I can’t say it’s been fun, or interesting, as I’m just a small fish in a big pond in a big island in a massive sea. Completely. And. Utterly. Insignificant. In. The. Grand. Scheme. Of. Things.

But I’ll leave you with this – Zack and Miri Make a Porno wasn’t anywhere near as bad as writer and director Kevin Smith would have you believe.

Ten years ago I was fresh out of school and had just started college. I was studying Information Technology and fully expected to work in computing once I had left college, gone to uni, etc. I ended up with a History degree. Funny how life turns out.

Ten years ago I had a VCR, and now I’ve got a Blu-ray player. Poor DVD.

Ten years ago I had a Ericsson mobile phone that couldn’t send text messages. Now I’ve got an iPhone 3G which can handle augmented reality.

Ten years ago I had one PC, and it was a bulky one. It had a CRT monitor, a 333MHz Intel Celeron processor, 64MB RAM and a 4GB hard disk. I thought it was awesome. Now I have an Apple MacBook with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2,048MB RAM and a 250GB hard disk. I also have a PC which I built a few months ago that has a 24″ LCD monitor, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 7750 2.7GHz processor, 4,096MB RAM and a 250GB hard disk. Oh and an old semi-retired PC with a 19″ LCD monitor, 2.4GHz AMD Athlon processor, 2,048MB RAM, a 120GB hard disk and a 160GB hard disk. Oh and a Sony Playstation 3 with a 250GB hard disk, oh and my iPhone has a 8GB solid state drive (did solid state drives even exist in 1999?), and countless flash drives and SD memory cards.

Ten years ago I had cable. Now I have Sky+ and cannot quite imagine life without being able to pause live TV.

Ten years ago my MP3 collection consisted of about 40 files. Now I have 3,849 files that would take me just over 15 days to listen to without a break.

Ten years ago I had 56k dialup internet. Now I have 8MB broadband which is now considered slow.

Ten years ago I didn’t have a digital camera. We had one at school, but it was huge and photos were saved to a 1.44MB  disk inserted into the side of it. Now I have a Nikon D40 digital SLR camera that takes SD cards, and currently has a 2GB SD card in it.

Ten years ago I was running Windows 98 on my PC. Now I’m running Windows Vista and Ubuntu on my PC and Mac OS X Snow Leopard on my Mac. Ubuntu didn’t even exist ten years ago. Nor did OS X.

Ten years ago few people outside the US had heard of George W. Bush. Few people outside the UK had heard of Tony Blair. Few people anywhere had heard of Osama Bin Laden.

Ten years ago if a newsreader mentioned “a billion dollars” you’d have gasped at such a large figure. Now “a trillion dollars” barely raises eyebrows.

Ten years ago “credit crunch” would have sounded like a breakfast cereal. Now it’s fucked the world over.

Not everything changes, though. Ten years ago Liverpool fans were hoping and waiting to finally win the Premier League. Now they’re still hoping and waiting.

Why is cheating tolerated in football? Obviously people were angry when Terry Henry handballed, but the majority of footballers (especially Premiership ones) cheat incessantly – even when they don’t need to.

I’ve noticed they try to con the linesmen and referees when the ball goes out for a throw-in. Even if the player knows he was the last player to touch the ball, he will still throw his arm up to signal “it’s our throw-in”. Now that’s just cheating for the sake of cheating.

Then there’s the divers, those bastards who seek to gain an advantage (sometimes a game or tournament-altering advantage) by conning the referee into thinking they were fouled. If the referee doesn’t believe them they get a yellow card. A yellow card! That’s the exact same punishment as giving the ref a bit of grief or going in a bit too clumsily on another player.

Divers aren’t the ones I hate the most, though. The ones I hate the most – hate with a passion – are the players who are tackled/fouled and react as if they’ve been shot. I’m sure you’ve seen it time and time again, and it’s almost always foreign players who are guilty of this shameful practice. This is the worst sort of cheating on the pitch because if a player successfully cons the referee into thinking they have been the victim of a vicious assault then the referee often has no choice but to send the ‘offender’ off while the ‘victim’ jumps to his feet looking a bit sheepish. They ought to be banned for life.

But all of this would be stamped out in an instant if the FA, UEFA and FIFA punished the offending players after the events had taken place. If a driver cheats in Formula 1 they are punished after the race, and the results altered accordingly. So why did France get away with Terry Henry’s handball and progress to the World Cup? The game should have been replayed at the very least, but I’d have gone as far as to say Ireland should have been given automatic qualification as a result of the con by the French.

The football authorities have the technology to punish players and teams after the event, so why don’t they use it? They even have the technology to do it during the game. If a player dives in the penalty area and the referee and linesmen are unsure, why can’t the referee ask for a panel to quickly review the incident and let him know? It happens in cricket, so why can’t it happen in football? I’ve heard people say we can’t do such things because it’ll slow the game down. Seriously? What a load of tripe! Does it slow the game down as much as some streak of piss who has thrown himself on the floor claiming to have had his chin broken when all he’s really doing is conning the referee? No!

I’d like to see all Premier League and international football matches scrutinised after they finish and the following punishments for offenders brought in to football:

1. If a player pulled another’s shirt to stop them from gaining an advantage – 1 match ban
2. If a player is subsequently found guilty of doing it a second time in any one season - 4 match ban
3. If a player blatantly dived – 1 match ban
4. If a player blatantly dived a second time in any one season – 3 match ban
5. If a player blatantly dived a third time in any one season – 5 match ban
6. If a player blatantly dived a fourth time in any one season – 6 month ban
7. Any player found to have blatantly dived eight times in three consecutive seasons – lifetime ban
8. If a player clearly feigned injury to gain an advantage – 4 match ban
9. If a player clearly feigned injury to gain an advantage a second time in any one season – 3 month ban
10. If a player clearly feigned injury to gain an advantage a third time in any one season - lifetime ban
11. If a player successfully conned the referee into gaining an advantage which directly led to a victory – result annulled and victory or three points given to the other team
12. If a player attempted to intimidate the referee in any way – 3 match ban

Harsh? Perhaps, but it would stamp out cheating almost entirely in the sport. The players have little to fear at the moment because they know they can get away with it completely if they successfully con the referee. What does it tell other players when Terry Henry conned the referee and France were allowed to go through? It tells them that if they really must cheat then they will get away with it.

There needs to be some integrity in the sport once again, and the players need to know that cheating will not be tolerated, and if they do cheat the punishment will be severe and potentially career-ending. Then maybe the next generation of footballers won’t be so quick to cheat.

Here you go…

Aperture
399 photos have an aperture of 8
230 of 9
120 of 3.2
59 of 7.1
31 of 10
29 of 6.3
29 of 14
27 of 5.6
24 of 4
the rest are too numerous and I can’t be arsed including them.

Focal length
269 photos have a focal length of 55mm
177 of 18mm
137 of 6.4mm
69 of 200mm
50 of 38mm
30 of 35mm
29 of 26mm
the rest are too numerous and I can’t be arsed including them.

ISO sensitivity
605 photos have an ISO sensitivity of 200
234 of 400
107 of 80
81 of 800
23 of 1,600
22 of 100
14 of 320
9 of 50
7 of 125
2 of 250
2 of 160

Exposure time
269 photos have an exposure time of 1/60 (one 60th of a second)
83 of 1/320 (one 320th of a second)
82 of 1/200 (one 200th of a second)
77 of 1/250 (one 250th of a second)
76 of 1/500 (one 500th of a second)
69 of 1/400 (one 400th of a second)
68 of 1/160 (one 160th of a second)
66 of 1/125 (one 125th of a second)
the rest are too numerous to mention, but the longest one was 214.4 seconds.

Camera
845 photos taken with a Nikon D40 DSLR
210 taken with a Canon PowerShot A2000 IS
14 taken with a Fuji FinePix S3000
6 taken with a Canon PowerShot A520.

There. Some completely pointless stats for you to absorb into your brain.

Same goes for internet radio, but that’s another blogpost for another day.

So… podcasts. Why haven’t I warmed to them? After all, they’ve been around for several years, and everyone’s at it. Even MPs are at it. I don’t know why I have failed to embrace them, and I know enough people who swear by them, but they just haven’t ‘done it’ for me. That said, I haven’t really given them the time of day to actually try them out.

Maybe it’s time I actually tried them. Like last week when I gave in and sat down to listen to Michael McIntyre on Youtube. Previously I hated him, but I hadn’t actually given him a chance. I guess I wrote him off as yet another poor southern ‘funny man’ like Harry “I’m Just Not Funny” Hill. The result? I found McIntyre rather funny!

So… I’ve got iTunes loaded up, I’ve clicked on the Podcasts bit and it’s taken me to the store. The first thing I saw was a series of photography-themed podcasts by some guy called Chris Marquardt. I love photography and this is two blokes talking about how cameras interpret different colours of light. Now they’re talking about something called the ‘blue hour’ which is the period of twilight each morning and evening where there is neither full daylight nor complete darkness. The podcasts are short (eight minutes or so) but pretty informative.

Well, that was better than I thought it would be. Apparently there’s 400 of those photography ones by Chris Marquardt.

Next up is Today in the Past by John Hodgman (of The Daily Show fame). One podcast each day, less than a minute long, where John tells us something that happened today in history. He’s talking about a secret world government that planned World Wars 1, 2, 3 and 3.5 (also called ‘The Battle Beyond the Stars’). Odd, but kinda funny.

I just tried another one called MOTD Xtra! and it wasn’t at all funny so I turned it off after a few minutes. Ah well I guess not all podcasts can be funny or informative.

I think I’ll have to do some more listening of the many many podcasts available on iTunes, but it’s looking good.

I started using Facebook back in 2006 and quickly became hooked. Back then it was solely for university students and graduates who still had access to their university email accounts, and for a time it was good. There were no applications either. Just a brilliant way to keep in touch with friends.

But then came the trickle of applications, and for a time it was good. Facebook was opened up to the masses, and it really took off.

Then came the design changes, which I more or less liked. But then came the errors, the unstable servers, the stupid apps, and the general annoyances which accompany Facebook to this day.

So what do I do on Facebook? I do the following on a daily basis:

• play Mafia Wars, which in itself is utterly pointless as it’s a never-ending game
• update my status several times, which I can also do on Twitter

That’s about it. If I do any traveling I’ll upload my photos to Facebook, but that’s always a tad pointless when I have a Flickr pro account and upload all of my photos to there anyway, which are shown in all their glory.

Once a week I play Premier League Picks, but then I also play Fantasy Football via Sky Sports and premierleague.com.

I barely do anything else on Facebook, yet I spend a disproportionate amount of time on it. I check it countless times a day from my computer and iPhone.

And for what? Twitter does status updates better, Flickr does photos better, and Sky Sports and premierleague.com do fantasy football better.

Well if that’s so, then I must be more fucked up than most.

Right now I am playing Grand Theft Auto 4. I am not completing the missions – instead I am just killing people. Without remorse, and in the most explosive way possible.

In the past 15 minutes I killed them by:

• putting a bomb under a limousine to kill the occupants. This set off a chain reaction of exploding cars. Number of dead: about 10.
• Hopping over the wall of the United Nations building and assassinating a ‘diplomat’ in a suit. Number of dead: 1 diplomat, 20+ police officers.
• Driving at full speed in a Hummer into the back of a civilian’s car in the hope the force of the collision will rupture their fuel tank and set them and their car on fire.
• Parking a bus in the centre of Times Square and going postal on everyone. The bus is a damn good shield. Number of dead: 30+
• Pushing people into the path of subway trains.
• Going into Little Italy, firing my pistol at a passing car, and spending 15 minutes involved in a massive gang war with the mafia and the police.
• Breaking into a police compound to assassinate as many police officers as possible.

Sounds fucked up, no? Quite the opposite, in fact.

In the real world I don’t like violence. The last person I ‘punched’ (well, slapped) was my younger brother back when we were teenagers, and I wouldn’t even think of hitting someone unless they were hitting me first. I just don’t like violence in the real world.

I am also intelligent enough to know that there is a massive difference between violence in a computer game and violence in real life. I also know that there is a difference between violence on TV and films and violence in real life. Computer game violence is completely fictional and created by copious amounts of 1s and 0s by an electronic device. Killing someone in a computer game has zero repercussions on your real world life.

But people do indeed kill after playing a particularly violent computer game, or watching a particularly violent film. It wasn’t the computer game which made them kill – they were always going to kill regardless. Five years ago a British teenager was murdered by someone ‘obsessed’ with the game Manhunt, and the game was cited as the reason why. The killer didn’t need the game to kill – he was always going to kill. Maybe if it wasn’t for the game then he wouldn’t have killed his victim, but someone with the mindset to actually murder someone for little or no reason would always kill regardless of some game.

Yes, I’m going to get Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. And yes, I’m going to shoot the civilians at the airport. Why? Because I can, and because I know the difference between killing in a computer game and killing in the real world. Only a moron thinks the two are the same.

This sums up my experiences:

MTV: shit
MTV+1: shit
MTV Base: shit
MTV Hits: shit
MTV Dance: shit
MTV Two: shit
VH1: shit
VH1 Classic: shit
VIVA: shit
The Box: shit
4Music: shit
KISS: shit
Smash Hits!: shit
Magic: shit
Q: shit
Chart Show TV: shit
The Vault: shit
Flava: shit
Kerrang!: shit
oMusic TV: shit
Channel AKA: shit
Starz TV: shit
Bliss: the only one I stopped on for a few minutes because “Always on my Mind” by the Pet Shop Boys, which while it’s not a song I’d say I like, it was the best I could find on telly.
Scuzz: shit
Flaunt: shit
ROCKWORLDTV: shit
MTVN HD: shit
Music Choice: shit

It’s such a shame that modern music (as in music released around now) is dire.

Fernando Alonso - you just know he's too minted to give a shit

Since about 1994 or so I have watched more or less every season of Formula 1. Between around 2002 and 2008 I watched more or less every race.

I even defended it against the ‘haters’ who decried F1 as being boring.

But you know what? They were right.

Formula 1 is painfully boring. And dull. It never used to be, and was still fun up until a few years ago. But the fun died when Juan Pablo Montoya left. Montoya I hear you cry?! Yep – Montoya. He may have been too fat for his car, but he was one crazy motherfucker. He was a driver with a rare quality – he had balls of iron. He thought little of performing some crazy overtaking manoeuvre which no other driver would dare do. Little surprise he crashed a fair few times (and retired in 7 of his first 8 races in F1) – retiring a total of 28 times in the 94 races he participated in during his F1 career.

But there isn’t anyone in F1 like Montoya anymore. Hardly surprising really given the money involved in the sport. It’s good that the sport has become safer, but it’s gone too far. I reckon it’s safe to say the most exciting part of a race is the crashes, but nobody takes risks anymore. Something is inherently wrong with a motor race series where races are won and lost in the pitlane more often than on the track.

So this season I completely gave up on it. I don’t think I watched a single race. It’s good that Jenson has finally won himself the World Championship, but that wasn’t even enough to capture my interest in the sport anymore. The boredom was bad enough, but the corruption was what dunnit. Even Ari Vatanen – a bloke who was in the running to be FIA president – described corruption in F1 as being so deep that the only way to stop the rot is to have a complete break from the existing system. So not only is F1 mind-numbingly dull, but it’s also completely and utterly rotten to the core.

But wait! There’s more! F1 drivers are by and large assholes. Just look at Fernando Alonso – he’s a moron. Maybe he’s a nice bloke away from the sport, but he just reeks of ‘I’m too minted to give a shit’. I remember him once saying that he doesn’t have ‘friends’ in F1. Overpaid assholes.

That’s why I don’t care for Formula 1 anymore.

Not that the government will care. As far as they are concerned illegal downloaders of music are the scum of the earth and must be stopped at all costs. It is irrelevant to them that illegal downloaders of music actually spend more money each year on music.

As a rule of thumb people in government generally know nothing. Lord Mandelson especially so. The British government care about two things: fines and taxes. If something can be made illegal so that fines can be levied then it’s a win for them. Download something legally and they get their VAT. Another win for them. Even better is if one of Mandelson’s pals in the music industry can persuade him that coming down hard on illegal music downloaders and cutting them off from the internet is a good idea, despite Mandelson being against such an idea before the meeting.

The government should stay out of it and stick to doing what it does best – fining and taxing car drivers.