Always on #dealwithit?

Next week (Tuesday 21st May) is marked down in my calendar, it’s marked down as the announcement of the next-gen Xbox console or consoles; there could be a gaming one and a media player one. There’s a lot of rumours about this as there is with any tech announcement – just go to macrumours.com near Apple’s annual WWDC and it’s teeming with people speculating about the thickness of the next iPhone or iPad or the awful new iMac.

One major rumour that has flown around about the new Xbox (codenamed Durango) and the new Playstation is the ‘always on’ feature; it’s called a feature it’s more like a design flaw. What this means isn’t that the console has to be left turned on, what it does mean is that the console – or device – has to be connected to the internet at all times to work. For example a Google chromebook works from the cloud permanently and without the internet you have no access to anything you’ve made on it or even the applications.

This is a ‘feature’ i hope that is left out of the new Xbox (could be called the 720 or even infinite) as i believe it to be very limiting in todays current internet stage. Yes there are places and people that will have no problem with this in well connected areas, such as Google fiberhoods, capital cities, newly built housing etc but there are places without good Internet (Australia, New Zealand etc) and believe it or not some places don’t even have the internet; shock horror. This means you can’t play ‘offline’ a phrase coined to mean you turn on the console and play a game without being connected to the internet, tending to play on a campaign or a skirmish match that involves you and the console only (sometimes acting as the AI in the game as your opposition), you can’t play through Xbox Live or the PSN (playstation network). But this gives you a freedom if your internet isn’t working, or you might not even have internet; what if you move house and you don’t have it installed yet? That means you cant even use the console you paid money for, because Microsoft can’t shovel adverts in your face constantly on the xbox Live service YOU PAY £40 ANNUALLY FOR ALREADY, and also so they can regulate the games and who owns them by enforcing DRM (Digital Rights Management) through the internet – this is what is encoded into video and audio files to only work in certain areas/programs (audiobooks and movies in iTunes is a good example of this).

Now some people including ex-creative manager at Xbox, Adam Orth, think this isn’t a problem at all as ‘all devices are always on anyway now, thats the world we live in’ and ending that tweet with #dealwithit. Well Adam i’m glad you lost your job, you can say that because you’re a…were a…highly paid executive who can afford to have what they want when they want and when something falls through, you can throw money at a solution, not everyone can, most people can’t, if my internet dropped out for 3 minutes (the buffer time for the console to reconnect) and that forced me out of my offline game to go to a god-awful ‘troubleshooter’ i’d be pretty pissed off.

‘Deal with it’ isn’t something a company should use as a method of sidestepping a problem. Even if only 2% of your current audience have no or a bad internet connection then you still need to include those in the choices you make as they are your audience. To the company it might not mean much, but to the individual it means much more. I remember being at my family hone with a dreadful internet connection (Virgin media obviously) and being frustrated daily by being kicked out of Halo matchmaking, but if that shouldn’t stop someone being unable to use the console at all.

It’s the equivalent of a mobile phone being locked when you have no signal or iTunes not working if you haven’t signed into the store. It’s not the primary function or reason for the product so don’t limit it because of that. Hopefully Xbox (i don’t care about playstation personally) see sense and don’t include this so called ‘feature’.

The sorry state of todays fashions

I was wondering what to write about today/tomorrow (yay it’s on time today) until on my way to the train i walked past someone who appears to have got dressed like a bat, by this i mean upside down, not all in black with wings. I imagine he has got confused hanging upside down in the wardrobe with all the blood rushing to his head, thinking he was buttoning the bottom 3 buttons of his shirt up to ‘keep it casual’ over his deep-v tee but no. This guy is a rebel – or confused i’m not quite sure – he had the top 3 buttoned up, instead of having a shirt over his deep-v tee he essentially had a cape with sleeves, if he had to run for a bus it would definitely flap behind him like an indie Batman; or is that too much of a ‘mainstream’ reference?

Now i’m no gok-wan of the north, i’ve been in Next a few times and i own a pair of River Island suit trousers, and even have 1 checkered shirt (moment of madness). But i’d like to think i know how not to look like a tit. I do wear hiking boots daily but not because i like the look of the thick sole and the pattern on the laces but the fact they are like walking on warm clouds and support my feet properly; but i suppose that’s got nothin on a pair of £3 ‘pumps’ (plimsoles) from Primark, and why have people chosen to wear these, they are crappy shoes we wore at school for P.E. Since when did school trends become fashionable. Maybe next year it’ll be scratchy grey trousers and shoes from Clarks that’s making Vogue’s front page.

Rhod Gilbert and Lloyd Langford talked about ladies fashion last week on Rhod’s radio show and how women pluck their eyebrows to within an inch of there lives then draw them back on. A bit of grooming (not the bad kind) and tidying up is great but that’s a step too far. Lloyd also brought up the fashion of girls wearing leggings without skirts, which i also find hard to grasp, they aren’t designed to be the only thing between the world and your all very visible knicker line or worse, a thong label. That little square of white glowing under a pair of stretched leggings looking like a tear in the seem at distance but no its the washing instructions of your g-string.

Manchester is pretty bad for this and so is my hometown Darlington, but in all fairness in Manchester it’s mainly students so at least you know they’re 18 and up, but in Darlo they’re all parents, so around 15 and up. I’m hoping this trend doesn’t bleed into the male section of clothing stores, i don’t fancy walking around the city centre being able to guess if every over-confident manscaping alpha male is Jewish or not.

Maybe leggings need to come with a warning like alcohol ‘drink responsibly’, knives ‘keep away from children, and even some children ‘this is Francis, he’s not allowed in the sun’. Leggings should come with a huge label stating ‘BUY A SKIRT’ because trust me on this ladies there’s nothing classier than knee high leggings, a crop top and a pair of bloody pumps.

Coffee, Energy Drinks and Alcohol

Last month (being april if you’ve not noticed yet) i aimed to give up Coffee, Energy Drinks and Alcohol. Today was the first day i’ve drunk coffee since april 1st, i’m planning to not drink energy drinks again anyway as they are really bad for you and in all honesty do nothing for me regarding energy or keeping me awake so whats the point; in fairness neither does coffee but coffee is lovely and a lot purer than red bull.

The alcohol part of this i didn’t follow through with, I failed on day one, but i have a sensible reason – sort of – i came home that day to see that i had two cans of woodpecker in the fridge and i thought to myself that ill drink these today and tomorrow and just do another 2 days at the end to make up for it, otherwise those cans would be looking at me everyday and if i kept them cold for a month their taste would be different; that’s reasonable, right?

I also then drank that weekend and at that point thought ‘ah screw it, just coffee and energy drinks then.’ It’s not i’m an alcoholic or caffeine fiend or ‘have a problem’ i know that sounds like i do and i’m just denying it but i really don’t. I just think it’s healthy to remove these from your system for a month a year to clear them out.

Now this mildly segways me into something that’s going on in Australia currently involving the MMR vaccination and lots of parents not wanting their kids to have it due to it ‘messing with nature etc’. Now i may sound pretty arsey but get the vaccination, why would you deprive your child or yourself of a vaccination that’s proven to work, yeah there was a mild link with autism years back but i would rather have the vaccination and have the very minor risk of autism than get measles, mumps, rubeola, or all three.

It sounds like that it’s the kind of people who like their world to be all natural and stick with what we are given, like Jehovah’s who disagree with medical intervention such as blood transfusions, organ donating, medicine and vaccinations. It’s not like the human body is clean of bacteria by any stretch. Yes we are sterile in the womb but by the time you are 5 years old and attending school you have 3 pounds of bacteria living on and in you which is the same weight as your brain; i can imagine that by the end of day one of school that number has doubled.

Kicky kicky, bitey bitey, scorey scorey

This is a blogpost a bit out of the ordinary, and should be short (but i’ve not wrote it yet so i’m unsure to it’s length right now) but from the title you may be able to guess it’s about Suarez and his zombie fetish; i say zombie fetish, he probably doesn’t have one of those but he did bite someone again. I was going to use this next week but i think it’d be a bit out of news circulation by then.

Don’t worry I’m not going to be making any comments that require deep football knowledge as i don’t watch or follow it – had to check BBC to spell his name correctly – i enjoy playing football: 5-a-side, wally, posty, heads and volleys etc but i can’t watch the damn thing and it’s mainly because it’s boring as hell, people are way too involved in it – Millwall – and i can’t stand the players and how they get paid and treated. People argue that they have a short career so require a 6 figure sum a week, or that they train really hard and they’re life revolves around it; fuck off, it’s a hobby, they got lucky and when they leave at the age of 35 then they can get a real job and suck it up.

What Suarez did was animalistic, i can get a bit jumped up in sport or a bit over zealous but i don’t go biting people. I don’t think he should just get a 10 match ban and a slap on the wrist, he should be banned, permanently, the FA should make a mockery of him, maybe it would help towards reducing the diving and bad sportsmanship that goes with football, Ronaldo. The guy has assaulted someone, possible ABH and he should be stripped of any titles and preposterous wage, no severance, kicked out of his hobby and kicked back home; he doesn’t deserve the air and space he occupies.

Footballers are supposed to be role models, not purposefully, what kind of a role is a footballer to a child as an aspiration, may as well use Harry Potter, but people do look up to them and that shouldn’t happen while they’re diving on the floor, shouting at the referee (seriously what is with that, he/she’s in charge, accept their call and move on, you wouldn’t dare argue with a ref or umpire in any other sport) and more importantly BITING PEOPLE. Football is a gentleman’s game played by thugs, whereas Rugby is a thug’s game played by gentlemen. I want to see Suarez try to bite a welsh rugby player, they’d rip him limb from limb, it’d be like an exert from Game of Thrones or Spartacus.

Ok this wasn’t that short, bite me.

‘Would you like a free…’

Manchester seems to be quite a popular city for product freebees, whether it’s wrigleys extra, powerade, fanta, loreal conditioner ad once on my way to leeds they were giving away cadburys chocolate at piccadilly station and then leeds station; best day ever. Yesterday it was coca cola’s turn to hand out the smallest cans of coke ever; at least powerade gave out full-sized bottles.

I didn’t see the coke zero people this time but i knew they’d been, how did i know they’d been i hear you cry, because of the aftermath. There were tiny little cans of coke zero all over the floor, like some form of confectionary firefight, some people had the care to place them upon objects so they weren’t on the floor, some were even on top of bins; doesn’t take much more effort to put it in but there you go.

I’ll accept any freebies i’m offered, why not, i don’t like coke zero but if i’m offered a free drink on my way home i’ll take it. They open them in a certain way too, they use the top of one can to open another can and hand it to you, the coke goes fucking everywhere but the trick is that coke zero has no sugar so it’s not sticky, same reason you use diet coke for the mentos in a bottle trick, it’s a miracle; i’d still prefer to open the thing myself though, without spilling it, like an adult.

Does anyone even know the difference between coke zero and diet coke anyway? They both have no sugar and i think no calories, so is the only difference the label? And the adverts? One being played out by women ogling over a lift mechanic or as puppets who have a diet coke machine in their office, and the other with a smarmy dick popping up on a cinema screen who’s clearly never worked at a cinema in his life; he was still smiling. Zero calories, zero taste, but on the bright side vanilla coke is back, only took them 10 years.

Model Citizen

I am a model citizen, or at least i think am. Now i don’t fight crime or save puppies from evil monochrome haired countess’s; but i am prepared (scout for six years) and do things as efficiently as possible to not intrude on other people. A quote i read somewhere is something i can relate too ‘if i crap my pants, i’d rather sit in it and deal with it, than infringe someone else’s life with that’.

I’ve been reading John Richardson’s book ‘it’s not me it’s you’ and i have realised we have some similarities, but not the OCD tendencies, entirely anyway. But i do see some things the way he does, such as that someone who loses their phone/keys/ wallet etc isn’t just a victim of an ‘inevitable life issue’ but instead a personal flaw; because it is your fault, you lost it and didn’t pay attention to where you put the item down, you just need to try harder.

A perfect example is people who don’t get their money ready at a checkout before they are asked for it, and that point gawk at the cashier almost confused at what they are being asked to do, ‘i have to hand these carved discs over for the groceries i want? I had no idea’. These people should have to pay for everyone’s shopping in the queue.

On the train last week someone thought their laptop had been stolen, it was his own fault. He had gone to the toilet minutes before we arrived at Huddersfield, meaning that someone walked past a laptop bag, thinking it was lost property and handed it to the train conductor who handed it to the station’s lost and found. Five minutes later he walked back down the train wondering where his bag was, and couldn’t understand why it was missing. He had to then travel all the way to manchester then back to Huddersfield and then to his destination Liverpool, one toilet trip and a lapse of concentration lead to him losing probably 3 hours of his life. If you’re going to leave a bag on a train put it in the overhead bit, take it with you or put it in some other luggage rack, don’t leave it in a chair before a station; i almost wanted to claim it was mine to teach him a lesson.

Maggie and the uneducated vote

Now from the title of this you may be think that im calling the people who voted the Iron Lady into power were uneducated, but i’m not; i’ve been told private schools are very good education establishments. No, this is a blogpost slightly about Margaret Thatcher herself and the voting system in the UK.

Yesterday Miss Thatacher, 78, passed away after poor health and eventually a stroke. Now I don’t have much of an opinion on the woman as I wasn’t around when she was in power, i’m bias away from her as I see myself more Labour than anything else, but i’m not celebrating her death or grieving terribly, to me she’s just another politician.

I do however dislike how under her reign many things were privatised, i dislike privatisation because it leads to products and services being scattered into this ‘profit grabbing’ thinking among the companies it goes too; trying to choose a fuel company or book train tickets is a frigging nightmare and the profits go to shareholders and the bosses rather than back to the cause/people. You end up bouncing around from website to website being told ‘you can save money with us’ from every one. How much simpler would it be if there was one fuel company, one train company and one place to buy/rent a home without a need for profits, it’d be so much easier. You could argue that direct.gov is in this direction but that isn’t the way forward; the phrase ‘bleeding a stone’ comes to mind. I believe this could be the startings of communism but lets give it a go and see, yeah?

Now a lot of people are pleased or even ecstatic that she is dead, albeit the minority, but she wouldn’t have got in if she wasn’t voted for, yeah you can say ‘it wasn’t a majority’ but it’s never a true majority, for that you would need over 50% of the entire country rooting for you, which is unlikely to happen; the highest the UKs voting percentage has got since 1945 was 83.9 in 1950 and is only currently around 65%. Some argue that we make voting compulsory like in Australia who fine their citizens if they don’t vote, but i’m not so sure. Some also say that some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote (i don’t think that prisoners can, correct me if I’m wrong) i slightly think that people/families who choose to live on benefits and generation after generation and don’t contribute to society shouldn’t get a vote as they are just riding the system but where would the line be drawn. But i also think that immigrants and emigrants can vote if they have been here for for over 2 years and work; it’s their choice of residence.

I think the fine for not voting would force people to vote who were on the fence of whether they should bother or not but it would force the people who don’t care to vote, and that’s only going to end up in uneducated morons pushing buttons for the name they like the most.