News you say?

I tried, I really did. I was determined that I wasn’t going to be one of those people who moan about the Olympics. Indeed, I was one of the people who quite clearly made my feelings towards the dissenters known: stop fucking moaning about increased traffic and an influx of tourists – the Olympics is great for our country and a perfect stage for us to show off to the rest of the world.

But I’m afraid I have to take a little bit of a step back from that opinion right now. Why? Have you tried to watch BBC News or ITN or even your local news over the past few days? All it consists of is repeated wall to wall coverage of people winning medals! Which is great...but c’mon – when does it become overkill? Sure, it’s fantastic that Team GB are kicking ass in so many different events...but why, oh why, do BBC News et al feel the need to show us endless repeats of Team GB winning medals and then have the same people sat on a couch being asked ridiculous questions about their achievement? For half an hour at a time. I kid you not – I put the news on last night: Dressage/Chris Hoy/those brothers who destroyed the Triathlon. And to them all I say well done. But to put the news on again this morning and be subjected to the same images, the same interviews, the same non-news? It’s a little bit tedious, wouldn’t you say? I want to hear the news. News. BBC News showed an 8 second snippet about the Bank of England issuing some new, more ominous warning about the double-dip recession...and then it was back to lycra-clad people crying and holding big golden coins. What juxtaposition.

Now, I want to state once again that I’m not an Olympic naysayer. I have maximum respect for the achievements of Team GB (except the SHIT men’s football team). I do not condemn the whole spectacle as nothing more than a waste of money, as some do. I haven’t even mentioned the ridiculous sponsoring of the event by fast food chains (oops). But please...let’s get some perspective here. Since when, I ask you, is some bloke winning a cycling race more newsworthy than a load of civilians being blown up by government soldiers? If you need 24hour coverage of the Games, there are various media outlets available that will cater for your (somewhat neurotic) needs. But I simply can’t condone the main news channels constantly pushing the Olympics into our faces. News should be news. Sport comes at the end. That’s how it should be on a news programme. Rant over.

Filling The Void

I remember when the iPad was announced. I baulked at it – even referring to it on this very blog as just a big iPhone. And I still stand by that, to be honest. What is the point of owning both an iPad and and iPhone? They are the same thing, just on different scales, right? And only the biggest idiot would own the whole range of iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch...right?! The iPod Touch is just an iPhone without the phone, and the iPhone is just a small iPad. Or am I missing the point? Furthermore, have you ever seen someone taking pictures with an iPad? How fucking ridiculous do they look? Just buy a frigging camera! Oh, wait – you can’t because you’ve spent £500 on an iPad. Idiot.

Right. Now that’s settled, I’ll get to the point: I bought a tablet PC this week. Which is a bit hypocritical of me considering a) the previous paragraph; and b) because I’ve always deemed tablets as a bit pointless. But I saw this particular tablet on sale for a ridiculously low price: £129.99. And it’s not one of those super-cheap, trashy Android tablets either, which is what you’d expect to get for £129.99. Oh no, it’s one of these:

A BlackBerry PlayBook. And do you know what? It’s fucking awesome. I primarily bought it because I do a lot of travelling around on my motorbike most weekends, and I generally take my laptop with me wherever I go just so I can get online and check email, the news, watch videos etc...but the thing just takes up so much room in my backpack and won’t fit in the luggage box. Now I own a 7” PlayBook, such problems are no longer...erm...problems. For a start, the thing is tiny – much smaller than an iPad. It’s also really thin too. My previous opinion of BlackBerry was that they were a bit shit...just business phones with a crap OS and no apps, advertised as a chav’s messaging device of choice...but the quality of the PlayBook has shed new light on the whole mysterious world of BlackBerry.

So yeah – it’s a tablet PC with a really sharp screen, two HD cameras (not that I’ll be using it to take photos – I’ve got a camera for that, idiots) and a brilliant web browser that even supports Flash. Amazing. It’s only a 16GB model so I probably won’t be filling it up with music or films, but from what I’ve seen of it thus far, I’m impressed. The app store thingy has come in for a bit of criticism from various reviewers, but I can’t really see a problem with it. It’s got more stuff on offer than the old Palm Pre app store did, and there are a lot more ‘proper’ apps, as opposed to stuff just written by enthusiasts. Not that there’s anything wrong with home brew apps...it’s just nice to see official stuff on there too. The battery life is great, the sound quality is top notch and the on-screen keyboard is really good (plus it makes a satisfying ‘blip’ noise when you touch a letter...nice touch). So far, I really can’t fault it – it does exactly what you’d expect a tablet to do and for the price I paid...well the term ‘bargain’ springs to mind. I think the price was only temporarily lowered so by this time next week they’ll probably be £299 again (or whatever they were before), so I recommend getting down to PC World to pick one up before they increase the price.

Obviously, the PlayBook isn’t a patch on the (cough) iPad (cough), but it destroys the various Android tablets knocking around for about the same price in terms of quality. It’s probably not going to compete with the high-end Android tablets from Samsung, Motorola et al simply because of the bespoke OS it’s running...but for £129.99 I’m not complaining. Incidentally, the PlayBook does actually support Android apps (apparently), so that's good news, but it's never going to defeat the all-conquering Apple app store/iPad.

And just for those (three) people who may be reading this shit and are thinking about launching into a tirade about how the iPad is great and I'm a dick who hates Apple - that isn't the case. I fully appreciate that the iPad is a great bit of kit and that Apple stuff is generally brilliant. I just like to point out that if you own an iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, you are a fucking cretin. And Steve Jobs' soul owns your soul. And ass.

In other news, this week I went to see the new Batman film – The Dark Knight Rises. I was blown away by it. I saw the other two films in the trilogy on DVD because I just wasn’t that interested, and I thought the second one (with The Joker in it) was alright...if a little over-egged and confusing. But this latest one was fantastic. I went on Rotten Tomatoes and read an equal number of ‘fresh’ and ‘rotten’ opinions before I went to see it, so kind of had a neutral attitude...but I found the whole experience to be a whirlwind of excitement, great effects, brilliant story and fantastic plot twists. Looking at some of the reviews now I’ve actually seen the movie, I think some of the reviewers need to get a life and stop over-complicating things: it’s a film about a guy who dresses up like a bat and kicks ass...stop getting so het up about minor inconsistencies you knobs! Also, while it is true that Bain is sometimes hard to understand, it doesn’t really detract from the overall experience. So to the whining reviewers who rated The Dark Knight Rises as ‘rotten,’ I say this: get a grip and just enjoy it for what it is – a fantasy film.

I’ve written enough – I’m off for a sandwich.

Acid Reflux

Took part in my second half marathon of the year on Sunday. I say 'second,' but if you want to get technical it was my first, as the previous race was a '20k' race, which (if you want to get technical) is only about 12.5 miles. I actually came 3rd in that race (and 1st in my age category) and I still have no idea how that happened considering how horribly drunk I got at a party the night before.

Sunday's race started in similar fashion, as I went to a BBQ/pub session on Saturday afternoon/night and probably got slightly more inebriated than is advisable the day before a half marathon. Indeed, upon opening my eyes on Sunday morning, the last thing I wanted to do was even draw breath, let alone drag my arse over 13 miles of  hill and dale. But I somehow found the strength and with a little help from my significant other, a few hours later I was milling about amongst the crowd of neon-clad competitors at the race starting area. I also drew some motivation from the fact that one of my girlfriend's friends was also competing in her first ever half marathon, and she'd brought a small fan club with her who were also quite enthusiastic about my involvement too, so hats off to them. Anyway, the starting klaxon went and as it did, the massive acid reflux raging up my throat did nothing to help my case (damned real ale coming back for revenge). To be honest, the first couple of miles of a half marathon are pretty bad when you're hungover, but after you start to sweat out the toxins and you find your pace, it isn't so bad. In fact, I'm a firm believer that the sugar from the alcohol stored in your body actually helps with fatigue as the race goes on. Evidence? Of course: I finished the race in 27th place out of 410 runners, with a personal best time of 1:26:32. Not massivley impressive in the grand scheme of things (I didn't win, clearly) but I took part in the same race last year and finished 50th with a time of around 1:31:00, so to come in 20-odd places higher with a personal best time is pretty damn good - especially with a hangover! Next race is Bristol half marathon at the end of September.

Might get hammered the night before and see if I can continue this streak of improving times!

2012? You Sure...?

I went to watch some Olympic football yesterday evening. Not at the actual venue (Old Trafford), just in a pub in the centre of the town where I’m now (temporarily) residing. Yep, Team GB took to the field to take on the might of, erm, Senegal in their first game of the 2012 Olympics. As expected, it was a pretty boring game, especially seeing as Team GB is basically England Lite: A team made up of predominantly English footballers who weren’t good enough to be included in the shambolic line-up that Roy Hodgson took to the Euros...but with Ryan Giggs and Craig Bellamy thrown in just to qualify is as Team GB, and not England Lite. Just to be clear. Team GB, not England Lite. It ended 1-1 after Craig Bellamy’s well taken volley was cancelled out by a late Senegal equaliser. I didn’t see the equaliser though, as I’d left the pub and gone home by that point. Why? I’ll tell you:  It was down to the almost constant torrent of foul racist language, broadcast without any embarrassment, by quite a few members of the other inhabitants of the pub. I was disgusted, yes, but most of all I was disappointed. Disappointed that this kind of thing is still happening in today’s supposedly multi-cultural society.

A number of comments, ranging from laughing at Senegalese players’ names, to the berating of the black Team GB players, to the discussing of why these same black players shouldn’t be playing for Team GB were all flung about the bar. I suspect the vast majority of the people coming out with this drivel were pissed, as most of them looked like they’d been drinking in the sun all day, and not y’know, working. The generally tanned appearance of their tattooed arms and necks combined with the kind of slurred speech only attainable through sinking 12 pints of Strongbow in the afternoon sun gave the game away. What I guess I’m trying to say is that last night’s events told me all I needed to know about the town I’m (temporarily) residing in. Here we are, on the eve of the fucking Olympic Games, in the year 2012 and there are still people who think it’s either funny or clever to be openly racist. It makes me ashamed to be British that all the peoples of the world descend on these Isles, and are welcomed with open arms, when just under the crust, intense hatred bubbles away.

 It gets worse, by the way – before I’d even heard any of the shit coming from the amoebas dotted around the bar, I’d picked up a local newspaper that had been left on a nearby table. I opened it up to find that somebody had scrawled  in biro “dirty cheating paki’s” (sic) above a photograph of two muslim men who had been charged with benefit fraud or something. Now, I’m not Dr Watson (he was always the brains behind the Baker St operation), but I’ll wager that the person who wrote that delightful message doesn’t work either. And probably lives on benefits (possibly fraudulently). And is probably on the same intellectual level as the arseholes who think it’s funny to shout racist comments across a bar in 2012. How do I know this? Well, the crossword in the paper had been attempted and given up on (and most of the answers given were wrong anyway), and the jobs section at the back had a few pen marks around several labouring positions on offer, as well as a few scribbles and doodles in the page margin.

So to surmise, your honour: racist, uneducated and either out of work or looking to change professional direction. And I’m guessing that due to the location of the evidence (a fucking pub) it’s the former of the last point rather than the latter.

So there we are. Racism is alive and kicking in the town where I am currently (temporarily) residing. I totally understand that this incident (I’ll combine the newspaper and the comments as one occurrence to save space) is not indicative of the whole of our island nation’s society/values/beliefs etc, but it’s a little bit worrying given the fact that the motherfucking Olympics is being held a few hundred miles away. Thankfully, I’m only in this town temporarily and will be making an effort to relocate to a more cosmopolitan city as soon as is convenient. But not London. Too busy and full of fucking foreigners (see below).

Shock: Northerner endorses London!

I spent this weekend down south in our fair capital city. I spent a week down there earlier this year for work purposes, and the hotel I was put up in had no hot water for most of the stay (something about a dodgy boiler I believe), so as a consolation for having to endure cold showers and boiling a kettle to have a shave, the hotel kindly issued me with a voucher for a free night’s stay whenever I wanted. I didn’t think I’d ever use it to be honest, but being stuck for something to do this past weekend, I rang them up and called in my free night. So off my better half and I went to London.

We took a National Express coach, which was fine...apart from the fact that the chemical toilet at the rear of the vehicle stank like someone had emptied a demijohn of 3 week old piss into a super soaker and then emptied that all over the walls and ceiling. Seriously, the stench of piss from that cubicle was fucking vile...and on one of those coaches that has sealed windows and, conveniently, broken air-con...well, you get the idea. We moved to the front of the coach to escape the acrid fumes of urea but my heart went out to the poor bastards who had to sit at the back in the midst of them. Also – what is the deal with those new coaches? You know, the ones with the caterpillar antennae for wing mirrors? What fucking moron decided that having sealed, double-glazed windows was a good idea?

We got to London Victoria at about 1pm, so we spent the rest of Saturday visiting the various free museums in the locale. The Victoria & Albert was pretty cool – they’ve got some quite impressive displays in there, and you’d have to spend about a day to actually see all of it. It’s not on a par with the Louvre scale-wase, but the Louvre is just fucking ridiculous and offers an unrivalled opportunity for museum/gallery burn-out. You know – when you’ve seen enough old pots and paintings and you’re just wandering aimlessly and thinking about having a beer or a sandwich. After the V&A, we popped across the road to the Science Museum. I’ve been there quite recently so wasn’t massively surprised to find that most of it was still the same, but my companion had never been so we went in. I was mainly interested in seeing the new Alan Turing exhibition as he’s a bit of a legend in the field of computing, but the exhibition was a lot smaller that I expected and also a lot busier, so scope for enjoying it was minimal. Far too many people trying to take pictures of enigma machines and the Pilot ACE through glass with a camera with THE FLASH ON. Seriously, why? Turing would be spinning in his grave if he knew these morons were looking at his magnum opus and committing such offensive miscalculations of logic. Sadly he can’t, as he was cremated – but ‘spinning in the wind’ just doesn’t sound as good.

After the Science Museum we were going to try the Natural History Museum, but the queue looked similar to the one that’ll be spewing from the gates of Hades come Judgement Day, so we passed and headed to a nearby pub for light refreshment instead. After a quick tube trip and check-in at our (free) hotel, we found another decent pub and had several more drinks whilst watching some Australians play a version of cricket that involved lots of lager, kicking bottles and basically falling about. Much more entertaining than the boring shite you see on TV. So that was Saturday.

Sunday involved more of the same, plus a visit to Westminster Abbey (and the spot where I stood outside the Abbey for about 3 hours during last year’s Royal Wedding, not as part of the crowd but as a part of the naval contingent for the route lining – but that’s another post), the Houses of Parliament, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, Cleopatra’s Needle, Buckingham Palace and several parks and gardens. Finally, we got back on the coach (not the same one from Saturday’s journey, thankfully) and returned from whence we came. All in all, it was a really good weekend and really changed my opinion of London. Yes, it’s busy and congested and there are whole battalions of rude and arrogant people walking about (and swarms of foreign school kids wearing brightly coloured rucksacks and whom refuse to acknowledge you even exist as they march towards you)...but I couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer number of things to see and do and places to visit - most of which are completely free.

After visiting Paris a few years ago and being a bit shocked to find that virtually everything wasn’t free, I must eat a tiny morsel of humble pie and concede that London is actually a pretty decent place to visit. I wouldn’t really want to live there just because of how busy it is (the tube alone would drive me insane), but as a place to visit – it’s OK. Which is quite convenient really, considering the Olympics kicks off this week and the world and his wife are coming to visit. Wouldn’t want to be getting the tube at any point in the next two weeks though, and thankfully, I don’t have to.

Living Things

I seem to be doing quite a bit of moaning on here at the moment. So today, I’ll change tack. I’m going to talk about something quite positive. Not, just positive – amazing. Here it is:

Coincidentally, this is how I look after a 13 mile run.

Linkin Park’s latest album Living Things. I’m by no means a diehard Linkin Park fanboy, but I must confess to having bought each of their albums since Minutes to Midnight. That puts Linkin Park into a very select category of bands that I like: the ones where I’ll actually go into a physical shop and hand over physical money for a bona-fide, totally legal, official copy of an album. Other bands that occupy this strand are Motion City Soundtrack, Jimmy Eat World, Good Charlotte (what?!) and, at a push, Green Day.

I listened to a few of Living Things’ preview tracks on iTunes last week and quite liked what I heard, so yesterday I went into a local shop called ‘That’s Entertainment’ and handed over a ten spot for a copy. And all I can say is: Wow.

Have you ever heard a decent song from a band you kind of know about, and then been fooled into buying the album? Only to discover it’s a load of shite and the only tune worth listening to is the one you’ve already heard to death on the radio? The Fray’s ‘How To Save A Life’ is a perfect example. Not so here. I’m pretty sure that most of the tracks on Living Things either won’t be released as singles or, if they are, won’t receive much airplay – but that’s irrelevant. That’s because it rocks with unprecedented levels of ‘Holy Shit – this is a good tune.’ There’s one song that I’m not massively keen on (Victimized), but only because it’s a wee bit too shouty, but even that’s still toe-tappingly addictive. For the most part the tracks switch from angsty yet tuneful (In My Remains, I'll Be Gone, Burn It Down, Lie Greed Misery, Powerless), to melancholic and...well, tuneful (Castle of Glass, Skin to Bone, Roads Untravelled).

And that’s what makes this album so fucking great: every song has a distinct flavour and a melody that you can actually remember. And hum. Quietly to yourself, in my case. Linkin Park’s last album A Thousand Suns was a bit hit and miss (only the tracks Waiting for the End, Burning in the Skies, and The Catalyst stick in my mind), but this new offering is truly masterful. Some people don’t agree, but everyone’s tastes are different. And to be fair, that particular blogger appears to have a much wider knowledge of the rock genre than I do, but what can I say? I like what I hear when I play Living Things.

The last album I bought that I could just put on and let play all the way through (without feeling inclined to skip a track that I thought was a bit shit) was My Dinosaur Life by Motion City Soundtrack. That was a truly blockbusting album (not so sure their recently released follow up is even half as good though), and Living Things is definitely in the same category. More please, Linkin Park. After a world tour and a break, naturally.

The Root

They charged me. Just like I knew they would. Even though I was told by at least three different telephone operators that I wouldn’t be. Barclays charged me £8 for taking a standing order from the wrong account. This tells me a number of things – most notably that the people we speak to when we ring up ‘customer services’ don’t actually communicate with each other, and that they are liars who will say anything just to close your call. To their credit, they did refund the charge after I spent another half hour on the phone explaining the whole mess to TWO different operators...but this isn’t nearly good enough for a multi-national corporation that we are meant to be able to trust. Ultimately, this whole debacle has resulted in me closing one of my current accounts just so they can’t repeat the whole process for a third month, and will inevitably lead to me switching banks. It’s a shame, because Barclays have such impressive online and mobile banking apps that I really like using...but when they start charging their customers for mistakes that they themselves created...well, that’s just not cricket.

Went for a ride on the motorbike on Sunday. My Honda hasn’t been getting much use of late due to the horrendous British summer, and my proximity to work now that I’ve moved again (I can cycle in now...so I do), so thought I’d fire it up and take it for a spin just to give it a blow out. I’ve had a few problems with the thing in the few months I’ve owned it, and have spent a small fortune getting it all sorted (I think the previous owner had just let it stand in their garage for a while as they didn’t need it after getting a car). These ‘things’ have included new oil seals in the forks, a basic service, an oil filter and oil change, a new front fork, a new back tyre, a new chain and sprockets, a bit of welding to the thing that holds the luggage box on...and now I also think I need a new battery as starting it has become a bit of a game of chance.

Two months ago I rode it down to Dorset and as soon as I reached my destination, I noticed a massive nail stuck in my week-old back tyre. Grrr. I took it to ProTyre in Poole and they sorted it for £30, which is cheaper than a whole new tyre...but imagine my horror and disgust when after this Sunday’s ride I noticed that the front tyre had a nail in it too! For fuck sake! I’ve been driving cars/vans/trucks for a good few years now and never had a puncture or a nail in a tyre...and within weeks I get two stuck in my motorbike’s tyres! How is this even possible? Surely the law of averages dictates that with less wheels, that are thinner than a car’s, I should have less chance of hitting a fucking nail that’s just been casually thrown into the middle of a random road? Who exactly is throwing these nails around?! The mind boggles. Alas, I now have to fork out another £30 to get this new nail removed and the front tyre repaired. Sigh. The costs continue to mount.

You know, when I think about it, every shitty thing that happens isn’t shitty in itself. It’s not like some malicious cunt has gone out of their way to do something horrible to me – it all comes down to money. When it all boils down, something that I feel is ‘shit’ usually is so because it involves me handing over money to have the status quo restored to my daily life. Mental isn’t it. None of the crap that’s happened recently has been harmful or injured me in any way, it’s just been the way of the world or fate or whatever removing money from my grasp. Barclays’ bullshit, the motorbike issues...both equal no physical harm, just a smaller bank balance. Makes you think doesn’t it. Money truly is the root of being in a pissed-off mood.