BlackBerry, and Apple Crumble

PayPal finally caved in and allowed me to have access to my own money, which was nice of them. I got an email late on Wednesday evening alerting me to the fact that they’d reviewed my transaction and found nothing to raise concern, and that my cash had been released. Well thank you very fucking much, PayPal. I don’t actually recall asking you to come and investigate the totally legitimate sale of my motorcycle, but thanks all the same.

I’ve transferred the majority of the money back into the savings account from which I funded the purchase of the Suzuki Goose, and paid off a few minor debts I had (I gave back money I borrowed for the purchase of cheap booze and heroin). I did make one purchase with the spoils of my profit-making sale, however – a new phone. I think this must be about the 5th time I’ve bleated on about a new phone on this blog (let me see...HTC HD2, Palm Pre, O2 XDA, Huawei Blaze...yep, it is), so that just shows you how prone to failure/out-moding these ubiquitous devices really are. Fuck me – I’ve only been blogging since 2009 (well, 2006 if you count the Dreamcast Junkyard, but that doesn’t count) and I’ve already gone through 4 different mobiles! Planned obsolescence in action, or evidence of really shoddy manufacturing? You decide (in an old skool Big Brother Geordie voice). I’d probably go for the latter, as at least two of the mobiles had to be replaced due to the hardware going tits-up through no fault of the user (me); the Palm Pre’s touch screen went haywire and rendered it useless, while the Huawei Blaze’s speaker died so phone calls became an impossibility.

I was planning on replacing the Huawei with another touch screen, Android-based device – the Sony Xperia Tipo. This particular handset is described as a budget device, but it boasts a newer version of Android than the Huawei Blaze (Android 4) so that was the main attraction for me as I was pretty attached to the apps and stuff that the Play Store offered for Android 3.5. Upon reflection though, I wasn’t overly keen on the ‘screen only’ input methods of both the HD2 or the Blaze...so I took a gamble and bought a BlackBerry Curve 8520 instead. It’s a little antiquated (no 3G, for one), but BlackBerrys are renowned for their robust nature and the solid user interface, so that’s what swayed me.

My first impressions are pretty positive, even if the OS on the device is a little arcane at first glance. As I mentioned in a recent post, I’ve also got a BlackBerry PlayBook so I have some basic knowledge of how these things work, but the Curve is a lot more simplistic than the PlayBook. There’s no touch screen for a start, which may be a blessing in disguise – you have to scroll around using the little optical trackpad thing. Also, BlackBerry seem to be really into ‘security’ and such, so you have to create all these fucking accounts and stuff and go through registration setups and shit. Bit annoying, but I’ve managed to link it to my existing PlayBook ID so it’s all working fine(ish). I say ‘ish,’ because due to some fucked up method of operation, I need to have a special add-on with my Giffgaff account in order to use the BBM and email etc, but I can’t add it to my profile mid-month...so I’ve got to wait until October to add this magical extension. The phone works fine as it is (I can call, text, go online via the Wi-Fi or through Opera Mini (love a bit of OS trickery!) when I’m out of the house), but I’m assured that the BlackBerry phone comes into it’s own once you’re allowed to access all the cool shit like the instant messaging etc. Ah well...October is but a few weeks away, and I’m sure I’ll cope.

Away from the minor shortcomings of the OS and the network, I really like the look of the Curve, and the keyboard is fantastic for writing text messages. The coolest feature though? I can connect this badboy to my PlayBook via Bluetooth and use the thing as a mouse! Yes – you read that shit correctly! It’s possibly the most pointless (geddit?!) thing I’ve ever heard of considering the PlayBook is just one bit capacitive touch screen, but there you are. I don’t know how I could ever use this feature, other than to impress my equally nerdy flatmate (as I did, yesterday), but the fact that it exists is enough for me. There are other uses for this ‘BlackBerry Bridge’ feature - for instance you can tether the tablet to the phone for internet access etc...but I doubt I’ll ever feel the need to do that when Wi-Fi is pretty much everywhere these days.

Does this make me a BlackBerry fan boy? Maybe...but I’m several degrees further from hell than all the Apple zealots clamouring to get their perfectly manicured, fresh-from-the-cloning-vat hands on an iPhone 5. What is the deal with all the ‘new’ versions of the iPhone? They don’t look any different from the last one, but people are falling over themselves to get the latest model as soon as it's announced. There’s at least one person where I work who has a perfectly good iPhone 4S...yet they’re sweating about how they will be able to fund the purchase of an iPhone 5. And the price...fuck me - £500 minimum? My BlackBerry cost me just over £100 from Sainsbury’s, unbranded and SIM free. I just don’t get it. Neither does the guy who wrote this article about Apple's new product launches being boring now that Steve Jobs has uploaded himself to the iCloud.

However, I’m not going to turn this into another Apple-bashing session. I’m over that. I’m a BlackBerry power user now, and we just don’t stoop to that fucking level. Peace.

Permission to Scream: Authorised

Well, I finally sold the Honda. I suppose that should be a cause for celebration seeing as it’s been the source of quite a bit of stress over the past week or so. Ever since I bought the Suzuki, I’ve had the burden of entering the murky world of vehicle sales looming over me like some kind of sentient shadow. A bit like Count Dracula’s in that shit movie with Neo Anderson from The Matrix in it. But hold the champagne – the celebrations haven’t been given the all clear just yet. One word: Paypal. I’ll come back to that in a second, but first let me explain why getting rid of the Honda has been such a pain in the ass.

The first and most important thing I had to contend with was actually getting the bike exposed to a buying public. I advertised it on eBay as a classified listing and had exactly zero phone calls for about a week, before noticing (quite by chance)that eBay had placed a totally random telephone number in the ‘contact the seller’ section. I clearly remember entering my actual phone number, so where this random string of digits came from, I don’t know. I know some services offer a ‘number masking’ thing, where buyers only get to see an 0800 number to protect your identity, but eBay never offered one: this random telephone number seems to have been entered seemingly at random. Odd. Suffice to say, that after entering my correct details I had a call within an hour that led to the eventual sale. But we’re not at that point just yet. Due to the lack of interest from eBayers, I decided that putting the bike up for sale on several websites would garner more exposure, so off I popped to Gumtree.

I’ve sold things on Gumtree before, but the kinds of people who respond to Gumtree ads tend to be the ones who bring a certain odour with them when they turn up to buy stuff: that of sweat and faeces. Why? Who knows, but they do. Anyway, I tried to post an advert in the motorcycles section of Gumtree, but every time I did, the advert appeared in the ‘cars’ section. This happened about 7 times, and every time I tried to contact customer services to ask why, I was met with an automated response with a different (stupid) name attached at the bottom. People like ‘Gary Sultana’ then started to bombard my inbox with requests to take a customer satisfaction survey and such like. Here’s my customer response, Gary Sultana: take your ridiculous name and go fuck yourself you prick. Your service is nonexistent and your website is a fucking joke.

I’m pretty sure one of the emails was from an actual person – somebody calling themselves ‘Liam Henderson.’ I wrote a lengthy and polite email to customer services explaining that I was trying to place an advert in the motorcycles section and that my advert, once accepted, would continue to be placed in the cars section, ergo anyone searching for a motorbike would not see my advert...because it was in the wrong section. You get the idea. Liam Henderson sent me a reply saying this: “Your advert is in the section ‘Cars, Vans & Motorcycles – Cars – Honda’...seems like the right place to me.” FUCKING MORON! At this point, I realised that trying to communicate with this online entity was like smashing my head repeatedly against a submarine hatch, so I admitted defeat and put a filter on any future Gumtree mail sending it automatically to the ‘junk’ folder.

I also paid £15 to have a third advert placed on the pages of MCN (that’s Motorcycle News, for those not in the know), and I didn’t actually have an issue with it, other than a few calls from people who were from hundreds of miles away asking if I could deliver the bike to them (erm...no. That’s not how buying a vehicle works).

Even in the face of this web-based adversity, various time wasting phone calls, and several visits from people who were clearly trying to get the bike off me for a fraction of the advertised price, I managed to sell the bike. The guy rang and emailed yesterday (after I amended the aforementioned eBay contact info issue) and seemed like quite a keen, decent buyer. He turned up, looked at the bike and we agreed a price (slightly lower than the asking price, but a sensible offer and one I was only too happy to accept after the developments of the past week). The only problem was that it was about 7pm and the banks were all closed so he couldn’t get the cash out for me. We decided to use the Wi-Fi in my flat so he could send the cash to me using PayPal, which seemed like a perfectly acceptable method at the time. That is until a) I realised that PayPal had siphoned off about £50 for the pleasure; and b) I got an email from them saying that my request to withdraw the payment to my bank account was ‘pending’ until they had reviewed it. REVIEWED WHAT?! The guy was sat in my house chatting with me when he did the transfer from his bank account to my PayPal account. We shook hands, and he left a happy man. Why does PayPal feel the need to stick its fucking stupid face in? I’ve queried this, and been told that it’s for my protection. Eh?! From what, exactly?! 

So that’s the current state of things. I’ve sold my Honda and the buyer is happy with it. I’m happy with the price he paid. But I still haven’t got my money because I made the massive mistake of letting PayPal become involved. And there isn’t a single fucking thing I can do about it.

The morale of this story has several layers. I propose the first one is this: do not sell a vehicle unless it is a matter of life and death. The stress levels you will encounter are (probably) similar to those endured when moving house or losing a loved one (as those are, apparently, the two most unsettling events you can go through in a stable, developed country...although evidence suggests that’s bullshit). Secondly, the internet fucking sucks...or rather, the people tasked with running shit that is based on the internet suck. Ultimately, people are people...and as I stated in a previous blog post, quite correctly in my opinion, people are cunts to each other. The last one is this: PayPal seems to be a company that creates its own rules and regulations and generally they fuck with people’s lives. I’ve had a look at the community forums to see how long they generally take to release users’ cash, and there doesn’t seem to be a definite answer other than: when they want to. Which is quite a big flaw, actually. The closure of my account will be pretty swift once I get my cash – well done PayPal.

I’m quite relieved that this whole ordeal is (almost) over, and when I finally get my money released, it’ll be a good few years before I dip my toe into the world of vehicle buying and selling. I’d like to dip my fist/boot into Gary Sultana or Liam Henderson’s face though. And PayPal’s collective face too, if possible.

In a sudden and rather unexpected change of tack, go here to read my blog post over at the National Archives blog. It’s about Digital Preservation, so not going to appeal to everybody...but go have a look anyway. Expand your horizons and all that shit.

Update: I've just been looking at my PayPal account and it appears I have a limit on the amount of money I can withdraw or send through my account. I've just been on the phone with them and they said that this shouldn't affect the transaction from yesterday and that my money will go into my bank account in the next few days. Gah! If only I'd insisted on a cash payment. Hindsight: what a fucking amazing invention. I'm not holding my breath - I expect a bloody, drawn-out war over this. My Afghanistan, if you will. Further updates as they happen.

Procedures

Found myself way oop north last week. Yep – I took the train to Durham to meet up with some work colleagues and have meetings etc. Doesn’t sound too exciting, I know, but my employer arranged for this meeting to take place behind the scenes at Durham cathedral...and also incorporated a guided tour of the building. To say it was amazing is an understatement. I’d never been to Durham before so it was a fairly spectacular introduction to the place. The city itself is pretty nice – it’s not a big city like Birmingham or Manchester, but for that reason it has a totally different feel; very olde worlde, little winding streets and crooked alleys with independent shops built seemingly on top of each other.  Most people have probably heard of Durham University and the reputation it has, but the cathedral and castle are the first things you see as you approach on the train. Place looks like fucking Hogwarts – indeed, they used the cathedral as a set in Harry Potter...but I've never really been interested enough to watch any of those films so I couldn’t really comment. Something about ‘Monogle’s’ classroom? I don’t know. Meh. The guided tour of the cathedral was fascinating, and it was helped along by the fact that tour guide seemed to know a factoid about every single brick and door knob and column...so kudos to him. I’d definitely recommend a visit to the cathedral if you ever find yourself in that part of the world, and also a visit to the Shakespeare Inn just around the corner. It’s basically the Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings, but without the Nazgul trying to stab you in your bed.

Durham cathedral entrance

Took all these pics with my PlayBook

Durham cathedral cloisters. There were bats flying around, naturally.

Saturday was slightly more nerve-wracking. A little bit of background: I've had gut problems for years. This may qualify as ‘over sharing,’ but fuck it. I don’t care. So yeah, I've had gut problems for years, and these problems have manifested themselves in various ways: feeling like shit, bloated, farting out noxious gasses that could put down a shopping centre full of families. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember and recently I’d resigned to putting up with it for the rest of my life...however long that will be. I’d tried altering my diet, cutting out alcohol and other stuff like bread and dairy and also trying those bullshit bacteria drinks like Actimel and Yakult...to no avail. However, however. Saturday morning I went and had a ‘procedure.’ This procedure is more commonly known as colonic irrigation and involved a pipe being shoved up my ass and warm water being forced into my colon. I must admit to being extremely fucking apprehensive – who wants to get their ass out in front of a stranger and have a pipe slipped up it?! I was even more apprehensive when myself and my significant other (who arranged the appointment, by the way) walked into the clinic and the only member of staff appeared to be a bearded man who clearly weighed at least 30 stone. Not a good start. Fears were repealed though when the therapist turned up and it was a less fearsome-looking female of normal human-like proportions. So I took off my pants,  got on the table, had water squirted up me, shat it out...and I must say that the result is nothing short of revelatory. Since Saturday morning (it’s now Monday morning), I have had no gurgling, no pain, no bloating...and no repugnant clouds of stench. The impossible has become reality...I have normal guts! Amazing! So, if you suffer from a bad stomach/digestive issues I’d wholeheartedly recommend going for one of these treatments. Once you get over the initial embarrassment and realise that the people who offer it see hundreds of asses and yours is no different, you’ll be thankful that you did.

Away from ass news, I sorted the issues with my new bike. The Suzuki Goose now has some new indicators and a headlight that points in the right direction as opposed to at the floor. The only niggle I have now is the speedo. Because it’s an imported machine, the speedometer is in Kilometres instead of mph. And because of this, it has a conversion sticker overlaid that...er...converts your speed to mph. It’s just that because the Goose is so much more powerful than the CBF, I feel like I’m going slower than the speed I’m told I’m going at. Example – when the speedo tells me I’m doing 30mph, I feel like I’m going slower than that because the engine is hardly ticking over, just sort of growling, and I can’t rely on the flow of traffic to tell me that I’m actually doing 30mph because nobody drives at the correct speed anyway! Fucking annoying.

Equally annoying is the way that potential buyers of my previous motorcycle are pissing me about. It’s advertised on several websites for £1650, which is an absolute steal for this type of bike...but people keep trying to get me to part with it for less. One guy turned up to look at it on Saturday afternoon, spent about half an hour of my time trying to find faults with it (he couldn’t) and then offered me £1400! That’s £250 under what it’s advertised for...cheeky twat! I understand that buyers expect to haggle...but that was taking the piss, and clearly indicated that he’d turned up with that much cash totally expecting to pay that much for the bike. Quite simply: do one. Other biking news: I picked up a rather nice biker jacket at a carboot sale on Sunday morning...for a fiver! I also managed to get an official and rather rare PlayStation carry case for £5 too. There was a distinct lack of Dreamcast stuff there, but you can’t have it all: I think a virtually new biking jacket and a PlayStation branded carry case for a combined total of £10 are great spoils. On top of that, the weather this weekend has been stunningly good...so all in all a pretty good weekend. Feels a bit strange to not be moaning about shit (no pun intended), but don’t worry – I’m sure I’ll find something to bitch about in my next post.

Bikes an' Phones an' Shit

Turns out that the issue with my new bike being a twat (by ‘twat’ I of course mean ‘cutting out at 70mph on the M5’) was easier to remedy than I initially anticipated. I visited a dedicated Suzuki Goose fan site and managed to download a pdf of the Japanese owner’s manual. Inside, there was a really helpful diagram showing how the petrol tap should be aligned...and it transpires that having the tap turned to ‘on’ actually puts the bike in ‘reserve,’ and turning to ‘reserve’ allows the main tank to be accessed. Those crazy Japs and their upside-down petrol tank markings! I extend a thousand thanks to the people at www.suzukigoose.co.uk for uploading the manual...although the site doesn’t seem to be updated anymore so I’m not sure they’ll ever know how much I appreciate it. Maybe I could somehow deduce where the webmaster lives by analysing the backgrounds in his photos and cross-referencing against the entire Google Streetview image library, and then turn up at his gaff with a cake and a card. Bit much?

As usual though, another slight problem has arisen – the headlight is held in place by the indicators screwed into the sides through a bracket...but the indicator threads are a bit worn and loose, so there’s quite a bit of play in the angle that the headlight hangs at. This means that it’s pointing at more towards the floor than I’d like and isn’t much use as an actual headlight in the dark (as I found out to my disgust last night whilst riding through quite a poorly lit rural idyll). Hopefully I can remedy this with the replacement indicators I’ve purchased from Amazon. When they turn up I’ll have a go at securing the headlight with more...er...security, and hopefully that’ll be the end of the minor annoyances. These things are to be expected when you buy a used vehicle though, so I’m not too surprised to discover that I need to do a few jobs. And to be honest, I kind of enjoy tinkering with anything mechanical anyway so I don’t see it as a chore. What I do see as a chore is the sun going down way too soon now we’re heading into September, meaning that the work I’m doing has to be done super-quickly and right first time...or it has to wait to the next day. Fucking seasons. Fucking rotation of the Earth. Fucking sun. Fucking space. With futility bordering on the ridiculous, I shake my fist at you all.

Speaking of shit just going wrong, my phone has decided that it no longer wants to function as a phone. Texting and internet browsing – fine, go ahead. Actually make a phonecall you say? Nooo. And that’s because it’s a piece of fucking crap. For a start, it’s made by some tin pot organisation that probably has it’s head office in a back street in Kowloon walled city: Huawei. It’s a pretty basic and budget priced Android phone called the Huawei Blaze, and my initial impressions were that it was quite a good gadget for the price. I think it only cost about £70 and was pre-unlocked so I could just pop my GiffGaff (more on those cunts shortly) sim straight in and start using it. Only after a few weeks did I realise just how shoddy the thing really is. There are massive delays between you pressing any icons on the screen and anything happening, and it constantly locks up. The thing just doesn’t seem to have the power to handle the operating system (Android 2.3.5). Texting is a nightmare due to the lag between screen presses and letters appearing, and most of the other features you’d expect on a smart phone are either complete arse or just don’t work (e.g .the camera is bollocks and the radio doesn’t work). Now, the thing has decided that letting me hear someone when I call them is not within its job description, so all I get is silence through the earpiece. The caller (or called) can hear me, I just can’t hear them. So this thing is getting slung as soon as I can afford a new phone. Trust me – do not buy a Huawei handset, no matter how cheap and enticing they seem: they’re fucking trash.

Moving on to GiffGaff. I wrote about this new(ish) mobile phone network a couple of years ago when I first discovered it and I was full of nothing but praise. How soon things turn sour. I really don’t want to sound like I’m exaggerating but GiffGaff must have the worst network infrastructure on the planet: at least once a month (at least!), the network goes down. Either you can’t send texts or the data isn’t working or you just don’t have a signal, and the first you know about it is when you can’t send a text or whatever and then go to have a look at the GiffGaff website. Because it’s the network ‘run by its customers’ (utter tripe), they don’t have a customer service line – just a forum where you can ask questions. These questions are generally answered by forum moderators and they can be helpful sometimes...but most of the time, if there’s a problem with the network and it’s causing you a major headache (because y’know, you need to use your fucking phone to get stuff done), they’ll just post a generic ‘corporate reply’ with some piss-poor pseudo-apology. If you then write something in reply that is deemed ‘unfavourable,’ all these forum-lurkers who would apparently die for GiffGaff just jump on you and attack your forum post! It’s really fucking savage and one gets the impression that you should never question the shitness of the network or suffer at the hands of the forum campers.

During that network wide O2 outage a few months back, I dared to suggest that GiffGaff sort their shit out. I wish I’d never bothered question the all-knowing GiffGaff moderators. It was like the gates of Troy had opened and twenty thousand armour clad soldiers, prepared to shed blood for their beloved network had just poured out. I logged off and didn’t go back for a week...and when I did, the number of replies destroying me was unbelievable! So combined with the way the network is always offline due to a burst water pipe in a server room (yes, they’ve used that one about 3 times that I know of), the savage way disgruntled customers are treated by these forum cunts (forunts?) leads me to strongly advise against joining GiffGaff. I know that the network ‘piggy backs’ O2 and they usually blame O2 if there’s an issue...but I know plenty of people on O2 who never seem to be constantly without an operational network. So yeah, I’ll be leaving soon I think. I clearly need a new phone and I want to go with a proper network again, so I guess I’ll maybe move to Tesco mobile or something.

Cafe Racer

Finally decided I needed a faster motorbike this weekend. Sure, the CBF is a really comfortable and easy to ride machine...but it's lacking something. And that something is this: excitement. Yes, it's reliable and yes, it's superbly cheap to run...but it's just so pedestrian in the pace stakes. I never thought the 80mph top speed would ever be an issue for me, but last Monday I was traversing the M5 at a steady 75mph but still feeling like I was holding up inpatient twats in cars...and something inside me just snapped: I knew I needed a faster bike. So this weekend I put my CBF up for sale and took some cash out of my savings and bought a new ride:

It's a Suzuki Goose 350. I say 'new,' but it's actually a bike from 1992 so not that new at all really. It's also quite a rare bike in the UK due to the fact that Suzuki never launched it here - all the Geese in the UK are grey imports. So I'm now a Goose owner, and my initial impressions of the bike are positive. Firstly, it goes like the clappers: 90mph is easy...I didn't want to go any faster, but I'm pretty sure it'll do more than 100. Also, it's got such a comfortable riding position - completely different to the CBF and more of a forward-leaning position, but it feels really natural. Because of this riding position, the way you can throw it around corners is incredible - I'd never be able to get the CBF around a roundabout at the same speed as I can the Goose - and the noise of the engine. Jesus! It's only a 350 but it's so throaty it could easily pass for a bigger bike.

Sadly, I have neither goggles nor bandanna

I believe that this style of bike, with the swept back handle bars and low seat, is known as a 'cafe racer,' which sounds a bit camp to me...but if that's what it's called, then who am I to argue? I suppose there is a slightly cool retro feel to the bike and the image associated to it, but I doubt I'll be buying a skin-tight leather jacket or goggles to go with it. Yet. It's not all been perfect though - I did have a problem with the engine cutting out at high speeds (not fun), and was advised by a passing mechanic that there could be a problem with the fuel line...but that's an easy thing to remedy so I'll look into it over the next few days. Once I've had more time to play around on it and get to the bottom of the niggling 'cutting out' thing, I'll try to write up a proper review. The volume of stuff online about the Suzuki Goose isn't that great to be honest, but hopefully I can change all that with a few hastily written passages of dross. Watch this space.

Went out on the piss on Saturday. Was just me and my flatmate/landlord but was quite a good laugh as we went to a really crap nightclub and took delight at watching the chavs mingle and attempt to dance after necking several pints of Blue WKD mixed with Strongbow. Seriously. Due to this endeavour, Sunday was a bit of a write off, but it wasn't all bad - I just monged out and watched Inglourious Basterds. What a film that is. I'd actually forgotten how good it was, and special mention must go to Brad Pitt's turn as Lt Aldo Raine. Quality movie and full of really memorable sequences...oh, and Mike Myers as a British General. Like I said - quality.

Cheapocrite

Not me, yesterday.

Well, it’s almost September. Where has 2012 gone? It only seems like two minutes ago I was packing up all my worldly possessions (all one suitcase of them) and heaving my ass through the gates of the naval base I called home. Those were dark days, I must admit – why anyone with half a brain cell would want to endure a lifestyle of constant degradation like that...sheesh. And then there was the whole business with the motorbike training, and the moving and then starting my new job – it seems to have all flown by so quickly.

I hope it continues to do so actually, as April 2013 marks the end of my current job (it was only ever for a year) and the start of my planned 3+ month backpacking trip to Australia. Or possibly India. Or maybe Peru/South America. I’ve not really decided where I’m going yet, but it’ll be one of those places...and Australia is winning at the moment simply because it a) looks epic; b) is sunny; and c) the least amount of fuss is required in order to do some exploring, seeing as they already (quite handily) speak a form of English there. I know Australia is a bit of a cliché and the indigenous people (well, the ‘new’ indigenous people) must get sick of all the English who turn up at their airports sporting backpacks...but fuck it. I want to go there so I’m going. Australia is also top of my list (so far) because a few of my old school friends have gone out there to start new lives, and meeting up with some fellow Mancunians on the other side of the planet just sounds ace...even if they are Man City fans. 

So 2013 then. The year of my great excursion Down Under. Goodbye England, with your miserable weather and even more miserable population! I know the old phrase ‘the grass isn’t always greener’ blah, blah fucking blah...but in this case I really don’t give a toss. I’m putting all my shit in storage, putting some clothes and other assorted stuff in a bag and then fucking off for a few months: bliss. I know I’ll have to come back at some point and that will be another grim day...but I think a break from this isle will do me good and maybe help to shift my perspective of life here. I know I moan a lot (even though a lot of it is meant to be tongue in cheek), but I know that the quality of life in the UK is amongst the best in the free world: we’ve got the NHS, clean running water, freedom of speech, electricity, the internet, roads, a free press...loads of stuff a good chunk of the rest of the world doesn’t have...it’s just that the constant greyness of everything, well – it gets me down. And I need an extended break. So I’m taking one. And I’ll more than likely document it here on this very blog so people back home can see what I’m up to...so there’s also that to look forward to, you lucky lot!

In other news, the Paralympics had its opening ceremony last night. I didn’t watch it though – I was too busy listening to the bombcast (Giant Bomb’s vaguely games-related and funny as hell podcast), while playing NOVA 2 on my PlayBook. I seem to have become a massive fucking hypocrite in recent weeks: if you’d suggested to me, in say June, that in August I’d be playing on a tablet PC whist listening to my iPod, I’d probably have spat bile in your face. The June version of me would have said that tablets were a waste of time and that iPods are a piece of shit because they break so easily (I’ve owned several – look through the archived posts of yore for details of their individual demise). So yeah, I’m a hypocrite – but the facts of the matter come down to me also being a tightwad. The PlayBook was £129, and the iPod was £30. Bargains, I think you’ll agree. If I’d been offered either device at their full price, the aforementioned bile would again be raging up my oesophagus with a view to landing on the facial region of the seller. So, with that in mind, I’m not simply a hypocrite – I’m a cheapocrite. Which is something else entirely. So there.

Iron Lion Essex

So the lion that several people saw and heard roaming the Essex countryside has been explained away by the police as a large cat. Not to be confused with a ‘big cat,’ just a ‘large’ common or garden cat. This has been backed up by a woman who claims said cat is hers – and it is indeed a big cat...but big enough to be confused with a lion? I’m not convinced. Regardless, the search appears to have been called off...but what if all the unconnected witnesses who are adamant that they saw a fucking lion rolling around and cleaning itself in a field; and the other unconnected witnesses who say they heard a lion roar...what if they were right all the long and there actually is a lion on the loose in rural Essex? There haven’t been any reports of people being mauled yet and no reports of mutilated cattle or sheep being discovered, so maybe the police are right in calling off the search – after all, keeping two helicopters in the air and having 30 coppers occupied by walking through woodland is probably costing the taxpayer a pretty penny.

I remember a similar story some time last year. Apparently somebody had spotted a leopard/tiger/lion in a field (can’t remember where exactly) and the police went into overdrive sending a freaking  SWAT team and a load of helicopters and shit down there...only to find it was a particularly large stuffed toy. I also recall a story from my youth that has echoes of all this shit – apparently somebody in Wigan had reported seeing a big cat with a cub in some trees whilst out dog walking. You know the drill – police launch hunt, local news gets involved...and lo and behold they find a dead lioness by a reservoir. They didn’t find the cub though.

So the Essex lion (as it’s now known). Fact or fiction? Who knows...it’s got a Twitter feed though, so it must have a WiFi connection or a mobile. 

Tying in to all this bollocks, I saw a fantastic documentary on Channel 4 a few weeks back Called America’s Animal Hoarder, which told the story of some bloke in America (surprise) that had amassed this menagerie of lions, tigers and bears (oh my!) on his farm. He (Terry Thompson) was a bit of a local character by all accounts...and the population of Zanesville, Ohio discovered this first hand after Terry let all his animals out of their cages and then shot himself. Cue wild beasts of all description bounding through the countryside, through neighbourhoods and across the highway. When the local police dept started getting calls from people locked in their houses because bears were eating their garden fences, they rolled out and took back the streets in the only way they knew how: by emptying several thousand rounds of ammunition into animal flesh. It’s actually a really powerful documentary and I honestly recommend you watch it. Even though this all took place in October 2011 I can’t remember seeing it on the news, even though there are clips of BBC News reports in the programme. Weird.

It’s also interesting to note that the police conducting  the search in Essex for what was potentially a lion on the loose were armed with...well nothing, while the American rozzers happened to have assault weapons in the boots of their patrol cars. I don’t know why it’s interesting...but y’know. Comparisons and all that shit. In other news, I bought a second hand 30GB iPod classic yesterday for £30. It’s really cool. I'm actually listening to a 'podcast' right now. But that’s enough about iPods. Cough.

Phone Home

Ah, Bank Holiday weekends. Gotta love the free day off work...gotta hate going back to work when you’re completely out of the work ‘zone.’ And as per usual, it fucking lashed it down all day pretty much. Cheers, weather. Here – have a free day off work, but don’t even think about doing anything with it, as it’ll be pissing down and blowing a gale. Has it ever been nice on a Bank Holiday in the entire recorded history of Bank Holidays? I wonder. I wonder if some secret govt dept chooses which days to make Bank Holidays solely on the inside information the Met Office supplies: if it’s pretty much guaranteed to be the shittiest day of the month – Bank Holiday time. Yeah, we’ll give the proletariat scum a day off from pushing the futile millstone of life...but they’ll be fucked if they can actually enjoy it. 

Suppose I shouldn’t complain too much – there’s a fucker of a hurricane whipping up across the pond. It won’t be long before we’re getting them here though if the current trend of miserable weather continues. Can you imagine how we’d cope?! Jesus. This country can barely cope with a bit of snow...if we had to contend with hurricanes and the other bitch slaps that Mother Nature hands out to the rest of the world, we’d be shafted. Christ...just think about that. If an earthquake hit one of our major cities what would happen? Sure – the Great Britain of, say, the 1940s would probably stand firm and unite to rectify the damage...but today? Nah. Looting, rioting, uncontrollable malaise and general chaos. It’d be hell on Earth. 

Interestingly, I was reading something online the other day about this thing called the Brookings Report. The Brookings Report (also known by its proper title: Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs) was a paper commissioned by NASA in the 1960s which, as the name suggests, looked at the implications of peaceful space activities for human affairs. One tiny chapter of the report is what makes it interesting though – the bit where the various egghead authors speculate on the effect of the discovery of intelligent extra-terrestrial life on the general population of the planet. Seriously – this thing exists. Google it and look at the entry on Wikipedia. The fact that a body as important as NASA thought to even contemplate such a study is very interesting and throws up all kinds of questions...the main one being: how the fuck would the hoi polloi react if intelligent life was discovered? Or if it discovered us? 

In my experience, most people scoff at the idea of aliens existing. They live in this confident little bubble of ignorance, reinforced by years of movies and mass-media demonisation of the notion of the existence of extra-terrestrial life. Anyone who believes in aliens is a bit ‘loopy,’ and all aliens are ‘little green men’ who fly around in saucers. But look at the facts: NASA actually took this shit seriously way back in the 60s, and numerous experts in the science world bemoan the way in which humanity is so desperate to broadcast our whereabouts to the stars, either through our radio signals or by putting gold discs on our satellites that actually point the way to our mineral-rich little world. 

The brain-dead morons who permeate our everyday lives and who blindly go through every day believing that humanity is alone in the universe are the ones who this report predicts will not be able to handle the discovery of a superior intelligence if (and when) it comes. Forget the hypothetical earthquake hitting Birmingham or London...can you imagine if a twatting mothership landed on Wimbledon common and a super-intelligent army of 4-dimensional fire-breathing puddles came sloshing out of the hatch? Full blown hysteria – that’s what. Sadly Apone, Hudson, Hicks and rest of the absolutely badass crew of the USS Sulaco haven’t been born yet so we’d probably have no choice but to be enslaved by these new inviscid masters; but at least NASA could take the moral ‘we told you so’ high ground. Which is nice for them. Bastards.

The Stayt of Play

Hello. I feel like a fucking zombie. Woke up at 3.30am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I just fired up my PlayBook and spent the next few hours watching retro games reviews on YouTube and playing the really rather excellent port of Duke Nukem 3D. I knew this would happen though – as soon as I got to my desk at work I knew I’d feel like shit and want to close my eyes, if only for a second, and drift off. I've just had a cup of coffee and I feel no different. What is it with coffee? Don’t get me wrong – I fucking love the stuff – but why are we constantly told that it’s a stimulant? Every time I drink it because I need to stay awake...I just end up falling asleep. Same goes for energy drinks – I rarely drink them, but when I do, I don’t feel any different. They’re a scam. Actually, just while I’m thinking about this subject, I do recall watching a documentary on TV a few weeks ago (Panorama, BBC 1) that investigated the murky world of ‘sports’ and ‘energy’ drinks, and it found no conclusive evidence that they have any beneficial properties whatsoever. What the journalist conducting the study did find, however, was that the vast majority of them are full of sugar (shock!)...and the ones that claim to be ‘low calorie’ (like Powerade Zero et al) are actually paradoxical by design: they offer an energy boost but contain either low or zero calories. Interesting, and well worth a watch if you can find it on iPlayer.

Still on the subject of energy drinks, what is with those massive ‘Monster’ cans that people from a certain social strata always seem to be carrying around these days? Surely, life on the dole (c’mon, it’s usually chavs you spot drinking the foul-smelling shit) can’t be that physically demanding that you need to walk around Primark with a half-litre can of Monster Energy, just in case you collapse from over exertion? Saying that though, most of the females usually have huge hoop earrings weighing their heads down, massively over-laden prams and a gaggle of hyper-active, fatherless screaming brats to control, so maybe their reliance on Monster Energy is justified.

The same Panorama episode also investigated whether or not specialised running shoes actually had any bearing on the quality of a runner’s exercise...again, the answer was inconclusive...which I can kind of appreciate, as over the years I have spent an inordinate amount of money on various brands of running shoes. From extensive experience, I can confirm that in the main, they’re all pretty much the same and I’ve sustained injuries regardless of the particular brand I was wearing at the time. I currently own four pairs – a pair of Brooks, a pair of Adidas and two pairs of Saucony...and to be honest I can pick any pair at random and go for a run and not feel any benefit or disadvantage. Obviously, if I was a track runner then I suppose I’d get some benefit from wearing spikes, but just road running? I don’t think it really matters what you’ve got on your feet and this investigation by Panorama kind of laid bare the way in which sports companies dupe us out of our cash. Bastards.

When I eventually put the PlayBook down this morning and put the TV on, I was confronted by the usual glut of non-news on BBC Breakfast, but one item caught my attention: basically, so the story goes, Tesco has finally conceded to the other supermarkets and agreed to start putting those colour-coded ‘health meter’ things on its own-brand food packaging. To be honest, I didn’t even notice that they didn’t, but hey. BBC Breakfast thought that this was a big enough development in current affairs to devote a good 20 minute slot to it, and pulled out the full works for us news-hungry viewers: a load of vox pops of people giving their opinions on the food ‘traffic light’ system (filmed on Oxford Road in Manchester, I happened to notice (probably because they’re based at Salford now...sorry, just thinking out loud)), a special pre-recorded explanation of the colour-coding system, and finally a studio interview with some pencil neck from an irrelevant food-based government department and (I shit you not) a random woman who was simply described in her name caption as ‘a mother.'

It wasn’t all this over the top bollocks that bemused me though, oh no. It was Charlie Stayt (you know, the presenter who farted live on air a while back sending the guest into hysterics while he tried to pretend it hadn’t happened) struggling to get his ridiculously coiffed head around the notion of a ‘traffic light’ system on food packaging. Does he live in a parallel dimension or something? You can’t go into a shop without seeing these labels on food nowadays (unless it’s Tesco, obv), so how has Charlie Stayt not seen them? For fuck sake – there was a massive picture of the kind of labels I’m on about stuck on the monitor behind him! All he had to do was turn around and he’d have seen what everyone was talking about! For those of you who live on Charlie Stayt’s country estate (poetry!), here’s what I’m blathering about:

Yes? You see them on everything? Jesus Charlie – you should get out more. Stop sending the butler to Waitrose for your weekly shop, mate*. I’m clearly writing bollocks now, so I’m going to go for another coffee and a lie down. Zzzzzzzz.

*This is a polite little notice to those people (I know of at least one) who will go and Wikipedia Charlie Stayt and then come back here to comment about his less than glamorous lifestyle and numerous previous jobs. They'll inevitably state (!) that he's done well for himself and that I should leave him alone. I agree. He's done well for himself and is a damned good interviewer. All the stuff written up there is written off the cuff as I see it unfolding. So kindly take your Wikipedia-searching app and shove it up your arse.

Be Free. Be Facefree.

Today I’m going to talk about Facebook again. Now, I’ve been off the Facebook radar for over a year now and I honestly don’t miss it. Fuck – I don’t even think about it unless somebody mentions it at work or I’m walking down the street and over hear a fat, bleach blonde slag shouting at her spotty, tracksuit-clad wastrel of a boyfriend about a status update he made. This is actually more common than you’d imagine. So yeah, in my absence, Facebook continues to control the lives of every semi-sentient being on the planet. After my yearlong self inflicted exile from the hideous construct, I feel that I’m a living and breathing beacon of hope for those people (i.e. everyone I know) who feel that their lives wouldn’t be worth living without being able to tag themselves, upload a ‘zany’ photo or comment on some boring drivel somebody else with half a brain managed to compose. You may (or may not) be aware of a damning summary I wrote condemning everyone’s favourite social networking site a few years ago, so I apologise if this post is covering old ground, but I just wanted to show you that removing Facebook from your life is possible...and even makes the arduous task of simply existing that little bit more enjoyable/less abhorrant.

The main reason retards give me for wanting to remain on Facebook is that it helps them stay in contact with people. I personally think this is a load of bullshit. Bullshit that has subsequently been put into a food processor and blended with used tampons and then poured into pie case made out of pastry where the water has been substituted for piss. And then baked in an oven in Fred West’s kitchen. In hell. What I’m saying is that this excuse is feeble. Look at the facts – I’ve been off the cunting thing for about 15 months and everyone I want to speak to, I speak to. I text. I email. Fuck – there’s people in Australia I speak to every other day! Am I on Facebook? No.

The other prize reason people give for maintaining a presence on the infernal thing is that you can keep track of invites to events. This is also crap – I go to plenty of social events and if people require my attendance, they’ll ring me or text me...or God fobid – tell me to my face!

You may think that this renewed attack on Facebook has just come out of the ether, but I’m writing it because of something that’s happened at work. Basically, I was asked whether I’d be interested in maintaining or setting up a Facebook page for a project that I’m a part of (seeing as I’m the ‘computery bloke’), and I refused point blank with a ferocity verging on the insane. This shocked most of my colleagues to the point that a full blown discussion erupted and people where generally aghast that I’m not ‘on’ Facebook and am such a staunch anti-Facebookist (another new phrase introduced to the English Language, right there people). I’ve even gone as far as deleting the inbuilt Facebook apps on my PlayBook and mobile phone, and decided not to buy a HTC ChaCha mobile because it has a Facebook hardkey on it. Yes, my casual hatred runs that deep.

Fair enough – I ‘do’ Twitter, but only because it’s still a little bit niche amongst the general population; quite a large proportion of people still don’t see the point, and of course, you can’t go snooping through people’s photograph collections making sarcastic comments.

I don’t think I’ll ever be completely rid of Facebook – indeed, a friend texted me yesterday to say he’d used one of my infamous sms-based diatribes as a status update – but I’ll do my damnedest to remain free from its evil grip and will continue to campaign that my nearest and dearest rid themselves of it too.

For me, there’s no more getting annoyed about something shitty somebody wrote on my wall; no more cringing at photographs I’d rather not have broadcast to the entire planet; no more feeling the urge to write a pathetic, attention seeking status update when I’m feeling a bit pissed off (I just do it on here instead). People, generally, are cunts to each other and Facebook gives most of them a shield to hide behind and a sword to attack with. The ignorance that not being a user offers is tantamount to sheer mental bliss. And it can be achieved with just one little click of your mouse. Do it now. Release yourself.

Be Facefree, like me.

A Tribute to Mean Machines

 

I may have touched on this before in a post of yore, but I’m a massive advocate of video games. And by ‘advocate,’ I mean that I love them. Ever since me and my brother got an Amstrad 464 Plus for our birthday (it must’ve been our 10^th if I remember rightly), I’ve been hooked. Obviously, gaming has moved on exponentially since then – we had to put cassette tapes into the fucking thing to load the games and then go away for half an hour while a crappy bitmap ‘loading’ screen constructed itself line by line on the screen. And people complain about loading times on consoles today...

Anyway, that Amstrad with its wank graphics (even for the time, they were shite) planted in me the seeds of a computer games geek, and from then on I don’t think there’s ever been a period in my life where I’ve not owned one console or another. Indeed, by the time I left University I had about 12 different consoles in my room – it looked like a suicide bomber had detonated themselves in a branch of Gamestation (well, the queues do get quite bad on a Saturday afternoon). It wasn’t just playing the games that interested me though – it was everything about the subject, which eventually and inevitably led to me become addicted to buying games magazines. You see, back in the early nineties there was no internet, so the only place you could get new info on games and read reviews and get cheats etc was in the magazines, so naturally I had to embrace them as my only source of vital information ‘leaking’ out of such exotic sounding gaming locations as ‘America’ and ‘Japan.’ I say there was no internet – there was, just about, but getting online meant going to the school IT classroom at lunchtime, opening up Netscape Navigator on one of the dogshit slow workstations and waiting 3 days for Alta Vista (remember that?!) to pop up on the screen. No thanks. Not when there was football to be played in the car park.

So magazines were heavily relied on for gaming news, and the one I bought most often? Mean Machines Sega. It was an amazing journal full of lewd jokes and witty articles, and probably the magazine that made me want to ditch the hum drum life of a school kid and become a rich and famous games journo. There were several other mags I used buy at around the same time (CVG, Sega Power and GamesMaster – the former two now defunct, while GamesMaster is on life support) and they all promoted this notion that writing about games for a living was the equivalent of being an international playboy – jetting off to L.A. for a games convention, being wined and dined by publishers trying to sway your opinion on a new game, getting loads of cool free stuff...it just seemed amazing, and I wanted a piece of the action. Sadly, as I grew up I realised that the view I had was slightly askew and then real life got in the way and the dream died (as did the print magazine industry – damned pesky Netscape Navigator!), but I’ll always remember those mags as a key component of my childhood; indeed, the prose within is most likely what led to my sense of humour being what it is today.

Now, I’d been planning to write about this subject for a while and kept putting it off, but last night while randomly web surfing (surfing...navigating...there’s a theme here somewhere) I came across a website that almost made me cry with delight: The Mean Machines Archive! Yes, that’s right – somebody has gone to the trouble of distilling what made Mean Machines such a fantastic magazine and condensed it all into one amazing website! I couldn’t believe it when I found this site: all the memories came flooding back. It gets even weirder though – check this shit out. After looking at that archive for a while, I logged in to Twitter and one of the ‘suggested’ tweeters who popped up in the sidebar was Julian Rignall, a former staff member at Mean Machines! I sent him a message asking if he was the same person from the mag, and he replied that it was...and this sparked a slightly surreal Twitter conversation about the good ol’ days – y’know, how games mags aren’t the same anymore and how the humour has gone from the writing. 

It was all very strange – to have been sat on the couch thinking about Mean Machines Sega, finding a website dedicated to it, and then ending up chatting to one of the core journalists from the mag...like I said: strange. He was a very nice bloke and to him and all of the other journalists from that era (Gus Swan, Marcus Hawkins, Ed Lomas, Martin Kitts, Tim Weaver, Jes Bickham, Richard Leadbetter, Jonathan Davies and many, many more (is it sad that I remember all these names?!)), I say thank you. You probably have no idea how inspirational your games-related ramblings really were.

A Right Royal Clusterfuck

They say a picture speaks a thousand words. They, whoever 'they' are could have a point. What these words are though, I have no idea. After uploading yesterday's flurry of Manchester-themed photos, I was looking through the Pictures folder on my laptop and I came across this:

It's a bit of a random one, but these are the words that it speaks: I took this while I was getting ready to march out of some barracks in London on the day of the Royal wedding last year. I was part of the naval contingent who lined the street immediately outside Westminster Abbey, and we had to march through London to the Abbey and do all the rifle drill etc. on the march. If you look closely, you can see Prince William on the TV screen - we were all watching the proceedings on BBC News before we went outside to form into our companies and march down to Westminster. We did 2 weeks of drill training prior to the event, which involved 'learning' how to stand still for up to 3 hours at a time - which sounds easy enough, but try it holding an SA80 rifle...they're light enough initially, but after a while it feels like you're holding a particularly large cartoon anvil under your arm.

The march out to Westminster went well enough, and to be honest I actually felt quite patriotic seeing all the crowds and all the Union flags fluttering in the morning breeze. The whole world was watching and it felt quite amazing to be part of the event. Obviously, I missed the actual ceremony because I was stood motionless outside Westminster Abbey as it was going on, but I did see a Horse Guard get flung from his horse right in front of me as it reared up - that shit was worth the admission alone. After the Royals came out we did the salute as they went past in their carriages, then we all 'fell in' and attempted to march back to the barracks with the Royal Marines band playing music ahead of us. Unfortunately, we hadn't rehearsed this at all and we were all out of step: it was a total clusterfuck and I wanted to die of embarrassment - but you've got to take the rough with the smooth I suppose. Except when it comes to peanut butter: in that case, it's never smooth. Always crunchy. But I digress.

I'm not a royalist or anything, but to be involved in the day was quite special and there aren't a lot of people who can claim to have been involved in a Royal wedding.

Assorted Images of Manchester

I waxed lyrical about Manchester in my last post, so I thought I'd upload some of the photos I took over the weekend, along with some from previous visits (the ones with a hint of sunshine in them!). Enjoy!