Check out Hayley’s post about Lady Gaga fans and a conversation we had the other week.
Archive for the ‘Alphabetical Wednesday’ Category
G Is For Gaga
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010G Is For Ghostbustering
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Ghostbustering is the practise of walking two or more abreast in a location or situation where it is not appropriate, such as in a slim gateway or corridor, stopping the stream of people coming the other way.
This REALLY fucking annoys me. Owing to campus redevelopment at uni, there is a big fucking chunk missing from the middle of the site. Therefore there’s a lot of people moving through small gateways and doors which were originally intended as low-traffic portals.
Now, I know it’s nice to meander along next to your mate or that nice-looking female who eyed you up across the lecture theatre earlier. But when there are fifteen people trying to come through the gate the other way, how hard can it be to walk behind them just for a second? (more…)
I Is For iPad
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Apple have announced the launch of the much-anticipated “Jesus Tablet”, the iPad.
As usual, most of the predictions were nowhere near close.
Unlike earlier Windows tablet PC’s, the iPad has no keyboard, no DVD drive, you can’t install normal apps on it and use it like a normal computer plus touchscreen. No. It’s a whole different thing.
But it’s so pretty. I want. Now.
D Is For Decade
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009It’s only just struck me that in two and a half weeks’ time, we’ll be entering a new decade.
This is the third time I’ve done this, although only the second time it actually occurs to me that it’s a little bit more than another Christmas holiday, on account of me being six when we rolled from ’89 to ’90.
And as I was discussing with associate Phil the other day, we’ll soon have to start including the “nineteen” when we talk about the past. “The twenties” has always meant the 1920′s, but in another ten years we’ll be entering the twenties ourselves, and saying 2020′s sounds a bit awkward as a term for the whole ten years – of course, “the 2000′s” sounded odd which led to people referring to “the noughties”, which I absolutely fucking hate. This will become more noticeable in a few years’ time, when people refer back to the first measurable slice of the 21st century, and aren’t really sure how to phrase it.
Unfortunately, i didn’t really achieve much in the last ten years. The decade started with me dropping out of Sixth Form, where I would have been part of the year group taking the last old-style A-levels ever. I learnt to drive. I got a full-time job with a company who went bust after six weeks and didn’t pay me, then shifted myself down to That London for a couple of years. After I came back, I lived at home for a bit, then with Alex, Paul and Magee in scummy Potton Road and posh Emery Place, then back at home. I worked for a prison and a tea company before joining BP as a part-time till-tart, then going full-time, then being an assistant manager for a bit, then… leaving. (more…)
C Is For Citizen
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Way back in 2001 I was a regular reader of the hugely successful Geordie Citizen and Whitley Bay Citizen. After submitting a couple of articles, I decided that there was no way these Northerners should have all the glory, and thought I’d get involved.
The St Neots Citizen was born. Running for about two years, the Citizen featured two main types of story. One, spoofing local events and getting at councillors who seem to like to ruin everything St Neots loves – the outdoor pool was a great example, which they finally managed to close a few years ago. Or commenting on the town’s number one industry, empty retail units.
The second involved completely fictional events, based around typical characters of any market town – the whinging, slightly mad old lady, the boy racer, the chavvy 14-year-old mummy.
Eventually I lost interest and the Citizen died out.
In 2007, whilst working at ABB, I was rather bored one lunchtime and went trawling through the Wayback Machine to see if any of my old sites still existed. And there, lo and behold, were a few fragmented bits and bobs from the Citizen. A ha, I thought, it’s about time this came back!! (more…)
B Is For Bratwurst
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Ah, lovely pre-cooked German sausages! Tomorrow (5/11) me, Marcus and Julez are off to Deutschland for a final free holiday before the mum moves back to the UK next March.
A trip to Germany generally involves us eating a lot of German food and drinking a lot of German beer. German food is brilliant. Like any European country, the supermarket shelves are full of products that are almost the same as at home, but, as Vincent Vega once said, “there it’s a little different.”
Example?
Bizarre combinations is the first thing. Little balls of cream cheese smothered in paprika and curry powder. Sausages infused with cheese (käsewurst). Then there’s the things you don’t find in the UK any more, like “squirrel cereal” – little crunchy squares filled with Nutella that they used to sell in Tesco but don’t any more. And things that just have their old name – Kelloggs Toppas, for example, have been called Frosted Wheats for some time, and Coco Pops are stuck in Choco Krispie limbo. (more…)
A is for Apple
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009Inspired by some website I saw somewhere sometime, I’m going to start posting an update every Wednesday about something I like, hate, or that otherwise influences my life.
A is an easy one. A is for Apple. I love the fruity apples – well, about two varieties of them – but this is predictably about Apple Inc., those wonderful Mac-making magicians.
Seriously, who doesn’t love Apple? I sit in the library at university as I type this, and see about forty people with laptops. Of these, fifty percent are MacBooks, MacBook Pros, even one beautifully retro G3 iBook (oh I’d love one of those!). Everyone except me seems to have an iPhone, and you see very few people pull out their MP3 player to change track and realise it’s not an iPod.
Apple was, for years, the real underdog, and remains so overall. Windows has a massive, massive share of the market. Almost any office anywhere in the world uses Windows PC’s, cos they are cheap and run all your business-related software ever so nicely.
But Apple remain the leader in the audio and visual worlds – you’ll be hard pressed to find a graphic designer or DJ using some crappy Dell. More recently, Apple has really exploded into the consumer conscience, thanks in no small part to the ridiculously successful iPod. Everyone wants one, and an iPhone, and a MacBook, an iMac or a Mac Pro.
Why though? The number of people you see struggling to work out how their shiny new Mac relates to their clunky old PC is amusing to say the least. And the die-hard Windows worriers who say “ah but you can’t run XYZ on a Mac, can you!” Can I explain why Apple is so much “better” than everything else? No.
People fall in love with every feature Apple come up with, whether it’s brilliant or ridiculous. “I can shake my iPod to change tracks!” “Wow! This mouse has a little nipple on it!” “Oh my god, I’ve got the first computer with no floppy drive!” (try finding one WITH these days…) And more recently “This mouse has two buttons! Fuck yeah! And this keyboard has keys like a laptop!”
But ever since I picked up a G3 iMac for forty quid, I’ve been hooked. I’ll happily wind people up by telling people how much more fantastic my Mac is than their dirty Dell, their effluent eMachine or their awful Acer. I’ll even try to explain why.
But I won’t be able to.
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