Recent Blogs by Me
05/05/2009 - New ISIS Album - Wavering Radiant
The new ISIS album, 'Wavering Radiant' is out today. I've had it on pre-order for about 3 weeks so hopefully it will be waiting for me when I get home - Amazon reckon they dispatched it a few days ago so it is looking likely - yay! :D
Anyway, those lovely ISIS chaps have made what appears to be the entire album available on their Myspace page!. How good is that! For a limited time only apparently but go and have a listen before they take it down. Personally I'm going to wait until the CD drops on my doormat before I delve in...
All we need now guys is a UK tour, hint hint...
I'll try and do a review when I've had a couple of weeks to listen to it.
04/01/2009 - Good Riddance
Well it is now a 'new' year, whatever that means. I suppose the amount of time it takes the Earth to move round the sun is reasonably constant so maybe it makes sense to count the numbers of times it does so but the whole 'New Year' thing always seems a little arbitrary to me, the way people always seem to try to turn over a new leaf at this arbitrary point in every year. Anyway, enough whinging, I shall now swallow my words and join everyone in wishing farewell to 2008, a year that was in all honesty, a bit of a shit.
To be fair some of it was quite good - the first 2 thirds in fact - I managed to visit Scandinavia in the summer which is something I've wanted to do for about 10 years! Things are also going well at work, but besides that I can't think of much else of mention. hmm. Now for the bad bits! Sorry, you'll have to bear with the gloomy tone for a bit!
Firstly I split up with my girlfriend of 8.5 years - farewell Sarah :( Our time together has been wonderful and I really wish it didn't have to come to this but sadly, it does. Cliche time - we are still really good friends as the split was pretty much a mutual decision. I now need to try and recover from this shock and start to look forward to my new uncertain future! Because of this I'm staying with my folks for a bit until I can get my shit together, hopefully I'll be moving to my own place soon.
Secondly I had not one but two grandparents (both on my mum's side) die within just over a week of each other. I don't want to go into too much detail on this but suffice to say it has been a massive to shock to the whole family and the timing was also pretty terrible (just a few weeks before Xmas).
On top of all this my car has been playing up like never before causing me considerable cost and hair loss. Then to top it all off, I came down quite ill a few days before Xmas! This put a real dampener on the whole Xmas period - if it wasn't already damp enough!
New Year's eve was great though! Just me and a few other peeps round at a close friend's house - Thanks Pete and Donna, it was just I needed! :)
So it is my first day back at work tomorrow after all the Xmas/New Year shenanigans and I'm hoping it will bring some sort of return to normality, whatever that is these days! On the plus side I've been utilising some of my time off over Xmas to do some recording so hopefully I'll get some new songs up on the site soon. I've got a load of ideas, I'm just having trouble creating full songs from them :) I'm also getting quite fussy over the production so I'm spending lots of time fiddling with Cubase and other things with lots of knobs to twiddle!
So from where I'm standing at the moment it is hard to see how things cannot get better in 2009 so I guess that could be construed as some sort of optimism? Maybe. Well things better improve in 2009 or I think I will have to start writing soppy indie songs again - and nobody wants that!! ;)
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14/03/2008 - Car Crime :(
The other day I returned home from work to find I'd been a victim of car crime. Well.. sort of! How 'sort of' you ask? Well, err, how do I say this? I'm a bit of a muppet if the truth be told! :)
I walked past the car and thought I saw my windscreen dustery thingy sat on the driver's seat, which is odd because the driver's seat usually contains the driver - i.e. me. The dusty thingy usually lives in the glove box. I then discover that I've left the fookin car open! It must have been like that for about 4 days. I then levelled all manner of 4-lettered criticisms at myself.
After mentally punishing myself for being a complete tool, I then had a look round the car for anything missing. The glovebox contents had been emptied all over the car but strangely nothing was missing. This is even stranger given that I keep the front off the radio in the glovebox (bit naughty I know - security through obscurity is no security at all blah blah). Moving round to the boot of the car they have clearly been in here too. They had ripped the top off my CD changer and oddly unplugged some of (but not all) the cables from the back. I guess they were trying to rip it out or something not realising it is screwed down - der! I also found a small key in the boot. This is for my petrol cap but I guess they found it in the glove box and thought it might open some magic box that I stash in the boot. Sorry lads but nay chance!
So that was more or less it. I put everything back in it's place, checked the car for damage to the body/locks/engine/electrics etc - all fine, no eveidence of tempering. However the next car down the road was not so lucky - His window was smashed in and I presume a satnav or some such had been pinched. So I guess whoever did this was just some opportunistic fucktard. He probably couldn't believe his luck when he found my car unlocked!
Well it just goes to show how safe you car can be with a decent imobiliser and nothing of value left in it. Although I would actually recommend you LOCK your car :)
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I suppose there isn't really much point in stealing car stereos at the moment as they're relativly cheap. I'm also lead to belive that vehicle crime is on the decrease.
Crime Fighting Tips
<small>* i.e. not rubbish chav chart musical guff</small>
28/06/2007 - Flooding
It rained lots. Then it rained again. Then some more rain came. Then the rivers went berserk and decided to run riot over the land, the crazy sods. Besides playing merry hell with the trains this past week it's also presented a few dramatic scenes to be photographed. Here are some I've taken. I intend to take pics of the same scenes after the floods have receded to get the before/after effect.
This is the train departures board at York on Monday evening. Hmm
These two are of the river Ouse in York, taken from Lendal bridge looking out of town towards Scarborough bridge.
These 3 show the usually sedentary beck near work in Leeds as a frankly terrifying torrent!
On this last pic note that this actually shows the beck going under a bridge, yet the water has come up to the top of the arch! You can just make out an inch or so of a gap
19/06/2007 - Web Spam
I knew this would happen sooner or later but I'm starting to get web spam due to the publicly accessible comments form against every blog/review/photo etc on the site. It is easy enough to fix - I just need to implement a captcha but I have put off implementing one unless I really had to. Looks like I do :(
I think I'll try a really simple method first which should keep the spamming hordes at bay for a while at least.
08/06/2007 - C2 Lager - Half the strength, twice the con
Carling have recently released a new lager called 'C2'. The idea behind this stuff is that it has (accordnig to their marketing soundbites) 'Half the strength, same great taste'. The whole concept of this thing and the way it is being marketed I find utterly sickening.
I have never made any secret of my opinions about commercial drinks, beer in particular, and Carling epitomises this class of drink. Carling lager is utterly bland and tasteless and is also very low in alcohol (for a lager). It is sold in huge quantities at exorbitant prices and is heavily marketed. I can only assume people who buy it are either brain washed by the marketing and feel the need to follow the crowd, or just genuinely don't have a clue. Compare the taste of Carling to virtually ANY other lager in existence, and its hollow empty flavour is strinkingly apparent. How anyone could choose to drink the stuff when faced with the choice of something infintitely better is completely beyond me.
Anyway, reasons for buying it aside, it remains hugely popular, mainly with the drunken Friday/Saturday night revellers. Drinking has always been part of English culture for as long as there has been a culture - it is nothing new. However drinking is taking a lot of flak from the media and the government at the moment. They have even invented the meaningless term 'Binge Drinking' simply to refer to what has been happening for countless decades. The drinks industry is coming under huge pressure to try and curb so called binge drinking and promote responsible drinking. As far as I have seen, the drinks companies have mostly used this as an opportunity to rip us off. One such example that I saw was a pub chain being PRAISED for eliminating their happy hour. How can it be seen to be commendable to do nothing but increases prices for no consumer gain whatsoever? How does that benefit the consumer in any way? It was just a blatant cynical rip off, yet the pub chain received great praise in the press. This kind of thing infuriates me. People being screwed over in the name of some supposedly great cause. This is not the first time this has happened and certainly won't be the last.
Carling have stooped to a new low in this game. In some respects I say hats off to them - they have spotted a way to make some money off the back of a modern trend. But mostly I see it as a cynical ploy to strike while the iron is hot and jump on the brainwashing bandwagon. Their new lager, C2, is half the strength of their normal lager. Their normal lager is 4.1% ABV and C2 is 2% ABV. Now if you ask me lagers should START at 5% and head up to around 8/9% for crazy Belgian stuff. No beer should be any lower than 3.5% and really the lowest you will generally see in pubs is a shade under 4% (3.8ish). 2% is frankly taking the piss. I remember seeing Tesco 'Value' lager in the shops and laughing at how hideous it was with its blue and white stripes 'no frills' apparel and bargain basement price of 99p for 4 cans. This C2 stuff is exactly the same in my eyes except that it will have a flashy can/glass and should supposedly have a much more upmarket ideal attached to it. People aren't buying this because it's all the can afford - they are buying it because it is cool! YOU IDIOTS! You are being sold Tesco Value lager in a different glass. It is a Lada dressed as a Ferrari, a tramp in emporer's clothes. However you put it, it is a cheap product aimed at the top end of the market.
Carling have spotted that they can really milk this responsible dirnking game. They bring out a lager that is half the strength of their normal lager yet charge premium prices for it which is miles more profit for them and it makes it look they are a resonsible company for promoting moderation in drinkers. Don't fall for it! If you examined the cost of a drink per litre, against the concentration of alcohol you would find an irrefutable correlation. In other words the lower the ABV, the lower the cost. C2 is clearly an exception to this rule.
This then brings me to the second half of their tag line - 'Same great taste'. YOU WHAT!!?!?!? If there is one thing that Carling does not have, that is a great taste. It doesn't have ANY taste to speak of. This is yet more brainwashing - trying to convince you that they somehow have a tasty beer. No one who has tried something even as mundane as Stella Artois could possibly believe that Carling is 'tasty'.
My advice is that if you want to be a resonsible drinker, just drink less. Drink slower, drink halves, skip every other round, whatever. And instead of opting for the hyped up bag of shite that is C2, try a proper beer. You will be bowled over by the taste - I promise!
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Shirley, a better thing to do then cancel 'happy hour' would be to stop serving people who are drunk? Like they're ment to? But oh noes! that wouldn't make them any money would it
I hate knee jerk reactions to the latest fad worries.
Did you know that Carling is actually owned by the Molson Coors Brewing Company? Which as I'm sure you know is A American firm. Explaining the taste of Carling. I.E. Bland and offensive.
Did you also know C2 is being marketed as a "mid strength" lager. Now It may just be me but I would think that for classing strenghts like that it would be something like 3.5%-4.5% Mid strength 4.5%+ would be strong and 3.5% or less would be low? Making C2 a low strength.
On the sales side i managed to dig up a Earnings report for Coors/Carling. Saying that they were down in Europe a little for the 4th quarter of 2006, when they launched C2. I don't have enough info tell if this is due to C2 or whatever.
3.5% - 3.9% - low
4.0% - 4.9% - mid
5.0% - 5.9% - high
6.0% + - Belgian
<3.5% - piss
2.0% - joke
On the plus side I have never seen this stuff in a pub or shop. Great success.
But you are right, in order to drink responsibly we should all follow the example that you set in the pursuit of the finest wines from Le Chateau Jacksons costing less than £3. Only by drinking these wines will we burn our throats enough so that we can literally never physically drink again and therefore become responsible in our approach to drinking. Amen
01/06/2007 - VW Madness!
Dad and I decided to attend the 'VW Summer Nights' tour and meet on 29 April. This is an event organised by Demon VW whereby lots of VW enthusiasts meet up in their cars, go for a drive round Yorkshire and then congregate in York. Anyone can come along and join the convoy or just turn up at York to look at the cars on display.
As this was our first event of this type we decided we'd tart up our Golf GTis with as much spit 'n' polish as they could take and join the last leg of the tour from Thirsk to York. The meeting place at Thirsk was some industrial estate on the outskirts of the town. After ariving we had a chat with a few of the lads that had already arrived and then soon enough the convoy arrived in full force! That was quite a sight. Literally over a hundred VWs in convoy pulled into this little industrial estate over the space of a few minutes. Golfs (of all marks), Polos, Corrados, more Golfs, Seat Leons, Lupos, Audis, Jettas, Ventos, Boras, Beetles, more Golfs, Ibizas, Passats and even a Suzuki Swift! People got out and stood around for a bit, we took some photos, and before long it was time to head off to York.
The drive to York was not quite what i expected. Everyone was (i suppose predictably) just driving off at high speed, which meant the convoy fragmented horribly. For me it was like driving on any other day except there was a Corrado in front of me! We should all have slowed down to about 40 mph and that would have caused us all to bunch up and would have created quite a spectacle.
The venue at York was the Clifton Moor car park, just outside McDonald's. There were already loads of cars there when we arrived, probably between 200-300 i would guess. After a quick coffee we had a walk round the cars. To be honest it was a little disappointing. Almost all of the cars had been modified heavily, and that is not something that floats my boat paritcularly, in fact I hate modifications! Not only that but loads of the cars were just rust buckets. They'd obviously bought the car for next to nothing and then spent thousands on stupid wheels and debadged grills etc. There were a few nice cars there though. One MkII Golf GTi 16v in white was particularly stunning and completely original. Absolutely stunning. There were some interesting engine implants too. A VR6 in a MkI Golf I think, and there was also something with a 20v Turbo engine in it.
The concept of the day was very interesting but in reality it wasn't really all it could have been. Swap the horrendously modified rust buckets for some proper classic minters and slow the convoy down and we'd be laughing! Overall though a fantastic day out, some great weather and best of all I get to drive my car in its full tarted up glory! :)
Check out the pics of the meet and of my car after I'd finished tarting it up the day before :)
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Just a thought.
I'm sorry you found the meet to be poor,
You forgot to mention the VW Festival at Harewood House in August - we are planning to give that a try.
You also forgot to mention that as well as the white MkII valver there was also a very smart black 5 door - oops its mine!
Should be less cliquey too as it seems to be marketed as more of a family day out. Can't wait!
;)
http://www.saabphotos.com/gallery/albums/Orca_WY_02062007/DSCF5044.sized.jpg
I fixed your image - you put scr instead of src.
27/04/2007 - Geeky Cartoons
I found this website the other day.
http://xkcd.com/
I was so impressed with the cartoons i just had to post it up here :)
Here is an exmaple
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I found that a lot of them we're stangely akin to how my brain works - see forgetting how to do small talk, walking on squared floors and judging a house on it's pretective qualities in the event of a Velociraptor attack.
Also loved the Barrel stories.
And "Thoughts" :-)
(http://xkcd.com/275/)
Some of the comics on there are just too geeky for me though. Some of them depend on having played the right computer game 20 years ago to be able to understand.
09/02/2007 - New Job
After what seemed like forever, I have finally landed a new job :) Without wanting to give too much away, I have been offered a short-term contract working on the web portal for Orange (the mobile phone/ISP chaps) and I have accepted!
The contract is for 18 weeks and finishes in July and pays rather well :) There may also be a permenant job at the end of it with a bit of luck. The post is in Leeds so I'll be back to using the old trains again. This isnt such a bad thing as my commute isnt going to change a great deal in terms of time, but it means I can do more on the commute. For exmaple sleeping and reading are both things you cannot do whilst driving ;)
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Clickery click
Rich
09/02/2007 - Drumming!
Since my old band 23 Beasts gave up the ghost I have not really had a chance to play the drums. Living in flats in the middle of a city means setting up the drums in the lounge and having a thrash is out of the question. Add to that the fact I have little spare time since leaving uni and holding down a job and the result is that I haven't played the drums for nearly 3 years!!
Thats 3 years!
Of course I have been practicing day in day out using the old air drums or by drumming on my/someone else's knees, but it really isnt the same.
Having agreed to start a band with a new aquaintance I thought it would be wise to touch up on the old stick skills. So the other night I booked myself 2 hours in the rehearsal studio, lugged the kit across York, set it all up and gave it a good beating! :)
Given how long it is since I played them, it all came back surprsingly well. However my biggest concern was getting in some practice with my new double kick drum pedal. The band I have joined will be playing hardcore/metal/punk, much of which places a heavy reliance on the kick drum. I have done some double-kick stuff before but never really got anywhere. This time I just sat and churned through rhythm after rhythm and slowly it started to come together. I am certainly a lot more capable than I was at the start of the session.
I hope I can keep this up as a regular weekly thing. Also once the band gets off the ground I will be getting practice every time we meet up.
Lets hope it aint another 3 years until the next practice! ;)
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How is the new band going? Will you place a review on this site when you're up and running?
I don't think I will actually like the music you have chosen... and I still think you'd be well suited to a boyband.
Well maybe one day I'll get bored of the metal stuff and start singing on dancing on stage wading through piles of knickers. Stranger things have happened, although I cannot think what they might be.
"Lager, lager, shouting, shouting."
@Wallz - That is indeed a strange occurence. In fact I cannot recall the last time an eagle dropped a tortoise on my head. Not surprising really, a bang on the head like that is bound to play havoc with one's memory!
17/01/2007 - Crazy Road Pricing
Sign this:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/
The government have recently come up with the crazy idea of introducing a new road tax scheme whereby you are charged a certain amount for every mile you drive. The cost per mile changes depending on time of day and which roads you use. This in principle isn't all that bad an idea. I have read many articles that support road pricing and I have to say I agree on some of the points. For example if you want to get people out of cars and onto public transport, by introducing road pricing you do two things which work in conjunction with each other:
- Charge for using the roads which generates income and creates a disincentive to use the roads
- The revenue generated from the above can be used to invest in public transport, thus providing a modern and efficient service to cope with the growing numbers ditching their cars
It all seems so simple and makes so much sense but there are problems. For example there is obviously a period (possibly many years) where motorists are being charged but no gains are seen in public transport. This gives the impression that they are being charged for greed rather than public transport investment. However the biggest hurdle is probably HOW does a government/local authority implement such a scheme? Herein lies the problem with the scheme the government has proposed IMHO.
The government propose to install a 'black box' into every car on the road and use it to track where every single goes at every minute of every day. You would then be presented with a bill every month for all the miles you have driven. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons. Firstly it is completely and utterly Draconian. The government would have a system that would tell them where everybody is at all times of day (ok, not individuals, but their cars at least). This sounds like something out of a sci-fi film to me! All those that churn out the same old dumbfuck 'Nothing to hide, nothing to fear' mantra can quite frankly piss off. It is nothing to do with not having anything to hide, but is a bout privacy, and minding ones own business. The government has no business WHATSOEVER in knowing where I am at any particular time. The system may not be used to monitor peoples' movements initially but it wouldn't take much to allow them to use it to do so.
The second problem is one of technology. To install a tracking device that works reliably enough to produce accurate bills for every car i the country is an enormous technical challenge. Yes, we have the technology (and have had for some time) to be able to track a car on the roads - its called SatNav, but to have it installed in EVERY car on the road and for it to work reliably and with a centralised system is quite something else. It wouldn't take a genius to disable to device I am sure. I'm not even going to go into the costs of implementing such a system!
From a technology/practicability standpoint it also about cracking nuts with sledgehammers. So, you want to raise more cash form motorists?? OK, so increase fuel duty! People who drive more pay more as with the proposed scheme. OK, you cant change the cost depending on time of day/type of road but it is a start. Increasing fuel duty would require no extra costs at all, would work 100% reliably, would require no infrastructure, no modifications to cars, no Draconian tracking systems and would have largely the same effect. Also their is the option of congestion charging. A simpler, more reliable, tried and tested system which again can achieve the same net effect with a fraction of the cost/risk/Draconian systems.
It sounds to me as though someone in the government has their finger in one too many pies and stands to gain from the tax money funded contracts handed out to IT companies. Either that or the IT consultants have been bullying the government so much they have managed to convince that this is the best way forward (i.e. to give them lots of tax-payer's money and implement an unnecessarily complex system).
I strongly believe that the government would be making a BIG mistake were they to press ahead with this scheme and as such I have signed this petition:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/
I urge you to do the same.
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Part of the reason I do not drive is I do not really want to be so reliant on a car (the other parts are eyes, laziness and lack of funds).
20/12/2006 - Fog
It is foggy. The vale of York is prone to getting fogged up, and it is well and truly fogged up to the max at the moment. Something to do with the weather and the fact that the weather is, erm, shit.
Anyways my gripe is this: Fog lights. Or more specifically misuse of fog lights. Rear fog lights make your car more visible to people behind and are very useful so that you dont get another car crashing into your arse. Front fog lights on the other hand, in theory cut underneath fog to increase your visibility. In practice they do fuck all in my opinion.
This then leads me to 2 frustrations: cars with rear fog lights on when in a convoy of traffic. You are driving behind someone and all you can see is a redness emanating from the car in front. Turn the bloody thing off will you! I can see you - you are a mere 10 yards in front of me, no amount of redness is going to change that fact! It is not even that distracting, but there is just something that frustrates me about it. Maybe I should just chill out more!
Secondly are those utter madmen who dont have ANY lights on in thick fog. That is frankly scray and utterly stupid. They are endangering other road users who may not see them approaching in time.
In short I wish people would use their fog lights effectively. Put on the rear one when there is no-one behind you so you are more visible to traffic approaching from the rear, but turn it off when thre IS someone behind you. And make sure you at least use normal headlights when in fog. Thankyou. Points out of 10 will be awarded at the end of the month.
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Does anybody know if it's as rubbish as most remakes?
There was definitely much scope for 'things' to come out of the fog this evening and eat my face and/or eyes. Luckily the only things that came out of the mist were the odd village or two, so my face/eyes are still intact.
Hey Wallz, I'll be back in Baildon over xmas. Wanna meet up in t'pub at some point?
Plus Zombie Pirates!
Yeah I'd love to meet up for a drinkypoos over Xmas, give us a shout when your around.
04/12/2006 - Ascii Art
My friend Trev sent me this on email. It is a rather cool piece of Ascii art that appeals to the boy racer within me (Yes I keep many little boys trapped in side me). Unfortunately it was an advert for a rather large financial institution, but still it is rather cool! :)
Ascii Racing!
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"Isn't Ascii brilliant"
I want to know why every house has 3 pigs in the back garden though!
13/11/2006 - Driving Me Nuts!
It is that dreaded time of year where the car is due for its MOT. After the somewhat traumatic experience of putting my last car through the MOT (it failed - badly! It was beyond economical repair and had to be scrapped. Farewell oh beautiful Volvo 440 :( ) I decided to be a bit better prepared. As such I have a good idea of what work needs to be done and made provisions to do some of it myself. So it was that at the weekend I was trying to change the rear shock absorbers.
All was going well. The strut came out easyily and came apart easily. It was reassembling the new strut that caused a few headaches though. The nuts from the old strut didn't fit the thread on the new strut. So I am defeated by the smallest and most trivial of bits of metal! Nowhere would sell the correct nut on a saturday afternoon, so I had to put the old strut back in and go hunting for the right nut another time
I cannot believe I have dedicated so much of my time to tracking down a few insignificant bits of steel. The search appears to be drawing to a close though.
Life is too short for this! :)
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"I can see what's up with you you've got a wheel attached to your crotch" To which the man replies
"Yeah, can you help me out. It's driving me nuts".
Har! Har! Boom! Boom!
I suspect there maybe a lesson to be learnt here. Maybe that you should make sure you have all the correct parts before starting?
Anyway current thinking in the office here is that buying a hyundai is the way to go. Currently you can get them from between £6-9k depending on model they come with five years unlimited milage warranty and three service and RAC cover. Cheap insurance and get a diesel model then it's cheap on fuel as well.
Buy a Hyundai?? Are you serious? Yes all those benefits but it sounds very much like they can't give them away! Buy a cheap car, you end up with a cheap car.
Then after 3 years sell it for a few thousand and you'll be quids in.
Or you could get a Saab. They never break down. ;)
31/10/2006 - Road Rage
A friend of mine was involved in a car accident the other day, and this has got me thinking. I am now fairly confident of being able to look after myself on the road (this hasn't always been the case) but it is stupid ignorant drivers that scare the shit out of me. In my friend's case the idiot that caused the accident performed an utterly stupid and dangerous manoeuvre causing my friend to brake, spin, dent cars etc. This idiot then had the audacity to accuse my friend of causing the accident due to speeding!
This sort of stuff really makes me angry. In this case the idiot could not have had any idea what speed my friend was travelling at or even that she was there at all. The fact that the idiot then vehemently accused my friend of causing the accident when the idiot had so blatantly caused it just highlights how unaware they were of other road users, how dangerous their manurer was irrespective of other road users and how utterly arrogant and brainwashed they were. If you are involved in an accident where cars start flying around everywhere smashing into things, would the first thing you say be to accuse someone else of causing it? Surely not? You would ensure everyone's wellbeing and safety.
The fact remains that you can be as safe a driver as you like, you can drive as carefully or as slowly (to a point) as you like, but you HAVE to put trust in other road users that they aren't going to do something utterly stupid when you least expect it. You have to trust other road users to obey the rules of the road. Frankly I just don't trust them to do so. But what can I do about it?
- I could be more vigilant and watch every driver with suspicion
Yeah OK, I do that anyway, sure I could become even more hawk-eyed in tracking down the morons but there is only so far this can take you. If a car pulls out in front of you at the last second, whether you saw them or not, you are going to hit them.
- I could slow down significantly
Hmm, well yeah, but how far do you take it? If someone pulls out in front of me at the last second, if I am doing 60 mph then there will be a big mess of everything. If I am doing 30 mph then there will probably be some nasty denting but most likely no one would be hurt. If I am doing 0 mph there will be no collision. So clearly there is a balance to be struck somewhere. One could propose to drive at 20mph everywhere including motorways, but that is clearly ridiculous. But at what point does it become sensible? Is it crazy to do 30 on a motorway? 40? 50? Well yes it is. Travelling that much slower than everyone else is dangerous. The same applies to other fast roads (A roads, back roads etc), drive too slowly and you will be creating more problems than you are solving. So where is the happy medium? Well probably around the speed limit for the road I would think, but that still leaves you with having to trust other road users not to smash you to shit.
I think my conclusion is that there is not really a damn thing you can do (other than be vigilant) to protect yourself against idiots on the road, you just have to prey that the next idiot doesn't pick you to smash into. Oh, or drive a tank.
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If you do not do this and god forbid atempt to apologise, You wether you did or not are acused of being responsible for the accident.
I suggest we all start a nuclear war so we can just get on with it and live in a post apocalyptic world Mad Max style.
What happened with you Tim? Did you pay, or just cycle off angrily?
I guess those idiots that go through red lights may well have found themselves in this situation (being at fault for causing an accident) at some point.
Haven't heard from him since though. So his empty threat of "Well, you'll see what happens won't you!" showed how full of shit he was since nothing has materialised.
Yes you're right Dan some cyclists do some very stupid and selfish things. Although it is most of the time, it is not always chavs either. It is perhaps more infuriating when you are a cyclist yourself to see other people doing this shit. Not only do you get angry that they are taking the piss with road safety you also feel kind of embarrassed and shamed because their actions reflect on you and every other cyclist. One other thing that annoys me is slow cyclists on fuddy duddy bikes. It just winds me up to see so many people on the road who can barely ride the things and have absolutely no clue or urgency. Honestly I could walk faster than some people cycle!
08/10/2006 - Français
My recent trip to Italy and having read a book called 'Merde Actually' (basically about anglo-french relations) have inspired me to brush up on my language skills. More specifically I have signed up on a French course starting in a few weeks that should refresh what I learnt at GCSE and hopefully I can become increasingly proficient. Wish me bonne chance!
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I'll be fluent in no time! (chair right!)
09/09/2006 - Bloody Spam!
I cannot put into words how much I hate spam. It is not that it is an annoyance to go through and delete them all - I have got rather used to that. Rather it is the sheer inanity of them.
The only reason spam exists is because it works! If nobody bought their Viagra or Cialis or whatever the fucking hell it is they try and flog, then there would be no spam. Maybe it is because my pecker still works, but as far as I can see all the crap that lands in my inbox is just worthless. Stock reports, degrees, penis enlargements, viagra, job offers, mortgage loans. Who wants ANY of this shite? Why don't they send me great offers on computer equipment? Or cheap kitchen wares? Special offers on beer? Maybe that might be useful. Quite frankly if I wanted to grow an elephant shlong between my legs, some dodgy spamming miscreant would be the LAST place on Earth I would go shopping for the necessary butchery equipment.
A lot of this rubbish is written in chronically bad English. You would have thought if they were going to send an email to 10 million people trying to get them to part with their cash, that they would at least get a native speaker to check it first! Just more evidence that these spammers are complete and utter twats. If I ever read 'Our store is your cureall!' once more I think I will explode. Sadly I must get 3 of these every day :(.
The most infuriating thing about spam is that I and everyone else are completely and utterly helpless against it. There are many techniques for fighting spam. viz. blacklisting, greylisting, whitelisting, bayesian filtering, heuristic filtering, challenge-response etc etc. Unfortunately every single one of them suffers from one chronic shortcoming or other. All of them interfere with genuine emails and none are even remotely 100% effective. OK some might take out 99% of spam and only have a false-positive rate of 1% but when you get 1000s of spam that still amounts to a lot getting through. And that false-positive that is the 1% may just be the email from your childhood sweetheart wanting to meet up with you!.
For businesses it is even worse. Challenging customers is seen as arrogant, false-positives are lost business and snubbed customers, unblocked spam is lost time for employees, not to mention the cost and time of administering and maintaining the anti-spam systems.
It comes down to the fact that sending spam is cheap and they expect a miniscule number of responses. Maybe one in a million spam emails results in a sale, but clearly it is enough for it to still be profitable. However, businesses are not stupid and they will cut costs wherever possible. The 999,999 wasted emails is all time and money that could have been spent on something else. So it is that I am surprised that spammers haven't started streamlining their systems. If they had the means and/or inclination to examine the stats for spam sent to me, they would see probably hundreds of thousands of the little fuckers being sent to me over many years and not ONE SINGLE RESPONSE from me. Surely it is time to wipe my address from the list? PLEASE?! I look forward to the day that spammers start getting clever and start trimming the fat from these lists. Alas it may never happen.
All things considered, the old maxim of prevention is better than cure is all too relevant here. I contracted the spam disease because I published my personal email address on my website for many years, at a time when such a thing was commonplace, safe and indeed recommended. Times changed however! Along came the spam bots and ripped my address from my site, forever forging my address into the seemingly universal spam address book. Fuckers. It has got to the stage where enough is enough. I cannot stand it anymore. I have taken evasive action! I have ditched my old address in favour of a very similar but crucially different address (still a rathers.co.uk domain mind). The spammers have no idea this address exists so providing I am careful I should remain spam free, in theory (read hopefully!), indefinitely! Follow these rules to keep your email spam-free:
- Never, ever publish your email address on a website, forum etc. The spam bots will find it
- Don't use easy to guess names in your email address. E.g. instead of john.smith go for something more obscure: j0hn.sm1th81. It might be harder to dictate but the spammers will never guess it.
- Don't use popular email providers like hotmail, yahoo et al. They are easy targets.
- Only give your address out to trusted sources.
- If you are a business, try to send email out from an unmonitored address and solicit all communications via a web-form.
- If you have doubts about the reputability of a service/company you are signing up to, use a different address
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If I have to publish an e-mail address at all, I use a randomised obfuscation technique. I used it to build an e-mail encoding plugin for Textpattern, one of my favourite publishing systems. If you want the code for the function, I'll send it to you.
Other than that, the best thing you can do is fight back. I use a Spam Assassin on my mail server, and Thunderbird has built-in spam filtering (I suspect Opera does the same). If I spot a regular spam mail, I will try to trace the source and report it to their ISP (dnsstuff.com is very useful there). I've stopped using Spam Cop though. Since I started using them to report spam, my spam levels have risen rather than fallen.
09/07/2006 - Play Pong!
Simon Cooper and I wrote this at the weekend when we were bored!
http://www.rathers.co.uk/games/pong/pong.html
Use keys [Q] and [A] to control the left paddle and [P] and [L] to control the right. A few bugs in there still but its getting there!
It only works in Internet Explorer 6 at the moment too.
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I hope things get better soonish. I live up in Queensbury (you know the land of the tolerant) these days but give us a shout sometime for a few beers in Bradford.
And now that you are back with the 'rents you have no excuse not to come and see my band play mwhahahahahahah. aha.