When I was young, I was always told that if someone was blocking your way and you needed to move them – for instance in a busy supermarket – you simply had to say “excuse me” and they would know to move. I was told this was good manners and the polite way to handle the situation.
Just lately though, I’ve noticed three things:
1) People don’t say “excuse me” any more… they just stand as close to you as possible until you move, burning a hole into your back because you’re in the way and aren’t moving, even if you aren’t aware of their presence.
2) If you say “excuse me” to people that are in your way, you get a shocked look and a rapid apology, as if they were preventing you from getting to something urgent and that they couldn’t possibly have any right to be standing where they are.
3) If people need to get past, the just force their way past while muttering “sorry, sorry, sorry” with no regard for your personal space.
What’s going on? Has the British nation forgotten about the simple “excuse me”? Why are people so shocked to be asked to step aside in a polite manner? Have we got to the point where even communicating with our fellow man kind can only be met with repulsion and shock?
I have no answers… all I know is that I will continue to use my manners as my mother raised me to and I will continue to “excuse myself” whenever I need to.
I’m a nerd and an obsessive consumer of content, so for me social news sites, like Digg, Reddit etc have always been a big draw for me. In their early days, these sites always seem to attract a decent quality of reader and the conversations held in each posts comments are always educational and interesting. However, these sites always seem to have a tipping point, where their popularity brings them into the public spotlight, and a less enlightened user begins to enter the ranks. These users, post irrelevant comments, endless memes and generally lower the standard of the whole site.
When this happens, the original members start to get aggrieved by the new users and start looking for new places, this happened not long after Reddit launched, and droves of former Digg users moved to Reddit. Over time, more and more of the unenlightened users swarm into the original site, pushing more and more of the original users to another site. Eventually, the unenlightened users themselves are pushed out by an even lower form of life – the trolls, spammers and other layers of pond-scum, leaving a site that barely functions and nobody wants to be a part of.
This leads to a continuous migration of users from site to site, First Slashdot, then Digg, Then Reddit, even niche sites like Hacker News seem to be suffering lately – once a dedicated community of like minded entrepreneurs, they too have slowly begun to attract a number of “Digg caliber” users.
Over night some images appeared on Twitter showing supposed evidence of people having stolen iPads and iPhones from major outlets during the London/Birmingham/Manchester riots (not Apple stores as far as I can tell… they were well protected).
Anyone that partakes in these kinds of activities is wasting their time. Each store will have a list of serial numbers stored, when they report those numbers to Apple, Steves minions will simply hit a bit kill switch over at Cupertino and the device will cease to function. And thats if you’re lucky.
Photo by Beacon Radio
You see, all current iPhones and iPads come with GPS, built in and active out of the box. Not only can Apple remotely kill these devices but they can also track their location. Simply put, if you are using a stolen iDevice, Apple can find you and will probably guide the police right to your front door.
Before I start this review, I just want to say, I haven’t read the “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels that Game of Thrones is based on. I’m writing purely about the TV show (although, after series 1 I do have a strong desire to read the books!).
Game of Thrones is an medieval tale of Epic proportions set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, where “summers span decades and winters can last a lifetime” following the power struggles of several families as they try to gain control of the kingdom or just live their lives.
I’m not generally a big fan of Medieval type stories and found films like “Lord of the Rings” to be utterly boring even though I enjoyed the books when I was a teenager. Game of Thrones is different, from the first episode I was so captivated that I ended up watching the first ten episodes almost back to back over the course of a weekend. The characters are deep and driven and the actors are believable (with the exception of Sean Bean who while delivering an amazing performance looks a little too much like the wrestler, Triple H for my liking)
Sean Bean or HHH? You decide!
Only one thing outshines the actors themselves, and that is the setting. The scenery and sets are a thing of beauty and really help you believe this was set in a period of great darkness. I was incredibly shocked to find that a large amount of the sets are in fact, virtual. I has just assumed they had found great locations and built amazing sets on them.
Another thing that I like about GoT is that they haven’t made any effort to soften this for the younger generations. There are many scenes featuring full frontal nudity (should have been called ‘game of bewbs’ I swear!), masses of violence and frequent profanities. Even the unmentionable ‘c‘ word gets a couple of outings. Unlike a lot of shows, these things don’t seem forced or out of place – these were violent and opulent times (depending on your class) and I imagine this is how the world really be in these times.
All in all, I really enjoyed Game of Thrones and can’t wait for series two. Here’s hoping we get a few more episodes in it’s second outing as ten episodes flew by too quickly for me. Roll on series two!
I’ve had a fun couple of weeks at work as my lovely boss has put me in charge of a couple of competitions, the first to win an iPad2 and the second to win a months supply of biscuits.
I can’t tell you how good it feels to make that call and tell a stranger they’ve won an awesome bit of tech, or an insane amount of biscuits, especially when it’s not you that’s paying to deliver that happiness.
I had forgotton my password for an old Google account I use at work today and had to use their reset password feature, where I was presented with this CAPTCHA to verify I was human:
Seriously… Google. What the hell were you thinking? Who in their right mind is going to know what that says? What really bugged me was I had to refresh the CAPTCHA THREE FRIGGING TIMES before I found one that was legible! Have you never heard of letter spacing? Jesus!
Oh… and don’t bother playing the audio for disabled users either, that just plays a gibberish message of total crap that you can’t make sense of either – I listened to it on the off chance I could make sense of the image and it gave me over 20 letters and numbers as well as a whole bunch of crappy background noise.
Come on Google – we know you can do better than that – get your finger out!
I think this must possibly be the best news I have heard in a long long time. The homophobic Westboro Baptist Church (who’s motto is “God Hates Fags”) have been fined over Ã?£5 million GBP ($10.9 million USD) in a US court for picketing the funeral of a US military officer. This fine has officially bankrupted their Leader “Reverand” Fred Phelps who’s net worth is considerably less than the amount they have been fined.
Hopefully, now this case has been won and precedent has been set, the families of the other 300+ servicemen who this mob have hassled over the last couple of years can all do the same and take that fine up by a substantial amount, effectively suing these homophobic scumbags off the face of the planet.
I’m getting bloody pissed off with spammers of late, whether it’s the emailing type or the comment spam type, these people are really starting to get on my tits and I feel like they’re really ruining the internet for everyone.
My hatred of spammers is such that I have now come up with a list of ten things I would do to a spammer if I could just get hold of them.
The words that follow are the words of a man on the edge. A man that is getting buried under a deluge of spam and a man that wants REVENGE!
Read on, if you aren’t squeamish or easily offended!
I’m a bit disappointed with today’s Apple keynote – not with the actual products themselves, but the lousy shipping dates. Apple taking the stores down usually indicates that they’re about to release something for immediate purchase but all we got was the AppleTVwith a release date of next month and the iPhone (check out the interface demos – totally awesome!) which we won’t see in Europe until the end of the year!
I understand why Apple have announced the iPhone now but I was really hoping that this baby would be my next phone – now I’m going to have to upgrade my phone twice this year as my k750i is old and on it’s way out.
As for my predictions, I pretty much got it completely wrong. Out of my six main predictions I kind of got three of them correct.
I correctly predicted a new phone and a new PDA, just not that they would be one and the same. I was wrong about the name – Apple did actually call it the iPhone and I got the form factor a bit wrong, but I did get a lot of the functionality correct! iTunes integration, Safari, Touchscreen and OSX on a mobile device. In all honesty, my prediction for this device had pretty much everything you could put in – I was bound to get a couple right!
My other (partially) correct prediction was of course, the new AppleTV which supports high-def (so it’s just a matter of time before we get high-def on the iTunes store!) and 802.11n!! The $299 price tag has been translated to Ã?£199 (should be more like Ã?£154) in the UK store – once again we get screwed by the currency conversion!
Personally, I think that there was more to come, but due to the hardware screw up that happened during the keynote, they had to skip a few announcements (this would also explain why the apple store crapped out for about ten minutes – I think there were more products due to be put on and they screwed up while they were rushing to remove the new products!) I expect we’ll see another keynote around the shipping date of the AppleTV with more info about the new versions of iLife and OSX and maybe that one more thing that we’ve come to know and love…
Now then… when can we expect that next keynote?
Update – One more thing after all! – New Airport extreme base station!
Hmm… browsing the Apple website it seems that a) Mr Jobs has forgotten to mention the new 802.11n compatible Airport Extreme base station (also shipping February) and b) That I was right – Apple are using 802.11n as the new standard across the range… we all know that most of the latest hardware has secret ‘n’ compatible wi-fi inside just waiting to be unlocked, and this is probably why!
Personally, when I upgrade to 802.11n I’ll buy the latest netgear device as I really can’t be bothered with a separate wifi router AND adsl router – I’d rather just have it all in one device.
I’ve been regularly visiting Digg.com for about two months now and I’m still not completely sure what I’m doing.
You see, I always thought that Digg was a social news website, but I’ve heard others refer to it as a social bookmarking site (in comments actually on Digg!).
So… when I Digg something what am I actually doing? I thought that I was giving the article on question my ‘vote’ and saying ‘I like this’ but for some people, Digging is just the act of saving something for later and that’s why I’m getting confused. As I understood it the stuff on the Digg frontpage are the things that most people have voted for but if it works like I’m told it works I’m just seeing things that the most people have book marked.
Which is it? Is Digg a news site or a bookmarking site? Or is it both?
Speaking of social bookmarking – I’m totally “digging” Del.ico.us lately! On a day to day basis I can be accessing the internet from anywhere between two (minimum) to five different machines, each with a different browser and some with different operating systems. Previously, accessing my bookmarks was a nightmare but now that I have Del.ico.us my life is a lot easier!.
If you haven’t already, you should check it out now and if you already have, let me know your ID so I can add you to my network and see all the cool stuff you’re finding! (If you want to add me, I’m andy206uk).
I’m getting bloody pissed off with spammers of late, whether it’s the emailing type or the comment spam type, these people are really starting to get on my tits and I feel like they’re really ruining the internet for everyone.
