daily life: flash under the pan

I'm all for technology proliferating into our daily lives, in particular I m still wowed by the keyless entry and ignition on my car. But sometimes needlessly adding flashy features to daily activites just makes them tediously annoying, none more annoying than the 'high tech' electric hobs that seem to be all the rage these days. My flat has one of those flashy glass touch panel doo-hickies without any buttons that morons who don't actually cook but want everybody to know how rich and stylish they are always have despite the fact it doesn't actually work (Yay for run-on sentences).Coupled with the fact that electric hobs just don't fecking work, you either boil over the pan or it just sits there doing nothing like it caught ME, and forget about frying sausages. What idiot decided to integrate an iPhone with my hob, if I want to turn the light up I have to press a 'button' to change mode, and probably press it again because it was in the wrong mode to start with, and then press some more buttons some more times. What was wrong with turning a knob, when I was a lad we didn't have touch buttons, we had to make do with knobs and we were happy to have them.

Driving: stay at pump

I'm sure many of you have been at a petrol station, you've already paid, but you can't leave because the owner of the car in front is still inside the shop. To make it worse, after 10 minutes that feel more like 10 hours, the owner of said car trundles out laden with half-a-dozen shopping bags with content ranging from asbestos through to zebra steaks.

The first fault lies with the petrol station who have failed to understand sticking 2 extra pumps in to 'maximise profits', therefore requiring the pumps to be placed just far enough apart to successfully dispense the delicious petrol, ultimately results in so many queues you halve the amount of customers you can serve in any given period of time.

Secondly the moron that decides to do their weekly shop at the petrol station needs to be locked in a deep dark pit while children point and laugh at them. And why is it always woman? I could understand if it was a single man whose idea of 'Haute Cuisine' is a creme egg served with a 'Frijj' jus, they could therefore shop quite comfortable at the 'Gas 'n' Go', but when you start asking the spotty teen behind the counter where the foie gras is maybe you should change your shopping habits.

anouncement: who's been a naughty boy

Some of you may have wondered why there hasn't been an update in a while, perhaps you've been unable to sleep at night, tossing and turning in your bed as you attempt to come to terms with me no longer brightening up your day.
If this is you then my advise is to end it, perhaps find a bus to step in front of. For the rest of you there is a reasonable explanation for my absence, I've been sued for breach of copyright. Believe it or not I haven't obtained the express consent from copyright owners before posting some images on this site, and some litigious individual has attempted to bring down my musings.

Anyhoo, that's all over now and normal service will be resumed.

daily life: what a façade

I'm certainly no Howard Hughes, but I am reasonably strong on hygiene. You know those little things people expect you to do like wash your hands after going to the toilet, society sure is funny about stuff like that.
Well recently I've been noticing more people who façade hygiene, the people that think running their hands under a tap for 3 seconds is the same as dipping them into a vat of bleach. Because they know people wouldn't go near them if they just walked out of the toilet without washing their hands they just stick them under a tap for 2 Mississippis (thank you spell check).

If you've gone to the trouble of pretending to wash your hands then you might as well wash your hands properly. Or maybe these people are allergic to Carex and I'm being unfairly harsh on them.


Remember, I'm watching you.

daily life: Money Saving Tip #876

I apologise in advance for the seriousness of my post.

It is vitally important to save money where you can, and there is no better way to do this than cashback. If you want to buy something then why not get a little extra back. I'm not talking about saying yes when the checkout assistant asks 'Do you want cashback?', in fact tell that person to go straight to hell. I'm talking about earning as you spend.
Just the other day I got £101 cashback just for signing up to Sky TV, I was already going to do it, so I might as well get some free money for my troubles.
TopCashback and Quidco are both respected and reliable sites for this, and coupled with a Cashback credit card such as the Halifax Reward Clarity, and a current account paying a monthly tax free bonus such as the Halifax Reward you will earn hundreds each year just for doing what you wanted already. Other banks have similar accounts, so check what's available to you.

And if you buy everything on your Credit Card make sure you never, ever keep money in your current account, move it to an instant access e-saver to accrue interest between paying your credit card bills. Halifax have a Web Saver Reward paying 3% just perfect for the job. Why would you give the bank your money for nothing? Stop it now or I'll slap you!

Click through below to sign-up for Quidco and Topcashback and start earning today.

Topcashback

Quidco

food: tumbleweed

For my tea yesterday I purchased an Asda Stuffed Crust Meat Feast Pizza. With the wording Meat Feast I was expecting quite a banquet on my plate. But what I got barely fulfilled the claim of Meat and certainly fell short of being a Feast.

I expected the top of my pizza to be piled high with cow, pig and various other animal innards, but what I instead received were 6 slices of peperoni, 10 squares that I believe were meant to be ham but more closely resemble diced carpet tile, and some brown lumpy pieces that I believe were scrapped from the inside of a McDonald's deep fat fryer but the label on the box purported to be 'Beef'.

By the time I discovered how far I had been deceived by Asda I was starving and ate the sickly tomato monstrosity, but I will be writing to my MP about this I can assure you.

And have you tried that Asda Price Guarantee? I'd like to see a person that has successfully met every criteria laid out in the T&Cs.

technology: landline is king. long live the landline.

Like many of you today I woke up and was unable to make a phone call from my mobile. At first I thought the phone was broken as it has been crashing a bit lately, but after resorting to a landline and then surfing the internet via a landline based ADSL connection I discovered that O2s network for most of the South East of England is down due to an 'equipment theft'.

This is just another reason why being completely reliant on a mobile phone is always going to result in tragedy, and no matter how hard the industry argues, landlines cannot be fully replaced with a 'cellular' network.

So take today as a warning, mobile networks fail, and they fail bad. The landline phone is still king.

daily life: love your neighbour.... not your customers.

Finally an excuse to reference this piece of junk!

Fellow Sky television subscribers will probably have experienced the terrible build quality of Sky Set Top Boxes (STB). Thomson Sky(+) HD boxes are probably the most notorious of these, and very few of the original 2006 boxes are still functioning; the build quality was so bad that Thomson have now lost all Sky contracts.
As a customer of 10years+ I know too well how bad Sky hardware is, and in October the Thomson HD box under my TV that had spent more time being power-cycled than displaying 'quality programming' finally died from tuner failures, and I paid £65 for the privilege of Sky replacing their 5h17 hardware with a refurbished box (a box that had already broken in another persons house and had been repaired).
Well this refurb is a pile of donkey turds, so I fired off an email to Jeremy Darroch the guy in charge of BSkyB (click the link to email a complaint of your own). Often when you contact him somebody sorts everything out for you, but being me the complete opposite happened.

Today I get a call from Sky. I think 'Yay, Sky will give me a shiny new STB that might work for 6months before breaking'. Notice that I didn't expect a STB that works, this is Sky we are talking about, a company that purchased the Amstrad brand to 'improve' quality. How poor does your brand have to be if a rebrand to Amstrad is seen as positive?

Well I was obviously being optimistic because this is not what happened, instead the 'lady' on the phone described her job as 'I'm phoning to defend Sky from you slagging off their boxes'; nice to see impartiality is being taught to Sky's telephone operators. With a job description like that she obviously denies that Sky hardware sucks gonads, tells me I am a liar because I've only had 1 replacement Sky box which means I obviously don't have any problems with their hardware, and finishes off by claiming I threatened her and was abusive. If you've ever had an argument with a call centre you may be aware they are trained to say this when they are 'losing' an argument. By accusing you of threatening them they instantly disarm you, and you become worried that they will report you to somebody; often it is a good sign because it means they are worried that you are making some valid points, but with Sky it means they hang up on you or you hang up on them.

The woman did phone me back to offer a 'free engineer visit'; when Sky hire some engineers they might be able to provide that service, but at the moment they just have installers. An 'engineer visit' is Sky code for replacing your naffed box with somebody-elses naffed box that has been re-jiggered to work long enough to survive the 3month warranty period. So I told them where they could shove that.

So yet another failure of Sky customer service, they managed to tell a 10year+ customer they were a lying aggressive and threatening individual, and made it clear that around £10,000 of subscription and hardware payments does not entitle you to £50 of metal and plastic as a good will gesture.

daily life: campaign to stop identity theft...

... of me!

I have a pretty strong online identity, and people that know me are aware of my username across multiple sites (which I'm not going to post here for obvious reasons).
But many years ago I noticed someperson(s) or organisation trying to steal this identity as a flurry of accounts were opened up with my username and lay dormant for years.
Today I discovered that Twitter joined that list as somebody setup a Twitter account in 2009 with that username and to this date has not made a single tweet or even followed the inane tweeting of Jay-Z or Kanye West.

Fortunately I was able to procure most accounts prior to this process beginning, but I still get annoyed by failing to procure it for GMail even though I was beta testing it at the time.

One day I will track down the individuals responsible for this and punish them accordingly. So I give you fair warning, even though you won't actually find this blog because you stole my gmail account.

Plus, some wang on Xbox Live decided to copy my avatar to, I keep running into the little sod.

politics: an apple a day

I'm apparently an evil man, I leave my TV on standby and therefore I am single handedly destroying the environment, felling every tree in the Amazon, clubbing baby seals and melting the ice caps with a blow torch.

But am I? I think not.

Yes I have devices on standby, but my mobile telephone is over 5 years old, the last time I flew on a plane was 1998, I have had the same laptop for 4 years, my current MP3 player for 2 years and the one before that for 5 years. My home theatre system was 7years old before the amplifier blew, and my current amplifier wont be replaced for a long time either.
I always turn the lights off when I leave a room and I don't leave the tap running when I clean my teeth.

So I say to the people that upgrade their phone every 5 minutes just because Apple have released the iPhone 4.10234 and have just purchased the iPod Generation 56 to replace the iPod 55 that they listen to when flying from Cornwall to Devon, and get fit using their Wii rather than walking a real dog in a real park, well I might use 0.01w of electricity when my TV is on Standby, but you are doing infinitely more harm than I am, so SHUT THE F UP ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING or stop being such as consumer.


You know that guy called Al Gore, the guy that failed to become President of the US so became a right bitch about it? Well he is on the board of Apple which is according to Green Peace one of the worst companies for pollutants and waste out of the major manufacturers (especially when you consider how few products they actually market compared to Sony and Samsung) clicky and clicky, and Nintendo manage to stay at the bottom of the pack for yet another year.

rotfl: blatant attempt to get more readers.

In an attempt to make up for a lack of content I am stealing the work of what I hope is a talented individual. If this is actually a real posting then we must contact the authorities immediately because this guy is not safe to drive our streets in a Silver Ford Focus, let alone a Mint Green one.

LOOK HERE

entertainment: socially akward

This post is probably going to be a bit of a nonsensical ramble over several topics. So let's first start where it all began.

Chuck, the TV Series, is meant to portray the bumbling of a Mr Bean-esque Nerd who ends up as a spy. But if Chuck is a Nerd then I'm the Pope, and now Chuck can solve all of his problems with 'magic' (that well known trick for solving an impossible situation caused by inept writers) he is less Nerdy than ever. I wont even get started on his Australian girlfriend and her 10" heels.

I like to think of myself as a bit of a Nerd, maybe not 'Revenge of the Nerds' level, but I think I have a few of the classic characteristics.

MovieBob did an interesting video about what defined a Nerd in the past and how people selectively apply the label to suit their needs. It's an interesting watch even though it isn't one of his best videos.
I don't really mind it when nerds are caricatured as spotty, socially inept, cowardly, loners but what does annoy me is when square jawed, gel haired, 6ft, glossy toothed individuals are claimed to be 'Nerds'. 
The Big Bang Theory is just within the levels of acceptability in this instance largely due to the exceptionally funny Sheldon who manages to counter balance the fact that Leonard clearly isn't Nerdy enough.


So I'll finish this post the way any true Nerd would

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise

technology: a series of tubes.

It seems that everybody is watching TV on the internet. It is being sold as a convenient way to watch anything at any time. This is of course a lie, it's actually a fantastic way for broadcasters to mitigate PVRs and cut costs.
I record practically everything I watch, much of it in HD. Broadcasters hate this because HD is expensive to produce, edit and then distribute. Secondly, they hate that I can fast forward all the adverts. Broadcasters aren't making these shows as a charity, they are getting money from advertisers which has been dwindling because TV advertising is less effective than ever.

But enter the internet, this provides a cheap way to send sub-standard resolution video to you and it also prevents you fast forwarding the adverts. You try skipping the adverts on 4oD, you can't. So the broadcasters can prove how many people are watching their adverts and therefore charge more to the advertisers, and because the quality of streamed video is often far below broadcast they save a fortune.

So next time you think that the broadcasters are doing you a favour by letting you stream their shows, just remember that you are doing exactly what they want you to do.

daily life: let's call the whole thing off.

This is something that irritated me a few months back when perusing the shelves of my local Tesco. I was looking for some Cheese Muffins to have with my scrambled eggs for breakfast (Morrisons Cheese and Onion Muffins are actually much nicer).

How do I like my eggs in the morning?

I just told you, SCRAMBLED.


To my horror I see that the muffins are described as ENGLISH MUFFINS. In America they might be ENGLISH MUFFINS, but in England they are just muffins. What world do we live in where we have to tell English people that something is an English muffin? A world where our children think of those invading American Muffins as a true muffin.
Even worse, when you search online you have to search under crumpets to find a muffin. I can't take it any more.

Well I say enough, let's send these imposters (and their nylons) back to where they came from, and once again feast on an honest British muffin.

anouncement: charity appeal 2011

In the 2011 UK budget George Osbourne announced a tax incentive that didn't get much media attention. In the event that you missed it I'll give a brief outline.

Under the new IHT rules, if you leave 10% of your estate to charity in your will, your relatives pay 10% less in Inheritance Tax. Not a bad deal when you think about it.

So today I am announcing the 2011 theguywhomoanscalledmatthew Charity to Help theguywhomoanscalledmatthew. I'm not saying I want all my readers to drop dead, but I am encouraging each of you to leave 10% of your estate to my new charity who's sole purpose is to help me :¬), because my woeful Adsense doesn't pay the bills. And while I am at it, click my bloody advertising links.

Then, if you were to have an 'accident' you can rest peacefully in the knowledge that you helped the less fortunate... ME.

In the event that you don't want to will your money to me (shame on you), then why not give some money to The  Dogs Trust, but not the Cat Protection League because cats are lame.

daily life: wise words.

I must be too intelligent for my own good, that's because my Mandibular Third Molars are coming in, or to be more precise they have been coming in for the last 3 years. It's reasonably common for some or all of your wisdom teeth to partially erupt, but it frickin' hurts and I've had to live with Vertical Impaction for 3 years.

What is the point of Wisdom Teeth? I certainly didn't sit around thinking 'I sure wish I had a few more molars because because the 28 teeth I already have just aren't cutting it for me'.

They are just another evolutionary dead end, bits of the body that humans haven't needed for thousands of years, probably required when monkey-men ate food that was difficult to chew. Or if you don't believe in Darwin, it's because God is a douche and wants me to suffer.

English Teeth, English Teeth!

Shining in the sun

A part of British heritage

Aye, each and every one.

English Teeth, Happy Teeth!

Always having fun

Clamping down on bits of fish

And sausages half done.

English Teeth! HEROES' Teeth!

Hear them click! and clack!

Let's sing a song of praise to them -

Three Cheers for the Brown, Grey and Black.

— Spike Milligan, "Teeth"

what were you thinking: Knights who say Ni

I've actually had to make  a new category for this one.

As a trained (and if I say so myself, rather expert) Computer Scientist I am very wary about security, and regularly laugh at the comical techniques Spammers use to clog my inbox with junk. If you actually do click on that link to 'Claim your $1million from the King of Zimbabwe' then you deserve to be scammed, it is Darwin at work
As they say;

ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law

So I get rather annoyed when my personal security is compromised by the incompetence of multi-million pound or dollar organisations who have entrusted my details to Infinite Monkey Theorem, only instead of producing Shakespeare they obviously produced the most useless security system imaginable.

Recently I had been noticing an increase in SPAM, which transpires was possibly (don't want to get sued now do I) due to a breach at Silverpop, a company providing email services to many large brands including Play.com. Why any company would entrust millions of customer details to a company with a name even a 5 year old would find childish is beyond me. But they did.

So now my details, along with millions of UK citizens, and many more across the world are on every spammers hit-list.

technology: the sincerest form of flattery

I wasn't actually planning to do this post. I haven't actually used Open Office in years since it corrupted a lot of my documents. But after an avid reader pointed out the Open Office developers blatant attempt to rip-off MS I just had to critique.

I was one of the few that liked the Office 2007 Ribbon, and with MS incorporating it in Windows 7 even those that didn't are stuck with it.
Realising that the Ribbon is actually pretty good, Sun/Oracle decided to shoehorn it into Open Office. If any of you have written Java (which Open Office is written in), you will know that, to put it politely, it sucks in the UI department, so it was never going to look pretty. But not even Lucifer himself could have created such an abomination, a sight so abhorrent that to look upon it is to peer into the darkest abyss of humanity.

It is actually so awful that I have had to overlay it on Office 2010, because to look upon it's entirety will drive the sanity from you. Just look what it did to my beloved dog, I hear she is now ruler of a middle-east nation.

So ignoring the fact that Open Office is not very good, using it will turn you into a drooling lunatic, destined to live the rest of your existence with the knowledge you have seen the worst man can produce, no longer able to see all the beauty in the world.

technology: playing with fire

I have mentioned the irrational hatred that exists for Microsoft in the past, and never is this more prevalent than with Internet Browsers. Yes, IE6 was pretty pants, but IE7 and IE8 weren't bad.
Many years ago I switched to Firefox, and at the time it was much better than Microsofts offerings. But I started to get annoyed by how damned slow Firefox was , it made IE8 seem snappy and caused the only BSODs I have had on Vista and Windows 7. I soon jumped over to Google's Chrome and I have been loving it ever since. I've also had a brief play with IE 9 and it's pretty good to, and I see no real reason why you wouldn't use IE9 to read my musing.

But recently I've been doing some web development and I've been forced to use Firefox, and I've hated every moment of it. It's just so clunky and regularly hangs, it's like using IE6, but atleast with IE6 I was on a 56k dial-up connection so the browser was the least of my problems.
Yet, there are thousands out there who feel they have earned their geek-cred with statements like

IE is junk, Firefox FTW! 

And we all know the EU's opinions on IE, yet they haven't yet explained how you are meant to download their beloved Firefox if Windows didn't ship with IE.

Any unbiased individual will have noticed that Firefox has turned into the buggy, crash prone and incredibly bloated software that the community rightly accused IE of being.
But where Microsoft have learned from the communities concerns, and from Google's barebones Chrome, Mozilla has become complacent while legions of loyal 'fans' spread misinformation as they attempt to make millions join the cult of Firefox. I doubt few of the Firefox users have even used the browsers they claim Firefox is superior to.

So if you are reading this with Firefox, I advise you to quickly download one of the alternatives in the 30 seconds you have before your browser hangs for the 134th time this hour.



Next time, Open Office and why is sucks and GIMP really pisses me off too.

entertainment: he did the mash

Vampires have been a common staple in films and television for a while now, yet very few have actually read Bram Stokers Dracula, which although not the first account of vampyre, is essentially the Alpha although certainly not the Omega.

But watching True Blood or those god awful Twilight films you wouldn't even know that they were based around vampyre. The most recent series of True Blood has introduced some stupid plot with Werewolves and Vampire Kings and all manner of :censored:

Can we just put an end to all this vampire nonsense?
Mark my word, next series of True Blood it will be revealed that vampires built the pyramids as landing pads for their space ships as they are actually aliens from the Vampirous Nebula. Actually, I think I could go for that Stargate slash True Blood crossover. If you are reading this HBO I accept Cheques or Credit Card.

Armstrong and Miller did a series of parodies about how vampires have evolved in media, the first of which I have posted below.

daily life: this is Moscow calling

I had a scary moment yesterday. It is 10pm and I am watching some TV on my HTPC. Then, shock horror, I lose my internet connection. I glance at the router and the internet light is Orange, the router instructs me that their is an issue with the line, but just to be sure I restart it before coming to the realisation that I must phone BT. And so begins the worst 24 minutes of my life.

Firstly I phone to check if any faults are reported for my area, but sadly there are not.
I have to go through to Tech Support who are based in India.
While on hold I am instructed to visit www.bt.com for online help, okay then, I'll go do that when you fix my internetz.

When I finally get through to a 'technical advisor' she immediately instructs me to reset my router to factory defaults, which I politely refuse to do. After 10 minutes of battling, repeating every word 5 times, agreeing to be referred to as Ireye because I can't get her to understand my name is Matthew, she agrees to perform a line test and promptly promises to phone me back in 10 minutes.
25 minutes later I get a call, and the 'advisor' agrees that there is a fault with my line - Good job you hadn't instructed me to reset my router to factory defaults then. And they promise that an engineer is looking into it.

At 11pm on the dot my internetz are back, albeit at a reduced sync speed of just 8mb.

Then this morning BT phone me from India to ask if my problems are resolved, after 5 minutes of NPA where I tell the advisor I DON'T need assistance setting up my Wi-Fi, that my Xbox 360 and PS3 are working fine and that my BT Vision Box has been unplugged for 12months because it is rubbish, whilst being referred to as Mr Iran (Don't ask), I finally get off the phone.


I do have to hand it to BT that they can be efficient in fixing a fault, and the processes for making sure everything is fine the next day are a nice touch. But for the love of God, please can I speak to somebody who can string a sentence together in English. Repeating yourself 10 times over is not going to impress your customers. When you are continually referred to by the wrong name you get a bit annoyed. It's bad enough that the 'advisor' quotes a script that can't possibly resolve your fault.

You have been reading theguywhomoanscallediraney

technology: welcome to the world of yesterday.

Technology sure does move fast, and as William Shatner will tell you we can only imagine the miracles that are to come.
Shatner's Toupee would have flown off his head if somebody had told him that in the year 2011 I would be typing this message, and in mere milliseconds somebody anywhere in the world would be able to read it. Not that anybody is actually reading this nonsense.

I sure would like to know what magic those 2 buttons on that phone will be used for. One can only imagine, but I bet if you press them somebody will commission a decent Star Trek TV Series that doesn't get cancelled after 4 years.

entertainment: Son of a Preacher Man

I'm all for ensuring children grow up to become moral adults who know right from wrong. But I am getting a tad annoyed by all the preaching and 'high horsery' that is so prevalent on TV and film at the moment.

At the start of every Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode they flash up some moral nonsense along the lines of

"You hold onto friends by keeping your heart a little softer than your head."[src]

How on earth is a 4 year old even going to understand that anyway? I'm not even sure I do. We've got to a point where toddlers are being versed in Plato to teach them that stealing is wrong. All I needed was Postman Pat not stealing the post, now he flies around in his Royal Mail issued Helicopter, or his Royal Mail Hovercraft. How many DVDs did he pilfer to pay for that I ask you?

I've just put my down payment on a theguywhomoanscalledmatthew branded Stealth Bomber.

anouncement: they don't like it up 'em

Don't panic! I haven't gone away, but I have been incredibly busy  for a few weeks. Nothing has really annoyed me the last few days except that Google's 1.31 Google Checkout PHP files are full of bugs. But at least there is still Stuart Ashen's new BBC Comedy show 'Back Space' that I really advise you to check out. I've placed the first episode below, but I recommend that you click through for the rest (new episodes each Friday). Episode 2 is the best so far.

I know, there is nothing more annoying than when a blogger blows smoke up the @55 of another blogger (walks into coal-shed with shotgun slung over shoulder).

Well, I have to go and watch Psych, if you've not seen it before then watch the explanation below.

technology: development by divination.

Web development is a lucrative business and as web technologies have tried to meet the needs of users old approaches have been deprecated in the name of usability.

One example of this is Tables, back in the 90s every website was built around tables, if you need to position something on a page you used a table. It was messy and more than a little unreliable, but then came the DIV, a neat little box that you can position anywhere on a page, and automatically manoeuvre based on the screen size and resolution.
But with great flexibility comes great annoyance, and web development has been reduced to a hair pulling procedure of messing with CSS, floating here, clearing there. After 20 minutes of trying to float a div at the bottom of the screen you'll be curled up in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth in a puddle of your own drool.

There is only one think that can bring you back from the edge in such scenarios

driving: sirens song

If you drive regularly you probably listen to the radio from time to time, and in my case BBC Radio 2 is my station of choice, I do like a bit of the Jeremy Vine show.

But what annoys me is when songs with sirens or horns are played on the radio. How many times have you been trundling along and suddenly hear what you believe to be a police car or ambulance. You check your mirrors, look in your blind spot, trying to work out if you need to pull over. Unable to locate said vehicle, and slightly confused you assume it was in the distance and continue your drive. But alas, yonder sound does alight in your ears once more (I don't know why I went all Elizabethan either), and again you can't locate the source of the siren. Then it dawns on you, it was on the radio, some idiot decided to put the sound of a police car on the song, and some bigger idiot chose that song for the play-list

Everybody knows (yes mum, I put in the Cohen reference) that 99.99999% of all radio listening occurs in a motor vehicle, so it doesn't take a genius to realise broadcasting such sounds can be incredibly dangerous. Imagine if each of the ~8million drive time audience simultaneously started checking their mirrors, how many thousands would perish in the 'Great blind-spot check of 2011'

Therefore I call on the UK government, no the ECJ to legislate that any song containing a siren, alarm or horn should be banned from radio broadcast.

I'm a public service you know.

daily life: letters from the edge

The Royal Mail get a lot of stick, and although they often annoy me, I feel most of it is a tad extreme. Yes, the Postie arrives at 12pm on a good day, yes the Postie steals your valuable parcels, and yes a letter would arrive faster if you strapped it to the back of a sloth .

But where I draw the line is what I call the 'Royal Mail Tax'. If you ever import items into the UK exceeding the customs threshold (around £17) you have to pay import tax, VAT .etc. Fair enough (although they included P&P in the price). But then the Royal Mail charge you a 'Processing Fee' to take the items to HR Revenue and Customs for processing, and to collect the fees from you at your sorting office. This is possibly fair, it probably costs about 50p for RM to do this. But how much does RM charge you for this 'service'?


You probably guessed wrong, it's actually a whopping £8. How do the Royal Mail justify this tax, that often dwarfs the VAT and Customs charges.

Example, I imported some CDs from the U. S of A, with P&P they were about £20 (just over the threshold), the customs charges were about £4 so it was £24 (still cheaper than Amazon.co.uk), but then RM stuck their Royal Mail Tax on top bringing it to an eye watering £32.
How can the RM charge me £8 when the customs charges were only £4? If the item is £200 you could argue the £8 is small, but here it was nearly 50% of the cost of the items.

Royal Mail, I declare WAR on your TAX. Tell me if you think this was worth the hassle.

entertainment: Some say I'm crazy for my love

Over the years I have watched much television, and during this time there have been a few programmes that burned twice as bright for half as long. In fact, any time I enjoy a programme it is snatched away from me and I would like to dedicate this post to all those shows that died early.
In no particular order.

Andromeda (Rommie has to be one of the best Sci-Fi characters ever!)
Stargate Atlantis (Better than SG1 in many respects)
Caprica
Stargate Universe (Suffered BSG clone syndrome)
Over There
Dirty Sexy Money (Much better than Ugly Betty)
Enterprise (I know what you are saying, but we've had no Star Trek for 5 years now)
Farscape
Threshold (Didn't even survive the first series)
The Riches (Eddie Izzard was actually watchable!)
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (How did Joey survive longer than this?)
Firefly
Arrested Development
Better Off Ted
The Newsroom
Flashforward (How did this get cancelled?)
Hyperdrive
Supernova
E-Ring (Didn't survive the first season and finished an a ridiculous cliffhanger)
Eastwick (Surprisingly watchable)
The Class (Better than Friends?)
Dollhouse (The curse of Whedon strikes again)
Trauma (Take a note BBC, this is how Casualty should be done)
Flight of the Chonchords


and for my mum Moonlight (she fancied the vampire guy).

Special mention to King of the Hill which lasted 13 years before cancellation. Much better than Family Guy.

There are probably plenty of other shows that I have forgotten, and with the death of each Sci-Fi show the genre has dwindled on TV with SyFy (what a stupid name) failing to fill the gaps left by the big networks.

Let's all take a moment for solemn reflection.

politics: Bob crows - nobody listens.

I'm not a fan of trade unions, and the RMT 'General Secretary' Bob Crow is top of my hate list. He has spouted some nonsense over the years, but recently he has a new plan to make money.
Bob Crow wants to charge you for every email you send, and I am not making this up. You can hear this 'plan' during an interview on the Channel 4 show '10 o'clock Live'.
Go to about 31 minutes for his interview.

But what he didn't explain was that 1p per email was just an starting point and the new system operates on a sliding scale, I have the full details below.

Base charge:
Standard Email - 300 characters with an additional 100 characters as embedded links. Email headers not included in character count : £0.01

Extras.
Additional 200 characters of text: £0.01.
Additional 200 characters as embedded links: £0.02.
HTML email surcharge: £0.03.
Images - per 10kb of image: £0.05.
Images - Up to 500kb of images maximum of 5 images: £0.50.
Including a picture of Equine: £0.75.

Pornography - Pornographic content surcharge: £1.
Medication - Advertisement for medications surcharge: £0.50.
Humorous - Humorous content surcharge: £0.20.

High Priority - High Priority Flag set: £2.
Low Priority - Additional 50 characters included in Standard Email allowance.

International Rates:
Sending to EU country: Additional £0.10.
Sending outside of EU: Additional £0.50.

Discounts and additional charges:
Weekdays:
02:00 - 05:59: 20% discount
09:00 - 17:30: Additional 30% (minimum of 1p)
17:31 - 22:00: Additional 10% (minimum of 1p)

Weekends:
Saturday 15:00 - 18:00: 10% discount.
All day Sunday: 45% discount.


Lets work out how much this email would cost.

Dear Mr Crow,
You are clearly a lunatic with an inferiority complex. You feel threatened by anybody that is more intelligent than yourself, or who has achieved more through their own hard work. We can only hope that you don't believe the nonsense that you spout, and that you only make these ludicrous comments to gain media attention and just to convince yourself that you are important. If you really do believe the drivel that you spout then I have to worry that you could ever be elected to such a powerful position in any society. Please get of your high horse

 Sincerely,
               theguywhomoanscalledmatthew


Assuming standard priority the above email sent at 8pm would cost 1p for the Standard email, plus 2p more for exceeding 300 characters The picture of a horse incurs a 75p charge, plus 50p because it is 140kb. There is an additional 20p because the email is humorous, and another £1 because that is one sexy horse. Finally we have an extra 3p for sending at 8pm

So the total cost is ~£2.51.

Nice one Bob Crow, you just made the poor poorer.

entertainment: AYBABTU

I often watch subtitled films, often a subtitled Chinese film is much more entertaining than anything Hollywood produces, and being literate I don't mind a bit of reading.
But there lies the problem, I am literate so I can read the subtitles, unfortunately it seem that the people writing the subtitles aren't quite so literate.

I'm the first to admit that I can't learn foreign languages, and hats off to anybody that can string a sentence together in English if that isn't their first language. This certainly isn't a rant about foreign speakers. It is a rant about proof readers, Quality Assurance .etc.

How is it that a film can be translated into English, presumably proof read, copied into the subtitles on the film, proof read again, screened to the Director and Producer, screened to the big wigs at a Movie Studio, screened to a Test Audience, released to cinema, released to video, released to TV broadcasters, and at no point does anybody notice the spelling or grammatical errors. Somewhere, in that very long line of people, somebody would say 'Hmm, that sentence doesn't make any sense at all'.

But obviously that doesn't happen. At best it is height-larry-house, at worst it ruins the film.

technology: echo "Hello World"

This post has been sparked by two things.
Firstly, a brilliantly funny video from LoadingReadyRun.
Secondly, the most pointless device I have ever seen.

It is vogue to despise Microsoft because they are an evil corporation that is destroying competition, as a result more and more companies are turning to 'Open Source' solutions as a way to save licensing and attract the 'trendy' market who want to lord it over their Windows using friends because they run 'teh linux'.
But as netbooks sales are falling manufacturers need more  devices to run linux. That sentence just went on forever.

Enter Linux phones, and I am not talking about Android. Motorola have hailed in a new device that can run a full linux distribution. But how can you run Linux on a 2" screen with no buttons or mouse, you can't it just isn't possible, so to get around this Motorola will sell you a laptop which you plug your Linux powered phone into.

When you have to do this to make your device run Linux it's time to give up on the idea, when your phone looks like this you might as well just carry around a laptop. It's the complete opposite of convergence.

entertainment: creamy.

Every company wants to find a 'cash cow', a product or franchise that they can milk for years with increasing profits for very little creative expense.
Movie studios have just emerged from several decades of franchise milking, although the practice is still going strong, we are seeing a bit more creativity as consumers become tired of Saw XXIV and Friday the 13th part 87. The trend has lately been to 'reboot' tired franchises with very little success, and studios are realising that change is required, unfortunately that means adding 3D to the end of a title.

But where the film industry leads, the games industry follows behind by about 10 years, so we are midway through a long drink from the franchise cow. Lately you may have played Guitar Hero 15, Call of Duty 34 and Resident Evil 123. Just days ago Ubisoft, a publisher that has been very restrained in the franchise milking, announced it would be releasing Assassins Creed games on a yearly cycle.

Ranting continues after the break;

daily life: DIY banking.

As a British Tax-payer you own a piece of several large banks in the UK, including the Lloyds group that own Halifax. You might think that gives you a certain level of respect when you visit a branch, but Halifax have decided that because you own the bank that means you should actually be working behind the counter.

Yesterday I went to my local Halifax branch (there are other banking institutions available) to withdraw some money, and pay-in some money. After 10 minutes in a ludicrously long queue I was at a cashiers window and made my request. In a very abrupt and rude tone the cashier asked 'Have you filled in a withdrawal slip?'. Having no clue what she was on about I answered 'No, I have not', to which she responded, 'We have a new policy, you have to fill in a slip and then hand it to us, go over there and fill this in while I serve some customers'.

I was not best pleased with this, but I duly filled in the slip that previously was filled in by the cashier. I made a smart remark about how I was doing the cashiers job now and she mumbled something.

When I returned to the window I was told that by filling in the slip myself I was benefiting from new services, now 'Cheques clear faster and I can make bill payments'. The cashier then proceeded to type in the details I had been forced to write on the paper into her computer terminal. What the hell, if you are still going to type the details in then what is the point in making me write my sort code .etc. on a piece of paper.

She mumbled again about how filling in the slip myself will magically make my cheques clear faster to which I nodded because explaining that this is nothing to do with their 'new' process which they ripped straight from the 1940s would be fruitless.

When internet banking was introduced about 15 years ago the concept was that by banking yourself, at home, you saved the bank money and they duly rewarded you with higher interest rates. But now banks have taken this too far, next time I walk into my local Halifax branch somebody will probably hand me a name badge and a uniform.

The Halifax logo is a registered trademark which I do not own.

daily life: when I'm sixty-four.

Getting older is just a fact of life, and no matter how much you spend you can't halt the ageing process. You can take a bath in Oil of Olay and drink 4 pints of Actimel every day, but you are still going to die and I have come to terms with that. 

But what I am not planning to do is die bald, so imagine my horror when I look in the mirror to find my hairline has receded by a good inch since my last Birthday and I've got more than a few white hairs, I've skipped straight past grey to white.

At this rate of decomposition, by next Wednesday its going to take Trevor Eve and Sue Johnson wearing 7 types of Haz-Mat suite to suck up the sludgy mess that is my remains with a Wet 'n' Dry.

Maybe its all the moaning I do, perhaps this blog is sending me to an early grave. But I'm still willing to cut short my promising life to keep it going. But if you haven't heard from me in a week you will have to find yourself a new Messiah and I recommend Stuart Ashen who has somehow survived a deluge of tat, or Charlie Brooker who's current show 'How TV Ruined Your Life' is keeping me entertained in my final hours.

You should also check out the rest of the Aspirations episode if you haven't already.

entertainment: So 1970s

Anybody that saw J. J. Abrams re-imagine of Star Trek would have left the cinema with permanent eye damage due to the most ridiculous levels of Camera Flare (now you get the post title). Even Abrams admitted it was 'ridiculous' that they were deliberately shining torches at the camera to create flare.
Star Trek may have been a pioneer in the field of flare, but it certainly wasn't the dead-end it should have been, and flare has quickly replaced grey/blue filters in ruining films. Most recently an episode of the BBC's awful 'Outcasts' got in on the action which is what sparked this rant.

But at least you've found a use for that 3D TV you wasted money on, the polarised glasses are perfect eye protection.

Camera flare seems to be completely counter to everything film/television has been working towards lately. HD was introduced to give you the 'clearest' pictures, and now 3D is meant to be 'immersive', but all Camera Flare does is ruin the picture and make it obvious that you are looking through a lens. The blue line in Raiders of the Lost Ark has haunted both Lucas and fans for years, but now I can only imagine a director would be impressed at how authentic it looks.

I think you can all agree that this iconic scene is so much better with a liberal camera flare.

technology: a fool and their money.

With so much jargon bandied about these days it is easy for organisations with purely financial interests to extort money from the clueless. The technology market is probably the best case of such activity, with companies and magazines preying on the ignorant with massive financial rewards.
What Hi-Fi are notorious for ridiculous reviews with the sole purpose of keeping advertisers happy, and the infamous Denon Link  which is nothing more than a $500 Cat 5 cable is a prime example.
I thought I had seen everything, but whilst reading this thread (which I suggest you check out) I came across some hilarious products of which I will detail just a few.

Firstly, the Russ Andrews 'Audio Desk', that claims to improve the quality of your CD audio and DVD video by cutting a massive grove in the disc. The last thing any sane person would do is cut a massive chunk out of a DVD spinning at hundreds of RPM.
Another Russ Andrews product is a CD cleaner that can magically make your favourite artist sing better. Through the power of magic this cleaner can modify the data encoded on your CD to make listening to Björk even better.


There is so much of this crud that I can't mention it all, in future I'll try to collect together a more definitive list. But before I leave you I'll just give you a link to an investigation the Advertising Standard Agency are conducting into Russ Andrews, they must be waiting for a new delivery of Chappie.

entertainment: finish your lightbulbs.

I've never personally heard anodised aluminium making a noise, but I'm fairly sure it wouldn't be a horrible screeching sound even during the hottest part of the smelting process.

So why does Metal refer to music ruined by screeching. Eyes Set To Kill are a perfect example of this, the lyrics aren't bad, and the female vocals are pretty good, but then you have the 'scream vocalist'. I'm not sure how you can ever describe screaming like you've just been kicked in the gonads as a 'vocal', although if someone kicked me in the man fruits I'd be pretty vocal about it.

The brilliant thing is that the guy ruined his voice by their second album, at which point they should have realised that perhaps screaming should be phased out in the 3rd album, but no, they find another volunteer to 'lend their vocal talents'. An example of these light bulb munchers ruining music is below for your 'pleasure'

I wonder if the US military have ever considered releasing a CD of their 'Enhanced Interrogations', I imagine they could get some pretty good 'Scream Vocals' after a session at Guantanamo Bay.

If, for some bizarre reason you'd like to buy their first album follow this link, I believe I get money if you do ;¬)

daily life: in my day.

Older members of society often make wild statements like 'In my day things were built to last' and 'In my day we took more pride in our work'. Basically, take any product, food, activity, prefix it with 'In my day' and you instantly become 70.

But 'In my day TVs were built to last', but that day has passed. Less than 3 years ago I upgraded to a very expensive, flagship Sony TV, which after fewer than 2 years now produces pictures  like this.

And I am not alone, it seems that every Sony model from 2007, ranging from the flagship X series, to the humble V series suffer a variety of issues with the T-CON board reducing the HD quality images to a mangled mess, but at least it obscures Louie Spence's prancing about. 

Understandably Sony UK does not acknowledge this T-CON board issue because that would mean thousands of sets would have to be replaced free of charge costing millions, but the real kicker is Sony USA do admit the fault. Is a bit of consistent douchiness too much to ask for.

I'm usually the first to criticise our litigious former colony, but in this instance it seems that fear of litigation has made Sony USA do the right thing.

But don't think Sony are alone in producing shoddy merchandise even Derek Trotter would be too ashamed to sell. Lest we forget

Humorous 360 RRoD comment.

bargains: money saving tip #1

Every Sci-Fi fan wants a replica from their favourite series, and what better gift is there for a Star Trek fan than a Type-II Hand Phaser.
It's a lucrative market for replica manufacturers and a replica Type II will cost as much as $500. So why not save money by picking up one of these for less than £15, add £5 of silver paint, some permanent marker and a few sticky labels and you'll have a phaser so authentic you'll be dropping Borg left and right. Just remember to remodulate your pulse frequencies to combat the Borg rotating their shield polarities, but only rookies would forget something that fundamental.

Plus, you can re-enact classic episodes while grooming your dog. It's a win for all the family.

daily life: Dictionary Corner

How many times have you walked into a shop, or seen an advert on TV that says something like 'Buy One Get One Free on All Dog Food', but after rushing to the shop find out there is some small print that says 'Exclusions apply' or 'Stickered Products only' and the only dog food on offer is Chappie. No dog likes Chappie, any owner force feeding Chappie to their dog should be sent to prison and fed nothing but Chappie until the day they die.
But I digress, the dictionary definition of all means every single item, so how can a shop say 'All' and mean 'Some', 'Some Dog Food Half Price' doesn't have the same ring to it I guess. But what the hell are the Advertising Standards Agency doing with their time, probably force feeding dogs Chappie while laughing.

Remember, the half-priced cake is a lie.

driving: OK Commuter.

There is one thing us Brits are renowned for across the globe, our love of queuing. I hate to break it to you world but that just isn't correct any more, Britain has forgotten how to queue.
Nowhere is this more prevalent than the Petrol Station, where we queue up to almost literally burn money, only we don't queue up to do this any more because a new trend has reached Britain - The Pump Jump.

Next time somebody jumps the queue on you at the petrol station, or you see somebody Pump Jumping I want you to climb out of the car and chant Pump Jumper, Pump Jumper while pointing at the offender. Perhaps even rig up a crude petrol bomb because frankly, what better place is there to do that than a petrol station.

Together, we can stop Pump Jumping. Also, buy* one of my custom designed T-Shirts that clearly aren't just mocked up in MS Paint.

*To order a T-Shirt send me your sort code and account number and I will take the necessary funds and email you the T-Shirt via the internet somehow.

Entertainment: Hit me with your pricing stick.

Shock horror, some people in this world still buy CDs, and I am proud to say that I am one of those individuals. CDs are brilliant and compared to an MP3 much better value for money, that is unless you want to purchase a CD not endorsed by Simon Cowel. If the artist you listen to did not win Britain's Got the X Factor Strictly Dancing on the Stars it is a completely different matter.

While browsing Amazon the other day for some CDs I came across the following insane prices.

Jakalope: Things That Go Jump In The Night £28

Flyleaf: Remember To Live EP £17


Mankind is Obsolete: Rise £17

Die Mannequin: FINO + BLEED £24



This is just insane. And I will finish with my favourite Jakalope video.

technology: Should have gone to Specsavers.

Keeping up with technology can be difficult for even the most technologically minded individual, new buzz words are thought up by marketing to make 10 year old technology seem new and exciting, just look at how the Apple Newton iPhone that has revolutionised the way you don't make phone calls.

I'm sure everybody and their dog has heard the 3D buzzword, how 3D can turn even the most pathetic plot into the 'Greatest Movie Experience Evar' it's all about 'Perspective' you know.

Perhaps this is true, but like many of you out there I wear corrective lenses and trying to wear active shutters is like balancing a hippo on top of the Eiffel Tower.

In truthiness 3D was reintroduced a few years back to try and curb the haemorrhaging numbers attending the cinema (which has so far failed miserably). The TV manufacturers jumped on it as an easy way to beat the spiralling costs incurred in pursuit of improving LCD technology by simply updating the picture engines in their existing models and killing off the dynamic 3LED back-lights that were costing them a fortune.