Love (Remix)

Hmm. I've had this blog sort of sitting around as a medium to spew a bit of angry speil every now and again, and in the blink of an eye my two great friends have gotten blogs and outstripped me in terms of quality and quantity of posting. Seriously. One of them has posted more interesting stuff in two weeks than I have in two bleedin' years. So it's time to respond :)

I'll link you to their respective blogs in a future posts - they both make for great reading.

For now though, I've decided to start posting up some of my writings on here, including some poetry-cum-song-lyrics and such, and I'll start with this one I dug up from my now-overflowing notebook which has served me well for about four or five years now. It's a poem attempting to capture the feeling of pure love - funny since one of the great friends mentioned above used his second ever blog post to celebrate the joys of love. It's something I've always been fascinated by it, due mainly to the fact I can say I've never properly felt it, and I've been left to see the effects of it on others. This is my summation of it when I THOUGHT I was in love...when it was more infatuation than anything else.

Love (Remix)

No-one ever knows quite how to react when
A feeling they never thought they'd experience
Hits them square in the face
With all the grace of a drunken disco dancer
Heart beats faster,

Lightness in the chest
A feeling so unbridled you can't control,
It,
It lifts you up to the point of euphoria
Where nothing you think can ever hope to stop it

It also begs the rational question
Is this simply madness borne out of hope?
Nothing more than wilful infatuation?
Short-lived, temporary high dope?

But the message from your brain cell beg to differ
This isn't a short lived fad, or fickle delight
How can it be when it feels this good?
A sweeping and soaring rollercoaster ride

The Church of Climate Change's Foundations are Crumbling.

What defines a debate? A debate, in my mind, is one where there are two clear sides to one argument, those in support and those in opposition, and both sides are given their chance to discuss calmly and rationally, and put forward their arguments and points. It is not a free-for-all, with people shouting others down, and 'winning' a debate relies on one side putting forward the more reliable and well-structured argument with more confidence and conviction than the other. The last time I checked, it didn't involve simply shouting down the opposition, insulting them, accusing them of evil crimes, and hysterical scaremongering.

Obviously, it seems, these traditional rules go out the window the very moment the words 'climate change' come into an argument.

In the 'debate' (I use the word very, very loosely) over climate change, those in support of the notion of man-made global warming, or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) have used everything on the above list and more in an attempt to bombard anybody who dares to either question the theory or stand directly in opposition to it into sonic submission. For example, according to Gordon Brown (that esteemed and all-knowaledgble guru on climate change) has accused me of being a 'flat-earther', and Al Gore has stated that, by being sceptical about climate change, I am as bad as a Holocaust denier.

This actually offends me deeply. By me, of course, I mean myself as a staunch climate change sceptic. These comments are referring to me personally as well as every other climate change sceptic or denier in the world, personally, and they are deeply insulting slurs.

First, the Flat-Earthers are a geniune group of people who believe that the world is actually flat. This is clearly foolish - it is proven fact that the world is spherical. But it is Gore's comment which really stings in my mind. The Holocaust is surely one of the worst human atrocities to ever be committed by human beings in the history of this planet. Reading through the details of the various massacres, death camps, methods of torture and execution etc is enough to make anyone feel sickened and horrified that anybody could possibly commit such an awful act of mass genocide. You simply cannot deny it's existance. To do so would by myopic and biblically foolish.
Compare both of these to AGW (interesting how it's not called global warming anymore, is it?) and not only does the really insulting side of those claims come to light, but so too does the fact that trying to compare climate change to one of those two other areas is ridiculous and farcical. Firstly, as I said, it is a proven FACT that the world is flat, and it is a proven FACT that the Holocaust happened. AGW, however, is in no way at all a proven fact - far from it. It hardly takes any effort at all to start picking apart the entire theory of it - indeed, only last week did the serious science behind the theory begin to unravel, and we have a bunch of computer hackers to thank for exposing what many people had possibly suspected was happening but had no real proof. Let's just have a look through what the emails, which have been dubbed 'Climategate' (how imaginative - do we really have to just add 'gate' onto the end of words to give scandals a convinient name nowadays?), imply have been happening:
Manipulation of data to support ideas? Check.
The slow phasing out of fellow scientists who do not agree with them? Check.
And who is this 'they' that I speak of? Not just a bunch of random wannabe scientists sitting in a rusty old station in the Australian outback with outdated piles of junk for computers - only the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, one of the leading bodies and one of the loudest voices in the constant shouting on climate change. What makes this all worse, is that this oh-so-accurate data and graphs have been used to support countless IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change - Christ, there's a lot of acronyms in this blog) 'the-world-is-doomed-we're-destroying-the-planet-you-bastards' papers, speeches and reports. In other words, the very foundations of the research that most of the screaming and shouting on climate change is based on is under very real scrutiny for the very first time.
This is not just a one-off incident - although unsurprisingly, the Pro-AGW lobby are desperatly scrabbling for the biggest broom they can find to sweep this under the biggest and thickest rug they can get their hands on. This is very much the tip of an iceberg. Indeed, speaking of icebergs, another hysterical IPCC report this week saying how icebergs will melt from 500,000 square miles to just 100,000 square miles by 2035 has been rubbished by several eminant scientists; y'see, the original research concluded that it would in fact be the year 2350 when the icebergs would reach 100,000 square miles. As one scientist said, 'I am amazed they have made such a basic reading error'...hmm. Something tells me this wasn't one random bout of dyslexia. By the day now, it seems, there are more and more examples of data being fudged and graphs being exposed as farce - I'm almost expecting in the next few days to have several graphs exposed as having no data behind them at all, and being simply made by a 'scientist' drawing a straight line from the bottom left corner to the top right corner of the graph, with some random scribblings about 'C02 levels' and 'global temperatures' being scribbled on the side.

This is the debate that the Pro-AGW lobby have been refusing to have for years, and it begs a massive question: If the Pro-AGW people have been so certain on their science, their figures and their research, why have they openly refused to take on the climate change sceptics and denialists head-on in a reasoned debate? Why have they callously dismissed any opposition with no intellectual arguement? Why is it that when a study comes out revealing that nearly half of the British public are openly sceptical about climate change, with perhaps more also questioning it, our own elected politicians pretty much come on record telling the public that they are idiots who do not know better? It screams more and more every day of desperate bleating, like someone atop a soapbox screaming about doom and the apocolypse raining down upon us all.

Sunday Sermon in the Church of Climate Change

Climate change appears to go through peaks and troughs, and by that I mean it appears that everyone can go several months without any real mention of it, and then you can go several more months where everywhere you turn there is some sort of story or message written about it. It appears we're hitting one of those peak periods, as I've started running into multiple articles on the subject over the last week or so. And they've all been balanced, well-written, and in no way are they hysterical drivel.

Or not.

The Daily Mirror, a paper which I thought was relatively balanced and not prone to extreme bouts of Daily Mail-style "IT'S GONNA KILL US ALL!" blather, ran a large story today focusing on Gordon Brown's speech saying the world (yes, the whole world) now has 75 days to sort out climate change, else the world is doomed for all eternity. Or something. He claimed that if no deal was thrashed out at the next climate change summit in Copenhagen, 'the planet will be in even greater danger than ever of droughts, floods and other extreme weather'. And in their 'Voice of the Mirror' section, the editor agreed with him, and ranted about how climate change is the 'single biggest threat in the world' and that, and I quote, 'the scientific evidence is so clear that climate-change deniers now sound as misguided as flat-earthers'.

Most of the time, when I see a piece on climate change which is about as un-biased and balanced as a case study on homosexuality from the Westboro Baptist Church, I normally just shake my head and turn the page. But that part basically accusing anybody of being a climate change non-believer as being delusional stung me to such an extent that I almost felt insulted. And to be honest, this also exposes a real problem with the whole climate change arguement and it's staunch believers.
First, I have to ask the question - where is this stone-cold evidence? In the many many years that this whole arguement has been going on - back to the point where it was called global warming (Whatever happened to that tag, I wonder?) - I have yet to come across concrete, unrefutable evidence that proves to me that climate change is happening, and happening now. There are holes in all of the arguements or claims that I have read. For example, there is a quote in the main article from the Mirror which says 'he (Gordon Brown) warned the 2003 heatwave across Europe caused 35,000 deaths. And he said that this would 'become the norm' if no deal was reached in Copenhagen'.

Can you see the flaw in this logic? I can. Surely if climate change is an ever-worsening problem, then wouldn't every summer since 2003 bring with it an equally devastating, if not even worse, heatwave?
Continuing on this theme, why is it that, if global temperatures are going up, why was last year's British summer the wettest on record for many years? That doesn't sound like the consequences of a climate that is heating up all the time.
What bothers me even more though isn't these misguided and shaky arguements they use, it is the climate change believers' methods of going about argueing their point.

As you've probably gathered, I've not exactly read an abundance of balanced, well-reasoned articles or stories on the issue of climate change. The thing is, If they were prepared to calmly set out their points and use common sense and reason to argue their case, then maybe myself and lots of other people would be inclined to listen and perhaps come round to their way of thinking. But the massive problem is that listening to a speech on climate change is like listening to a religious extremist giving a sermon.

Basically, their beliefs and ideals are superior, and you have two choices; either believe, or die in the fires of Hell.

That may sound like an extreme metaphor, but I tell you what, it's how it damn well feels sometimes. You either subscribe wholeheartedly to the idea that man-made climate change is real and the biggest threat to world existance in history, or you are cast aside as a delusional, myopic idiot. It's ridiculous and somewhat farcical, and I tell you something, it is one of the biggest reasons why people are largely so apathetic to the concept. Ironically, all the climate change lobby are serving to do by trying to hammer their beliefs down people's throats in this manner is simply put MORE people off possibly believing in it - in essence, they are simply shooting themselves in the foot by taking the stance of religious zealots preaching their message from the rooftops and soapboxes. They've even got similar phraseology - a favourite sentance among TV preachers, begging for your money, goes something like this:
"BUT! You can save yourself! Just call 1845 SAVEME and pledge a donation to our church..." etc etc.

For a climate change speaker, simply modify to:
"BUT! You can save yourself, and the rest of the world! Just turn off the standby light on your TV, cycle to work and use solar panels!"

What really angers me the most about the whole situation is the fact that I am seeing such figures as Gordon Brown promising to put climate change 'at the top of the public agenda', when I can think off the top of my head of multiple situations and problems which need sorting or working on before we get to the concept of something which may or may not be already happening or possibly happen in the future. Let's see: the fact that we are still technically in a recession, mass unemployment, the faltering NHS, the fact that Mr Brown himself saw it fit to release a convicted mass-murderer on 'compassionate' grounds, the unsatisfactory end to the expenses scandel (Expensegate?), the sinister rise of public surveillance, illegal immigrants and health and safety, and, oh, nearly forgot, that oh-so-worthwile war we are engaged in in a faraway country which, at one point a few weeks ago, was seemingly producing one dead soldier per day.

I don't want to sound like a politician myself, but does Gordon Brown know the word 'priorities'?

A Beer for the working man, and paranoia for everyone else.

This blog was prompted by a friend's blog, who observed how beer, and also linked to that pubs, were on the decline. He mentioned how great beer tasted, and how much he liked it, but also how, as the number of pubs slumps, the number of wine bars seems to be on the increase.
Wine bars annoy me. For some people they are classy establishments for nights out, but to me, give me the pub any day - the pub is the R 'n' R area for the common working man, whereas wine bars, to me, just stink of upper-class trendiness. In pubs you will find builders and salt-of-the-earth workers - in wine bars you're more likely to find smug bankers or office workers. And who would you rather mix with? You see my point.
But what got me thinking more is how beer, like many other things, is slowly being more and more frowned upon in this nanny state.
I can't tell you where this 'do this, don't do that' attitude has come from with our current government and the Tony Blair administration before that, but I can tell you this: it is total, and absolute...bollocks.
I don't tend to swear in my blogs, but there is no other word for it.
Not a day goes by when there is not another campaign of some kind going on, some kind of insidious attempt to try and make us worry for our own well-being. First, it was smoking that was targeted. Then our eating habits. Then our habits with regards to watching TV. Then our drinking habits. And now it has come down to such an extent that we should now check the amount of salt we consume every day for fear of suffering a heart attack one day.
If you intend on leading a perfect life, you will never touch alchohol or a cigarrette, you will eat 5 fruit and vegetables a day, drink 8 glasses of water a day, have no more than 6g of salt a day, and have 1 hours exercise. Apparantly. Oh, and sitting watching TV is a big no-no.
And even if you've got that all down to a tee, thanks to bloody global warming, you now aren't even allowed to have the TV on. Not even on stand-by. Oh, and forget about going out for a nice relaxing drive in your car, you planet-murdering scumbag.
I hate the way global warming (or climate change, whatever you want to call it) is slowly becoming accepted as fact, when it is still unproven, and I am fed up with the way that it is now being used as another excuse by the government and countless watchdogs and research groups to tell us how to live our lives. These people appear to want us to constantly worry and fret about our very existance, and almost create a sense of paranoia about every single thing that we do.
I am fully aware that doing certain things to the extreme, like living solely on McDonalds Big Macs, doing nothing but play Gears of War for days on end or giving yourself ammnesia by alchohol most nights, will be very bad for your health. It's simple common sense - too much of something is of course bad. But what really, to quote Peter Griffen, grinds my gears about the whole affair, is this extreme barrage of fear and paranoia.
Let's come back to the example of me. I eat crisps because they're tasty. I drink beer to relax. I play videogames for enjoyment. I watch TV for much the same reason.
When I am old enough, I will probably end up buying a powerful V8 muscle car. And I will drive it a lot. For fun. I will also take it racing at drag strips. For fun.
And guess what? I really do not care.
I do these things because I can, and because I like to.
Basically, in the last blog I posted up, I told people - mainly women - to stop worrying about their appearance. In this one, I have modified that statement to read as thus: stop worrying altogether.
Stop worrying, and lead the life you want to. Do what you like - if you want to drink beer, then do it. If you want to smoke, then do it. If you want to eat burgers and chips, then do it. There are many more important things to worry about than how much C02 your lightbulbs are emitting, or how many units of alchohol were in that last bottle of Smirnoff.
All of us only get one life, and do you really want to get to retirement age and realise that you've spent your whole life worrying about things that, in the grand scheme of things, make absolutly no difference at all?
I don't think so.
Now, if you will excuse me, I'm off to get another beer from the fridge.

Plastic Fantastic? I don't think so.

This was first written in August 2008, and it was one of my first proper articles. Have a read and see what you think. I've updated it a little since the original one I posted on my Myspace blog.

A few months ago now, I heard of a report by the government that they were planning to take obese children away from their parents and into care.
The benefit exactly of this I'm not sure. It might save money on fire services being called out to extract teenagers from their own doorway, but I can't see the rest of the benefits. More worryingly, however, I can see the sinister consequences of this.
You see, in America, to be obese is to be physically repulsive. Obese people in America are mistaken for Jabba the Hutt or a small planet with legs. America is the country with the serious obesity problem.
Here, on the other hand, most of the England national rugby team are classed as obese. Here are men at the peak of their physical fitness and ability, and yet their being told that they are about to have a heart attack if they dont loose weight? Has any of the contestants of Britain's Strongest Man collapsed with a stroke? Don't think so.
Then I noticed on Facebook an advert for MYA appearing. MYA stands for Make Yourself Amazing. Basically, its plastic surgery.
These people are pushing plastic surgery on a website commonly used by teenagers. They are delibratly playing on teenage girl's insecurities to persuade them to go under not only the knife, but some ridiculous belief that when they come out, with a plastic nose and breasts with their own gravitational field, they will have guys falling at their feet. No you won't. You'll just grow up looking ridiculous as certain parts of your body age and the others don't.
All of this prompts a strong question, and it's one normally overlooked when considering one's personal image and looks - who actually is the judge of what is attractive and what isn't?
Does anybody have a God-given right to tell you that you're ugly? Not the government. Not MYA. Not the supposadly popular girls at school. No-one.
I'm concentrating on girls here because, for the most part, girls worry more about their image than guys. It's a fact of life, although I know a few guys who do try their best to disproove that claim. But largely, for the most part, it's the girls who are more concerned about how they look. They spend hours on their hair and clothing etc, and one guy telling them their ugly can ruin their confidence completly.
But why? Image is a personal opinion thing - just as people can disagree on subjects, people can disagree on whether a person is attractive or not. One person may think a certain girl resembles a warthog, another may think she resembles Kelly Brook.
Let me give you an example. At a Battle of the Bands contest at Bluewater in summer 2008, I had the pleasure of meeting a very attractive girl. Actually, that's an understatement. She was, by a country mile, the most gorgeous girl in the whole of Bluewater that night. But when we went to get something to eat, she refused to eat much because - and I'm not joking - she thought she was too fat.
My jaw hit the floor so hard that when it came back up I had a bruise on my chin. Seriously, did she just say that? Apparently so. And she's not the first girl I've heard say this about themself. A friend has a similar problem with his girlfriend, who seems to have an idea in her head that because she doesn't have the figure of Kate Moss (i.e. a stick insect) she is somehow abnormal. Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.
And who made them think this? Probably a guy, or perhaps another girl, probably with some lofty idea that she is beauty incarnate, saying so.
Well, I have some enourmous reservations. Take me as an example. I have fairly ordinary looks, funny hair that resembles a Lego figure when it doesn't have gel on it, a slight belly and no muscle definition to speak of. Basically, I have none of the stereotypical 'hunk' characteristics. And yet, I've met (and dated) girls who seemingly think I'm more attractive than Jude Law. I'm not being arrogant, but it proves my point - that appearance is an opinion, not a judgement.
Now, I'm not saying we should all slob around not caring about our looks - one should always take pride in one's appearance. But imagine it like this - just because one person thinks you're as attractive as genital herpes, doesn't mean everybody else will think the same. In fact, there may be someone around the corner who thinks you are a gift from the Gods in terms of appearance.
What I'm saying, in a kind of roundabout way, is to be proud of your appearance. Don't waste your time wishing you were something you're not, instead, take pride in being who you are, and instead of looking for attention from the opposite sex, just wait for it to come your way. Because trust me, it will.
Oh, and on a personal note - girls. Short skirts - there is a limit to how short they can be, y'know.

On an aside - since I first wrote this article, the girl from Bluewater has gone out with my best friend, and they will soon be celebrating their six month anniversary together. Do you reckon he thinks she is too fat? Nope, didn't think so.

'Digital Britain' and the death of the internet as we know it.

I have long learnt to be suspicious of government announcements, and especially grandiose proposals, simply because they are normally hiding something. PR gurus can dress it up any way they want, and the PM or whichever MP is announcing the proposal can create a dramatic and powerful speech, but all that does is make me more and more questioning of the proposals, and whether they are all they seem. Of course, in politics, nothing is what it seems.

This is why it’s quite lucky I stumbled upon an article about Lord Stephen Carter’s announcement of a new era, what he called a new, ‘Digital Britain’, for all. This had passed me by, and I remember when it came out, I tuned out when I heard Gordon Brown droning on about how it could become more important than the transport and road network we have already. That is, until I found an interesting article from the Guardian, which exposed the sinister underbelly of these proposals. It seems, then, that Digital Britain is not the perfect e-utopia that Brown painted in his speech - it is, in fact, yet another step closer to the Big Brother-state that George Orwell predicted many many years ago. God, if he was still alive today, he would be shocked at how much the modern world is coming to resemble the state envisaged in '1984', written 60 years ago this year.

The most worrying aspect of this scheme is that it is in favour of internet pricing, and that it plans to take away internet neutrality, the most sacred of areas of the modern internet. The way the current internet works is this: you pay an internet service provider (ISP) a flat monthly fee, and in return, they provide you with access to the Internet. And that is pretty much unlimited - you can surf on anything you want. And the ISP's duty is to make sure they provide you with this service in a fast and easy fashion, and they must provide you with this service no matter what their opinions are on the websites you visit. However, with this new scheme, instead of paying the ISP a flat fee to access whatever you like, you pay ISPs to have certain packages of websites, much like with digital TV where you pay to have packages with certain TV channels. At the same time, the websites will be expected to stump up more money to pay to each ISP to allow people to access them, and ISPs will decide which websites you are allowed to see - if they do not like one particular website, they can choose to simply refuse to let you visit it. It is basically a massive con. The huge popularity of the internet thus far has been because, beyond that inital charge to the ISP every month, it is free-to-access. The amount of information available on the Internet is truely amazing. You can access anything you like on there - YouTube, Facebook, Google, this BlogSpot website from which I am blogging from, and all the millions and millions of websites which are on the World Wide Web, no matter how large or small. It is all about freedom of information, and sharing information. So much of our lives, everybody’s lives, revolve around the internet. And that is why people like Lord Carter, sitting cackling behind his overly-large spectacles, are trying to move to take this basic civil liberty away from us. By making users pay for website usage, and preventing us from visiting certain websites, it takes away the most basic aspect of the internet - its neutrality. It suddenly swings the balance - not everybody will be able to afford to put their websites up, due to the fact that they will have to pay ISPs to have their websites in their packages, and not everybody will be able to afford to access these websites. It will erase millions of small websites around the world, leaving only a select elite who can afford to pay these ridiculous costs. It will also erase countless more, as ISPs deem them not worth hosting, and therefore people will no longer be able to access them. This is basically supressing information. I hope this is not too confusing, as this is a massive issue - as I have said, the whole appeal and basis of the Internet is that it offers freedom of information. If this is taken away, it will be a grave injustice. There have already been attempts in other countries (I think Canada is the one that springs to mind) - I will be raising as much awareness as possible to ensure that it doesn't happen here.

But believe it or not, that is not all that Lord Carter is proposing in his 'Digital Britain' - sounds so sweet and innocent, doesn't it? For besides this, there are ideas to enforce stricter copyright laws. They want greater power to enforce copyrights on songs. The example used on the Guardian article is this: say you make a remix of a song, for example, In Da Club by 50 Cent. Let's say, as a laugh, you make a cover or a joke version of the song. It's just sitting there, doing nothing on your computer. You don't plan to release it or make any kind of money off of it, because it’s just a joke song. Maybe you'll send it to some friends, and they get a laugh out of it too. No harm, right? Wrong. Lord Carter's proposals indicate that he is with the 'multinationals and billionaires which control the rights' (Guardian article quote), which means that they will be given more power to shut down and prosecute people like the example above, even if they are not making any commercial gain off of it. YouTube is already beginning to fall foul of this - on some videos, the soundtrack has been erased due to it being 'unauthorised'.

I do not understand this. If a song is on a video on YouTube, where is the problem in that? YouTube is a free (at the moment anyway) website, where people can post up videos for free and they can then be viewed for free. Notice the usage of the word 'free' - something that this report as a whole is aiming to cut down on, it seems. The Digital Britain will be a Britain which stifles out young, creative talents in favour of the massive, money-hungry corporations. This may sound like a real left-wing rant, but it is becoming more and more true.

And the madness still doesn't stop. There are other proposals too, mainly involving more petty copyright issues, not directly stated but suggested, which confirms the belief that Carter's Digital Britain is in fact a nightmare for all. I will try my best to raise awareness towards these issues, and I hope you do the same - this is an issue which affects a lot of people, particularly the internet neutrality issue, which would destroy people's enjoyment of the internet as we know it. If people can club together on this issue then maybe, just maybe, people can put this government off these ideas and halt these money-driven plans in their tracks.
Because if these proposals are allowed to creep into force, then I wont even be able to vent my displeasure on this blog without having to pay AOL for the privilege. And after the appalling service they have given me over the years, the last thing I feel like giving them is more money.

Mac > PC. There, I said it.

The PC Versus Mac war rumbles on, then. The never-ending debate continues, with still the overwhelming majority plumping for the four small multi-coloured squares of Bill Gates' Microsoft over the little half-eaten apple of, erm, Apple. Everywhere you look, there are Windows computers, and now to back them up is that annoying "I'm a PC" advert doing the rounds.
Now, me and Apple have never gotten on terribly well in the past. I've never been a fan of their sly advertising tactics, which has meant that they have managed to advertise the iPod into everybody's pockets, even though there are so many other models of mp3 player which are in some cases better and much more cost-effective than the 'Pod. I now also dislike the iPhone, which suffers similarly from being achingly hip, despite being overpriced and underspecced compared to other modern phones - I was amazed to discover that the first version didn't even have 3G. But, for the first time, I find myself siding with Apple on this one. And I firmly believe that their range of computers, despite being named after a raincoat, are a better option than their dominant Windows counterparts.
I once dared to say this on that great 'social networking site', Facebook - I've never seen so much bitching and arguements in one place - and I was shot down by a bunch of people who have plainly used Windows all of their lives. Okay, so one guy had used one in my Media class, for all of five minutes before he promptly threw a tantrum because the interface was a bit different from the blue toolbar with the 'Start' button he had been accustomed to all of his life. Actually, I say shot down - I was more not in the mood to go into a long-winded discussion about it. Now, if anybody tries to argue that, I shall point them in the direction of this blog. Because now, I'm going to explain why I prefer Macs over PCs.
Firstly, the interface is something of personal preference, and the Mac interface can be a little confusing. But work with it for a little bit - I took about a week to get used to it - and it starts to become easy. But this is personal preference, and I prefer the Mac's shiny and slick userface. Windows has taken a while to catch up, and Vista actually takes some cues from the long-standing Mac interface. But I can understand why people would prefer Window's long-established interface.
But what cannot be argued is the issue of reliability - Macs are streets ahead in this area.
And nobody who uses a Windows PC can deny this, because nobody can say they haven't suffered at one point or another due to Window's poor reliability.
This isn't actually because Macs are very good here; it's more that Windows is just biblically rubbish in comparision. And this is nothing new. Back when Windows 98 was released, Bill Gates attempted to demonstrate a great new feature of this new OS at a press release, only for the computer to very publically crash on him in front of a multitude of top journalists.
And this was no one-off. So often do errors and crashes occur on Windows PCs that the error screen that appears has it's own name - the Blue Screen of Death. How many times have you seen this lovely blue screen of grey text, a metaphorical two-fingered salute at you as whatever you had open at the time, unsaved or not, is lost forever. You simply cannot say this has not happened to you before, because it has.
That's not all. Windows also has the power to infuriate by being incredibly stupid. My computer has taken to trying to wind me up when, at random times when click Log Off or Shut Down, instead of coming up with the box with options to, say, Shut Down, or Restart, or Standby etc, it simply comes up with an error message saying that Windows Explorer (the main interface) has encountered a problem and needs to close. So what it's basically saying is that it has encountered a problem in closing itself down and needs to close down? On the new Vista it is even worse - you get a question every time you open any program, asking you if you're sure you want to open it. Patronising? Just a little. But I'll talk more about Vista later.
The list of idiotic things my computer does is endless. I have in fact had to re-install Windows XP three times on my PC, and Im getting to the stage where I will have to do it for our office PC, and it has already been done for our house laptop. Why? I don't know. All I know is the warning signs that the installation of Windows is corrupt - erratic CPU usage (increases and decreases very quickly for no reason), random error messages, and it struggles to recognise new hardware that it should be able to recognise anyway by default. And the re-installation process is just so long and so tedious - it takes about 3 hours, and then you have to re-install absolutly every single program on there. Oh, and you risk loosing all your documents in the process.
Oh, and it gets better - Vista is even worse. It is an undeniable fact that many people are now buying brand-new PCs and actually uninstalling Vista and installing some other operating system on there. What does it say about Microsoft that they spend so many years and so much money on their new operating system which turns out to actually be even less reliable than its predecessor? It is, quite frankly, ridiculous. And the monumental stupidity has actually increased - the other day I discovered that, on a friend's laptop, they had a very good video card - about 512MB video RAM. However, for some reason, the computer itself had only allocated 32MB for usage. It beggers belief.
I am nowhere near finished. I could give even more examples if I wanted to. But I think the message is clear. Macs are better overall because they work better and for longer. They do cost more than Windows PCs, granted, but this is the same as comparing the prices of a similar-spec BMW 5-series saloon and a Ford Mondeo - yes, you do pay for the badge in the BMW's case, but you also pay for the quality that that badge brings. Everything is made of a higher quality, and everything feels that bit better. You get that same feeling with a Mac, I feel. Not just the Mac computers themselves, which are well-designed, sleek and quite attractive, but the operating system itself just feels smoother and gives an impression of quality.
A lot of this is my opinion. And if you disagree, then fair enough. But I shall say it again - Macs are more reliable. And you won't be able to disagree with me because its likely that you're PC will have crashed before you manage to post a response.

Oh, and by the way - remember earlier when I mentioned about that 'I'm a PC' advert that Windows have made? What they have neglected to mention on that advert is that the advert itself was actually made on a Mac.

Forty Years of Hurt...and probably a lot more if you don't shut up.

This was an old blog I wrote after England's match against Kazakhstan a few months ago.

Everybody nowadays has their own opinion on the England football team. Every season-ticket club fanatic, every armchair manager with the George Cross plastered over his son's face, every hyperbole-obsessed journo and every single ex-player splashed across BBC Radio 5 Live and Match of the Day seems to have their own view on the current situation of our men in white (and red). The maelstrom of critics and opinions and judgements really is beginning to blend together into an endless white noise, where every single movement is scrutinised and analysed, every result and match broken down and the negative points of each are dissected out and held up for all to see. And frankly, I don't know about you, but it's getting really, REALLY boring.
Let me just start by saying I'm not a full-on football lover. Rugby has always been my main sport. But I have always enjoyed football as well. I don't support any given club, to be honest - when pushed, I'll say Liverpool (I did so back in infant school) or Aston Villa (simply because I read somewhere that they field, on average, more English players each week in their first teams than most, if not all, other Premiership clubs) - and I just enjoy the game mainly as a neutral, watching with interest the rising fortunes and the downward spirals of various teams.
But what I have noticed is a worryingly short attention span in modern football. Maybe attention span is the wrong word; maybe, patience? Yes, that works. Short patience. And I think I know why.
In recent years we have noticed a new trend in the Premiership - football teams nowadays are treated as businesses, investments for men with more money than sense, rather than football clubs. But to be honest, this hasn't changed much. The successful clubs have remained successful despite the influx of an almost infinite amount of money. The big four remain the same big four that has been for quite some time - Manchester United, for example, have been winning trophies for as long as football has been around, seemingly, and the arrival of a bunch of clueless Americans who think football revolves around quarterbacks and body armour hasn't changed much at all. Except, perhaps, the names on the team sheets - what was once a team littered with names like Gary, Paul, David, Rob et al is now adourned with such names as Christiano, Carlos, and Alessandro.
Yes, instantly recognisable British names they are.
But I digress. This isn't a blog about foreign players in the Premiership, although that is a concern.
This is about a bad side-effect these endless millions and fatcat investors have brought to the modern game - an instant demand for results.
As in, not even a demand for a gradual increase in results; a demand that almost verges on the point of clicking one's fingers and all of a sudden a club can be turned from mid-table fodder to Premiership all-conquerers in one big fat takeover.
We've seen this worrying trend already employed - just listen to many 'fans' on BBC's 606 football phone-in on any given evening to see for yourself, or just read through the sports section of any decent newspaper and see which manager has been sacked this week after a pathetically short amount of time. Two were binned last season after just one season in charge - Avram "I must never smile" Grant and Sven Goran-Ericksson both sacked despite successful seasons apeice. Tottenham did quite well last year and yet after a bad start this season the calls for Juande Ramos' head have reached ear-splitting levels. This trend is slowly seeping into rugby as well, despite there not nearly being as much money in rugby - Leicester Tigers dumped Marcello Loffreda at the end of last season despite having warmed the coach's chair for about five months, and Brian Ashton was barely celebrating his first year anniversary as boss of the England team before being unceremoniously, and very publicly, shoved out of Twickenham to make way for Martin Johnson, who presumably now has in his contract the condition that if he doesn't win absolutely everything left to win in the 2008-9 season, he'll be out, too.
Now, to paraphrase those bank adverts, it, erm, doesn't work like that.
Going back to Manchester United, they are an incredibly successful club who only last season netted both the Premiership and the Champions League - prooving beyond doubt that, right now anyway, they are not only the best in England, but the best in Europe.
Who do they have in charge? Sir Alex Ferguson, who probably took charge as the Berlin Wall fell down.
Over at Arsenal, we have another successful club, and their manager, Arsene Wenger, first arrived there roughly around the time Operation Desert Storm liberated Kuwait from Iraq. Or alternatively, when I was born. Okay, so this is an exaggeration in both cases, but you see my point. We're also beginning to see it at Liverpool - Rafa Benitez (very Scouse name, I must say) has been around a little while now, and the trophies have started to come in.
The point I'm making here is this. Just throwing money and big name players at a club doesn't equal success. Neither is talent dictated by the size of a player's transfer fee, and how many zeroes it has on the end of it. It all boils down to a lot more than that. And that is where patience must come in. A championship-winning club is not born overnight, it is developed.
This same principle applies on the international stage. Because in international football the simple solution of throw money at something and see what expensive players stick can't be applied, most people are just happy to bemoan the international team.
Of course, some of this scepticism is well-founded - England's rugby team have done a far better job on average in 20 years of World Cups than the football team have managed in over half a century, and not qualifying for Euro 2008 is something to be rightly ashamed of. But constantly kicking someone when they're down isn't going to help them get back on their feet, just the same as constantly critisicing and analysing England's every move is not going to help the concrete-faced Fabio Capello lift our team back up from where we are right now, which, let's face it, is international laughing stock.
I'll give you an example. Last night, Ashley Cole made one error. It did end up in Khazakstan (apologies if I've mis-spelled that) scoring their only goal of the match, but it was, in fact, not that much of a blunder - a simple split-second desicion that went wrong and was snatched upon by the Khazak striker. But, being the caring and supportive types they are, the fans in the stadium roundly booed him whenever he went near the ball afterwards. And despite the fact the final scoreline was a convincing 5-1 victory for the Three Lions, there was not one positive word to be said about the performance. Not one. It wasn't perfect, for sure, but more than anything this kind of attitude serves to strip respect away from the opposition - Khazakstan played better than anybody expected and were as commited and determined, if not as skilled, as their England counterparts. For England to come through with five goals in hand and, Cole's error aside, an umblemished defensive record, is worthy of some praise. Okay, so it's not perfect - but how many performances nowadays are? There were probably errors and imperfections in England's demolition of Croatia. Hell, the heroes of 1966 may not have played their best game ever against West Germany, but they still won, didn't they?
And in the end, this negative press all comes back to this wholesale lack of patience. Capello has not been in the job long, and it will take a while to drag England out of the depths and back to a more respectable position, if not contention for international trophies. The progress ball is beginning to gain momentum, and what Capello must now be allowed to do is keep the momentum building, and not to have it's path checked by the never-ending army of critics and doubters. Perhaps if everybody took a collective step back and allowed the England team to get on with it, then maybe, just maybe, the Three Lions will begin to roar again. But until everybody backs off, they are more than likely going to remain mewling cats rather than ferocious lions.