Centre Parcs

My last rant aside I really am having a lovely time here at Centre Parcs...

Plenty of stuff for me to actually enjoy as the week progresses - climbing, quad biking, feeding birds of prey, Ten Pin Bowling Ball shooting with a fuckoff sawed shotgun... the list is endless :)

Ten Pin Bowling

I fucking hate Ten Pin Bowling, I'd rather take a cheese grater to my nutsack than play it... there is simply no user satisfaction from it. The goddam ball, regardless of what you try to do with it goes off on it's own, and when you do get the damned thing to go where it wants the sodding pins it hits just seem to fall over in a random order!!

Fucking Ten Pin Bowling, FUCK OFF!!!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone in the web 2.0isphere :)

I've spent the past few days practically bedridden from a nasty stomach bug but I'm sufficiently well enough to get down with the festivities now, so come on Champagne w00t!!!

The movie imdustry is running out of bad guys?

This article explains that movie studios choices for nationalities portrayed as the bad guys are becoming somewhat thin on the ground...

Well us English have been bad guys in movies for as long as I can remember and there's never been a national outcry about it, we simply don't give a shit.

Some of these countries need to put their toys back in their prams and man up, it's fiction ffs!

FIFA - Tossers

Apparently FIFA are tightening their rules for the World Cup host bidding process...

Sounds great but ultimately it will still involve cash back handers, gold watches and the odd blow job...

FIFA executives - bunch of crusty old suites who only recognise the smell of money.

Taming an Ocelot

After a considerable amount of time exploring in my new Minecraft world (whilst taking a break from all the mining and building I've been doing over the past few days) I came across an Ocelot. According to the game bumf you have to get them to come to you (no sudden moves or they run off) and you need to have raw fish equipped. So I make a fishing rod and catch 5 raw fish then I go off looking for it… sod's law of course, the sodding thing had disappeared!

I go off looking for it but it's not around so I continue my exploring+mining wood+killing monsters and then, hey pretso! The Ocelot reappears, cue several minutes of chasing it and feeding it 5 raw fish before it was finally tamed, video of the final 30 seconds of me taming it below…




I now have a cat for my farm… all farms need one!

Minecraft Underwater Habitat

I've now started on my underwater habitat, it's going to take a while to finish as I've selected a rather large area to build it in, however I have started in earnest!

The first two sections have now been created, the following video (shown below) shows the method I used to 'drain out' the water ;)

Basically I built a rectangular area of glass that isolated the water blocks off from the rest of the ocean in my Minecraft world, I then placed wooden blocks in the isolated area and then burnt them off. This meant that I could go off and do something else whilst they were burning, rather than having to mine them away to create the air space inside (which would have taken a while)… it creates quite a pleasing building with all the glass blocks as walls.

Holiday Checklist

Today's checklist:

1. Get up early - CHECK
2. Have a healthy breakfast - CHECK
3. Go get my hair cut - CHECK
4. Go to the gym - CHECK
5. Avoid a long fall resulting in a fiery death in Minecraft - DAMN!

Minecraft

As I am on holiday at the moment I've been using the time wisely - mining like a motherfucker in Minecraft! I got it for £3.59 for my XBox One, probably discounted because I own the XBox 360 version.

So I start a new world and do pretty much what everyone does, start feverishly mining downwards to collect enough resources to build a shelter for the night. Once that was done, continue to feverishly mine looking for diamonds and whilst looking for diamonds collect any other resource I come across (iron ore, coal, gold, redstone etc.)

After a day's worth of mining and building, I'd established a safe haven, several sky walkways (for getting around at night safely) and a farm full of wheat, pumpkins, melons and trees.

With all the self sustaining shit sorted I then hit the bedrock and started mining out, with the intention of collecting an assload of cobblestone and finding as many diamonds as possible, the reason for this? Get a diamond pickaxe so I could go get some obsidian.

With enough Obsidian secured I then built a gate to the nether... now, the nether is not a place to be scoffed at, I've been burnt there many times, so I like to think I was very careful when I entered it. Unfortunately I never expected the system to plop the damned gate right on the edge of a very high fortress wall with a pit of lava at the base of it!

Whaaaa! Plop! Crackle, pop, crackle, dead!!

I sat there and stared at the screen wonder whether or not Mojang purposely coded in something like that? They must have, probably thought it was a right laugh as they sat in their comfy seats drinking Mountain Dew, shouting "Dude! That sucks but let's totally do it man!"

Of course I lost everything I had on me at the time, including a newly minted diamond pickaxe, a load of iron ingots and tons of wood (and every Mincrafter knows how tedious it is to collect wood).

Rather than throw my controller at the wall (which I've done before), I steeled myself to getting back everything I lost, half a day's worth of mining and I was even better off… fuck you Mojang.

Since then I've secured the obsidian gate on the nether side with a veritable fortress of cobblestone, for two reasons: one, so I don't keep falling into the pit of lava every time I go through it and two, to prevent ghasts from blowing me off said wall! As cobblestone is impervious to ghast fireballs it was a no brainer, I've now got a 'beachhead' for me to start from when I go looking for nether resources.

I am now off to do some caving, I need coal, lots of it, I need a shitload of glass as I'm now constructing my glass fortress in some very deep water! I will post how I produce it via XBox Live's Upload feature.

Um, Wow?

Wow that last post made no sense to me whatsoever, I guess alcohol does that and I don't remember much from that night… I proper football club reunion!

No posts since then, but then I've been off on holiday, three weeks of no thinking!

Crabbie's vWTF2.02

It truly is amazing how alcohol affects us, one minute we're collectively urinating against the best our local pub has to offer (toilet-wise), next, we hate it all?!
Are we going because we h... aaaah crap, just realised, sat here and lost my beers, ffs

Crabbie's v2.01

...aaand now add a Baileys's onto that :p

Crabbie's v2.0

I've now improved on my previous consumption...

w00t Christmas!

Crabbie's

Ah Crabbie's Alcoholic Ginger Beer - elixier of the gods ;)

Google Schmoogle

I often think Google's famed 'search algorithms' are complete and utter bollocks.

Why do I say this? Well, over the years I've worked my ass off SEO-ing various websites I've created and I've found little evidence that the optimisations I've done made any difference. I've extensively read Google's 'how-to's' and lurked many forums getting advice from gurus, I've kept up with the ever-changing 'techniques' required for SEO due to Google changing said 'algorithms', with little to no success.

Personally I think it's a bit of code that simply says: "Randomise the results for the non-paying peons and whoever pays the most, put them on the first page of the sponsored links", probably written on a piece of bog roll and stored in Google's massive vault, where they keep all their gold… looked after by a Goblin legion.

Organic listings? My arse…

And Google Analytics? These days you need to degree in rocket science to understand it all, there's way too much information and you have to wade through it all to get to the pertinent stuff. In fact, the only useful logistic is the sessions visit timeline at the top which is what you see first when Analytics loads (which only interests me when I see spikes in visits), so I bet most people never bother with the rest, I know I don't, not these days… I used to but I didn't like the nodding off from sheer boredom it caused.

I mean, people scan webpages, they never read them, they simply scan through it all until they get the info they need then they move on and everyone does this, so the Analytics data always shows a high short time drop off but Google wants you to think that you need to put more content in to keep the reader hooked. Well I'm sorry Google but unless it contains porn, they'll never be hooked.

I sometimes wonder if Analytics wasn't created by humans but some biomechanical spawn of Google's mass of datacentres.

But above all, it's all about the wonga, pay them enough money and you'll always be on top.

The New Star Wars Films

Phil Jupitus said in a recent interview that he cannot watch the new trailer that has come out for Star Wars Episode VI and I think what he said is spot on.

Although, personally I'll be going to the cinema to watch it, that lightsaber is intriguing me...

Snow and the UK

Here in the United Kingdom we love to moan about the weather, it's a well known fact and we make no pains to hide it. We find nothing better than a good gossip about how shit it is outside…

So when our tabloids publish their first panic stricken articles of the Winter about snow being on it's way the entire country goes into meltdown. BBC News 24 dedicates almost an entire evening of coverage on how much grit local councils have stashed and our train network actually starts it's delays to services early before any 'wrong kinds of snow' has fallen!

So I'm wrapping up with several layers and steeling myself for the inevitable deluge of complaints, delays and general all round fails that will come...

Microsoft You Fail!

We recently updated our core IT infrastructure to SBS 2011, got new PC's and the latest versions of Office in order to leverage the best out of it's features.

A few months into using it, I decide it might be cool for us to put a calendar in the Exchange 2010 Public Folders for holiday requests, that way, everyone can see who's got what days off via Outlook. Rather than having to shuffle over to look at a small wall calendar in our sales office where they are all penned in in 'old school' style.

So I get it set up, put a few holiday dates in and set them for 4-day reminders.

Then what do I find out? A calendar in public folders doesn't support reminders, how fucking lame is that?! I mean, part of the feature of calendars in Outlook is reminders, it means that people get fucking reminded about important dates coming up and saves them having to move back and forth between their messages and calendar tabs.

But Microsoft, in their wisdom (and fuck knows which highly-paid peon decided this, probably over a gay latte in their solid gold seating and tables cafe in their fucking 'campus' in Seattle) must have thought that it's much better to not have that feature for absolutely no practical reason whatsoever.

A global reminder to tell them all that key personnel are off a few days in advance saves a lot of headaches, it's not too much to ask is it?

I mean, why not put the feature in and make it configurable to turn it off? That covers organisations that have several million mailboxes and IT don't want their system getting clogged with reminders hitting that many mailboxes.

Fucking Microsoft.

Wasps' New Home

I can see my seat from here!

Went to the Ricoh Arena to attend an open day Wasps Rugby Club had laid on to promote them becoming it's owners.

It was a dantastic day, free entry, parking, tea, coffee and food, a tour of the arena's facilities plus we got a chance to walk pitchside to see where we wanted to sit as we're geting half season tickets :)

I have to say Wasps did a cracking job welcoming us all and looking after us, everything was perfectly done, even the food they served was a sample of what they'll be serving on matchdays.

There was a talk by the CEO to explain why Wasps have done it and a few words from Coventry City Council's chief about their relationship with Wasps going forward.

I think it's important to state here that despite all this Coventry City Football Club will be okay aswell, they haven't been 'steamrollered' by this deal and will continue to play their games at the Ricoh as normal, despite what the 'naysayers' are going on about... I asked the CEO myself and got assurances from him that that was the case (and I'm not even a Sky Blues fan but I always like to see that Midland clubs are doing alright).

I look forward to seeing the result of what I think is one of the most astute bits of business I ever seen in the world of sport.

Go Wasps!

Freelancer - Orginal Intro

One of my most favourite games of all time ;P

The Plunge Pool

I go to a gym and I have to admit that this year my attendance hasn't been exemplary, in fact it's been downright poor.

So after a couple of health-related issues recently I decided that rather than go whinging to a GP about them I'd bloody well hit them head-on with a well orchestrated gym-related exercise plan. After all, being as though I've been a member of this particular gym for more than 12 years it's about time I applied all the experience and knowledge I've gained from going there for so long.

After three successive nights of going (what I called the initial 'shock and awe' sessions to wake up my body, which I won't do again and will pad out the visits as the weeks go by) on the third night I decided to make use of the gym's superb water facilities, which I haven't used for a long, long time.

So I finish my routine in the gym area (all cardio, the core stuff comes later), change and head down to the hydropool area and the Sauna as I thought I deserved it.

Now, at my gym, after a Sauna there's three things you can do:

1. Wimp out and hit the showers
2. Go to the open shower area and get doused from a bucket of cold water by tugging on a rope (I am not joking, my gym really has that option!); or
3. Head outside and jump into the Plunge Pool

I opted for 3… it's the only logical choice in my opinion

Now, jumping into a Plunge Pool in December in the UK is not something to be sniffed at, you come out of the Sauna sweating like a pig and whilst that is a tad uncomfortable it's not absolutely necessary to plunge headlong into near freezing water for relief. Perhaps there's scientific benefits written somewhere, I don't know… but certainly it's not for your mental health.

When you approach it (after manning-up and not flinching when the cold air hits you as you step outside) simply take a couple of steps and jump, don't think and definitely don't use the ladder. Once you jump, there's a delicious moment of finality, completeness and a perfect sense of "WTFBBQ" as you hover for a microsecond before gravity pulls your sweat-stained body down into those freezing depths, there's nothing, absolutely nothing you can do at this stage and never is there a more perfect moment for you to wish you were Superman!

As you go under, your whole life flashes before you, your balls go up into your throat and every nerve and fibre BOSDs and collectively screams "BLOODY HELL!" As you surface you get a double whammy from the cold air hitting your head. You then come to your senses and suddenly realise that you're standing in 6ft of near freezing water when what you SHOULD be doing is downing mulled wine in a nice warm pub. From the moment you jump to this point the whole experience lasts roughly 3 seconds… it feels like a lifetime.

But the shower back up in the changing rooms afterwards is sooo damned good ;P

The Plunge Pool I use is nowhere near as inviting as this one!

A Collective Sense of 'Elsewhere'

Is it me or is humanity slowly losing it's collective sense of situational awareness?

When walking, I lose count of the amount times I have to sidestep or literally swerve round people whilst on my daily commute to work. They always seem to not be totally there, as if they're seeing a world in another dimension, turning their head slowly around with a glassy thousand yard stare then seeing me at the last minute but not doing anything about it… and those are just the people who aren't glued to their smartphones!

When I'm out and about and walking, I walk, I don't meander from side-to-side, I observe what I need to see in order for me to get to where I want to go… and THEN I whip out my smarphone/Kindle. I say that because nowadays it's an accepted way of life (and I have a healthy appetite for good literature that my Kindle more than adequately satisfies) but at least I do it standing or sitting where I am not an annoyance or a danger to myself or anyone else.

It doesn't take much to look both ways before stepping out to look at the bus you're about to catch, or to read bus/train times, or to think ahead and get your train ticket out ready BEFORE you get to the ticket barriers. I mean, when crossing the road you don't just amble carelessly forward with your eyes fixed straight ahead do you?

Some people simply don't care, they're so enclosed in their little virtual biosphere of social media that they couldn't give a fuck about manners in a public place.

I blame Failbook (I can't bring myself to call it it's proper name). Mark Zuckerberg, you may be a computer whiz but I blame you for the continuing dumbing-down of humanity and I cite Failbook as evidence of this.

Failbook pros and cons:

For Failbook:

1. It allows families separated by country borders to more easily keep in touch such as grandparents being able to see baby photos etc.
2. It helps businesses promote their abilities and products more easily.

Against Failbook

1. It makes people lazy - why go out and meet up when you can sit at home on your arse and chat via your mobile device or computer, this is one of the reasons why pubs across the length and breadth of Britain are closing in record numbers.
2. Reduces intelligence - I cite an example where, in America, someone called 911 when the Failbook servers went down, sure they would not do this normally?!
3. It's breaks up friendships and relationships - however I have to highlight no. 2 above, if you're stupid enough to put stuff on your wall that causes problems with your friends and/or significant other then it's your fault but if Failbook wasn't around then maybe you'd keep it to yourself? Although, again, I cite an incident recently, I was out with a friend in the pub and he put a comment on another of our friend's wall supposedly from me (my name was mentioned) it was a negative comment which I told him to remove but he just waved it aside claiming "he'll just delete it anyway"… so, here I am wondering if he's got a problem with me over something I never wrote, all because of Failbook and I'm not even a member!
4. Bombards you with pointless advertising forcing you to spend money on products you don't need. Ultimately this is what Failbook aims to do - make money from targeted advertising, feeding shareholders rich enough to be able to afford a swimming pool in their third house, they don't care about the ills it causes, provided the ad revenue keeps piling in...
5. Spreads malware and social engineering scams.
6. Oh there's probably a dozen others I could think of but they'd probably merge in similarity with the list above...

My point is Failbook seems to bring out the worst in us and leave it there for all to see, back in the old days we socialised in a pub so at least you had a chance for redemption through alcoholic induced forgetfulness the next day! These days, in  a pub, you look around and most people are head-down looking at their smart phone, seemingly having a conversation to someone miles away, yet their friends are RIGHT THERE next to them!

I'm not saying we lived in a perfect utopian society before the advent of Web 2.0 and social media, to be honest I think the dumbing-down started when e-mail hit the masses but I think Failbook contributes A LOT to the problem, people need to wake up and look around more.

So there I shall be, walking to the train station doing a Lionel Messi style dance through crowds of Failbook sheep wondering if humanity is heading towards the dystopian futures portrayed in either Wall.E or Idiocracy films.

Asteroids could wipe out humanity

Asteroids could wipe out humanity unless more effort is made to track and destroy them, a leading body of scientists and astronauts has warned.


Not whilst Bruce Willis is around they won't...

Mashed Lyrics

Whenever I listen to the following songs, I always mash-up the lyrics...

Cindi Lauper - I Drove All Night

I drove all night to get to you
Is that alright
I drove all night
Crapped in your room
Woke you from your sleep
To make love to you
Is that alright
I drove all night

Jefferson Starship - We Built This City

Marconi plays the Mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember
We built this city, we built this city on sausage rolls
We built this city, we built this city on sausage rolls
Built this city, we built this city on sausage rolls

Don Henley - The Boys Of Summer

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
You got that hair slicked back and those Grey Farahs on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I'd like to thank an old work colleague of mine for the above, when we worked together all those years ago he'd sing them as he heard them, hence the mashed lyrics, and they've been stuck in my head ever since ;)

Mental Block

Damn… haven't posted much this week.

I've had a mental block since the weekend though as I spent much of it hungover. It used to be that I could go on a three day bender and only need a day to recover, now I need three days to recover from one night!

With middle age comes aches, pains, weariness and a constant need to pee...