green flashy shiny tin man

2008-08-26T16:54:00.002Z

An Open Letter to the Woman Who Tried To Kill Me Today
Every so often, I go out for a walk. I've always loved walking - not over green pastures or along clifftops, spotting chaffinches and dragons, but just walking along the pavement with no particular desination in mind. Walking soothes me, especially after I've spent the first half of the day trying to explain web usability and design aesthetics to people who get confused by 24-hour digital clocks.

I walk fast. Not like that I've-had-a-poo-inside-my-shorts-and-I-need-to-get-home-without-it-slipping-out fast walking; I just walk fast. As such, cursory glances across junctions and judging whether I can cross the road before I get hit by a car as it approaches become the aim of the game.

When I was taught to drive I had one particular maxim drilled into me: once a pedestrian is on the road, they have the right of way. I guess it makes sense; the only way to stop a pedestrian having the right of way in the road would be to destroy them with your automobile. And I'm pretty sure that's frowned on in most countries.

So, on my way back home, 3.5 miles into my 4.5-mile walk, I get to a familar pedestrian crossing. I look to my right to see a car rounding the corner 50 feet away. I look to my left and see the traffic light is already on amber, half a second away from turning red. I casually look to my right once more as I step into the road, confident that the car is slowing to a stop.

Oh, no. The woman decided that, at a pedestrian crossing when the light was on amber and a pedestrian was waiting to cross and - I cannot stress this enough - with her little baby in the passenger seat - she decided to accelerate. She braked sharply, stopping a good 6 inches from my leg, swore loudly, and buried her head in her hands.

Standing a foot-and-a-half in the road, I turn to make sure that - yes, the lights are red. I turn to the car, gesturing with my hands. "Come on! The light's red!". I assumed she would only see my mouth move, but it turns out she had her window rolled down. She poked her head out of the window and said, astonishingly, "Actually, it was on amber.". I started to cross the road, looking over my shoulder as I went. "Well that's perfectly fucking safe, isn't it?"

So, to the young mother who thought that running an amber light at a pedestrian crossing might save her 90 valuable seconds: the government, common sense and safermotoring.co.uk tell us:

"You should stop at the [pedestrian] crossing if the lights are amber, and wait for the lights to turn green before leaving."

Even more interestingly, considering that your baby was in the passenger seat on the left side of your car and, as I was crossing the road on the left side of your car, had you hit me i would have most likely flown over the bonnet, my skull smashing your windscreen. Then one of two things would have happened; in the best-case scenario, your tiny baby would have been showered with shards of broken glass. In one of the not-so-best cases, I would have carried on through your windscreen and smashed your baby's face in with the top of my head - one of the thickest parts of the skull and incredibly resistant to blunt trauma.

Happy motoring!

2008-08-14T17:12:00.003Z

Dear LOVEFILM: You Suck Balls.
We used to rent our DVDs from Amazon's rental service. It was awesome. We'd make a huge list of the films we wanted to see, move the ones we were really eager for to the top, and then just sit back and watch the films roll in.

Once we'd watched a film we just popped it in the prepaid envelope and within 24 hours another film would appear in our mailbox to replace it. Fantastical!

Then Amazon handed over its rental service to Lovefilm, and everything went to crap.

For a start, the usual next-day turnaround for DVD deliveries appears to have become an anywhere-from-48-to-96-hour turnaround, meaning that it doesn't really matter when I send off my DVDs, because apparently Lovefilm don't check their post for days on end anyway.

Lovefilm are also now cramming all of the DVDs into one envelope rather than one-film-one-envelope, which means we have to wait until we've seen them all before we can send them back which, when added to the slow turnaround, is a fairly neat way of almost guranteeing that we don't get through our monthly quota.

Lovefilm have also carried over the rental-ranking system we were used to on Amazon: you mark the films you want to see next as High Priority, then Medium and Low Priority for other films you don't mind waiting for.

This is where we come to the biggest issue: since Lovefilm have taken over our DVD rental service, we have not once received a film marked as High Priority in our list. In fact, the next 3 DVDs they're dispatching to us have all been taken from the very bottom of our list.

I can understand that some newly released films may be in high demand, but at least one of our High Priority films came out over three months ago, and all of the films at the top of that list have sat there stoically for almost two months, seemingly never to be dispatched.

I realise that some of this issues may seem trivial, but they all add up to a thoroughly crappy service that replaced one that was truly wonderful.

I guess the thing that galls me the most is that Lovefilm know exactly what they're doing. Their service, while quite poor, isn't so utterly dreadful as to attract undue attention. To paraphrase Peter in Office Space, Lovefilm are working just hard enough to not get fired. You'd have to be fairly petty and anal to complain about deliveries being more than 24 hours late or not getting your most eagerly anticipated film out of a list of 30 others.

Well bad fucking luck, Lovefilm - I am that anal.

2008-08-06T13:48:00.002Z

Paris For President

Last week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain launched an ad capaign comparing rival Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, suggesting that Obama is merely a celebrity candidate unready to lead the nation.

New independent presidential candidate Paris Hilton has posted a video rebutal to McCain's comparisons. In a swimsuit. And she talks about energy policy.

As much as I hate to say it, it's fucking awesome.

2008-07-10T19:02:00.001Z

Cristiano Ronaldo is a 'modern day slave'; embarks on promising career in cotton-picking

I just read this headline on Yahoo news: FIFA president Sepp Blatter has apparently urged football club behemoth Manchester United to stop treating Cristiano Ronaldo like a 'modern-day slave'. This story apparently stems from the fact that Real Madrid has made an offer to sign Ronaldo and he wants to go, but Manchester United are reluctant to lose their record-breaking scorer so soon after signing him to a 5-year contract.

I really could not care any less about football; I mean that sincerely. But what caught my attention about this story was the use of the term 'modern-day slave'. I thought to myself, "That's an interesting phrase. Hey! Let's compare!" So I did some quick digging, and turned up some truly astonishing results.

One of the must famous slaves in history is Dred Scott. I had no idea, but with the innocent marking of an 'X' for his signature on a pro forma freedom suit against the United States territories and the ensuing, astonishing decision by the US supreme court to deny citizenship to black people was the catalyst for the US Civil War.

Dred Scott was born into slavery as the property of someone else. Originally born Sam but adopting the name Dred from his older brother after he died, he was sold from family to family, moving from state to state, even staying in territories where slavery was illegal. Originally suing for his family's freedom in 1850 and then having that freedom repealed by the supreme court in 1852 and returned to his 'masters', it wasn't until 1857, through another failed lawsuit and being given back to his original owners that Dred Scott and his family were finally emancipated. Scott lived as a free man for only nine months before he died of TB.

Cristiano Ronaldo earns �120,000 a week from his contract with Manchester United, and his estimated annual earnings top �9.2 million each year.

Methinks Ronaldo is not so much a slave as he is a whining tool.

2008-06-22T12:21:00.002Z

One Is The Loneliest Number
It was my birthday! And as horrifically disappointed as I was that not one of you selfish bastards bought me a present, my glorious girlfriend more than made up for it by buying me a Playstation 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV!

...and, as per usual, fistfuls of those just and noble organisations that don't trust parents to bring up their own children are just chomping at the bit to have it banned.

In this small but wonderfully formed excerpt from his interview, Phil Villarreal of the Arizona Daily Star spoke to Dan Isett of the Parents Television Council about the myriad objections to the game.

Usually if I'm going to stumble into an argument all guns blazing, I usually consider it good form to have at least some actual facts in my armoury. Facts are clearly unneccessary when defending children from society:

Isett: I've actually played Grand Theft Auto IV, and it's right in keeping with previous versions. The series continues to lower the bar and this is the first game that has an alcohol content warning. You get points for driving drunk in this game.

Villarreal: You know that's not true, right? The game doesn't have points.

Isett: If nothing else, it's a rewarded activity. Necessary for advancement.

Villarreal: I don't think so.

Isett: But there's an alcohol content warning and a scene of drunk driving, correct?

Villarreal: Yes. Did you play that part?

Isett: No, no. I didn't get that far.

Seriously, all you guys are geniuses.

2008-05-08T20:12:00.001Z

Lawrie's Adventures On The Other Side Of Customer Service

It's always fun to read the experiences of overwraught, disgruntled and harangued retail professionals when dealing with moronic, monosyllabic, vegetable-IQ'd consumers and their lack of understanding, empathy, social graces and volum control. In my various former incarnations as a front-line offensive to the everyday consumer, my more-or-less verbatim transcripts have provided literally a whole bunch of people with a handful of hilarity. Today, however, my retail experiences come from the other side of the fence. Rarely have I been in a position as a buyer of goods and on the recieving end of such spectacularly poor service as I was this evening.

The first offender of my consumer sensibilities (and this may seem slightly tenuous, but stick with it), was my TomTom Go 100. In the coming years we will all have robot slaves; this is something I look forward to with great anticipation, and satellite navigation is the first foot in the door. Gone are the days when map-holding girlfriends and wives are required to know the difference between left and right - we now have a little electronic toy to guide us home. As I'm sure you're aware, however, sat nav systems are far from infallible.

I faithfully gave my TomTom my destination postcode and set off. It told me to make a right, but the turn in question was blocked off and being diverted. Fortunately, these systems can quickly and efficiently plan alternate routes, which it did. So I carried on for a bit, becoming accutely aware that I appeared to be overshooting the mark a little bit, when all of a sudden it told me to make a series of sharp turns which appeared to have me pointing in vaguely the right direction. Finally, he proudly announced "You have reached your desination". Unfortunately, this was in the middle of a residential street; I was supposed to be in a large retail park. I turned a couple of corners, then pulled over, re-inputting the destination postcode. It took me round a few more corners, taking me a full three miles from home - over a mile and a half further than my intended destination - onto a completely different street. He then announced, like he was Mapthor, God of the Road and Mini-Roadabouts, "You have reached your desination". "No I fucking haven't!" I screamed back, my window open and two small children standing directly next to the car. "Not even St. Christopher knows where I am, you fucking ZX Spectrum tape-drive fucktard!" Realising that my chances of making it to the store were becoming very slim, I caved in and set the destination for home. Dejected, trundling along at a snail's pace, I looked up to see... *gasp!* the retail park on the other side of the road! I furtively pulled a highly illegal u-turn and swung around in the road, careering into the car park directly in front of my store of choice: HobbyCraft.

If you haven't heard of it before, HobbyCraft is like a tiny little shop in some secluded street, run by two old ladies and sells paper and sewing buttons. The only difference is that HobbyCraft is a megastore and it shits all over the little old ladies two-bit 'buttons-and-crap' operation. This is where the second half of my adventures commence.

I rushed into the store, clambering around to make sure I had money and enough brainpower to propell myself through the store. Almost the instant I was inside, a deadpan pre-recorded monotone booms through the PA: "This store will be closing in ten minutes. Please make your way to the tills to pay for your purchases." Ten minutes? That's a lifetime to an experienced speed-shopper like me. I whisked along the rows to find the inky pads I was after. However, barely two minutes had passed - and I wasn't immune to the visual hate-daggers being thrown at me - when the same recorded voice announced, "This store is now closing. Please make your way to the exit.". Given my Oscarian mood, my witty repost was limited to "Please make your way to fucking off,". Yeah. Good one.

I grabbed an ink pad at random, carefully studying the back to make sure I wasn't buying gloss emulsion or glass paint, and read a note about needing an aerosol sealant for this particular ink. I accosted a shop 'assistant' - you'll notice I enclosed her job title within quotations to give a visual indication of inferred irony - and asked her if she knew how many ink stamps I might exepct to get out of a particular ink pad, to which she responded with a barely perceptible shrug. Pretending not to notice her indifference to the world, I asked the same question again. "Dunno," she managed to mumble. "Thanks. That's very helpful. Now, it said something about maybe needing an aerosol sealant?". Her brow creased and she asked, as if offended, "Where did you read that?". I pointed at the back of the ink pad, then at the sign in the aisle. "It said on there... I read it... look, does it matter? Do I need a sealant or what?". Another shrug. "Dunno, then. Don't fink so." Oh, you don't fink so? Well that's very reassuring, you Fuzzy Felt hippy.

I grabbed my inks and headed for the tills.

2008-04-15T12:36:00.003Z

Winning 'Awards' The Easy Way
I'm no stranger to the headlines. Once, after accidentally recieving a cheque for over a half a million pounds my story made it onto page 3 of The Sun (for all you foreign types, 'Page 3' means "a page in a 'newspaper' with boobs on it") and even got my picture on the front page of the local rag until some selfish bastard crashed his helicopter and died later that afternoon.

So imagine my twinkly joy at discovering that, after working on Elbow's new site, I have inadvertently made it into The Sun again. Note that I've conveniently highlighted the parts I worked on, since they're the most important and nobody should care about anything else.

And finally, after spending a good couple of years trying to destroy independent widget development, Myspace have finally seen the light (in particular, the lamp of foolhardyness illuminating the fact that they're consistently falling behind Facebook in terms of UK traffic) and stolen Facebook's development platform.

2008-04-05T17:07:00.002Z

How To Waste Money And Imbibe People
For those of you just joining us, welcome back to, officially, the most bestest design-having blog. Hooray for me and my mantel of shiny-yet-intangible awards! In addition, I have just set a record for the worst grammatically structured fragment of 2008.

While searching for a frustratingly elusive video of George Carlin performing his version of The Aristocrats (if you don't know the legendary gag, you should check out this trailer and then immediately order the DVD), I stumbled across Otto %26 George's retelling of this comedic classic. Nothing gets me much hotter than a fantastically vulgar puppet.

2008-02-05T13:57:00.000Z

Dear Centre Parcs

Dear Centre Parcs,

I recently had a very enjoyable stay at your Elvenden Forest 'parc', although unfortunately I didn't see any elves or, failing that, any wolves eating children. I did see a boy push his sister off her bike and laugh, though it was neither magical nor elvish. I did some swimming, I played some badminton (which, it turns out, I'm not bad at), I shot some pool, I totally kicked ass at go-karting even though everyone claims I cheated; a great time was had by all.

However, I have one issue that came up again and again that almost ruined every day for me. Like an effluent smell that follows you to bed even after you put your shoes in the washing machine, or the constant ringing hum of tinnitus that lets your brain know that your ears are dying from the inside. For the sake of my own health and wellbeing, I must insist on recompense for no less than the cost of a full treatment of laser-eye surgery for both of my eyes. And a really nice pair of sunglasses.

I realise this unpleasantness may well have been avoided if your facility had not completely burnt down a few years ago thanks to the boy wonder who decided to take a blowtorch to a bitumen-coated roof, and for that I am sorry that you have been placed in this unfortunate position. However, I feel I have no recourse but to demand reparation given the nature of the issue that blighted my every waking minute at Centre Parcs in Elvenden Forest, unless you can offer a solid, plausible reason for using COMIC SANS ON EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SIGN YOU HAVE.

It's not even a real typeface, you fontologically challenged pissmidgets. The only possible way you could have made things any worse was by throwing an apostrophe into every plural and hanging a sign in the changing room that said "Be careful with you're belonging's! Their are theives in the area!"

2007-11-18T14:59:00.000Z

Phoenix Dark Wants To Meet YOU
I frequently suffer through phases of insomnia, infecting my brain in same way I imagine hundreds and hundreds of venereal diseases feed happily on Jodie Marsh's pubis; and last night was no different - for my insomnia, or Jodie's vagina, I'd guess.

As I sat in bed watching Mystery Men at 2am this morning, I began to notice a pattern in the far-too-frequent advert breaks marring my enjoyment of this cinematic classic; all of the advert breaks were identical. I don't just mean that there was a commercial for some kind of Ford parambulator and another for one of those generic price comparison websites; oh no, there were eight (I counted. Twice) separate adverts for those mobile-text-flirt services.

You know the ones - some gormless bint with horrifically modified grapefruit-boobs crammed under a thoroughly inadequate bikini top, her skin dyed to the colour of an out-of-season satsuma and wearing more make-up than a member of The Black %26 White Minstrel Show pretends that she's at home alone on a Saturday night having the time of her life (optionally joined by a genetic clone of herself wearing a black wig) texting some sad twat sitting at home on his own in underpants and a vest while he knocks out a five-knuckle shandy to the fake picture of 'herself' that she just sent to him.

Well, I started noticing that while the advertised numbers changed and the girls looked (barely) different with each commercial, the company offering the service listed in teeny-tiny text at the bottom of the screen remained the same. That company is MyTXT, and the plethora of different-but-the-same services they offered piqued my interest enough to take a look at their website.

At first glance it appears that someone got their nephew to put the site together with Microsoft FrontPage (although a quick glance at the page's source code tells me it was done with Pysoft's Actual Drawing 6.0), but with a single click of my mouse, I was taken to the single-most revealing 'Safety Tips' page I have ever read. Let's eat some safety nuggets together!

'We all go on blind dates and an occasional anonymous trick.'

Okay, please please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm certain that the word 'trick', especially in this context, is how a prostitute refers to having sex with a paying client; she 'turns a trick'. And I'm not entirely comfortable with the suggestion that 'we all' do it. Maybe in Australia chum, but I'm British.

'Prior to meeting, be sure to get a photo of your date.... Save the picture in an accessible place on your computer. You can always erase it later if his psycho rating is extremely low.'

This is, disturbingly, the only mention of any kind of 'psycho rating', which leads me to believe that it is less a trustworthy points system offered by the company in the name of safety and more a mental gauge that you should use; unfortunately a gauge many of us lack - my three horrifying dates with Psycho Becki 8 years ago being a case in point.

'Map an Escape Route: In the rare case your date may follow you home or attempt to harm you, take a route different from your routine or meet at a location away from your place of residence.'

Yes, one way to absolutely guarantee your safety is to meet a stranger well away from home. That way, you can be certain that your date-rape will take place in complete privacy, well away from concerned friends and family.

The very fact that they have to offer advice about mapping escape routes in case of imminent danger makes me wonder exactly what's happened before. "Hmm... you know, a lot of our customers are being murdered. Maybe we should offer some advice usually only given to MI5 operatives when planning to meet KGB double-agents."

Is it just me, or does this entire 'txt-2-flrt' system seem utterly anachronistic given the many millions of ways we can use the internet to communicate cheap-as-free? You could either spend �3 sending one message and receiving one in return (Three pounds!), or you could download MSN Messenger for free, sign up to Myspace for free, cut out the middle man and spend all night abusing yourself.

2007-10-28T14:50:00.000Z

Daylate Animation Studios Presents...

Anberlin's video for A Day Late.

Watch! an awestruck horror as every member of the band desperately tries to bust a move and prove he is a pro-active and zany musician. Cringe! in belly-cramping mortification as the singer tries to play the emo-by-numbers card whilst, amazingly, auditioning for Pop Idol at the same time.

Horrible. Just horrible.

Update:

Thanks to Bassface for the heads up on the link, and to Google for the correct song name. It turns out that Anberlin are a pretty big deal in the States. Who knew? Not the UK!

2007-10-09T17:14:00.000Z

An Open Letter to Parcelforce
Dear Mr. Parcelforce,

How can one company fail so completely and utterly at achieving the most core, basic services that it claims to offer? I don't have an answer, so maybe you can provide one after we take a look through the keyhole at our relationship thus far:

2004: Unwilling and unable
My girlfriend, the lovely, kind-hearted, forward-planning and sensible girl that she is, ordered a bunch of my birthday presents on Amazon a full two weeks in advance. She also marked them for next-day delivery so that she would have plenty of time to wrap and hide them.

Now, I'm not sure if you're using the Gregorian calendar or Professor Zonko's Wacky Calendar of Lies, but in no way do I equate 'next-day delivery' with 'I have to drive down to the depot two weeks later to pick it up, only to find it's been torn open and the desk clerk is commenting on the broken stuff inside'.

One angry written complaint later, and Parcelforce apparently have the balls to respond with:

"I note from our records that you have now taken delivery of this item, so we consider the matter closed."

What an interesting way to spell 'fuck you'.

2005: Can't deliver, won't pick up
After another instance of 'we delivered your package but no one was home', despite the fact that one of us is almost always around to pounce on any incoming deliveries, Parcelforce then pulled a unique trick: you offered to pick up a parge package we were delivering. Handy! Or not, as the case may be.

We arranged a date, we arranged a time, we waited eagerly by the door for the van to arrive, secure in the knowledge that the package would reach its destination just as we intended. BRANG! Two hours after the expected arrival of the Parcelforce van, we commandeered a vehicle and, with much struggling and heavy lifting, drove ten miles to the depot ourselves. Upon our arrival and subsequent fight to get the package out of the car in what can only be described as one of Britain's rare monsoons, two Parcelforce employees watched from an open bay, laughing. When I started to complain in person, we were pretty much told to get fucked. A pattern emerges!

2006: How to fake deliveries and confuse people
By now we've discovered that Parcelforce's favourite trick is to claim that you attempted delivery of a package, playing the odds that neither of us would be home. Well, the joke is on you fuckers, because I work at home, and with your handy order-tracking system I can prove conclusively that you are lying bastards.

Following the non-arrival of yet another parcel, I went through the now all-too familiar game of calling Parcelforce, keying through 19 different options to actually speak to someone, and complaining. On this occasion I was informed that my parcel had been taken to the post office just up the road; all I needed to do was take some ID and it was mine. Hooray! FAIL.

I arrive at the post office and... yes, I can see my parcel with my name on it sitting on the shelf. I walk up to the counter, offer my ID, and I'm told quietly but firmly that I can't have it because I don't have the Parcelforce delivery card. Oh, you mean that flimsy piece of card with semi-literate biro scribble on it that Parcelforce are supposed to deliver but didn't because they've never been to my house, ever? And you're telling me that card is more convincing proof that the parcel belongs to me than a UK driving licence with my full name, a photo of my face on it and 3 years worth of electricity bills in my bag with our address printed all over them? Okay! Hey - do you want to hear me scream? Because here I go!

2007: We don't care if you live or die
Oh, I had a bad feeling when I ordered my super-comfy new chair online. It seems that these e-retailers just can't help themselves from defaulting to using Parcelforce in a pinch.

I received three separate emails informing me of the expected delivery date - I was even assured that my delivery should be unaffected by the postal strike. BONUS. As far as Parcelforce deliveries go, that's like having a heart attack on Christmas Day. The very second I get a link to track my parcel I get to work. Order-tracking ahoy! SPROING! You attempted delivery yesterday at 7am, but no one was in? And then you attempted delivery again at 3pm and, once again, no one was around? How many lies has thou spake? Oh, let me count thine ways.

I call up Parcelforce, spend two minutes brute-forcing my way through the automated options, and when I finally get a human to talk to I spend 20 minutes listing allll the ways in which Parcelforce has ruined my life. When I mention this most recent turn of events and the apparent failed deliveries, she says, and I quote verbatim:

"Oh, that's funny; the parcel hasn't been signed out of the depot once."

No wonder you failed to deliver my package! YOU DIDN'T HAVE IT IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE. I then gave the hapless woman four pages of instructions on how to drive to the building where I live, how to park the van, and how to approach the front door and ring the bell.

The following day, my parcel arrives with no hassling, no quibbling and no magically invisible packages being undelivered. This is not exaclty what I'd call a 'happy ending', because it's neither happy nor an ending. As long as I order things online, I have a feeling I'm going to be stuck with a company that has failed to deliver or pick up my packages 100%25 of the time.

Parcelforce is owned by the same company that owns Royal Mail, is it not? Yet you are unable to communicate collection protocols with your customers or each other, and you have consistently failed to find an address that my postman delivers to every single day and that a 17-year old pizza delivery boy can find on his moped? Forshame, Parcelforce. Forshame.

2007-10-01T10:48:00.000Z

Eat My Brain Matter
I am finally famous! Aftr years of toiling away, pouring useless and mostly irrelevant movie trivia into the internet movie database, one of my submissions has been accepted!

First, you may read the horrifically dull back-story. A film was released this year entitled Magicians, written by and starring those Footlight veterans of uncomfortable comedy Mitchell and Webb. The film itself wasn't actually all that brilliant. In fact it was almost as dull as this story, which was a shame.

The final third of the film was shot in my native Nottingham; specifically at the Theatre Royal, which is solely owned and operated by my girlfriend via remote control from her sky fortress (it's the first turning after Cloud City. If you see a sign saying "You Are Now Leaving Bespin", you've gone too far).

And that's pretty much it. That's my piece of trivia: the film leads you to believe they're on the island of Jersey when, in fact, they're in Nottingham. Quite why the IMDB chose this particular nugget of non-information when I've previously submitted gems like John Wayne singing prophetic statements of mortality from Gilbert %26 Sullivan, or the mind-boggling technicalities of IP ranges that Denzel Washington can't quite grasp, I shall never know.

But here it is; my moment of Zen. Magicians triviata!

2007-09-23T11:52:00.000Z

Eat My Goods

Hey, you know what's fun? Taking expert testimony and quoting it out of context:

"Consumers' attention span is pretty short," said Lakshman Krishnamurthi, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. "As long as you have a good product that people like, people are going to go and eat it."

What a great analysis, Dr. Lankyman. Maybe you should stick to teaching your Frosties Analysis class at Kellogg's Upstairs College of Cereal Nuggets before offering that kind of advice to General Motors. You fucking plum.

2007-09-06T17:40:00.000Z

Protect Your Kids: Download Milk
Hands up everyone who knows the difference between INT(10) and BIGINT(unsigned)? Put your hand down, Jon - the difference is, of course, that the latter means that my comments work while the former sits in the corner like a fat retarded child, eating peanuts out of a shoe.

My comments now work! I simply thought everyone on the internet was ignoring me, but having sliced through my database like a spear through a teenager's eyelids I can see that everyone still loves me and thinks I'm awesome. As such, I shall reply to you all.

IAN: Welcome to England. Did you know that, by getting a Bachelor's degree at Cambridge, you automatically receive a Master's three years later? Just so long as you don't commit a felony in the meantime. No countryside dogging for you.

ANGEL: Assuming you have already come to England and gone again; you should come back. Again. We'll party it up in the gun crime capital of the UK! For that is where I live.

DOUG: So what if I identify with Betty Ramirez as a strong, independent female role model from whom we can all learn a valuable lesson about inner strength and positive self-image? I've seen videos of you crying at the end of The Never-Ending Story 1, 2 %26 3, The Waltons and Weekend at Bernie's.

LIAM: You are a bummer.

2007-09-04T12:18:00.001Z

And so it starts
At least four hundred million people have asked me what in the holy flying fuck I'm doing with my life that is so important that I don't have time to write absolutely high-lay-rious blog posts to fill your horribly dull, pathetic lives with a small cupful of joy? Well I'll tell you: I've been destroying children and denying the existence of shovels.

I'm still much too imprtant to communicate with most of you disgusting plebians, but I will let you in on a secret: this is the best commercial I've seen today.

2007-06-12T17:54:00.000Z

I'm hunting wabbits
I was reasonably pleased when a friend forwarded me a link to Apple's Beta release of Safari for Windows; at the very least, it saves me buying a second-hand MiniMac just to test my sites on a horrible, horrible browser.

I do wonder exactly how much Steve Jobs was pissing himself laughing when he claimed that Safari loads half a second faster than Internet Explorer 7 in Windows XP. After seeing Apple's frankly Munchausian claims regarding Safari's benchmarking, I was curious as to how fast it would really load. Using a stopwatch and my eyes, here are the results:

Explorer 7: 2.049 seconds

Firefox 2: 3.148 seconds

Opera 9: 5.413 seconds

Safari 3: 16.484 seconds

In fairness, that unbelievably slow Safari load time was on it's first launch; the second time I opened the browser it took a relatively speedy 6.055 seconds. And when I say 'relatively', I do mean relative to a 200-year old paraplegic turtle that's been waxed and set to climb up a playground slide after its nervous system has been frozen to zero degrees Kelvin. And then murdered.

However, all of this fades into utter insignificance when presented with one particular bug. I appreciate that this is a public beta release, and by its very nature you expect a few bugs to fly out and hit you in the face. What you don't expect is a completely unusable interface because no text is visible, at all. No text in the menus, in the title bar, on the web page, in the address bar, or in the search bar. Take a look. Judging by the views on this discussion on Apple's official support forums, over five thousand people have suffered the same problem.

A more-or-less definitive solution can be found here; it is a reasonably geek-tech hack that involves opening a browser system file with a non-native program (I used Wordpad) and telling it where to find default system fonts. It's a bit like seeing someone collapsing due to asphyxiation and having to grab them by their idiotic lapels and yelling into their stupid faces: "BREATHE!".

2007-05-31T19:59:00.000Z

Parlez vous Englisch?
For three years now the Flash/Blogger tutorials have been available on here, and in that time I've gotten lots of acclaim from site like NewsToday, DesignIsKinky and the DQS design community at 24-7 Media, a couple of awards... and over 500 emails from people asking for help.

Asking for help is fine, but at least half that number are from people who speak English only as a distant second language and have difficulty understanding some of the concepts put across in the tutorials, and as a result, my helpful replies aren't really very helpful at all.

So, I'm looking for some gifted, bi- or multi-lingual individuals (haha, I said 'bi') to translate one, some or all of my tutorials into as many different languages as possible.

If you know the difference between 'I'm calling the police' and 'Please sex my face' in any other language, please get in touch.

P.S. I'm particularly interested in eastern languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Malay, although I'm not holding out much hope there.

French is fine.

2007-05-16T12:11:00.000Z

I am XML-ent
You see what I did there? Working in a pun based on a self-congratulatory statement and the acronym for an open standards markup language? You see? Hmm? Yeah, well balls to you too.

This is just a quick and entirely boring post to let you know that I've written a new tutorial, my first in a year. In this particular groove adventure we get to mash it up, bringing the funk direct from Discotown before jiving it up in our very own block party. Word.

[TRANSLATION]:

'bringing the funk' = 'creating an RSS feed'

'direct from Discotown' = 'from your Myspace blog'

'before jiving it up' = 'then importing the XML document'

'in our very own block party' = 'into Flash'

Please feel free to shizzle on my flizzle.

2007-04-29T19:02:00.000Z

grab the world by the conkers
Just a quick post to let you know about two of the awesomest (it's a word) commercials on the remote televisual unit at present; the first starring a dinosaur and a volcano and the second starring, obviously, Mr. T in a tank.

I'd also like to know how gay it makes me that I like Ugly Betty.

2007-04-10T14:08:00.000Z

it's really uncomfortable to sleep in blood-soaked clothing
I watch Diagnosis Murder every day, solely for gems of dialogue like this:

crazy homeless man: you're almond cork roast!
big fat black man: that rhymes with 'toast'.

Thankyou, Dick Van Dyke. Thou art a televisual genius.

2007-03-26T15:36:00.000Z

By the power of Greyskull
This weekend my girly and I travelled down to London-ish to celebrate her brother's 30th birthday. A thoroughly lovely time was had by all.

HOWEVER.

I'm not about to let a lovely meal on a warm spring sunday afternoon get in the way of the bilious tirade about to spew from my foaming maw; ho no, I know what you're all thirsty for.

We had decided to travel down the night before so that we didn't have to do the 160-mile round trip all in one day, so we booked into a Travelodge in Luton. Travelodge are one of the fastest-growing chains of short-stay hotels in the UK, providing quick and simple accomodation for people like us; people looking for an overnight stay and not much more. That being their primary aim, Travelodge are really quite good at providing that basic approach; however, not content with simply stripping their hotel rooms of all personality and most functionality save for a bed and some lights, Travelodge want to boast about it like it was my idea in the first place.

They make the rather bold assumption that I don't want things like shampoo, bathmats, towels or pillows, and that's why these 'extras' haven't been included. in the main, I can see their point; whenever we travel, we invariably pack our own shampoo and toiletries, and I can see how complimentary biscuits with our complimentary tea might just seem like an outlandish frivolity, but... hold on, there's no bathmat?

"People slipping on bath mats is the cause of the thousands of accidents every year, and we'd prefer you to leave us in one piece! In most bathrooms, the bath surface and the floor have enhanced slip resistance and there are hand rails, so it's as safe as your bathroom at home (if not safer)."

Hoho, always start with a joke. That 'enhanced slip resistance' stuff is a steaming pile of horse manure, too: put any liquid between two surfaces and the resulting friction is greatly reduced, and handrails cannot magically reverse the effects of physics. It was on my GCSE Physics paper:

"Which of the following items can magically reverse the effects of physics?

a) A magnet.
b) The Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN.
c) A bathroom handrail.
d) A chocolate duck."

Sticking with the bathroom, they also ask, "Why don't we give you loads of towels?" before piping up with an answer about avoiding unnecessary costs and saving me money. After checking the bathroom, the wardrobe and under the bed and finding precisely zero twoels in our room, perhaps they should modify this question to read "Why don't we give you any towels at all?" According to the clueless badger at reception, the answer is simple:

"Housekeeping... mwleh!"

This same answer was provided when I asked about extra pillows, but the only spares they had were sans pillowcases. After taking a cursory inventory of our room, I would like to suggest some addition questions-and-answers for the Travelodge group:

"Why is there no remote control for the TV in my room, and no spares available at reception?"
- Because they have been stolen, apparently. Besides, You can still change channels by getting up and pushing the buttons on the TV. Sure, you won't be able to access Teletext, but you could always go out and buy a newspaper.

"Why isn't the window in my room double-glazed, despite being less than 500 yards from the M1 motorway and directly above a 24-hour petrol station?"
- We have calculated that, by not adding the unnecessary luxury of double-glazing, we can save each guest 11p on their bill, all for the minor inconvenience of being woken up every half an hour by the nasal whine of the nightshift woman at the garage or a passing fleet of trucks on the motorway.

"Why aren't there any towels or pillows, anywhere at all?"
- Housekeeping... mwleh!

2007-02-26T14:32:00.000Z

designers are not monkeys
better than a whole month scratches and skips over me like a blunt phonograph needle over a joe dolce single, and i've been buried up to my pretty long eyelashes in web designery with almost no time left over for fun and frolics. almost.

before i was bombarded by clients aplenty, i spent a long weekend selling merchandise for the touring production of a really rather famous west-end musical. unfortunately, i spent the entire time selling over-priced promotional fluff to perfectly normal, polite people. even children said 'please' and 'thank you' after each transaction. where's the fun in that? i'll tell you; there's no fun in that. if i can't publicly mock idiotic, semi-literate plebians whose ages accurately reflect their IQs, then what can i do?

...well, i could always win some awards! *does a merry jig* take a looksee on the left at my quite small collection of transitory accolades and shower me with praise! i want to bathe in your brainwaves.

2007-01-23T13:03:00.000Z

low-fat versus non-fat
as not-really-promised, i experienced not one but two spectacularly moronic encounters with customers who, between them, share the IQ of a cheesecake.

idiot #1: [points at the display counter]
lawrie: i'm sorry, can i help you?
idiot #1: [points more insistently at the counter]
lawrie: [worried that i'm dealing with a mute] would you like a rainbow stick?
idiot #1: yeah.
lawrie: okay... [grabs a packet] you just need to pull out the tab at the bottom, and those are spare batteries.
idiot #1: prove it.
lawrie: excuse me?
idiot #1: prove it works.
lawrie: i don't understand.
idiot #1: do everything you just said. get it out of the packet and prove it works.
lawrie: are you kidding?
idiot #1: no. you'll look like an idiot if it doesn't work, won't you?
lawrie: [rolls eyes, then opens the packet] there, see?
idiot #1: oh... is that all you had to do? pull out that tab?
lawrie: yes. just like i said less than a minute ago.
idiot #1: what are these? spare batteries?
lawrie: ...yes.
idiot #1: oh right.
idiot's wife: you can be such a wanker sometimes.

and on the penultimate show, an angry man comes storming out of the auditorium at the interval...

angry man: excuse me! excuse me!
lawrie: can i help?
angry man: [points at a flashing spinner] did you know there are children in there waving these things about during the whole of the first half?
lawrie: um... yes. it's a panto.
angry man: well it's not acceptable! it's very distracting!
lawrie: i'm not sure what you want me to say. it's a panto; children are meant to have fun.
angry man: someone should go in there and stop them from doing it!
lawrie: well sir, it is a children's show, and the kids love this kind of thing. we couldn't stop them from waving around this flashy stuff even if we wanted to.
angry man: yes there is! you could stop bloody selling it!
lawrie: unfortunately i'm not authorised to make that kind of decision: i'm not the director of the theatre, as indicated by the fact that i'm selling merchandise.
angry man: did you know there's a child on the end of my row and he's been waving one of those bloody spinners throughout the entire performance! i'm hardly able to concentrate on the panto!
lawrie: concentrate? it's a panto.

2007-01-18T13:52:00.000Z

the abyss gazes also into you
as the panto draws inexorably to its close and the crowds thin out, so too do my comical interactions with the obesely moronic public. in what will more than likely be my final post concerning my current part-time job (save for something spectacular during my last three days), i've decided to present here a compendium of some of the most common stupid questions i get almost every day. to understand this mass idiocy, you have to understand that everything is labelled and priced at least twice and everything that blinks and flashes and spins is switched on for display purposes, making my little hut look like a christmas tree threw up all over it. so! let us begin:

woman: how much is it?
lawrie: sorry, how much is what?
woman: everything.
lawrie: do you want to buy everything?
woman: no! i just mean... [points] how much is that?
lawrie: �4.50.
woman: [points at something else] and that?
lawrie: three pounds. we have a price list. look, it's here.
woman: oh. [squints at list] what's a 'rainbow stick'?
lawrie: it's this thing here. the one labelled 'rainbow stick'. with the price on the label. and on the list. you pointed at it not twenty seconds ago.
woman: i see. how much is it?

another common one:

man: so, what have you got?
lawrie: uh... everything you see here.
man: i see. what does it do?
lawrie: what does what do?
man: everything.
lawrie: generally, most things flash and blink and spin around.
man: [points at a currently flashing fluffy wand. labelled, of course] what's that?
lawrie: it's a fluffy wand. it's �3.50.
man: what does it do?
lawrie: it... it flashes. just like it's doing. right now. you can see it, right?
man: i see. how much is it?

and the kids are no better:

boy: i want a foam thumb!
lawrie: okay, what colour would you like, we have ora...
boy: i want a blue one!
lawrie: we don't have blue. we have orange, green or yellow.
boy: a red one!
lawrie: orange. green. yellow. no red. no other colours.
boy's sister: do you have any pink ones?

another kid's favourite is 'i only have a pound to spend, but i want everything':

irritating kid: [has spent five minutes poring over the price list] what's a coolie hat?
lawrie: [points at labelled coolie hat in display case]
irritating kid: oh. what's a chinese fan?
lawrie: [points at small chinese paper fan, also labelled]
irritating kid: oh. how much is this? [grabs a rainbow spinner]
lawrie: that's �4.50.
irritating kid: oh. how much are the finger lasers? [grabs a pack of finger lasers]
lawrie: they're �3.50 for a pack of four.
irritating kid: can't i just buy one?
lawrie: no.
irritating kid: oh. do you have anything for fifty pence?

one of my personal favourites is perhaps one of the most innocuous items: a police truncheon. you all know what a police truncheon is, right? a slender black stick that bobbies of old used to beat criminals about the head with. our police truncheons are soft hollow plastic and make a horribly irritating squeaky noise. what amazes me is that about seventy-five percent of all customers cannot read the word 'truncheon'.

woman: what's a 'police tench'?
man: what's a 'police trunk'?
boy: what's a 'police tunk.. trunknon'?
girl: what's a 'police trenky-on'?
uncle: what's a 'police tunsh?'
grandma: what's a 'police trunchy... trunk... tun... one of those?'

we also have a 'rapier sword', which, in retrospect, may have been an unfortunate name to grant something that will be requested mostly by semi-literate idiots.

woman: can i have a rappier sword?
man: can i have a rap sword?
grandma: can i have a rappy sword?
uncle: what's a 'rape sword'?
boy: can i have a rape sword? i want a rape sword, mum. can i have the rape sword?
mum: please stop saying that, jeremy. can he have one of those, uh... rape swords?