Saturday 31 December 2016

Well, 2016 pretty-much sucked...

Yep, a boatload of talented film, TV, radio and music stars died, my health took a nosedive, work is shit and... two days before it ends my dad get's admitted to hospital for the first time in his life with a mystery illness that they haven't figured out yet... and here I sit as I write this with less than an hour before midnight, worried sick about him.

Fuck you 2016. Crappy New Year everyone.

Friday 23 December 2016

Hunting artillery in World of Tanks

More World of Tanks goodness...



To be honest I got very lucky... if that player had been able to fire on target I'd be the one in flames!

Having fun in World of Tanks...

Here's a video of my latest session in World of Tanks... playing artillery:


Thursday 15 December 2016

This is why I voted for Brexit...

This video is why I voted for Brexit...



EU bureaucrats - what a bunch of immature children... blanking our Prime Minister in a collective display of sour grapes because our country voted out.

Tossers.

I feel for her to be honest, her job's difficult enough as it is without that lot pulling faces and making it even more difficult.

HP Printhead Nozzles Conspiracy

I am convinced that it's bullshit when HP reports show nozzles out on their printheads (for those types of printers that support it).

Take our HP 360 Latex for example, I spent some time this morning running 'clean printhead' operations then running the Printer Information report immediately after:

This is the first report, prior to me running a clean, it shows some nozzles on the printheads 'out':

Report 1

So I run my first clean, and after, refresh the report:

Report 2

To be fair, it 'shows' that they ARE unblocking, so I run another clean, then refresh the report again:

Report 3

Oh wow! Looks like I'm making some progress based on the results from that previous report, so I do a fourth clean (the OCD in me thinking I can get those numbers even lower...)

Report 4

Nope. What WAS I thinking! So now the optimiser printhead loses the plot and the previously misbehaving magenta printhead is getting clogged up again.

In-between reports 2 and 3 I do some plot tests and sure enough there ARE nozzles out on the magenta and they DO come back after a targeted clean (i.e. I do the clean ONLY on the magenta/yellow printheads). However the plot test shows the black printheads as perfectly okay despite there being nozzles consistently out.

So I do another clean, thinking maybe the optimiser printheads will unblock because, strangely, they were fine based on the first report:

Report 5

...aaaand... No! They just start getting worse again!!

I gave up at that point and just ran a image quality test, which looked acceptable... to most people, but not to me because I KNOW there are nozzles not working!

In conclusion, I think HP just runs a routine in the printer firmware that randomises the output of the printhead nozzle numbers, that way, us peon print-operators use-up ink from doing continuous cleans, forcing us to buy more than we need.

Tuesday 13 December 2016

'Tis the season for office parties...

Working in a large city has it's benefits sometimes... and one of them is watching large crowds of office-goers heading out to their yearly Christmas party as I make my way across the city to catch my train.

Take last night for example... as I passed a well known, quite posh, real ale pub (it's based in one of the more prosperous parts of the city and is usually full of high profile well-to-do finance office workers, lawyers etc.) I saw a group of people there, stood outside, dressed in what looked like Pantomime characters. Their laughter could be heard a couple of streets away and they seemed to be having a good time but, to me, their laughter sounded a bit too loud and a bit too forced... almost as if they were collectively silently crying out: 'This isn't what we wanted to do for an office party!' I'd imagine that the alcohol had started to flow early and fast in order to take the edge off their apparent discomfort!

So from now on until a day or two before Christmas Eve, I'll be dodging gangs of well-dressed people drunkenly roving the streets, either heading off or coming out of their respective parties, that will be/have been full of stereotypical behaviour that we all expect for this time of year.

...and no, I'm not jealous at all... well, definitely not jealous of that bunch wearing the Panto gear, I'd rather take a cheese-grater to my nutsack than have to put up with that kind of party.

Saturday 10 December 2016

Out and about... drinking

Off out doing a spot of 'single' pub crawling prior to meeting up with some family members in a bavarian beer shed... where they are serving beer in stein mugs. Then after that I am heading in to town to a reunion with a load of my old work colleagues... this evening is going to get messy!

EDIT: It didn't get messy, no-one was drinking steins, just expensive German crap in plastic jugs. After that I headed into town where I almost pissed myself because I spent too much time outside my bladder's comfort zone looking for the joint where I was to meet my ex-work colleagues. Then, when I finally found it (after an impromptu stop at another bar I thought was the venue but used their toilet anyway), only half of them turned-up! Then, at the end of the evening, the trains failed me again and I had to get an expensive taxi due to the last train home getting cancelled... that taxi fare was my groceries for the following week.

Fucking trains. Fucking expensive taxis - another reason why I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Wednesday 7 December 2016

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #10.5

Fucking trains...

Never getting to get back two hours of my life lost, on a bus, stuck in traffic... and why? Because every single train got cancelled, forcing me to make alternate arrangements.

Two fucking hours to go a measly 12 miles... and this is supposed to be the 21st Century!

I'd have gotten home quicker using a horse and cart, from back in the early 1900s.

EDIT: Whilst I'm thinking about this... and while we're on the subject of the 21st Century - when my Fitbit Surge is charging, the Fitbit app, without fail, sends me a notification telling me "That it is charged and is missing me...", yet the LondonMidland app did fuck all to prevent me slogging all the way to the station to find chaos.

Yep - 21st Century is shaping up nicely, we're all well-informed on stuff that doesn't matter.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #10

The weather...

When I was younger the seasons in this country were so much more... 'honest'. By that I mean summers were bloody hot and winters were bloody cold.

These days we don't have seasons, certainly not ones defined by the weather... leaves on trees appear sometime at the start of the year and then fall off towards the end, that's about it.

In this country the retartdedness of the weather starts around December - we'll get warm, mild, wet conditions, usually reserved for mid-summer. Making walking around in a winter coat fucking uncomfortable and annoying because it supposed to feel like winter so not wearing a coat just feels weird.

This will continue until January when it'll cool down but we won't get any snow because that would mean we could have some fun and remember kids, no-one has fun these fucking days... so it'll be bitterly cold and wet (but no snow) and will stay that way until mid-May (despite the fact that it should change to more milder conditions around mid-March to May.

Then... like pressing a light switch, conditions will warm-up but they won't be dry... oh no, we won't be allowed that... no, from May onwards we're subjected to almost continuous monsoons which makes any outdoor activity an utterly miserable experience. Then August arrives, and we'll get short periods of nice hot, dry weather but only during a working week, it'll cloud over at weekends and rain.

Between mid September and October we finally get some consistent, dry decent weather, but by then the days have become too fucking short and the sun too weak for anyone properly enjoy it.

Then we get to November and the leaf fall starts... which tells us it's autumn and that we should start getting our t-shirts ready for that fucking annoying warm mild spell in December again.

I really do feel like our weather these days is controlled by a bunch of middle-management pointless Post-it note wielding quango dickheads.

Tuesday 6 December 2016

Ski Preparations...

Well I'm relieved to find out that my ski boots still fit after several years...


As for the actual skiing bit? Ahh, like riding a bike!

Coming soon - my trip to Austria... in pictures!!

Monday 5 December 2016

People asking directions...

Twice in the last couple of days a two different people have come up to me in the street and asked me for directions... both times I was unable to help.

I feel so inadequate!

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #9

People who produce artwork... in other words: Artworkers.

Are they being taught badly in college, or are they just plain lazy?

In the print and signage industry, in most circumstances I'm at the end of the creative process, in other words I'm printing the result of a collaborative effort between a customer that wants something printed, a designer/artworker who creates the prints and maybe a marketeer and a salesperson who sold the idea to the customer... anyway I digress, I get sent artwork to print...

In  most cases the artwork I receive to print, is shit. It often contains a mixture of lazy graphic 'cheats' to hide things, poor low-resolution image/effects use, no outlined fonts, ZERO bleed ('cos let's face it, adding 5mm onto the edge of your job is SO HARD) and, occasionally, ENTIRE job is just a tiny low-res image that they think will 'magically' increase in resolution when enlarged and printed!

This has gotten worse over the years, when, ironically the software to create electronic artwork has gotten easier to use! Yet people seem to see this as a way to spend as little time as possible and this isn't because they lead truly busy lifestyles that justifies their time management... for example I've seen artwork where white polygons have been positioned at the edges of a logo to 'mask' it against a white background, a method that takes longer to do than the usual masking procedure! They are simply too lazy to learn it. Or not adding bleed, they can clearly see that the graphic elements in their design touches the edges of the overall print but because they started at the edge it's now too hard to extend it out! Any designer worth their salt knows about bleed, it's not some obscure outmoded practice no-one uses anymore, in fact, it's one of the first things you learn about creating printable artwork! This is just the tip of the iceberg, to part-quote Rutger Hauer's character from Blade Runner: "I've seen things you wouldn't believe..."

So, eventually I have to spend additional time 'tidying' up their mess... why? Do you ask, do I do this? I do it because, these days, even if I speak in layman's terms to a designer about what they need to correct in their work, they don't understand and/or don't listen... it's just easier to do it myself than explain it. I've worked hard during my career to adhere to good artworking practices... so fuck you.

This, dear people, is also why it makes living on this planet a little bit shittier as the years go by.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #8

Driving...

Maybe it's just me but driving on our nation's roads has gotten a bit shittier these days -  it's harder to get anywhere due to excessive traffic and it's dodgy at the best of times due to idiots who don't know how to drive.

I'm not sure of the reasons why to be honest, perhaps because of Facebook ruling people's lives so much they can't tear their eyes away from their smartphone screens to concentrate on something as 'trivial' as driving? Or too much red tape in highways' management slowing down road repair procedures and keeping traffic-delaying diversions in place for longer? I don't know but it sure is shittier...

I still have a car but I try to use it as little as possible, saves mileage, money and, I suppose, the environment (to a certain degree, I don't agree with these 'global warming' tree huggers) and one less person on the roads during rush hour.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #7

Instagram...

Why is it that some vapid (albeit quite fit) stick-insect takes a picture, via her diamond-encrusted smartphone, of her wearing her latest million dollar bling, she puts a burn-in edge filter on it... it then gets millions of hits, and she gets an instant modelling contract, a mansion and a fuck-ton of money.

It COST me £88 to get what I think is a fucking award-winning landscape photograph printed and framed... yet if I posted online (and I'm not going to) I'd get zero hits... and why? Because it's a landscape photograph (too boring), it has no connection whatsoever to reality TV shit, has no fashion bling in it... and contains no pouting fit vapid stick-insect.

I'm not jealous of their success via Instagram... I'm just annoyed that half as much effort seems to get double the amount of reward these days. For example, there must be millions of truly talented artists out there who went through the mill to get to where they are but are constantly trumped by someone with a smartphone app and privilege to be in places where their photos get viewing hits. As opposed to someone who sits in the undergrowth for an entire day, in the cold, waiting to get that 'one photo' of a Kingfisher, that will (undeservedly) get minimal exposure either in their local paper or 5 minutes of fame in MailOnline only to be obliterated by a cascade of photo-articles about some average shit the Kardashians did.

In my humble opinion humanity's collective taste in art photography has gone down the shitter.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #6

Technological advancement moving at a painfully slow pace...

Don't get me wrong we, as a species, have made huge advancements in technology in just the past 50 years but nowadays I get the feeling that some major technological breakthroughs haven't happened because certain groups of very powerful people are deliberately suppressing development because if they happened, those people wouldn't have it easy in their lives anymore... and by that I mean they wouldn't make as much money as they're used to making. These people (whoever they are) don't care about the future, all they care about is now, the rich lives they live... and fuck the generations of humanity that live on after they die.

I'm not talking about flying cars either... because they are genuinely a bad idea, humankind can't drive properly on the ground, let alone in the air!

What I mean is stuff, for example, like alternative power sources for vehicles, hydrogen for instance... I doubt OPEC would like it if all the worlds' vehicles could all run off water, because of that, we're still lugging around with internal combustion fired by petrol and diesel.

Battery development seems to have stopped, the latest smartphones seemed to have gone backwards when it comes to power management... and it still takes ages to charge any battery up and why? Because if batteries' capacities were improved and it if could take less than a few minutes to charge them, they could go into vehicles, improve their ranges, make it easier to re-charge (i.e. quick stop at a power/petrol station) and no-one would need need fuel for their vehicles anymore... OPEC anyone?

Mobile phone signals - 4G, is shit, it's like some sort of half-assed attempt to get broadband speeds via cellular signal, yet whenever lots of people start to use it in an enclosed space, like at a stadium for instance it grinds to a halt! It's the 21st Century I shouldn't have to wait 5 minutes for a webpage to open on my mobile device, shouldn't get cutouts when talking to people, shouldn't have artefacts appear when streaming content! Why? Because the cellular companies don't want to invest more money into more cell towers or improve their efficiency because they have greedy shareholders to satisfy!

A new rocket engine, called the EmDrive has been announced that could get people to Mars a LOT faster, yet it's development is being hampered 'cos some scientists who's voices are louder than the rest state that it breaks Newton's Third Law. Now, whilst I respect Newton and his ilk, I really don't accept that that is ALL we know about the Universe and that Physics just stops at what scientists said hundreds of years ago. Why don't they just fucking build it, launch it into space and fucking try it out?!

It's stuff like that - it get's 'delayed', or it's science funding gets cut and re-channelled to helping war-weary immigrants... when what they don't realise is that forging ahead with these breakthrough science projects, in the long run, helps humankind and ultimately reduces the amount of war weary immigrants in the first place!

Nope there are people who won't allow that, they make too much money and everything is alright as it is right now thank you very much.

Yet another reason why this planet wanting woefully.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #5

Brexit.

I voted for it, I really did... and I stick by my decision. I thought long and hard, read and heard all the arguments and in the end I genuinely felt that we were better off out.

What pisses me off is all the bullshit surrounding it now... why can't the Government just send the article 50 letter and get on with it?

Well, on this planet, these days, sending a simple letter WOULD BE JUST TOO FUCKING EASY!

There's everyone in London having it easy, supposedly creaming it off the top with their chums in Europe whilst the rest of the country had the scraps. Then they collectively threw their toys out of the pram and had a hissy fit when WE (everything north of Watford Gap, not including Scotland) voted out... and because of that the whole process has ground to a halt.

Prices have gone up because of opportunistic fuckwads smelling a profit... we lost a major customer at work because of that and we continue to get e-mails off suppliers stating price hikes.

Toblerones have less triangles in them, Cadbury Creme eggs are smaller (although I have to say that was happening BEFORE Brexit), Marmite increased in price AND IT'S MADE HERE! (Well done Tesco, by the way for standing up to that price hike). Pretty much everything is becoming half as big and twice as much in price, which just makes this planet a little bit more like I want to fuck off it.

But I still want Brexit, so fuck you London.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #4

Hipsters - the dark side of the millennial generation

"I'm taking an Uber taxi to the get some Sushi for lunch... stopping at Starbucks on the way for a Faff-Laff-Toffee-Decaff-Maff-Paff-Chocolate-Chip-Latte-Mocca-Locca-Chocco Coffee, then we're going onto a wine bar called 'Tosser' that serves it's food on a shovel... which is really novel and edgy!" [all that posted to Facebook of course]

FUCK OFF! Actually no, you all stay there, GET ME OFF THIS PLANET!!

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #3

I recently ordered two bottles of Ponche Caballero and only received ONE.

Apparently they fucked-up the order... this is happening with deliveries more and more these days, they were probably reading Facebook rather than concentrating.

I ordered a copy of CoD: Infinite Warfare (it's a Christmas gift), a week-and-a-half later I received it... WTF?! This is the 21st Century, not the 1800's where everything was shipped via tramp steamer! I could've walked into town and bought a copy from HMV or Game - time taken to do that, 30 minutes, tops.

So, in other words, I'm fed-up with all the Amazon 'third-party sellers' bullshit where you're not entirely sure what section of the planet your order is coming from.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #2

The 'fat in the new fiver' debacle...

This is the new £5 note - plastic, crumple-free, water-proof and hygienic, it's made by a company that has been supplying them for years, so it's generally well-known what ingredients are used to make them.

So then these vegetarian fuckwits decide to put in a protest to the Government and the BoE to get them to stop distributing them because they contain traces of animal fat. My question is: why protest now? Australia (and other counties) has been using these notes for years, surely some of these protesters have visited Australia as tourists and used these notes? Why didn't they protest then?

This is an example of many kinds of 'complaint faffing' these days that I really can't stand to see or hear about - nit-picking and making a big deal out of it just to make a name for themselves. Surely trace elements of animal fat in a plastic note isn't going to them your hands burn?

Then there's that nice old couple who have been running a vegetarian restaurant for 60-odd years, decide to not accept the notes and if people give them the 'legal tender' blurb they ask that they put the note in an envelope to be given to a charity. They're in danger of going out of business, why? Because people will go in there and, on principle, pay for their meal with just plastic fivers thereby forcing them to put all the proceeds of said meal to charity rather than for the running of their business... people are fickle like that. So their business is threatened because they joined in on a pointless, unnecessary protest bandwagon.

The inventor of the plastic notes was right to call them all 'stupid'.

Reasons why I don't want to live on this planet anymore #1

Reality TV, for these reasons:

They don't require any creative writing, putting talented writers out of work and suppressing younger aspiring writers' desires and ideas, whilst fat-git producers get rich off the advertising revenues.

They promote vapid z-list attention-grabbing 'celebs' who actually make tons of money off that shit, which then gives them the ability to be even more public about themselves whilst simultaneously annoying the shit out of most of the rest of the world.

They're just a reason for ad-breaks, let's face it, it's really all about selling products to the masses who want to see vapid z-list celebs mouthing off at each other. Why do you think Bake-off eventually ended up on channel four? It was inevitable, stuff like that can't be on the ad-free BBC, what the fuck were they thinking? So some fake-tanned orange-faced executive producer tosser 'manipulated' it so that it got took away from them, so he/she/it can make more money for themselves with ad-revenue.