to support a company that seems to be so out of touch with the market. You can't move without falling over someone who is complaining about the Wii's lack of storage, yet they continue to ignore the issue. So this is officially the last Nintendo console I will buy until they change that attitude.

People Suck - #2

2008-05-18T18:30:00.002+01:00

It's been a while since my last post, but that's because the world has miraculously failed to piss me off for a while. And I was in America for a couple of weeks, so that probably helped too.

Now I make fun of America a lot. The "normal" people we see on TV are portrayed as stupid, and their political and judicial systems leave a lot to be desired.
However, the one thing they know better than anything else is customer service. Everywhere I've seen in the US gets a glowing repuation for customer service. They hand over your lunch with a smile, they ask if they can help you without prompting, they refill your drink every few minutes, they will pretty much fall over themselves to make your stay enjoyable and then when you're leaving they wish you a nice day.

It was certainly refreshing when compared to the UK's grumpy and miserable equivalent. The American south may have a reputation for being homophobic and racist and backward (and it may be, but I didn't see any signs), but as a straight white male I was treated like a king. Although the Scottish accent may have helped.
Even random people on the street were polite and courteous! It was great.

Which lengthy preamble brings me to the basis for this post - returning to the UK.
When we got back, we needed to go straight back out again to walk round Tesco. God that was a mistake.
Why are people so totally oblivious to the existance of anyone but themselves? Why do they park their trolleys in such a way as to block as much of the aisle as possible? It's like a bloody innate talent. Why do they insist on walking one direction while looking another, and then have a fucking cheek to scowl at you like it was YOUR fault when you walk into them? Assholes, every single one of them.

I've now taken it upon myself to be the counter to it. No longer do I gently edge my way round someone's trolley - if it's in my way I will move it. If you can't find it, that's your problem. If you ignore me when I say "excuse me", I will push you out of my way. If you park across the aisle, I will run into your trolley so it bounces painfully off your ankle. If you stand in my way looking at the selection of pasta sauces, moving backwards and forwards every time I try to pass you, I will tip the entire shelf into your basket and you can fucking well decide which you want somewhere else! Play me at that game and I will beat you.

I HATE THEM ALL SO MUCH!

And people use the word "genocide" like it's always a bad thing. If I killed every moron who pissed me off in a supermarket, would society as a whole really miss them? If that person can't traverse a supermarket without doing something stupid, what possible benefit could they provide for the world?

I say let's lose safety warnings on coffee cups:
"Contents may be hot" - MAY be? If it's not hot it's going back!

Let's get rid of allergy warnings on packets of peanuts:
"May contain nuts" - may? And what else would you expect in a bag of peanuts?

Warning signs at the sides of the road.
"Look both ways" - for what? A ton of steel coming your way at 30mph? If you can't work that out yourself, you deserve everything that happens to you.

Do matchboxes and cigarette lighters now have a warning on them that the contents are flammable? I don't think so. It's implied by the INTENDED USE OF THE GOD DAMN ITEM.

Survival of the fittest, I say. No more manipulating the world to make it easier for stupid or ignorant people. Get rid of them all, preferably in a single weekend.

Dr Tanya Byron = Awesome

2008-04-04T13:11:00.005+01:00

I don't normally go with such a clear cut title, but I can't really say it any other way.

As you may or may not know, the UK Goverment commissioned well-known - in the UK at least - psychologist Dr Tanya Byron (MSc, PsychD) to write a report on the effect violent video games have on children.
Well, the report was released a couple of weeks ago, which basically said everything that sensible people have said all along - that there's no problem if you actually pay attention to the ratings that the games have. She did point out that it would help if games used the same age rating symbols as movies did, which I agree with. They used to as well, I don't know why they stopped.

A few days ago, well-known - in the UK at least - daytime chat show host Anne Diamond made a public statement about how she was disgusted by the adult content in some games that she had seen. Something nobody has focused on so far is that she also openly admitted allowing her under-age children to play 15-rated game Halo 3. Seems a little bit hypocritical, no? I would've torn her a new ass for that blatant foot-in-mouth statement. But that's just me.

Today, Dr Byron has come out and said she found Diamond's article "unbelievable" and went on to say that it is just enforcing the shock, knee-jerk reactions of the Mothers Against Everything (if that's not a real focus group it should be).
Read the MCV interview here.

It's not very often that we gamers get someone standing up for us. I do my best, but it's not like my blog is going to make much of a difference to the world. Each time Byron makes a statement, she goes further up in my estimations. I was expecting the report to be all negative, but it's really not. And for that, I applaud her.

Dr Tanya Byron, the gaming world owes you a debt. Long may you continue to kick ass in the name of gamers everywhere!

We salute you!

No April Fools Round Here

2008-04-01T14:02:00.002+01:00

I thought about posting some kind of April Fools related crap here today, but I decided that (a) it wasn't worth it since nobody reads this page, and (b) I really can't be bothered anyway. I've seen so many lame-ass attempts at people trying to make other people do stuff today it's just not funny. And I mean that - it's really not funny.

So instead I decided I'm just gonna post the link to the page where you can go to see/hear my band and help us get to V-Fest 2008. V-Fest is a 2-day outdoor festival and the winners of this competition get to open each festival day.

Anyway, without further ado, here's the link:
http://www.roadtov.com/profile/44656

You don't need an account to view the page, but if you want to rate us and/or leave a comment, you do need to sign up. So please feel free. It's not a joke, so don't go in expecting a laugh or you'll be really disappointed :)

Albany Down Play The Cavern!

2008-03-23T23:48:00.001Z

It's true, we did. That little old club in the heart of Liverpool where the Fab Four were discovered - we played that.

It's not exactly the same club mind you. The area we played is actually an extension of the original club, in a far bigger area. The old stage is still there, but it is utterly minescule in comparison.

Unfortunately, that good old curse is still following me around. The one that inevitably ends up with whatever band I'm attached to getting screwed over as much as possible. Yup, Albany Down is no exception. I'll elaborate.

A while after our sound check we were watching the other bands set up and do their testing. Some of them were good, some of them were a bit crap.
As we were about to head out to grab some food between our soundcheck and our original 9pm slot, a member from one of the other bands came up and asked us if we'd be interested in swapping places with them. Well we weren't convinced. We had people coming to see us and we didn't want to screw over the sound technician out front. And then he dropped the hook.
He mentioned that he was in the last band.
He said we'd be headlining.

Well Billy was off on one before the words were even out of the guy's mouth. Me and Paul weren't convinced it was a good plan, since the last band wasn't due to start until after midnight and people catching public transport would need to leave before then.
Sadly, Billy wasn't listening any more. He got played like a two-bit fiddle. Kudos to the guy from the other band though - he knew exactly what he was doing.

Unknown to us at the time, Billy even went and confirmed the switch with the sound guy, so our arguing later on accomplished nothing. Being the calm and reasonable person that I am, I was all ready to drop out and not play at all.
Eventually my girlfriend, along with my mum and brother (who had driven down from Scotland for the gig - crazy fools) calmed me down and we went on at 12:15.

We were right though - the place was a hell of a lot quieter then than it was at 9 o'clock. The two bands who had each brought a coachload of people with them, had taken their fans when they left, so the place was a lot less crowded. That said, it was still far from deserted.
And it was fun, which is the most important thing. And everyone seemed to appreciate our Beatles homage at the end of The Morning After.

Onward to Surface Unsigned!

Jeff Healey R.I.P.

2008-03-03T16:41:00.003Z

I read on the BBC news website earlier that blues guitarist Jeff Healey has died, aged 41. He had a rare form of cancer which took his sight aged just 1 year old and he has lived his entire life with it.

I only have one of his albums, but have heard a good load of his songs. "Holding On" is probably my favourite of his tracks. His newest album was just about to be released and he was due to apepar on Jools Holland's show soon too.

He was known for his style of playing the guitar, which he did by having it sitting on his lap, playing it using an overhand method. Kinda cool really.

BBC Article

Is Free-Range Food Always Right?

2008-02-29T12:34:00.004Z

The new girl at our work is trying to convince everyone to stop going to KFC because of the urban legend that they use genetically modified mutant birds that have like no feet or heads or whatever. Believe that if you like, I'll accept it with a generous pinch of secret herbs and spices.

But it also made me think about the battery vs free-range chicken debate.
It's been accepted for a long time that free-range chickens live happier lives. But doesn't that make it even more cruel to suddenly and violently kill them?

"La la la," says the Free-Ranger, running around the farmyard, "I'm so happy, this place is so awesome. There's seed scattered around and I can flutter and..."

WHAP! Dead chicken. Yum.

Take the battery chicken on the other hand.

"Oh god," says the Battery, squished into a cage smaller than itself, "This sucks ass. I'm cramped and uncomfortable and my neck hurts and I wish I was dead."

WHAP! Dead chicken.

Same goes for eggs.

"Yay!" says Free-Ranger, "An egg! A family! I'll have a child which can run around by my side and we'll live happily ever after!"

WHAP! CRACK! Dead chicken with fried egg.

On the other hand...

"Oh bloody hell," says Battery, "An egg. Please don't let my child suffer the same as I have."

WHAP! CRACK! Sizzle. Mmmm, I love fried eggs.

But y'see, battery farms - making chickens dreams come true. You tell me which is more cruel!

Disclaimer: We call this "satire". If you can't take a joke, get the fuck off of my blog.

WTF? #1

2008-02-13T22:47:00.004Z

Okay, another short one.

I was just making my online application for my provisional driving license and one of the pages just made me boggle. Here it is for your amusement:

It might not be immediately obvious what's so stupid, so I'll point it out.

Firstly, #8.
Angina (heart pain) which is easily brought on by driving
Right, correct me if I'm wrong here but how would you know? This is a provisional license, so in theory I should never have driven before. Therefor how would I know if it's easily brought on by driving?!

#12.
Narcolepsy
WTF? You want to drive when you just randomly fall asleep?! Are you nucking futs? Do you WANT to kill people? God almighty.

And lastly my favourite, #14. We know what they mean, but let's look at it.
Brain surgery
Do I have this condition? Yes, I'm currently filling this form in while having brain surgery. "Excuse me Doc, please hold still in there; you're making me tick the wrong box. You didn't see my password did you?"

So there we go. Who'd have thought a government for would have had stupid stuff in it?
Oh wait. Everyone.

Odd Behavior #1

2008-02-12T12:31:00.000Z

Just a quick one today.

Has anyone else ever noticed (and I'm talking to guys here) why men can use a urinal in a line beside 20 other guys, but if there's no space at one and they need to use a cubicle to pee, they close and lock the door?

Pointless, no? But from what I've seen, true for the most part.

More Crap Against Games

2008-02-11T11:40:00.000Z

I'm getting really sick of all these "new measures" being taken to "protect" children from the adult content in modern games.

Apparently the latest genius idea is to stop children playing games in their rooms. Apparently this means parents can keep an eye on what their kids are doing. Because according to the article, kids have easy access to adult games anyway.

Now hold on just a bloody minute here.

First things first, let's find the basis of this justification - kids have easy access to adult-rated games (I've mentioned this before, I swear).
Retailers: STOP SELLING ADULT GAMES TO CHILDREN.
Parents: STOP BUYING ADULT GAMES FOR CHILDREN.

That way, children don't get adult games and therefor supervision is not necessary! It's not fucking rocket science.

Right, now the article-specific burn.

Who gets the TV?

Most parents want to use their TV to watch TV shows that the kids couldn't care less about.
Most kids want to use the TV to play games and their parents probably have absolutely no interest in.

So who wins? You surely can't buy a kid a games machine and then never let them use it, can you? That must amount to cruelty in this day and age.

The Xbox has parental controls to limit access already. I'm pretty sure the other consoles do too. So you can limit what your kids can do. If they don't have access to any mature games, you (as a parent) have nothing to worry about.

And finally...

The article implies that children have TVs in their rooms already. So if we're to use the same example, are we also assuming that those TVs are monitored by an adult 24/7? Because I'm pretty sure it's nearly impossible to police a TV set in the same way, and there's far worse "adult" content on TV after 9pm than you'll see in the average 15/18-rated video game.

People are so bloody retarded it makes me sick.

Female Journo Goes Off On One at Men

2008-01-30T12:46:00.000Z

Normally I'd say that men deserve it too, but this time it's ridiculous.

If you can even stomach the entire article, you'll find out that she believes (using Actual Scientific Data(TM) ) men should be getting a mortgage instead of an Xbox. But wait, there's more. She also thinks that they should be getting sensible jobs, that they should not go out drinking with their friends and that they should stop using cosmetics. You understand now why I have to reply.

Let's start at the beginning. At age 25, how many people earn enough to even qualify for a mortgage? I'm guessing not that many. So even if you did want to, you probably couldn't get one anyway. I know house prices round London means I'd need to earn twice what I do now in order to afford even the longest mortgage period.

Secondly, human beings are a social animal. Presumably this mad bint must think that women should therefor not visit their friends either, right? I'm guessing she doesn't. Just because the actions are different does not mean the social interaction isn't the same thing. So guys go out drinking while women might stay in drinking or watch a movie. It's still a social event where you meet up with people your own age and have some fun.
Same as the gaming. We all need a way to let off steam, to relax, or just to forget about the daily grind for a while. Gaming is one way of doing it. Since these days you can combine this with social interactions in online games, it fits two of these categories.

And thirdly, cosmetics. Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought part of being a 21st century male was the sudden pressure put on us to take care of our appearace. The sudden appearance of "For Men" moisturisers is testament to this. So now we're NOT supposed to use them? Time to make up your mind I think.

On this no doubt highly researched and 100% factual article, she also lists a load of stats which say that the average number of men married by age 25 and 30 has fallen over the past few years. According to her, this is down to immaturity and the desire to not settle down.
Is it not also possible that it could be because these days they are still in college or can't afford to get married? Is it also not possible that many more people see marriage as unnecessary these days?
Also remember that the stats there mean WOMEN aren't getting married there either. Does it all have to be the man's fault? Is it possible they just haven't met the right person? Have they maybe no interest in committment because of the unrealistic ideals forced upon us by articles like this?

Look at it this way. The 1990 US Census said (yes I did research - shut up) that the average age of women giving birth for the first time has gone up 4 years since 1970. If a 1.5 year shift (mentioned in the article) is a lot, what does 4 years say?
If you use Kay Hymaintenence's article's way of thinking, you could assume that women are frigid old maids and are only having families when they feel they should.

Now I did go through the entire article and one theme really jumps out at me. It sounds exactly like what she wants is a cliched 50's suburban lifestyle. Like Edward Scissorhands, the man goes to work at "the plant" all day, comes back and does home improvements until bed time, when he goes to sleep wearing sensible plaid pyjamas and gets in a solid 8 hours.
But I bet if I also sugggested that means she wants to stay home all day chatting to her neighbours, having the dinner on the table for the man coming home and fetching his slippers when he called for them, I'd get lynched. You can't have it both ways.

We're either masculine enough that we do everything the way we want, or we become pointless doormats with no personality or substance and do everything the way they want.

And I'm not done yet.

Presumably, she must have been in a relationship with a man at one point. Presumably she has also gone out to try and find the "perfect" partner. That's how the 'game' works.
Seems to me that if you find someone that you like and you get to know them, find out who they are and what makes them tick, it's completely stupid to then try and change everything about them.

Women like shopping and jewellery and clothes and shoes and cheesecake. I accept this. I don't like any of those, but I accept that if these are the things they enjoy, I don't have the right to take them away.
Is it okay to say the same about the things men like?

The entire article is nothing but prejudice, backed up by loosely-related statistics. I bet if you substituted "man" with "woman" or "black man" or something, you'd have a law suit on your hands faster than you could say "Xbox". Because it's just man-bashing, nobody gives a damn. I'm getting sick of it.

The Bull(shit) & Gate

2008-01-29T12:19:00.000Z

It just goes to show exactly what you can accomplish when you have more friends than you do talent.
Which inflammatory introduction leads me to the main subject of this rant. After all, it has been a while since the last one (on the blog anyway, I do plenty in real life).

We played the first round of Emergenza at Kentish Town's Bull & Gate pub. Let me talk you through the day.

First thing's first, there were supposed to be 8 bands showing up. 3 of them dropped out. One of them had an injured drummer, so we'll forgive that. Apparently he had a broken leg or something. But 2 of them just never got back in touch with the promoter.
So as a result each band got to play an extra song. Annoyingly, it also meant our slot got pushed forward a little.

So the first band went on. Holy crap. Now this event claimed to be all about live original music. The first band was a 3-piece and they used more backing tapes than they had songs. Seriously. All of their songs had backing, and one of them the real drummer didn't even start playing until about 2 minutes in. Both of the guys (I'd say 'singers' but I fear I would insult even the most dire karaoke noobs) were fairly good at their instruments, but as well as being about 4 years old, neither of them could sing. It was like listening to a Kraftwerk remix of a dying whale. They should've been bitchslapped for not being 100% live. But they brought along the entire Emo Squad, so they got a completely undeserved crowd vote.

Right, the second band of the night were actually damn good. Free Reign, they're called, and I'll be keeping an eye on them. 5 piece, twin Les Pauls, plenty of harmonies and big choruses. Can't really fault them, other than maybe being a bit too loud for the venue. Reminded me of Primal Scream with a bit of Charlatans in there. They're the only one of the bands I'll use the name of, since they're the only ones who deserve it.

There was another band in here, I'm sure of it. They must've been som awesome I can't even remember them.

Then us. We rocked. I had a lot of fun, playing with what was left of the crowd. The really fucking annoying thing was that everyone who had come to see one specific band left when they had come off stage, or didn't come in before they went on. This meant that instead of discovering new bands, they pretty much just skew the votes. I wouldn't have minded all that much if the other bands had actually been good.

Next band were kind of unremarkable. 3-piece, they definitely wanted to be the Hendrix Experience. Some of their songs weren't too bad, but the singer (called Elvis - I made an awesome "He's left the building" joke when the guy introducing them wanted to know where he was) didn't really have the confidence to pull it off. I think with some more practice they could actually be quite good.
Problem was, in this competition for live original music, they ended on a Hendrix cover. Complete sell-out too, since I think that bought them a load of votes. So they should be disqualified for that.

And the last band of the night were about as good as the first. They were far too loud, the guitars were really twangy and ear-buggering, the singer was crap (and since he sang with an Irish twang he should really have got kudos for that) and the songs didn't seem to have any noticable sequence. It was like intro-NOISE-NOISE-NOISE-end. But since it looked like they'd brought along every single person from their home town, their crowd response was far better than ours was. I didn't even waste my time staying to the end, because you could tell who was going to win before any votes were even taken.

So there we are. Yet another battle of the bands competition thing which ended up with a totally screwed-up result. Story of my life, that. I can nearly guarantee though that when these bands are away from their home crowds, they won't get any further in the competition. Local support from friends is fine until you go further away, and then you actually need talent to back it up - and that's exactly where these guys will fall flat.

We didn't get through (big shock) but if Free Reign did I have to wish them the best of luck. They really are the only band from that night (other than us) who deserved to get to the next stage.

Merry Thingy & a Happy New Whatsit!

2008-01-03T10:39:00.000Z

Happy non-specific winter celebration greetings!

Right, it's a little bit late but I don't care. I could backdate the post if I wanted to look good, but I'm too lazy.

So what happened over the holiday period? Well we moved house for one thing. Thankfully it was relatively painless. Especially for me, since the band had an event audition the day we were due to move, so I spent the day mainly on a train and sitting about while my girlfriend, mother and brother shifted the house contents.

The new place is great. It's absolutely massive, has a marble floor entry hall, stained glass windows (although I think they're actually perspex) and is about twice the size of our old place. Sorted.

But this post is all about the saga we had trying to get the Sky+ reinstalled. Bloody hell. So here goes.

When we moved, I called up Sky and they arranged an engineer appointment. After messing up our address and giving them a house number somewhere down the other end of the street, they eventually got to us thanks to me jumping out onto the road in front of their van.
Now there's scaffolding up around our house right now, because there's a new roof being fitted. After messing around for a while, poking around and talking on mobile phones for about 15 minutes, they decided that the scaffolding was blocking the signal to the dish and when the scaffolding came down the TV would be working. I wasn't convinced.

I called up our landlady and asked if she knew how long the scaffolding was likely to be up, and she said to speak to the builders the next time they were round, which I did. He said it'd probably be a few weeks, maybe less if the weather stayed dry. There's a second dish on the house feeding the upper flat, but they told us that one wasn't working. Now with the Xmas TV schedule approaching we decided this sucked. But when we looked at our dish, we couldn't work out how the signal could be getting blocked by the scaffolding the way it was.
We spoke to the upstairs neighbours and asked them if they were getting a reception, since that dish was right behind about 6 pipes. Yes they were, and they were watching it right then.
"..." I said, and called Sky again.
After a lengthy discussion, they gave me the engineer company's number and I called them up. The guy I spoke to said it sounded odd to him too so he'd send someone out and they'd call me so I could come back from work (a 5 minute walk) to give them access.
A couple of days pass, no engineer. I call up again, get told he's coming soon, same old same old. Eventually speak to someone who says they did the job while we were out. A little weird, but okay. It's not like they needed into the house anyway. He said "our" dish wasn't working, but he connected it to the neighbour's dish which we already knew was working.

So we use our Sky+ but soon find out it's failing on some recordings. We work out it's when we try to record two things at once, or record one thing while watching another. Stef says she bets they only connected one feed rather than the two that the Sky+ needs. I fetch the phone.
So I spoke to the engineer company again, and tell them the job was only half done. I tell them what we think has happened and eventually a guy comes out to take a look. Judging by what he said on the phone, he's a fairly senior guy at the company. I show him round the house, he doesn't think it's reasonable that the scaffolding is blocking the dish either. He climbs up, gets some cable and starts messing about with something. Five minutes later he knocks the door and says he's done.
You know what the problem was? Our dish just wasn't aligned properly. It's working perfectly, just that the lazy bastards from the first night didn't bother to actually do any damn work! So now we have one feed on the neighbour's dish and one on our own and it's working perfectly, like it should've been from the start. But no way in hell do I want those engineers coming out again. I'd have a better chance of fixing it myself.

And then there was the net connection...
Actually that went live on the date they said, although our speed is fluctuating wildly and has been everywhere from 13mb/s right down to a barely-better-than-dial-up 9kb/s. Hopefully it'll balance out soon.

Albany Down @ Tommy Flynns, Camden - Dec 4th

2007-12-06T11:07:00.000Z

Where:Tommy Flynn's Bar
When: December 4th, 9:15pm

Well what can we say? That was the plan at least...

Soundcheck was supposed to be at 6:30pm, and we arrived in plenty of time to find the stage was still being built. Some genius had decided that the afternoon before the bands were due to play was the best time to do some renovations.
6:30 came and went.
7:00 came and went. The dust curtains came down and the stage was cleared.
7:30 came and went.
At 7:45 the "organiser" (I use the word sparingly, since it would appear he couldn't have organised a piss-up in an Irish bar) came up to us and asked if we'd be okay to go on first, at 8 o'clock.

Now this wasn't part of the plan. We were supposed to be about the 3rd band on that night and this was over an hour early. We had all arranged for people to come along and see us, and because most London travel is done via the Tube, contacting people to rearrange is nearly impossible.
Turns out the pub owner had decided to invite two bands he was friendly with along and add them to the list, meaning the rest of us got shafted. We argued and stalled as much as possible, but since we have no reputation to fall back on and we didn't want to end up with a bad one, we had little choice but to take to the stage as much after 8pm as we could get away with.

Our soundcheck consisted of me trying to tune the bass guitar, and that was about it. As a result, our first song sounded pretty bad from the stage and probably not that much better from the bar. We had feedback all over the place and I couldn't hear anything I was playing other than the lowest string, which was unbelievably loud. And I forgot the lyrics to two songs, which was better than the three I was expecting!

Apparently though, it sounded good from Front of House and after the first song or two we got into the swing. People seemed to enjoy it as well, judging from the pretty limited crowd in the pub at 8:15pm on a Tuesday night. Annoyingly, my girlfriend and he workmates arrived just in time to see the last minute of our final song and one of them missed it entirely. Highly annoying, but can't really be helped.

So a moderate success for a first gig. Let's hope the organisation of future events is a hell of a lot better though.

Brad Pitt Pushes for rebuilt New Orleans

2007-12-04T11:29:00.000Z

A report on the BBC Website today says that Brad Pitt is trying to get people to rebuild a load of houses in New Orleans after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

A noble venture, some might say. And to a certain extent they'd be right.

But the entire area is a flood plain. It flooded because most of the area is flat and close to or below sea level. Therefor, I can guarantee you that it will flood again. And when it does, it will level the place once more, causing just as much chaos.

The fact that the city was lost is tragic. It had a lot of history and it was generally accepted as a damn cool place to be, especially if you were interested in Blues or at least Blues-based music. Or you liked gambling in the 20s. But rebuilding it is just going to mean you'll get a carbon copy of these events at some point in the future. It could take years, it could take decades, but it will happen again.

You do not build a city on an area you know suffers regular natural disasters.

Were the ancient Romans smarter than modern day Americans? It sounds likely.
Pompeii was built under a volcano. The volcano erupted and the town (and others nearby) were totally destroyed. Did they rebuild? No. Because it's UNDER A DAMN VOLCANO! They built further away, they learned from the mistake.

Not in America. It would appear they would rather risk further massive loss of life than admit it was a bad idea and move on. The people are already uprooted, they might as well relocate somewhere safe. I sure as hell wouldn't go back to somewhere that had seen a disaster of that scale tear everyone's lives apart.

Nature always wins. It's time to accept that and move on.

Wherever I Lay My Hat

2007-11-20T10:39:00.000Z

So yesterday I went down to our letting agents to confirm we wanted to renew our tenancy agreement in January. When I got there I was told that this wouldn't be possible, so we'll need to be out on January 20th. She was a bit more polite than that, but that's what it boiled down to.

Apparently the landlord wants to "carry out some work" on the property and as I found out this morning, when the work is done they don't want to lease it to anyone with pets. As you can see from my profile, we have 3 cats. So that pretty much means tough shit for us.
We have the basis of plans put in place, depending on what happens next. Sadly, the phone call I received this morning confirmed the worst fear - that we will not be allowed to continue living there after January 20th (unless we go the emergency court order route, but that's for another time).

So we'll need to move. Bottom line.
Sadly, we really like our flat and the area it's in, so we're absolutely gutted about having to go. The only small upside is that we'll finally be getting away from Whingebob downstairs.

Our Council = Retards

2007-11-12T10:45:00.000Z

I found out today that my the Council is replacing my girlfriend's department's PCs with "state-of-the-art" terminals. Which in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing - everyone likes a new computer. Apparently their department is getting them first because they were complaining about their desks being too small.

Wait, what? Let me try to plot out this conversation.

"My desk is too small"
"Well here, have a new computer."
"Thanks, but my desk is still too small."
"But it's new!"
"It certainly is, but it doesn't make the desk any larger."
"But new! Shiny! With buttons!"

So instead of going to Ikea and spending a few hundred quid on some new desks for the department, or even spend £100 each person to upgrade the current machines, they thought the smart idea would be to spend out thousands on new computers for the entire department.

Please bear in mind that this is the same department cutting four jobs in a few weeks because of a lack of funding. The same department struggling to cover the workload because they've already lost a load of staff to better paid jobs in other places. The same department clearly run by a troop of retarded baboons.

If you would like to tell them exactly how stupid they are, please do so using this email address: first.contact@barnet.gov.uk

You know they deserve everything you can throw at them.

People Suck - #1

2007-11-09T16:18:00.002Z

Frequent readers of this blog (if such a thing existed) and my close friends will already know of my extreme disdain for the general public. I hate people. One by one they're not too bad, but as a general populous they are stupid and ignorant.

In the first of what is bound to be a lengthy series on the stupid things people do, we have the filling in of forms. This is related to my job at a certain ISP.

Most people can just about manage the Name section. Where they seem to consistently fall down is the Address part.

If the form asks for Street Number and Street Name, why would you put (for example) 4 in the first part and 4 Main Street in the second?
This means that when you get any correspondance it will come in addressed to 4 4 Main Street.
Add to that the fact that by simply reading it you would understand that nowhere in the street name is the number of your house. Have you ever heard of a street called Four Main Street? No. Therefor you do not put the number in the Name section.

Secondly, towns and localities. I think the word 'locality' must throw people off. But some people insist on putting the same thing in both sections. So we now have a letter going to:
Mr A Nonymous
4 4 Main Street
London
London

Can anyone else see the problem here? Is there a London inside London? No I don't think there is. It's all the same city. Maybe inside Greater London, but certainly not contained within itself. If you were asked to put something in the car, would you look for the car inside the car? I don't think you would.

These are the kinds of stupid things I have to correct dozens of times every day. Can there really be that many stupid people out there? Sadly it would appear so.

The People Suck series will no doubt be continued later...

Can't We Tell the Truth Any More?

2007-10-24T15:34:00.000+01:00

So Halle Berry got in trouble for a comment she made on Jey Leno's show. She said that a picture of her with a larger nose "made her look like her Jewish cousin". Why is this offensive? Aren't Jewish people well known for traditionally having large noses? Are we denying this now? Did she claim it was ugly? No. Did she scream and have a tantrum about how hideous it would be to be Jewish? I don't think so.

Guess what else? Black people are well known to have skin that's darker than white people's. And people of Celtic origin are known for their red hair and pale skin. Oh my god, not pale skin! Nobody has pale skin, ssssh! Don't talk about it and it can't be true!

People are not all exactly the same. These are racial traits. If you deny they exist, you deny that race their distinguishing feature. Then you have a bunch of cardboard cut-outs which would have been people but are instead bland clones.

You just know the people who are irritated by this are the very same people who are up screaming for equal rights. If we're all exactly the same, who is getting treated differently?

Pointing out a racial trait is not the same as belittling it or abusing it. If Halle Berry had said how ugly Jews were or whatever, yes I'd be all for bitchslapping her as well. But she didn't. All she did was point out something that everyone already knew. Big deal.

Relax guys, or all you'll end up being known for is your tendency to have heart attacks. Oops, did I just claim people have heart attacks? No, never happens...

EA Wants "Open Gaming Platform"

2007-10-19T16:26:00.000+01:00

According to the BBC website today, EA has said they would like to see what is basically a combined technology gaming machine which will play every game for every current format.

To which I have to ask: Why?

Many companies have single-format deals, meaning the only make games for either one or the other. A lot of companies develop for both. Companies like EA and Codemasters.

Developing the same game for both formats is the best idea, because it generates healthy competition and helps to lower prices. If you can buy a game for cheaper on one console than the other, obviously people with both will go for that one. This inspires the rival to drop their price until they both even out.

In the situation EA would like (unsurprisingly right enough, with EA being the most dispicable evil software developer and publisher in the world) means that you're only making one disc and then it runs automatically on whichever system you want.
So what's to stop a developer charging £100 for their new game? If you want it, there's no other choice. Why would they drop their price if there's no incentive or benefit to the company?

Likewise, the hardware would have the same issue. If you only sell one box, you can charge what you like for it. £1000? £5000? If there was no competition to drive the price down, the only limiting factor would be what people are willing to pay. And from the way a lot of hardcore gamers behave, some of them would spend that.

Basically, the only people this would benefit are the hardware and software companies. Big shock then that moneypit-yearly-game-recycling-unimaginative-cess-pool Electronic Arts wants it that way.

Arseholes.

What Are Wii Waiting For?

2007-10-16T13:13:00.000+01:00

According to a recent Japanese report, around 67% of Wii owners have not played the console "in some time". After 11 million sales it might seem kind of shocking that two thirds of those consoles are sitting idle.

You know why that is, Nintendo?

BECAUSE 90% OF THE GAMES FOR IT ARE ABSOLUTE SHIT.

Their idea was sound - create a unique gaming experience. Not as much power as the Xbox 360 or PS3, but a revolutionary control method to get people more involved in the games.
Which should have been fine.
Unfortunately, games seem to be replacing content with motion controls.

Mini games.

The very word makes my flesh crawl.
You see someone on screen and have to move your arms to blow up a balloon. Why? What is the reason you're racing three other people to blow up a balloon? Or you have to balance something on your head. What the hell for? And how does that relate to the blowing up of balloons? And when you complete the selection of seperate tasks you've been assigned you get to...repeat the entire process again.
Woo-bloody-hoo.

Nintendo's attitude of late has really been pissing me off. Firstly, they claimed that nobody is interested in long games any more. Now for a company which used to release really good dungeon crawl Zelda titles, this seems like a strange move. But to someone (like me) who wants their £40 to buy them a little more than 6 hours play time, it's also a hellish oversight.
Especially when you see their attitude toward online gaming on the Wii. Don't even get me started on their old claim that nobody is interested in online gaming - I see 1.5 million Halo 3 players who would disagree.

Next came their claim (and this is a good one) that "Gamers were bored before Wii", although they also say that we "didn't know it yet". Excuse me? I don't recall being bored with the games I play. If I was bored of them I wouldn't play them. I'll tell you what I am bored of though - crappy stupid cutesy cartoon graphic mini-games. So if that's all you're offering then I guess I am bored after all.

People like me have been supporting Nintendo for almost 20 years. We are the people who fought wave after wave of bad guys to rescue the princess in Zelda on the SNES (a huge game with a lot of play time). We are the people who completed Mario Kart on every difficulty level and then went on to countless multiplayer battles (another huge amount of game time). We are still around, and we will still be around long after the new players get bored and move onto something else.

We may not be Nintendo's target demographic these days, but we are dedicated fans who have stood by their technologically inferior 8th generation console to the hilt, while others were claiming the 360 and PS3 would devour it. Our opinions are as valid, if not more, than people who have come in on the strength of a gimmick.

I know people who have sold their Wii's because of these reasons, but I refuse to. I remain hopeful that a developer somewhere is going to release something and surprise us all in terms of decent gameplay and intuitive motion controls.

Please don't disappoint us any more.

Bassholes

2007-10-15T12:55:00.000+01:00

What is it about bassists that makes them so impossible to deal with?

Firstly, they're a little thin on the ground. It's not as cool as playing guitar, and it's a big heavy bugger to carry around with you.

I can appreciate that, but it's a vital part of any band. They're like the glue between the tinny rythym of the drums and the mid-tones of the guitar. Without them it sounds hollow and empty. And since they're so scarce you'd think everyone would be rushing to learn because they're almost guaranteed a spot in a band. But no.

Secondly, they always want to play too much. Maybe they're making up for the fact that it's the guitarist who gets all the attention, but for some unknown reason they can't just play the line the way it should be, they have to add in 50 notes somewhere along the riff to make it complicated. More interesting to play? Definitely. But play too many notes and you end up with a song that sounds disjointed and muddy in the middle where there should be a clear differentiation between bass, guitar and vocals. Apparently the overall sound is less important than them getting to show off.

Guys, remember this - being a musician isn't about knowing the right notes to play; it's about knowing when to shut the hell up.

Thirdly (probably relating to the other points) they are notoriously unreliable. In the short time I've been rehearsing with Albany Down, we've had two bassists. One of them missed one audition, showed up for the next, got accepted and then never turned up again. The second was invited to two rehearsals and never showed up for either of them.
As I previously mentioned, they can pretty much pick up and drop bands as they choose, but why must they be so thoughtless about it. Tell us you're not interested so we can advertise again, don't just fail to show up week after week.

God damn them all.

So for the time being I'm playing bass while I sing. Not a problem since I can do that, but I don't really want to be doing it forever - I much prefer being able to move about the stage freely when I'm performing.

Come on guys, give us a break here.

Wherever We Rome

2007-10-02T15:50:00.001+01:00

Last week we headed out for a couple of days in Rome. Stef got her passport not long ago and neither of us have been abroad for a good few years now, so we figured we'd head somewhere. Since I've been talking about wanting to move to Italy for a while, we eventually agreed to visit Rome.

It was a good little break. We took in a couple of the tourist spots - the Collosseum, the Pantheon and the Sistine Chapel. All of them are very impressive, but it was the Pantheon which particularly struck me. It's a very imposing building from the outside, with massive pillars and a huge entrace, and for some reason standing outside it made my legs feel strange. Apparently it's built on a congregation of ley lines though, so if there is spiritual significance to the area I guess that could explain it.
In case it's relevant, I'm agnostic and very much interested in things I can see rather than blind faith of any kind. However, I'm open-minded enough not to outright deny the potential existence of anything.

Of course I love Italian food, and we ate a rather large amount of it in our 3 (and a bit) days, stopping in at cafes and gelaterias (ice cream shops to you) when we needed something. We tried a couple of different restaurants and they was all very nice and seemed very pleased with our attempts at speaking Italian. Stef can speak a little more than me, but we probably understand about the same. We didn't do too badly for a quick 3-week pre-vacation learning burst!

Traffic in Rome. Bloody hell, there's a terrifying experience. Pedestrians pretty much have to risk their lives every time they cross the road because red lights seem to mean "stop, unless you think you can get through". And the roads were pretty wide out near our hotel, so it seemed much further from one pavement to the other than it actually was. We decided the only way to actually get across was to find a gap, grit your teeth, step out and hope that the next car slowed down enough to avoid hitting you. And they don't even seem to queue behind each other either, instead preferring to essentially pile up, overlapping corners and whatever part they can fit into the space available. Not surprising then that the vast majority of the cars we saw had dents and dings in them.

But our taxi ride to the airport, that was the pinnacle of our fear. It was like an insanely dangerous half hour rollercoaster ride. Being on board with a driver who drives like Pompeii is erupting behind him while all the other cars on the road swerve left and right into spaces only big enough for a gnat, braking at the very last minute. He locked the tyres at one point and we were only saved from hitting the back of the SUV by a last minute swerve. Madness? This is ROMA!

3 days wasn't quite long enough though. Too much to see in such a short time, so it was a little hectic and our legs and feet were in agony by the end of each day. That said, it's a great city with fantastic people and it's an amazing sight when it's lit at night. We'll be back at some point in the not-too-distant, I have little doubt.

Back In The Saddle

2007-08-20T10:13:00.001+01:00

So after my first audition with the Albany Down guys I went home pretty pleased. It had gone well and I thought they seemed quite impressed. Obviously I was right.

On Sunday (yesterday) we got together again and after running through a few numbers again they said the singer gig was mine if I wanted it. Like that was in any doubt! Bassist app Andy was also in, and our aim is to get out and gigging by the middle of October.
At first we'll be mostly performing the old Albany Down back catalogue, but at least that takes off the immediate pressure to have a handful of songs written, rehearsed and ready to go in a few weeks. Obviously originals will be forthcoming as we all get used to each other's styles.

So watch this space (or even better, the Albany Down website) for upcoming gig dates and other developments on the band front.

Same Old Song & Dance

2007-08-06T15:23:00.000+01:00

In the start of my Aerosmith song title posts theme (don't ask, I only just decided), I thought I'd let everyone know what's going on.

Firstly, and most importantly, I had an audition for a band on Sunday. They're called Albany Down and they need a new singer. Originally Leicester-based, they came to London to reform after their original singer buggered off (much like a certain guitarist I could mention). According to their website, they got a load of critical acclaim and one of their songs won a bunch of awards. Can't say fairer than that.
The audition went pretty well; they seemed to be pretty impressed. I think they were expecting to need more attempts at the songs (I had 4 to learn), but I had learned them all pretty well. Got an email about it today which said:
"...we think you will be an asset to any band"
Can't say fairer than that.

I was offered a part as an extra in the new Nicholas Cage National Treasure movie, but the offer was then dropped because the agency didn't have a picture of me in a suit. Seems like a silly reason to me, but if that's the rules I can't really argue with them.
They said they'd try and see if they could get me in, but I'm not sure how likely that is.

Still, it was a promising week. Finges crossed on the whole band front.

Raining! No, Sunny! No, Rain! No, Sun!

2007-07-26T16:33:00.000+01:00

That pretty much describes the way the weather has been here in London over the last few weeks. One minute the rain is falling, the next the sun is shining and it's really warm.

Loads of places in the UK are underwater (although ironically without water because a few water processing plants have flooded as well), but thankfully London so far seems to be resisting. I'm not sure how close the water would get to us were the Thames to burst it's banks, but I don't think it would actually reach us. But I imagine the Underground would be out of service for a long time - all it'd take is a small stream to get down to the tracks and the entire line would be shorted out. Scary.

But yes, at 2pm today it was torrential rain. The air was literally white with it. It battered off our 7th floor office windows and turned the street outside into a paddling pool. Then it stopped.
And now, at just after 5pm, the sun is out, the clouds are dispersing and it's getting warm.

What is going on!?

Alan Johnston Free!

2007-07-04T14:23:00.000+01:00

After what must have been a long and gruelling 16 weeks, BBC Gaza Reporter Alan Johnston has been freed by his captors.

This is great news for him, his family and the media as a whole.

Whether or not his captors saw the overwhelming support for Alan, I've no idea. but I do know that 200,000 people signed an online petition for his release, myself included.

Remember, if you want to get your point across to the world, you need the press on your side.
I'm very pleased to be able to remove the link to his release page.

Welcome home Alan.

Seasonal Shift

2007-07-03T14:30:00.000+01:00

Okay, the weather round here has been bloody weird recently. As some people will already know, a lot of the country is suffering from flooding at the moment due to sudden torrential downpours.

Here in London we've had it fairly easy. It's been a little damp, but still mostly sunny. Sort of. In fact what we're actually getting is a generally sunny day (albeit a bit cold) but interrupted by 10 minute bursts of monsoon.
Right now as I look out the window, most of the sky is grey with some patches of sun breaking through. And hail is falling.

This phenomenon is what I have decided to call Seasonal Shift.
Basically, my theory puts it down to global warming and the change in the winds which normally bring the different seasons. As the earth heats up, the winds and tidal currents are changing direction and strength, bringing unfamiliar weather to new places. It is also pushing our seasons out of alignment, giving us later summers and winters.

Let's look at when I was a child. We got snow in December almost every year (although never enough on Christmas day). It fell thick and lay for weeks.
These days December is mild and wet, and the snow isn't arriving until February and March and isn't last long because the Earth is closer to the sun (on it's normal orbital trajectory).
Our summer has been pushed into August/September, meaning we're getting "April Showers" well into June.

And that's only in about 20 years. I don't know what will happen if Summer and Winter reverse entirely, but let's hope it slows down before they do.

My Birthday on Avenue Q

2007-07-02T14:59:00.000+01:00

When I got asked what I wanted for my birthday, I used my usual response of "Don't need anything" because it's true. I don't really care about birthdays that much. In fact I don't really care about any Hallmark celebration a whole lot.

But Stef wouldn't let me away that easily, and did actually force me to decide on something I wanted. She had originally planned on getting me an Xbox game, but since my mum had no idea what to get me I let her get that instead. Unfortunately that meant Stef was pretty much screwed out of ideas.

In the end I decided I wanted to see Avenue Q, and I'm very glad I did. It is possibly the funniest thing I've seen in years.

For those who don't know, it's like Sesame Street for adults. Before anyone gets fired up, they do say they're not affiliated with or endorsed by Jim Henson Workshops in any way. But the puppets are undeniably Henson-style, and the fact that one of them (Trekkie) sounds like Cookie Monster can't just be coincidence.
It deals with the slightly more grown-up themes of leaving college, relationships, racism, porn. Pretty much anything you expect from a good night out.

I went with Stef (obviously) and our friend Marc, and by the end of the show, all three of us had sore faces from laughing so much. Which even I can't complain about!
So if you get the chance to see it, I highly recommend it.

UK Moves a Little Closer to China

2007-06-19T15:26:00.000+01:00

Today, it was announced that the BBFC was refusing to rate upcoming Wii title Manhunt 2, meaning it has been denied a UK release.

For those not in the know, Manhunt 2 is the story of a guy called Danny. It looks like Danny got rather screwed over in the previous game, and he's being held in an asylum which appears to be a cover up for a much more sinister project. This project would seem to be the very reason he's being held there in the first place.

Now onto the so-called "justification" for the ban.

"Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game." - David Cooke, BBFC Director

Apparently, Sir Quentin Thomas, Lord Taylor of Warwick and Janet Lewis-Jones think they know me well enough to say that I'd be a danger to the general public simply by playing it. And of course those sound like the names of people from normal, working-class families and obviously represent a fair cross-section of the British public. Right then.

I've not played Manhunt 2. Or Manhunt 1 for that matter. I wasn't even planning on getting it for the Wii. My problem is the fact that it's banned at all. This is the Government telling you that you are not responsible enough to judge for yourself whether this is to e taken seriously or not. That you cannot differentiate games from real life well enough to understand that it's not acceptible outside of the game. That they know better than the people. That sounds a hell of a lot like the Chinese Government's way of thinking to me and is totally unacceptable.
Slap an 18+ certificate on it, add a warning that it does contain potentially offensive content and you're legally covered. Don't ban it, because that not only pisses off the population, it also makes the product more appealing.

It's just a form of oppression and it's a load of bollocks.

A Hard Day's...Work?

2007-06-01T12:10:00.000+01:00

Well Wednesday was my first day of filming for The Best Days of our Lives and I have to say it was quite good fun.

I arrived and was ready for my costume fitting at 7:45am. And the hassle of getting into a 1940s Sailor's outfit is a little crazy. The white shirt is so heavily shaped you literally have to dive into it. Then there's the light blue collar, which is supposed to tie around your waist, the black silky neck tie thing and a small piece of white rope. Nobody knows what that's for.
But the real fun was the pants. They fitted well enough, and the huge bell-bottoms were pretty cool, but why would you ever need 12 buttons on a pair of pants? Seriously. Going to the bathroom was a marathon task and I had to make sure I had enough time to struggle with the buttons! Like I said at the time, you wouldn't want to be struggling to get dressed on a sinking ship...

The first part of the day was spent sitting around in the cold. It was raining monsoon-style for a lot of the day, but we did have a dry bus to sit on, and there was plenty of convas covers to stand under. One guy looked like he may have already known someone on the crew, because he got called in for pretty much every scene going. Jealous? Of course not.

Keira disappeared into the green room as soon as she got there, and only came out to film the scenes. Cillian was very much the same way. But Sienna and Matthew were mingling with the crew and the extras with no problems. And I'm not sure if it was due to the make-up or what, but Sienna was actually looking a lot better than Keira. So there you go.

One thing I did discover was that as an extra in scenes like that, you were required to mime your conversations. I thought we might get away with whispering, but apparently not. It's very difficult to simulate a conversation and the right responses when you have no idea what the other person is saying. Even worse was the couple of scenes where there were three of us. When you can't hear the person speaking, how do you know who to look at? These leading role stars don't need to worry about that - their lines are scripted and they know what they're doing. Us? We were making it up as we went, and every scene was different.
Funniest thing was one of the crew said you can have great fun miming swear words to try and offend any deaf lip-readers watching the film. We fell about laughing at the thought of that.

We finally wrapped at 7:30pm, making it a very long day indeed. But watching the crew setting up, rehearsing and some of the clever tricks used to make places look busier than they are was pretty interesting. My next scene is on Sunday morning, but that's apparently only a 3 hour shoot. And I'm getting paid for it all, so that's just fine.

If I happen to get snapped up by any nearby agents I'll be sure to post here and let everyone know!

Free Alan Johnston

2007-05-31T11:35:00.000+01:00

I know this is slightly off-topic for this blog, but I think it's important so I'm dedicating this entire page to it.

I hope he remains healthy and is released soon. My thoughts are with him and his family.

The Best Days of Our Lives?

2007-05-29T11:10:00.000+01:00

So it's been a while since my last post, but since no bugger reads this anyway it doesn't make that much difference.

It was a few weeks ago I applied to be an extra in a wartime movie starring Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller called The Best Days of Our Lives, and was delighted when I was invited along to the casting. The movie is about the poet Dylan Thomas and his relationship with two women during WW2. I signed up with the agency (free, which was a bonus) who took my details and measured me up for a future uniform fitting.

I was equally pleased when I was called up several days later to be asked to appear in two scenes, one in King's Cross station and another in a bar (location as yet undisclosed).

Sadly I did have to get my hair cut in a 40s-style military cut, which thankfully wasn't all that much shorter than my normal 'do. But it didn't help the fact that I was trying to grow it again. We were told the fitting should've been that day as well, but they told us when we got there that the fittings would be done on the day.

And the bar scene is due to be filmed sometime tomorrow. I've taken the day off work, although I'm not sure yet if it will be in the evening or during the day. Either way, it'll be an experience. I've even been working on my Welsh accent just in case they decide that I'm so awesome they want to give me a speaking role. Although I'm not holding my breath. Boyo.

More on this as it happens. Or more likely after, since as it happens I'll be doing it and too busy to write a blog post. Duh.

Online Again!

2007-03-27T15:09:00.000+01:00

Yes, it finally happened! After 3 weeks of climbing the walls with no internet connection, BT finally got their act together and flicked the switch to get our connection back up. Not that it wasn't without it's final bit of drama though.

I got a phone call at work on Monday (19th), saying the Sky order was complete and the line was live. Great stuff, I thought. When I got home, I re-booted the router, plugged it all back in and waited for the lights to come on. Power? Check. LAN 1? Check. LAN 2? Check. Internet? Nope. Please? No. I'll give you a biscuit. Bugger off.

After a final call to Sky, they told me BT had fixed the exchange problem but hadn't actually activated the line. Obviously it does take computers a long time to load, and after 6 weeks I was a bit silly to expect it might have been done and ready for us. They said they'd contact them and it would be done within 48 hours, but allow a maximum of 72 for it to complete. Don't ask me about the logic of that one. It's like saying 3 is definitely between 2 and 4, but you should allow it to be 5.

Anyway, turns out we only had to wait a couple of hours, since on a whim I decided to plug it back in as I was passing. Power? Check. LAN 1? Check. LAN 2? Check. Internet? Yes! Yes? Yup, internet access. Are you sure? I said yes, didn't I? I love you! Steady now.

Connection seems to be stable enough now that it's all going though. And I saw my first 2mb download rate a couple of nights ago. Didn't last long, but it was definitely over 1000k/s for a little while. Yay!

Where R T3h Internets?

2007-03-19T14:10:00.000Z

We've now been without an internet connection at home for almost 3 weeks. It's turning me into a drooling mass of murderous rage. And in a surprise move, Stef is actually worse than me!

It all happened because we decided to switch from the accursed NTL to Sky Broadband. We placed our order, got a BT line reconnected and waited. Our live date was 12th February, but they contacted us to say that due to a problem with our exchange, it may take an extra 15 days to complete. No problem, we think, since the NTL connection wasn't due to drop until the end of the month, giving us a couple of crossover days.

15 days come and go, and still no sign of progress. Y'see, it turns out our good old national telecom service BT are using their market monopoly to furnish their own customers with their required equipment, but leaving every other poor sap at the bottom of the list. It's good to see that even the most trusted of corporations can kiss goodbye to it's morals when they're the only option.

It's not as if it's just us they're doing it to - because I work for another ISP I know that BT are treating all non-BT customers the same way. They get ignored while BT customers get preferential treatment. And how do they justify it? All non-cable customers must use BT lines and therefor we all pay our line rental to them anyway. Over 25 million UK homes have BT phone lines, so that's at least £250 million per month. You'd think they would be able to afford more staff to complete the jobs that need done then, but apparently not.

12th February, then 27th February, then "when it's done", then 16th March, and now they're telling me it will be done by today (19th). I'm sure they'll excuse me if I'm a little skeptical. So asking BT to install exchange equipment is a little like buying a Wii - you know the stock is there somewhere, but it's usually a case of some other bugger getting to it first.

Wii Have a Problem

2007-03-15T14:28:00.000Z

Back when it was still called Revolution and there wasn't anything all that revolutionary about it, I wasn't all that interested. But since Nintendo first showcased the unique control method and announced it as the "Wii" (which is still a crap name) my interest has been peaked.
I was of course absolutely delighted when they also announced that it would be much cheaper than either of it's competitors (The XBox 360 and PS3) at a fairly modest £200.

So for the last few weeks I've been trying to find one, and let me tell you - it's like trying to find a transparent, micorscopic needle in a haystack the size of the sun. Nowhere has any, and annoyingly most places with pre-orders available are only selling it as part of a bundle for £300. No use to me.

I spoke to a guy in HMV on Leicester Square who told me that they were expecting 9 Wii's in on Thursday, but it's all done on a first come, first served basis. 9 units. And he said they'd be sold out about a minute after they opened. Ridiculous.

So I'm scouring websites and shops for any remote chance that they might have one tucked away somewhere, and each time I try I'm disappointed. I'd even got an extra £30/40 if the bundle was a game I'm particularly interested in, but most of them aren't.

It's driving me crazy. And it's driving Stef crazy too, since she's the one who has to listen to me complain about not being able to get one!

Extra? Extra? Read All About It!

2007-03-08T13:30:00.000Z

When I signed up to StarNow.co.uk, I planned on using it to help my so far fruitless search for a new band, but when I saw an advert looking for extras for a show on BBC3 I stuck my application in anyway.
Nobody was more surprised than me when I got an email back saying they wanted me to turn up and play a casino extra for a show I'd actually heard of, The Real Hustle.

When I got to the hotel (nearly 2 hours across London at morning rush hour - ouch!) I had a release form to sign, saying that should any part of me appear on screen, they would henceforth own my soul and everything attached to it. So I signed, since I gave that up ages ago.

The ballroom we were assigned was moderately sized and decked out using a mobile casino as the prop providers. Makes sense really, since they know the rules and can set-up and take down quickly. We were introduced to the director and the hustlers (who I may or may not have recognised) and pretty much told that as long as we didn't look at the camera or block a shot, we could move between tables as we wanted. I was hoping for Poker, but had to settle for Blackjack instead. The director told us to keep talking, since they wanted background noise, but to be careful it didn't get out of control. I was impressed that it didn't, although I bet it would have had we been playing for real money!

So I played Blackjack, and I won some and lost some. At one point I was just over £2000 up, but that situation was quickly remedied. We were moved around during the day, and I also ended up with £10700 at one of the Roulette tables, and I think I could have made more if I had kept to the whole "small wins/small losses" style of play. Of course it wasn't my money, so I went crazy and lost it all!

There was an almost endless supply of Coke and crisps to keep us alive, and I thought this was all we were getting. Sadly, that meant I had stuffed myself by the time our proper lunch arrived (in the form of triple-deck sandwiches and potato wedges - tasty they were too), so I couldn't take advantage of a free lunch.

The afternoon was a lot of the same thing, and my feet were killing me by the time I was done. They were apparently planning to continue filming until about 7pm, but I wanted to make a move before that and headed out just after 5:30. I was given £10 to cover my travel, so I technically made a profit and therefor consider this my first professional acting job. Shush you!

It was good fun, and I made sure Charlotte knew I was interested in doing more work like this, which she said she'd keep me in mind for. Networking, y'see? Getting my face out there and in front of people.

And with that, we see that I am actually capable of posting something that's not miserable!

Official - Americans Too Stupid To Feed Selves

2007-02-27T11:38:00.000Z

We've all known for some time that our trans-Atlantic cousins have never been all that bright. How many settlers originally went over there? 100,000? And now there's almost 400 million of them. That's a lot of inbreeding, even for the southern states.

But now, thanks to this article on the BBC website, we can ignore any doubts we once had about them maybe being able to help themselves.

Not content with suing fast food companies for making them fat and cigarette companies for giving them cancer, they're now complaining that restaurants are making their dishes too appetising to have small portions. Yes, obviously the maitre d' is approaching each table, grabbing them by their big fat jowls and cramming as much garlic bread and fried chicken wings down their throats as possible, because surely...surely they couldn't be expected to show some bloody restraint themselves, could they?

And we have people complaining about the developing 'Nanny Culture'? That's because we have idiots like this complaining that just because something is there on the menu, it means they have to eat it!

I have a message for you, fat-ass: I like my portions the size they are now. Make them smaller, I'll be hungry. Do I deserve to be penalised for you being a total uncontrollable hog? Doesn't sound fair to me, perhaps I'll sue them if that happens.
And guess what else, blubber-mound: Just because a portion is on your plate doesn't mean you have to eat it all! FFS...

They're complaining that a dessert has 1380 calories, but nowhere on the menu does it have nutrition information. It's called Chris' Outrageous Chocolate Cake and can only be found at the Cheesecake Factory. The hint is somewhere in that sentence, moron! What the hell do you expect to get there? They're not advertising salad on the menu either, but do you hear anyone complaining about that? NO! Because it's a goddam cheesecake shop!

But of course that's just me. Perhaps the entire world is this stupid and I'm being punished for something hideous I did in a past life. Maybe I was Genghis Khan or something...

Presents for Women: A Man's Guide

2006-12-05T16:00:00.000Z

Ah, December. T'is the season. Sitting by a roaring log fire as the snow gently floats down, drinking sherry, watching ancient movie reruns on TV, waiting for the bearded fat man to drop down your chimney. Lovely.

But if you don't have the psychic skills of Santa, what do you get for your girlfriend/wife? Will she like the ironing board and washing up gloves you got her? Probably not. This guide is designed to help all the men out there avoid the embarrassment (and possibly pain, especially if you got the gifts I mentioned) associated with buying a Christmas present for your special lady.

Point 1: Shopping
You will have to make at least one shopping journey with your partner before the event. Sorry.

Ignore everything you want - you know them already, and so does she. Do not point out things that you like at all. She already knows what she's getting you, and probably has done since about June. This is your chance to shine, and you will need every single bit of your concentration to work out what to look for, what to avoid, and what to comment on.

Walk close to her, so you can hear what she's saying

If she stops, look and listen to what she's talking about

You want to get this over and done with in as few trips as possible, and getting all the required information now means you can get it out of the way next time, leaving you free to enjoy your spare time.

If Rule 1 doesn't work and you still have no ideas, here are some other guidelines to follow:

Point 2 : What Not to Buy
A quick rundown on the things to avoid like the plague.

Clothes

Under no circumstances buy her clothes. Buying clothes is like tap-dancing across a minefield. You are a man and therefor know nothing. Accept this.

You might think you know what size she is, but different brands and shops will be different sizes.

Potential Fights:

One size too big: "How fat do you think I am?!"

One size too small: "You think I need to lose weight!"

Just avoid the clothes stores. And shoes. And in the name of god avoid anything that's labelled 'edible'.

Chocolates / Flowers

This is another pitfall area. You might think this is a great idea, but you are wrong.

If she's on a diet and you buy her chocolates, you will get sulked at. Or she'll eat them all and then blame you when she puts on that dreaded 3 ounces. If you get candy that she doesn't like and you do (either by coincidence or design) you will be accused of being selfish.

Flowers are another strange one. They have a good initial impact, but since they die very quickly you will be expected to replace them regularly. If you haven't been together long, she will expect them (whether she admits it or not). If you have been together for a while, she will think you've done something wrong.

Potential Fights:

You like her candy: "Selfish pig!"

You don't replace her flowers: "You don't love me anymore!"

You replace her flowers: "What did you do?!"

With both of these you need to watch for allergies. You don't want to be responsible for putting her in hospital. Whether she laughs about it in the future or not, she will not forgive you.

Books / Videos / DVDs / CDs

A novice mistake, but one made regularly. You may be happy with the newest car chase, explosions, naked chick film, but that's not a great idea. Her favourite book or film is acceptible as a secondary gift, but will not get you many points as a main - they are not very personal. If you can get a copy signed by the star/author/director then this changes.

Potential Fights:

"You bought that for yourself!"

"You think she's more attractive than me!"

Note: If you buy her favourite film or album, you will have to watch it/listen to it with her. This is not negotiable. If you can't stand it, don't be the one to buy it for her. You can escape if someone else has got it.

Additional Fight Possibility: "Why did you buy it for me if you hate it so much?!" (it makes no sense, don't ask me).

Point 3: What's Left?
Less than you'd like, but more than you think

Jewelry

This is a safe option, and the supply is almost endless. There is a wealth of unique stuff available, especially if you live near an open market, such as Camden or Edinburgh's Markets. All it takes is a little observation and you'll be worshipped as some kind of mythical hero figure. Or something.

If she doesn't wear gold, don't buy gold. The same goes for silver. This is a guaranteed fight starter, but easy to avoid.

Look at the earrings she wears already. Be subtle! Are they studs or hanging? Don't get one type if she wears the other. If she wears both, that's fine - but make sure it's in a style she likes (in male terms: just like ones she already has).

Necklaces. If she's not religious, don't get her a huge crucific or a pentacle or any other religious symbol. If she is religious, please make sure you get the right symbol! If she wears choker style necklaces, stay with that style. If she wears elaborate loose ones, that's your safe option.

Bracelets. See necklaces. Under no circumstances do handcuffs count as jewelry. If you must, get them as a secondary present. Do not buy her a watch. Watches must be chosen so that they match every outfit she has. You do not have the experience needed to co-ordinate this massive operation.

Rings are a grey area. If you happen to know the size of her fingers (or can take one of her rings with you without her noticing), then this is fine. If not, it's normally safer to avoid them altogether. Also, you may not want to risk the whole "ring=commitment" thing.

Point 4: The Last Resort
If you can't think of anything else...

If you still can't think of anything to get her, take her to something you weren't sure about and ask her if she likes it. She'll appreciate that you've at least thought about it and you'll get some points for that. If it's early in the relationship you can get away with "I'm not sure what you like yet and didn't want to get you something you hated" (bonus points for the word 'yet' in there and good sympathy score for the word 'hated') but this won't work later on.

You must follow up the non-surprise present with dinner. This will soften the blow. The present surprise is gone, but you replace that with a suprise meal and a present she's guaranteed to like. Score one for the guys!

I hope this helps out a few people and prevents some of the lingering disappointment that can be caused by crap presents. Follow these instructions and you can't go far wrong. Oh, and don't show her because she'll know you cheated!

New Religion Proposal

2006-11-27T14:51:00.000Z

I hate winter. It's cold, it's wet and nothing much happens until all the uproar around the end of December, then it's back to the cold and the wet until about April.

To avoid this I decided to start my own religion, known as Hibernalism.

From the teachings of such wise scholars as Squ'Rel and the Great Bear, followers of Hibernalism should begin stockpiling food around September. The type of food is up to the individual, but it is wise to have a selection of both snacks and sustaining meals. Crisps are a good choice, since they do not go out of date too quickly and a decent big multipack will last several weeks. Bread is good, but must be kept frozen and only defrosted when needed.

The Teachings of Squ'Rel, Chapter Six (verses 5 to 12):
"And as the winter drew near, did not Squ'Rel reach down into the earth and extract a bounty of food with his bare hands. Around him, the people did rejoice as they knew their leader was a truly learned man."

Hibernalism does not require practitioners to totally avoid leaving the house, as this is not always possible in modern times. However, since concentration levels are much lower in winter than summer, it is unwise for a Hibernalist to attempt any form of work during the colder months. Hibernalists in the workplace must get at least 3 months off work (recommended November-January) with a preferred leave time of 5 months, to be taken between October and February.

During this hibernation, Hibernalists should take time to give thanks to Nature for being wise enough to show them the way to live, and understand that were we supposed to walk during winter, Nature would have granted us fur coats.

Walking with the Great Bear, Volume XI, verses 21-34:
"We had wandered for what felt like miles, across the barren, snowy land. I could no longer feel my feet, and I knew that if I stopped walking now I would surely perish. I surveyed the landscape and saw the trees stripped of leaves, bushes trying in vain to break free of the thick layer of snow on top of them, and strange lumps, which may have been packed ice or the bodies of the last people to attempt this journey. The Great Bear, sensing my despair, turned to me and spoke these words:
'Do not worry, we are nearly at Tesco now,'"

While purists insist that Hibernalists should never leave the house at all during their time of worship, the less strict paths say that travel is permitted as long as it through choice and not necessity. The concentration required to worship through the winter must not be interrupted by employers. However, this concentration is not broken by doing things the worshipper enjoys.

Hibernalism is already beginning to spread through the world, and even popular band Green Day have chosen to associate themselves with this religion.
"Wake me up when September ends," said Billie Joe Armstrong, combining his Hibernalistic beliefs with a shameless promotion for the band's song about the religion. Probably.

And who can argue with that?

Disclaimer: Green Day are probably not Hibernalists. Duh.

This is My Week

2006-11-14T15:39:00.000Z

Well after spending the last few months looking for a job, and having less response than a comatose mute, out of nowhere a week of good luck suddenly appeared from nowhere. In fact, it was getting so positive that I was really wondering what Fate was up to.

Firstly, I was offered (and have accepted) the job I was interviewed for at Thus. the interview was a couple of weeks ago now, and I thought at the time it went quite well. I don't get too nervous about interviews, because I have a collection of key phrases I know they want to hear and generally the only other thing you need is the ability to talk through your CV. So that's great, suddenly going to have some actual cash. That'll be weird.

Secondly, I've been in contact with a band from my local area who saw the advert I posted on Denmark Street in Central London a few weeks ago. In fact, it had been so long since I put them up I just thought nobody was interested. After all this time looking for a new band since the old one split (that's a story for another time) and it all happened last week.

But I don't like when a lot of good things happen at once - it makes me paranoid. I must be careful not to fall down the stairs, or accidentally poke my eye out with a toothbrush or something.

The Journey From Hell

2006-10-31T07:33:00.000Z

Sometimes Fate really likes to test my patience. Here, for example, is one morning when I was heading for a job interview at a school. I had planned my journey online, but had no real idea where I was going, since I'd never been there before. Details of the ridiculous journey follow...

Left in plenty of time (for a change) and slowly made my way up toward our closest Hail N Ride bus stop. I made it all the way to the stop, but wasn't worried about that. As I waited, a couple more people turned up, but not a problem. And I waited. And waited. And waited some more as 9:46 came and went. The bus turned up at 10:05, predictably packed with people.

Hopped on, swiped Oyster and no beep. And again, no beep. But the kid in front of me had a problem too, so the driver nodded me past as I swiped like a possessed swiping thing. Miraculously I found a seat next to some HU-U-UGE girl (who made no attempt to hide the fact that she was stuffing her face with snack after snack and not even the decency to make it a diet Coke) and even though the bus was already full we kept stopping for every pleb that waved a hand. A couple of stops from Arnos Grove, a friend of the Girl with No Shame got on and they decided to talk utter utter crap until it was my turn to make my escape. Perhaps the conversation was caused by the lack of oxygen on the bus, who knows, but it was bad.

So into the station I went, deja vu all over again. Swiped the card, no beep. "Oh bollocks" I say aloud. Swipey swipe I go, silencey silence it says back. Typically it decides not to work when I'm already running late. In his infinite wisdom, one of the nearby members of staff says:
"It's dead."
Thank you, Captain Obvious. I walk over to the counter (another miracle - nobody in front of me) and throw the card through, saying:
"I have no idea what's wrong with it."
He scans it a few times and says "It's dead, isn't it?". I blink. Bloody hell, is there a Mensa convention on today?
"Looks like it."
He hands me a form and says:
"You'll need to fill this in before I can give you a replacement." Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
"Do you have any proof of address on you?"
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! (miracle 3 - I happen to still have a bill in my bag from the last agency I signed up with. That's my year's luck gone then). Form filled in and handed back, new card handed over, I swipe the new card and hold my breath until the sweetest beep I ever heard plays and I run down to the platform. On the platform there's some more good news.
"Due to a signal failure..."
Dear god no...
"...there are delays reported in both directions..."
[sob]
"...on the Piccadilly line."
Someone's taking the piss. But no, a train turns up only a few minutes later than normal and I jump on board.

The rest of the journey was amazingly short and I actually still arrived 10 minutes early. Perhaps God was having a laugh, since it was a Convent school I was going to. Who can tell? But if that's his idea of a joke, the son of a bitch is one sick puppy!

My Theory of Evolution

2006-06-07T10:14:00.000+01:00

It'll come as no surprise to people who know me, to find that I hate stupid people.

I don't mean people who can't recite pi to 50 decimal places, or the square route of 253469. That'd be silly. I have an above average IQ, but I've had plenty of friends within the "normal" IQ band, so it's not like I'm some kind of super-intellectual or anything. Nor am I talking about just people with below average intelligence. In fact, people who would once have been called "simple" are generally very nice people.

No, I'm talking about the troglodytes with more children than brain cells, who think their head might fall off if it's not attached to a mobile phone while they scream at their equally brain-dead friends, who have no manners, who think that you want to hear all about (random girl) splitting up with (random guy) because of (random reason) when they're across the other side of the bloody room, who sit under no smoking signs with a cigarette in their mouths (possibly related to the inability to read), who think tracksuit trousers are formal-wear and should be tucked into socks, and who are forever finding new and depressing ways of making me wonder just how they manage to stay alive long enough to irritate me.

Ahem, rant over. For now.

But you know exactly who I'm talking about, and if you're one of them I commend you for (a) being able to read, (b) being able to use a computer, and most of all (c) for trying to change. Please.

I get the bus to work. Not such a big deal, normally. Except this one obviously passes a bunch of schools on the way, and as such we get the trog hordes invading our space (without paying, too). And sadly you can't help but hear them talking. Or more accurately, shouting. Bleh, I won't start again. Scroll up if you want the rant again!

So here's the theory.

I believe that fertility is inversely proportional to IQ. Which means the lower the IQ, the more likely to fall pregnant. You obviously sacrifice intelligence for sheer numbers.
This leads me to believe that Nature is trying to 'breed out' the faulty gene as quickly as possible. Generation after generation will spawn (most of them as soon as they hit puberty) and eventually the average IQ will drop so far that they won't be able to survive, or breed any more. And then they'll be extinct, leaving the rest of us to live a life of relative peace.

The signs are all there. And that is a day I wish I'd be alive to see.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho!

2006-05-30T11:41:00.000+01:00

Well it finally happened - someone actually gave me a job!

It's just a temporary office job (4 weeks for Barnet Council here in sunny London) but it's a start, and it might continue to run on after that period. After getting ignored by pretty much every employer I sent an application to, it's nice to have someone wanting to give me a chance.
The fact that my girlfriend (who works for the same manager in a different department) helped influence the decision was very useful!

My useless memory also means I keep forgetting the vast number of things I need to do, but I do have a booklet of instructions here, which is proving to be worryingly useful.

So far I have no idea how much I should be getting paid, but as long as it's more than my unemployment benefits I think we'll be alright!