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.