From the Desktop of Andy J. Wotherspoon

Strange Behaviour

2012-01-02T10:34:00.000Z

I've been doing something quite strange over the past 6 months or so, writing posts to myself. No, you wont be able to find them, because they're cleverly hidden away in a private blog which only allows me to access them, so future me can read them and go "What a douche". This kinda seems like a completely ridiculous idea, but I've found it's really helped. I guess I've been struggling to get my head round a few things and the problem with my head is that it tends to get stuck sometimes and not let me think things through properly, so having a way of expelling them in a conversational way to myself has really helped. To be honest, that's not that weird at all, people have been doing that for years, it's called writing a journal, but I guess I find it easier to open up a web page and type some thoughts into it, than I do scribbling in a notebook. Mostly due to the fact that my hand writing is horrific.

I've also been dealing with what you could possibly call depression, or maybe just being a miserable twat, but essentially feelings of complete dispair and not knowing what to do in life or why to even bother. This usually has a bit of a crippling effect on me, in that I can't really put my mind to anything and can't talk myself round to feeling ok. It can also mean that I don't particularly want to see or talk to anyone, though sometimes it's more an intense need for company, but not wanting to seek it. I usually find that after going to bed I wake up back to "normal", whatever that is, and can continue on with my life as before, but this doesn't feel like a solution to the problem. I imagine there's some root course to this that I could do with addressing, though I'm relatively good at self analysis, so tend to be able to come up with possible reasons for why I find myself "depressed" or whatever, but I'm never quite sure what to do with any of it. I've not yet bothered to speak to a professional about any of this, but I guess if I were to be diagnosed with some form of depression, then I'd perhaps feel like I wasn't just being an idiot, though it's easy to just slap a name onto something without it really making things any better.

It seems that issues with depression and mental health are not at all uncommon, but the problem is that rarely does anyone do anything about it until it's either too late or things get outta hand. I've seen this in my own family, my friends and just what you hear in the news. Celebrities are often shunned when they display signs of mental illness and then celebrated when they manage to overcome adversity, or in some cases die, in which case they are a tragic story of inner turmoil and strife, so it's no wonder that people don't really want to think about mental health issues. I think it's too easy to wave things away as just being a bit moody and that there are people out there with bigger problems than you, which is probably true, but that's no excuse to not take care of yourself. In some ways, this is a bit of a pep talk for myself, just with the possibility of others listening in, a way of convincing myself that I don't need to just exist how I currently do and that there's a better way of thinking.

Basically, I think 2012 will be the year of getting my shit together, of making sure that I don't just fall into a pit of dispair, of remembering that there's far more to live than the job you do, the place you live and the stuff you own. And hey, if this ends up making me a better, happier person, then awesome, but even if all it does is make things easier to deal with, then I'll consider it a success. And if the mayans are correct and this is our last year, then hopefully it'll have been a good one for me.

--

Incidentally, I'm never quite sure how to split things up into paragraphs. It would seem sense to section things up so that a new thought or topic is in a new paragraph, but it all seems to come from one thing for me, so not sure if my paragraph structure make any sense.

Google+

2011-07-01T10:15:00.000+01:00

I've not really been using + (as I shall be calling it) for very long and the fact that I dont have many people to communicate with yet, with it being in beta and all, so I feel I can't really give a full opinion on it just yet, but it is pretty cool. I like that it's pulling information that i've given it for however many years I've had a gmail account and I trust google far more than facebook so am more willing to integrate it with everything else I use. It has some interesting stuff to it, but nothing that's made me go "Woah!" yet, though i haven't played with the hangout thing yet, not that I'd particularly use that much. It does seem like something for the geeks at the moment, which is mainly down to it being in beta, so hopefully when it comes out of that it will be much less geek orientated and hopefully it won't crash like wave did (ho ho ho).

What would be really great is to be able to migrate all your data from facebook to +, that way you wouldn't feel like you were starting all over again. I think it would also be good to be able to post to FB and twitter from +, that way you wouldn't be faffing about posting in multiple places, as tends to be the way things go. Which does make me think that what's likely to happen is people will sign up to + when it's released and then add it to tweetdeck or something like that so they can just post once and have it send to all their contacts.

With luck this will autopost to +, seeing it's a google product and i'm signed in to my google account, but I suspect it won't as there's probably a lot of work to do to make the integration work in a sensible fashion, rather than having everything you do in google post directly to + and I suspect blogger won't yet have integration to + set up to ask if you want to post it there. I'll find out soon.

I really hope that + manages to take off as I would be much happier to use it that FB and I have far more resect for google. I've already been moving more over to twitter as my desires to use FB dwindle so this feels like a vaguely logical move, assuming everyone else ends up using it.

Some General Ramblings

2011-05-12T18:36:00.000+01:00

I've come to hate blogging for various reasons, but mostly that it seems to be a way of spewing some absolute rubbish into the ether and expect people to read it and marvel at your genius, or something like that, but I keep thinking about things I'd like to write about or get a thought process out and not feel too much like an absolute twat for having the audacity to believe people really give a crap about what I think.

Right now I'm sat in a popular coffee chain in Brighton, with my mac on my lap, overly aware that I probably look like a real nerd, especially because I'm "blogging". I'm essentially your typical nerd, but without the glasses, the weight extreme or the intellect.

To be honest, I'm only doing this to pass some time before a gig, hence being in Brighton, but I guess it's also because I've actually got some free time where I'm not traveling or wanting to "relax" in some way, or some other lame reason why I'm not doing something more productive. I actually can't think of anything really useful to say, so I'm going to ramble on a bit about the weirdness of brighton, compared to London.

London seems to be so over populated that you just view everyone as some kind of vague blob that exists solely to be far too close to you. It's rare that I'll actually notice another human being when in London, as it seems that everyone's trying to avoid each other, which we do very well. This is hardly a new revelation, but it's true non the less. In brighton, however, there seems to be a greater variety of people and I feel very much outside of my comfort zone, as though everyone can sense I'm not from around here and shouldn't be here. A sign of paranoia, no doubt. My reaction to this does seem to be to try and ignore everyone, like I do in London, and hope that they'll ignore me in turn, which they're probably already doing, so I guess I win. I dunno, it seems more hip here (which makes me sound like a 50 year old man... shit). Fashion statements seem a bit more brash, but no one seems to care (incidentally, I think I can see a trendy looking pregnant person smoking, nice work there, though maybe they're just a tubbo. Who knows?) or they're too cool to care, either way, it's a bit strange.

Everywhere I go there seems to be people trying to fit in in some way, whether it's doing the jogging thing, because that's what you do in London, or dressing kinda weird, because that's what you do in Brighton, or blogging about crap, because that's what you do in the internet. It all seems kinda strange and conformist, yet even non-conformity is in so many ways conforming to something, even if just the desire not to conform...

Well in conformity with the rest of the people here in this coffee place, and their closing policy, I'm going to stop now and leave.

This has been far from focussed, but I'm going to try and make more of an effort next time I write something... in 6 months time... or longer.

laters.

Roman Potpourri

2010-09-17T10:23:00.004+01:00

I'm not hugely bothered by this whole Pope thing. I find it all a bit strange, but the fact that he's here in the UK makes little difference to me, unless he starts disrupting the tube system, then there'll be trouble *shakes fist*. I don't really agree with the Catholic way of doing things, but I have no real problems with them, however it seems that this isn't the case for others.

I've found that I've seen a slew of comments from various sources, Twitter, Facebook... that's it really, regarding the Pope's visit. Most of them, if not all, from a negative standpoint. The strange thing is that it annoys me reading these comments, not just because a lot of them seem to be in remarkably ill taste, but also because it seems like suddenly people feel compelled to be outraged and demand something is done because he's a religious figure. I'm well aware of the child abuse issues, but that seems like the fuel for the fire which is random outrage. Berlusconi, that absolute twat of a man, visits the UK and the majority of what is said about him seems to be based it humour at his philandering and general idiocy, rather than wondering how a man such as him can be running a country. In particular I don't get why Richard Dawkins is so vocal about all this. I don't hear anything from him, apart from every now and then he pops up to say "evolution" then disappears again, but as soon as the pope decides to visit, he's all "arrest the pope" and "[it's] a despicable outrage". What's your angle? Why are you so compelled to have a go at the pope, but ignore other people who stand for worse things? it it just because he doesn't chime up "yes, evolution, you are clever" whenever you mention it?

It kinda feels like, hey look, here's a religious figure, lets jump all over it, because it's something we don't agree with and religion is always fun to have a dig at. I kinda feel like religion is the whipping boy for a lot of people, the kid that never stands up for himself and everyone always makes fun of, so if you take the piss out of him everyone will get a laugh, except them obviously... kinda sounds like school was for me, oh the memories.

The main thing that seems to have urked people, not least Richard Dawkins, is his speech which contained the following:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny” (Caritas in Veritate, 29).

The main point of contention being that the word atheism was used in relation to the Nazis. Yep I can see why that could annoy people, saying that atheists are nazis... well, sort of. The actual phrase is "atheist extremism", which is remarkably similar to another phrase I've heard banded around quite a bit int he past few years "Muslim extremism". Is it just me or have people decided that the word extremism mean "everyone associated with the preceding word". The wider muslim community seems to have been painted with the bastard brush since extremists screwed everything up for them, and that seems to be the assumption being made with what the pope said too, by atheist extremism he means anyone who doesn't believe in God

I don't really think this is what he was trying to say, so it seems a little silly to jump on this point as a way of showing that the pope is a nutter and that he hates everyone. What he seems to be saying, so how I understand it, is that the Nazis tried to force religion (jewish, christian, muslim, tarvuism) out of their society, and that didn't go so well. Atheist extremism, ie. the extremist views of some atheists that God has no place in society what so ever and should be removed, is not a good thing, in the same way that muslim extremism, ie. the extremist views of some muslims that they should kill those who disagree with them. There is seemingly more pressure to remove religion from society and the pope doesn't think this is a good thing.

So anyway, in conclusion. I don't see the point of taking issue with the pope, there are far, far worse people out there that get ignored and in essence the pope is harmless. Religion is too easy to take the piss out of, so why not try something more challenging. Atheism extremism doesn't mean anyone who doesn't believe in God.

No doubt there are holes in my reasoning, please point them out to me and I'll try to fill them, or at the very least point at something and say "look at that" whilst I run in the opposite direction.

transcript taken from:
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/518808-pope-s-holyroodhouse-speech-transcript (I assume he didn't tamper with it)

Things I've learnt from owning a pair of noise-cancelling headphones

2010-09-04T10:32:00.004+01:00

I bought my Audio-Technica ATH-ANC3s a few months ago to replace the £15 pair of earphones I had bought as an "temporary" pair over a year ago. The main reasoning for getting noise-cancelling earphones was that I spend far too much time on trains and the London underground, so needed someway of reducing unwanted noise allowing me to reduce the level of my music and save my precious hearing. I spent a good while looking at various earphone, both noise-cancelling and -isolating in the £70 price range and settle on the ATH-ANC3s as they seemed pretty decent for the price. They've served me well so far, but I've noticed a few things that i hadn't thought about when buying them.

1. Noise-cancelling isn't 100% perfect - you wont be able to sit in your own little bubble where all you can hear is your own thoughts or whatever else you decide to stick through them, especially not for £70.

2. Noise-cancelling also acts as noise creating - as the microphones in the ear pieces react to sound pressure, the difference in pressure created by a train passing or the changes in pressure when going through a tunnel is as much used in the cancelling process as actual sounds are, so there are times when a fluttering sounds is heard which normally wouldn't be there. There are also some strange affects from short sharp sounds of a relatively high frequency, such as the clicking of a gas cooker spark. This tends to lead to a double sound, the initial sound, followed by the attempted cancelling, which is slightly delayed.

3. Noise-cancelling wasn't designed to be used with an iPhone (or similar device) - That annoying noise made by phones when placed too near speakers is also made in the earphones if the cable is next to the phone body. This is more annoying when on trains where signal drops out easily and the phone has to find the signal again and make all kinds of funny noises.

4. Noise-cancelling is the gift product that keeps on giving taking - Having a tendency to forget to turn the noise-cancelling off after use means that batteries are consumed more quickly and thus makes the cost of the earphones increase. If I was savvy enough to get some rechargeable batteries I would, but I'd have to fork out for both the batteries and the charger.

5. Noise-cancelling makes you socially inept - When using noise-cancelling earphones, social skills seem to disappear. For fear of shouting or mumbling like a crazy person, I resort to trying not to say anything, there is a monitor button so you can hear the outside world, but it's a bit silly fumbling to find it so you can successfully say "sorry" or "it's ok" to someone who you've stood on/stood on you, best to stick with obscure gestures or a smile.

6. Noise-cancelling is my favourite switch - Despite the silly little annoyances I still get a great deal of enjoyment from flicking the switch on when the outside world threatens to invade upon my musical enjoyment.

An Adventure into Driving

2010-03-13T11:42:00.004Z

I can't (legally) drive. I've had a few lessons so know the basics, but if it came to it and I had to drive a car any real distance along side other drivers, I'd fall apart. The problem is that there’s just too much for me to think about when driving, and I haven’t yet had enough practise for everything to become natural. If I could just steer, i’d be fine, if I could just work the pedals, I’d be fine, if I could just change gears, I’d be fine, but when I have to do it all at the same time, I can’t cope fully.

Recently, on a trip back to the homeland (Liverpool), I was fortunate enough to spend a bit of time tinkering with my good friend, Jonathan Mullin’s Mini. This was about as awesome as you can get for things to do. I love Minis, they’re utterly fantastic, and I love pulling things apart, so you’ll understand, I was in my element. We were working on the clutch and gear system, so we needed to see what happened when the clutch was depressed and clutch pedal, something I was keen to do, as boring as it sounds, because I got the chance to get behind the wheel of a Mini and feel like I was in control. Admittedly the car has no battery or wheels so it’s not like I was going to be going anywhere, but it was still cool. Having fiddle around with the clutch mechanism and bleeding it to remove all the air, we then went to the gears, something I was also keen to do. I remember as a youngster, getting into my parents car and practising changing gear, something I still do at 25, It felt good that I could shift from first to second to third to fourth and then into reverse, not advisable on the road of cause, without too much difficulty, which is hardly impressive. So anyway, the upshot of this is that I felt like I was driving, or at least in control of, and old, smelly Mini, which was marvellous. With luck, as Jonny and I are going to be getting a house together, we will somehow get the wheelless, broken Mini down to London so we can continue to work on it, and with luck get it to a drivable state, in which case I will be learning to drive a Mini, which will make me very happy.

In the mean time I will be learning on this

I bought this the other week and have been having fun driving around like a lunatic in the various racing game I have. It’s good fun and makes driving games much more enjoyable, if not a little harder. I’m still not at the point were I can work the gears as well as the pedals and driving, for the afore mentioned reason, but hopefully I’ll get there eventually. It’s fully equipped with force feedback, so the wheel has some weight to it and will turn itself if you hit a bump or drive on gravel, which makes it all very fun/arm straining. I’m still working out all the various nuances of the different game and driving techniques required to make it round a course without crashing or spinning or generally ruining your hopes of first place glory, but it’s all a learning process. I can hardly say that any of the techniques I’ll pick up here will transfer to actual driving, but you never know when you’ll be racing around a circuit in a high performance car.

So essentially, I’ve had the most car filled couple of weeks possible for someone who doesn’t even have a full driving license.

iPhone != spyPhone

2010-02-24T09:28:00.004Z

http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/814619-hackers-could-turn-your-iphone-into-spy-phone

oh, Metro, how much utter bollocks can you spew from your position of ignorance with your tone of confidence in your "knowledge".

iPhone = Apple Product = Not hugely vulnerable to viruses etc. If you're going to use an iPhone as a headline at least reference it in the body of the article, even if it is to say "we're just shitting you, you're iPhone will be fine." You mention windows and generic smartphones, so why not have the balls to say that iPhones probably wont be affected.

I obviously don't have hard evidence that they wont be affected but using my keen deduction skills and knowing a small amount about Apple, I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong.

The stupid state England is in

2010-02-09T09:19:00.004Z

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/812344-bus-delayed-for-driver-s-prayers

This marvelous piece of dross, gives an insight into the minds of people in England, or London to be more precise.

Road works, overcrowding, ‘planned engineering upgrades’ – commuters face enough delays getting across town.

Which was probably edited so that the line "without selfish religious, non English people faffing about with their weirdnesses." was no longer there. That's not my opinion, but what I assume the "journalist" behind this piece was thinking.

Gayle Griffiths was on her way to collect her daughter from school in Gospel Oak, north London.
‘The driver stopped the bus very suddenly, got out of his cab and walked toward the doors,’ said the 33-year-old from Camden.
‘But then he took off his shoes and began praying. I was gobsmacked and quite bewildered.
‘I didn’t say anything – but I thought that this might be some sort of terrorist attack because I had heard that suicide bombers prayed before attacks.’

And this poor mother had to endure her misinformed shock of thinking she would never see her daughter again as she reads tabloids and doesn't think for herself (I wildly accuse).

The problem is that this is the worst quote from a person ever (well, sort of), surely there were other less inflammatory comments made, but then old Doris Humplecrop crooning on about "The nice young muslim man stopped the bus and started speakin' all funny. And I sez to Mable, I sez, 'Ooohh, this is fun, should we join in?'" probably wouldn't have been as interesting.

I would like to think that had I been on that bus I would have seen it for what it was, a devout religious man trying to honour his god. Now, I suspect that wouldn't have been my thought, it may have been similar to Gayle Griffiths' (wow say that with a lisp) and thus I would've had to shoot myself. I wonder where she heard that suicide bombers prayer before attacks. Probably from the same place she's being interviewed for, or some equally idiotic newspaper. Luck there weren't any scotsmen/skinheads (not that I equate the two) on the bus, had there been we probably wouldn't have heard about it as it would have been a story about an assault on a muslim man and no one wants to hear about that.

The angle on this article is more about the disruption to commuters, the fear of terrorists (or non-whites as the Metro likes to call them) and the fact that the driver was a bit weird. However I think that what is more important is the fact that we seem to be convinced anyone who is a muslim (or looks like one) is a terrorist, if ever terrorism came from white, British people I think the media would fold in on itself and implode, they'd not know how to deal with it and neither would we, who would we trust and who would we suspect? It seems we simply don't know anything about the other cultures that are around us and their customs. We're allowing ourselves to be scared into a state of idiocy by the media, the government and by terrorism. The war on terror is lost, we're terrorised.

Incidentally, I've notice that the notation (sic) has become synonymous with (YOU IDIOT) in the metro. It regularly crops up when quoting something someones' written and they're trying to discredit them. It's all rather petty.

IPad Why? A Response

2010-01-28T08:41:00.004Z

http://blog.sinjakli.co.uk/2010/01/28/ipad-why/

This was started as a comment to the above blog post, but ended up being so large that I decided to turn it into my own blog post. It's also mostly written as a direct response, so it may feel a little odd to read if you're not SInjo himself.

I don't entirely agree with you.

I don't think the iPad is just a big iPhone, it's meant to the bit inbetween a smartphone and a laptop. When using a smartphone to browse the internet you're hampered by the small screen and the relative largeness of your fingers. On the iPhone in particular when you add the keyboard onto the screen you have even less of a view of the site you're browsing which an lead to a clostrophobic feeling of looking at a site through a cereal box from the other site of a room. So to have something with a bigger screen and more precise controls seems like a good thing.

The onscreen keyboard is definately a point of contension, but from
my experience of the iPhone's keyboard I can say that for new adopters of the technology, it'll take a bit of getting used to, but will become something quite natural. (I'm typing all this on my iPhone now, and while slightly more work than a keyboard, it's not much different). I agonised over getting an iPhone, mostly because of the lack of keyboard, but i don't regret my decision one bit, onscreen keyboards can work well. I you compare the ipad to a device with a built in keyboard, you'll notice that the device has to either be much larger to accomodate it, or have a smaller screen. With the iPad you get a nice large screen when browsing or doing other such tasks and when typing you get an unobtrusive keyboard which you can use with your fingertips rather than havingto full press a key. You also don't have the problem of damaging the keys during transport or wear and tear and nothing to get food stuck under. So for me, I'm not so worried by the lack of a keyboard. Though it's totally understandable to be concerned.

The focus does seek to be more on people who need to work with laptops and wander about, iWork has been iPadded so that it's designed for the device, so the thought is on presentations and documents. I can image it being sed to drie a PowerPoint in a trend office allowing the presenter a nice view of the slides and any notes and stops the whole bending down for a laptop or having to rely on a clicker which gives you no hints of your next slide or what you were mean to say if you forget. I can also
see it being helpful in a warehouse to keep tabs on stock and then write up a report back at your desk. Personal use, I can see less applications, however. As I already own an a laptop, I don't particularly need another device to do stuff, though I can see it being useful as a eBook reader (do you remember the eMacs? What ever happened to them?) I read on my commute and recently have started reading eBooks on my iPhone as a cheaper way to have a varied reading list and a good way to reduce the amount of stuff I have to carry. So a larger screen than my iPhone would be great, as string at small text can be a pain and larger stuff means "turning" a page every 10th word. Other than that though, I can't see any particularly useful applications in my own life, not to say that I'll never own one, they do look awesome and I definately like shiney things.

The camera point, I kinda agree, kinda disagree. Cameras add bulk to a device, they need physical space to contain the lenses and sensors so this could be a size thing, or they're planningto bring out a iPad eye at a later date. The concept of having a webcam for video chat is definately interesting, though the question is why? Phones tries video chat a number of years ago and it never took off, possibly more to do with connection speed/consistency than desire to use it, but whatever the reason, it didn't work. As aovile device using 3G there is no need for a webcam. As a computer on wifi there is more
need, but then they're not expecting youto not have a laptop/computer, so you'd just use that. They also sell an iSight camera, which will probably work with the iPad and we all know how companies like to sell their overpriced peripherals to us. So not so fussed by a camera.

I don't know anything about the lack of multitasking, no doubt it wasn't specifically said in their keynote, is this something you've heard about or assumed from the iPhones lack of multitasking? I agree it's not great, but on the iPhone it's rarely a major problem and it essentially simplifies user interaction by not having it. I used to have an smartphone running windows mobile, which I sometimes had to shut stuff down in the task manager as they'd not closed properly and where sat silently in the background taking up memory. I'm not sure how the iPad functions with apps (iPhone and otherwise) but it may be able to run more than one at a time, though I've no idea so I'll shut up.

I think Apple have already ridden the wave of success, so to speak, with the iPhone 3GS, if anything was a lame attempt at getting people to get a new model without thinking that was it. There isn't a great deal of improvements over the 3G and as it came out a year (i think) after the 3G, it seemed a little weak.

I have a couple of concerns myself. Firstly that It only has 64GB of flash memory. This doesn't seem much for a device to have which suggests it's more focussed at small stuff and not at full programs which produce large files. Thus full gaming probably wont be possible with this device, but when is it with Apple products, and you'll probably be added content from your laptop/computer to you iPad and then using it during the day. I think that they are probably relying of people already having a laptop or a time capsule (or other wireless hard drive) to store the majority of their content and then streaming or copying stuff to your iPad.

The second concern is that it falls into the same hole the iPhone does, with regard to internet connectivity. In London at least, there is a major internet blackspot, the underground system. When you're here, you may as well go back to the dark ages where technology is concerned, my iPhone turns into an iPod Touch which isn't exactly what I wanted. It's also not a great story outside of the underground where trains are concerned. You constantly drop in and out of coverage and go from full 3G to nothing at all in no time at all. Add to that tunnels and that the iPhone gets confused when it loses signal sometimes and doesn't know what to do and you have a very annoying device for serfing the neticles. I can't imagine that anything major will have changed with the iPads connectivity, but then it's not really their fault. The pathetic nature of our network coverage in England has a lot to do with it. Until they bring out a faster, more consistent connection browsing the internet wirelessly (not over wifi) it'll just be a pain to use when travelling, which is when people use wireless devices the most. So in essence, the mobile infrastructure in the UK (and possibly in US, who knows) isn't good enough yet (in my experience) to make this kind of device really useful for internets, but it could still be useful for other applications.

I image that they will release more versions of this device in a year which will expand on it's features, assuming it's successful, so anything that seems like it's missing, will no doubt be added in then. I trust Apple, they seem to do things properly and rarely do anything just for the hell of it. The iPhone 3G started out without copy and paste (the iPhone itself started out without 3G despite it being a relatively common phone feature), but they added it in later on, not because they forgot about it, but because they wanted to do it properly, well that's my view at least. They could have postponed the release f the iPhone 3G to work on copy and paste, but that would've hurt them, or they could have released it with a buggy, horrible copy and paste method, which would also have hurt them. If you constantly release buggy products, people associate you with that and not with quality. So they released it without and then added it in when it was ready, free of charge and it works. I don't remember not having copy and paste on my iPhone, it just doesn't matter any more. And I think that this is something that Apple do, release a product which may be missing a couple of things and then release an update later, this may be hardware or software, but it means that they can continue to release products regularly without having to rush things, which personally, I like. Vista was a nightmare, 7 was what Vista should've been. It doesn't seemed to have hurt Microsoft too much, but if they keep making mistakes, the Xbox 360 RROD fault also comes to mind, then they'll be seen as a company who rushes things and then makes a mess of it.

Final thing. This.

Why I Hate Scientist and Other Generalisations.

2010-01-27T00:17:00.007Z

Having just watched Nerdstock: 9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People on iPlayer I decided that I'd be all bloggy about it.

Being of Christian origin and being brought up as an Anglican, I have the annoying problem of being indoctrinated with some views which I now think incorrect, not least of these that evolution is evil. I've come to think that evolution is most likely the best way of explaining how we came into existence on this spherical cube we call Earth, at the moment. No doubt as with all things sciencey, it'll change, or, ironically, evolve, into something else at a later time when our understanding of how things work expands. I think that it would be a little cocky of us to say that we, as humans, are at the pinacle of our understanding of everything and that from here on out it's just polishing what we already know, and I doubt any scientist would actually say that, but it feels at times like they're saying that they are 100% right and anyone who has a differing view is wrong, which is unfortunately mirrored in religion. I can only really speak from my own observations of Christianity as a religion so some of what I'm going to say could be a complete generalisation and incorrect, but I'm willing to concede if the need arises.

I still class myself as a Christian, or at least a believe is God, Jesus, Holy Ghost etc. yet I can still happily say that I don't regard evolution as complete rubbish, as i think a lot of Christians do, or at least seem to. Yet I find it hard to not get a little defensive when scientist essentially call me stupid for believing in something that, to them, is superstition and unfounded nonsense. Partly due to my proud roots which make me go "NO, STUPID, HETHEN SCIENTISTS! YOU SHALL NOT SAY EVOLUTIONS PROVES GOD DOESN'T EXIST, YOU'RE WRONG, EVOLUTION IS STUPID." which usually leads to me going "Hold on a minute, I kinda believe they're telling the truth, well at least about the evolution thingy." which tends to confuse and annoy me, but I digress, but also partly because they don't do it in a particularly nice way. It comes across as a bit of a QED situation. Christians go "There is a God, because, well we say so" (In my best Eddie Izzard voice) and scientists go "Ahh, but what about the evidence of evolution and all that stuff, it proves that the whole made in 7 days thing is crap, and thus God doesn't exist. QED, you're stupid for thinking he does exist." (In my best Eddie Izzard doing James Mason voice). This, in my opinion, is the worst kind of argument, as it generally leads to "No, you're stupid for not seeing God in everything!", "No, You're stupid for seeing God in everything!' and so on until we all die of boredom. I don't mind being given a different view point on things, but I do mind being thought of as stupid simply because I believe something that is implausible. Surely there are elements of science that are implausible, but still we research them. Back in the days when the world was flat and electricity was a silly work, stuff that we now understand and stick in the true box would have been thought of as implausible and anyone who believed in them would be labeled stupid or utterly crazy, yet they stuck it out and made a big discovery which then made everyone else go "Ohh, well now were clever because we believe you now, and anyone who doesn't is stupid." Equally there were times when to not believe in God would label you as stupid too. What get's me is the concept of having to discredit each other for a difference of opinion, surely a wonderful part of existing is having different opinions and being able to talk about those differences without the need to ridicule, maybe that's just me. I don't believe that The Bible is literally describing the way the earth was created, so it seems silly to use that point as a proof that all Christians are crazy. I do believe that if evolution is correct, there is God involved in it at some level. As convenient and wish washy as that sounds, I don't care. There are some convenient and wishy wash things in science, go fiddle with your own grey areas instead of mine.

It seems that one thing we can agree on, scientist and Christians (not entirely sure why I capitalise that, crazy Anglican rubbish I guess), is that homeopathy and crystal healing is ridiculous, and we're very capable of making those who do agree with it look stupid. Which is kinda ironic and stupid in itself. There are definitely things which just seem silly to believe in, but who can really judge another for their views, which is a bit of a general and leading to other massive, unrelated to this current thought process, discussions which really shouldn't be broached. Surely the concept of believing opening an umbrella indoors is bad luck is silly, yet many people still do, and in some ways it's based around the possibility of knocking something over or poking someone in the eye while you wield around your ungainly portable roof, but that's not the main reason people think it bad luck. There are many other superstitions which have some logical backing and some that relate to cultural or mythical concepts which have been passed through the generations and in some cases evolved into something slightly more believable or logical and sometimes not.

I've come to realise that sometimes the worst thing to do is come together as a group of like minded individuals in order to celebrate the fact that we are right and the other lot are wrong, which this program (hey look I came back to what I started on) seems to do. It collects the big names in science nerdity and gets them to come onstage and give their reasons why they're right, to an audience of people who already agree with them (another generalisation there). This surely is the worst method of debate. "I think that God doesn't exist, because jupiter is made from ground beef" says the crazy man to his equally crazy friend "I agree" says his friend and they both stew in their own ignorance. Now I'm not saying that this is how the program went, I'm simply illustrating that if you collect like minded people into one place they will simply agree with each other and not challenge each other (yes, a generalisation). Equally if you get a load of Christians together, of all denominations, they will at the very least be able to agree that God exists and thus they leave still believing and still unchallenged. I suspect that you could collect a variety of different faiths together and they would still agree that God exists, though there may be some more discussion on exactities. So, what I think would make more sense is to have a program which collects people of all understanding and beliefs who are capable of not just calling each other stupid and allow for a more balanced discussion and allow people to give proper reasoning for their concepts and then allow others to comment and see what results. Collecting together to mock your opposition is more an exercise in ego stroking than it is giving valid reasons why you should believe one thing or another.

I think that's all I can squeeze out of my brain, so I shall stop there. Though I will finish by saying, I don't disagree with scientist, I disagree with the methods they use to convince me/others that we need to rethink our beliefs, it reminds me of how some evangelists try to convert people to Christianity by shouting at them, which I also disagree with.

ps. There are enough generalisations in this article to kill a wooly mammoth.

Following the crowd[surfers]

2009-12-20T19:49:00.004Z

Now that one of the biggest campaigns to make changes to the music industry has succeeded, I feel that I need to defend myself (and probably others) for my actions. I have never heard, nor do I wish to hear, The Climb, by Joe McElderry, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed to take a stand against it. Equally I don't think that this campaign was a waste of time, I think that it had good intentions which became distorted and exaggerated as the hype grew, I'm not entirely sure, but did the campaign initiators really think that this would take off as it did?

I have my qualms with the whole thing too. I don't really think that a song of this nature is particularly suited to being top of the Christmas charts, as they tend to be made into compilation CDs and other such things, in later years, and usually has to be child friendly, which this really isn't. I also do think that there is an element of cheapening a concept, by using Killing In The Name's major hook as a way of saying, we're not going to buy the CD you tell us to. Is this a strange white middle class uprising, which really is completely pointless?

Looking at previous years, it's striking that X-factor has monopolised the Christmas number one charts, which was obviously a purposeful move, but I'm not sure if having Rage sat in the list is actually going to be a good thing. I imagine that it will be shunned from Christmas number one compilations (possibly replace by Joe's song), something which wouldn't happen if it where the other way round. Obviously, there are obvious reasons for doing this (if it does indeed happen), which are mostly down to taste, but it still smacks of discrimination against non pop music. I also wonder how long Rage will stay on top, now that all the hype has essentially ended, will people still buy the record or will it simply drop off as quickly as it rose, we shall have to wait and see. I wonder if there will be any controversy? Will Rage have their title stripped from them for some pointless reason and then handed to Joe? Will Rage become a strange vague period of Christmas No. 1 history which is glazed over in an attempt to not let future generations know that real people can change things? Who knows? My other thought is that it surely had a very strange effect on sales of both of these tracks, as people would be manically buying their preferred track in an effort to knock the other off the top spot.

I image their are some very angry mums out their, annoyed at the Rage fans for ruining it for Joe, which would be mirrored if Rage hadn't won, but I think that they hype and emotions involved in this whole thing are misplaced. I didn't decide to download the Rage track because I wanted to be mean to Joe or Simon (though Simon is a turd), I downloaded it to support a group which I like and agree with their views. I also didn't do it, because of the controversy, as you can tell by my slight hesitations about the tracks suitability, had this been a different song by Rage which was less sweary, I would have still downloaded it. Had it been a different band, Elbow for instance, who I like, I would've downloaded it, had it been a band I wasn't so bothered by, I probably wouldn't have. So my motives, where of support for a band rather than a way of vengeance upon X-factor. I'll admit that I didn't instantly download the track as I wasn't really sure that this was a serious effort and thus thought little need to download a track I already owned, so there was an element of wanting to support something when it was likely to cause more impact, but why not? Would sales of Joe's track been as high had it been released earlier in the year when it would just hit the charts? It certainly wouldn't have sold as well if there hadn't been such hype.

Finally, was there any point? What will this achieve? An odd blip in the Christmas number one charts, which will be forgotten in a few years? Will this affect the music entering the charts throughout the year? Will this be turned around and used to make a heck of a lot of money for people who already have to much? Only time will tell, though I think the latter is almost certain.

Final final thought, could this all be a strange conspiracy? Was the really started on facebook by two random people, or is there some link to the industry which helped get the ball rolling? Are we really just doing what we're being told, or are we really being original?

Raging Against The Machine - and why it's good

2009-12-16T10:37:00.000Z

So if you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you may not know that there's a campaign (propagated by facebook) that is set to get Rage Against The Machines' Killing in the Name of (with strange capitalisation by me) to be the Christmas number one ahead of X-Factors puppet, whatever his name is, I don't care.

Now for those of you who may be thinking, but this is stupid it's just a bunch of teenagers/students who want to be disruptive and ruin something. And to you'd I'd say, yes and no. It's mostly students etc. but there are also some of us who are not students but still don't like the whole X-Factor thing and would love to see it buried.

I was wondering why Rage Against the Machine was chosen, but it fits quite nicely, firstly raging against the machine than it X-Factor and it's pop spewing machine thingy and also they're a revolutionary band which is similar to this in the way that it's the peoples voice on what should be the Christmas number 1. Worst explanation ever.

Now why should you download Rage's Killing in the Name of? well, firstly it's a pretty cool track but secondly it helps further genuine charity, not just fake, we'll donate 10p for every copy we sell, but obviously we want to keep most of the profits for are bloated egos, charity (though not entirely sure that's true, they may donate all the proceeds).

The facebook page for this venture has a link to a JustGiving page (as well as where to buy the track) with donations going to shelter and a message encouraging people to donate to Shelter if they bought the track as a way of aligning themselves with the charity donations from the X-Factor track. This is a great idea as it allows people to donate much more than they pay for the track and relies on people actually making an effort to donate rather than a bonus for buying a track, so far it's raised more than £36,000 for Shelter and hopefully that will continue to grow.

Further more if you're a Strictly Come Dancing fan, then you can stick it to X-Factor in another way, buy supporting this group.

So basically, don't think of this a silly and childish, but a genuine voice of the people standing up and saying, "X-Factor, SHUT IT!" and doing something good in the process.

Inapproprite use of sounds in an advert

2009-12-10T13:53:00.002Z

What's the function of the ridiculous fart noise that is played every time the 50% glows? It's the most pointless and stupid use of a sound in an advert that I can currently remember (so within the last week).

The n Second Rule

2009-11-26T16:47:00.005Z

The theory goes that you have 3 seconds (or 5 or 10, depending on who it is) from the moment a food item touches the floor, to pick it up and thus preserving it's edibility and your status in society. However I feel that an arbitrary number, such as 3, doesn't quite do the situation justice. Firstly there are a number of factors to consider when deliberating this conundrum and secondly, there are times when it isn't possible to get to the food item within the 3 seconds, for instance if it's fallen behind a sofa or cupboard. In order to obtain a more true value for such an event, I have devised the following equation:

n =

d( t + h )

Where

n = number of seconds available to you
d = difficulty of food position (1 - 3)
t = tastiness of the food stuff (1 - 10)
h = how hungry you are (1 - 10)
f = dirtiness of the floor/area the food lands (1 - 5)

This allows a maximum of 60 seconds for a difficultly places, very tasty object on a clean floor whilst very hungry. Or 2/5th of a second for a easy grab of a bland item off a grimy park bench, having just eaten a large meal.

I feel this gives a more accurate representation of the n second rule and will enable more food stuffs to be eaten prior to an accidental drop, by more people around the world, thus decreasing waste food and boosting immune systems.

The rise and fall of the newspaper layout

2009-11-16T18:11:00.006Z

I'm back, an this time I'm whining about typography

It seems increasingly common that newspapers, particularly free ones care little about form when it comes to laying out a page. I'm quite regularly baffled by an image which is sat next to a block of text which bears no resemblance to what's being reported only to find that the image relates to another, much smaller, piece and not the main text of the page. Although this fails as an anecdote, seeing it's mostly conjecture, but I'm pretty sure I saw a picture of a soldier recently, with some relatively morbid headline above it, I noticed the story didn't match the picture too well and then noticed that the picture was part of a completely different story, which had just a caption for the photo and that was it really. It strikes me that juxtaposing and image of a soldier, who is at risk of dying whilst on duty, with a headline relating to death (or something of that sort) is a pretty stupid idea as it could have caused some concern for the family of the soldier, who may have thought this was a report of their son/husband/fathers death, which it wasn't.

The above picture shows the common dropped capital at the start of the article which was easily mistaken for an indent line, or at least by me it was. The first words were "IT HAS", with the I as the block letter and T HAS sat so close together it reads as THAS. I'll admit that I tend to miss the dropped capital the majority of the time I read newspaper articles, as I'm just not used to it, but it shocks me that something as important as the first line of an article, something which is meant to draw you in, was so poorly formed, leading me to first ponder over the usage of the word 'thas' and then post a message about the poor use of typography on the Internet, good job of pulling me into the article there Evening Standard. Considering this was an article about iPhone app development, something that I am at leat vaguely, if not more so, interested in, it reflects even worse on them as I felt compelled to comment on it rather than read the article. Though I am strange like that. I feel that it is a particularly poor move by the editors to not have noticed that the use of a sans serif font resulting in a straight line for the dropped capital, was a silly idea and either used a serif font or changed the opening line, but then to further confound people having the character spacing so close that spaces become almost indistinguishable from gaps in letters, just seems crazy.

Quick breakdown of the free london papers etc.

The London Standard tries quite hard to look and feel like an upper class type paper, but generally fails by being a bit too amateur in some areas, such as knowing how to lay out information. The Metro is more bland and jumps about in it's layout style trying to cover all it's bases in one go. The London Lite is a piece of (London) shite and thus I shall speak of it no more. The Sport, I've never bothered read, it's about sport. The... forgotten what it's called... man focused (not in a booby way) magazine is a bit more trendy styled and generally does an all right job of laying stuff out, but it's still pretty pants.

Now obviously it's a bit mean to compare these free rags with anything you have to pay for, but I will. When you look at the guardian and the times you can see what good typography and layout is. The Guardian website in particular is lovely. It combines a clean layout with striking colours which relate to the different sections on the site giving you a easy way to know what you're looking at, thus, it make me happy.

My parents where down in London town recently to see me and hide from their church, a common thing to do if you go to an Anglican church, and we went to the V&A, where they had some slabs which where used to cast font styles back in the day when a font was a physical thing. It kinda struck me that there was a lot more to a font than just something that can be read and that before computers a font was something someone laboured over and thought about. Now, however, it seems fonts are generally used in a bit of an off way.

I'm not an expert in typography, nor do I know a great deal about it, but I'm also not completely inept at that kind stuff. My general philosophy with fonts in designs is that they shouldn't be overly complicated and they shouldn't really be the design, more a part of the design. It can be difficult to balance using a stylised font to aid the design whilst trying to keep it simplistic and not become too much of a distraction. It also seems a bit of a cheat if you use a font as the main part of your design, kinda feels like taking someone else's work and sticking it into your own work. My general fall back font is arial, partly because I'm a web developer and arial is about as standard as you can get with fonts, but also because it's a pretty nice, and versatile font. When used small it can add an element of class to a design as it's clear, but also subtle and when used large it stands out well, but doesn't over complicate things.

A good site for lovely typography is this one: I love Typography - I'll admit I haven't visited it that much, but when I do, I generally see something I like. So that's about as good an endorsement as I can muster.

Anyway I've said enough

www.andywotherspoon.co.uk is now more than just a holding page. WOOP

2009-02-16T23:20:00.003Z

I've finally got round to doing something with my site, other than just having it as a holding page, and to celebrate I've changed the banner on this blog... poorly... I'm not really happy with it, so it'll probably change again soon. It's actually taken me well over a year to get my site going (as I remember someone commenting that the copyright still said 2007 when it turned 2008 and seeing it is not 2009 (and having had to make sure I change the copyright date again, I should probably just write a script for that)), but it's there and has some stuff what I have done, so that's better than a kick in the eye.

I'm planning to update it relatively frequently (we'll see how well that goes) and make sure it serves me well as a portfolio site and something to do.

On completely different notes, I've been playing GTA IV again as the new DLC is coming out soon, but I was just feeling like a change and some driving and shooting and stuff. I also recently bought Mirrors Edge, essentially a first person parkour simulator, which has been fun, if not a little frustratingly difficult to control and also makes me want to get back into doing parkour again. Which leads me nicely into my next point... I went for my first jog//run type thing in about 9 months (enough time to make a baby... I didn't though) which was pretty good. I have little stamina so have to stop (well have to is not necessarily the case, I'm not very good at keeping myself going) every now and then, but spent about 40 mins outside the house, most of it above walking speed, so that was good and hopefully I'll keep it up. This is kind of a way of easing back into parkour, aside from having a bit of a knee injury (agrivated somewhat by repeatedly kneeing the bar at the Edward Rayne pub), one of my greatest weaknesses (apart from being lame and scared to go and do parkour, I over think things) was stamina and being able to keep up flow and stuff like that whilst training, so hopefully by increasing my stamina it'll increase my confidence and allow me to get back into things. I've kinda been scoping spots out a little around Raynes Park, particularly Raynes Park High School, there seems a couple of good spots, but I'm worried I'll be viewed as a troublemaker, but hopefully it'll be ok, we'll see. If you don't hear from me, I've either been arrested or continued with my infrequent posting on this blog, you'll never know which really.

So anyway that's that and my last thing is that I'm contemplating being all trendy and using odd punctuation and stuff like that _so using _ instead of ( to separate things _I was going to do a thing where instead of sing ( in my explanation I'd use a _ as a "joke" but I think it'd jsut be confusing_ erm yeah_ this could get confusing//

The A to Z of Andy's Games...

2009-02-07T12:27:00.010Z

...Xbox 360 & PC (I have games for the original Xbox, but very rarely play them).

A:

Alone in the Dark 360
Army of Two 360
Assassin's Creed 360
Assassin's Creed II360

B:

Bioshock 360

C:

Call of Duty 3 360 - Sucky game, 1 & 2 where better, 4 is supposedly good too, not sure about 5
Condemned 360
Crackdown 360

D:

The Darkness 360
Dead Rising 360
Dead Space 360
Colin Mcrae Dirt 360

E:

F:

Fable II 360
Fallout PC
Fallout 2 PC
Fallout 3 360
F.E.A.R. PC
Forza Motorsport 2 360

G:

Gears of War 360
Gears of War 2 360

H:

Halo 3 360
Halo 3: ODST 360

I:

J:

K:

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men 360

L:

M:

Mafia PC
Mass Effect 360
Max Payne PC
Mirrors Edge 360 - Currently in the post, but technically I own it
Myst IV Revelation PC

N:

Naruto: Rise of a Ninja 360

O:

Oblivian 360
The Orange Box 360
The Orange Box PC

P:

PGR3 360
PGR4 360
Prince of Persia 360

Q:

R:

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 360
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 360

S:

The Sims 2 PC
The Sims 3 PC
Star Wars : Knights of the Old Republic PC
Star Wars : Knights of the Old Republic II : The Sith Lords PC
Star Wars : Force Unleasehed 360
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent 360
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Xbox - Honorary mention as it was a fantastic game
WWE Smackdown VS Raw 2007 360

T:

U:

V:

Viva Pinata 360 - I loved the demo, but the full game bored me after a while

W:

X:

Y:

Z:

The A to Z of Andy's Music...

2009-02-07T00:39:00.008Z

...again, probably minus some letters.

A:

Aimee Mann
- Lost in Space (I've only just realised what an idiot I am)
Air
- 10 000Hz Legend
- Moon Safari - not a big fan to be honest
- Premier Symptomes
Aphex Twin
- Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Fiona Apple
- Extraordinary Machine
- Tidal
- When The Pawn..........
The Arcade Fire
- EPs
- Funeral
- Neon Bible
Athlete
- Tourist
- Vehicles & Animals
Audioslave
- Audioslave

B:

Bloc Party
- Silent Alarm
- A Weekend in the City
Björk
- Greatest Hits
- Volta
Jeff Buckley
- Grace
- Grace (Legacy Edition)
- Live a L'Olmpia
- Live at Sin-é
- Mystery Whie Boy
- Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk - Possibly the most tragic album I have, but 1st disc is excellent
- Songs to No One 1991-1992 - Possibly the worst Jeff Buckley album, sorry Jeff
Cathy Burton
- Burn Out

C:

Coldplay
- A Rush of Blood to the Head
- X&Y
Counting Crows
- August and Everything After
- Hard Candy
- This Desert Life
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Soundtrack

D:

Deftones
- Adrenaline
- Around the Fur
- B-sides & Rarities
- Back to School (Mini Maggit)
- Deftones
- Saturday Night Wrist
- White Pony - From this you can take it that I like Deftones (and Jeff Buckley, but I didn't think to mention it then)
Delirious
- Cutting Edge
- Deeper
- Glo
- King of Fools
- Waiting for the Summer singles - From this you can take it that I used to like Delirious, not so much now, although GLo is cool
Dependance
- One Life - I'll forgive your for not having heard of these guys
Devotchka
- How it Ends - Bought on the strength of hearing title track being used on a Gears of War 2 advert and listening to some of their other stuff on MySpace
Doves
- The Last Broadcast
- Lost Souls
- Some Cities
Dweeb
- This is Not Our Shed

E:

Earthsuit
- Kaleidoscope Superior
Elavi
- Soul Science - Some dude who was selling his CD after a RZA gig I went to, not really listened to it
Elbow
- Asleep in the Back
- Cast of Thousands
- Leaders of the Free World
- The Seldom Seen Kid - Most likely my favourite album
Brian Eno
- Apollo
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Soundtrack
Evanescence
- Fallen
- Open Door

F:

Faultline
- Your Love Means Everything
Feist
- Let it Die
Fields
- Everything Last Winter
William Fitzsimmons
- Goodnight - Independent "folk" dude, love him
- The Sparrow and the Crow
- Until When We Are Ghosts
Frou Frou
- Details

G:

Marting Grech
- Open Heart Zoo
- Unholy
Goldfrapp
- Black Cherry
- Felt Mountain
Gomez
- In Our Gun
- Liquid Skin
José González
- In Our Nature
- Veneer
Gorillaz
- Demon Days
- G Sides
- Gorillaz
Guillemots
- Red
- Through the Windowpane

H:

Imogen Heap
- Speak for Yourself
Becky Higg
- Your Sofa

I:

Ida
- The Braille Night
- Heart Like a River
- Lovers Prayer
- Will You Find Me
Incubus
- Make Yourself
- Morning View
- S.C.I.E.N.C.E.

Here I noticed a major error in the alphabetising on my shelf. J and K appear after M with K in the middle of the Js, I've rearranged them now. Onwards...

J:
Michael Jackson
- Bad - Reminds me of my childhood
Jamiroquai
- Travelling Without Moving - 90s Funk! Can't get better!
Norah Jones
- Come Away With Me
- Feels Like Home
- Not Too Late

K:

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
- Mustt Mustt - Jeff Buckley made me buy it
Kings of Convenience
- Quiet is the New Loud
- Versus
Kings of Leon
- Aha Shake Heartbreak
- Because of the Times
- Only By the Night
- Youth & Young Manhood

L:

Lemon Jelly
- '69 - '95 - I seem to have lost it though :(
- Lost Horizons
- Lemonjelly.ky
Linkin Park
- Hybrid Theory
- Meteora
- Minutes to Midnight
- Reanimation - I like Linkin Park alright
Luna Halo - Shimmer
Russ Luscombe
- ...could be Abel
- The Impossible EP

M:

Aimee Mann
- Lost in Space - That's better
The Mars Volta
- Amputecture
- The Bedlam in Goliath
- De-loused in the Comatorium
- Frances the Mute
Mew
- And the Glass Handed Kites
- Frengers
Múm
- Summer Make Good
- Yesterday was Dramatic - Today is OK - Best title ever
Muse
- Absolution
- Black Holes & Revelations
- Hullabaloo
- Origin of Symmetry
- Showbiz
My Brightest Diamond
- Bring me the Workhorse
- Tear it Down

N:

O:

:P

P.O.D.
- Satellite
A Perfect Circle
- aMOTION
- eMOTIVe
- Mer De Noms
- Thirteenth Step
Portishead
- Dummy
- Portishead
The Postal Service
- Give Up
The Prodigy
- The Fat of the Land
- The Prodigy Experience

Q:

R:

Radiohead
- Amnesiac
- Hail to the Thief
- In Rainbows
- Kid A
- OK Computer
Rage Against the Machine
- The Battle of Los Angeles
- Evil Empire
- Rage Against the Machine
- Renegades
Rephlexions! An Album of Braindance! - A collection of tracks from a record label
Josh Ritter
- The Animal Years - Bought from Impulse in Euston? Station, on impulse
Rubik Record - Presents: Kubiks & BCEE

S:

Nitin Sawhney
- Human
- London Undersound
- Prophesy
Sigur Rós
- ()
- Ágætis Byrjun
- Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do
- Takk...
The Smashing Pumpkins
- Adore
- Machina II : Friends & Enemies of Modern Music
- Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
- Siamese Dream
- Zeitgeist
Space
- Spiders
Steve
- Falling Down
Sufjan Stevens
- The Avalanche
- Come on Feel the Illinoise!
- Enjoy Your Rabbit
- Greetings From Michigan - The Great Lake State
- Seven Swans
- Songs for Christmas
- A Sun Came!

T:

Amon Tobin
- Chaos Theory
- Foley Room
- Out From Out Where
- Supermodified
- Verbal Remixes & Collaborations
Turin Brakes
- Ether Song
- The Optimist

U:

UNKLE
- Psyence Fiction

V:

W:

Rufus Wainwright
- Poses
- Release the Stars
- Want
Wu-Tang Clan
- Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

X:

Y:

Thom Yorke
- The Eraser

Z:

Zadok
- Peregrination
Zero 7
- Simple Things
- When it Falls

The A to Z of Andy's Films...

2009-02-05T17:27:00.006Z

...minus a few letters and with other things other than Films. (Catchy title!)

#:

'64 - '95 - Lemon Jelly Music Videos
π (pi)
1984
21 Grams

A:

aMotion - A Perfect Circle Music Videos
Afro Samurai - Cool Anime with Samuel L. Jackson in
Akira - Old school anime
Apocalypse Now
Amelie

B:

Babel
Big Fish
Black Hawk Down
Bladerunner - AWESOME!!!!
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne... actually I don't have the third one
Brick - very cool sleuth in a high school setting type film
Bucky O'Hare - Awesome 90s cartoon I loved as a kid and still do

C:

A Clockwork Orange - Not watched this yet, kinda scared about it's violence etc.
Corpse Bride
Crank
Crash
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - If you one of those people who doesn't like/get this film never speak to me again!
Cypher

D:

Deadwood - Charley Brooker comes through with an awesome recommendation
District 13 - Parkour film awesomeness
Donnie Darko

E:

Equilibrium
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Probably my favourite film
Everything is Illuminated - Another very cool film#

F:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Very odd, but pretty cool too
The Fifth Element
Fight Club - So cool I could die
Finding Nemo - Simply good animation and story
The Fountain - Incredibly beautiful and mind bending
Fullmetal Alchemist - One of my favourite Animes

G:

Gangs of New York - A film I bought on a whim and is very cool/bloody
Garden State - Love it
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell 2:Innocence
Ghost in the Shell (Stand Alone Complex) Solid State Society - what a title
Ghost in the Shell [Stand Alone Complex] 1st Gig
Ghost in the Shell [Stand Alone Complex] 2nd Gig - All of the above GitS are all very cool anime
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part III
The Guillermo Collection (Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backlbone, Cronos) - listed here simply because that's how it is on my shelf, in one boxset

H:

Harry Potter 1-6 - the 3rd is my favourite HP film, the rest are alright and mostly exist for collection completeness
Hero
Hot Fuzz

I:

Ichi the Killer - Crazy Korean film, cool and violent
I ♥ Huckabees
Immortal
Iron Monkey

J:

Jackass (Volumes 1-3 & Movies 1 & 2) - I like mindless idiocy
Jumper
Juno

K:

Kai Doh Maru - A very stylised anime I've never finished watching, it's a bit too long and slow
Kill Bill Volume 1
Kill Bill Volume 2
Kingdom of Heaven
Kung Fu Hustle

L:

Lady Vengeance - Part 3 of the Vengeance series
The Last Samurai
The Lion King - The only Disney film I think I like
The Lookout - A good recommendation I had from a friend
Lost in Translation - Just love the feel and music of this film

M:

Mad Max
Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome - Tina Turners in this I think
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Animatrix - Redeeming the Matrix series somewhat, listed here as it's like that on my shelf (because it'd be stupid to separate it from it's kin)
The Mighty Boosh (1-3 & Live) - Woop
Minority Report - Not my favourite of films, but I keep it as it's a Philip K. Dick book adaptation I think

N:

Naruto (series 1-3 (4's coming soon)) - ANother cool anime series, slightly more aimed at kids, but still good
Night Watch - I should probably get Day Watch too
The Nightmare Before Christmas - Started my love for Timmy B
The Number 23 - Kinda lame at points, but pretty cool and dark at others

O:

Old Boy - 2nd in the Vengeance series, and very cool
Origin - Just got this today so no idea what it's like, but it's an anime film
Otogi Zoshi - A relatively good anime series, got a bit bored part way through, strangely just after they did a bit of a twist in the story

P:

Primer - Very random time travel independent film
Princess Mononoke - (Mono-no-kay) very cool amine film

Q:

R:

Renaissance - Animated film with Daniel Craig, weird huh
Requiem for a Dream - Really cool film, but about as happy as a puppy with a drinking disorder
Reservoir Dogs

S:

Samurai Champloo - Another anime series, which is cool and mixes anime with hip hop
A Scanner Darkly
The Science of Sleep
Seven
Sky Blue - Anime film, pretty cool
Steamboy - Anime film with Patrick Stuart in it
Spirited Away - Utterly beautiful anime film
Sunshine
Sympathy for Mr Vengeance - 1st in the Vengeance series

T:

Tideland

U:

Underworld
Underworld Evolution
The Untouchables

V:

Vic Reeves Big Night Out - Crazy stuff

W:

Waking Life - awesome animated film about lucid dreaming

X:

Y:

Z:

Zodiac - I forgot about this because Russ has it.

And there we have it, my DVD collection. As you can see it's missing a few letters, so not quite a complete A-Z, but if you have any suggestions of films then let me know, however there is one condition. I'm very proud of pretty much all of the DVDs I own and don't generally buy films just for the sake of having a film on DVD, so for instance I'm not going to buy Zoolander just so I have something for Z (ok kinda redundant now that I remembered about Zodiac, but you get the idea) as I'm not a huge fan of that film, although I have watched it and wouldn't mind watching it again, just not going to buy it. So there we go, by utilising the knowledge of the films which I already have, suggest films which I may like and could fill the gaps (Q, X, Y & Z) in my alphabetic collection.

ten-oh-ten

2009-01-26T13:16:00.005Z

Well would you look at that I passed the 10,000 Gamerscore mark (10,010 to be precise). I didn't even know, I knew I was at 9,995 the other day but obviously got me some more achievements that pushed me over the edge, woop.

So, mostly playing Fable 2 recently, as a break from Fallout 3 for a bit, felt a bit more like playing something a bit more cheery than the desolate wasteland of DC that is Fallout 3, not that it isn't fun.

Nothing much in the way of photoshopping or anything like that, haven't found any short, fun tutorials recently.

Sims 3 is just under a month away. Not entirely sure if I'm going to get it, I'm literally sat there with Game.co.uk open on the sims3 page and trying to decide. I loved The Sims, I enjoyed Sims2, except I felt that it lacked content, because they intend to sell you more stuff later on, and I know that the Sims 3 will probably have the same curse. However it's a cool franchise, and it's now been expanded to have more of a open neighbourhood, as opposed to just your house and a few locations, which makes me want to grab it and see if it's any good. However it's a bit of a time consuming game, which I have a few of already for the 360 so not sure if I want another game to take up my time. But I's like to think that it'll afford me some good fun, I love the whole building a house and interior design type stuff and back when I played The Sims, I had a nice successful family (named after Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan, he was Ol' Dirty, he had a wife who I forget her name, something cool I think and a son Li'l. And they were the Bastard Family - I liked rap and was juvenile enough to think the Bastard family would be funny... which I still do), who I spent a good amount of time on getting up through the career paths and affording me to buy a new lot and build my own house, which I could then expand on and it kinda looked like the white house, and I had a lot of fun. Now I can't say I had the same experience with the Sims 2. One thing I have noticed though is that whenever I create me and use it in a game I struggle to do anything more that what I might realistically do (aside from shooting people in the head), so with the Sims 2 I tended not to have a girlfriend or wife as I kinda thought that a) it may depress me (yes I'm that lame, leave me alone) or b) it'd just be a bit sad living out an idyllic lifestyle which essentially isn't mine. And this (As is common I put an y at the end of And, it's a strange concept impulsively spelling your name when you try to type and with a capital) also extended to job choices, I wouldn't chose a career that I wouldn't particularly do in real life, meaning that I limited myself to what I could do and I also tried to have friends who where real (well a Sims representation of my real friends) and spent far too much time trying to get the relationships of my friends to how they actually are, so making brothers like each other and stuff like that (I hope they allow you to preset some relationship levels as it annoyed the hell out of me when you had a family that started of with indifference to each other, meaning you spent the first few days (sim days) trying to get everyone to like each other before getting jobs, that or have one person no one likes but brings home the bacon. Which leads me onto another annoying thing. You got §20,000 (simolions, and I'm pretty sure that is the right symbol) to build/buy your house and stuff for it, but this was the same for all families, 1 person or 8, meaning that for 1 person you could buy some decent stuff from the start, but with 8 you essentially bought the cheapest possible things you needed (a cooker, fridge, shower, toilet, beds etc.) and usually ended up with too few beds and the worst possible lifestyle for the sims. So basically they need to give you more money depending on the size of the family. Fair enough you could cheat and start with an 8 person family and then kill them off, but so what, if you do that you're lame), all this meaning I just couldn't be arsed playing with my own character. So with this theory in mind, and the past experience of a complete random family unrelated to my own, the Bastard family, through which I managed to do well, I may buy the game and create an obscure family which I can play with. Soooooo..... that was all rather long winded and strange. Incidentally that'd be the first PC game I'll have bought for years (I don't count The Spore Creature Creator as it was £5 and not really a game, more a waste of time and money).

Success!!!!!

2009-01-21T15:46:00.003Z

I completed Gears of War 2 the other night.

It was fun and it means that I can now get on with playing the other games I have without too much feeling of wasted money. May spend some time with Fable 2 now, it's a pretty world and the dog is awesome.

Also completed Halo 3 on legendary with Russ the other night and was annoyed that I didn't get the achievement for doing so because the game decided we hadn't completed two sections, which we did! Think it may be something to do with stopping part way through them, that or we switched who was the first player part way through too, so not sure if that screws things up.

Coming up on the 10,000 Gamerscore mark too, woop, lame but awesome.

Photoshopping

2009-01-16T17:41:00.001Z

the tute

the result:

I'm not too happy with the result, the tutorial was a little vague at points which didn't help, but it's the kinda thing that if I fiddled with some more I'd be happier. As it happens there's no point so I wont bother.

Make your mind up!

2009-01-15T13:10:00.003Z

Well I don't generally make my mind up about anything really until it comes to the crunch and then it's like "err.. crap, yes, I mean no, I dunno, just gimme the green one!" - which generally doesn't help me at all.

But yeah erm, I'm potentially going to start using this blog again for more specific things like, what I've been upto of late, xbox wise, life wise, other things, so I shall start by detailing various things that I'm doing.

Xbox360 Games:
Mostly Fallout 3, having watched my bro cruise through it over Christmas I kinda got game envy so have been playing it whenever I can. It has pushed me to commit to finishing a game before I go back to any of the others I have lying around. After the mass of awesome games that dropped Q2 2008, namely Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Dead Space, I've had more games than time and subsequently have not really got round to playing any to completion. Admittedly I bought Dead Space to give me something to do while I waited for Fallout3 and Xbox360Fanboy had been speaking highly of it so thought I'd grab it.
So yeah I've decided to keep blasting Fallout 3 and try to finish it before going onto anything else which may have been a bad move as it's a pretty huge game. There are so many side quests and other such things that get in the way (in a good way) that I actually haven't moved on in the main story line even after many hours of play. However it is very enjoyable so I'm not going to complain.
Other than that I have been playing Halo 3 a good amount with one of my good friends, which has been great for both a bit of relaxation (unless we play against each other) and also as a bit of guy time. We recently started playing the campaign on Legendary (hardest difficulty setting)and are pretty far through (I think right near the end) which has been good fun, and will get me some achievements.
I've also dabbled in a bit of PGR4 (racing game) and I'm still looking to buy a steering wheel for the 360 so I can play driving games using a proper wheel and not a couple of sticks, not sure how successful I'll be as the options are pretty much the microsoft one for £70 (not exactly cheap) and not much else as they are all out of stock (due to demand for them being long gone) but maybe the release of a new racing game will pick it up again, no idea when that will be though.

Design:
I'm kinda trying to gear myself up to doing more design practise in the hope that I can utilise it at some point in the future, so have been having a play with Photoshop and tutorial sites. So my first offering is this:

Which I got the tutorial from PSDTUTS.
I'll be aiming to try and find a tutorial to do during my lunch hour and hopefully get me up to scratch with some photoshop techniques and stuff like that.

"Random" Thing:
Pantone Bag - I thought this was pretty awesome.

Well I'd best get back to work

insert title here

2008-10-01T19:52:00.004+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, for various reasons, work, another blog that is just as good a place to write stuff as any (and usually better) and a general lack of anything much to say, but I clicked a link on my site, that I was just about to do some more work on, and thought I'd chuck up a post just to satiate my blog's desire for posts, I suspect it gets lonely without me.

So anyway on to a quick update about my life. Well I'm still in London and have a job as a web developer for a company which produces videos for companies to allow their CEOs and other important types to tell the world what they're doing. My job is to make the pages where the videos sit, it's not overly interesting work, but can be challenging and sometimes stressful, Yesterday and Monday particularly so. I was required to produce a relatively complicated bespoke (already bespoked by a designer) page which released at 7am this morning and had to pretty much get it made in less than a day, whilst battling with the various idiocies of IE6 and the various requests of the client and producers. Tuesday was spent mostly polishing the site and continuing to battle with IE6. It culminated in me not eating lunch on either Monday or Tuesday, which is rubbish, and generally feel crappy and tired. Oh well, it pays pretty well so I'm not so bothered.

Aside from that I don't get up to much else, I started going to Kendo classes recently, but have only so far managed one lesson (as this Monday I was far too tired to yell and hit people with sticks). But hopefully that will develop into something fun to do on a Monday evening, although I wont be able to go next Monday either as a friend is returning from holiday and well it's nice to see people after that kinda thing, he may bring presents (hopefully a moose).

I also recentlyish started writing a book of sorts. It's a kinda fantasy fiction book I guess, which may or may not really get anywhere, but hey it's been interesting doing something like that.

Well yes that's probably it for the moment, another mostly pointless post, but hey it kept me occupied for a few minutes.

69 and doing fine!

2008-06-21T19:43:00.002+01:00

errr... yeah, I realise that making any reference to 69 is probably a bad thing, but this being post number 69 and my first for a while, I thought I'd start with something of a less savoury nature.

Well if you're one of those clever people who has rss feeds that you check frequently then you may have noticed that I've gone back on what I said previously about stopping posting here. Well I had a change of heart. There is one main reason for this, which is Russ' latest blog entry, which fuelled my desire to have somewhere to chronicle my various thoughts and other such idiocies.

So I guess firstly I shall drivel on a little about how in a world which promotes selfishness and on a format that facilitates selfishness (ie. a personal blog) I intend to focus more on things which I feel are less about me and more of an outward looking thing. However, as is inevitable I will mention what's going on in my life to satiate my selfish desires.

So let's get that out the way now. I recently managed to procure myself a job, hurrah, meaning that I should be self sufficient within a month or so and capable of living in Raynes Park, where I moved about 3 weeks ago, without having to rely on my parents giving me money, which will be a great relief to them, but also to me as I always feel guilty about taking their money each month, but wouldn't survive without it. I'll be doing web development for a company called Cantos, who deal with video streaming for internal communications of some businesses in the ftse 100 and 250. On a more pointless note, I just spent about 2 hours cutting a large patch of grass out side our house and still didn't finish, but my thumbs gone a bit numb from using a crappy strimmer that vibrated far too much.

Right onto the less selfish stuff. It occurs to me that I don't do enough to ensure that I am environmentally, human rights and animal friendly. I will happily shop in outlets that don't use fairtrade clothing. I will not always think to ask for fairtrade coffee (or check that a company uses fairtrade coffee) when I drink coffee out side of my house, although me and Joe did leave Costa after asking if they did fairtrade and was given a less than positive answer. Anyway this still feels a little me focused, but the general point is that by and large (whatever that phrase really means) when it comes to fair trade and stuff like that, you can't do too much in order to try and make a difference, as the focus is on trying to give those less fortunate than us (who by shear chance where born in a country that is generally very affluent) a bit more of a fighting chance. If you think less about the expense of the matter, ie. fairtrade is generally more expensive than unfairtrade stuff and more on the fact that there are people, real human beings, who are being utterly shafted so that we can get cheap clothing and food. It's annoyingly easy to seperate yourself from things when you don't see them, but they're there and they're being exploited for our benefit. It is utterly disgusting and something that really shouldn't be as much of a non-issue as it really is in our society. The same goes for people in England who haven't got it easy too. I realise my hypocrisy and I know that it's not always easy to make lifestyle changes (although after making relatively big changes to your lifestyle you may find that it wasn't such a big deal after all), however is it really such a stretch to aim to buy as much fairtrade stuff as possible and screw the convenience of being able to go into any shop and buy a chocolate bar you like, but having to maybe go to one a little further away that sells fairtrade chocolate?

If you'd like a book which has ratings of companies then buy the good shopping guide, or just go by the rule of "if it's a major brand it's probably scum" you should be alright. Abbey national (or just Abbey as they're now known) have gone down quite a bit since being taken over by Santanda, they used to be a good ethical bank, but now they're not so good, also HSBC are the sum of the earth banking wise (think potentially investing your money in Robert Mugabe's regime) so if you're currently with them, think about changing, and screw the convenience, as soon as I'm able to pay off my overdraft I'll be moving from Abbey, probably to the Co-operative, they're pretty good.

On recycling, this is something that is pretty easy to do, but isn't done enough, it's not hard to change your habit from chucking everything into a bin to putting some stuff into other bins so they don't go to a landfill if they can be recycled. If you don't do it already, do so, it's a relatively small thing to do but does make a difference.

Furthermore turn stuff off standby (including computers), turning stuff off at the wall can save you money and reduce energy consumption greatly (especially if lots of people do it), it may mean you have to walk across the room to turn the plugs on, but if you're too lazy to do that then you need the exercise so do it anyway.

I think my basic point is that we are too concerned, as a society, with convenience and how easy things are and if they're likely to cause us any hassle then we wont do them. However the big picture is usually one which means that our convenience is at the expense of other peoples well being, which surely isn't a good thing.

Here endeth the lesson... or something to that effect.

Alas Poor Yorik. I Knew Him, Horatio.

2008-05-14T11:27:00.000+01:00

Mostly pointless title. But it vaguely relates to the fact that I'll probably be closing this blog and using Oedipus as my main blog as I'm finding less and less reason to have my own dedicated blog, especially seeing that it's not widely read, which I really don't have much of a problem with, but it seems silly to have two blogs. So please check out Oedipus as it's a really cool co-authored blog, with about 6 authors now, and subjects ranging "From Oedipus to Samuel L. Jacksons Wallet".

Enjoy

EDIT: well apparently I kept going...

Review (vaguely): Firefox 3 beta

2008-05-10T15:57:00.006+01:00

Well as I'm meant to be revising for my Spatial Audio exam which is on Monday, so I thought I'd do a quick review of Firefox 3, which is currently in beta 5 (whatever that means, I assume there have been 4 other iterations of this beta).

I haven't really played around with it much, but it has an updated GUI and a few new features. The main reason I installed it was for the new Smart Bookmarks feature. These work similar to the smart playlists on iTunes, but obviously with bookmarks. The premiss being that you have some set filters for bookmarks, ie. most viewed, and then the smart bookmarks update accordingly to display say your 10 most visited bookmarks. They can be edited but it requires a small amount of coding knowledge, in a sense of the word. I'm not overly sure how I came across this link now but, I did. Further info regarding codes can be found here. To be honest I'm not sure what use these will have, at the moment they're just annoying as they're where my feeds used to be (which are now the button next door) so I keep clicking the wrong one, this is easily remedied, but I haven't got round to it yet. Maybe I'll find a good use for them later.

Aside from a crazy robot as their new mascot, the old firefox logo remains but the robot pops up in various places looking like a strange tin, moustached vampire, there are a few additions for web developer and the like. Firefox 3 has extended support for CSS3 features, some DOM improvements and support for javascript 1.8 (this is all from their welcome page), which I mostly understand. This is focused at web designers/developers, which I technically am, so I'm mostly interested. It doesn't support all of the older add-ons, in particular fireftp which I use relatively frequently (but isn't overly important) isn't yet supported, but it's only a matter of time really and considering it's a beta it's not a major issue. There's also a button that is meant to give you details about the site you're viewing but so far I haven't found a site that uses this feature, not even their own website.

Verdict: Nothing over the top mind blowing that makes this anything much better than 2 as far as I can tell, maybe smart bookmarks will be really useful in some way, but it's not like it's taking a step back either so it's all good. It may be best for the majority of firefox users to wait until it's out of beta mode, but for those interested in what's to come go get it.

I can't really give this a rating out of 10 so I wont.

New videos on Flikr

2008-05-09T19:02:00.003+01:00

I've put a few videos up on Flick r, if you haven't already seen them, so head on over, have a gander and let me know what you think!

By way of an update, I'm currently revising for a Spatial Audio exam, whilst also trying to work on a promotional video for a church in Aintree, two websites (one for a friend, one for me), some work for my dad involving videos of drains (very slightly more interesting than it sounds, but not much), searching for work in the Wimbledoon area and trying not to go mad whilst I sit around waiting for interesting stuff to happen.

Spring Cleaning

2008-05-04T11:36:00.004+01:00

I've given the blog a quick spruce, ie. changed the template and then edit it a little so the header works and that the reference to my website is now a link. I also changed the name slightly so that it was all witty.

I'll be trying to tag as many of my posts with the appropriate phrases as well while I have time, so hopefully this blogity blog will be a little more organised.

Film Review - Stand By Me

2008-05-04T01:30:00.002+01:00

Release Date: 13 March 1987
Certificate: 15
Director: Rob Reiner
Starring: Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell

Set in the 50s when rock and roll was at it's peak and walking on train tracks was not an entirely stupid idea this coming of age film about four friends who, on hearing of the whereabouts of the body of a dead boy of their age, embark on a journey of self discovery and adolescent frivolity that shapes who they end up being later on in life. (probably the doucheyist sounding synopsis ever)

This is one of those films that I've known about for a while but just haven't got round to seeing for various reasons, one being that I didn't own it and another being that I thought it was just one of those over hyped films that isn't actually that great. I was wrong. This is a really fun film to watch and made me wish I'd done more rebellious stuff when I was a kid, but also made me think about people who used to be my friends who I no longer have contact with and also what kind of a parent I hope to be.

Apart from starting off with the air of 4 young actors who are playing up for the cameras the acting improves quite dramatically as the film progresses. River Phoenix gives a good performance as the tough guy Chris Chambers, fiercely loyal and sensitive when it comes to peoples preconceptions about him because of his family. Wil Wheaton also performs well as the shy, overshadowed by his older brother kid, who is convinced his father hates him after his brothers death. Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell are relatively overshadowed by the other two performances, but hold the group together well giving good performances of the joker and the push over respectively. It's also interesting to note that Kiefer Sutherland also stars as the leader of a greaser gang and does a good job of being a thuggish hard-ass, which he continues to do in later life.

The camera work is nothing special and the use of blue screen is amusing by today's comparisons, but good for when it was made. Filmed mostly in dust bowl locations the scenery is not overly interesting, but then it doesn't need to be as the main focus is all on the story unfolding in front of you.

The various themes dealt with throughout the film are common to kids but perhaps a little more intensely portrayed. These range from being bullied by older guys and unable to do much about it, in fighting within friends, to feeling out of your depth but ultimately sticking together through it all. By the end of the film you're left feeling quite attached to the four boys and the final scene is a little of a let down in a sense of the word, but hardly ruins the film.

Verdict: A great classic film, and really shouldn't be missed (even though that's what everyone says, it's true). I was moved by this film, laughed, felt mildly uncomfortable seeing kids cry (I'm weird like that) and thoroughly enjoyed watching this film and how the characters grew throughout the film. It also made me think about various things and hope that I become a good parent (if I do indeed become one).

9/10

Film Review - Oldboy

2008-05-04T00:44:00.004+01:00

Year: 15 October 2004
Certificate: 18
Director: Park Chanwook (Chan-wook Park)
Starring: Choi Min-sik Yoo Ji-Tae Gang Hye-Jung
Language: Korean

The second film of Park Chanwook's Revenge Trilogy, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance and Lady Vengeance being the first and third respectively, And based on the manga of the same name by Garon Tsuchiya & Nobuaki Minegishi.

After a man is kidnapped and imprisoned (all be it relatively comfortably) for 15 years for seemingly no reason with only TV for company and brief encounters with his imprisoners when then come to feed him, Oh Dae-su is finally released with no explanation. The subsequent 5 days of his search for the reason behind his imprisonment are told for the majority of the film. Using the skills he's learn from TV he embarks on a vicious journey seeking revenge and answers while befriending a young girl called Mi-do. However will revenge satiate his desires or will it lead to further trouble?

I find that the mark of a really good film is one that you end up enjoying immensely even if you weren't quite sure you where in the mood for this kind of film when you started watching it. This was certainly the case for Oldboy, having just watch Stand By Me, I thought that a shift from a soul searching feel good style film to a Korean film laced with violence would be welcome, but it most certainly was.

Park Chanwook has a flair for unusual shots, from various CG enhanced shots that enable the camera to look directly at mirrored objects without being visible to a side scrolling fighter style sequence involving a hammer. The film mixes utter brutality with humour well, with the actors reactions playing a big part in the humour, one particular section where Oh Dae-su goes into a hair salon looking for information and ends up with his hair in a shower cap with a look of annoyed resignation is fantastic. The fight sequences are brutal whilst feeling realistic and not over played. The feel of the film is intriguing and provides a variety of locations (including New Zealand) from the dingy prison room, to the bright open skies of the real world.

Min-sik Choi is very engaging and gives a great performance as Oh Dae-su, his performance when drunk is brilliant, funny, realistic and ad-libbed. He also did most of his own stunts, ate eight live squids (supposedly not too uncommon in Korea, just usually sliced) and his street fighting style of kicking ass is awesome.

The final twist is interesting enough that you shouldn't have seen it coming and furthers the plot nicely. The underlining theme seems to be that revenge is useless and that TV can teach you things, although I wouldn't trust that.

Verdict: A wonderfully filmed, slogfest if ever there was one. Brilliantly acted, brilliantly executed and able to make you both laugh and bite your fist whilst cringing.

9.5/10
(I'd give it 10, but I'm scared that something bad may happen if I ever rate something top)

No More Dissertation

2008-04-25T21:33:00.002+01:00

Well that's not technically true, I'll be reading through it on Monday and making any necessary changes, but until then I'm going to have some fun.

Quite impressed I think I wrote about 5000 words today, which is cool. Glad my limit is 10,000.I'm up to 9525 with all the extra bits that pad it out, which I thinks pretty good. Will probably be able to squeeze a few more out next week.

Anyway enough of that.

More Dissertation

2008-04-24T16:59:00.002+01:00

Continuing with the whole should be writing my dissertation thing.

My plan is to try and get it finished this week, for two reasons. Firstly to get it out the way, I learnt today that a couple of people on my course had already finished it, so I think I should endeavour have it done before the deadline so as not to end up potentially not finishing it in time, it all sounds rather strange, but if I set myself an earlier deadline it's not a big deal if I go over a couple of days. Secondly GTA IV comes out on the 29th and as lame as it may sound I'd prefer not to have to work instead of playing it. It also means that I wont be distracted when it arrives as I'll just be able to play it.

Hopefully I haven't given myself too much of an enormous task, it seems doable at the moment and I'm about a third of the way through my dissertation (word count wise).

Well back to work.

ARGH DISSERTATION!

2008-04-22T11:21:00.003+01:00

Yup that's right I should be writing it. Thought you might like to know.

However if you could head over to http://www.csesalford.com/wotherspoonfp register and then post a message (really doesn't matter what) then I'll be happy. It should only take 5 minutes and you can peruse the "many" features of the forum.

cheers and many thanks

Ohhhh Priddy!

2008-04-15T22:35:00.002+01:00

I've just created what I think is something relatively beautiful. Whilst continuing to develop my website for my dissertation I decided to make it so you can edit your posts directly in the forum window, so no need to go to another page to make changes. So with a little bit of Javascript (which I;m starting to love after being quite scared of it) I've made it so you click the edit button under your posts (and only your posts) and the box with your post in changes to a text box which is roughly the same size as your post (achieved by getting the size of the div tag, using java, and then dividing it by an arbitrary number to arrive at a number similar to the number of rows, this is becuase text boxes work on rows of text for it's height and not pixels like div tags do, however it is a rough size, at the moment), the edit button changes to say finish when you click it and when you're done editing you click finish and it uploads it to the database. So far it reloads the page even if you made no changes, but I may be able to find a way to solve this.

This may all sound like a load of technical jargon / gobbledigook, but hopefully there's a couple of you who understand this, and when it's finally done (hopefully in a few days) I'll post it's link so you can see the beauty for your self.

Andy The Emo

2008-04-10T00:53:00.002+01:00

I've said it to people before and I know release it into the world of the intermaweb:

If I was a teenager now I'd be an emo.

The whole teenage angst thing seems appealing to me, but I can't really get into it as I'm 23 and not a teenagers so I'd just seem be being an idiot.

I have a strange affinity for tragedy, some of my favourite things are about teenagers who suffer in some way. I shall list a few.

* Harry Potter (Teenage plagued with tragedy and having to fight evil stuffs)
* Naruto (Teenager/kid who is mostly despised by his whole village and goes through various hardships trying to get respet)
* Fullmetal Alchemist (Teenagers/kids who's mum dies and they lose various limbs/whole body in an attempt to resurrect her and then go an a quest to try and get it all back - crazy Japanese storylines :D )
* CHERUB (teenagers who've lost various parents etc. recruited for secret agenty type stuff, generally go through teenage life but get to play with guns and get into trouble)

It probably has something to do with the fact I've had nothing in the way of tragedy in my life (which I'm really glad is the case!) so strangely long for it or a way to relate to it, which kinda links with the whole emo thing of being all morose and listening to moody music and being all "she ripped out my heart" and all that rubbish. Which I've vaguely experienced as a teenager but have grown far past that state and now have a happy indifference to.

Well that's about it for that weird thought, but yeah I'd probably be an emo, or maybe a goth, that'd be cool.

Silly Pictures of things!

2008-04-07T23:33:00.004+01:00

Another try at putting a sleelection (or selection) of pictures that I've taken at various points in time.

- So glad I was around to witness that, even though it'll happen twice every day, but still cool.

- I really want to live on that lane.

- Proof that kids are racist, satan worshippers.

- But where is the Old Cock?

- You do need to be careful with water about.

Well that was all rather silly, please continue with your lives now.

Updateathon

2008-04-01T00:44:00.003+01:00

After breaking, then fixing my Xbox things have been a lot better for me, although my computer has taken to blue screening today, but that may be the fact that I was running 5 different high power programs all at once and making it do things.

Anyway, I've got some fun things with filming and making a promotional video for a church in Aintree this week, which should be good fun but potentially frustrating, I've also got to do some finishing touches to some fliers for an event my church in Manchester is doing, I've also got some minor animation work and some web development for a friend for his production company and uni work on top of that. So lots of work and non of them pay me, which is rubbish!

I'm about 2 months away from finishing uni and joining the world of work, which will be fun/SCARY!!! during which time GTA IV comes out, so I'll probally loose a large proportion of my life to that but hopefully get all the various bits of work I need to do done.

With luck I'll get some parkour in this week with a couple of mates from Liverpool which will hopefully get me in the mood for when I'm back in Mancland, hurrah!

Oh and if you've ever decided to dual boot your PC so you can have seperate work and play installs, it's more hastle than it's worth in the long run. I may reformat my PC again just so I can set it back t one partition as it's driving me nuts (There's a great joke about that phrase) that they're not synced together, so podcasts and bookmarks and various other things are different and because of BST it decided to set me 2 hours ahead after I booted up the 2nd install after using the 1st most of today. STUPID STUPID STUPID thing!

BOLLOCKS!

2008-03-25T19:43:00.004Z

This is currently what I'm thinking and here's why.

I'd just decided to play a bit of Halo3 on my 360, so went to switch the disc in the drive, so popped it open, grabbed the Halo3 Box (big heavy metal tin in a plastic sleeve and turned to drop the tin into my hand and get the disc out. However instead of it dropping into my hand it dropped onto the disc drive of my 360 (not entirely sure how this happened really) and then fell on the floor (where it remains) because I thought that the more pressing issue was if my 360 was OK or not, it looks ok, but unfortunately the disk drive now wont go back in! Why? because the motor mechanism pushes it up before the tray can go in properly, so it wont close either mechanically or with me pushing it as there's a lump of metal in the way. Needless to say I'm a little miffed and really hope I can sort it out, otherwise it'll be send it back to microsoft with a vague description of what happened and hope they don't charge me to fix it (should be within warranty though).

BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS!

EDIT:

UNBALLS UNBALLS UNBALLS UNBALLS UNBALLS

I managed to fix it, so all is good and happy in the world again.

I had to push a bit off plastic so that it wasn't connected to a cog until the drive was pushed further in, but this took a while to figure out what bits did what and was all pretty scary in a could break my 360 kinda way. Anyway all seems well with my 360 and it plays games, so hurrah.

Easterland

2008-03-24T12:26:00.003Z

Easter, Pascha, Bunny Day, Zombie Jesus Day, whatever you call it, it's still not as big a holiday as Christmas, which is probably due to the fact it's not as all out on present giving, despite the number of adverts enticing us to buy stuff at Easter. However for Christians it should be the biggest celebration as it marks the occasion when Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified, proving that he was actually the son of God and not just another man. I had a good time being reminded of this and spending time with friends that I hadn't seen for a while, so a good day. Anyway whatever your beliefs and reasons for celebrating Easter I hope you had a good day and got some chocolaty goodness.

GAME I Love Thee

2008-03-19T11:00:00.001Z

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (sequel to the most awesome Rainbow Six Vegas for the 360) comes out on the 20th, I have in in my hand today (the 19th). I'm a happy bunny. Thankyou GAME :D

RADIOHEAD WOOOO!

2008-03-17T22:50:00.003Z

I like Radiohead, they're fantastic and thom yorke is an utter legend. here are some of the reasons why I think they're awesome, both musically and other things (all in video form :D )

video1
video2

It appears Adam Buxton had something to do with atleast one of these videos, but I dunno details.

Focus

2008-03-17T12:02:00.003Z

I've been listening to a few podcasts about Xbox360 type stuff, and through this, for various reasons, I've come to the conclusion that I could do with a little bit more focus for this blog, as it's really just a collection of various things, which have no connection other than they're coming from me. So I'm thinking that I should get some focus with this blog, not entirely sure what but it'll hopefully have less rambling about how I'm not doing my work, who cares about that? and some more info about things that may be of use to other people in the world.

We shall see if this actually happens.

Silly Photos and Whatnot

2008-03-12T11:06:00.004Z

Well there may not be any silly photos as blogger is being a bugger and refusing to let me upload them, so onto the whatnot.

Well I've been getting on with various things over the past weeks, mostly my dissertation website, but also my own personal one, much slower than I'd hoped though, so it could be a while before it's active. http://www.andywotherspoon.co.uk for those who want to bookmark it beforehand.... JAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry just thought how ludicrous and up myself that is, no one cares... or just stick it on their block list.

Life continues and things are going well, although time is rushing by and I wonder what will become of me, not sure what that means really.

unfortunately no pictures, sorry.

Flickr

2008-03-03T21:35:00.002Z

For those who want to see pics what I have taken go 'ear!

For those that don't go 'ear!

Multipost time, weeeeee!

2008-02-27T01:11:00.005Z

After posting this on the other blog I ramble on, I thought I'd put a quick note here saying...

"ARGH CRAZY TREMOR SHAKING MY ROOM!!!!!"

Well I'm off to bed, but not before I link you to my other post which was probably caused by a similar event in August.

HD-DVDEAD!

2008-02-19T12:45:00.002Z

Well Toshiba has lost the battle for supremacy in the High Def disc wars, says the Beeb, oh well, I wasn't overly attached to it. For those of you who may pay attention to the Xbox scene, there was talk about an Xbox with a built in HDDVD drive and this probably explains why nothing has been done. No doubt Mr Gates was awarre of the failing nature of the HDDVD format and decided to postpone anything until a clear winner was announced.

I can't say I know a great deal about HDDVD or Bluray, but if statistics are anything to go by Bluray is the better format, but I could be wrong. HDDVD allows 30GB, where as Bluray allows 50GB per dual layer disc (with a 200GB disc in the works). So it looks like the best product has one in a format war for a change. Maybe Sony was still bitter from the betamax thing of the 80s, so decided to go for the win.

There is however the trade off of price, bluray is more expensive than HDDVD but that should change now that the market is held by a single company who no doubt will want everyone to have a Bluray drive soon enough.

From what I've heard Japan has had HD for 10 years, so we're a little behind at the moment with technology and as most people haven't yet made the jump to HD it may take a while for Bluray to become a standard and completely replace DVD (as DVD did for VHS) which should be fun.

Here's hoping for a Bluray compatible Xbox soon, although that could be why the PS3 is so horrendously priced.

General musings

2008-02-18T22:54:00.003Z

I find it difficult at times to leave things alone, particularly if they're of my creation, but continue to fiddle and muck about until they are as close to perfect as I can possibly get them. This covers a multitude of things, from DIY, which I tend to be alright at but have a knack of making things worse before they get better, to web design etc. This can be detrimental as deadlines loom and I'm still trying to perfect one specific method of doing something whilst other bits have been left by the wayside. But it can also be a good thing, not wanting to do something half arsed or produce a stop gap which inevitably will need replacing in the relatively near future. So it has it's positives and it has it's negatives but it's part of who I am so it's unlikely to change.

I also have a habit of getting remarkably sidetracked and forget what I was initially doing so having to go back and work out what it is I was trying to do in the first place. This relates to web design frequently as I will do something then find a problem so try to sort it, then find another problem, generally unrelated, so fix that, then find more etc. until i'm unsure about what still needs doing. I think I probably need to make more lists, but that's too much effort.

I also have a habit of wanting to be great at things without putting in the effort required, resulting in massive failure as I'm not exactly naturally talented. At times I realise that I need to put effort in and aim for finesse over greatness, aiming to work on the techniques required in order to progress better, but I cang et sidetracked with this too and try to achieve greater things too quickly. This relates to Parkour, I tend to want to be doing big stuff without first mastering the smaller stuff. I guess that really size looks impressive, but the more fluid you are about the smaller things the better you look (if that's all you're bothered by, which I kinda am and not at the same time) but also the more likely you are to be able to progress.

Finally, I like making things work. When a feature on a website I'm designing finally works after hours of fiddling it makes me happy.

Please someone buy me one of these!

2008-02-17T22:52:00.000Z

fun for andy

Quick Update

2008-02-01T17:45:00.001Z

It's been a while since I've posted here, so I'll give a brief update of things.

Firstly go listen to Fields either on their myspace or on their main site which is unfortunately currently down, but hopefully will get back up soon, it was cool.

Hopefully this term will be much more enjoyable than last and I seem to have more motivation than before. My modules are Spatial Audio, stuff to do with how a sound works in a space, Animated Graphics, mucking about in After Effects to create idents etc. which should be fun. There is also the continuing saga of my dissertation, which is essentially going to be a social network/forum site. It's taking shape, not a very good one at the moment but it'll get there. I'll attach the relevant link when it's a bit more stable and working like a forum not just a place to display my prattlings (so a bit like my blog really).

I've been playing Knights Of The Old Republic (KOTOR) recently, taking the dark side route for a change, I normally go light, which proving to be fun. It's a little difficult at times to not come across as a turd, but I'm trying to have my own prerogative instead of helping a specific side, currently I'm very evil, essentially wiped out the entire Sith Academy after using them to get some cool stuff and my latest thing is becoming an intergalactic bounty hunter "helping" the republic, I'l hopefully be able to screw some people over. I've only been playing for 12 hours and have only been to 3 planets (of 8) so lots to do still. By the end I hope to be galactic overlord :D

I've been playing guitar for about a month now, not exactly solidly or anything like tat, but I've developed nice hard finger tips on my left hand, I'm still not exactly good, transitions between chords are pathetic, my knowledge of chords is minimal and I struggle to strum and change chords without inventing new timings, but it's early days still.

I plan to go to London on the 20th for Russ and Kate's engagement party, which should be fun, but I also plan to go there on a more long term basic when I'm finished with Uni, I'm currently trying to sort out housing and a job for when I get there. All good fun, but still very much at the this may not happen stage of things.

I moved my room around again so I now have much more floor space, which I've filled with boxes and books, and have dual partitioned my hard drive giving me a general use version of XP and a separate one for AVD (Audio, Visual, Design) stuffs. I think I may have just made up a new acronym.

That's all that I can think of for the moment.

Toodles (what ever the hell that means)

A Step by Step Guide to...

2008-01-15T13:24:00.001Z

...Dismantling a Powerball.

This really has no usefulness as it's not exactly broke so no fixing will be going on, however I have two and one has been dropped a couple of times and has begun to rattle, so essentially I'm pulling it apart because I can and to see if anything can be done. I was also asked to do it in the same way I did the Actionman surgery by Jow, so here it is.

I'm writing this as I doing it in an attempt to make the whole process more streamlined, not sure why you need to know that but now you do.

Ok, let's do it.

Tools needed:

1 x Philips Head Precision Screwdriver
2 x Flat Head Precision Screwdriver
1 x Special levering device (optional)
1 x Extra bit of plastic to make using precision screwdrivers easier (optional)
1 x Large Flat Blade (about 2mm think)

Step One:

Remove the rubber grip ring, very simple and gives you access to the screws.
It looks all naked.

Step Two:

Remove the two screws using a philips head precision screwdriver.
I used one that has an attachable bit of plastic to aid with leverage, a common problem with precision screwdrivers as they have little to grip onto.

Step Three:

Remove the digital display, if it has one. This is simply done by sticking a flat head screwdriver in the small crack at the top and bottom of the display and wiggling it from side to side.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the plastic, ie. cheap, it dents easily, so be careful. I wasn't really. Set the display aside for further dismantling.

Step Four:

Using a large flat object, in my case the back of a knife, prise the two halves of the outer case apart, this is a little difficult and a good bit of force is needed. Remove the gyroscope from the case.

Step Five:

Removing the outer ring will leave you with the gyroscope in all it's yellow glory (despite it looking green in the pictures), be careful not to lose the plastic washers if you intend to put it all back together again. If you don't then just chuck them away as you'll probably lose them anyway and they really don't have any other use.

Step Six:

This next step requires you to have more hands than are usually at your disposal. So with the help of a large lump of white tac, stick the gyroscope to the surface so that it is held upright firmly with the main circuit board facing up. Then, using a combination of flat precision screwdrivers and luck, remove the metal ring at the base of the metal rod that holds the circuit board in place.

Step Seven:

Remove the circuit board holding the LEDs. You should now have a gyroscope and a load of LEDs.

And through the magic of gyroscopes:
I haven't, as yet, managed to get the LEDs to light up as they seem to use the motion of the gyroscope and magnetism to induce a current. I may just try hooking them to a battery.

Step Eight:

Now back to the display. Remove all the screws and it'll all fall apart leaving you with a mostly useless device. So it's probably best to put it all back together again.

Step Nine:

Essentially reverse everything you just did in order to put it all back together again.
I however intentionally left out the LEDs as they tend to be a bit annoying when using in a darkened room as you blind yourself. I'm going to try to find a use for them.

The Result:

If all went well and you didn't lose any bits then you should still have a working Powerball with a display, unless yours didn't have one in the first place, then you wont have a display. If for some reason it was broken and you managed to fix it, well done. I simple removed the LEDs so technically broke it.

Ramble. Ramble. Rambull. Ram, Bull. Raam, Bool. Rhyme, Brew. I'll stop.

2008-01-08T22:43:00.001Z

I've decided that this "blog" has become a place of utter ramblings, sometimes on a sensible topic, other times not. So I appologise to the few people who read this and wonder what the hell I'm going on about. I shall endeavour to be coherent in the future.

Laters

Eliteism

2008-01-04T20:11:00.000Z

I was in the presence of some like minded individuals today, ie. web developers, graphic designers, sound & video engineers etc. (all cleverly rolled into 4 people), and was able to express some of my opinions about music and video and stuff like that which I normally wouldn't bother doing with some people as they probably just wouldn't overly get it, or maybe they would, who knows. Anyway it prompted me to write this post.

Essentially it boiled down to the dwindling quality of music due to mp3 and peoples desire to fit 4 billion songs on half a gig of hard drive space (mild exaggeration).

Quoting from Apples iPod page on their site "160GB of storage... up to 40,000 songs or up to 200 hours of video".

A quick bit of maths for you 160GB/40,000 = 0.004GB = 4MB per song (average).

For those who don't know that's roughly at bit rate of 128Kbps (kilo bytes per second) which means every second 128 Kilo bits of data are being sent about that second of music, which may sound like enough to most people, but considering that lossless audio codecs (ie. as close to the original signal as possible) use between 500Kbps - 1MBps (about 4-8 times more data per second) one has to wonder what is being lost in order to get this huge reduction in information. Basically all the intricacies of the music. I heard of an "experiment" that a guy I know did which essentially removed the stuff that are heard in a 128Kb copy from a lossless copy of a track leaving you with only the bits you miss out from the 128Kb copy, stuff like trumpets in the background and various other instruments that are in the higher and lower frequency ranges, which are considered unneeded by lossy codecs, but in reality aren't.

Quick glossary:

Lossless codec - a way of encoding music by removing data which is completely not needed and by doing some other clever things leaving you with an pretty much perfect representation of the original music.

Lossy coded - a way of removing more data to produce a smaller file size by using various techniques to try to get rid of data considered less important (but not necessarily is, a computer is discerning this not a human), this removed data is completely lost and cannot be got back.

(probably not very well explained/partially incorrect)

Now if you think of Youtube videos and phone videos where the sound is generally rubbish and has odd sounds or a general weird ring to it this is all due to over reduction of the data being transmitted thus when it is being played back it goes to the nearest common sound instead of the exact one, think of a set of stairs compared to a diagonal line, 2.4cm up the diagonal line is represented as 2 on the stairs, so is 2.2, 2.7 and 2.9 ignoring normal rounding techniques, so too is 2.35, 2.358, 2.3583... subtle differences, but at times noticeable, the old missing a step on the stairs feeling can be applied to music coding too :D. (I should probably produce some diagrams, but I can't be bothered)

Anyway if you think of music (well at least good music) as art, then using quite heavy data compression on a piece of music is similar to going to a art gallery but only being able to parts of the paintings and sculptures etc. because parts of it have been removed to reduce the amount of space it takes up in the gallery, further more a computer has decided what it considers less important to the overall piece of art.

[EDIT: Or as was pointed out to me a more close comparison is looking at a digital photograph or the Mona Lisa at low resolution (don't get me started on low resolution and phone cameras) and not being able to fully appreciate her smile. Cheers Patrick :D]

As MP3 and all those things are relatively new (in a sense of the word) it follows that it is still in it's infancy and thus will get better and seeing that we are currently able to buy 16GB flash drives (the size of a packet of chewing gum) for about £70 and 1TB (1000GB) hard drives for £180 we're not to bothered by storage any more. OK so at 1MBps a 5 minute track is 300MB but that's not too huge really you can get 3333.33333... songs onto a 1TB drive (not as many as the iPod quotes, but far better quality), give it a few years and it'll be awesome.

There are other factors in this matter however, such as the output sources quality, speakers, headphones, mobile speaker (ARGH!!!) obviously the more expensive the better (in general).Most people aren't willing to spend a great amount on a pair of speakers or headphones, but if they did they'd know the difference and hopefully never want to go back to poor sound quality ever again.

I guess this comes from being a technically minded person and into stuff like this, but it mildly annoys me that the vast majority of people don't understand that it's not the same as the original if you reduce the file size and thus MP3 downloads are becoming common place and potentially becoming a replacement to CDs (not sure how true that is but I've heard it as a suggestion), to be more fair CDs too are not that true to the recorded sound, hence Super Audio CDs and DVD Audio (which some of you may never have heard of) they didn't really go down well as people probably couldn't tell the difference through their crappy speakers.

The same goes for video, but I'll not get into that.

I've been upping my bit rate in iTunes to 198KBps, not a huge increase but better than 128KBps. I guess it's not exactly mindblowingly noticeable, but it does seem a bit more of a fuller sound. If I could afford the storage space then it'd be lossless all the way though.

Anyway I think I've rambled on enough. Yes, on reflection I have.

Learn a new thing every day...

2008-01-02T00:55:00.001Z

...is something I won't be trying to do this year. however I have at least rekindled my desire to learn guitar.

I got a guitar for my birthday (or christmas, same thing really) many many years ago, back when I had properly long hair, but never really got round to learning how to play it properly (one in a long list of things I never got round to doing) but I decided to crack the old girl out of her fake leather case again after listening to some inspirational (ie. good) music and really wanting to be in a band and make music, which is more likely to happen if I can play an instrument. Now you may be thinking that this is the old want to be in a band thing that most teenage boys go through (I know I did) and that it's just a stupid idea, but I do have a desire to create music, but generally lack the skills required, so hopefully I'll manage this time round to learn how to [p]lay the geetarr and play some mad tunes.

I'll let you know how it goes.

2008, who cares?

2008-01-01T15:40:00.000Z

I'm sure some people do, but I'm not overly bothered, it's just another day really, it just happens to have accidentally fallen over into another year, it's not it's fault.

Despite this notion I still have "resolution" type things, not that I really care for them, why try doing something at the start of the new year, why not just do it?

Well I'll be attempting to moan less this year than last, I get bored of moaning about pointless stuff.

I also want to do more stuff I enjoy or have wanted to do (not specifically this year, but in general), I kinda want to create a review type site, somewhere I (and potentially friends) can review, whatever the hell they like and have it in a central place. Not sure if this will be another pipe dream thing or whether it'll happen, we'll see.

Less Rambling, Moaning and General Pointlessness This Time

2007-12-31T15:37:00.000Z

As the title suggests this will be less of the above, I can't guarantee it wont have some but who can.

I actually did some work today, yes it's 20 to 4 so I can hardly call it a days work, and I started at about half 1 (I say started, I've been listening to podcasts so there is little else my brain can do) so I really haven't done much at all. In my defence I read one of my assignment briefs and nearly cried, here is an extract:

"Your report should contain the following:

A detailed description of those aspects of audo and visual perception that are relevent to low bit-rate video and audio coding, eg. masking, this should include reasons for the phenomenon. That is, are they due to the peripheral sensory system or neural processing and why."

There are two more paragraphs of a similar ilk.

That probably makes little sense to you (unless you're into that stuff) but it also makes little sense to me, who's doing the course about this stuff.

I then proceeded to read through my notes, hampered slightly by the americans talking at me about Xbox games and stuff like that, but I still didn't quite understand what I was reading, I say quite understand, some bits literally made no sense to me and are unlikely to. So how the hell am I meant to write and essay about it?????

Anyway I'm going to press on and try not to moan too much more. I've come to the conclusion that moaning is really a completely useless exercise and achieves nothing where as getting on with it achieves much more.

Melancholy and the Infinate Sadness

2007-12-30T02:12:00.000Z

You may be wondering why I've stolen a Smashing Pumpkins album title and spelt it properly... or not.

Well firstly this is mostly how I feel and secondly it's because I wanted to be trendy.

Oh by the way you probably don't want to read this, it's almost entirely me moaning about why I'm such an idiot, I require no sympathy as it is undeserved and this is almost purely so that I can vent my annoyances to something other than nothing. If you want the gist of it click here.

It's the 30th of December. My birthday, Christmas and almost a whole year has passed, so now I have little to look forward to until next Christmas. Although I will finish uni soon which will amuse me greatly. However this then throws up some other problems, such as what the hell will I do when I finish uni???!?!?!??!?

Get a job seems like the thing to do, but where? London would be nice, but I need to secure a job and then somewhere to live before I can safely move down there. I also need to find something I'll be qualified for and hopefully enjoy, yeah I know it's a weird notion getting a job you actually enjoy, but to be honest if I don't then I wont want to do it so probably get fired for being crap at my job, which would then land me straight back where I started.

However before any of this can really be thought upon I need to finish my first terms work, which I still have mountains of and only 2 weeks left to do it, all my previous notions of doing it the week before christmas went straight out the window, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth and the old stressed out feeling that I get when I have too much to do and very little time to do it. I think I'm going to have to unplug my Xbox so I get some work done. This all has the similar feeling to a previous post which also references two weeks and looming deadlines, so all very deja vu really, suggesting I don't learn, which seems to be true. This however leads onto a more pressing matter, will I always be like this?

I really hope not, but the history tells a different tale. I never really bothered with "homework" in primary school (but that didn't matter), I never bothered with working through GCSEs (but did OK, and again doesn't matter), I never bothered with working through A-Levels (and did crap, it's starting to matter now), I didn't put too much effort into my work when I was in Clitheroe (supposedly doing a job I enjoyed), I left everything last minute with work during my HND (a course that suited my interests well) meaning I did pretty well, but not as good as I could have done if I'd put in the effort (which is pretty important), and so far I have done the bare minimum when doing work for my BSc (which is the most important thing to date) so far this way of working is proving to be slightly detrimental, which will most likely mean I wont get a high grade degree, which I would like. So does this now mean that I will go into a job and still perform as crap as ever, even if I like the job? Now if you think, well you'll change, let me tell you a thing or two about my ability to change, I rarely do it and if I do it's something relatively pointless. I stopped biting my nails a number of years ago, well done, but I still chew the skin around the nails occasionally, vulgar I know but true, meaning I've not entirely changed. I tried to get myself fitter recently, by doing Parkour, which I enjoy, but I sometimes really can't be bothered with it, I try to go for jogs every now and then, but mostly I just can't be bothered, I've tried to learn instruments before and I never really put my all into it so now all I can do is play a few chords on a guitar and I've no idea how to play the Oboe any more. I seem to be one of these people who tries things that he'd like to be able to do, but when I find that I'm not good at it straight away (so pretty much everything) I can't be bothered trying, possibly because of the fear of failure even if I do try, but that's a ridiculous idea.

To continue this sickening tale click here

Please don't scroll down, you'll ruin the fun of it and you'll feel empty inside.

I'M A DICK!

On an even more worrying note, well it is for me, my Christian life is utter crap, I'm not saying I don't believe it any more, I still very much do, but I rarely act like I do, I rarely pray, I rarely read my bible, I rarely enter into discussions about it, with either Christians or Non-Christians, and when I do I can't say too much as I don't know enough, because I don't read my bible, so don't really know what God thinks about whatever is the topic of conversation. If there is anything in my life which I want to change it is this, but it seems like the hardest of them all, and if I crack this, I can crack the rest. But I don't really think being a Christian is to be cracked, it's not a little switch that you flick and then you're the perfect Christian, far from it, but I'd still like to make some progress, so I can feel like I'm not just a worthless lump of meat sat on a chopping board waiting to be hacked in half and thrown to some dog so that he can have something else to moan about (me not the dog).

This is the whole problem (so you know the last few sentences have been peppered with swear words (well swear word) in my head, but I have not typed them in an attempt to maintain my decorum, and a PG rating on this blog)... I shall repeat myself so you don't have to re-read the start of this sentence:
This is the whole problem, I don't ever want to do anything about my "problems", if you want to call them that, not having a limb is a problem, not being about to pay rent for the 3rd month running is a problem, living on the streets is a problem, not being able to feed your family is a problem, I have non of these real problems, what I have is slightly bothersome quibbles with my current state, anyway all I want to do about these lightly bothersome quibbles is moan about them, when really I should do something about them (which is the place I get to every time I get like this, but not really change much). Which I guess leads me back to my previous quibble, I can't seem to change my attitude towards these quibbles. If you have kept with me to this point I salute you... with the stupid stick, I'm truly amazed anyone could be bothered reading this self indulged drivel for more than a few minutes without wanting to beat me senseless. However I'm sure I can go on longer.

I think that the basic point is I'm a complete idiot who refuses through sheer stubbornness and ignorance to chance his attitude towards things that are difficult that I get all worked up and eventually I'll explode in a giant ball of idiocy and take out half of England when I go.

For an even more basic idea click here

The End

Happy Christmas and all that

2007-12-24T23:26:00.001Z

I thought I'd post a quick err... thing (it being half eleven on this the eve of Christmas, oh how sad I am), saying Happy Christmas to everyone who happens to read this. Thanks for allowing me to waste some of your time :D

All my scroogian like comments aside I do hope you all have a wonderful time and a great new year.

And yes I will no doubt be on my computer or watching TV or playing on my 360 or some other non human interactive thing when the clock strikes 12. I did try to see if anyone wanted to do anything but heard nothing, sniff. Oh well.

Enjoy merriment etc.

A Step by Step Guide to...

2007-12-21T13:36:00.002Z

...Minor Surgery...

...on an Action Man!

That's right ladies and gentlemen I recently performed surgery on an Action Man from the early 90s (I think), Stalker.

As I was a sensible child and played with my action figures instead of keep them in their original boxes so that in years to come they'd be worth something I managed to break both of his legs (one at the knee and the other at the ankle). I'd considered fixing the ankle before, but last night was my first attempt to fix his ankle and today was the concluding part. I decided to ignore the brake at the knee as I thought it would be difficult to achieve without mutilating my Action Man

Last nights shinanigans consisted of pulling the broken bit of the ankle out the bottom of his foot, a delicate process involving needle nosed pliers and the already existing hole in the bottom of his foot (I assume left from the moulding process or something like that).
This enabled me to concoct a plan involving a small drill and a paper clip, which fell at the first hurdle as the drill bit was too short. I then tried gluing two bits from the paper clip to the side of the ankle "bone" and shoving it in, which also didn't work. I finally tried just plain super glue, which also failed misserably.

Bed time ensued.

Finally the day of reckoning was upon me (and Stalker) and I decided to do things properly and because of this I shall now take you step by step through the process (with pictures).

I advice you to think of this process like you would if it where a real person, that way everything seems a bit more disgusting :D

Tools Required:

1 x Broken Action Man
1 x Weird Bulldog Clip
1 x Drill with small(ish) drill bit (about the same thickness as bulldog clip arms)
1 x Hacksaw
1 x Needle Nose Pliers
1 x Clippers
1 x Mole Grips
1 x Metal File
1 x Super Glue
1 x Place to work where your mum wont shout at you too much

Sorry about the blurry picture, camera phone's suck and for some reason it was focusing about a inch in front of the lens. Useless piece of crap. (oh no wait, operator error, I was using it on macro focus, stupid boy)

Step One:

Separate the broken section from your Action Man.

The best way is to pull back the toes of the foot toward the ankle to expose "bone", then, using needle nose pliers, grab the "bone" and pull out from foot.

Step Two:

Play around with ankle-less leg for a bit and imagine it's a real persons ankle, think Harry Potter the 2nd! Hours of fun.

Step Three:

Using the drill make a whole through the broken section as straight as possible, I went for the slightly off centre approach.

(I forgot to take a picture of this)

Step Four:

Replace leg fragment back inside the leg. Position Action Man firmly on surface and raise leg in air so that the bottom of the foot can be drilled into further. Continue drilling hole further into the main section of the leg so that you have a hole that goes through both sections of the leg and stops before coming out of anywhere it shouldn't. This is a good place to test if leg is likely to be rigid when pin is in place, just be careful (see Step five)

(again no picture)

Step Five (Entirely Optional):

Snap drill bit off inside leg while trying to pull out rendering any attempt to put your Action Man back into active service almost impossible. At this point it's a good idea to quash any thoughts of becoming a real surgeon.

(If this step wasn't done skip to step 8)

(By this point things where going a little wrong so I forgot to take pictures of the process, sorry)

Step Six:

After ferreting around inside foot fruitlessly trying to get hold of the broken section of drill bit, come to the conclusion that there is only one option left.
Take the scalpel and cut leg at point where break occurs (taking a moment to realise how similar to cutting real skin this seems, except for no blood)

Step Seven:

Pull back bottom section of leg to reveal the end of the drill bit and remove with the ever useful needle nose pliers. Realise that you have probably now destroyed all chances that this ACtion Man could ever become a collectors item.

Step Eight:

Using a hacksaw cut a section out of weird bulldog clip, it's advisable to use a sharp hacksaw as a blunt one will be almost useless and result in resorting to using the clippers to cut through the thick metal (which isn't much fun).
Using the metal file smooth of the edges of the pin so that it fits nicely in the hole. Cut the pin to the right length for the hole drilled.

Step Nine:

Glue the pin into the ankle section ensuring that the right length for the hole within the rest of the leg to ensure a good connection. Allow to dry.
Put more glue on the section to go inside the leg and re-insert leg piece into leg and push together firmly.

(Alternatively if you had to cut the Action Man's leg open, simply fill the two holes with super glue and push the pin into place)

Step Ten:

Leave to dry in a comical pose.
I chose the leg in the air holding a pine cone pose, not sure why.
Reminded me of that weird gymnastics thing with the ball and the flailing around.

Step Eleven: (Depending on whether step five was carried out or not this may be required)

When dry, glue laceration to leg back together just like they do with real leg lacerations (well maybe not if things are to scale). Clean up as much of the glue as possible before it dries too much. A finger is a good tool but be quick as you can glue yourself to your Action Man, which is never fun. You'll also end up with crusty fingers.

The Result:

Once dried your Action Man should be ready for action and to fight along side his comrades.

Now you may be thinking that I have somehow managed to purchase an Osama Bin Laden Action Man, this isn't the case. I converted my Stalker Action Man into Action Joseph a few years ago for an Alternative Nativity. He made an appearance last Christmas sat under our Christmas tree and I found him again this year in the Christmas decorations box.

The other Action Man is Snake-Eyes Commando. I only ever had two of the four that where out at that time and I kinda wish I had them all. Ebay may be getting a visit from me after Christmas :D

As a final thought, considering I was forced to cut open my Action Man's leg I may do another sergery on his knee in an atempt to fix that too, can you tell I'm a fix it person, but I think I'll let him recover somewhat from his first operation before I do the next. Action Men are people too after all.

This made me laugh

2007-12-21T00:32:00.000Z

Lame but funny.

CLICK LINK, READ COMIC THEN READ THE REST OF THIS POST

Although I'm sure Thyme is more of a herb than a spice.

What's green and ethical?

2007-12-16T16:07:00.000Z

This site

You just don't get jokes of that calibre these days (thank goodness).

I've only recently discovered this site, through TV.com which is a marginally strange place to find stuff like that, but smartplanet seems like a good way to find out about ways of being more green and ethical, I personally have it as an RSS feed of Firefox, which I've come love as it means you don't have to go to a specific site to see if any new stuff has appeared (especially useful with blogs).

As Promised

2007-12-12T16:55:00.000Z

Here are a couple of images I've found. This was done a while ago.

Sorry for the poor quality, phone camera picture of pencil images, never a good idea.

Narcissism

2007-12-12T13:24:00.000Z

I've been perusing the various images of me on facebook and decided that in a good number of them (including when I have long hair) I don't look as horrendous as I think I do, maybe I'm just a sexy beast, I doubt it somehow.

If anyone else thinks I'm sexy let me know, we can get psychiatric help together.

I feel duped

2007-12-12T12:00:00.001Z

*sniff

Is it Classifiable as Greedy to Have Two Blogs?

2007-12-11T22:07:00.000Z

I've recently been added to the list of collaborators on another blog (which was mildly due to my asking :D, I'm not that sort after) so I shall be spreading my blogging between these two err.. blogs over the next however long I can be bothered blogging, which may be a long time, who really knows, or, indeed, cares. (I hope I've got all my punctuation in the right place, I somehow doubt it.)

Postulating Posture

2007-12-10T16:30:00.000Z

The pain I am currently suffering is directly related to my lack of good posture.

Well at least now my title makes sense.

I am currently suffering from relatively acute pain in my back, below my right shoulder, which I am attributing to my general lack of good posture but also the lack of a decent chair for my computer which supports my back properly.

I find it mildly ironic that when I have an imminent deadline and finally get down to doing work I am relatively unable to due to pain brought on by the work itself. Being sat in one position for a extended period of time can, and has in this case, resulted in strain to my back (and possibly neck as I was informed recently that the area under my shoulder is where it connects to my neck).
This seems different to the normal way one uses a computer, but I'm not entirely sure how. I guess that when casually using a computer you move around more, or even feel that you are able to stop whenever you like instead of forcing yourself to continue. I'm going to stop for a bit as I'm struggling to type...

...Anyway I've kind of lost track of what I was trying to say, so basically, I really need to be doing work, but I'm unable to, whereas previously I was just unwilling.

DAMN!

Andy Tries to be Trendy

2007-12-07T00:10:00.000Z

In a vague attempt to be trendy and have more influence (well maybe not) in the internet world, I'm going to start doodling and posting it either here or on www.andywotherspoon.co.uk, when it's an actual site and not just a holding page.

I wish I had something to put up to be the start of this new fad but I don't, well I'll have a quick rummage in my box of stuff...

Nope, sorry. I'll try to put something up tomorrow as I've got a fun task from www.bearskinrug.co.uk (which means he's probably English, wow) which will be a fun test of my creative stuffs.

I've always been vaguely arty, which helps when you have aspirations of being a graphic/web designer, but I seem to fall short when it comes to being truly innovative with my designs and I think some practise into drawing and such stuff would be really good.

I've also always wanted to be good at drawing, but never really managed it, annoyingly my brother is really good at doodling, scarily good. I'm pretty good with a paint brush, but mostly art farty stuffs and not realistic, but hey that's all part of having a style and all that. I also love mucking about with clay, but don't get to do it any where near often enough, the last time was about 3 years ago, but I made a cool orcish head (not full size) not sure if I have any pictures anywhere.

Anyway time for bed. Goodnight

Christmas - A Christian Holiday?

2007-12-05T15:04:00.000Z

I've been thinking a while that Christmas is a bit of a farce when it comes to the whole Christian holiday thing. By the way this is all from a Christian viewpoint so forgive any jargon that may exist or anything like that

Firstly it has been so overcome by secular ideas, giving and (more importantly it seems) receiving gifts, Santa (and all his Coca-Cola fuelled merriment), pretty lights (which I do like), over indulging (food, drink and money wise), carol singing (mostly by chavs) etc. etc. and it seems that the shops see it as a time to cash in on the whole thing and make a killing, and very little to do with Christ, which most people believe to be just another man, so why do they celebrate his birth?

Secondly (which is linked in a way to the first point) it's position in the calendar year is that of masking an old pagan festival, which involved "raucous parties, gluttonous eating and drinking and present giving" (which has a similar feel to today's version).
Now I guess this is a clever way of covering up a non-Christian festival (give it a Christian ideal, pat it on the bum and tell it to keep on going), but it doesn't seemed to have changed much.

There is always the thought that if we keep saying "Christmas is about JESUS, hence CHRISTmas" eventually the general public will get it, however I think that it would be pretty interesting (and maybe a little cool) for us Christians to say "OK, you have your "Christmas", although you're going to have to change it's name. We'll have our own celebration (Possibly in September, when Jesus was supposedly born, according to some sources) but you're only allowed to join in if you believe he died for you." I reckon there'd be some questioning as to why this was happening and what those crazy Christians where up to.

Thirdly I think Easter should be made into more of a big deal, I feel it's more of a crux (I was informed of a clever pun I'd made here) to the whole Christian thing, without it Jesus would have been just another man.

I do however enjoy going home to see my family and friends at Christmas, the warm feeling that you get around Christmas which is the inverse of the weather, the smells which are associated with Christmas, however these have little to do with Christmas and more to do with winter.

Thoughts of a Dying Procrastanist

2007-12-04T17:47:00.001Z

Procrastinist isn't actually a word, but it makes for an interesting title.

Seeing I'm in the last two weeks of the first term of my BSc course, I'm finally getting round to doing some work. This is now the 5th time I've been in a similar situation (ie. every term since I've been at uni) and frankly I'm tired of it. I feel deja vu creeping upon me from every angle yet I still think that this wont be the last time I feel like this, despite my constant promises to myself that "this time I'll do the work when I get it" it hasn't happened and now I'm suffering for it.

I lie in bed at night forcing myself not to think about the work I have left to do before the end of term so that I don't get all stressed out and have a crap night, again. I get myself all stressed out which makes everything worse because I then focus on how much I have to do in so little time and not on what I actually have to do.

I'm not writing this for sympathy, I far from deserve it as it's my own stupid fault. It's more as a way of venting some of my frustration at myself.

With luck I'll be able to write another post in a couple of weeks saying "I got everything in on time and to a reasonable standard" but that's not a definate.

The problem is that this is how my educational career has been since the dawn of my existence, homework was generally not done, but I could suffer the wrath of my teachers reasonably well, whereas university has a different feel, -10% to be precise, -20% if it's more than a week late and 0 marks if it's more than two. This has made me at least get the work in on time consistently (apart form one occasion, but I blame computers for that!) However I still get a sense that if I really applied myself I would get better marks, if I spent more time researching things I'd get a better understanding of the subject, if I spend more time doing the work I'd enjoy the course so much more, yet I don't bother most of the time, possibly due to a weird idea that if I truly apply myself but still don't do well then it's just a case of me being stupid (but I generally get decent marks so what am I worrying about?) or maybe I'm just plain lazy, which fits quite well, I'd prefer to do nothing than something half the time. My main worry is that this mentality will carry on throughout the rest of my life meaning that I'll never really make anything of myself and be one of those people who never really progresses in their career but just stays at a mediocre level. I guess that it's all up to me, if I really want to make something of myself then I'll get sorted and push myself to do what's required even if it's not exactly fun instead of hoping it'll go away if I ignore it for long enough.

Well anyway this is probably a good point to stop and go get something to eat (or at least drink, I have the hiccups).

By the way I'm not dying, It's similar to the title of a muse track, thoughts of a dying atheist, luckily I don't have that problem :D

Things and stuff...

2007-12-01T14:21:00.000Z

Intro
Well Its a Saturday and I'm sat in front of my computer (I wonder if that's why it's called Sat-urday, probably not). So what better thing to do than post on my blog, wooo, that is probably read about once a month, by me.

Blogs
I noticed that other peoples blogs don't get commented on too much, apart from the really cool ones that offer fun stuff, which this one certainly doesn't, but those of normal people are shunned, which mildly upsets me, I like to think that people read this (and I have vague proof that they do) and care a tiny bit about what I have to say, despite most of it being misinformed ramblings which have no bearing on anything in particular, but I rarely get any comments, it makes me sad. I'll get over it though.

Comments
I have (after backtracking slightly from the next paragraph to add this bit in, to at least making this post slightly less disjointed) a slight quibble about stupid people (ie. generally American type kids) who post comments just for the sake of posting commetns.

example: what the *@#$ is this

seriously, who posts solely about being the first post, what do you want a medal or something, you have successfully spent so much time on the internet that you are the first to be there when a new tutorial (in this case) is posted. Well woop de doo, maybe next time you could think for a few seconds about whether anyone really cares that you have the first post and that if you are going to have the first post, the one everyone will instinctively read regardless of content, you should at least write something that is of value to the rest of the human population. Thus bringing me to the conclusion that having a site that is popular may not be a great thing as you will have to deal with complete morons like that.

Fun stuff
Zero Punctuation is a fantastic place for faced paced (or as I was going to put paste), butt kicking, sarcastic, intelligent, unbiased, game reviews, and after watching a couple of "episodes" (if that's what they can be called) I feel I have ingested some of the perpetrator's personality (a one Mr. Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, a fedora wearing, bearded nerd with a lot to say in a short space of time). I wish I was him so I am currently typing as though I was popular and offered cool stuff to people, which I don't.

The End
Well that's all I can be bothered with at the moment, I'll let you all (whoever you are) know when andywotherspoon.co.uk is up and running properly, as opposed to a coming soon screen, and I'll let oyu know if I survive the next couple of weeks as I have a lot of work to do in a very short space of time.

EDIT
After writing this I noticed I had a comment on my previous post, which was a nice surprise, thanks Pete, it also made this seem rather contradictory to the comment, oh well, I never said that this blog would be consistent.

Another useless point, this blog has been helping my English and spelling, I have Firefox checking my spelling and it underlines any misspelt words, which I usually chose to try correcting myself and then if I can't spell it use the suggestions.

Alternate Ways of Life

2007-11-25T23:13:00.000Z

I've been thinking a little into what I do in my life and how I do it. Mostly not a great deal and as vaguely as possible, but there are a few things I believe in, besides God, that I think others should be at least aware of. I'll admit that I don't keep to this as strictly as I should, however there are limiting factors (mostly lame ones) such as money, transport, availability, etc. but I still fervently believe that these things are good and by trying to do these things I will eventually get to a point where I am doing as much as possible. You have to start somewhere I guess, so I encourage you to try to do some, if not all, of the following when possible.

These things (in no particular order) are:

Buying fair trade goods (food, clothing, elephants)
Buying local produce (vegetable, soil, mules)
Recycling (glass, tins, paper, children)
Animal Rights (animals, children)
Conserving resources (turning off lights, saving water, having cold showers (I jest))

I'll go into a little more detail, about how and why:

Buying Fair Trade

This is relatively easy to do but does come at a bit of a price. Usually fair trade goods are a bit more expensive than your average good, as the producers are getting paid more so the company distributing it adds it's profit margin stuff on top of that, but to be honest it's worth it.
Most companies treat there workers horrendously, under paying them (like a few pence a day for very hard work) treating them badly (beatings etc.) employing kids (very cheap), so that their ultimate goal of a large profit can be realised in an expensive product with very low production costs.
Unsurprisingly fair trade removes this and allows products to be created by workers receiving a good wage and pleasant working environment and generally they are of a high quality (sometimes much higher than high street stuff).
So maybe not good on the wallet, but good on the conscience, but then not eating loads of chocolate all the time and buying a nice bar of fair trade chocolate every now and then is a good thing, also kinda applies to clothing.

Buying Local Produce

Simply to support farmers who do a good job providing fresh fruit and veg for us to eat (5 a day people) who are being shunned by supermarkets for larger providers who can ship there produce all over the country cheaply, so farmers markets (or even stuff in supermarkets from local farmers) are a good way of getting their, generally superior produce.

Recycling

This is just good common sense. If we all throw less stuff into landfills and recycle more stuff then there'll be less rubbish in big piles all over the world and also less resources being wasted, such as power, trees and other such things.
Recycling is hardly that much of an effort (especially if you council offers good services) and results in a lot of good stuff. Saving the earth one bottle at a time.

Animal Rights

I've always kinda liked animals and not really wished them much harm, except that dog that bit my arse so many years ago (I jest, I probably deserved it).
However only recently was I turned onto the fact that animals are very poorly treated before they make it to our tables. It may not seem like too much of an issue, but it's pretty unpleasant to be kept in a cage and stand in a pile of your own, and others, crap for days on end until your feed start to dissolve and when you are finally removed you're so stuck in that your legs are ripped from their sockets when you're extricated from your cage. That's one example I've heard about chickens. There also such fun things as being boiled alive (as you weren't killed before hand by the buzz saw meant to slit your throat) to loosen your feathers so you can be more easily plucked. Or just simply not allowed to run around outside but shut in sheds for your entire life, fed food made to enhance your meatiness through chemicals.
Well anyway I think it's important, so buying well looked after meat (look for the red tractor, or organic stuff I believe) can't be a bad thing. It also means it'll have less crap in it from chemical enhancement.

Conserving Resources

A good mix of economics and environmentalism here, by saving water, electricity and gas you save money but also you save the environment a little. This can also apply to walking instead of getting a lift places (or driving yourself if you're lucky enough) same with getting a bus or train places.
Electricity obviously causes waste like carbon monoxide and such things (we still rely of fossil fuels for the majority of our power) so turning off lights when they're not needed, turning off computers fully (and at the wall) when not being used, unplugging phone chargers (and any other transformers, that is any plug that's massive) when not need, all help to save electricity. Having a shower instead of a bath, sticking a brick in the toilet to reduce the amount of water per flush, both saves water and the various processing that goes with that to clean our sewage. Public transport, although infuriating, is better to use than driving yourself everywhere, car pooling also helps reduce emissions per person. The main problem with public transport is it's reliability which is a problem when being on time is a major factor in your travelling needs, however the less people that use it, the less money it makes, the less it runs efficiently, thus the less people want to use it. A nice vicious cycle there. So the more people who put up with it, the more money it will make, the more it'll run on time etc. thus the more people will want to use it. a friendly cycle.
Maybe a bit utopian but hey it could happen.

Well that's it as far as I can remember, I may add more if I think of them, but in my opinion doing these things helps me to be a bit more of an active citizen trying to do my bit to help with problems with our society. I know I could do these things better and I'm going to try to be more zealous about these and try to get others to do the same so that the world becomes a little bit nicer to live in whilst we're here.

I guess it does help that I'm a Christian when it comes to caring about these things and believing that God created the world, therefore I should respect it, but that doesn't stop other people from thinking the same way as me so I don't think I'm a raving loony.

"hacking"

2007-11-21T17:10:00.000Z

I've taken my first step into the realms of hacking, well what I would consider hacking.

The general story:

Recently decided to leave sky as they where expensive and a crap service provider (for broadband) and decided to go with talktalk, as they where cheap.
So today everything changed over to talktalk resulting in the router we got from sky (bastardised to only allow sky users to use it) not being able to get a connection to the internet. The idea being talktalk sends us their router first, then hook us up, not likely, this is an English company we're talking about.

So I ring talktalk to enquire and they inform me that a backlog in orders means we wont be able to get one till the 28th, cleverly 7 days after our live day. nice work talktalk. However the guy did say, ring our tech support and they'll try to get you connected though your old router.

Hurrah I think, ring them up, get some various details about DNS and other such lovely things and start fiddling with the router config file. A few minutes later I decide that this isn't working and decide a firmware update, to return it to normal netgear router stuffs is in order.

The first roadblock is the slight problem that I don't have the internet at the moment, so downloading is a problem, however one of our neighbours (a pretty close one if the wireless strength is anything to go by) has an unsecured network, which is their loss! So I steal their internet for a bit and proceed to download the required firmware.

Back in router land (with much flipping from network to network going on) I attempt to update it. "ERROR!!! wrong firmware", say the router "Eh? No it isn't!" I reply. So I do some more internet searching and come across a nice tutorial on flashing your sky routers firmware, much fun to be had.

Once more I jumped onto my neighbours connection to download a recovery program from Netgear (I like the irony that you have to recover your router after sky have essentially killed it, if that can be called irony). All went well, apart from forgetting to enable my LAN connection so that I could use a cable instead of wireless, and I finally managed to get a full access interface for the router, meaning I could then input all the info from talktalk to allow me to connect to the internet through our sky router.

Well considering you're reading this, meaning I've posted it via the internet, you can safely assume that I got it all working and have a lovely fast (well faster than sky usually was) internet connection, and this, for an change, is correct. No twists at the end, no funny anecdote about how the mice chewed through the cable meaning we have no phone line or anything like that.

So far, so good.

The only problem really is that I now have to pay for a new router, a whole £20, so that I can connect to the internet, which I'm already doing. I may ring to try and cancel it.

procrastination and coffee

2007-11-20T12:54:00.000Z

well as the title suggests I am officially procrastinating, having woken at around 11 (which I hate doing now, but am struggling to wake any earlier of late) and going for a shower, surfing the net, having breakfast, drinking coffee, surfing some more, drinking some more, reading a blog (this one to be exact) and then writing on my own blog, I have done absolutely NO work! "crap salad" is about all I can say!

I have a meeting with my project supervisor today to discuss my dissertation and it's progress (or lack of) and I'm going to have to convince him instead of doing bog all this week I've been productive and thought for more than a few seconds about what I want to be doing with the whole project thing. Essentially I need to do research (which I hate, as previously suggested) and find out various things about web 2.0 then various things about how various 2.0 services are used by people and then how this relates from a technical stand point (ie. how I do it and what make is difficult etc.), a vague description I know!

So with luck when I've finished this post, have a think about stuff like that, then go meet my supervisor, blag my way through the meeting then return home to do nothing else and go out parkour training.

On the topic of coffee, I seem to lack the skill to make consistently nice tasting coffee, especially when a large vessel is concerned, some times it's fine, others too sugary, others too coffeey, I just don't get it.

For those who care I've been recently dabbling in xhtml and php, which is all quite fun. xhtml (1.0) is a great invention, it's basically html but with the crazy anal button pressed, resulting in a really nice strict language that requires you to be consistent with you coding. I've always tried to code website I make in a ordered way, normally using capitals to denote a tag ie.

for a div tag, but xhtml demands lowercase, I assume this is for futurity (no idea what futurity really means but it's what the dictionary wants to use over futureness) as DIV and div are defined as different things, as is DiV, dIv and i assume all other variations of capitals, meaning that if they decided that they want a new tag that relates to DIVersions or something obscure like that, then they can use it and confuse all the silly amateur coders out there :D. Now saying that I am by no means a professional and i'm sure a real professional would laugh at my puny coding "skills" but still I do have a vague understanding of web standards and stuff like that. Continuing with xhtml, it's essentially a clever way of future proofing your coding (as long as you use the strict profile and not transitional or frameset (not sure what frameset does really, probably allows frames - bleurck!), meaning that if browsers decide to drop older versions of html or the whole thing then your sites will still exist. This is unlikely to happen for a while as browsers like to allow sloppy coding, but what's the point of not using xhtml when it's a good idea to make all your code pretty. The only vague silliness I've noticed so far is that it's removed the target attribute from the "a" tag meaning that when you click on a link it opens in the same window/tab as the current page, however as I read on a css forum, although this isn't css related, but that's mentioned, the choice should be up to the user not the webmaster (sorry for not finding the specific post, too lazy to read them all) which is actually a good example of web 2.0, ie. leting the user have control over content etc. so it's not that much of a problem, personally I usually middle click links to open them in a new window, and get frustrated when they are already set to open in a pop-up resulting in a dead tab. So it's not all that much of a problem. I'm most likely going to make all my active sites (all 3 of them, well maybe more) xhtml compliant over the next few weeks or so, just to be a loser.

As a side note xhtml 1.1 appears to be an over anal version of xhtml, which takes the whole analness a little too far. So anyway my first site written in strict xhtml 1.0 exists, it's very simple but atleast it's pretty on the inside (the code that is).
www.salfordcu.co.uk/new it's not currently the live site as the exec for the cu are losers (only joking) and haven't given me permission to put it as the official site yet. But it should be soon.

Well I think i've rabbited on enough for now, procrastination is fun and annoying.

www.andywotherspoon.co.uk
for those who care, it's all called using php, which made me happy.

well that's it, if you've stuck with this post and read it all I applaud you, you truly are an idiot, but I love you for it!

laters

Thing's and Stuff.

2007-11-18T00:49:00.001Z

Blogity Blogity Blog.

I'm just letting my brain ramble now, hence the title and opening "sentence".

Firstly - www.andywotherspoon.co.uk - not much there at the moment, but there will be eventually. This'll be the home for general experimenting with PHP and also showcasing the various works of andy.

Secondly - Assassin's Creed - AWESOME!! yes it is!

Thirdly - I don't have a thirdly!

Well that's enough of that

Research Hurts My Brain

2007-10-30T12:08:00.000Z

I'm not a natural worker, that is to say I'd prefer to sit on my arse all day playing games and watching TV than do anything overly productive. However when I get down to it it's not all that bad. I've started researching Web 2.0, which ironically blogging come under, and although it hurts my brain reading so much and trying to understand what it's saying, I've learned some good stuff that, hopefully, will enable me to produce a good report at the end of the year and a good web 2.0 demonstration site.

Admittedly I'm not doing fantastic as I've been taking time out to procrastinate relatively frequently, ie. right now, but it's a good tart non the less.

The aim is to get a good understanding of what Web 2.0 is, this phrase that gets banded around and appears to not have much meaning, but actually means a great deal for those of us who use the internet frequently. It appears that Web 2.0 comes down to user participation, and various other aspects, but this seems to be the major factor. Without users a website is completely pointless, if no one reads it what's the point of it's existence? Going further though, without users contributing to a site it is nothing more that the views of a select few, which products are the best, what music is good, what constitutes as Parkour, a active topic if ever there was one. A site that isn't ever changing and ever improving is worthless, it's looked at a few times then discarded like a newspaper, a clever analogy if ever there was one, who's ever heard of keeping a newspaper for more than a few days, just in case the headline changes to reflect today's news, a technology which I believe is in development however. With luck I'll be able to create a site that harnesses the power of the user well and is able to reflect what is really wanted by those who use it and with even more luck it'll thrive and I'll be ale to make some form of living off it, but this may be just a pipe dream. I do hope that I can create a way for users to collaborate with each other to create a vibrant community that people love being part of, but who knows.

Anyway enough procrastination.

A Little Bit of Maturity

2007-10-21T22:28:00.000+01:00

just posted a huge section on northernparkour about competition in parkour

northerparkour.com forum

mostly nothing to do with it to be honest, but more on the general way people react to things on the forum etc. Which was fun, but also kinda tiring, as i was really trying to think about how to best put it so that i both wasn't talking complete rubbish, but also not attacking any one person or making anyone feel attacked, which i hope i achieved. I didn't want to write something that was arrogant or annoyed anyone, but made them think about how they respond to people and treat them.

It did get me thinking about how i tend to jump on the proverbial band wagon at times without really thinking about how i think about it, and ultimately how God thinks about it, as I should be doing constantly as a Christian to ensure i'm not living a completely non Christian lifestyle or being hypocritical. I really admired the way Dave Sedgely dealt with the conflict arising, not getting on a high horse or being offensive, but being logical and respectful, something JC did and I should do too. So hopefully that post was a good thing (i shall know soon enough) and hopefully it was eloquent and respectful and hopefully i can continue to be like this and subdue the urge to be condescending or rude.

the end

Things what have happened

2007-09-20T21:15:00.000+01:00

-finished working at airplay (hurrah)
-went to london to see mates (hurrah, but spend £150)
-spent time in liverpool (err.. meh)
-completed bioshock (hurrah and playing again until halo 3 arrives)
-went back to salford for a day and broke something i wish i hadn't (crap)
-bought replacement thing from america where shipping was more than the object (grr but oh well)
-got bored, wrote here (errr.... idiot)

mistakes of the spelling variety

2007-08-22T11:18:00.000+01:00

I've noticed that I keep making spelling mistakes in this blog, show's how much I care really doesn't it.

The Sky is Falling

2007-08-14T09:10:00.005+01:00

I missed Parkour training on Saturday, which to be honest was a bit of a blessing as I did enjoy a nice quiet weekend, due to a strange occurrence involving an 18 foot house (or there abouts), some cast iron draining and gravity.

In short the cast iron draining that runs along the front of our house decided to fall off at about 10 am on Saturday resulting in a horrendous noise, some broken roof tiles and some laughing at the crapness of our house.

It certainly made for an eventful day, if not a rather weird one.

EDIT: NOW WITH PICTURES :D

What met me as I opened the door.

And from the other angle.

The strange white rectangle (with red bit in middle) is where our burglar alarm used to be, it now functions as a handy door stop :D

It also took out our sky dish, the bastard.

Finally a look at the whole scene, notice the damage to the overhanging room above the door. Incidentally, I live the in room with the big bay window on the right.

Sheffield's Cliffhanger Event

2007-07-15T22:09:00.000+01:00

Ahh much fun was had at the Cliffhanger Event in Sheffield. I never knew you could do so much with some scaffolding, a 4x4 and a couple of hay bails, but we did and my muscles hate me for it. Incidentally 4x4 appears to be in the dictionary on my comp as it's not coming up as spelling mistake. Anyway it was good meeting some of the Sheffield traceurs and hope to see them again sometime soon.

6am is my friend, oh no wait it wan'ts me to die!

2007-07-03T06:25:00.000+01:00

I've been waking up at 6 for the past week and a bit and it's not overly fun. It's now half 6 and i need to get a shower so I can leave by about 7 to get a train to get to cheadle so I can get to work for half 8, grrr.

but hey it's in the right area, video production, and it's mostly fun and Paul from Northern Parkour helped get me the job so it's all good.

Anyway i smell so need to shower!

Back to noramlity, kind of

2007-06-12T14:55:00.001+01:00

The toilet is fixed and the leak is gone, hurrah.
The lack or normality comes from having a fourth person in the house for the next few weeks. Should be fun

Why can't things just work

2007-06-09T00:15:00.000+01:00

It all started with our toilet descending into a state of brokenness. I eventually got round to ringing the maintenance guy to get a plumber out to fix it. Which he did, and it was nice. However Owen, my housemate, noticed at around 6 this evening (over 12 hours after the toilet fixing) that the lounge floor was soaked in the corner. He suggested that the toilet may not be properly fixed, as our bathroom enjoys leaking into our lounge on occasions, but I was unsure. It turned out to be the stop cock in the corner which the plumber closed so he could work on the toilet, the clever man (that's not sarcasm by the way), however due to a horrendous botch, involving plastic bags and what appears to be some sort of tangled rootsor something like that which really belong outside, it decided to drip on the floor for those 12 odd hours, with no way to stop it as it's the bit before the stop cock. Obviously not the plumbers fault, but I really do want to find the person who did the work on the stop cock so I can punch them right in the face.
ARGH!!!!! why is this house so crap???

Get fit quick

2007-06-04T00:44:00.001+01:00

This isn't a way to do so but more of wish. It'd be great if I could just do a couple of sit ups and push ups etc. then go for a quick jog and be set for life, able to run marathons without breaking a sweat and have all the strength needed to do whatever I wanted to, but this obviously isn't the case.

I've just got back from a relatively short jog (about 25 mins, with a few quick breaks) which made me sweat loads, get pretty outta breath and also made me hungry (which is annoying as it's not great to eat at 10 to 1 in the morning). I also did a couple of different push ups and sit up type things, which also hurt. And I know that this is no where near enough to get me fit and healthy. I'm going to have to keep it up (which is always an issue with me, one I hope to solve), ensure I eat properly (something else I'm not great at) and take things at a sensible pace, no point trying to run before I can jog (clever evolution of an old saying). My biggest fear is injuring myself pretty seriously (again) and having to stop doing parkour for another few months. So i'm taking it relatively easy (although I do get a little carried away when out doing parkour) and trying to ensure I keep my muscles in check so that they're not being put under unneccessary strain.

I also wish there where more parkour sessions in manchester too, I kinda get withdrawral symptoms and I'm not 100% confident to do stuff on my own, I like the comfort of some people around to laugh at me as they take me to hospital if I fall on my face.

"Parkour" and Parkour

2007-06-02T23:24:00.000+01:00

Well we went to the contact theatre to join in with the "parkour" workshop they put on, which was more like a health and safety nightmare that a workshop, but hey it had nothing to do with Norhern Parkour so it was all good. We left at the lunch break and then went to do some real parkour in the fabulous midday sun, and all got sunburnt, which is always fun. It was a really positive session however, I learnt some new stuff and just generally had fun with the rest of the guys, until I split my pants. They weren't my normal pants to parkour in so it's not a big deal and I had to go get changed for a job interview at HMV anyway so it worked out ok, but it did mean I had to sit there for about an hour watching the other guys as I didn't want to wreck my jeans. Next time I'll not wash my pants the night before Parkour

Who's Good?

2007-06-01T10:49:00.000+01:00

Who's Good being firstly a paraphrased quote form the bible but also the title of the art exhibition I'm helping out with. I finished the DVD of the talks at some stupid time last night, which is mostly due to my computer being pretty old and slow so takes ages to render anything, especially a 5 minute bit of footage consisting of a single image with a countdown which took 45 minutes to render and is over 8 Gb in size. Sorry for anyone who didn't understand that (if anyone actually reads this rubbish).

NP swift tee-shirt delivery service

2007-06-01T10:47:00.000+01:00

Is what it should really be called. Got the tee-shirts through the door today, looking fantastic, but need to shower before I put one on, don't want to sweaty them up too quickly.

NPT

2007-05-31T18:52:00.000+01:00

That's Norther Parkour Tee-shirts

Well they've supposedly been posted today so I should have them tomorrow, if I'm lucky. I asked for first class, but if they don't arrive tomorrow then I'll probably have left before they arrive on Saturday so I wont be able to wear one to the workshop at the Contact Theatre, so let's hope Royal Mail do there jobs well... I'm screwed!

I also have an interview for HMV tommorow and an interview for where Paul (one of the NP guys) works on the 14th June, which means I may have a job and some money soon.

And so it begins (again)

2007-05-31T11:45:00.000+01:00

I've probably got about 5 other blogs dotted around the internet but I guess this will become my main one as I can't remember where the others are.

Well i may as well tell you what my 3 passions actually are so you don't have to work it out yourself, they are, in this order.

1. GOD - it's quite a biggen. I'm a Christian so this is pretty much top of my list.
2. Video - creation and general watching, I'll try to post some videos i've made.
3. Parkour - only just really started but I really want to dig in and do well at it.

So that's that and I guess it's time to do one of my passions and edit a bit of video for an art exhibition. It kinda works for the whole Christian thing too as it's a Christian art exhibition and i'm editing some talks together to be played on a TV, if only I could get some parkour into it it'd be awesome.