A Grimm Tale

Are you sitting comfortably? Good - then I'll begin. I've just been on Facebook (doesn't everyone check their notifications as soon as they get up for work? No? Oh.) and somebody's status update about a nappy and a shit-covered child reminded me of an incident that occurred a few years back that I have very scarcely spoken of. I now believe though, that the time has come for me to disclose the details of said incident - and where better to do it than here, on my very own blog? It's sort of like when the Ministry of Defence decides to release details of UFO sightings by 'terrified' British Airways pilots 15 years after the event, only without the threat to national or global security.

OK, here goes - and please bear in mind that the various people depicted in this story still do not know any of this and I have changed their names to protect their identities.

A few years ago, when I was back in Manchester on leave, I arranged to meet up with a friend that we'll call Kevin. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and I had agreed to go down to the flat that he shared with his long-term girlfriend...er...Kate. After a bit of a chat about what we'd both been up to and watching of a bit of TV, it was decided (as is the norm on a sunny Saturday afternoon), that a trip to the local boozer was in order - so off we went.

I can't really remember the order of events that fateful day, but I seem to remember seeing various faces from the past, multiple pints of ale being thrown down my neck at a rate of knots, and getting very, very pissed. Obscenely pissed, maybe. We then decided to go into Manchester city centre at some point in the evening to continue the bender and maybe go to a club. Then it sort of goes fuzzy.

Cut to the next morning. I awake in a state of half undress in the single bed in Kevin's spare room. The curtains are closed, but due to their (possibly) pound-shop origins, the bright sunlight outside has no problem penetrating them and virtually blinding me as I stir. As I lie there in a state of head-banging semi-consciousness, the reassuring notion that maybe - just maybe - I hadn't done anything stupid the night before crept into my head.

At this point I'd just like to state that this was particularly welcome because I - on my own admission - tend to act like a bit of a bell end when I've had a few too many beers. I don't really partake in anything sinister, like fighting or vandalising stuff etc; no - I usually just make up outlandish lies for no apparent reason in an attempt to impress people. And usually just end up looking like a bit of a cunt. But I digress. This particular morning, I had no feelings of dire regret - just a skull-splitting hangover.

Things, though, were about to go downhill. After wallowing there for about 20 minutes I realised that I didn't have my jeans on. Fair enough - I was in bed. Then I realised I had no boxer shorts on either, which was slightly more bizarre. I sat up in the bed and looked around the room. Due to the slightly laizzez-faire nature of Kevin's interior decor, the room resembled an Oxfam shop that had recently been hit by Al Qaeda - there were discarded clothes everywhere. I scanned my surroundings and located my jeans on the floor by the door and my boxer shorts a little further away. Why I had taken them off, I still didn't know. So I sat up, pulled off the blanket and prepared to get up. And then I saw the devastation.

I had shat the bed. Not just the bed, mind - I had literally shat the room. There were clods of shite all over the sheet and the underside of the bedspread. Even worse, trails of brown ran down the side of the divan and culminated in an almighty dollop of faeces on the carpet by the side of the bed at exactly the same latitude as where my arse would have been if I'd been lying down. I did the math: I must've needed a crap during the night, decided that I didn't need to visit the bog like a regular human, and just hung my ass over the side of the bed and opened the torpedo tubes.

Never, in all my days on this planet have I sobered up as quickly as I did that morning. I jumped out of bed, still semi-naked and covered in shite, threw my jeans on and rolled up the boxer shorts and bedding into a macabre poo-filled swiss roll. I then proceded to the bins outside the apartment block and stuffed said blanket into the furthest-away wheelie bin I could find. After legging it back upstairs and scooping the carpet-based turd up with newspaper and kitchen towel (which I then 'cleverly' discarded in a different bin to conceal any evidence), I located some bleach and Febreeze under the sink and began scrubbing and spraying the carpet in an attempt to banish the big brown stain. The cloths and sponges I was using quickly became fetid and the smell of the scat was overpowering. Kevin, meanwhile, was still in bed with Kate and I figured that due to the lack of noise coming from their room that they were still asleep. I opened a window to let some of the noxious fumes escape and, thankfully, the stain was fading rapidly as I pounded it with more and more Sainsbury's own-brand multi-purpose bleach.

I made another trip to the bin to dispose of another brown sponge and was beginning to think I might actually be able to clean up all the 'mess' before Kevin even stirred. These hopes were dashed when I re-entered the flat to find him stood at the door of the spare bedroom in his dressing gown, with a confused look on his face. The smell in the flat was barbaric - the fact that I'd opened a window only amplified the stench as the breeze carried it out of the spare room and dispersed it, but Kevin appeared not to notice (!). "Aw man - what have you done, Tom?" He slurred. "I...er...threw up mate...sorry."

He entered the room, still apparently oblivious to the overpowering odour of death permeating every pore. He sat down on the bedding-less bed. "Shit Tom," he began without a hint of irony, "I even put a bucket down for you...couldn't you have spewed in that?" He pointed at the pale blue, sparkling clean washing-up bowl by the bedside table. "Sorry mate," I repeated "I got some on your covers too so I just put them in the bin...I'll go into town later and buy you some new bedding."

Kevin sat there staring at the brown stain, the smell of shit whirling around us like some angry daemon. "No worries mate...do you want a brew?" He got up and shuffled off into the kitchen.

What. The. Fuck. How had he not rumbled me? How, with a big brown stain on the beige carpet (why is everyone's carpet fucking beige?!) and with the nostril-singeing bouquet of human faeces all around us, did he not rumble me? I didn't stay around to find out. "No mate," I replied, "I'm just gonna get off home and have a shower." Which I did.

Kevin has since moved out of that flat and is still with his girlfriend, and I still see him every time I go back to Manchester. He has never mentioned the described incident and neither had I - until now.

Hopefully, this blog will never attract his attention...

...and if it does - sorry mate!

The Man from the Pre

So my new phone turned up in the post. Surprisingly quickly, actually - and in a totally undamaged state. I saw a documentary the other week about Royal Mail and was pretty disgusted (although not exactly surprised) at the way postal workers treat our mail. Opening birthday cards and stealing the inevitable cash inside; chucking parcels about like rugby balls...it's a fucking disgrace. However, as previously stated, my new mobile telephony device arrived in perfectly good order. Well done, postie.

It's a Palm Pre. Here's what it looks like:



Now, some people who know a bit about mobile phones may think I'm a bit of a knob for swapping my all-singing, all dancing HTC HD2 for this handset. However, even though it is technically inferior I believe that the Palm Pre could be the new 'best phone I've ever owned.' Why? Well, it's in the subtlety of the thing. When I first unboxed it and turned it on, I was slightly underwhelmed by the simplicity of the OS and the comparatively basic features: text messaging, web, email...a few memo and calendar programs and the most threadbare options menu you've ever seen. But then I dug a little deeper. There's an 'app store' where every single app is free. The phonebook pulls in contact details from your Facebook account and merges all the duplicates you already had on your sim card.

Palm offer 'over the air' OS updates that continue to improve speed and stability of the operating system almost monthly. A good example of this is how the Palm Pre I have now does not have the ability to record video through it's 3 megapixel camera, but the next update will reportedly add this feature to the OS. I personally find this level of support from a manufacturer very impressive because it shows that they not only have faith in the hardware and continue to push it, but that they also give a shit about improving the experience for owners of their device. The same simply cannot be said of HTC.

I went onto the HTC website numerous times with the sole aim of updating the ROM on my HD2, only to be constantly confronted with error messages and such like. And that leads me to another aspect of the Palm Pre that I'm massively impressed with: everything just works. It doesn't freeze, the apps you download run perfectly and even YouTube runs smoother that it ever did on the HD2. Granted, the jitters I had viewing videos on the HTC could be levelled at the crapness of the O2 network (again), but I've been using the Palm in the same location as I used the HD2 and the quality and speed of the downloads/web browsing speed is vastly superior.

This thing came with my Palm Pre:



It's called a Touchstone and is essentially a wireless charging device. You change the standard battery cover for the Touchstone one and then you can just stick your Pre to the 'dock' part and it will charge up without the need for plugging wires etc in. It may seem like an insignificant feature of the Pre, but in practice it becomes invaluable. I've certainly never been able to just throw my mobile onto the windowcill and have it charge up, and then just be able to grab it again if somebody rings. Like I said, the beauty is in the simplicity.

Oh yeah, and the Palm has a proper QWERTY keyboard, so everybody's happy. Well, I am. Right. No more boring posts about new gadgets. For now.

Facebook of Psalms

Yep - it's been more than a fortnight and I've not written anything down. No particular reason, other than that I simply couldn't be bothered trying to get online. To wit: it really annoys me that getting online in this day and age is seen as a privilege as opposed to a right of living in the so-called 'digital age.' I remember when I was at secondary school in the time before the world went online mental. IT lessons were the only time you ever got near the internet (usually to check cheats and other such game-rated shite), and because stuff like Facebook, Hotmail, eBay etc didn't exist then, it wasn't overly important. And because of this lack of importance, the fact that the only way to get on the internet seemed to be a few stolen minutes in an IT lesson didn't matter. Fast forward to now though, and little seems to have changed - for me, at least. Trying to get the internet up on my phone inevitably leads to constant 'page error' messages, whilst trying to access a wifi hotspot on my laptop almost always leads down the dead-end, pot-holed lane of 'lack of connectivity;' or the appearance of one of those BT Openzone pages where you have to pay £6000 with a credit card for 3 minutes of internet access. Alas, in a parallel to my earlier internet experiences, the only time I seem to be able to actually get online with a decent, reliable (yet censored) connection is a few stolen minutes at work every now and then (like right this minute, for example). And yet still we are being coerced into thinking we live in some highly advanced, hi-speed online world. Come and live with me for a week. Not only will you learn to live on a diet of Cornflakes, toast and lager - you'll also learn that trying to get online appears to be more trouble than it's worth.

But enough ranting about that. In the time gulf between now and my last post, a few things have happened. Perhaps the biggest thing is that I finally managed to move into an actual house. It's not an exclusive, me-only house though. It's another shared one. However, unlike the one I lived in down in Portsmouth the landlord is a live-in one and so actually possesses the right to turn up at the house when he wants and sleep on the couch. The last landlord didn't live in the house, yet still partook in this activity. Which, as you can imagine, was a bone of contention with me. No, this house is infinitely better than that hole. It's massive, has a top view of Weymouth/Portland Harbour and I'm living with a good, varied bunch of people. Really can't complain. For now. I also got my first ever valentines card yesterday (which wasn't sent to me by myself), which is a result!

Tech news: I'm swapping my new phone. Yes, I harped on about the HTC HD2 a few weeks ago, and I still think it's one of the best gadgets I've ever owned. The only problem I have with it is the touchscreen interface. I'm forever texting and on Facebook (when it loads, fucking shitty O2 network), so a good input method is a must for any phone I own. This is really where the HD2 falls down for me. For obvious reasons, the keyboard you have to use is a software one that pops up on the screen when writing. It must be the buggiest input device on the planet. 5 times out of every 10, it will not register the letter you are trying to press and even with the predictive word suggestion (which is a godsend, by the way), it's still all too easy to end up writing a sentence of complete and utter gobble-de-gook when all you wanted to say was 'crypto-zoology.' It's even worse if you're outside in the blistering cold. For some reason, the capacitive touchscreen doesn't like the cold weather, so trying to text in such conditions truly is a test of patience. The only thing stopping me from hurling the bastard thing at the pavement at times was the knowledge that it's worth about £400. I thought about going into the O2 shop near my new gaff to see if they'd swap it for another handset with a keyboard, but abandoned that because I knew what the answer would be. So instead, I went back to my old friend swapz.co.uk.

Lo and behold - I have found the perfect replacement for my HD2 - the Palm Pre. Whilst it doesn't look even half as technically advanced as the HD2, it has one massive advantage: a proper qwerty keyboard! It's also a bonafide smartphone with all the bells and whistles you could want (including the coveted YouTube app that I've been abusing (when it works)). So I've arranged a one for one swap with a guy who wants rid of his Palm. It comes with a fairly nifty little charger that allows you to simply place the phone on the charging 'block' without actually plugging it in. Sounds pretty cool. I should have it by the end of the week, so I'll post my views as and when.

Speaking of that swapz website, I got my Nintendo DS. To say it's addictive is an understatement, especially since it came with a thing called an R4 cartridge that is in effect a device that allows you to put roms on an Micro SD card and then play them on the DS. Since I acquired the DS, I msut have played nearly every major DS games there is...and I'm impressed. I used to have a PSP and granted, whilst the visuals of most of the games are far superior to any on the DS, I have to admit that having the touch screen adds an extra dimension to a lot of them. Most impressive for me is the way that a lot of the first person shooters use the d-pad and touch screen as a mouse and keyboard substitute. So you use your left thumb to move around and your left index finger to fire (via the left shoulder button), whilst you control the view with the stylus and touch screen. Intuitive - especially in Metroid Prime: Hunters. Furthermore, the range of different games available for the DS is staggering. From games where you have to survive on a desert island (Lost in Blue), beat em ups (Viewtiful Joe), racers (Mario Kart) and crime sims (Crime Scene) to slightly more bizarre things like a game called Scribblenauts where you get to solve puzzles by 'drawing' items - every gamer is catered for. Seriously though, the sheer number of genres represented is amazing - I for one never thought I'd be playing an air traffic control game on a handheld console before I got my DS. It's a brilliant console, and even has wifi capabilities...not that I've been able to use the wifi, or access any of the multi-player modes in any of the games. See paragraph 1 for details.

Random Meandering Crap

Hello. I'm bored at work so thought I'd update this thing for my own amusement. It's a bit like a virtual version of writing down the day's date or a comment in the corner of the page you're reading when ploughing through a book. Ever done that? I have (obviously). No point to it, just think it's cool to randomly stumble across shit written down years ago. For example, I recently found my old copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (the one with all the books in one volume) and remembered that I'd done the old 'write in the corner' thing with that. The notes I found were scribbled while I was reading said sci-fi comedy epic during night shifts in my job as a concierge in the Hacienda Apartments in Manchester. They were only things like 'bored, it's 3:12 am and I need a piss' etc, but I thought it was quite interesting to glimpse back into the past, and at the inanities of previous employ.

The Hacienda Apartments, yesterday.

That was a fucking weird job though. It was 2004 and the building itself (constructed on the site of the renowned Hacienda nightclub) wasn't even finished - indeed only a handful of the flats on the lower floors were actually occupied. The upper levels of the building were far from finished though, and some sections didn't even have the lid on yet - an aspect of the place I used to exploit by going up on the roof at night and watching the skyline twinkle. All very romantic, I'm sure you'll agree. Took a dump in a few of the unfinished apartments' toilets, too. Perks of the job an' all that. Seems like a lifetime ago now - so much shit has happened between then and now its unreal. But that's another post, on another long boring night here at my desk. I suppose it's quite apt, writing about my nights at the Hacienda though, seeing as I'm doing nights now and am equally as bored!

The Hacienda, back when it was a nightclub

Anyway, back to now. I've recently, through a website called swapz.co.uk, managed to swap (naturally) my Flip Video Mino and O2 XDA Mini S for a Nintendo DS Lite. I'm still waiting for it to arrive in the post, but hopefully I'll have it in my hands by the end of the week. I've never actually played on a DS so I'm intrigued to see what all the fuss is about. I used to have a PSP many moons ago and was addicted to it, but sold it to fund the purchase of my first car. I know, from looking at screenshots on various websites that the DS's graphics aren't really up to the standard of those displayed on Sony's handheld, but it appears to have a fair few decent-looking RPGs available for it, and that's what I'm after if truth be told - a game with some longevity and a meaty storyline. Oh, and a bit of Mario Kart action.

A low quality size comparison of the iPad and other devices. It's between the DS XL and the Amazon Kindle.

Been reading about that new tablet PC (Mac?) from Apple - the iPad, too. Personally, I don't really see the point. It just looks and sounds like a big iPhone, with the functionality of a Macbook. Who, exactly, is the thing aimed at? Most people who want the features that the iPad offer already have either an iPhone or an Apple laptop of some description...so who else is there left to appeal to? Steve Jobs reckons that the iPad will offer a 'complete' browsing experience. Don't iPhones, iPod Touches, Powerbooks, iBooks, Macbooks, Powermacs, iMacs, PCs, PDAs, Blackberrys, smartphones, laptops, internet tablets and games consoles all offer a 'complete' internet browsing experience, y'know, already?! I'm not an Apple basher - I used to sell/demo the fucking things for a living (and I've still got my 'Apple Product Professional' badge and certificate to prove it), but the iPad just seems like a bit of a stupid thing to exist. Very cool, don't get me wrong, but still stupid. I have no doubts whatsoever that I'll be proved very, very wrong when Apple sell 20 billion of them and then use the profits to buy the moon, scoop a big chunk out of it and turn it into a massive, ubiquitous nocturnal corporate logo. Bah. Fuck you Apple and your money and stuff.

On the subject of money, it appears that an immediate lack of the stuff is having a profound impact on my ability to find a house share. I've been looking at various house mate websites, but all the landlords advertising seem to want some ridiculous deposit paid up front before you move in. I can see the point, don't get me wrong, but even when I explain my circumstances and offer to pay a deposit over, say, a few months, I just get the silent treatment. I'll keep trying though...and if it comes to it, I suppose I'll just have to save a deposit this month and then move next month when I get paid again. Not ideal, but what can you do?

Anything else I can bore you (ie, myself) with? Oh yeah - stop the press! I finally finished my book! I didn't actually write on any of the pages in this one because I forgot to, but I digress. The book was Fallen Angels by Richard Morgan - the sequel to hisawesome debut novel, Altered Carbon. The series depict the exploits of one Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-Envoy soldier ( hard cunt) who lives, dies and kills people with relative ease in a distant future where corporate corruption is rife, humanity has crossed the stars, and life is cheap.

Cheap, because the vast majority of people have their personalities 'backed up' in little canisters, or 'stacks,' that are implanted in the back of the neck. If they die, the stack is just implanted into a new body (called a sleeve) and then carry on regardless. Obviously, there's a fuck load more to this particular pantheon, but I can't really go into any great detail here simply because I can't be arsed. But take it from me, both Altered Carbon and Fallen Angels are brilliant books. There's a third in the series called Woken Furies (which I'll be buying), and Altered Carbon is rumoured to be getting the movie-adaptation treatment...so yeah. Go and check them out if Sci-Fi awesomeness is your bag. If it's not, then...er...go and read something else. Or don't. It really is up to you. You could go and wander around a shopping centre, looking at stuff in shop windows that you can neither afford nor have the inclination to buy, for example. Or you could have a biscuit. See - there's loads of things you could do. Bye.

Kneesy Peasy

Annoyingly, I have done my right knee in. As regular readers (all one of them) will know, I am quite the keen runner and I tend to average between 45 and 60 miles per week...but since last Friday I have been out of action. I'll explain. One of my routes takes me along a 1.6 mile stretch of fine Somerset A-road, and during the recent blizzards it naturally got blanketed. The constant trampling of this snow by other users of this route, combined with sub-zero overnight temperatures created a terrain not dissimilar to that of the surface of the moon - I would imagine, having not been there myself. And it is down to running over this icy, uneven lunar surface that I blame the recent destruction of my right knee. It feels like a particularly nasty daemon is sticking a knitting needle through my kneecap when I run for any period of time, and so have been giving it a miss over the last week, instead using a zero-impact cross-trainer/elliptical machine in the gym instead. This is fine, although I can only go for around 40 minutes before becoming so bored I want to strip the skin off my arms...I seriously need to get back out in the fresh air and once again embrace the freedom that road running offers.

When I think about my current predicament, it amazes me that I, up until a few months ago, almost exclusively ran on a treadmill in the gym. Now that I have started to run outdoors, I just can't see the appeal of sweating away in a dingy room with a load of other equally sweaty people. But I digress. I need to get this knee sorted asap and get my luminous yellow jersey on again soon as I fully intend to take part in a sponsored 7 miler in mid February. I forget the name of the good cause that funds raised will go to, but it will be a first for me to actually take part in a running event rather than running for the sake/enjoyment of it. Let's just hope my knee does the right thing and sorts itself out before then.

Also occupying my mind at the moment is the constant nagging feeling that I need to sort my shit out and find somewhere to live, properly. Since I joined the military, I have only really lived in service accomodation (apart from my brief stint in that shared house I moaned about last year). Whilst this is perfactly fine, I really need to acquire my own actual abode. Somewhere I can go to when I am not at work, for example. As it is at the moment, I live and work within the same barbed wire-topped fence, and I'm beginning to go a little stir crazy. So the hunt for a dwelling has resumed at full pace. Wish me luck.

Rescinded

What's new then? Not a lot, really. I am the first to admit that my life is probably about as dull as is humanly possible. It could quite possibly only become more mind-numbingly boring if I was a fucking corpse. Case in point - the highlight of the week thus far has been my trip to Halfords. You know, that car/bike shop where there is never a shop assistant around when you need one, and when you do actually find somebody who works there they haven't got a clue about anything - anything - to do with cars or bikes. Anyway, I went to Halfords...to buy a replacement exhaust pipe cover (see left) for my car as the previous one fell off. Oh, and a new cigarette lighter poppy-out thing because there wasn't one in the car when I bought it. See. No matter how fucking depressing you may think your existence is, there's always somebody else enjoying their time on this mortal coil less than you. In retrospect to reading what I have just written, I suppose I should be thankful that I live in the UK and not Haiti; that the few items I once owned are not now lying beneath the destroyed remains of my home, and that if I want something to eat I can just go to the fridge. And for that reason, I rescind all feelings of boredom and depression previously conveyed.

Eye Spy

You may have noticed that a lot of the detritus that weeps out of my mind and onto this blog is generally about various gadgets and bits of tech tat that litter my life. And you'd be right. That's because I like gadgets. I can't give a reason for this slightly obsessive fascination with little lumps of plastic that perform various non-essential tasks, nor can I give a reason as to why I waste yet more cash on magazines that pre and review new gadgets. What I can tell you, though, is that I've accrued quite a number of them over the past year or so, and I've noticed one thing that a lot of them have in common. Cameras. Yep, about 75% of the things I've acquired have cameras on them, and it only really occurred to me after reading one of Charlie Brooker's rants about ubiquitous screens, over on The Guardian's website. What he was saying is that no matter where most of us go throughout the average day, we're surrounded by screens. You know, TV screens, computer screens, phone screens, etc etc. But on the flipside, cameras are just as prevalent. Obviously, I'm aware of the ridiculous number of CCTV cameras dotted around Britain's towns and cities (did I read somewhere that the British public are the most observed in the world?); but, going back to the gadgets thing, I'm on about little mini cameras. Where the fuck is this meandering shite going? Well, the other day I counted the number of devices I own that are capable of recording either a still or moving image. Here they are:

Flip Video Mino. Obviously. It is a mini video recorder afterall. It'd be a bit fucking daft if it had no lens. Don't recall the resolution of the video it records, but it's pretty good quality. There is a HD version of this little beauty available, but it's slightly bigger than the original Mino and is more expensive.

Fuji Finepix J20. Again, its a camera. It captures brilliant 10 mp stills and there's also a fairly decent video option too.

O2 XDA Mini S. My old(ish) PDA/phone. It's got a 1.3 mp camera on it. Can also record average quality video.

Alcatel OT 707. I bought this cheapo touchscreen mobile to use after I got my old Nokia wet whilst on a mountain biking trip. It has a 1.3 mp camera on it and is capable of capturing (very low quality) video too.

iPod Nano 5G. The new Nano is an awesome gadget. Obviously, it stores music - but the new 5th Generation Nano also has a little camera on the back. The quality isn't mind-blowing when recorded clips are viewed on a PC, but when played back on the Nano's display it is perfectly acceptable. For some reason, the Nano can't take still pictures, but I'm sure the inevitable 6th Gen one will have the ability.

Dell Inspiron 1545 Core 2 Duo. My laptop. Finished with a lovely red lid. It also has a little camera lens embedded into the shell just above the screen. The quality of the pictures and video it records is perfectly acceptable for the function it serves. It is only meant to be a webcam, afterall.

HTC HD2. My new phone. That I went on about in my last post. It's got a 5mp camera that can shoot either stills or video.

So there you have it. Without even trying, I have accumulated SEVEN devices that can shoot pictures or video. Do I use any of them? Well, I use the Finepix to take photos when I'm out on the piss (incidentally, I've lost my two previous digital cameras on nights out) and I use the phone camera now and then, but apart from that the rest of them are pretty much redundant. Ebay time, methinks. There's no point to me telling you all this, by the way. I'm just bored at work so thought I'd amuse myself by writing something. Anything. Urgh.