Voiceovers
Posted: Mon 28 March, 2005 Filed under: General, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »Recently, I’ve noticed something on a couple of TV programmes that really annoys me. On both “The Apprentice” and “Masterchef” they have commentaries and voiceovers. It’s grating on the Apprentice, but it really annoys the fuck out of me on Masterchef.
The programme’s only 30 minutes long, for shite’s sake. Yet the viewer has to put up with some bint whittling on about “Will Andy’s lobster bisque impress the chefs?” or somesuch. We’ll find out in about thirty seconds anyway, not all of us have the attention span of a cerebrally challenged goldfish. “Norman’s first course didn’t impress the judges” (as we saw FIVE FUCKING MINUTES AGO, YOU SIMPERING TWAT) “so will he have cut the mustard on the second challenge” It’s something that makes me wish “interactive” TV were more like DVDs where you can at least turn off the bastard fucking scumshit commentators.
In a half hour programme – with no ad breaks, it’s on BBC2, let’s not forget – they remind the viewers at least three times for each competitor what’s happened. It’s not spread over days on end, or even hard to follow. Instead it seems to have been made for the type of people who find Jerry Springer tough to follow. Except of course that kind of person is busy watching Jerry fucking Springer (or the simpsons, whatever), not bloody Master-sodding-Chef.
It’s Summer
Posted: Sun 27 March, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »I forgot to say earlier in the week – I’ve seen my first indication that Summer is definitely on the way.
No, not first cuckoos of Spring, first Daffodils, nothing like that. The first sign that it’s getting warmer again is my old bugbear – white leggings with a black thong underneath. At least this one didn’t also have VSTL, which is a bonus.
Happiness is…
Posted: Sat 26 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Well, in this case happiness is multiple. The first part is having the new book by Richard Morgan, titled “Woken Furies. I’ve loved two of the previous three books he’s written (the only exception being Market Forces, which was OK, but I need to re-read in order to firm up my feelings about it) and this one involved a return of the major characters from Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, so I’m optimistic.
Second happiness is – sad to say – geeky. The PC I wasn’t looking forward to sorting out is now sorted. It’s not quite as bad as I thought – at least it runs Windows 95 – but it’s still pretty bad. MS Office 6, 15Mb of RAM, and an 800Mb hard disk. Older than the ark…
Now there’s garden stuff to be done, it’s sunny, and there’s lunch out in the offing.
Have a good one, one and all.
Off
Posted: Fri 25 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Good Friday? Bloody Brilliant Friday more like. A day off – and another one on Monday.
And even better, at the moment I even get paid for them. Can’t be bad.
In the meantime, go and look at the website for Banksy, one of the more renowned “graffiti” artists in the UK. I love a lot of his stuff, and the site is well worth looking through – especially the outdoors section.
Tempting Fate
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, General 1 Comment »Following on from yesterday’s Customer Services farce(s) – and let’s face it, Sky are renowned for putting the arse in farce – I’ve really gone and done it now.
In a bid for “three-for-three” purity of failure, I’ve only gone and upgraded my phone with O2 from the Nokia I currently use to a Sony Ericsson K700i. Supposedly I may get the phone during the next week. Mind you, they also said they’d confirm this through email, and as yet they haven’t. So I’m not optimistic.
More pleasingly, considering the last time I had to deal with O2’s upgrade “service”, it’s costing me sod-all.
I must admit that when it comes to mobile phones I’m back to being a bit of a dinosaur. In 2004 I had a 3G phone for a while and won’t touch another one ’til the entire concept has been sorted out. Which, apparently, is still going to take some time. I don’t need video calling, I don’t particularly care about having a 1.3Mp camera (in my experience camera phones are still fairly bobbins, and as I always carry around my 6Mp camera anyway, I don’t need another one), and I don’t really need to sync the phone to the PC all the time. In short, I want a phone that makes and takes calls/messages, has a silent alert and/or a decent unobtrusive ring tone, has a decent battery life, has a GPRS (or better) connection so I can do basic webstuff, and doesn’t piss me off. As for other stuff, it all falls into the “OK, I might use it” – calculator, clock, email (sometimes handy, in my experience, particularly when running late for work or whatever), and an alarm function for reminders. But I wouldn’t miss any of those if they weren’t there.
So yeah, an SE K700i. It’s going to be interesting, swapping over to yet another phone maker. Assuming it happens, of course…
Wooden It Be Nice
Posted: Tue 22 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »via Slashdot, a guy has made a wooden laptop. Not just wood-covered, but the entire case is made from wood. Quite, quite barmy – but nicely different to the black and silver plastic that seems to be everywhere.
The world needs more barmpots like this, I think.