Toys for me

Well, after less than two weeks my XBox 360 is on its way home, which means I'll finally be able to properly play Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis (surprisingly awesome) and some cool XBox Live Arcade games, such as Schizoid and Castle Crashers - both of which I was playing at Will's on the weekend.

I'm also getting a new PC (AMD Athlon X2 4800+, 3GB Ram, 2x 7800GT and lots of nice cooling and other bits) and a new monitor (see above), which means I'll be able to properly enjoy my latest acquisitions, Spore and TF2.

Seems a great time to start back to University, eh?

Toys for cats

After an exciting trip to Maplin today, we popped into Pets At Home to laugh at the animals who were so unloved by their owners that they're up for adoption. They had some great stuff there...

1. A new friend
Whilst looking at the hamsters, it occurred that I hadn't yet gotten our house's cat - Roscoe - a present for his birthday yet. Now, he's not much of a hunter outdoors, and has yet to bring me back anything dead as a present yet. Quite a disappointment I'm sure you can imagine. So...how about a hamster?


_Rawr

I was thinking we could make a YouTube video, called 'really super cute hamster'. We could film the hamster washing himself, eating little bits of cucumber and playing with bits of string. And, just when the teenage girls have called their mother, little sister and favourite doll over to watch the video, we let Roscoe into the room.

He can chase the hamster around for a bit, catch it, toy with it for a while and then, having ripped its heart out, present it to the camera - smearing the blood all over the lens.

Alternatively I could just get him a little toy mouse stuffed with catnip.

2. Litter Kwitter
"Toilet train your cat" read the box. "Guaranteed results within 6-8 weeks". What?



This little box contains three separate rings which are placed in the human toilet (and hopefully remembered and removed when people are sitting there), and taken away one-by-one until the cat is taking up the bathroom for 15 minutes at a time and filling out all the answers in the crossword in the Sunday papers.

Seriously.



You might think it's a bit wrong to watch this video for more than about 22 seconds. Don't turn it off...you'll see.

Obamashot

The conscientious folks over at Twitter decided to set up a special area of their site, Election 2008, to gather up-to-the-second opinions on the American election - including some big debate that's apparently going on tonight between all the major candidates.

The conscientious folks over at The Internet decided to take that area of the site, and use it to talk about the things they find most important about the American presidential election.

As such, the hottest topics on Election 2008 right now are...election drinking games.

Obamashot
Drink one shot every time Barrack Obama says the word 'change'.

McCainshot
Drink one shot every time John McCain says the word 'my friends'.

It's going to be a messy night in many, many American households. I bet the electoral debate will have record viewing figures amongst students though.

CDs have arrived!

Totally awesome, I have a large box full of CDs with my face and my music all over them.



It's entirely possible I've forgotten who amongst you actually ordered copies (except those that have actually paid), so get in touch. £3 if you want one in person, £4.50 if you want one posted to you. If you want one posted, either grab me online to get my bank details or pay via Paypal.

They look pretty awesome ^^

More blasphemy (now in picture format)

I love the internet.







The bottom two are from the Perry Bible Fellowship, highly recommended. Click all images for higher-res versions.

Sexism == success

From BBC News:

Men with sexist views 'earn more'

Interesting, eh? Almost as interesting as the fact that three separate people have linked me to this page. Am I really that successful?

Musical Road

I love Honda, they come up with such awesome stuff, such as this - a musical road. They've cut ridged grooves into a road in California, which interact with your tyres to create a little melody as you drive along. I can't think of anything more awesome:



Next challenge: make a spoof video of what it would be like if the British public sector tried doing this on the M25.

Artwork's Done!

Well, Somnesia's been sent off to the printers for duplication, printing, boxing and wrapping. As there's not really a lot more to say about this (other than to regale you with my exciting trip to the post office, which my lawyers advise me is unwise), here's a peek at the front cover:



Can't wait! :)

Contradiction/Affirmative Action

I'm applying for some graduate jobs at cool places, the eBay family (eBay, PayPal, Skype and others) amongst them. On their form, I found the following two sentences, very close together:

"As such, eBay Inc. is required to take affirmative action to employ qualified minorities, women, and veterans."

"eBay Inc. maintains a policy of considering all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability or veteran status."

Now, I don't bring this up to pick holes in their logic (or their spelling of 'colour'), but more as an example of quite how ridiculous 'affirmative action' is, in my opinion*.

If a company is found to be actively discriminating against say, people called Jim, then I agree entirely that they should be punished for this. This is known as 'anti-discrimination legislation' and has nothing to do with 'affirmative action'.

However, if a company just happens to have no Jims on its staff, then it's ridiculous to say that they should take 'action to remedy this'. You see, action to remedy this lack of Jims will have to involve actively discriminating against the Steves of this world. And then the company needs to be punished for discrimination again...

Affirmative action is, quite frankly, a joke. There's stopping discrimination, and there's advocating it - and I don't see quite how the twain are supposed to meet.

eBay should always employ the best suited person for the job. Given their success, I don't doubt that this is exactly what they do. So, why on earth are they being asked in the first sentence above to 'take action' to ensure they employ certain demographics? And how do they reconcile that legal requirement with their equal employment policy set out in the second sentence above?

Seriously, I have no idea. Anyone?

--

* <sup>I write 'in my opinion' only to make that sentence scan a bit more nicely:

a) Of course it's my opinion, I'm the only one who writes here.
b) My opinion is right. Always. Don't get the impression I lack faith in my beliefs simply because I added those three words.</sup>

The semicolon

Whilst proof-reading the artwork for Somnesia (printing tomorrow, I promise!), I was lucky enough to spot an inconsistency within a semicolon separated list. One item following a semicolon was capitalised, one was not. I was fairly sure I knew which of the offending pair to change, but quickly stepped over to a search engine to find a reliable source to confirm my beliefs.

Behold:

Sussex University

At Sussex, the claim is that the use of the semicolon as a 'supercomma' (a ridiculous term) is frowned upon. Tut tut Dickens, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Austen et al. They also have the ridiculous sentence 'Do not use the semicolon otherwise.' on their page. Hardly an academic institute to be taken seriously.

Bristol University

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I don't think I'll ever take a graduate in English from Bristol University seriously ever again (not that I recall ever having done so, but, y'know...). They start off by claiming the semicolon will take 'no more than a few minutes to master' and then proceed to misuse it themselves, in the example sentence for how to use a semicolon. I have not the words.

Please, read the following from Bristol's guide to the semicolon:

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley; Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness; Colonel Custard, Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of Otago, New Zealand.

I hope you're as appalled as I was. Rest assured they've received a strongly worded email.

Also, Bristol University English Department, please stop putting full stops in headers on your web pages. Please.

University of South Florida

Yes, shaming though it is, the one decent academic guide I could find near the top of Google on the semicolon comes from the Americans. I disagree slightly with the banality of what they term 'sentences' when demonstrating how a semicolon may join such a pair, but can't fault their English. You can find their guide here; it's very good. That preceding pair is an example of exactly what I meant by their 'banality'.

Be ashamed Brits, be very ashamed.

--

I considered explaining Bristol's unforgivable error, but, frankly, if you're a regular reader of this blog I do expect you to uphold certain standards. Try looking at some of the Americans' examples if you really need to work it out.

Recording Pics

Lots of people I've been talking to over the past couple of weeks think that recording studios are exciting places full of fairies, neon lights and whirring machinery. There were a large selection of machines that did indeed emit varying green and red lights, but other than that, it really was just a couple of (rather cold) rooms that get quite tiring after 10 hours a day, day after day.

That being said, here's some pretty pictures:


<sub>My pretty guitars


(Not my) Steinway Grand Piano, 1872


Could you try that again please Ina? And again...and again...


...screw it, we'll just get Tim to fix it


Drum boy, drum


Harpsichord, hand-made by William De Blaise


Parking facilities were...sparse


But the views were lovely</sub>

Omega Sektor Sponsorship

I headed out today to meet with some folks from Omega Sektor about partnering up a bit with my lovely Aston CompSoc. It seemed a fairly logical union, as we've got a bunch of geeks and they've got a hell of a lot of gaming PCs and consoles.

They gave me a quick tour of the place before we talked, and I was far more impressed than I thought I'd be. They're building a Wii area downstairs, with a bunch of large screens in cubicles for gaming fun. You know the only game that'll get played there is going to be Wii Tennis though.

There's also a giant-screen Wii (not sure how that works with the motion sensor), a PS2/PS3/XBox 360 console room and a whole bunch of rooms filled with gaming PCs, in varying formations for different team strategies - mostly shamelessly sponsored by big gaming companies that have little connection to the rooms.



After the usual kind of deal was agreed on (we promote their stuff, they give us free and discounted stuff and talk to our members), they even gave myself & a friend free run of the facilty 'till we got bored.

Great fun, highly recommended (and not just because they're now paying me to say that) - more details after our first CompSoc LAN there ;)

My XBox 360 is broken :(

Today, my XBox 360 decided to stop reading any DVDs or CDs that I put into it. All that comes up whenever I put anything into it is 'Open Tray' or 'Disc Unreadable'. It's little consolation that I can still play the various arcade games on XBox Live - but I can at least still watch films and the like from external hard drives.

I can send it back in to Microsoft for repairs, but as it's not the specific error they've extended their warranty on (3 Red Rings Of Death), it looks like I'll have to pay £65 to get it fixed.

Rather annoyed :(

5 Songs from the Recording are up

Well, I've put 5 tracks from my recording jaunt up online.

You can find them on:

Tie-Dye Quartet's Website
Tie-Dye Quartet's Facebook (add us as a fan)
Tie-Dye Quartet's MySpace (add us as a friend)
Tie-Dye Quartet's Last.FM

Hope you enjoy. You can buy the whole album from me for a whole £3, or buy it online with a bit of an extra fee for postage and PayPal.

Enjoy, tell your friends!

Xx

Awesome animals

I recently stumbled across a little article on MSN Environment about some very cute, and some very bizarre animals. Had to share.

The Leafy Sea Dragon



Any animal with the suffix 'dragon' is immediately cool, but this one looks like it came out of a computer game. I was, however, disappointed to find that the male of the species is the one that looks after the kids. I bet they don't even breathe fire.

The Star Nosed Mole


A cross between a mole and a sea-monster. Awesome. More here.

Looking Good

Sneak previews of some of the music from the album will be coming soon. Just tidying up some web stuff and sorting some artwork now.

Speaking of which, here's a glimpse of quite how good some of the photos that will be going into the album, and be used for general publicity are going to be:



Sweet or what?

Thank You, Random Folks

I'd just like to say thanks to the completely random folks out there who come and chat to me via the Digsby Widget down the right hand side of this blog. You folks give me faith in the...diversity...of humanity, as well as wonderful, intelligent, witty insights into your own little worlds. Ok, I might be stretching it a bit far - but here's a few of my favourite recent random folks, if you're still reading, feel free to say hi in the comments at the bottom:

Thank you 'BT Guy', for your inimitable mood swings. One moment I'm absolute scum for daring to disparage the good name of British Telecomms, the next you hate your job, your employer and even the BT connection you have at home. Oh, but how dare I slag off BT on the internet, when I'm just one user and don't give a representative sample...a representative sample of the company you hate. Oh God how you hate them, how you wish you could just quit (but inexplicably, haven't), how you wish you had cable in your area...

My thanks to you 'BT Guy', and also a recommendation that you go see someone about your mental health.

Thank you 'Lara', for approaching me to proof-read and offer advice on your GCSE coursework on Romeo & Juliet. I'm baffled as to why, but it was a fun way to end a long day and hopefully you've got a better grade out of this. However, this isn't a general offer of coursework advice folks.

Thank you 'Ass', for asking me to look at your band's myspace page, then swearing at me when I (politely) gave you my opinion. I won't even link to it here because, let's face it, it was pretty awful. Please stop playing music, trying to design web-sites and breathing. Assuming you're still reading here. Assuming you can read.

Thank you 'Guest15439', for sharing with me in great detail your recipe for the perfect roast dinner. I don't believe I've ever mentioned having trouble with cooking roast beef before, which is why it's especially nice of you to take the time anyway. I must admit I thought you were some kind of scammer, right the way up until 'hope it works out for you, post on your blog if it does'. Well, as I've mostly been living on Micro-Chips this week, nothing to report yet, but keep hoping eh?

Thank you 'Geraint', for letting me know out of the blue one day that you've been reading my blog for over a year, to find out what working at Microsoft was like. For then telling me (after a full year) that I didn't post enough about the things you wanted to hear about, and that you were disappointed in me. Such feedback is always appreciated and, if time-travel is discovered, will certainly be shortlisted for potential consideration.

Thank you also to my various friends who read my tweets about my beautiful random chatterers and then pretend to be a stranger too. It's always reassuring to know there are people with as much time on their hands as me.

Keep it up folks.

Xx

Finished

Years of playing, months of composing, weeks of rehearsing, over 100 hours in the studio, 20-something hours of driving and not a lot of sleeping later...Somnesia is complete.

We've got 12 tracks, totalling around 66 minutes' of content. It sounds wonderfully professional and is far better than I'd even dared to dream.

Over the next week or so I'll work on getting some pretty CDs printed with a nice full colour booklet and all that jazz. I'll also be putting some of the tracks up for free play online, along with some of the photos we had done before we started.

Copies of the album will be £4 or so to cover the CD & postage costs (unless you're lucky enough to get one free), and will probably even come signed by the band - good or what?

For now, I need some sleep. Normal blogging will resume shortly.

Xx