albumbyyear

I’ve moved!

- To blogger.com

albumbyyear.blogspot.com

Who’s idea was this pub crawl!?

The pub crawl went well! Despite breaking the cardinal rule of never having more than one drink per pub (which me and Dan succeeded in doing in the um, first pub) we managed to visit eight or nine places before finishing off in Guildfords finest homosexual establishment that used to be called Platform 9 and who’s new name I was too drunk to remember.

The more internet based side of it wasn’t quite as successful. Although the individual pub updates did yield a few comedy gems such as:

“The Star - Most banterous barmaid of the night. Also: “I’d like a dick in my beer please””

The actual GPS feed provided by Brightkite didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. Almost all of the links provided to my Twitter feed put us in a town just outside of Guildford called Shalford. Although in their defence this location was based on cell tower triangulation as all of the updates were done inside the pubs themselves, not outside where I could get a proper GPS signal.

In retrospect it was a great night and the only failures with regard to the technology side were, as I’ve alluded to before on this blog, down to the drunken humans using it.

Drinking and the Internet

Hello! Today I’m going to take part in my first web 2.0 pub crawl. To be fair, it’s actually my first ever pub crawl, but being the geek I am I’m trying to incorporate as much technology into it as I can. The route itself has been traced out using Google Maps:

View Larger Map

And I’ll also be using a brightkite.com iPhone app which is linked to my Twitter feed to give real time updates on how far along we’ve got - possibly with comment on the pubs we’re in but I’m assuming that as I get progressively more drunk the comments will degenerate into mindless swearing and eventually become unintelligible. So I’ll probably just reflect on how well that went during tomorrow afternoons hangover.

To make an educated guess, initially I’d go with “very fucking badly” but in amongst the dross some comedy gold may turn up so it’s worth trying it at least.

So heres to technology and alcohol. Two of mankinds greatest achievements. By the end of today I’ll know how well they work together, and I’ll also have a kebab.

Cheers!

Battery failure or USER ERROR?

I found out the other day how much I depend on technology. Specifically my iPhone.

On Monday I was sent over to Fleet to cover as someone had called in sick. Normally I’d drive but on this particular occasion I decided that I’d take the train - didn’t particularly fancy attempting to go down the M3 for 30 miles during rush hour. The journey there was fine, apart from missing my connecting train which made me half an hour late.

Upon arriving in town I remembered that it was quite a distance from the station to the town centre so I used the Google mapping software on my phone to figure out how long it’d take to walk. 20 minutes. I got the company to pay for a taxi. Plus I wasn’t knackered. Happy Days.

The day went well, checked my Facebook, updated my Twitter, watched videos of people falling down trapdoors on YouTube. The usual, until it was time to go home. I downloaded some podcasts and texted my mum asking for a lift home from the train station, all the while marvelling at how well my phones battery was holding up - until I got onto the train and my battery died. It seemed that for some reason the battery indicator wasn’t displaying the actual life left in the phone.

I arrived at Walton station after THE MOST BORING JOURNEY EVER hoping that my ride would be there. It wasn’t.

Seeing as the station is 4 miles away from my house walking was out of the question, and I fucking hate buses. I figured I needed to find some way of calling my mum to see if she was picking me up so I thought I’d search for a payphone.

“Ah! I can find one on Google maps on my phone” I thought - Until I realised that seeing as I couldn’t make any calls with my phone, it was unlikely that I could use it to search for a payphone. Or bring up my mums number to call anyway. I couldn’t even check Ray Mears’ website to see what he would do. Essentially I was a bit fucked.

Anyway after ten minutes my lift turned up and everything was cool. But it really demonstrated how reliant I am on this one piece of technology and how wrong things can go if it packs up.

A normal person would say it wouldn’t have happened at all if the battery indicator had worked - however we all know that Apple stuff never goes wrong and in some bizarre way that I haven’t figured out yet the whole ordeal was entirely my fault.

Broken TV NOT caused by errant Wii controller!

As some of you may know, I’ve been without a TV for about two weeks. Essentially it turns out that my kid brothers five foot tall guitar amp and the massive magnets inside it have, according to Samsung “fucked up your TV way hardcore”

Its fine, my new one arrives later today courtesy of John Lewis’ complimentary 5 year warranty.

What I’m writing about though is the fact that I haven’t really missed having a TV. I just watch everything via my laptop. All the programming I’m interested in is available online, my podcasts are tucked away in iTunes and when it comes to serialised stuff like Peep Show/24 etc I generally buy those on dvd anyway. Mainly this is down to the fact that I’m one of those people who has to watch the next episode straight after the old one otherwise I’ll forget what the hell is going on. That does apply more to 24 than Peep Show though, just to clarify.

Despite my earlier post about the new COD being rubbish, I do miss gaming, my PS3 hasn’t been on in over a week and I really wanna play the new HD Street Fighter. I’ve been unable to watch blu-rays since the TV has been away, but that in itself isn’t a massive problem - if I didn’t have a TV in the first place I’d just have bought the films on dvd instead.

The whole episode has really got me thinking about whether a TV is necessary these days. If you’re a console gamer or you want HD content and you don’t have a laptop that’ll play blu-rays then yeah you need a TV. But if you don’t then maybe you should pass on owning one. You won’t need to pay a television licence (probably) and it frees up loads more space in the room for that coffee table you’ve been thinking of buying but have nowhere to put.

On the flipside, owning a TV is very much like owning a penis. Even if you hardly use it you still want to have a bigger one than the next guy.

It’s finally happened.

Yes thats right, the long arm of the legal divisons of the American music industry has finally penetrated my genteel Surrey home.

A few days ago in homage to the new Notorious B.I.G. film I knocked together a trailer for a film called Furious F.A.Z. about a friend of mine who’s known for having a bit of a temper when he’s had a few too many drinks. As background music I used a song by a chap called “Flo Rida” to emphasise Faz’s gangsa-ness. I uploaded it to Facebook, got a wonderful response from everyone and did a little dance cos I was getting attention. It’s the stuff that web 2.0 dreams are made of.

I logged into Facebook today and noticed this ever so subtle message from the friendly sounding “Facebook Team”

Now I appreciate that no, I don’t own the copyright to the song or have any claim whatsoever over it but seriously? I used it in a trailer for a pretend film that no one is ever going to see, let alone make any money from so what is the harm in using it?

I’d understand if I was charging $5 a pop to watch it and was using that money to fund terrorism or the RSPCA but I’m simply not. It’s just. for. fun.

I’m not mad at Facebook, they’re only doing what they’re told to by their lawyers. But the irony is that although the video and it’s offending song are no longer on FB where they can only be seen or more importantly in this case, heard by a select group of mine or Faz’s friends, it’s now on YouTube where EVERYONE IN THE WORLD can watch it.

Madness.

Geolocate this post

Posted with LifeCast

Shoot Shoot Shoot. Hide. Shoot.

Just before Christmas I bought myself a copy of Call of Duty: World at War. I hesitate to use the word reluctantly, but it’s probably the most accurate. Obviously like everyone else who owns any kind of gaming platform I absolutely adored COD: 4 and knew full well that going back to World War 2 for the sequel wasn’t going to be anywhere near as interesting as the modern setting. Hence the reluctance.

I still bought it, thinking something along the lines of “Well considering COD: 4 was so incredibly good, this will still be ok, I guess” and to an extent I was right. It is ok. Average. If I’m honest, kinda boring. 

Bizarrely, I’m sure that if COD:4 never came out that I’d be incredibly impressed with World at War, but when playing it there’s always that niggling feeling that as lovely as shooting people in yet another ruined European town with a crappy bolt action rifle is, it just doesn’t compare to clearing a TV studio full of insurgents with a fully automatic assault rifle whilst receiving air support from a Cobra Gunship. The irony of this though, is that if COD:4 hadn’t come out I wouldn’t have bought World at War at all.

Gheyy.

Kickass.

Like I said however. I was fully expecting not to enjoy World at War as much as the previous game so when it turned out that I didn’t I merely shrugged and went back to finishing my Carphone Warehouse level in LittleBigPlanet.

What did surprise me is that on Christmas day I was given a copy of Resistance 2 and upon playing it I still found myself unfavorably comparing it to COD: 4 

Resistance 2 is good, the concept is brilliant and I really enjoyed the first game. It’s better than the first one by miles but I just don’t find myself being really compelled to play it as I did with COD:4 and the thing that really gets me is I don’t know why. World at War has gay weapons, thats fine. But there is just something about Resistance 2 that makes running around a spaceship shooting aliens with lasers less fun than going to a hot country and shooting foreigners. 

I’ll update later when I figure it out.

In honour of Tony Hart…

Xmas slump…

Increasingly good times at work!

Over the last two months or so I’ve found myself increasingly demotivated at work. Hardly any of the incentives or ideas I bought to the store were working, we weren’t increasing accessory sales or insurance. Maybe it was bad timing what with the economy going down the pan and so on, but still, it didn’t make for an impressive start at the store.

The other downside of this was that while concentrating on helping the team sell more stuff, I was hardly selling anything.

This essentially made me the most miserable assistant manager in the whole of Carphone Warehouse over the Xmas period and only recently has it been remedied.

How? I hear you ask…

I’ve given up on doing anything managerial and gone back to purely selling. The only difference being my name badge looks slightly mincier. The result? The store figures appear to be on the up.

Its early days yet, and now I’ve posted this and its been picked up by Googles search bots and archived for time eternal I’m sure it’ll prove to be disastrously wrong. But heres hoping!