The (Semi) Return of Sunday Music!

Well, Sunday music is back folks. This won't be regular for two very good reasons.

1. I now work sundays.
2. Youtube has sod all music videos left.

Despite these two obstacles I have managed to successfully embed Youtube vids into the blog and have also managed to rustle up three music videos that still exist to share with you all! Hooray!

First up. A classic from the 90s. Reel 2 Real featuring the Mad Stuntman - I Like to Move It. The Mad Stuntman is so awesome. :P


Next up. I recently bought Hammerfall's new album, No Sacrifice, No Victory. Here's the first track on it, a catchy number entitled "Any Means Necessary".


And finally. The only music video for the awesome folk metal band Falconer. This isn't their best song. In fact I can think of tons better but this is the one that exists in video form so that's what you get. Cross Emotional Skies by Falconer.

OM NOM NOM!

Awesome!

Busted.

So they caught the robber. Nice work huh? Just seven days. He pleaded guilty to armed robbery and has been sentenced. I dunno the full details yet but he'll be serving a lengthy sentence.

Result!

Zippo.

So I decided to treat myself to a new Zippo. I lost my last one like six years ago now and I felt the time was ripe to get one again. ^^ So I went looking on my favourite online bazaar (amazon). So many designs. So many awesome designs, really. In the end I settled on this.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0029E3G0G/ref=ox_ya_oh_product




Who said smoking isn't cool? :D

Meh, journalists.

So my brush with pointy death earned me a front page article in the local paper. They have also released footage of the robbery to their website.
http://www.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/cleethorpes/news/Help-police-catch-knifepoint-robber/article-1005962-detail/article.html

Sadly the related article is a little inaccurate, obviously.
Firstly, I'd like to point out that I am not the manager, a title they bestowed upon me twice.
Secondly, I would like to refute this line altogether.
"The male employee was left very traumatised – which is only to be expected after having a knife held to your throat."

Very traumatised my arse. ¬¬ When I finally got home four hours later I cracked open a bottle of rum and posted an article about it on my blog, checked my emails, browsed Youtube. Hardly the actions of someone very traumatised. I can appreciate the fact that they need to whip up public sympathy to encourage grasses to shop him, but still. ¬¬

Anyway, glad I can amuse you all with my knife dodging skills. :P Enjoy.

The Clans are Marching...

So I was on Youtube just poking around, watching some guitar solos. Trouble is, the Youtube censorship has gotten to stupid levels now. Seems that rather than removing videos that contain even a second of music belonging to Warner Youtube has started simply disabling the audio, leaving completely silent and thus useless videos.

Now. This has all been going on for a long time and I think most people are sick and tired of hearing about it. Which means it simply needs to end. And being the criminal genius that I am, I have thought long and hard about how to reclaim our internet freedom.
Youtube must die.

A rebellion must be simple to achieve its goals. Hacking Youtube would just lead to pissing them off and improving their overall security measures and such a thing just isn't the way to go.

People, we have a very simple way of showing Youtube and the music companies that we're fed up them. The only downside is that it would take the co-operation of every single Youtube user.

That's right. You've probably already made the mental leap to see my plan. Videos are central to Youtube's very existence. It can afford to pull a shitload of them offline at Warner's whim because there are so many more. The only way to send a message of true power is...

For every single Youtube user to remove all of their videos and delete their accounts. Simultaneously. As in, within 24 hours. Leave Youtube a bare shell. And what better time to do it than now, right as we start a new financial year.

On the one hand it may seem an impossible task. Persuading all Youtubers to take their beloved vids offline probably won't happen. But when you think about it... It's VERY possible. It could actually be done. It would cost Youtube an absolute fortune in lost revenue. It would create massive media furore. And it would send an unmissable message to the companies removing videos left right and centre.
The only people who have the power to do it is the masses themselves. Us, the public, the users. WE made Youtube what it is and if we choose, we could break it. Fuck Warner's oppression. In my opinion, this is something that needs to be done and soon. I just wish I had the means to spread the word and persuade all those people to do it. It would go down in history as the biggest online protest ever.

Just Because...

Those of you who are non-gamers won't have ever seen this and I was listening to it earlier. It's also an embedding test so let's see.



EDIT: Success. Well allow me to explain. The song is from the ending of the game Portal. I haven't actually played it but this song has become quite famous. It's something to do with a computer that talks to you during the game, seemingly the mastermind behind the events and when you kill 'her' at the end, this is the result. :P So it's a song about cake and death, sung by a psychotic artificial intelligence. Hooray. :D

Pokémon! Gotta Poke 'Em All.

Huh, what's that Mudkip? I should take a photo of us to test out my laptop's webcam? And post it on my blog? Well ok then little fella. You just hop up onto my shoulder and...
*click*

Sunday is Funday.

Rather than have to repeat this story to multiple people I decided to cover it in a single blog post.
I just got home from work at 1am, 3 hours after the end of my usual shift after having to give a lengthy police witness statement. Why? Because the shop I work in was subject to an armed robbery. Some drugged up twat with a 14 inch carving knife decided he wanted a little cash from the tills.
It went pretty smoothly, if that can be believed. He was a bit twitchy with the knife, which he insisted upon thrusting at my hands while I was trying to put the cash in a bag. Impatient bastard. He got away with the entire contents of the till draw, notes, coins, coupons, everything and I got away without injury so I suppose that's a blessing. I kept calm, kept my composure. I dunno if it shows my jaded misanthropy that I can honestly say that this wasn't the scariest moment of my life. I can think of many times that were scarier. Maybe I've just been subjected to this kinda shit too often.
Anyways, I'm fine. Tired perhaps, but no worse off than that. Bit pissed that he got quite so much money. By sheer fluke he managed to pick the moment just minutes before we empty the tills and luck was definitely with him when he picked the one till of two that had the majority of the money in. Seriously, I am annoyed as hell at his success but what can you do? Thankfully, in a small town like this it's only a matter of time till he gets caught. He's got a grand or two of instant cash and the police have handlers who deal with plenty of informants. It won't be long until someone rats him out and down he goes.

The annoying part is that the boss is gonna give me grief over this for sure. He has to say the obvious "the money doesn't matter, as long as you're safe" but the truth is, the money obviously does matter. He's pissed, inwardly, even if he can't show it and he's bound to repeatedly complain that the tills weren't emptied earlier despite the fact that he knows full well what time we do it. But what's done is done, you know? Not a lot we can do about it now. Life's a bitch huh?

The Credits Spoonerism Game

Another simple game that my bro and I play. When watching a film, to relieve the boredom of the opening credits we race to spoonerise the names. For example, if the credits pop up the name "Johnny Depp" one would shout "Donny Jepp".
It's a pretty simple one, but good fun nonetheless. I'm much faster than Pete is. ;) Pretty good fun on foreign films where the names are difficult to pronounce anyway. Considering we watch a lot of Japanese and Korean films it gets a bit tongue twistery. Takasha Miike would become Makasha Tiike, which is more difficult to say than it looks. Especially when you get a few Jap names up at once and are racing to say them all.

Just a thought.

A man is not a machine. He shouldn't be expected to work like one. He shouldn't be expected to perform like one. He should, however, be expected to be more reliable than one.

Why Can't Lamp Be On?

I'm seriously fed up of things breaking. The monitor on my desktop PC has now had its day. Which means shelling out somewhere in the region of £100+ for a new one. Or waiting 'til I find one on special offer for less money.
Guess which option I'm taking?
Yup. So for now I'm back to laptop only again. Bloody lifesaver this thing. Bought not a moment too soon. Didn't help that my internet was off all last night though. You'd think that after failing to provide the service I'm paying for that perhaps my ISP might have contacted to me to say something along the lines of:
"We apologize sincerely for your internet being off all yesterday. it was a minor technical fault that has been rectified."
Well no. Not a word. Typical huh. Are ISPs exempt from customer service? I sometimes get the feeling that that's the case. I think they need regulating tighter, to deliver exactly what they promise. I'm looking at you Tiscali!

Elaborate Crotch Scratching™

So with the success of Hot Spoon™ I've been asked to reveal more of the incredibly amusing games that my brother and I have invented to pass the time. Today it is the turn of Elaborate Crotch Scratching.

The game was born on a boring winter night. Some crappy film about huskies or something was on TV and the alcohol was flowing like... well, a body of water not entirely dissimilar to a river I guess. I had a man-itch (you know what I mean fellas) and scratched my crotch. And why not?! But it needed a tad more effort to dispell and so I stood up for extra leverage.
Not to be outdone, Pete, my aforementioned brother, stood up and scratched his crotch with both hands!
And the game was on.
Just how elaborate can you be whilst scratching your crotch? Upside down in a computer chair with both arms hooked under the armrests?
Halfway down the stairs with one arm through the banister?
One arm wrapped around the leg of a disapproving father?
Sadly we got carried away and exhausted pretty much every object in the house to further pursue the single most elaborate crotch scratch with no definite winner. The game is probably on hold until we take it outside, old school and involve some wild animals or a policeman or somesuch. Perhaps while doing a handstand in the path of a speeding sports car? It could get dangerous. Play carefully crotch scratchers.

Ps. Although it may seem a fairly masculine game there is nothing in the rules to say that a female cannot join in if they so wish. ^^

Just Another Neverwinter Night

http://www.eccaira.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=291

The comic wit of Ace and I. :)

Panic over.

Whew. Seems we were looking at the best case scenario here. I stuck a new (500w) PSU in, changed the fuse in the cable and... TADA! Windows booted straight back up, didn't even throw up the boot menu. A lucky escape and a great relief. ^^ Now I'll get back to doing the laundry. :(

Kaboom!

So my PSU exploded last night on my desktop. Seems the little ring inside, you know the one encircled with copper wiring that I guess acts as some form of electromagnet, yeah well it ummm fell off.
Sigh. I mean seriously, wtf. I only got that PSU in October. It wasn't that bad, 450w, 25 amps on the 12v rail. It suited my needs. :(
Anyway. I'm making a trip to a few computer shops in my local area today to see what I can pick up but in the meantime I'm on laptop until I find out just how much damage was done to the machine. hopefully it didn't fry the new mobo because those things are seriously difficult to get hold of. If it did fry the mobo and/or the GPU and/or the CPU then I think I might just bite the bullet and build a whole new PC. We have a spare comp I can use to retrieve most of the data so I could go SATA I suppose. But that will be both time consuming and expensive so fingers crossed that it's only the PSU that's knackered hmm?

Woe is Nvidia (poem)

Woe Is Nvidia

Oh nv4_disp.dll
Why must you crash so very hard
Why is the Nforce chipset so
Incompatible with this card
The now regretted switch from ATI
To the 7600GT
It's an Nvidia card
An Nvidia chipset
Specifically Nforce 3
So why then don't you have a driver
That supports this combination
Why no package with a bridge controller
To finish my frustration
Why a card that fails so hard
There's not even time to dump
Oh why did I, leave ATI
I feel like such a chump
It wouldn't be so bad perhaps
If it hadn't cost so much money
Oh Nvidia I bet you're laughing now
I'm glad you find it funny
Because I've had enough "exception not handled"
And "thread stuck in infinite loop"
I put it to you your driver support
Is a steaming pile of poop!
So as we crash again I grab my pen and screaming, gouge out my eyes
Never again Nvidia! From now on, only ATIs!

© Charon 2009

Bit of random before the main event

Have you noticed how catfood is generally flavoured after foods you could imagine a cat eating?
Tuna for example. Yeah I can see a cat killing a fish and eating it.
Chicken, yup.
Rabbit, sure, I suppose so.
Turkey, a little exotic perhaps but maybe two cats could take one down...
Beef? O_O How many cats would it take to kill a cow?

Also, today I ate a pear. Om nom nom.

A long winded poem.

This has been going through my head for two weeks so I'm glad to finally get it out. :) Here we go.

Out On The Town

Saturday night
It's the Neanderthal parade
Unsteady, staggering men bawling loudly about football, sports cars and getting laid
Clinging to the arms of airheaded blondes
Wearing more perfume than clothing despite the cold breeze
That chill fetid wind carrying with it the stench of stale cider, drying vomit and the cacophony of ten different techno dance tracks all with the same bassline, blasting out from ten different night clubs all with 'trendy' glowing fascias guarded by bouncers who look like they just might if dropped from the right height
The inebriated rabble, seemingly oblivious to the waiting fluorescence of police vans and ambulances just biding their time for the inevitable hauling of comatose victims to a cell or a stretcher

I betcha've been there
Drunk your fair share
Woke up Sunday morning with puke in your hair
Just another mindless mammal doing the Saturday night shuffle drowning in a sea of poisonous bubbles
Just another turd in the puddle
It's not really poetic
It's pretty pathetic
But that won't prevent endless repeats like an episode of Friends
"The one where it ends"
Coming soon
To a liver near you

© Charon 2009