Sully's Blog

Reflections on a transatlantic move #1 - Making Friends

2011-11-23T20:16:00.001Z

I moved to Toronto at the end of September, which has been a great experience so far, but since it's been almost two months since I posted about the motivations behind the move, I thought it'd be appropriate to follow up with some more introspection on how things are going.

Making Friends
It's incredibly easy to make friends when you're a foreign guy in a new city, especially if you have no friends. My friend-making skills are rusty - I've tended to ride the coattails of my childhood friends or girlfriends for the past few years, but now that I'm away from all friends and family, I need a support-network, and my efforts reflect that.

Some friends of mine were playing a few gigs in Toronto, which meant I had people to tag along to bars with for a few evenings. I'd walk up to people, introduce myself, and make chit-chat for a while. This approach can't fail, especially since many of the conversations with Canadians start with "You're from Ireland? That's so cool!" I've been the foreign guy in a few different cultures before - you never run out of things to talk about, because people are generally interested in hearing about the curiosities of their culture that they take for granted. Armed with a few humorous ice-breaking anecdotes of my first-impressions of Toronto, I got into plenty of fun conversations with people that led to valuable advice on finding places to live, work, or just things to experience.

One facet of psychology that's always stuck with me is that if you want people to like you, have them do you a favour - it seems counter-intuitive, but even if someone is telling you a load of information you already know, or offering to take you to a place you've already been, just go along with it.

From my first couple of nights out, I had a stock of phone numbers, twitter-handles and e-mail addresses to follow up on, and I realized that my friendship 'problem' was now a matter of quality control (granted, most of the consideration that went into deciding who to get in touch with was who is most likely to drug and rape me).

I was concerned that since I'm in a relationship, it'd cripple my appeal somewhat, and cut off certain 'shortcuts' that have worked in the past (to paraphrase a dear friend; I can't fuck my way into a social circle), but I've met some great people that I'm excited to call my friends - I'll delve into the 'reinvention' clichés in another post.

Being a teetotaller does not help one in making friends. Minds boggle at the thought of alcohol abstinence. Everybody wants or expects a quick, narrative explanation, and since I don't have one, they assume that I'm hiding something dark. Alcoholic? Religious-nut? Dryballs? My strategy is to hold off admitting to it as long as possible (depending on the circumstance, naturally), but I could tell that I was disappointing a lot of would-be friends by declining drinks, or passing shots off onto my coconspirators. The cooler people would say "that's awesome that you don't drink - want to go outside and get high?" I'm offered weed in Toronto about as often as I'm offered tea in Ireland, and I feel about as bad for not being interested in this social icebreaker.

I find that I've been hesitant - almost hostile - about engaging with the Irish community in Toronto, as if not having an entirely Canadian support-network constitutes a failure to emigrate 'properly', but every fellow expat has been awfully decent, with many going out of their way to offer some sagely wisdom to spare me weeks of figuring stuff out for myself. I'm pretty sure that as the weeks crawl by, and the need to get more stable work grows, I'll be pulled into the orbit of the Irish community proper. Which will be a good thing. One can never have enough people to not drink with.

Keith Barry and the Massive Os

2011-11-07T05:56:00.000Z

Keith Barry is an Irish magician. That's about 90% of what I know about him. I caught his Irish TV show a few years ago, and it seemed that he was just aping Derren Brown's tricks and style, but without the charm. I didn't pay too much attention to him.

When he was hosting Ireland's version of Deal or No Deal, I had assumed that he had given up on the magicianing lark, but it seems that his star has continued to rise - his hypnotism shows have drawn major crowds and broken records in Ireland, and he even made a 4-part series for Discovery.

He's clearly doing something right, and I've great respect for magicians, but when I tuned in to his appearance on Limerick's Live 95FM to promote his tour, he just sounded like a perverted 13-year old boy, giddily bragging about how ladies were having "massive Os" on stage. In case you missed it, he said it again and again, each time more unnerving, an ill-fitting phrase-of-choice for a man in his thirties. Yes Keith, your potency is such that ladies can orgasm from your very suggestion, but please don't sound like such a potential-sex offender next time you're trying to lure in the bawdy blue-collar crowd.

I couldn't find a copy of the recording, but in the first interview I found on YouTube, he asserts that the camerawoman is 'waxed, not shaven' within the first minute. Classy, classy guy!

Anyhow, what really prompted this ad was catching a few minutes of 'Deception with Keith Barry' on Discovery. I noticed that the producers put as much effort into designing the title card as Keith does into creating his act. Keith sees what other magicians are doing that looks cool, and then claims it as his own.

So the producers are making his title screen - they take a picture of him standing in front of something with his arms crossed, slap some text over it, then click through the fonts until something looks decent, like 12-year old girls formatting a book report.

"'Cracked' looks cool. Good enough for you? Let's pillowfight!"

It bothers me when this is done, so to punish Keith Barry and the lack of effort, I made a graphic of the show that I wish I caught five minutes of:

Still not painting a proper picture? Okay - everyone knows and is sick of Comic Sans, right? This is how much effort they put in:

Alright, that's all for today. File this under 'General begrudgery of successful Irish people'.

The Perfect Storm

2011-10-31T03:36:00.000Z

A few weeks back, my Twitter account was successfully phished.

Since I have an image of myself as a person who does not enter passwords willy-nilly on spurious websites, cognitive-dissonance reduction has kicked in to assure me that I couldn't have not entered my password on that fateful day. I was at the mercy of the perfect storm.

Let me introduce all the moving parts in this sequence.

About a month ago, I moved to Toronto. Since I figured I'd need to stay connected to the internet, I sniffed out the cheapest smart-phone & plan possible to get me started. My friends were playing a music festival in town, so I let them crash with me for a few days. Since the place was small, sharing beds was inevitable. Since one of my guests is a total shutterbug, there were plenty of photographs taken at inappropriate times, and threats of ruined political-careers flying about.

A few nights into their trip, we were all dispersed within a single pub, mingling with the locals. My friends and I had been using Twitter to stay in touch while we were apart, so when I got a direct message alerting me to a 'funny picture' of me making its way online, I didn't suspect its veracity. I had seen some of the incriminating photos on his phone, so I clicked on the link to see what the damage was.

The phone I've been using is a piece of junk. It's an Acatel 980S, and it's plagued with a grotesque lack of memory, so it regularly flushes the browser-cache to keep things moving. It's not unusual to be logged out of a website I was just using, so when I clicked on the link from within my TweetDeck app and was presented with the Twitter login page, it didn't set off any alarm bells. I wasn't thinking too much about what I was doing, other than pretending to still be interested in the Canuck droning on about how cool Ireland was when he visited as a nipper.

I wasn't on the real Twitter site, and I didn't realize until I had entered my username and password (probably incorrectly, since the tiny screen makes the onscreen keyboard worthless) and hit submit. The error page wasn't quite right. Something was wrong. I went looking for my friend in the pub and asked him if he has sent me a picture. He had no idea what I was talking about. I had just done something incredibly stupid.

Serves me right for being such a rude prick.

From there on, it was actually quite tricky to change my password - I couldn't find the option on the Twitter mobile site, and the regular Twitter site kept redirecting me to the mobile version. Eventually I had to Google 'Twitter password change' to be brought to the page I wanted.

Lesson learned: pay more attention to links you click on. Fundamental of internet-security proven: having different passwords for different services is essential, and in this case I was quite relieved to think that the password I volunteered to the phishers wouldn't get them in anywhere other than my fairly unimportant Twitter profile.

Robocop 2 - Déjà Vu Revue

2011-10-27T06:08:00.000+01:00

It's been years since I've seen Robocop 2. The only details I remembered from my childhood is a fight in an arcade, a terrible CG face, and that the main villain is a kid.

So, how did it hold up? Read on!

Robocop 2 is the tale of a man… Scratch that. Robocop 2 is the tale of a city… Robocop 2 is a parable of the perils of… Y'know what? I don't know what Robocop 2 is about. I don't even think Robocop 2 knows what Robocop 2 is about.

The film starts off on territory familiar to viewers of the first film - some heavy handed near-future satire, in which an ad for a car-thief electrocuting anti-theft device leads into the evening news, where pollution and crime are discussed in a blasé manner by the anchors. Here the central conflicts are established: the privatized police force is on strike, and 'Nuke,' "the most addictive narcotic in history" is directly responsible for all manner of violent crimes.

After some heavy-handed foreshadowing "God knows why they want this strike", we get our first look of life on the streets of Detroit. A haggard old lady pushing a cart full of cans is almost knocked down by a speeding car, when a bystander rushes to her side, it's to snatch her purse. As he walks down the street pocketing her belongings, he's set upon by 'ladies of the night', who beat him to a pulp and walk off with his swag past various scenes of other crimes in progress. As they make it to the end of the block, they're engulfed in a sizeable explosion from a gun-store heist in progress. This is the crime that our protagonist intervenes in.

I'm ashamed to admit, but it took another 45 minutes before I realized that this was more of an unintentional parody of the first film than a true sequel. Was anyone paying attention while this was being put together? Characters say the opposite of what they mean: ("When are you going to stop paying the cops so they get back to work?"), lines and grunts are looped in sloppily, and the overall flow of film is so disjointed that even by the time you get to the credits, you're worried that yet another needlessly protracted action scene is going to kick-in. This is likely a consequence of this being a Frank-Miller script - as a comic book series, the ebb and flow might work, but here it's a disjointed mess of poorly-stitched together action sequences.

There's a 15 minute chunk where we see Robocop struggling to shed his former-humanity, stalking his widow and pouting in a fashion unbecoming of a character who killed dozens of people with impunity in the previous scene. When he's finally face to face with his former wife, he lies about not remembering her, and that's the last of it. If Robo is suppressing his humanity, it's kept from the audience too, and the most interesting conflict in the character is ignored. It's a thread from the previous film that probably had to be addressed, but if it was cut for time, it would have resulted in a stronger film.

There are innumerable bits that needed to be edited out of this mess. There's a sequence where Robocop is stripped down, rebuilt, reprogrammed, and fails to stop a electronics shop robbery by a little league team.

I shit you not.

Despite being incapable of even getting his aphorisms straight ("a rolling stone is worth two in the bush") Robo has the presence of mind to run few thousand volts through his body to erase the unwelcome programming additions. Just like that, he's back to work, good as new, except now he's joined on a siege with a load of fleshy cops in tow to soak up bullets for him.

There is so much incongruous about this film, it's hard to know where to begin. Every twitch and flex Robocop makes is accompanied with dramatic whirring and buzzing sounds, every step he takes makes a bassy 'thunk' sound. Despite sounding like a full-dishwasher tumbling down a stairs, he manages to sneak into not one, but two drug-facilities without anyone noticing.

"Shhhhh. I'm being stealthy"

The characterization is similarly preposterous, and the actions of the characters seem motivated only by what set-piece the filmmakers are trying to get to next. Why do the bad guys stop short of destroying Robocop when they have the chance? Why do the police storm the compound with the rebuilt Robocop, even though they previously express their disgust with him for not joining the strike? Why does the lady in charge of the 'Robocop 2' program pick the brain of a drug-addicted serial-murderer to operate a crime-fighting robot?

The mayor character seems to have been written for Eddie Murphy, but since they were unable to get him, they found a Gary Coleman impersonator and got him to do a bad Eddie Murphy impersonation instead.

(That's the mayor on the right)

I don't get what this film is trying to lampoon. Democracy is feeble and corruptible. The free-market is greedy and evil. Everyday heroes are punished for trying to help their fellow man. Humanity is violent and untrustworthy. Technology is dangerous and unreliable. Money is the root of all evil. Money solves everything. Violence solves everything. Representations of liberal and conservative are equally insidious. The world is fucked.

Moneyshot!

I could go on and on, but I'm just going to rattle off some observations and call it a day. The name of the State Attorney is "Sphincter". The dialogue is atrocious. ("For God's sake, these people are criminals!" - "Why do you have to label people? I hate labels!") It takes 10 cops a great deal of effort to lift Robocop, but a regular motorbike has no trouble supporting him during a high-speed chase. A lady tries to seduce an evil, killer-robot. When OCP (the evil corporation at the heart of everything) are announcing plans to privatize the entire city, the Nazi parallels are just a little too subtle (if you're going to rip off the banners and the uniforms, why not just have everyone goose-stepping around too?). Robocop finds the corpse of Elvis in the gang's lair. After the day has been saved, and picking an appropriate scapegoat, Mr CEO literally steps over the corpse of an innocent bystander on his way to address the media.

Really subtle guys.

So what about my feeble recollections of the film? Yes, the kid briefly serves as the main-villain, but not much is made of it. Yes, we see Robo throwing a fat guy around in an arcade, and yes, the crummy CG face (used to express the emotional state of the evil robot) is not only wholly unnecessary, it's also quite a dumb characterization tool.

It's a bad movie. Scratch that. It's a terrible movie. About halfway through, a character flushes himself out a sewer system to flee from a shootout. I imagine that if I was in the movie-theatre back in 1990, I'd take my chances on a similar escape.

"See you for the sequeeeeelll!"

Random Thoughts From A Worldly Primate

2011-10-19T05:57:00.001+01:00

This post is a blatant ripoff of the frighteningly insightful knowledge-bombs frequently dropped over at Apes In Elysium, which you should be reading instead of this piffle.

~1~
The only real-world use I have ever got out of the Irish language is impressing foreigners or talking about them. This is all I ever expect to get out of it. That so many of my peers are incapable of stringing a basic sentence together in Irish strengthens the notion I've held for years that we are pissing away millions of man-hours keeping a braindead language on life-support. This time and money could - and should! - be put to much better use elsewhere. Traditions be damned, keep a few experts trained up and leave it at that.

~2~
After a few trips through English airports over the past few years, I feel comfortable comparing their style to that of the yanks. What kept rattling around in my head was "this is such a kinder hegemony". When I was randomly stopped for additional screening, I was apologised to for the thirty-second imposition, and had the process of testing for explosive residue explained to me as I was swabbed and awaited the machine to give me the all-clear.

Further bolstering this notion is the family-friendly security lanes at London Heathrow - there are dinosaur decals around the metal detectors, and toddlers are encouraged to walk through on their own and receive rapturous applause and cheers from the staff when they comply.

When I set off the dinosaur-detector, I got a very intimate patdown by a cheerful bloke who entertained me with some stock Irish phrases he had learnt off. It almost distracted me away from his hand inside the rim of my jeans.

Every time I go through US customs, they make me feel as though they know I'm guilty of something, they just can't prove it this time and wave me on begrudgingly. Whether the friendly demeanour of the Brits is more insidious, at the very least, it's nice to be convivial.

~3~
It's a good thing foreigners find the Irish accent attractive, because as far as the visuals go, we're not a terribly attractive bunch. It's not anyone's fault, just a likely consequence of our relative isolation on the edge of Europe for generations. Do your part for Irish aesthetics and impregnate a foreigner. Stir up that Irish gene puddle!

~4~
I've mentioned the 'Dunning Kruger' effect on this blog before [one of my recent favourites, that one], but it's worth bringing up again.

Here's Sam Harris' take on it, from his book The Moral Landscape:

"[It's] true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for. Conversely, those who are more knowledgeable about a subject tend to be acutely aware of the greater expertise of others. This creates a rather unlovely asymmetry in public discourse - one that is generally on display whenever scientists debate religious apologists."

It's tough being the guy with facts on your side because you have to be sure to present them accurately and honestly, while also taking care to not overstate the significance of what you know, and acknowledging what you don't. The quote above uses religion, but the anti-vaccination movement is a better example. (Feel free to apply this theory to my bold proclamations about the Irish language, or all the other nonsense I pretend to be knowledgable in). It's not just the media that needs to take a closer look at the statements of self-appointed experts or activists, people need to call bullshit in everyday life so people don't get carried away. The list of those who get hurt by those who muddy the water with bad information and emotional appeals grows longer every day.

~5~
Psychics are another concept that lacks internal consistency. A common reason given for physics not winning millions by gambling is that they would lose their powers if they abused them for personal gain. I'm calling bullshit. Think of all the self-professed psychics in the world (I've seen one every couple of blocks here in Toronto, especially in the crappy neighbourhoods) - surely to Christ that with such a large sample size, at least one of them would have played the lottery and bought their way out of the very need to hold hands with filthy, gullible strangers and pontificate about their futures for $20 a pop.

~~~

What about you, dear reader? Do we see eye to eye here? Leave a comment to agree with me by pointing out my many aesthetic deficiencies.

Oh... Canada

2011-10-10T20:43:00.000+01:00

Note: This is a personal post. If you’re interested in reading about a white dude making post-hoc rationalisations about why he left his homeland, you might get some enjoyment out of the following.

Dear reader, I have joined the growing number of recent Irish-graduates who have ~~emigrated~~ fled from the homeland in search of greener pastures abroad. Eleven days ago I arrived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with no job, no friends, and no idea of where I was going to live. The days that followed were a blitz of e-mails, phonecalls, apartment viewings, and disappointments. It was quite an adventure.

So when people ask me “Why Toronto?”, that’s the short, polite answer – it’s an adventure. I’ve been asked to elaborate a few times since I arrived, but my answer varies every time, so I’m sitting down now to try and tease out the motivations. Here are the first few to come to mind:

It’s closer to the USA

This is such a stupid reason, but I’m awfully fond of that girlfriend of mine in the States.

I’d move there if I could, but for a dude with no ‘soft’ skills like mine, I’m not an attractive prospect for employers in the US of A, who must prove that the dirty foreigners they hire are so uniquely talented that they’re not stealing jobs from the natural-borns.

Taking time off to see the missus can be awkward when it requires a transatlantic flight, so hopefully moving to the same continent will facilitate some more face-time.

It’s not Ireland

That title might be needlessly broad. Specifically, it’s not Limerick, which is where I’ve been keeping busy for the past few years. Since my work didn’t feel like it was building towards something, I decided it was time to try something else.

With the ladyfriend committed to another 2 years of school and work in the States, it doesn’t seem like there’s a point in starting some new endeavour in Ireland, when the plan is to leave eventually anyhow.

Furthermore, living in Limerick feels post-apocalyptic. People are obsessed with the diminishing supply of jobs. Permanently angry inbred-tribes maraud around in horses and traps, pilfering as they wish from the remaining businesses while the local authorities shrug their shoulders in languid indifference.

Guilt for a privileged existence

Life was too easy. I had plenty of disposable income (which I'll choose attribute to not-drinking, and not being grossly overpaid), good friends that were consistently great company, and a stereotypical Irish mother who would browbeat me into doing my laundry and cooking for me as often as possible, despite my efforts to live independently (paradoxically, she would then complain about how I never did these things for myself).

When I had settled into a routine of family, friends and work, the only things that would stand out from my day were the frustrations. It’s my hope that by scrapping the infrastructure I had in place, I’ll be happier with my lot in life. Allow me to elaborate on that one:

To be a Self-Made Man

I’m not terribly good at making friends. Not necessarily because of my odious personality, but because of a lack of willingness. The friends I had in college were the same friends I had in secondary school. As the social circle grew through the outreach of these childhood friends, I was along for the ride, but didn’t contribute to the friend-tally.

Part of this is because I’m not terribly sentimental (which is why it tears me up admitting to a fondness for another human being), and my self-esteem isn’t based on how many people come to my birthday parties. The friends I made on my college-course amounted to a mere handful of intellectually stimulating sons-a-bitches, and they were kept separate from my other group. When I went to Pittsburgh Billy-no-mates, I made a few dear friends that I still try to see as often as possible.

Of course, in college, there’s a structure in place that lends itself to meeting people. Wiping the slate clean and trying to build a support network in a foreign city is a whole new challenge, one that should get me excited about just one stranger asking me if I want to meet up again sometime.

On this note, I should note that I already felt a spike of elation when I secured a place to live starting in November, and the few successful social interactions I’ve had so far are all the more gratifying, since it feels like the foundations of a new support-network.

All the cool kids are doing it

It’s somewhat disingenuous of me to say that I’ve left all my friends behind, since they’ve been leaving me behind in growing numbers for the past few years; relocating to various parts of the world in gainful employment, or on a world-tour of the pubs and dives of planet Earth.

If they can do it, why can’t I? And if not now, when?

That’s all the introspection I’m going to allow for now. The tone of this is rather final, considering that I’m over here on a one-year work permit, but my current hope is that - whatever my relationship with Canada over the coming years - this is the beginning of the end of me calling Ireland home.

Don’t be surprised if this blog gets a little travelogue-y as I come to grips with my new city. I might also post some advice and resources for anyone about to follow in my footsteps, so that they can avoid all the social pitfalls I'll be hurling myself into over the coming weeks and months.

EE11 - Rage Hands On

2011-09-25T01:41:00.000+01:00

Day 3 at the Eurogamer Expo saw the biggest queues yet, but I still managed to take in some very worthwhile developer sessions, and I got chatting to id cofounder Tim Willits, who was aptly introduced in his talk as "the nicest man in the games industry" (he initiated a conversation with me and Fin because I was wearing an id Software shirt"). I spent some time with Rage on the showfloor, and here are my impressions:

I'll admit that I haven't been paying attention to Rage over the years since its announcement. Given the pedigree, I was expecting a gorgeous-looking shooter that nails the bread-and-butter of first person shooting, and that's exactly what I got.

The interior environments are densely detailed, looking as ramshackle as post-apocalyptic buildings ought to. One of the demos took place in a derelict garage with such rich scenery that its history of being picked clean by the survivors passing through is tangible.

Anyone who explores the myriad choices available to the player should come away with an understanding that this is a game that values variety. Each of the four weapons in the demo (pistol, shotgun, assault rifle and bolt-thrower) come with a variety of ammo types, and players can deploy sentry guns, spider bots, and throw blades that liberate heads from torsos with a satisfying geyser of blood and a heavy ragdoll slump, but more on the gore later.

I fought two different factions; the bandits seemed to be living hand to mouth, and when reacting to my presence, responded with anything from reluctant engagement from behind cover to charging in with melee attacks, all the while screaming in confusion. When I was fighting the battle-armour wearing squads, they issued commands and tried to surround me, chucking grenades and keeping their impervious power shields pointing towards me to make taking them out difficult. The end of the 'Bash TV' segment saw me squaring off against a towering beserker, who chased me around the arena, soaking up my bullets while I circle-strafed around him - a great throwback to the games of yore.

What excites me most about this game is the visual feedback - shoot an enemy in a particular spot and he'll react appropriately; enemies will limp towards (or away from!) you with bloodied legs if that's where your bullets clipped them. When a crazed bandit charged me with a club raised, my panicked shotgun response blew off his arm above the elbow. When I was verifying that he wasn't getting up, I pressed the shotgun up against his head and pulled the trigger, leaving blood and brains all over the floor. It's a gruesome, refreshing change from the sanitized, plasticky presentation of modern military shooters that makes the player feel as though he is wielding great power.

When I found out that Rage had driving, I wasn't expecting much, other than a functional way to traverse a large overworld. Remarkably, I was quite wrong. When I loaded up the race mode, I was treated to a post-apocalyptic Mario Kart. Six racers tearing around the track, picking up single-use weapons by driving over them, and firing them up the tailpipe of the nearest competitor. Successful kills sent wreckages flipping and spinning around the track, accompanied by dramatic explosions. The buggies have great grip on the winding course, and the recharging boost mechanic adds a layer of strategy to the business of racing. I took first place with seconds to go by spectacularly exploding the leader off the track after a harrowing race spent dodging incoming rockets by throwing my buggy behind canyon walls, sacrificing my racing line to save my skin. As a final word on the racing; it was more accomplished than some full-priced arcade racers.

The limited time I've spent with the demo has left me with much to gush about - (using mind control bolts to walk an enemy into the middle of a room before detonating him all over his buddies was a highlight I keep coming back to), but ultimately it has made me feel as though I need to atone for ignoring its progress by spreading the word of what a great experience this is. Cynical gamers seem to want to dismiss it as a Fallout 3/Borderlands hybrid (even though this isn't an unfair description by any stretch), but this misses the point. id Software brought us the first person shooter, and this is the game that will reaffirm their relevancy to older gamers, and firmly entrench them in the mindshare of gamers unaware of their storied history.

This is the demo on the showfloor I keep coming back to, and something tells me it'll be the game I have to play one last time before leaving the Expo tomorrow.

EE11 Hands Ons

2011-09-24T01:17:00.001+01:00

Attendance at the Expo today is at least quadruple that of yesterday's, making yesterday feel like off-season in Disneyland, considering the amount of queuing that had to be endured to get near a gamepad. If only I had known!

Anyhow, here ~~are the highlights from my day~~ is the full extent of what I'm willing to type up before passing the hell out. I'll proofread and add photos later.
Maybe:

Battlefield 3 PC Multiplayer Demo
A 16 player team deathmatch that featured no vehicles whatsoever is not what I associate with Battlefield, and the presentation aspects of the demo continued to disappoint from there. The audio coming from the provided headsets was barely on (and believe me, I had it cranked), so I missed out on what DICE VP & General manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson described as "50 - 60% of the experience" at yesterday's panel. The combat played out in an urban environment, with many combat bottlenecks in the doorframes, and the players sniping out the windows lining the street made the outdoors a no-man's land. Over the course of the ten minutes, nothing surprised or excited me, and it felt more like a sequel to Battlefield Bad Company 2 than Battlefield 2, but hopefully I can try and get into a battle on the scale that Battlefield is known for.

Battlefield 3 PS3 Campaign Demo
Again, a less than ideal setting - playing on a TV with janky brightness and contrast (despite the rep trying to fix it while I was playing), barely any volume and a dualshock controller isn't how I like my shooters, but it still made for an enjoyable time. Nothing in the demo was new or special: the level opens with a sprint down a hill under mortar fire, then a battle along a canal under heavy machinegun fire, then a brief few encounters indoors. I was pleased to note that there were no Call of Duty-style infinite monster closets, where enemies spam the player until he presses forward. In fact, quite the opposite is true; I felt like I had to keep pace with my team, who were pulling off the kind of spectacular heroics normally reserved for the player character in other FPSs, even if it disappointed me to see the same scripted grenade throw playing out across all demo units. The level was mostly linear, but allowed some player choice when approaching the set piece indoors, which was encouraging. I'm hopeful that DICE have more combat-bowls than corridor shooting, as the interior battles had little significance when considering the generosity of the recharging health and the amount of damage the player can take. There are signs of Hollywood influences creeping in - one set piece involves the player character being knocked to his back in slow motion by an enemy charing into a room. If these flourishes can resist the Michael Bay style theatrics of recent Call of Duty titles, and the story manages to tell a worthwhile tale I'll consider playing the campaign, but from what I saw it's very easy to dismiss this as just another modern-military shooter with tight mechanics and high production values.

Mario Kart 7 3DS
The preamble: I don't own a 3DS, and my unsuccessful attempts to see the 3D effect on demo kiosks convinced me that my slight astigmatism prevented me from availing of its delights. Mario Kart 7 made me want a 3DS after about fifteen seconds of playing. The game is gorgeous, certainly more of a delight than the Wii version, and the added depth certainly added to the immersion. Mario Kart 7 seems to further reflect the notion that Nintendo might be listening to its fanbase for once, importing popular game mechanics into the title wholesale. With the 3D on, and everything whizzing by at a hefty clip, controls were tight and responsive, and the blue and gold sparks spilling out during the Mario Kart 64 style drifting was such a spectacle that the speed boost seemed a less important reward. Collecting coins for the SNES-style overall speed increase seemed easier with the 3D on, and once full, I enjoyed narrowly missing them so they flew towards me. New features have been introduced that also take advantage of the 3D effects - large jumps cause the carts to deploy gliders (leading to a speed/distance trade-off reminiscent of F-Zero X, or San Francisco Rush 2049) and the cars can now sprout propellors and drive underwater. Each of these effects is accompanied by a deluge of particle effects that tickle the eyes.

I spent most of the races out in front, so the only items I saw were the staples of the series: bananas, and green and red shells, available in single and in threes, as ever. Happily, I was not subjected to the same ~~bullshit~~ frustratingly unfair items that made taking first place follysome in previous titles.

Considering how quickly I picked this game up, and how reluctant I was to put it down, I think Nintendo are on to a winner with Mario Kart 7. In less than ten minutes, my skepticism about the game and its host console's worth have dissolved - this is the game Nintendo needs to get into the shops to turn the tides for the 3DS.

Uncharted 3 Multiplayer Demo on Active-Shutter 3DTV
After the joy of Mario Kart 7's 3D, I decided it would be prudent to try a more seemingly sophisticated alternative. Having to wear 3D glasses over my spectacles was decidedly uncomfortable, and the results weren't worth the hassle; at the very most, I thought that the (limited) HUD and text was floating a bit over the game world, but mostly I noticed the way that the particle effects were broken - the player characters had a 'glow' area around them where no particles would appear, which was quite unsightly when the dust-storms kicked up.

Fin's insistence that the 3D was 'excellent' (Disclaimer: His pay cheques come from Sony) has convinced me to try the demo again when I'm wearing contacts so I'm not distracted by discomfort, but I doubt I'll warm up to the expense of a 3DTV.

As for the game itself, I saw little to differentiate it from the Uncharted 2 Multiplayer mode; frenzied running and gunning, interesting level designs, but ultimately unsatisfying gunplay.

Eurogamer Expo 2011 - The First Day

2011-09-22T23:52:00.002+01:00

It's been a busy day, and I'm pretty beat, so here's some of the key things that stick out from the first day of the Eurogamer Expo.

Queues were not too bad. It took about 20 minutes to get in to the expo (granted, it took an extra 5 minutes to walk to the back of the queue), and since I spent the entire day in developer sessions, it was a case of queuing for a panel, attending the panel (about 45 minutes), a quick wander, then queueing up for another panel. When I get around to playing games over the next two days, I'm expecting to be very well acquainted with standing in place for hour on end.

Schwag galore! As far as free shirts go, I got Counterstrike GO, id software, and a Prey 2 shirt. These are nice to have, but are ecliplsed by the free OnLive MicroConsole, which retails for $100/£70.

The games on offer are fairly well-varied. There are some curious inclusions - Gears of War 3 and Driver: San Francisco are already on store shelves (and the Driver demo has been up for weeks now), but floor space is still set aside for them. The more niche titles have demo installations devoid of any queuing system, since they're unlikely to draw a crowd. PC RTS End of Nations and aerial-dogfight sim Ace Combat: Assault Horizon were being passed over by gamers in their droves, which makes me want to give them a whirl. There's a retro-games area (the ambient racket there is dominated by Mario Kart 64's item roulette sound), and a curious exhibit of games that Eurogamer have crowned game of the year that will be worth a closer look.

The show floor itself is fairly well laid out, affording plenty of room for traffic to get around, as well as stop and gawp at games being played. Curiously, there's an 'over 18' area that partitions away some of the games in a rather inefficient (and somewhat arbitrary) fashion, but I might give it a proper look tomorrow to see if I can figure out the logic involved.

Booth babes are present and correct, for better or worse, most of them decked out in absurdly tight spandex and provocative costumes. When awkward nerds are pressing themselves up against these living eye-candy exhibits for photographs, they’re awfully gracious, which might well be a bad thing for the social development of these young men.

There’s not enough time! Since I’ve prioritised attending the developer conferences over playing games that will be released in a few months, each of the breaks today were only a few minutes long, and afforded only brief, tantalizing glimpses of the games on the floor. I played three rounds of Counter Strike: Global Offensive, and two minutes of Rage, and managed to take a total of four photographs. Tomorrow I'm expecting to spend a lot more time playing games (and I'm expecting to be functioning on a few more hours of sleep), so check back tomorrow!

Sully's Blog: Eurogamer Expo Edition

2011-09-22T10:05:00.001+01:00

The dearth of updates lately is due to a busy few weeks of fruitless labour that has yielded little grist for blogging, but I'll delve into my many failings as a human being in a later post.

I'm writing this up on the Stansted Express, bound for central London, where (after getting lost in the Tubes for a few hours) I'll be attending this year's Eurogamer Expo (thanks to Mr. Fin.ie), a videogames event that's open to the public, highlighting some of the releases coming this holiday season, and hosting some hopefully illuminating panels on game development and the industry from some big names.

Despite being an avid reader of gaming blogs and news-sites, I've held back on writing about my main hobby on this site - mostly because I didn't want to contribute to the overabundance of terrible gaming blogs on this limited internet. Hopefully the next few days should bring opportunities to play games that most won't have played, bringing value to whatever I upload.

That, or come back with a few photos of dudes with neck bears and stories of crippling BO (these notions are based on Fin's experiences in 2010).

If you're interested in reading up on what the Eurogamer Expo is all about, check back over the next couple of evenings and I'll try to make it worth your while. If you see any game or panel listed on the expo site that you're worried I might overlook, leave me a comment or hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.

Not interested in games or what I have to say about them? Regular programming resumes in October.

Oh, Internet

2011-09-18T15:21:00.001+01:00

If you're a tech-savvy, intelligent person, it's a great time to be a shopper.

It excites me that I can walk into a store, browse through the offerings, and scan the barcode with my smartphone to pull up price-comparisons across physical and online outlets. It's the cutting edge of subversive thrills.

One category where the gulf between online and retail prices is at its most gaping is cables. This applies to any kind of cables, but Audio/Video cables seem to be subject to the most marketing nonsense and price hikes. Since HDMI cables are (arguably) the most convenient way of hooking up your high-definition equipment, they're subject to the most egregious price inflation.

Monster cables have long been a target of internet watchdogs for their often shady practices of comparing their HDMI cables to archaic composite cables, then using this evidence to charge customers $80, when the exact same thing is available online for less than a dollar apiece. Bear in mind that these are digital cables - any claims of double-insulation or gold-tips increasing the fidelity is utterly bogus.

It seems that some enterprising ~~company~~ asshole has seen their scam and decided to crank it up to 11.

Three and a half feet of cable for $1,095.99! That's 5768 times more expensive than the $0.19 I paid for my cables, which were twice as long! The blurb had better be impressive:

Oh boy. Well that's a load of impressive-looking piffle. Let's hope that the last line of defense keeping fools and their money united is vigilant. To the customer reviews!

Urk. All the reviews are 5 stars, and a full two thirds would recommend the product to a friend. At least we can read the text of the reviews as a case study of cognitive dissonance in action!

At least that's what you'd think. Read past the gushing headlines like 'Amazing!', 'Your Life Can Change Too!' and 'Not just a cable, an investment!', and you'll find a consistent subtle (and not so subtle) ironic tone in each of the reviews.

They take on the persona of materialistic luddites trying to regurgitate sales pitches:

Similar to a BMW (or if you remember from the golden age of automobiles the classic ‘Monza’), this will only increase in value as time goes by. So I would definitely recommend this cable. But with one caveat… only use it when important guests are over say of a caliber such as Donald Trump. Do not use it for run-of-the-mill every day guests. If you overuse it, the quality of the signal may eventually degrade and of course that would affect the resell value down the road.

They heavy handedly satire the kind of heavy handed marketing nonsense that is crammed down the consumer's throats:

I bought this HDMI cable around Christmas time. Even though I just had a small 20-inch vacuum tube television and VCR-laserdisc combo player, my favorites immediately were up-converted to High Definition. I've honestly never seen Mulan like that before. Now I don't have to imagine what it would have been like to face the Huns - I can experience it every Thursday night in the comfort of my own home.

They take the mickey out of the steepness of the pricetag:

After a few months I have finaly saved up to buy this cable... lets just say I am thrilled! Definately worth the buy, it is a very pretty cable. Now I am saving up for my TV.

These six reviewers have silenced that part of my brain fretting about the plight of misled buffoons, and have caused me to bookmark this page for the eventual angry 1-star review taking the others to task for their enthusiasm for a worthless product.

There's a lot more on the product page that I haven't posted, so check it out if you want to witness a well established subversive shopper behaviour.

Reflections on Glory Eluded

2011-08-31T23:59:00.001+01:00

I could have been a contender, instead of a lousy bum.

I could be eyeball deep in internet bucks right now, but my own dilly-dallying has given another sufficient time to snatch my glory away from me.

Since 2001, I have been painstakingly chronicling the appearances of one of the worst TV and movie extras ever to grace celluloid. This extra is not only a strange looking man-child, he's an overactor who pulls attention towards the background that his participation is supposed to immerse the viewer in. And sadly, because of this internet video, you've probably heard of him:

I first noticed Jessie Heiman, the 'World's Greatest Extra', when his odious acting skills ruined one of the crucial scenes in 2001's Spider Man (a YouTube viewer also noted it and put it online here). Ever since then, Jessie has been haunting my films and TV shows. There he is in Goldmember. Now he's in Old School. I could pull one of my DVDs off the rack, and if I paid enough attention, he'd appear in the background. Holy Christ, there he is in Catch Me If You Can.

I started a Word Document with a list of all his appearances, years before I had a blog to share it on, but eventually, I just had to stop. I was obsessed, turning on films just to scour the background. "That Fat Extra" is in here somewhere. I'd terrify new girlfriends during movie-time by jumping up from the couch and pointing at the screen - "IT'S THE SAME FAT EXTRA FROM SPIDERMAN! HE'S TERRIBLE!"

Things eased off when I moved to the States in 2006, until I saw that he was in a mobile-phone commercial. I took to YouTube and found his profile. The fat extra had a name. He was just some kid earning a crust, and not some demon that only I could see. For a while, I was at peace.

But then he started showing up in the TV shows I was watching. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Arrested Development. Heroes. He was there, and he was taunting me:

"I WILL EAT YOUR DREAMS "

I started a new list chronicling his every move, as the old file was three-computers ago. The monomania was back. I started a blog entry draft called "that fat extra". I scrawled down timestamps from episodes of his appearances. It grew and grew and grew, and since it kept growing, I thought it best to sit on it for a while longer.

This decision was follysome. The YouTube embedded above video came out in March of this year, and 2 million hits later, Jessie's a guest on Jay Leno. This obscure flush-faced fattie just went mainstream, and the screengrabs and scrawled notes now amount to naught.

Still, I can take some solace knowing that I wasn't the only one bothered by his ubiquity, and even though his newfound fans are flooding his YouTube page with gushing comments about how great he is, there's one comment there that predates all the others by a good few years; mine:

And in case you're curious, he wasn't kind enough to reply, the talentless prick.

Right for the Wrong Reasons

2011-08-31T08:54:00.004+01:00

In the past year or two, I've been referring to myself as a 'skeptic' on this blog with increasing frequency. So what's that all about then?

A 'skeptic', in the sense that the online community around it intends, refers to a person who arrives at their beliefs and conclusions via the scientific method. Listen to any of the myriad podcasts, or browse the countless blogs and you'll see again and again that the skeptical community will not tell you what to think, but how to think (and not in the scary, cultish way). [Primateus advises you to be be wary of self-proclaimed skeptics]

I discovered the skeptical community in April 2008, by way of Richard Dawkins - his website linked to a interview on the Skepticality podcast discussing a creationist PR debacle. I kept listening to the show after the interview ended, and have been listening ever since, emboldened to by the knowledge that a quasi-organised community of freethinkers were sinking their teeth into much more than just endorsing a humanist agenda.

However, before I had developed a robust framework for evaluating claims, I was a bit of a jackass. Still sceptical, and sometimes right, but often for the wrong reasons.

I've always enjoyed being a pot-stirrer, and I learned early on that subjecting religion to criticism and exposing its logical fallacies is a surefire way to upset most of the population. Religion was my favorite class as a young 'un, because it was an introduction to rhetoric, and the grown-ups would get flustered when presented with questions that undermined any of its framework.

I recall not being terribly interested in rituals as a child - and I can vividly recall that I spent my confirmation mass muttering to the classmate next to me about how disgusting it was to have to pray about 'not being worthy', and other statements my narcissism couldn't reconcile. Rather than just conclude that all religion was a pile of nonsense, I spent the next few years wasting brain power by living through a different religious prism (albeit hugely watered down). I'd precociously chide my friends about 'bad karma', and catalogue their past transgressions as evidence of why the universe was being mean to them lately. Similarly, I'd attribute good fortune to acts of kindness. Even though I presented it to my friends as a thought experiment, my efforts were motivated by a desire to make them doubt their own beliefs, and not to push towards a more valuable set of humanist beliefs.

Similarly, and most shamefully, when the twin towers fell, I peddled the worst information I could get my (fifteen-year old) hands on. One example is the e-mail forwards that told users that the flight number (or plane number, in varying stories) of the vessel that first struck the Word Trade Center was Q33-NY, then implored readers to view those characters in the Wingdings font, which revealed the following:

Spooky coincidence, or proof of Microsoft's involvement? It wasn't until a schoolmate showed up to class with the same printout that I bothered to actually investigate the claim so that I could expose his blind belief as the gullibility it was. [Snopes link for the curious]

My next 9/11 related nonsense was fuelled in part by the 'documentary' Zeitgeist. Split into three acts, the first was a takedown of Christianity by highlighting its many plagiarisms from older belief systems, the second examined the possibility that the Bush Administration orchestrated the attacks, and the third went off the deep end in conspiracy nonsense about one-world governments that would only titillate those with extensive tinfoil collections.

Since I was more interested in seeing people react to uncomfortable information rather than propagating good information, I mined whatever probable 'factoids' I could from the video and similar sources and presented them to my friends, not necessarily as my beliefs, but as 'compelling' information.

So why have I shared these disparate examples of my peddling of nonsense? As much as I feel as it's repentance, I hope it will serve to illustrate that there are intelligent people out there who will be excited by information that purports to be clandestine, or contradicts the boring reality, even if it's out of sheer boredom.

If you find yourself in a conversation with someone who is defending the indefensible, take a step back. Ask them if they really believe what they're saying, because some conversations aren't worth having. A friend of mine once got quite worked up trying to refute the infinite monkey theorem. We're talking a good fifteen minutes of flushed red cheeks. Arguing against infinity. That's pretty intense. Try to keep your mental masturbation in check when you're in public.

Getting people to stop engaging in harmful practices motivated by stupid beliefs that impair the human race's progress is a Sisyphean task, but it's one that intelligent, free-thinking people can and should rally behind, particularly if they know that their one voice is part of a worldwide chorus. Those who get in your way with naive notions may be your future allies who just haven't perfected their critical thinking skills yet, so help them along. Rabid allegiance to established beliefs safeguarded by emotional arguments and illogical rhetoric is the ultimate enemy, and open, intellectually-honest debate is the goal.

Gosh, my brain lights up with implausibly utopian notions every time I consider such a thing!

Bullshit hunting at the Wisconsin State Fair: Part 2

2011-08-18T08:43:00.002+01:00

[Click for Part One]

As time was working against my noble efforts to document more perversions of common-sense, I was unable to interact with any of the shillers of snake-oil in any meaningful way.

Much like how the 'Acupressure' [read: backrub] stands were a franchise available on every row, I passed a number of signs reading a variation of 'Got pain? Have a seat!'

Whatever this product is, it implies that it's an efficacious remedy for pains caused by 'diabetes', 'restless leg', 'degenerated disk', and 'sports injuries'. In an effort to tick the box of every possible customer, it seems as though they just brainstormed afflictions until they ran out of space on the sign.

Sure enough, a few people had taken a seat (possibly because it was the only place on the showroom to sit), but there was only one woman who was availing of the product on offer:

Neither of these ladies seemed terribly impressed by what they're witnessing

So what is the machine? A calculator-sized device with wires coming out of it that are connected to pads that stick to the skin. Not entirely sure what happens from there, but since I was snapping pictures and running, I just took a blind guess that a product that promised so much and was being advertised in such a hucksterish fashion would be utter rubbish.

In truth, I had hoped to find a similar stall in a less-crowded area of the salesfloor so I could get some more info. I'm not sure if the affiliation is the same, but I did find the following device at a similar booth that invited attendees to sit down and have their ailments cured;

The Rhythm Touch 2-Way! Its website describes it as an "Electrical Muscle Stimulator", which sounds like a fancy way to say 'massager' to me. Sure enough, buried beneath the woo about 'acu-therapy' and how Koreans (glad to see the Koreans represented in the ancient Asian wisdom) have pioneered the technology. How much would you pay for a massager. $20? $50? These pricks want to sell you this and some janky accessories for $299.95 US!

But back to the fair. Have a look at the info sheet available:

Show Special $299.00? (And that's without half the accessories available online). Sheer madness. It also irks me that this tattered piece of paper doesn't have the decency to specify which 'show' this 'special' applies to. Embiggen the picture if you want to strain your eyes reading about how acupuncture has existed for over 5000 years, thereby making it better than every medical practice devised since. To prove how sciencey this product is, they've included the obligatory acupressure map:

[Click here to read about my encounter with a therapeutic touch practitioner]

My favourite bit is the bit right above the pricing details:

"We are looking for people who want to make extra income. Please call us after the show for more information. Ask the sales person for more information"

Not only do they want you to buy their lies and preposterously priced vibrator, they want you to shill them too!

It heartened me to see that in the minutes I spent observing the people of Wisconsin in this arena, they were generally more interested in buying meat-snacks and curious tchotchkes than dumping money into the stupidest of stupid nonsense, so I was able to enjoy the rest of my time at the fair without that lonely feeling of being a sensible man in a mad world that grips me from time to time.

This at-peace feeling shattered just as I was leaving the fair. 9/11 Truthers were set up on the sidewalk right outside the park's pedestrian entrance - a scrawny chap in his 50s was screaming his lungs out to nobody in particular, directing half his sentence at passing groups of fairgoers, then the rest towards the cars stopped at the traffic lights. His agitated nature didn't do his cause any favours; he was waving his literature so furiously it was as if he was battling demons only he could see with it.

The snippets of rhetoric I caught were "They lied to you about the Iraq war, they lied to you about the twin towers". Again, I'm happy to report that he was almost universally greeted by groans of dismay and head-shaking, and I felt as though I should be ashamed in being the only one to approach him and gingerly take the literature he was waving around. Sadly, despite telling my stalwart ladyfriend to snap a picture as I approached the gentleman, she failed to take the shot, but I can't blame her - nobody wants to piss off a feral 9/11 truther.

So what kind of BS did I walk away with? Well, for one, I got a sweet copy of 9/11 Investigator [PDF here], a well-designed four-page broadsheet-style newspaper that's like a bullshit bible for 9/11 Truthers.

As well as that, I got an insert with more information about the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth Organisation and their strongest evidence. WTC 7 is their monomania, and the lack of publicity its received compared to the twin towers seems to be what fuels their fury. Nutters.

Brilliantly, one of the inserts was a less-slickly produced, photocopied page entitled "Take A Second Look Investigate/Research What Happened On Sept. 11th, 2011" - a 41-point list of miscellany that features a few gems. Here's my favourite:

35. Eyewitness testimony about toasted cars, instant disappearence of people by "unexplained" waves

"Unexplained waves"? Hah? Let's read on to the bottom:

"* Is it possible that such a technology exist? Since invention of the microwave for cooking in 1945 and lasers in 1955, comercial and military development of directed-energy technology has proceeded apace, so use of directed-energy technology is likely to exist -- and the data tells us it does exist.

So not only was 9/11 an inside job, but the government also has a device capable of making people disappear. And we know that this exists, because microwaves were invented long ago. By now they've surely improved the technology, so I can conclude that this data set proves that eraso-rays exist.

Your move, lizard-people.

Bullshit hunting at the Wisconsin State Fair

2011-08-15T02:52:00.000+01:00

After 5 years or so of visiting Wisconsin regularly, I finally got to experience the Wisconsin State Fair for the first time this week. I was hoping to lift an official paragraph from the State Fair's website that would explain to the uninitiated what it's all about, but there was none to be found. Hopefully this Q&A lifted from the FAQ page will accurately set the tone.

"Will there be food on a stick?

Yes, our vendors will supply a delicious variety of your favorite foods on a stick. For a list of foods on a stick, please visit our Food tab" [Note: This is a long ass list]

For the sake of expediency, let's just call it a ten-day long celebration of Wisconsin's food and culture presented in a carnival / street-festival / outdoor market hybrid. With concerts. And livestock.

I'm getting bogged down in details here, but the point is, it's a big deal (attendance is regularly over 800,000 each year), and there's stuff for sale there, so I knew that there'd be plenty of woo on sale.

It didn't take too much wandering around in the Expo Center before I hit paydirt:

Extreme Balance Bands!

Extreme Balance Bands! Awesome example of total bullshit, right there. These bands are a ripoff of the original Power Balance Bands from an Australian company who got into a spot of bother with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for claims made bout their snake oil, and they've since had to scrap their stock, cease the misleading marketing, and reimburse customers who felt ripped off.

Can't touch your toes? It's a balance issue that this accessory can remedy!

I've encountered and documented their cousins in Limerick City already, so I won't go into the tired reasons as to why the claims are nonsense, but I wanted to share the woo-porn.

Where these scammers have shown some originality, however, is the sports watch accessory, which according to the front of the package is a "Tourmaline power minus ion Healthy Sports Watch", so while you're getting a big fat load heaping of codswallop, you're at least getting a timepiece.

If you have a rigorous scientific mind, you might want to view the actual specifications though, so you'll be glad to hear that the back of the box boasts "1 ATM Water Resistanee", "Minus Ion(above 1900ions/cc), Far Infrared Ray (above 90%)", and of course, the "HQ silicone rubber is no harm to skin". [All of these typos are accurate, but read the back of the box yourself if you think it'll help to read this tripe in context:]

Science!

I asked one of the ladies shilling these products for the cost - she started by telling me that they sell in malls for up to $75 (I failed to suppress my scoff), but they were selling them for $20, and would throw in the watch for a few dollars more. If the watch keeps time okay, it's probably not an obscene price, but judging by the disposition of the salesgirls, and the decidedly unimpressed looking member of the public testing out the band, I think they were having a tough time flogging their wares. Taking this into consideration, I decided that toying with them by asking awkward questions about research and scientific concepts they had zero interest in seemed like a waste of time.

Since I was under serious time constraints, I zig-zagged through the 200,000sq ft. Expo Center at random looking for more woo (passing only one table giving out free-samples, sadly), hoping to find some more nonsense to document. It rankled me that the stalls set up for massages were big, red, mega-Chinesey affairs, with Chinese lettering surrounding the word 'Acupressure'. Paying money to have a wizened old Asian person rub my shoulders is magical enough without all the 'ancient-wisdom' mumbo-jumbo.

As I pushed my way through the throng of people, choosing directions on instinct alone, I turned to my girlfriend and proclaimed: "I know there's more bullshit in here. I can smell it. And I'm going to find it if it's the last thing I do."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Sweet Chocolate Jesus

2011-08-04T20:27:00.000+01:00

In this age of RSS I’m a bit old-school in my browsing habits, typing URLS from memory into the address bar, which often leads to misadventure. Last night, when I wanted to go to my friend Cait’s blog at wordisking.tumblr.com, I forgot about the “.tumblr” part, and found myself at WordIsKing.com.

Word Is King? It's not too much of a stretch that it redirects to a site called Biblical Black Art, is it?

Picture the Last Supper. Hard not to think of Leonardo Da Vinci's version, isn't it? Let's see if this becomes your new go-to image:

Sweet chocolate Jesus!

These images might seem 'out there', but is it any more offensive than the white, European look of Biblical characters that are drummed into the consciousness of most in the West?

I'm not going to try and make a point here, I'm just going to post these pictures in the hopes that someone stumbles across them and contemplates the tacit racism in claiming culturally significant Middle-Easterners for ones own ethnicity. Or preferably, some racist gets brain-pain from seeing Jesus with cornrows.

(More after the break)

These pictures were all republished without permission, but as they're all for sale from BiblicalBlackArt.com, I doubt the artist will mind the plug. I poked around in the site to find some direction as to what the republishing guidelines were, or maybe understand what lens I should view the art through. On the 'About Us' page?

Lorem Ipsum! (I wonder if the uninitiated, credulous browser would consider this a devout prayer to Baby Jesus in his native tongue?)

Valuing Video Chat

2011-07-13T00:41:00.001+01:00

I haven't heard a lot of enthusiasm from the Tech-press over Facebook and Google's recently announced plans to implement video-chat into their social networks, and a recent post on TrustTommy questioned the focus on these services, when there's still plenty of work yet to be done on the basics (such as worthy mobile apps).

The comment I posted on his almost week-old post got no feedback, so I thought I'd expand my thoughts here, which should dovetail nicely with my recent reflections on my long-distance relationship, and my openly declared affection for Google's services.

Basically, video-chat is pretty much the most important thing my internet connection brings me, mostly due to that pesky long distance relationship I'm in. Human interaction is just richer when you can see who you're talking to. I don't just mean reading body language and facial expressions - I feel rewarded when I make my girlfriend smile, and punished when she gives me a withering look, meaning her ongoing behaviour modification can continue in earnest despite our lack of physical proximity.

At present, I'm in a state of transition, spending the Summer with my ladyfriend before moving onto Canada with a work permit, and even though I'm living in the same house as my number one reason for having Skype, I'm still getting regular use out of it to talk to those back in the motherland.

Before I left, I was genuinely concerned that my 18 month old nephew would forget about me in my absence, but a few Skype calls was all it took to assuage this fear. Even though his vocabulary is insufficient to hold a conversation, he happily sits on my brother's lap in front of the computer, warbling at the low-bitrate video stream that he recognises as his uncle. Thanks to the video-chat, I even get to see the pictures he's drawn of us hanging out, like old times!

The next step is convincing his father for a high-quality scan for my fridge

Moving aside from the touchy-feely stuff, consider for a moment the current state of Ireland, and the new generation of Irish diaspora. I think it's safe to say that video-chatting will enjoy a greater prominence than ever before, thanks to how accessible it will be in the years to come.

Facebook is one of those things that almost everybody who has the internet uses (including begrudgers like me), so even the luddites incapable of navigating to Skype.com and downloading the appropriate software will be able to avail of video-chat goodness, integrated almost seamlessly with the existing instant-messaging service they use to while away their evenings (this assumes that they are able to successfully click 'yes' to installing the necessary java applet). Friends of mine embarking on international excursions talked about 'setting up Skype' as if it's a major chore, so the lowering of this barrier is definitely a good thing.

The most recent video-chat development that I'm excited about is Google +'s group-video chat, in which up to 10 (ten!) users can hang out with a video feed each (once again, Google makes me happy by rolling out free feature that trumps the paid-model offerred by competitors). I've only tested it with one other user (you're still better off with Google Talk or Skype for a one-on-one conversation), but there's a lot of smart ideas at play, the best being how the main video window will change to highlight whoever is talking (or talking the loudest if you're in a rabble).

Video, text-chat, and synchronised YouTube watching (which didn't work when I tested it with Fin.ie earlier) for a group of friends sounds like a good time, particularly since keeping in touch with a large group of people is hard work. Consider the way it is today for the world-adventurers you surely know: connect to someone on Skype, tell them all your news, then connect to someone else, and repeat half the conversation - to date my diplomatic way to avoid this has been to not pick any favourites and not tell anyone anything, Google +'s hangout feature gives me hope that I can catch up on my scattered college buddies in a fun, casual forum.

Et toi, reader? Are there any features about the bold new frontiers of social-networking that excite you?

How I do it - Part 2

2011-06-29T08:30:00.048+01:00

Picking up where we left off yesterday, today I’m elucidating on what I consider the important bits of keeping my long-distance relationship alive:

#5 Technology on your side

As far as I'm concerned, communication is everything in a relationship, so getting that all important conversation in each day can be a logistical and financial burden.

Skype is essential, but it's not the only option. (If your technology aligns, FaceTime is also a ~~great~~ viable service). We use free webtexts and Google Voice to pepper one another's day with sweet-nothings at no price. Google Voice (available from within Gmail) has been offering free voice-calls to the States from the end of 2010 through to the beginning of 2011, effectively making it cheaper to talk to my girlfriend 6000km away than my friend in the same city.

For the past year, I’ve been using a smart phone, which has made everything even easier. Skype over 3G (or even 2G) is a great service, but having essentially free access to Google Voice and webtexting services mean that keeping in touch doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Not having to justify spending €0.35 to brighten up my lady’s day with a cute message from the road is a luxury that I might not be able to live without, and the exchange of e-mailed photos of curiosities and encounters of our days does wonders to close that gap.

#6 Some basic character traits

Patience is important for a number of reasons that should be obvious.

There's no point getting pissy if the conversation is cut short, for whatever reason. There have been times when I've been excited to share my day with the person I hold most dear, but she can't talk for longer than a second. After staying up hours past bedtime for what is essentially an exchange of pleasantries, it would be easy to dwell in the disappointment, so occasionally I will have to remind myself of the choices I've made and why to keep perspective.

I don't fret when I hear that she's been spending time with guys more attractive and accessible than me, despite the cross-examination by my friends ("she's at the cinema with another guy? You know what that guy is after, deep down"), despite my misanthropic nature (particularly towards fellow males), I have absolute trust in my girlfriend. Anything less and the relationship would surely crumble.

I will admit that I could keep my cool much better when the technology lets me down. A choppy connection with missing and distorted sound irritates me - a monomania that often rankles my ladyfriend, and decays the conversation into one about our connection trouble. When the lifeblood of my relationship is being blocked by some glutton sharing my Internet connection, it's not uncommon that I find myself suppressing the urge to rain blows upon friends and family.

#7 An unwavering commitment

Yes, this is #1 again, but it's worth repeating. I've been in relationships before with commitment and mutual affection, and I had no intention of settling down anytime soon when Kate came along, but it just seemed like it was worth a shot.

Over the four and a half years, the relationship has gone from strength-to-strength, but an uncomfortable thought has continued to lurk in the back of my thoughts - 'what if I feel so strongly about this because it's difficult?' What if the moments we share are so special because of their scarcity? And what if I'm not seeing the true relationship dynamic, as we're both holding back on our petty gripes to not spoil the limited time we have together?

It seems to me that the only way to eradicate these fears is to close the gap, so that's what I'm doing.

I'm one week into my extended stay in the US of A. The plan is to stay for as long as I can via the tourist visa-waiver program, before heading off to Canada on a one-year work permit.

If you asked me five years ago if I'd ever inconvenience myself in such a fashion for the sake of a woman, I'm pretty sure that I'd have the hubris to scoff at such an irrational course of action. The trouble is, leaving behind my friends, family, and a quarter-century worth of accumulated material-possessions for the sake of narrowing (not closing!) the gap seems like the only sensible thing to do.

Here's how I do it

2011-06-29T00:51:00.001+01:00

I've been in a long-distance relationship for four and a half years. Some people are impressed by this, others react as if I'm admitting a severe mental instability. Regardless of how this information reflects on my psychological profile, I'm invariably asked 'how do you do it?'.

For those who wish to know, read on.

The background: my girlfriend is from the USA, I'm from Ireland. We met in early 2005 when she was studying in Ireland, and we started dating in late 2006 when I was studying in the USA. From the beginning, our relationship was long-distance, as our respective universities were a plane-journey away. This may well have made it easier.

So then, how do I do it? Hopefully these notes will pique your interest or help someone in a similar situation.

#1 Commitment

Of all the things to emphasise about a transatlantic long distance relationship, this slice of banality should be the only vital one, as everything will fall into place with the right mindset. Based on our close-friendship, I knew enough about Kate to know that she was the most viable candidate for a life-partner I had encountered, and we decided to give it a try. Why let the opportunity pass?

That aside, let's get onto the pragmatic aspects:

#2. A big bag of money

People ask me how far away my girlfriend lives. I sometimes reply "About €800 away". If you're planning on getting out to see your beloved quasi-regularly, it's going to take money. There's a lot of ways to reduce and eliminate the costs of keeping in touch, but physical-proximity is going to cost ya. Use price-comparison sites like expedia.com, sign up for the frequent flyer miles, and pay attention to the special offers that are often running. Consider taking a bus (yech) to eliminate the cost of a connecting flight, and volunteer your seat away when the flight has been overbooked to score precious airline-credit.

These tips help, but there's no getting away from the fact that this is an expensive habit. I don't smoke or drink, and I sometimes try to convince myself that the money I haemorrhage away on flights could easily be spent over the course of a few weekends of booze-fuelled socialising.

#3 A libido with an off switch

The less said about this, the better, but if you're looking to follow in my footsteps, your genitals better be capable of going into a state of hibernation (of course, it helps when your social life consists of staying in listening to podcasts). If you're feeling remorse over denied gratification from those immediately around you, a long distance relationship might not be for you.

Looking at this sleeping animal should soothe your carnal urges

#4 A (slavish adherence to a) routine

Me and Kate talk every day, almost without fail. With a 6-hour time difference, that can be awkward, particularly with her hectic schedule, but whether we can make time for an hour-long video-conference or grab a thirty-second phonecall, we will inconvenience ourselves to make the call.

Calling it a 'routine' might be misleading, since sometimes the call will be crammed into the tiniest window without notice, but despite the number of absurdly brief conversations we've had at awkward moments, we've never entertained forfeiting the ritual of talking every day.

~~~

This post has bloated up rather quickly, so this one is becoming a two-parter. The remaining pointers will be posted tomorrow - in the meantime, feel free to leave a comment (and if you can find a picture that accurately portrays a sleeping libido, bring it to my attention!).

Confessions of a Google Lover

2011-06-11T00:54:00.007+01:00

I like to think that I'm a rational creature who likes and dislikes things for rational reasons, but when I find myself openly begrudging something popular, I worry that I'm falling into the same kind of lazy thinking exhibited by 'alternative' people who valorize going against popular opinion. If you've ever watched one of your hipster friends clumsily trying to justify their about-face on how they feel about bands like Green-Day, you should have a fair idea of the type of archetype I'm trying to avoid.

Of course, even though these people often can't articulate tangible reasons for disliking popular things, they too have convinced themselves of their rationality. When I posted late last month griping about Facebook's shortcomings I was cognizant that I would be seen to conform to hipster-type, so I intended to post a twin-piece as soon as possible, extolling the merits of another popular online service.

It may be six months late, but here goes:

I love Google. I use as many of their services as I can. I'll leave the privacy-concerns to the bubble-bursting commenters and focus on what I love about what they do for right now:

For a start, the essential services are free. By 'free', I mean 'ad-supported', but not in an intrusive way.

More importantly, the quality is rock solid - Gmail is almost universally lauded as one of the best e-mail clients there is, on or offline. Google Voice's call clarity tends to be better than Skype's, Google Reader has a clean interface to organise my RSS feeds from any web-connected device, and has a layer of social-integration for those rare moments that I want to share something with friends or see what they're recommending.

Google products tend to have a sense of humour - on the occasions that Google's services have thrown up error messages, they tend to be quirky ones, like when Google Wave (RIP) went belly-up on me one time:

A goofy error message that tells me how to fix the problem? A nice way to assuage the inconvenience of having to refresh the page, eh?

Also, when sending my girlfriend bloated text messages, most composing applications will tell me when I'm spilling over into more than one SMS, but Google Voice does it differently - have a look at the remaining-character count as I continue to prattle:

Keep prattling on and it throws its arms up at you in protest - a sensible deterrent to rambling text messages

There are new features rolled out all the freaking time. Part of the glory of having the applications on the web is that the updating process isn't very jarring - every now and again I'll log onto Google Docs to see that some new feature has been added:

Priority Inbox on Gmail, Mobile-View on Blogger, Google Instant search - they are constantly tinkering and improving on the bread-and-butter of the basic online experience, and I like to see the progress.

These seamless-updates aren't just for web-apps either, Google Chrome, my web browser of choice, updates itself in the background - if I leave Chrome running for five days solid, I'll get a prompt to restart the browser if there are updates ready to go - this is how I wish it was for 90% of the software I use.

Attention to detail: This is great software, and it shows when you consider the effort that goes into localisation. Look at the difference between the 'Options' page on Windows XP running Chrome in US English, and my Mac running Chrome in British English:

Firstly, they adhere to the Mac parlance of referring to 'options' as 'preferences', but 'Under the Bonnet'/Hood?' C'mon! That's a loving touch right there. It warms the cockles of my hearts every time I see it.

~~~

There's much I haven't touched on here for the sake of keeping this at a reasonable length - I could fill another blog entry about Android and cloud-syncing stuff, but I'll cut off the gushing for now.

I surely seem like a die-hard fan here, but the most significant contribution that Google makes is competition. They have all the money in the world to pursue projects with big budgets, which is great news for those (like me) who shop around. Google Voice has successfully supplanted Skype as my go-to VOIP solution, and how could they fail? In addition to a competitive feature set (that includes Gmail integration, a US phone number, voice-mail transcription, free texts to US numbers), they also offerred free voicecalls to the US for the entirety of 2011. That, friends, is a no-brainer.

Gmail's killer feature when it launched was 1GB of storage - at the time (if I recall correctly) Yahoo! Mail was giving me 250MB (Hotmail was bragging about 100MB not long before) - look at the major providers now - space is rarely an issue, and it's from Google pushing along the competition.

I like talking to people who dislike Google for good reasons - and there are plenty of valid reasons for not liking the company, but the products they put out are top-notch, and even if you don't partake yourself, you can surely admit to benefitting from Google's participation in the service-provider arms race, whether you use e-mail, a mobile phone, or even a TV.

If that hasn't convinced you somewhat, just remember - if you don't love Google, the hipsters win.

Three things I envy about religious people

2011-05-31T23:52:00.001+01:00

Despite how much effort idiots put into tainting the word, 'Atheist' is one of the few labels I'm comfortable applying to myself. Trying to pinpoint how long I've been on the agnostic/atheist continuum is difficult, but I do recall an event when I was seventeen or so that has stayed with me.

There was a school outing to the shrine at Knock, and the itinerary called for a gruelling day of prayer and gawping at sacred trinkets. Attendance was optional. But all of my friends were going. Nobody seemed motivated by my suggestion to spend the day off doing what we wanted, rather than enduring a long day of ritual observance [more likely, my friends' parents weren't giving them a choice], and eventually I was goaded into attending. I felt like an outsider, so to avoid looking like an outsider, I bit my tongue for most of the day, only breaking my dishonest silence to a priest when I was forced into confession like the rest of the sheep.

The point is, I've been an outsider for years now, and I've gradually become more comfortable in openly not attending religious services, but there are a few things that I occasionally find myself envying about religious people. This is a quick (and unplanned) blog entry that is as respectful of religion as I feel it's appropriate to be, so if you take offense or have insight on what I've said as a believer or non-believer, leave a comment and let me know.

#3: Meditation
Alone, in private, Christians pray for all sorts of reasons. I don't think prayer itself is particularly valuable, and intercessory prayer has been proven in clinical trials to not have any effect in the healing of the sick (I'm trying not to launch into a tangent on the absurdity of billions actively trying to alter God's infallible plan). That said, the act of prayer is a form of meditation, where people take time out from their day to organise their thoughts and focus on the needs of others, or their own hopes and dreams. While believers may be parsing their urgent needs in the form of an appeal only heard by themselves, I would consider this a more fruitful labour than merely distracting oneself from troubling situations by engaging in brainless activities.

Taking moments to collect one's thoughts seems to me a great way to 'defrag' the brain, and my abstaining from this activity is consoled by the fact that sometimes prayer does lead to dangerous levels of inaction, and if you pay attention to yourself, you can keep your thoughts in check without having to invoke the supernatural.

While I'm on the subject, I might as well confess that I miss being 'able' to pray to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost articles, who would be petitioned by my family every couple of minutes when I was a boy. Regardless of his spotty success rate, I can still remember how comforting it was in the moments after soliciting the assistance of an all-seeing entity whose sole responsibility was to help me find my Ghostbusters proton-pack.

#2: Immunity from offense
Yes, I'm mostly taking the piss, but consider for a moment how much privilege is afforded to religion in society. Even after thousands of years of effrontery against science and reason, countless real innocents murdered in the name of expunging imaginary spirits, and countless bad PR days resulting from angry muslims and pedophile priests, gently tutting at the peculiarities of religion is terribly bad manners.

I try to muster as much self-righteous indignation as possible when somebody is trying to peddle misinformation about the world, but my protests don't hold as much weight as the poor victimized Christian, who may defend his religion by dismissing dissenters as ignorant pricks.

This is immense power. Don't want to come up with solid logic for vilifying abortion? Hide behind religion. Someone doesn't agree with your assertion that your wife is your property? Invoke religion and call them a vulgar scoundrel. This bleeds over into political rhetoric, bringing the conversation to a halt before any ground is broken. Equal rights for gays? How dare you betray the inerrant word of the Bible!

Being able to effectively shut-down discourse whenever the cognitive-dissonance gets too taxing is naturally a bad thing, but I envy the power. As an experiment, I once tried to take offense to the phrase 'my brother from another mother', as I have a brother who was born of another mother, but this did not wield the same conversation killing power as religious ire.

#1: Community
This is the big one. The human species owes a great deal to reciprocal altruism, and while I don't entertain the notion that altruistic acts exist because of divine instruction, I do think that in the modern day, having a focal point to build communities around is great for expanding and enriching social circles. My girlfriend attends a [presbyterian] church for community purposes, and on the few times I've attended services, I've heard people asking for 'prayers' for loved ones who are sick or jobless. Worthless though the prayers may be, these people are able to put up a distress beacon for emotional support or job-networking that may well lead to genuine benefits.

The multitudes of ways this can misfire are obvious: in-groups can be hostile towards out-groups, particularly when religious fervour is involved, assuring the aggressor of his divinely-granted inerrancy. Think Christian versus Muslim, Shias versus Sunnis, Protestant versus Catholic, creationists versus sensible people, and you'll get the picture. These conflicts may not necessarily stem from religious affiliation, but it's a convenient way of 'othering' fellow human beings.

~~~

What I've discussed here isn't really the most important stuff, it's just what came to mind to me recently as a result of contemplating my future. I've a few notes scrawled down that I might explore at a later date but in the meantime, leave me a comment and weigh in yourself.

The Best Bits of my last Week or so

2011-05-31T23:50:00.000+01:00

Busy few weeks! Little time to blog, but here are a few bits and pieces that I found along the way.

Within days of endorsing some sceptical podcasts, I find a toilet that empties into a sceptic tank:

"I'm sceptical that this is natural waste, so I'm going to back up into the sinks now"

While out in Limerick City (for the first time in a long time) I found something oddly reminiscent of the religious graffiti I tracked for a few ~~months~~ years over the country a few years ago. Has the intrepid vandal moved onto a new uplifting message with less? Forensic analysis to follow at a later date:

Accidentally cut off a bit - it reads: "Hope - The unconscious mind works it out - Sleep on it"

Limerick Band Fox Jaw Bounty Hunters released a fantastic new album last week, and I finally got to listen to it uninterrupted. Well worth a purchase, if you're into solid rock with a menacing vibe [Amazon Link].

Here's the latest single, Hatch Sixteen, which I've yet to decide is a paean or condemnation of Limerick City.

Now she tells me?

2011-05-20T23:06:00.000+01:00

It was my birthday a few days ago. I received a small influx of material goods. Which was appreciated.

My girlfriend tends to get me some awesome gifts on my birth-anniversaries, but more often than not, it's the joke stuff she includes that always seems to be most memorable. Old school readers will remember the Creationist DVD and the vile evolution-denying children's books that she's gifted to me in years past.

Earlier this week, while Kate was pulling out thoughtful gifts out of her (Christmas-themed) gift bag, I was waiting for the self-conscious titter to announce the arrival of some goofy trinket designed to offend my sensibilities. This titter never came, nor did any offending items. I kept my disappointment to myself.

While I was ignoring her for The Sopranos, she asked me why her Facebook feed was abuzz with chatter of the apocalypse. I paused my show for the chance to pontificate, but had gotten no further than 'some Christian crazies have somehow grabbed some headlines...' when she let out a squeal and ran for her backpack.

She grabbed some pamphlets and eagerly shoved them towards me.

"I meant to give you these with your birthday card!"

Click for hugeness

Three flyers, (each consisting of four double-sided pages), and a business card that asks if you've heard 'the Awesome News?'

The end of the world? The Bible Guarantees It! Awesome! This not-particularly meek and mild approach is seen throughout the apocalyptic literature, with another flyer starting with the assertion that 'GOD GIVES ANOTHER INFALLIBLE PROOF THAT ASSURES THE RAPTURE WILL OCCUR MAY 21, 2011' [no emphasis added]. They've got maths on their side! This is science!

Click for science!

My favourite part about this is that my girlfriend hands these over at 22:30 on May 20th, 2011. Not quite enough time to repent, let alone read through this drivel. How did she procure these items? They were shoved into her sister's mailbox. Someone is paying to get these printed and delivered across the States, and gullible people are losing their minds over it. Just bear in mind occurrences like these when you wonder why I'm flying off the handle about harmless tat for superstitious old ladies.

Fear not, dear reader, Harold Camping, the engineer behind these claims, was wrong when he predicted the same thing in 1994, and as he is now in his 89th year, we can take solace in knowing that he won't be wasting column inches for much longer, rapture or not.

A quick curiosity [Apple]

2011-05-13T20:08:00.000+01:00

As a consumer whore, I have a habit of checking the Gold-Box deals on Amazon just to kill time, but rarely does something tickle my fancy.

Whilst navigating through the store the other day, I saw that I could 'save big' on previous generation iMacs, but the prices were tantalisingly out of sight. "Add to cart to see price", it exhorted. Fair enough!

A click later, and I'm looking at the iMacs available. The cheapest is marked down from $1099, but to determine how much has been knocked off, i must 'Click to see price'. Here goes!

$1,079.99? It's fallen by a whole $19.01! That's some serious bull right there. How dare you make me click three times to learn that last year's iMac has barely been discounted. Why, Amazon, why?

Click to read comfortably

Oh. Because Apple (and other retailers) won't allow Amazon to advertise a price below the "minimum advertised price", I wasted twelve seconds of my day thinking I could get a good deal on an iMac, then wasted three minutes of yours telling you about it. You learn something new every day.

But hey, if you were looking at an iMac 10 months ago and thought to yourself "Man, I'd totally buy that if it was only 1.7% cheaper" it looks like today is your lucky day!

Remember, if you're looking to buy anything from Apple, consult the MacRumors Buying Guide to avoid putting your tech-savvy friends in an awkward spot when you show them your shiny new iDevice that's three days away from being old hat.

5 Podcasts to make you a better person*

2011-05-10T01:37:00.000+01:00

I listen to a lot of podcasts - I often use them to ease the monotony of whatever errands I may be attending to, or to distract me away from the fact that my circle of real-life friends is rapidly dwindling and I'm not doing a good job replenishing the ranks.

In years to come, psychologists will point to listening-habits like mine as a trait indicating mental illness, as my obsessive need to stave off tedium leaves me deprived of any time for introspection, genuine human interaction, or the will to make new friends, since the people in my head are smarter than most people I'd meet in my daily life anyhow.

Today, dear reader, I've decided to share this burden with you, in internet-friendly list form! I'm going to give you five podcasts that I consider essential listening to see if I can't rob you of your thought-organising time too.

#5: The Onion Radio News

Despite expanding their schtick from mere mock-newspapers to mock-TV and radio news, The Onion still manages to deliver a mostly consistent stream of laughs. The Onion Radio News series are the finest expression of The Onion, in my opinion. Bite-sized pieces that show off the variety and humour of The Onion mean that even if you absolutely can't enjoy the humor in one piece, the next one is a few seconds away, and it's likely to be a good one. The Onion lampoons world leaders and public figures to great effect, but I enjoy it most when it's delivering absurd treatises on (fictional) everyday people agonizing over mundane occurrences with its dependably bang-on, po-faced delivery.

#4 : For Your Ears Only

When Newsweek crumbled, I was worried about my favourite America-centric podcast, Newsweek On Air, but it quickly re-appeared as 'For Your Ears Only' (and I didn't have to update my RSS feed!). Despite losing the Newsweek branding, it still delivers a solid news programme, talking about the major news from the past week in a refreshingly organised and relaxed fashion, including voices from across the political spectrum. Granted, the guests they have on the show tend to be hocking books, but they tend to be smarter than your average bear, dealing in facts and avoiding appeals to emotion, reflecting the demeanour of the coolheaded and informed hosts.

The format of the show suits a European interested in US goings-on - recapping the week's news means that all the redundant information from breaking news has been pruned out, leaving only the good stuff. They also have a rather nifty 'Archive' segment at the end of every episode, where they typically replay a major story from the same time last year.

#4: Global News - BBC World Service

According to the podcast's own intro, Global News presents 'a selection of highlights from across BBC World Service news' over the course of the day. Each 30 minute episode provides a smorgasbord of major world events, human interest pieces from across the globe, and enough non-western voices to make you feel as though you're not being blinkered by more easily accessible news outlets. The podcast is updated every 12 hours (!), so don't let OCD get the better of you when you see all the episodes you've missed.

#3: Skepticality

Skepticality holds a special place in my heart as the first podcast I got hooked on. The format is pretty simple - long form interviews with scientists and notable people about controversies or the books they're hocking. What's fantastic about this approach is that the interviewees have time to expound on the usual soundbites, often forming a great companion-pieces to the item they're shilling. Hosts Derek and Swoopy are intelligent people who understand that they are implicitly endorsing a book by interviewing the authors, so they clearly endeavour to read the book, and it shows in the kind of conversation-stoking and thought-provoking insights that one wishes would find their way into all shows.

As the name implies, this is a sceptical show for those who like to keep their wits sharp and learn about the difference between cutting-edge and broken-thinking. If you have a passing interest in inoculating yourself against superstitious nonsense while simultaneously hearing some wickedly intelligent people talk about fascinating stuff, this podcast is worth an hour of your time every fortnight.

#2: This American Life

For years, I noticed that a few of the entertainment-oriented podcasts would denigrate themselves by saying things like "This American Life we ain't", until it was finally drilled into my head that This American Life was a radio programme that has reached lofty heights that many others aspire to, and I needed to check it out.

I had high expectations, despite knowing little about the show, and these expectations were far exceeded. The hour-long podcast consists of a collection of discrete stories (referred to as 'acts' by the effortlessly charming host, Ira Glass), collected under an often tenuous theme, and presented in an exquisitely crafted fashion, with music cues and narrative interludes that bridge or disrupt the flow of the story as necessary.

Even after five months of listening, each week throws up thrilling surprises. The human interest stories often illuminate the darkest corners of the human psyche. The breakdowns of cultural curiosities from around the world are informative, fun, but somehow reverent. The precautionary tales are given enough room to breathe so that instead of scoffing at the mistakes of the victims, the listener becomes more attuned to his own fallacies. This American Life is a masterclass in storytelling, and yet they are happy to subvert their tried and tested approach seemingly whenever the fancy strikes (the most recent episode at the time of writing is a collection of stories from the past seven days entitled "This Week").

Every other week I find myself enthusing to a new person about the latest episode of This American Life, and I assure them that despite what the name implies, This American Life is not necessarily only relevant to Americans.

#1: The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe

The first thing you might notice about this recommendation is that word again: 'Skeptic'. This podcast is a totally separate entity from Skepticality, but they share a common goal: advancing scientific literacy and critical thinking in the general public.

Spending 80 minutes a week listening to five 'sceptics' from the New England Skeptical Society tackling whatever woo is worthy of addressing might not sound like a particularly good time, but these guys have captured lightning in a bottle. Each of the five panelists have complementary personalities that bring great levity and energy to a subject that could quickly devolve into something stuffy and academic. It's always great to have smart people clearly elucidate on the facts underneath the hype of major science stories in the media, and the enthusiasm they have for human endeavours is infective.

The regular features on this show are a fun way of bolstering one's intellectual toolkit. When the panelists engage in 'Name That Logical Fallacy' and 'Science or Fiction', the listener gets to play along at home, and learn something in process that will assist in deflating the nutter at the social function rambling about conspiracy theories and bigfoot sightings. It's easy to pick up on because it's intuitive stuff, but it's powerful to learn a little about how your thoughts can be derailed.

The only thing I can currently think to fault the podcast on are the stilted buffer pieces they use between segments, so rather than rambling on about how immensely grateful I am to have these awesome people volunteer their time to combat pernicious shillers of dangerous pseudoscience, I'll implore you to download the latest episode and defy you not to come away a little wiser 80 minutes later.

########

So there you have it! Five podcasts deserving of your time for various reasons, cherry-picked to help you pass the time, learn a bit about the world, and inject a bit of fun into your pathetic life.

*=Will not make you a better person. Will make you a more Sully person.

The Bullshit Bus rolls into Limerick

2011-04-30T23:59:00.004+01:00

Every May Bank Holiday weekend, Limerick hosts 'Riverfest', consisting of open air concerts, firework displays, and markets hocking exotic goods and foods from around the globe. The main timesink is the market, where shoppers can traipse down the uncomfortably narrow road, browsing the stalls and taking in smells and tastes from across the globe. French, Italian and Chinese cuisines and desserts are all within a crepe's throw, in what must be a dream come true for all of those quixotic suburb-dwellers yearning for a more exotic life in some distant locale.

I was there this morning, and while pushing my way through the throng to score some oriental noodles, I noticed a stall set up hocking Power Balance bracelets (and a cheaper non-brand alternative). I've heard of these before, so I decided to take a look:

The box enthuses "As worn by Celebrities & Athletes!"

Power Balance bracelets are silicon wristbands with holographic stickers attached. Sounds like a cute fashion accessory, doesn't it? They cost $29.95 on the company website. What could justify such a price? They sprinkled in some bullshit. These are not mere adornments, Power Balance claims, these are a performance-enhancing tool!

Let's read the display:

So many alarm bells go off when you think about what this notice says. Let's ignore the drivel about this thing reacting "positively with your body's naturally occurring and ever-flowing energy fields", because this is patently wrong. Have a look at the empty promises of improving "Balance, Flexibility, Strength, and general Wellbeing". These are not empirically measured metrics, and "Wellbeing" is a term that snake-oil peddlers use when they can't make direct health benefits, so that can be immediately dismissed.

Your humble blogger, handling bullshit with his bare hands

Let's take a moment, dear reader, to look at the underhand way that "professional sportsmen" have endorsed this product. Luminaries such as David Beckham, Ronaldo, Shaquille O'Neal, and Linford Christie are listed as having "experienced the benefit of Power Balance". Experienced? As in someone accosted them with a bracelet as they politely tried to excuse themselves? That counts as an 'experience', but not one that they're necessarily championing. This non-endorsement however, could be enough to get some hero-worshipper to cross the line and part with €30 to get one step closer to his idol.

The guys peddling these bracelets have some serious nuts. Just have a look at EFX, who saw Power Balance charging a 30,000% markup on a 10c silicon bracelet and decided to get a cut of the action, but with a harder-sell:

"Try before you buy" it exhorts! Stand on one leg and have someone (more than likely the vendor, let's face it) push on your wrist until you fall over! Then put on the magic bracelet and repeat the procedure! This is science! There are so many things wrong with this 'trial' that I'd rather not expend the energy on it. The only truthful statement on this packaging is that it poses a choking hazard to children.

It's no surprise that something like this would be at a market. Far be it from me to opine on subjects in which I have no expertise, but I have pigeonholes into which I place people who seek out such bullshit. Cosmopolitan types who make a habit of going to markets to procure produce at inflated prices for the sake of not engaging in a more conventional corporate environment are the kinds of people who buy into the bunkum like alternative medicine, because they're 'alternative'. These are the belief networks that promulgate fear of western medicine and propagate rubbish that muddies the water about safe, important procedures, like vaccines. These people are dangerous in a rather subtle way.

Power Bracelets are an Australian Export, and thanks to the efforts of some Australian sceptics, they recently admitted to their lies:

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility.
We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.
If you feel you have been misled by our promotions, we wish to unreservedly apologise and offer a full refund.
[Click for story on Gizmodo]

When I was at the stall this morning, I picked up the bracelet with a chortle and started telling my friend about the specious claims they were caught out on. The attendant kept her distance. It's possible she was aware of the high-profile fall-from grace that Power Balance had suffered. Had my initial reaction been any different, I reckon she'd have offered to test my balance.

[A scientific breakdown of the claims made by Power Balance are available on Skeptic Blog]

Me and My Kindle 3: After the honeymoon

2011-04-29T22:49:00.001+01:00

I've been using my Kindle 3 regularly for three months now, and I've already posted my initial impressions, but as I continue to pick up on tips and tricks, I figure it's only right to pass them on.

When I travel to the states, my smartphone becomes a dumbphone unless I want to pay Vodafone's extortionate fees:

€30 a day for 50MB? It takes a serious set of cojones to call this "Great Value"

This, of course, is totally unfeasible. Since I paid the extra $50 for the 3G model, I get "free" worldwide wireless internet through my Kindle. I was aware of how limited and clumsy the browser was before I made the purchase, but I figured that janky web browsing is better than none at all.

Facebook is fine for whiling away a few minutes in an airport terminal, but the browser makes it a chore. Likewise, pecking out e-mails in Gmail is more of a pain than it ought to be with the Kindle's Qwerty keyboard, but it's good to know that if there's something that requires an immediate reply, I won't be off the grid when I have my Kindle with me.

The true revelation came when I accessed Google Reader - I didn't consider that it would be a viable alternative to a native RSS reader, but it works quite elegantly. The keyboard shortcuts work (press 'f' to get full-screen, 'j'/'k' for previous/next), and the text is very comfortable once you crank it up to 125%.

There are a few shortcomings. Naturally, the pictures will be grayscale, and flash content won't load, so you won't be watching videos or playing games, but you shouldn't have expected that anyhow. Since the browser doesn't support multiple tabs or windows, it will scold you for trying to click on an external link on the desktop-version. If you're intending on reading through RSS feeds that only give the first paragraph, you'll need to fire up the mobile version (reader.google.com/i) to successfully navigate away from the current page.

Don't want to see this? Load reader.google.com/i

This might not sound ideal, but with a very slight amount of effort, your Kindle becomes a self-updating newspaper and magazine of sorts, which I find very exciting (and much more palatable than paying a few dollars to subscribe to a blog that's normally free). It reminds me of a futuristic sci-fi movie I saw aeons ago that showed old men reading electronic newspapers that automatically updated. Realizing you're holding a piece of the future you once dreamed about is a thrill for any person.

Since a lot of my enthusiasm stems from how this purchase saves me from spending money to entertain myself, I should mention that Google Voice works through the Kindle browser. Setting up a Google Voice number is a little awkward if you don't live in the States, but once you have it, you can use any web-connected device to send and receive texts. This was a bit of a relief during my sojourn abroad, as I knew that if the plan changed, I'd be able to send and receive text messages and figure out a Plan B without having to spend a fortune in roaming charges.

Free texts to the US? Don't mind if I do!

As far as usability goes, it does sting to have to interrupt reading for the sake of take offs and landing, but the convenience of being able to download Michael Shermer's 'The Mind of the Market' from the tarmac made up for that somewhat. The atrocious audio-player feature is a wretched addition that I can't even ignore - while walking through Newark Airport I heard the familiar tune of the fantastic Skepticality podcast. For a thrilling instant I thought someone was piping it out over the Airport's PA, but then realized that my Kindle's Alt & Space keys had somehow depressed simultaneously in my backpack and triggered the playback.

I've been reading through a book I got for Christmas over the past few nights, and I've been missing my Kindle sorely. My finger twitches when I see a word I don't recognize, but there's no built in dictionary to look it up with. I want to highlight certain phrases and expressions but I have no tools to hand to do so. Last night I fell asleep while reading, and this morning I realized I didn't put in the bookmark. I feel like a big baby for admitting it, but sacrificing comfort to facilitate turning pages isn't an experience that fills me with nostalgia. To those who ask if the Kindle is a barrier to immersing yourself in a book, I would suggest that it's less intrusive than a bound hard-copy.

The Kindle is the best way to read a book, and now that I've experienced it, the ways I was perfectly contented with a few months ago seem unreasonably anachronistic by comparison.

tldr: Get a Kindle with 3G, then use Google's webapps to squeeze even more value out of it. It's awesome.

Flyer Foul-Ups, and other distractions

2011-04-23T19:40:00.000+01:00

For some reason, having a phone on me at all times just means I end up taking pictures of weird stuff, rarely sharing it with anyone unless I can find a suitable occasion.

I've designed a few flyers in my day. Not particularly good ones mind, but I always endeavour to get the basics right - I may not have the flashiest artwork, but at least I'm consistent. Unlike this flyer advertising additional downloadable content for Mafia II on the PS3:

Which is it, flyer? The 'Made Man' or 'Man Made' pack? While both are phrases used in the English language, it puzzles me that something this obvious slipped through.

I'll get to the next flyer after I clear out some more weird stuff from my phone:

On the impulse buy rack at a grocery store in the US: a "Kid-Pleasing" TV Series. How do you please kids? Suggestive tail pulling, naturally

They have ORANGE Cadbury's Creme Eggs in the US. Can somebody get me a freaking green card already?

Can't afford Penguin bars but refuse to buy a non-aquatic themed equivalent? Seal bars are available at your local Lidl to fill this gap in the market

Yanks covers their cars in moronic Jesus-propaganda to win good graces. "Elect Jesus"? "Jesus Christ - He's the Real King" in Coca-Cola font? Who comes up with this crap and sells it for $9.99? And how can I get on this bandwagon?

Okay, back on topic - the other flyer I want to share is from Harvey Norman. Remember Harvey Norman? Here's a hint - they're conniving, bait'n'switching sons-a-bitches. Let's have a look at their latest, 'Hardly Normal' flyer:

Holy balls! A Nintendo 3DS for €129! I'll be there right away! Hang on a tick - the picture is of the Nintendo 3DS, but the accompanying text (and logo) reads Nintendo DSi Console. This is an obscene screw up, and when part of your business practices involves advertising deals in print that aren't available in store, you don't get the benefit of the doubt on this one, Norman. From now on, I'm referring to such promotional material from your company as 'liars'. Heh-heh.

And thus concludes today's lesson on blogging for people with dull lives. Don't have anything interesting to say? Post some pictures and make some words about them!

Free Catholic Tat. Only €6

2011-04-15T21:59:00.001+01:00

Most of what comes through our letter-box at home is junk-mail, but yesterday morning, something arrived that was more interesting than the typical rubbish:

As the bright red text attests, this is a mail-in offer for a free("!!!") 'miraculous medal', which apparently grants the wearer "great graces!". The only catch is you have to order a book about the medal itself.

For €6 (which including postage and packaging), superstitious old biddies can read a tale about Jesus' mother appearing to a French nun almost 200 years ago, in which she pitched a medallion design that sold like hot cakes. This medallion comes "Free!!!" with the book, so modern day dullards can avail of the "graces" that this must-have accessory bestows.

On the inside we get the hard sell, including the hucksterish offer to pay after you receive your wares:

Click for the full thang, in case you think I'm spinning this

Do you want to participate in "the spiritual regeneration of our dear country"? To do that, you'll need "great graces". Maybe you know someone in need of prayers - maybe "in studies or in work - or a special protection - or even a physical cure?" Well, for €6, you can "read about conversions, and broken families reunited, and people and property protected from misfortune... and cures of severe illnesses..." [the source ends in ellipsis - I didn't add that to make the claims seem even more specious].

Since the medal is "already blessed you can begin using it - immediately", along with the "powerful Novena" that accompanies it. How fantastic! The fact that some over-educated virgin has muttered some incantation over a pallet full of these surely raises the value a bit, and it never hurts to add a few "powerful" prayers to the old arsenal.

This is a troubling document. Not only does it leave no stone unturned in trying to qualify its appropriateness for vast swathes of society, but it's hocking a stupid trinket under the pretenses that it grants supernatural powers of wish-fulfilment. Are there Catholics stupid enough to believe that such McGuffins act as a parabolic antenna to boost your prayer power? If all you need to receive favourable treatment from the heavens is a shitty fashion accessory, what does that say about the internal consistency of the religion? Or the value of prayer in general? I know that these superstitious old hags trade prayers like recipes to find one that yields results (my own mother is well on her way to becoming an old biddy herself), but such a cynical attempt to co-opt that process irks me.

This leaflet also came into work, hand delivered by the postman - leading me to believe that these flyers are being indiscriminately distributed throughout Limerick city and county (if not nationwide) via An Post. This is not a cheap way to advertise to young, educated, savvy people, so forgive me for my assumption that this is aimed squarely at the older folks. Something tells me that once this company has the details of these cash-cows, their wrinkly teats will be sucked dry.

And who is responsible for this mailshot? The Irish Society for Christian Civilization. The same tinfoil-hat wearing Catholics who were squawking about the evils of the Lisbon Treaty back in the day, comparing the European Union to the Soviet Union, and generally advancing a "yay-Jesus, fuck everybody who doesn't like him" attitude.

Silly Catholics, believing in fictional entities.

Do you really want to see your grandmother's €6 go to support the endeavours of the Irish Society for Christian Civilisation, including their art department? Get to her house right now and hide this leaflet before the damage is done. (That money is rightfully yours to inherit!)

What to expect when you're expectorating

2011-04-09T00:07:00.000+01:00

Warning! This blog entry features talk of bodily functions. Ye be warned.

Every now and again, I treat myself to a McDonald's breakfast. Of course, when I say 'treat', I really mean 'resort', since those occasions tend to coincide with those mornings when my stomach is grumbling and I've neglected my shopping duties to a point where my cupboard is bare.

This past Tuesday was one of these occurrences, so I decided to avail of a Sausage N'Egg McMuffin:

Yum!

My stomach was somewhat tumultuous a few hours later, but I ignored it and got on with my day. Dinnertime came and went, but I felt no hunger, just a general sense of lethargy. After sitting in a stupor for an hour or so, I finally got a jolt of energy - to evacuate some explosive diarrhoea.

From about 8pm until 3am, I took up residence in the lavatory, emptying the contents of my irascible stomach and bowels in the order of whichever seemed less patient, often 'hotswapping' from one end to the other within seconds of each other.

How bad could it be? Well, my knees were red and chafed from pulling my pants down so often, which was unpleasant. As I lacked the energy to move my carcass between bouts of expurgation, I had a few minutes to kill. I would have caught up on my RSS feeds, but my HTC Desire's battery failed after serving a few webpages. I would have read Michael Shermer's excellent 'Mind of the Market' on my Kindle, but I was afraid of besmirching it with one of my many torrents of bodily effluvia. In the end I decided that my iPod touch was the least prized gadget in my arsenal, so it would keep me company.

Once my guts were well and truly spilled, I was still retching up tiny specks of blood, so I quaffed some water so I'd have something to emit, which worked out splendidly. Since I had my iPod, I was able to see what advice and consolation the internet had to offer.

Sites generally agreed on the basics - keep hydrated, restore electrolytes, and gradually return to a bland diet "such as rice, bread, potatoes and milk" [HealthScout], but some sites offered 'quick remedies' that sounded compelling:

First, stop eating all solid foods. Drink plenty of purified water
Then, take one or more of these:
NCD - Zeolites;
Apple Cider Vinegar (ACV);
Grapefruit Seed Extract;
Garlic;
Coloidal Silver;
Goldenseal Root.
Finally, replace lost electrolytes: young coconut water is excellent for this. If you don't have this. You might add a little sea salt or himalayan salt to your drinking water. [TheBestOfRawFood]

Other 'quick' remedies included 10-step programmes involved mixing lemon juice and garlic with esoteric herbs and spices, then ingesting and rubbing them onto the stomach. One advises that you should "Eat some bread", because "Bread has a tendency to soak up the poison" [FatFreeKitchen].

Compelling though these quick-fixes were, I thought it best to stick to the less insane-sounding advice, and focused on a diet of bananas, yoghurt and toast. After subsisting on a diet not too dissimilar to my 18 month old nephew's, my next bowel movement was unsurprisingly not too dissimilar to one of my 18 month old nephew's; a formless green sludge that will haunt my dreams for aeons to come.

It's only been three full days since that harrowing night, and I'm still recovering. The thoughts of fried food causes such revulsion that I felt nauseous when I caught a whiff of some fries earlier. A modest feed of scrambled-egg on toast prompts that 'food-coma' feeling typically associated with Christmas dinners, and I've a somewhat irrational fear of McDonald's restaurants. I've surely eaten at McDonald's hundreds of times (at least a dozen times at my local chain) with no ill-effect to my health, but much like the last food-poisoning incident left me hesitant to eat chicken and pesto paninis, my girlfriend will be delighted to hear that the notion of getting anything from McDonald's is making me queasy.

To end on a note of failure: I failed to last three years since the last time I vomited - which was also the last time I suffered through food-poisoning. Maybe I should start eating at more upscale restaurants?

A Bible-thumper who wants your money?

2011-03-31T22:35:00.001+01:00

It always troubles me deeply to see how much money there is in propagating Biblically-informed right-wing twaddle to racist cretins. It's mesmerizing watching Glenn Beck in front of his chalk-board, talking about how atheism leads to Nazism, socialism, and Universal Healthcare, then tying it into an explanation of how Obama hates white people. Ann Coulter shills her bestselling books portraying the American right-wing as jews in Nazi Germany, trying to rally against the oppressive movements of gay-rights, abortion-rights, and rights for anybody other than white anglo-saxon christians. There's money in scaring comfortable fat white people.

Brannon Howse
Today's villain.

Every now and again, out of sheer boredom, I'll turn on the 'Christian channel' at my girlfriend's house to see how long it takes for my hackles to be raised. Venturing into the heart of the echo-chamber isn't a particularly comfortable experience, but I get to learn about a whole new cadre of assholes. Just the other day, I learnt about the existence of Brannon Howse. He hosts 'Worldview Weekend Rallies' - a traveling roadshow broadcast on Christian TV channels, in which he talks about the evils of liberalism and pluralism, and praises Jesus and capitalism. Think of a low-rent Glenn Beck and you're halfway there.

I watched a few minutes of his programme - it flogs the usual canards of fundamentalist nonsense with a forced sense of urgency and a ham-fisted attempt at fitting red herrings to biblical prophesy on the end-times. I can't recall the exact quotes, but the gist of it was 'educated people want to turn your child into a hedonistic pervert'. I'll mine from the sizzle-reel posted on his website:

"Philosophy 101 should be called Atheism 101 - Religion 101 should be Religious Pluralism 101. Biology 101 is more like Evolution 101!"

Worlds like 'pluralism' and 'globalism' are dirty words to Howse and his followers, who can also tune into his talk-shows on Christian radio. Let's look at some choice topics covered in these shows:

Brannon reveals Bible verses that God will cause someone to die for their continued rebellion. [02/03/11].
How unions are and the communists work together, how Muslims and Marxists work together and why the National Education Association is run by people that do not carry about [sic] the teachers or children. [22/02/11]
If Obama sees that he is not going to be re-elected as President of the United States of America will he and his team do everything within their power to destroy America and thus really accomplish what has been their goal since taking office? [20/10/10]
Topic: Obama's Reeducation For Social Change. Understand The Goals of Obama's Radical, Anti-Christian, Socialist, Feminist, Pro-Homosexual Public Service. [19/11/10]
Brannon also discuss [sic] how America is becoming a third world country with the increase in illegal aliens that are taking jobs from Americans, increasing crime, our nation's debt and bringing disease to our country.

The word 'environmentalism' appears 32 times on the archive page, and only six times is it not preceded by the word 'radical'. 'Obama' appears 615 times.

I don't think I need to delve any further into his level of discourse - the guy is an asshole, using this religious soapbox to hijack his audience's reasoning, and to coax money from fools. Let's have a look at what's on offer at his online store:

Tat. Brought to you by America

His website pimps his e-books on the front page and enthuses that "The Worldview Weekend E-Gift Card makes a perfect gift!" His radio shows are free for 14 days, after which the price jumps up to $5 each. Devotional music performed by Mr. Howse is available for $0.99 a track. An atrociously badly put together PC Game costs $19.99, which is apparently marked down from the 'standard price' of $24.95. (Back of the box features include "Sound effects")

I'll assume that these are not indicative of the '3D graphics' boasted on the game-cover

A sister organisation called 'Worldview Weekend Foundation' solicits donations to pay for the rallies (sneakily making 'weekly donation' the default option). To inspire urgency they're called 'Code Blue Rallies' (likely because their benefactors are acquainted with cardiac arrest themselves), and have posted articles like "Losing it in College" and "The Storm before the Bigger Storm" on the frontpage.

Sure, I scoff at these products, but they clearly hold some value to a stupider person, so I can't entirely begrudge Brannon for earning a crust filling this niche. Where things get really sinister is the 'free' offering posted on the front page:

The Truth about Money? A free Educational CD & DVD on Money Truth? It's got Brannon Howse's face on the front - if you trust him with on his religious and your political advice, why not money?

So what is the Truth about money? The truth is you need to buy gold, Jerry! GOLD!

Why yes, that is Obama riding a paper-airplane made out of a US dollar. He's about to crash it, you see.

I'm not particularly au-fait with investing, but everything I've heard from people in the know leads me to believe that it's a terrible investment for all kinds of reasons. That said, tinfoil hat wearing troglodytes who fear everything they've worked for will be taken away by that Kenyan-born moslem in the white house (read: conservative nutjobs) think that filling their nuke-shelters with gold will insure against financial apocalypse.

The info-pack is from a company called Swiss America, who must be giving Howse a commission on every sucker he sends their way, given his commitment to the schtick. A special hour-long talk with Michael Weiner of Swiss America is available for free on the website, and Howse also incorporates pimping gold into regular programming on his radio show: "Utah considers return to gold, silver coins and alternative currency along with 11 other states" [04/03/11]. I think this exemplifies the level of cynicism we're dealing with here.

This subject exhausts me. Every now and again I try to convince myself that people so aggressively against the forces of progressivism are the bitter old pensioners who will throw money at hucksters with backwards, racist opinions until they all die off and the rest of the sane world won't have to put up with any more of the dishonest and lazy rhetoric that pays the bills for people like Beck and Howse. There's money in taking advantage of people who can't think for themselves, which means that people who try to do the thinking for you will continue to pop up on our radars.

tl;dr version: Conservative religious people are stupid and are paying people to say things they want to hear. Stupid free-market.

Dáil Election 2011 Follow-up

2011-03-17T23:33:00.003Z

For those interested, I've followed up on a few bits and pieces from the Dáil elections:

It looks like outgoing TD Peter Power will need to change his Twitter username...

And his Facebook page username:

And his official website-- oh wait...

Also, it turns out that John Dillon lied to us through song:

[The lyrics page verifies that yes, they rhymed 'mussels' with 'Brussels']

Dillon's gonna win? Gonna win what? You deceitful knave!

And what about our old friend Mike Deegan in Dun Laoghaire? How did he fare?

Dead last. Perhaps the Irish voters aren't as hopeless as I thought.

Battle Los Angeles: The battle within

2011-03-13T11:00:00.004Z

I liked Battle: Los Angeles. Lots of stuff happened. But that's not what I want to discuss.

Aaron Eckhart plays the lead role. Aaron Eckhart is a handsome man.

Such a magnificent creature. Let's see how he looks in costume.

Pretty good. Now let's see him with his helmet on.

Still pretty good, right? But let's see him under less controlled circumstances.

As I watched that chin, under that chinstrap, I couldn't help but be distracted by what I was reminded of:

It's hard to entirely engross yourself in a film when you're trying not to think of this:

"WE HAVE TO GET THESE CIVILIANS TO THE F.O.B!"

Happy Pancake Tuesday

2011-03-08T20:16:00.000Z

Some time ago, my housemate's girlfriend cooked us delicious pancakes.

Delicious, penis-shaped pancakes (with suggestive drizzles of maple syrup)

After a brief discussion of what to call them (Pan-cocks? Penis-cakes?) I snapped these photos, figuring I'd find a way to blog about them eventually. Fast forward to three years later. Boom.

Sully Reviews: The Adjustment Bureau

2011-03-07T22:34:00.001Z

I don’t do movie reviews on Sully’s Blog. At least I generally don’t, but this past weekend I went to see such a wretched mess of a film that I am honour-bound by the bloggers’ code to spread the word.

The Adjustment Bureau, hailed as “Bourne meets Inception” is one of the worst films I've seen recently. A more apt tagline would be “Like The Matrix, only shit” And if you’ll join me after the break for a spoiler-filled discussion, I’ll spare you the time and money it would take for you to find out for yourself.

I'll fight to change your fate and spare you from this film

The film starts off promisingly - picking up at the end of David Norris’ (Matt Damon) doomed campaign for United States Senate, we see him meeting a sexy lady in the men’s toilet just before his concession speech, inspiring him to go off-book and inspire the nation. Most of it is vaguely plausible, mostly because we’re never given a glimpse at the actual politics of the protagonist.

A few months later, we see Norris retired from the public eye and making his way to work. A non-threatening black man is instructed to make him spill his coffee before 7.05am. The non-threatening black man falls asleep and doesn’t accomplish his task. Norris meets the sexy bathroom lady on the bus to work and is happy.

When Norris arrives at work, everyone in the building is stuck in time, and his boss is being probed by weird men. When Norris expresses displeasure at this, the conceit of the movie is explained, and a plot black-hole opens up and sucks the entire affair into it.

How? Why?

The eponymous Adjustment Bureau is a supernatual, clandestine organisation that interferes in the everyday lives of human beings to steward them towards their true potential. These agents of fate have been referred to as ‘angels’, as the film’s dialogue affirms, but these guys are not the standard angel archetype - they are bored-looking men (all of them are men) who operate in plain sight, decked out in conspicuous 50s style suits with hats. Their task is to carry out the plan of ‘the chairman’, but to accomplish this they must battle through the red tape of their divine bureaucracy, and suffer arbitrary restrictions on their power.

The film attempts to evoke the same sense of general menace as The Matrix, in which any entity could be taken over by the sinister ‘Agents’ - the analogue in this film is driven home by an exhortation by the non-threatening black man that “Anyone with a hat could be one of us. A fedora, a yankees hat, even a yarmulke.” These magic hats are key to the peculiar method of securing omnipresence these entities possess - by rotating doorknobs anticlockwise, they tap into a subspace highway, and can instantly come out on a doorway somewhere else in New York (Yes, just New York. Apparently the New Yorkers are the chosen people). They can’t choose what doorway they’ll appear out of - they have to memorize which door leads where, which is about as arbitrary and inconvenient a method of locomotion as one can imagine. Oh, and water messes with their ability to track people. Rainwater. Seawater. Water in pipes. That stuff messes ‘em up. (What about the water in our bodies?)

The whole point of the film is that these would-be lovers are being conspired against by ‘fate’ itself, and we’re supposed to be rooting for them, but the thinking viewer will be too distracted by the incongruous elements, such as the burning question of why can the Adjustment Bureau freeze an entire office-block to conduct their activities, but require Matt Damon to be delayed by the incompetent token black guy?

What it comes down to is a lack of testicular fortitude. The film refuses to present the fate-agents as villainous, or even callous, as they represent an unspecified deity - yet it is still demanded that we feel suspense at the looming presence of what is essentially an incompetent government official.

The film fails in characterization. I don’t buy into the chemistry between the lead actors, and can’t see the future that Norris fights for, but I can forgive this oversight as fighting for free will is commendible. The motivations of the individual agents of the Bureau are never glimpsed. Non-threatening black guy is trying his best Spock impersonation, but his character’s betrayal of the divine plan is as likely to be caused by workplace disgruntlement as a belief in true-love (he even bemoans the lack of manpower of his supernatural employers in an early scene). Likewise, sexy-bathroom stall girl suffers several ultimate rejections (and throws away a significant commitment) and is always willing to give Norris another chance. Sure, the heart wants what it wants, but love can’t explain away bad storytelling in every instance.

The film fails at decent dialogue. When the ‘case’ is elevated to the ‘big guns’, a stodgy attempt is made at creating tension. “Thompson?” One rube asks incredulously. “When he operated in the field, they called him “The Hammer!” I was quaking in my boots - actually I was exchanging the fiftieth incredulous look that hour with my fellow moviegoer (Hi Ger!).

The Hammer disapproves of this review

After showing their prowess at inconveniencing the protagonist, the film kicks it up a gear. It’s a training montage. Matt Damon has a magic hat (the magic powers transfer to humans?), and we hear that once he goes through the first door “all hell will break loose”. All that build-up, and what happens? We get three minutes of Matt Damon running through magic doors, relatively unperturbed. A few shots of him having to knock hats off pursuers in clever ways would have been appreciated. Instead, the viewer must endure the remaining 15 minutes with blue balls.

The lack of an action-climax was a disappointment, but the lack of an intellectual payoff is what grated the most. I liked the Matrix and how it presented free will vs. determination. So many times this film will try to make its viewers think “Wow, this could be happening right now!”, when the agents are talking about the ways they orchestrate chance encounters. The pluralistic, all-inclusive nonsense is deeply troubling - Non-threatening black guy even awkwardly explains how “the chairman” is a “him or her”. There’s grist here for some compelling stuff - why don’t the agents find it troubling that the divine plan is subject to change? How is it that the agents themselves are victims of “chance” (clearly delineated in the film as being separate from “fate”)?

It’s clear that nobody was supposed to think too much about this film - even the style of the movie breaks down under scrutiny. They wear 50s style suits, conduct their activities with magic notebooks in distinctly ‘analogue’ buildings, but drive menacing, modern black SUVs?

Ugh. I could go on.

The Adjustment Bureau is a vapid, contrived mess, and it will give you blue balls.

One Sully out of Five

Me and My Kindle 3: The first month

2011-02-28T23:00:00.004Z

I treated myself to a Kindle in December, and I started using just over a month ago. I’ve decided that it’s the future of book-reading, and if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you why.

First things first - I'm talking about the Kindle 3G here. The choice of Wi-Fi-only for $139 or the worldwide 3G model for an extra $50 was made for me by the experiences I’ve had of struggling to kill a few hours in various airports around the world. Buying a few hours of Wi-Fi access would cost $50 alone, so I was obligated to buy it.

Why It's Great:

Being able to buy a book at any time is fantastic - often I'll be listening to a podcast with a very interesting person flogging a book. Regardless of where I am, I can download a free sample to the Kindle, and if it makes the cut, I can purchase the whole thing in a few seconds.

This thing reads me bedtime stories. One night my eyes were too sore to focus on reading, but I wanted to get Flim-Flam finished by the end of the week, so I lay back in bed and had it read me a few chapters in a serviceable monotone. (Sadly, some publishers choose to disable this handy feature.)

The (official) case I have has a built in light powered from the Kindle itself, so I can read in the dark. This beats a 'real' book and booklight combo, which I've always found unwieldy. This thing gives good light coverage and doesn't disturb bedmates. At $60, it's quite expensive, but I think the quality and convenience is just about worth it.

Your intrepid blogger, handmodelling in the dark

'Kindle' isn't just an e-book reader - the mobile phone and computer applications are almost as much of an attraction as the device itself. Reading the books on the device is wonderful, but the ability to pick up reading from the last read page on my phone or Mac and have the highlights and notes transfer over might prompt the same revelation in you as it did in me: this is much better than the dead-tree system of old.

Speaking of notes, I could rarely bring myself to besmirch my printed books, but now I've a load of highlighted passages and statistics in my favorite books, available from any device the Kindle app runs on. Neat.

Also, turning real pages sucks. Pressing a button to make new text appear is so much easier. You like watching the 'read' side of the book grow as you near the final pages? Fear not, the % Complete at the bottom of the screen will soothe your soul.

What's not so great:

Luddites try to ruin this for me. A few people (intelligent, charming, progressive people) tut when they hear I'm using the Kindle. Words like 'Orwellian' are used ambiguously, possibly to describe the fuzzy ownership rights of the books (and Amazon did make a major screw up before when they 'recalled' 1984 from users' virtual bookshelves). To address this simply: the Kindle is not a locked down system. It's very easy to find copies of books not available on the Kindle store and read them on the device. When you pirate books (and I have pirated copies of books I own for the sake of science), you lose many of the conveniences that 'owning' the book bestows, but it makes me feel safe that my device won't be worthless if Amazon ever decides to abuse its users (which isn't good for business, so I don't see it happening). Give me a better reason to hate eBook Readers.

Some reasons to hate it:

It's an electronic device, so you have to charge it. I can still taste the disappointment of going to bed expecting to read until I fell asleep, only to find an empty battery logo when I picked up my Kindle. It felt like somebody had taken my new favorite book and whited out all the pages.

It's an electronic device, so I won't be able to read on it during take off and landing.

The Kindle for Mac app in action. Good when I'm waiting for a process to finish and I've a few minutes to kill

The audio playback is terrible. Just because a feature is labelled 'experimental' doesn't justify it being utterly wretched. With no graphical user interface, users have to press memorized keyboard shortcuts to play and skip songs. Want to pause a podcast and finish it later? Tough shit, it won't remember where you were. Want to skip ahead a few seconds at at time until you find your spot again? Tough shit, that feature doesn't exist. This effort is so offensive I think I'd be happier without it.

It's an electronic, internet-connected device, but Amazon stubbornly refuse to (significantly) update the software, instead making users upgrade to the latest model to avail of new features. This particularly stings when considering the commendable work that Barnes & Noble have done with their Nook.

This thing doesn't do colour, which is a shame, but not terribly important for my reading preferences. If I come across a diagram that warrants the hassle, I can view it on my phone or computer's Kindle app.

This thing doesn't do RSS feeds, which is unforgivable. You can subscribe to magazines and newspapers for a fee, but years of internet use have taught me not to pay for what I can obtain for free. There are some hacks and workarounds out there that I'm going to look into, so updated impressions will follow down the line.

Also, you can't share the books. Some publishers let you 'loan' your license to someone for two weeks, but you can only do this once per book. For two weeks. On very few books. What a load of cock. I'm optimistic that market forces will force Amazon/publishers to reconsider.

So how long will this device last?

It's hard to say what it would take for this particular Kindle model to be made obsolete. It doesn't need to compete in any arms races in terms of specs, since displaying text expediently is about the only thing users expect this to do, and it already does this very well (I reckon the virtual page-turn takes about as long as a real one). Even if Amazon released one with a more traditional tablet design, replete with multimedia features, the Kindle 3 would still be relevant as a reading device with no extraneous distractions.

My experiences with my Kindle over the past month have made me believe that eBook readers are here to stay, and I can foresee continuing to use it every day until the battery craps out or I forget to take it out of the seat-pocket on an aeroplane. There's a lot that I haven't touched on - in two weeks I'll be going on a trip with this thing, so I'll get a chance to use it in a less controlled environment, and if there's anything worth reporting, you'll see it here. In the meantime, I would recommend this to everybody who likes to read and is willing to spend money on their hobby. My dear ladyfriend gives herself a hernia with all the tomes she piles into her backpack when she's travelling, so this device might spare her some back trouble (and spare her from buying me any more massage books on the Kindle store).

While I'm ragging on independents...

2011-02-26T01:21:00.001Z

One of the independent candidates running in yesterday's election certainly has his act together when compared with the ~~less accomplished~~ lunatics also vying for election to the Dáil.

He has a website! He has proof of a previous leadership role! He has posters! He has laid out his policies. He even has an election-anthem:

Why should you vote for Dillon? Cos Dillon's gonna win! The song even says it!

One fateful night, he called to my mother's door at dinnertime. I told him I didn't want to stay long, and he gave me his five second pitch and shook my hand. Decent chap. I liked him. He gave me a flyer:

Neat! An independent who doesn't openly display an easily-diagnosed mental illness! Let's have a look here...

"@dillondelivers@twitter.com?" Sorry John, you just got bumped to #2.

Vote Cretin with a Webcam No.1

2011-02-25T00:35:00.000Z

Facebook throws up some woefully inappropriate ads sometimes, and I begrudge them for it, but every now and again, it only gets them slightly wrong. Like when it implored me to "Vote for Mike Deegan". Alas, he's asking to be elected "as your TD for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown".

I don't get a vote in that constituency, but I am curious to see what motivates this independent candidate, so I decided to stick around and see if he's really "NOT more of the same", as his Facebook page insists.

The Facebook page started on February 2nd. Since then there have been a grand total of ten posts by Mike Deegan. He has 31 'likes' at the time of writing, and two of the three posts by visitors consist of someone who (ostensibly) loaned him the tie in his profile picture, and another with the same surname. Of the ten posts, six of them consist of the same two YouTube videos posted and reposted. One of the four remaining posts explains his modus operandi:

"I am running my campaign as did Obama using the internet and personal interactions without environmentally damaging printed material."

This is hugely commendable! An online-only campaign! So where's the rest of the information? Well, there's no website, so the Facebook page is the only information repository. Since I want to know about this would-be public servant, I suppose I'll have a look at the first of his two videos, which serves as a de-facto manifesto.

A middle-aged, somewhat dishevelled man is sitting in a badly lit room. He speaks slowly with a distracted affect, punctuating his sentences with long 'em's and sighs. It's a bad first impression. But let's not discount him yet. He could be the future of Irish politics!

Click here to watch it for yourself (or just read on and avoid the hassle)

He didn't really hook me with the opening salvo:

"This video is me, talking to you. Telling you that much as I don't really want to, I will be running for the Dáil in the next general election."

Okay, the begrudging public servant. It's an angle that could work! Do go on.

"People say "Mike are you crazy?" Perhaps I am"

At least he's not saying anything so far that the audience can disagree with. But why is he going to all this trouble?

"For me. For my family. For my parents, my child. For the future and the current state of Ireland."

Inspiring stuff. He's a patriotic family man who will stand up because nobody else will. I'm on board. But others won't be won over so quickly. Why should we vote for you?

"If you want to vote for me, vote for me. If you don't, don't. That's how it works, isn't it?"

I take it back. Mike, you're insane. Such banal lessons on the democratic process have led me to realize that I'm eighty-five seconds into a rambling YouTube video from some mentally unstable internet-addict.

I may as well sit here for the next three minutes and see what other verbal diarrhoea spills forth:

"I'm not going to be putting my poster on every lampost in the neighbourhood or anything like that. No. I'm not going to be doing that."

Making your total lack of a budget sound like a virtue isn't particularly effective Mike, can we please get onto the policy stuff?

"Hmmmmmmmmm... What else should I say? What am I pushing? Well, older people is a major thing for me. One day, I will be older, just like you, and I want to address the way we treat older people in Irish society. The disabled also come in under a - connected, similar remit of how they are treated in our society."

Finally! But these statements are a bit vague. What exactly does he mean? And what does he propose we should do about it?

"And then onto the wider picture."

Mike, don't you think that you should finish your thought on the disabled and "older" people, (whatever that means exactly) you didn't even go into --

Well, jobs. Absolutely. Of course. Jobs. There's so much to talk about. Job creation. It's difficult to know where to start... The government [says] that whatever has to be done to create jobs has to be done. And I would agree"

Hang on. You've said nothing at all here. And you agree with the government that you're railing against? I don't think that you have any original ideas in your head whatsoever. I think you're just some cretin with a webcam who is jumping on the bandwagon of exasperated people who are fed up with the current government, even though they have no better ideas of how to address the problems Ireland is currently facing themselves.

"Aaaaaahhh further to that. The environment. Some call it climate change, some say it's not climate change."

Yeah, that's right Mike, the discord surrounding climate change rev the nomenclature.

Whatever it is, it's happening. It's affecting our world. It's affecting everybody. We have big problems with delivering potable drinking water to large parts of the world. We have difficulty providing food to large parts of the world. we are burning too much fuel to power our - everything, and an alterative needs to be arrived at... Discovered."

What the hell? You're running for TD in FUCKING IRELAND. If a major Irish industry consisted of "delivering potable drinking water to large parts of the world", maybe this would make sense, but it doesn't. And your magic-bullet solution to environmental trouble is "discovering" an alternative to burning fossil fuels? Shouldn't you be doing that now instead of nattering into a camera?

Let's have a quick look at what else he's been posting:

Good. Fucking. God. Mike got drunk for his birthday. Now he's making birthday resolutions. He's going to turn his life around. But first he'll go to the city. But he can't remember why. What a tard.

You goddamn ignoramus. How dare you waste my time by populating my web-browser with your Facebook ads. How dare you waste Google's bandwidth with your rambling, hollow pontifications. Yes, jobs are important. So is the environment. If you had something worthwhile to say about it, you would've said something tangible, but you didn't. It's commendable that you're putting yourself out there for your principles, but you've completely failed to show what they are exactly. Instead of making a positive impact on Irish politics, you've just wasted ten minutes I could have spent researching some credible candidates. This pitiful pageant of quixotic balderdash leads me to believe that you're just some manic-depressive desperately trying to give his life some meaning.

"That is basically me."

"Only In America"

2011-02-17T19:40:00.000Z

I have a habit of taking pictures of peculiar things that I happen across in my everyday life. Sometimes they get used on the blog, sometimes they sit on the computer for months until I decide to do a photo-dump.

What I'm posting now are some oddities encountered whilst on (United States of) American soil, in no particular order at all.

Commencing dump...

Sign reads "Experience Church Online!" Man - that exclamation point almost caught me out.

Gum Tree at Grand Canyon. Someone put their gum on it, then dozens followed suit. Gross. But kinda neat.

Bear-proof bins at the Grand Canyon

View from Hoover Dam

Tortilla Flat, AZ

Prophylactic dispenser at a rest-stop somewhere on the I40, Arizona. Somebody put effort into these product names.

Poop we can believe in. Sticker in a toilet cubicle at Newark Airport.

I met Mike. I didn't point out the missing apostrophes.

More roadside Jesusing in Las Vegas. A minute down the road is a billboard for the 'Adult MEGA Outlet'

Touristy area in Arizona also houses a 'Center for the NEW AGE'. We didn't stop in, despite their generous sale offerings.

Buses advertising the Penn & Teller show at the Rio, Las Vegas

A 'Pit-Potty'. Looks like a toilet. But there's no running water here. Your excrement falls a few feet into a pit filled with the excrement of lots of other people. My phone was brand new during this holiday, so the thought of going closer to this thing filled me with dread.

Candles depicting Bible scenes available at a down-market grocery store in Wisconsin

If you're driving a truck down this hill and can't stop, this 'Runaway Truck Ramp' is just what you need! Turn off the road and into a big mound of truck-stopping sand.

Testament to the fact that George Lucas will whore his franchise out to anyone if the price is right - Star-Wars themed gambling devices at Las Vegas.

"TRY ONE. The Gun Store" Sure it'd be rude not to.

"Leanaí cúthail agus milseáin"

2011-02-10T09:00:00.000Z

Last week, I shared a story about getting a pizza with erroneous cooking instructions and the ensuing consequences.

When my compensatory pizza carried the same typographical error on the packaging, it seems that I forgot everything that I had learnt from my first experience, leading to another ruined evening.

I immediately whinged to customer care. The gist of my e-mail was as follows:

Dear Professor Oetker,

My pizza told me to cook it at ninety degrees. My oven only goes as low as 110. Undeterred, I set the oven to where 90 degrees looked to be and left the pizza for 25 minutes.

I'm not even sure if the oven turned on, but either way, the pizza was ruined, and my girlfriend was so pissed at me that she wouldn't put out.

Understandably, this has ruined my life, and I demand compensation for my lack of intelligence.

Kind regards,

Sully

Things didn't quite go the same as last time. There was no immediate reply. Four business days was all it took for the hoard of vouchers to arrive last time, and that time had already passed. I had given up hope until the fifth day, when the good Doctor had returned my letter.

It was pretty standard fare, but the gist of it was:

Dear Sully,

Thank you for your vaguely plausible story about a simple packaging error causing your entire life to crumble around you and forcing you into celibacy. Please accept this voucher for free pizza as a reward for successfully typing our e-mail address into the To field of your bullshit e-mail.

We hope it will be the first step towards you turning your life around, a life that surely revolves around eating junk-food and finding things to complain about.

Your specious complaint will be kept on file, and any further specious complaints will be checked against your name and address to dissuade you from bullshitting us again.

Wishing you'd get off the couch and go fuck yourself,

Alphonus P. Oetker, PHD.

My experiences of dealing with customer service has reminded me of that old Irish saying: "The shy baby gets no sweets, but the aggravating son of a bitch gets free pizza". (It loses something in the translation).

I'm four pizzas up from two e-mails (only one of which I sent myself). Do any readers have any experiences of whinging at customer service over minor infractions in the hopes of scoring free stuff?

"What're you waitin' for, Christmas?"

2011-01-31T23:59:00.000Z

During my childhood, my lack of athletic prowess wasn't as debilitating as it was to the other kids' social lives. When my feet touched a football during lunchbreak, it generally resulted in disaster. Countless break-times were lost to searching in ditches for elusive balls, or spent apologizing to the girl on the adjoining basketball court who took the brunt of my toepeg to the face.

These things mattered little, for I had a secret weapon. For you see, dear reader, I had Duke Nukem 3D, a game that stood out from the crowd by offering a protagonist was a pastiche of swear-happy action stars, spitting out countless hilarious (and context-sensitive!) one-liners as the bloodbath ensued on screen.

Classmates would call over to the house, demanding to see in person this wondrous game featuring scenes of ultra-violence, swearing, and nudity. I'd fire up Episode 1, Level 2, turn on the weapon cheats, and walk them through a well-rehearsed romp through the 'Red Light District', blowing up the enemies to prompt Duke's taunt of "Blow it out yer ass!", showing off the amount of in-game objects that could be fiddled with (flush toilets! flick light switches! play snooker!), and of course, spending plenty of time in the strip-club using up Duke's endless supply of scrunched up hundred-dollar bills.

It probably sounds a lot lewder than it was - the tone of the game was goofy - the graphics were cartoony, the violence was comically exaggerated, and the fidelity of the nudity would only titillate the type of person aroused by wood-grain patterns. The 'adult content' was the hook, but I played and replayed this game because it's a phenomenal one. When I revisited the game two years ago, it passed the test of time - a feat few other games and movies from my childhood have managed.

The wait for the sequel has been painful - for over 12 years a trickle of magazine articles and screenshots have kept me updated on the game I've waited half a lifetime for, and finally, the end of the wait is in sight.

When I consider the game from a rational point of view, I know that nothing could be worth that long of a wait, but emotionally, I'm preposterously excited to play this game. The trailer came out a week ago, and I've watched it at least a dozen times - this is the same obsessive behaviour I engaged in back in the day with promotional VHS cassettes that came with gaming magazines. Looking at the trailer critically, I don't find it entirely compelling, but then I feel those old irrational feelings of excitement stirring up:

Hail to the king, baby.

How many men does it take to get a free pizza?

2011-01-28T01:17:00.001Z

Last week, I got a Chicago Town BBQ Meat Madness Pizza. [This is going somewhere - my blog hasn't quite stooped to that level yet..]

I noticed that there was a problem with the cooking instructions on the packaging, so I showed it to my housemate - let's call him Mega.

Fans of Celsius will notice that the listed temperature is about 100 degrees less than it ought to be

Mega was aghast. "That's despicable, unfathomable, improbable, outrageous! You have to complain."

Not really bothered, I told him he could do it on my behalf, and thought nothing of it.

He had sent the e-mail alright, but his sense of outrage and self-entitlement was clearly not evident. He opened by describing himself as a "huge fan", mentioned that "the pizza was great", and concluded by saying that he "just wanted to highlight this error to prevent a mix up and ensure everyone can enjoy this high quality product".

The response came through first thing the next morning, and would certainly be disappointing for anybody hoping for a truckload of compensatory pizzas to show up outside the house:

Hello,

Thank you for highlighting the error with the cooking instructions, feedback and comments are always appreciated, we are aware of this error and it has now been corrected by our printers.

Thank you for sending the packaging details so we are able to track this error.

[In case you're wondering, I didn't censor Mega's name there - the customer service rep didn't even bother to copy/paste his name into the boilerplate message]

Crestfallen, Mega expressed his disappointment to his work colleague, who tutted at his lack of savvy, and lectured him on the rules of engagement with companies, repeating the mantra "the shy baby gets no sweets".

The promulgator of peculiar idioms sat down in front of Mega's computer, and fired off a quick e-mail under Mega's identity:

Thank you very much for your swift reply. However this error was found too late. Unfortunatly, being unaware of this issue. We cooked the pizza at 90 degrees and were very ill afterwards. Please let me know what you plan on doing to rectify this situation?

Continuity be damned! He didn't care that Mega had earlier said that the pizza that made him "very ill" was "great" - he wanted to see what kind of stuff was there for the taking!

That e-mail was sent on Friday afternoon, but no reply came. The spectacular response time only seemed to apply to customers who where spinally-challenged. No word came on Monday or Tuesday, but then, on Wednesday, a letter arrived at our house from the Chicago Town Pizza overlords:

The letter said many things, mostly assuring Mega that he couldn't have gotten sick from eating a badly cooked pizza:

All our pizzas are produced from high quality microbial tested raw materials. In addition this this, all products produced within the factory are tested on a daily basis. This testing is carried out and recorded for both pathogenic, i.e. food poisoning bacteria, and nonpathogenic bacteria and all of the test results were fine […] even if the product was undercooked there would be no reason that this would cause sickness. [...] Illness caused from eating unwholesome food can take varying times to occur, up to a period of 72 hours after eating the product, this does make it difficult to identify the cause.

The letter was clearly from a template to deal with the loons and goons who claimed to have been poisoned by Dr Oetker products, but it did include one voucher for a free Chicago Town pizza (worth €4.50!) and two Ristorante pizzas (worth €2.00!).

Look! The voucher even includes life advice! [Underline added]

€9.50 worth of free pizza? Well worth being a total sphincter in an e-mail, if you ask me.

It just goes to show me that if you want anything in life, you have to bitch and moan and be an insufferable asshole until somebody decides they can't take it anymore and does whatever it takes to get you to shut the fuck up. Or, as the old saying goes: "The shy baby gets no sweets".

It's all about packaging...

2011-01-24T00:32:00.000Z

My girlfriend does not abide juvenile humour.

As part of her project to break me down and rebuild me as a decent human being, she goes out of her way to admonish scatological jokes with scoffs and eye-rolls devoid of any kind-hearted irony.

Well, dear reader, it seems that I've found a loophole. My girlfriend enjoys Irish culture, and keeps a death-grip on every hiberno meme I bring to her attention. Her retention is quite phenomenal - sometimes she'll impress me by stringing together various Irish words and verbs into an almost coherent sentence ["Dún an madra, Taoiseach!"] - sometimes she'll triumphantly scream "WELCOME!" and point at the doormat adorned with the word "Fáilte" outside my grandmother's house, clapping her hands together in glee until I praise her for being such a clever girl.

The day after Thanksgiving, we were in a crowded mall in Wisconsin, and as a treat for my good behaviour, she let me go to Gamestop for a quick look at games that I had no interest in buying.

One of the more prominently displayed Wii games was on display:

I noticed her hesitate in front of the promotional artwork - she was intrigued. As she pored over the somewhat dark artwork, pondering what it meant, I leant in to disrupt her mental process.

"Hey Kate, y'know what that game's title means where I'm from?"

She fixated on the title, cogs turning furiously in her brain, trying to recall what I was getting at. Once I spotted the glimmer of recognition, I leant into her ear to affirm her inkling.

"MASSIVE PENIS!"

The resulting release wasn't really a laugh - it sounded more like braying - she was clearly finding mirth in something that would make an Irish schoolchild chuckle.

When I pointed this out to her, I got a stony faced reprimand to "Grow up", but it mattered not. The lesson had been learned - if I parse unsophisticated humour in this idiosyncratic fashion, I will hit paydirt.

Operation dick joke is a go.

Socializing with Sully: Moistening those dry-balls [Part 2]

2011-01-16T02:09:00.000Z

In my last post, I modestly put forward that most young people in Ireland engage in an activity that is selfish and dull, and suggested that without intoxication, standing around in a loud room not talking to your friends isn't a particularly good time.

I'm not quite sure how to start a post following up on such assertions, especially when I've never partaken in these activities myself. As a teetotaller, I feel some trepidation in dumping on the preferred Irish pastime, but I'm hoping that rather than a mere dismissal that I'm 'missing the point', someone will elucidate why I'm missing the point. Anyhow, on with the show.

I lived in Pittsburgh for a glorious, eye-opening year. My friends and I were under the legal drinking age (21 years of age still seems nutty), but that didn't stop them from consuming alcohol - it just meant that it typically wasn't in public.

"This penis-straw may be zany, but I assure you, I'm dreadfully boring"

Most evenings involving alcohol were spent hanging out in the nicest apartment available, swapping stories, playing board games, or maybe having a game of charades. On a few occasions, the cash-strapped lot of us would go out to dinner. Talking about it now is reminding me of the reaction I had at the time after years of Irish programming: "That all sounds so lame".

It probably is lame, but I had never played charades before, and my experience of board games to date lead me to believe that they were merely a tool to lubricate interactions between distant-cousins at family-holidays while the parents drank themselves silly. How wrong I was.

Anyone waiting with bated breath (hah!) for this post to see what the 'silver bullet' to a more 'worthy' night of socializing is entitled to scoff at the suggestion, but there's more to it than "board games are a laugh" - I experienced a different approach to the consumption of alcohol: it was a complement to the evening's proceedings, and not the focus of the entire endeavour.

When you're playing board games, you generally have no choice but to talk to people - whether shouting frenzied guesses or going off topic with personal interjections, it's all 'quality time', particularly since the most exciting or embarrassing moments get brought up (in somewhat embellished form) at a future get-together. It's certainly a superior method to building a rapport with someone than getting drunk next to them.

As the token Irish member of the group, it stands to reason that yanks would be more interested in what I had to say than my fellow paddies, particularly when myriad cultural differences mean you'll never need to endure a pause in conversation ["In my country, we call what you call 'sweaters', 'jumpers'"], so maybe the difficulties I've had with enjoying the Irish way of fun are just a reflection of my lack of anything interesting to say to somebody from a similar background.

Don't think that I've mistaken the part for the whole - I've been invited to 'game nights' at various households in the States, often with people I've just met, and by the end of the night I'm joking and laughing with them as if I was what their group of friends was missing all along and they didn't realize it. Genuinely fun evenings like this drive home the point that if you're looking to loosen tongues, alcohol pales in comparison to the might of forced-human interaction.

Socialising with Sully: A Brief Tirade [Part 1]

2011-01-13T22:46:00.000Z

I despise socialising with my friends. It's not entirely their fault, they are for the most part an interesting and intelligent group of people. The problem lies with the dearth of activities to do in Ireland, or rather, what my demographic (young, post-college people) consider fun.

I have a sizable group of friends from various counties of Ireland, and while I do spend most of my time socializing with them in Limerick, I consider them to be an accurate cross-section of young people in Ireland, and what their hopes and expectations of a night out consist of.

The objective: "Have the craic"
The method: Stand around in a pub or club ingesting mood-altering drugs, whilst enduring eardrum-shattering decibel-levels that smother out conversation and push the inhabitants towards more booze. More booze is always good.
Possible Outcomes: "Decent night" - consumed enough alcohol to briefly temporarily enhance self-confidence, and impair fine motor control - fun seemingly a consequence of the additional challenge in piloting one's body through routine acts.

"Well-daycent night" - consumed enough alcohol to progress past the stages of a decent night, and encounter prolonged losses of ability to coordinate voluntary muscle movements.

"Fuckin' deadly night" - consumed enough alcohol to bring about the stages of a "well-daycent night", with added losses of consciousness, anterograde amnesia, and possible urinary incontinence. The perceived fun of the night is the joy of having survived overnight without succumbing to pulmonary aspiration (choking on your puke).

It's my fault that I'm unable to engage in these fun activities, as I choose not to drink, meaning that without the mood-altering drugs, I'm just standing around in a loud room watching my friends gradually lose their balance. I might entertain myself by ironically dancing in an overly-enthusiastic fashion, but that wears thin after about ten minutes.

Millions of young people are happy to go with the flow, but I can't help but take umbrage with attending venues that snuff out conversation (often with terrible music), and I consider going out with the intention of getting hammered and becoming a burden for your friends to be inherently selfish. I have no problem with alcohol or those who choose to imbibe it [precedence has shown I object more vociferously to teetotallers]- my problem is with how it seems to be the focus of a night out rather than an added element.

Dear readers, I have visited the promised land for teetotallers, and I will share with you my wisdom of how to have a fun night without alienating your dry-balled tetotalling friend. But not right now - give me a day or two to parse this information in a way that won't make your brain explode.

In the meantime, I implore you to disagree with me and point out how to have fun without alcohol via the comments (no suggestions of "go on the pull" please, the ladyfriend won't abide that).

You may also be interested in "A Brief Guide To Dealing with the Irish"

Some general Facebook begrudgery

2010-12-30T00:06:00.000Z

I begrudge Facebook for all the usual reasons that people waaah about it - "privacy waaah", "annoying apps waaah", but I have a few pet peeves that I've heard few others voicing, so I'm going to get them off my chest.

Irrelevant ads

Without having to consult any of the information I've given it, Facebook has a rough idea of where I am in the world, and what browser I'm using.

I use Google Chrome almost exclusively, and yet, for about a month, I got ads imploring me to try Google Chrome - while I was using that very browser! What a waste of a perfectly good slot that could have gone towards selling me irrelevant training-courses I have zero interest in.

That's not too bad, but I've also been enticed to try out the HTC Desire, which is exclusive to US Cellular in the US, seemingly - problems with this are that I don't live in the US (even if I do spend a lot of time there), and I already have the HTC Desire! I've posted on Facebook from my HTC Desire. Facebook knows this already. But it doesn't give a toss, it'll count my impressions anyhow when advertisers are checking their stats.

It bugs the hell out of me - it's like a waiter hovering over you insisting you try the fish when you've already got a mouthful of mackerel. [Also, in this analogy, the waiter reads your diary every day to sell you food more efficiently.]

Despite having access to the same geo-location software that lets IGN.com (for example) highlight Irish-relevant content, as well as a whole crazy stack of personal information both proffered and acquired through observation, the advertising on Facebook is worthless. As a person who is interested in the whole online-marketing game, this is a pity, but it's hardly the kind of thing that ought to put me off the service as a whole, so let's move on.

Coerced Evangelism

What does bug me is Facebook's 'Friend Finder' service, or rather, how I'm accosted every time I log in to Facebook to find more friends. My work e-mail is pounded every day from people I've e-mailed once or twice announcing that they've signed up for Facebook, and I should too, and it's because of this wretched service.

I haven't used it, but it's my understanding that it uses your e-mail credentials to scan your contacts, informs you of the ones that are already on Facebook, and pesters the ones who aren't (such as my work e-mail).

The last thing I need are more friends on Facebook. Horrible, needy things, friends. Crying out for advice, venting about bad days, and generally getting all histrionic in my news feed.

Speaking of generally misleading users...

There was a recent tizzy over the recent breaching of Gawker's user accounts, so when Facebook displayed a message advising me that my account wasn't as secure as it ought to be, I was interested. Here's what it looked like as I went down the rabbit hole:

Oh dear, it seems that my account protection could be a little better.

Okay, my e-mail addresses are accounted for, what else can I do?

Add my phone details so that they can use that as an extra layer of verification security, like Google does to verify business listings (among other things)? Sounds great, only they call it 'Facebook Mobile' for some reason. Oh well, better sign up for it - my every security is at stake.

Hang on a tick! Facebook mobile is only available to Meteor customers. Damn you Facebook! Almost fooled me into signing up for something again, but lucky for me I can't even complete the process you've duped me into since I'm on Vodafone.

A group of 10 or so of my friends are currently organizing our plans for New Year's Eve. We're using a big e-mail thread. It's quite elegant, there's no privacy concerns about somebody intruding on the conversation, and the conversation is fairly focused, 24 emails later. Not only that, but the ads Gmail displays are somewhat pertinent!

Now that I think about it, most of us aren't even friends on Facebook.

I was excited about Facebook when it was a sandbox for US college students to display hilarious pictures of me drinking from various penis-shaped straws. Now it's a social obligation that I propagate because of my crowd-following proclivities. Even after painstaking efforts to set up privacy filters to funnel innocence-shattering content away from my younger and older relatives, there's little I wish to share on Facebook. [I can't wait until everybody moves to the next big thing and we enjoy a few months in 'the sweet spot' before it gets too popular and becomes a pain again.]

So to summarize: Facebook is an online service that has been tainted by its cynical and often misleading attempts to boost its userbase (not to mention its users' level of engagement with the platform), which continues to chagrin me with each iteration, unlike another online service I use every day, but that's a blog entry for another day.

The Yankification of Sully

2010-12-21T01:39:00.000Z

As far back as I can recall, my sense of fashion has been outsourced to whatever woman is willing to take the job. Throughout my schooling, the process of acquiring new clothes involved opening the wardrobe and seeing what duds my mother had placed within.

When I moved out of home and started college, I suffered through a turbulent few months of fashion faux-pas as my loose-fitting fleece tops gave the impression that I was a middle-aged insurance salesman trying to hang out with college kids. I limped along until I moved to Belgium, where I acquired a girlfriend who set about making me fit in with my sexy European counterparts.

When I moved to Pittsburgh, I sufferred through a turbulent few months of fashion faux-pas as my tight-fitting European threads gave the impression that I was a hip, young homosexual. I acquired a girlfriend who set about making me fit in with my tubby Yankee doodle counterparts.

When I look back on pictures from these different eras, it seems to me that it's not just the clothes, the environments, and the attractiveness of those around me that change, but also my very essence. The fat, greedy, stupid Irish boy grows into a worldly, svelte European who wishes to share with his fellow man. That European then grows into a fat, stupid wannabe-yank man.

Think I'm being harsh? See for yourself:

Not to worry, despite my increasing grotesqueness, my narcissism is still powerful enough to create gifs of my evolving visage (not to mention the .jpg alternative for those not able to view the gif).

Rubberbandits - Horse Outside

2010-12-10T01:25:00.001Z

From what I know of the Rubberbandits, their comedy is fairly hit and miss. Nonetheless, I watched their latest music video since a few people I know appear in it, and I found it to be a slice of pure brilliance.

Yesterday, it had ~600 views. After noticing the furore on Facebook I clicked again to see what the hit tally was at - over 90,000. Eeep. I think it's time to declare this a phenomenon.

I'm not a fan of video-dumps, but I'm curious to see if those who aren't au-fait with the Irish scumbag sub-culture can appreciate this, because it might just be the best thing I've seen online since the bedroom intruder song.

I'll be supporting this for Christmas #1 with my wallet, judging by how quickly this video is picking up hits on YouTube, it shouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine a few thousand others doing the same.

Genital arrangement & swearing: My TSA Abuse Story

2010-12-09T16:16:00.000Z

The TSA agent stepped into my personal space, pushing his face against mine as I tried to undo my belt buckle, his seething voice raising into a roar:

"You're Irish, but you speak German? WHAT THE FUCK? EXPLAIN YOURSELF"

At 6"8 he towered above me, his red veiny face pulsating with rage as he looked down on me.

"Get into the fucking scanner"

I gingerly took a few steps forward and --- y'know what, dear reader? I'm too close to this story, and I'm sick of reading blogs where the author's emotional bias creeps into the facts, so I'm going to defer to an omniscient narrator for this post and start over.

-------------------

Sully had always fancied himself as an excellent traveller. A terrible cook, a mediocre boyfriend, but an excellent traveller. A seasoned veteran of airports, delays, reschedules and lost baggage, he made a point of maintaining a cheerful disposition in the face of any adversity, because that's what excellent travellers do. He offerred chirpy pleasantries and generously broad smiles to all airport personnel, and was always quick on the draw with the passport stashed in his back-right pocket, or the boarding pass in his back-left.

Even when his spirits were low, as they were on this day, the ritual of navigating his way through an airport towards the plane was an exciting adventure, mostly because he got to condescend to all the bad travellers who weren't as capable as he was. He tutted under his breath at those who set off metal detectors with obviously metallic apparel, mentally chastised those who made a fuss of themselves for no good reason, and generally felt superior to those who found the rigors of security theatre stressful.

Being the good traveller that he was, Sully was four hours early for his afternoon flight out of O'Hare airport. After checking in his luggage, he was left with only three hours and fifty-four minutes to locate his gate, so he set off towards the security checkpoint to start on this endeavour.

The queuing lane up to passport control was long, but empty, causing the TSA operative manning the station some mirth as she watched Sully shuffle left-to-right through the ropes, doing a great deal of walking but only barely inching towards her, all the while peering at her self-consciously out of her peripheral vision. She was a middle-aged blonde who spoke with a drawl that Sully thought didn't belong in Chicago, and slumped in her chair in a fashion that reflected the sleepy atmosphere of the entire airport that morning.

As she glanced at Sully's passport, he looked ahead. There was a TSA agent about the same age and build as him strutting around, looking about to see if he could do anything. Despite the low traffic at the security checkpoint, the only open lane to go through the metal detector was backed up beyond the conveyor belt, and didn't seem to be moving at all. Just to the right, there was a longer queue of airport personnel who were going through the full-body scanners at a much quicker rate.

As he had yet to have any first-hand experience of the backscatter Xrays, Sully was disappointed to note the sign saying "Employees only" in front of it. The passport-controller must have been reading his mind, or his face:

"Okay, you're good to go. You can step to the right through the body-scanners if you want - it's an employee lane, but you'll be fine."

Sully offerred his thanks, but was cut off by the strutting, younger TSA agent who approached the desk, and slowly enunciated:

"Das ist sehr langweilig."

The passport-agent furrowed her brow at him.

"What?"

Her confusion was tangible. He bopped on the spot, thoroughly enjoying himself

"Oh yeah. Sie sprechen kein Deutsch"

The words hung in the air for a moment, then she turned towards Sully with a quizzical look.

Forgetting where he was, Sully volunteered his assistance.

"He said he's bored. In German. And he's teasing you for not speaking it".

After seeing how his face had dropped, she broke out into laughter, as did the passengers around Sully.

He had stopped bopping on the spot.

"That's true, this is boring, but I didn't want the passengers to hear it!"

He chewed on his words and glared at Sully, but then let out a hearty chuckle to show that there were no hard feelings, then bopped back over towards the full body scanner.

Sully felt a little ashamed as he made his way towards the scanner. Had he got so caught up in American gregariousness that he had overstepped its bounds? His hometown was a place where people wouldn't approach one another to ask the time, let alone discomfit a stranger tasked with keeping people safe.

As he emptied his pockets into the plastic tray, he paused at his passport. Once, when flying out of Pittsburgh, a TSA agent chastised him for carrying it through the metal detector. A month later, at the same checkpoint, a TSA agent asked him for his passport as he stepped through the metal-detector. To avoid doing the wrong thing, he held up his passport at the German-speaking agent and asked if he should put it in the machine.

The response was theatrical: "You're from Ireland, but you speak German?" He stepped in close and lowered his voice so no one else would hear. "What the fuck, man!"

The two strangers chuckled, and Sully was told to keep it with him at all times.

"So what part are you from?"

"Limerick," - Sully held off for any signs of recognition "the south-west."

"No way! I'm from Tipperary" he said, struggling to render the county's name with his American mouth. Possibly reading Sully's reaction, a big smile of knowing self-parody spread across his face.

"Well, kind of. You know what I mean!"

It was Sully's turn to use the scanner, the next TSA agent in the chain beckoned and cut short the chat.

Sully's new friend patted on the arm and wished him well: "Have a good one, man". It occurred to him that he meant it.

Sully assumed the position inside the scanner. Legs spread, arms overheard, it was a freeze-frame of a jumping jack, Sully thought, or at least, that's what his years-old memory of a jumping-jack told him. Sully straightened his back, sucked in his gut, and shook his genitals into a more presentable arrangement out of sympathy for the imagined agent whose morning coffee had surely been ruined by the wretched samples of humankind being delivered to his monitor.

The operator implored Sully to hold still. The machine made a slight whirring sound. Sully was conscious of his trembling hands so he held his breath. The whirring stopped and Sully was ushered out.

He stepped forward where a male and female TSA agent were blocking access to the collection end of the conveyor belt.

"Stand over there, keep an eye on your stuff" the male TSA agent said.

Sully walked into the V-shape that the filtering-ropes were arranged into, and placed his feet over the yellow outlines on the rubber mat, turning his back on the TSA agents. He braced himself for some feeling up. Thoughts raced through his head. What in or on my body could be mistaken for a weapon? Had my new friend set me up? How long does a full-cavity search take? I only have three hours and forty minutes to make this flight.

Thirty seconds later, Sully's train of thought was disrupted by the female TSA agent.

"Uh, sir, would you like to step through and collect your stuff?"

She had removed the barrier. Of course! The delay was just the xrays being processed, Sully realized.

Sully gathered his bits and went about his day, pleased with how breezy getting through security had been, and he made a note to blog about the TSA in a positive fashion to offset the torrents of abuse they receive online.

Little did Sully realize that nobody gives a shit about his blog.

A comment on the commenting policy

2010-11-30T19:53:00.000Z

Meta-blogging isn't something I find particularly interesting to read, so I'll keep this brief, but in light of some recent comments I think it's prudent to clarify the commenting policy.

I'm a fan of discourse, and I have somewhat quixotic notions about how much freedom should be afforded to people when having a discussion, so here's a rundown of the rules:

I don't like imposing any barriers to commenting, so no registration is necessary, and anonymous comments are allowed
I don't pre-approve comments
The only comments that get deleted are spammy ones
I hate CAPTCHAs (they're a barrier to commenting), but a deluge of spammy comments means they'll probably stick around a while
If you want to take advantage of the anonymous comments, please use a pseudonym
Do try to be civil with your fellow commenters. Even the stupidest ones.

Accusing me of deleting comments that are critical of me or others is asinine. My whole schtick is that I'm a rationalist - I enjoy being proved wrong, or having something I overlooked pointed out to me, so don't hold back if you're worried that your insight will never see the light of day.

To 'protest' my buddy Fin's draconian comment-approval process, I invited a slew of brutal ad-hominem attacks. The resulting creativity from my readers is probably my favorite page on this humble slice of webspace.

Many of the comments I've received on the Jobseeker Beware entry (the most popular page on this site by a few orders of magnitude) make me feel as though my blog has done some good for people. Some of the comments are from apologists for the sinister companies I'm warning my readers about, and while I disagree with them vehemently, I won't delete their attempts to muddy the waters, purely because I prefer to make the part of world I have control over an open forum for discussion where people can make up their own mind.

This has been the policy from day one, but it's never been explicitly outlined, mostly because I don't get enough comments to justify it. However, in light of some recent, vaguely threatening comments that don't quite fit neatly into my existing policy, I'm going to start deleting these non-sequitur comments that attempt to disrupt discussion through harassment. I'll keep a copy of whatever I remove for those interested.

Feeding the hungry for Jesus

2010-11-30T10:30:00.000Z

Another great aspect of having a girlfriend is being able to plug into her social network, and one of the benefits of having a wider pool of people to interface with is that you may find yourself doing something you wouldn't engage in ordinarily.

A recent example of this was during a trip to Wisconsin, when Kate and I were offerred the chance to join her sister and brother-in-law in volunteering at their church-run soup kitchen. I should clarify - Kate was offerred the chance, and she volunteered my services. If I seem somewhat hesitant, I should make clear that the opportunity to do something selfless isn't one I'd agonize over, but this was a church-event, meaning I'd be helping the unfortunate in Jesus's name - as a rule, I don't donate money to charitable causes with a religious agenda, but I decided to make an exception in donating my afternoon to be a good Christian.

So after kitting myself out with a pretty sweet hat (mandatory) and a sweet fake name tag (also mandatory), I was ready for action. What kind of action? Well, to prepare for the onslaught of hungry homeless folk, I had to assist by wiping down tables and chairs with bleach-water, lugging large containers of gloppy foodstuffs around, folding cutlery and napkins together, and generally doing my best to make baby Jesus proud.

Sully is no more! Meet Gus, homeless-helper extraordinaire

Once the preparations were done, it was time for the volunteers to get their breakfast. On the menu was stuffed pepper, pickled cucumber, day old bread, day old donuts, coffee, and fresh-baked cookies provided by Kate's sister. Before we could tackle the generous spread, it was time to say grace before meals. Damn Christians and their delayed gratification! The orator gave shout-outs to the bakeries and restaurants that donated the grub, presumably so God would know who to reward.

There were about a dozen volunteers, ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-eighties, and as I was the youngest, most able-bodied of the group, I got lumbered with the most arduous task. I was the dishwasher, cleaning every implement, every tray, and every piece of cooking apparatus with a high-powered hose that melted through more than a couple of my plastic aprons.

Through the spray of steam and food particulate I'd throw covetous looks towards my fellow volunteers. Thomas and his task of 'Greeting'. Oh look at me, I'm a World War II veteran. Then I'd glare at Kate as she cheerfully carried out her duty of 'Corn Ladling', my envious grimace turning into an appropriately cheery smile to reflect hers when she caught my glance.

With the exception of the bread, it tasted a lot better than it looked

When I found out that I'd be cooped up in the kitchen, I wondered if I'd find it satisfying toiling for the less-fortunate without getting to directly witness their enjoyment on the frontline. It was a foolish notion - I was immediately invested in the work I was doing, and I can safely reflect on it as the most earnest two hours of physical labour I've ever engaged in. My back was hurting, and I was getting splashed with food and scalding hot water, but I wanted to be the most efficient damn dishwasher that kitchen had ever seen. During moments when I had cleared my station and had to wait on more ware to arrive, I'd start addressing things outside of my jurisdiction (including cleaning some obviously-neglected pieces of apparatus).

The way the room was set up meant that those coming to avail of the food were filing past the open kitchen door, and many of them took it upon themselves to shout in "God bless you". After shrugging off the first few seemed a little ignorant, I took to shouting back "same to yourself."

It was a great experience, one that I'd happily repeat, but like I said, my quixotic notions about 'good' charity cause some dissonance (i.e: My moral compass takes issue with reaching out to the less fortunate so you can bolster the ranks of subscribers to your supernatural ideologies). I was able to rationalize the sweat exerted in Jesus's name as a purely selfish act arising out of biological imperatives. How so? Well, my girlfriend wanted me to help the homeless, and complying with her requests will assist in the fulfillment of my carnal urges to copulate with her, so really, I'm doing this to satisfy my evolutionary impulses, so at the end of the day, Darwin wins.

The Silver Lining

2010-11-15T01:21:00.000Z

It doesn’t happen too often, but every now and again, I do something remarkable. The kinds of things that would be routine for over-achievers are novel for occasional-achievers like me, so I try to enjoy the satisfaction for as long as I can.

One of the fastest ways to spoil my enjoyment of an accomplishment is to get my mother to weigh in on it. Try it sometime. Next time you’re in the same room as my mother and me, ask me about something cool I’ve done and see what happens.

In every example from recent memory, the conversation goes something like this.

Well wisher: “I hear you graduated with a first class honours degree, how did you manage that?”

Sully: “Well...”

Mother: “I was down on bended knee!”

Well wisher: “Eh?”

Mother: “I was praying for him the whole time. His exams started at eleven, so I’d start praying at five to-”

Sully: “My exams started at 9am this year-“

Mother: “And I wouldn’t stop praying until I knew he was finished”

Sully: “Well, actually, there was a lot of project work in addition to--“

Mother: “Our Lady of the Wayside, she hasn’t let you down yet”

Well wisher: “Our Lady of the Wayside? What’s that?”

Mother: “It’s a prayer for students and young people. It’s done wonders for all my lads--”

Sully: “But, younger Sully failed out of college.”

Mother: “Shush – that was the best thing that could have happened to him.”

Sully: “He also failed his driving test three times.”

Mother: “And he never gave up! Our Lady of the Wayside! It’s wonderful!”

Yes, my mother believes in intercessory prayer, and petitions me ceaselessly to integrate the pointless exercise – actively trying to distract me away from preparing for whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish.

At the last family gathering, one of the observers of this ritual was a priest. After pithily remarking that her favoured prayer “must be a traveller’s prayer”, he nodded sympathetically when I bemoaned her lack of recognition for all the hard work and preparation that brought about the spoils of victory.

Priests will admit what my mother won’t. Prayer doesn’t get work done. Work gets work done. If you pray for something (like my younger brother passing his exams and staying in college) and don’t get your way, you shouldn’t be able to rationalize it by saying that the actual outcome was better anyhow. If your prayers won’t change the outcome, why continue to waste your time? The system lacks a consistent inner-logic.

Last week, I interviewed for a (pretty cool) job. I poured countless hours of effort into preparing, and my mother insisted on ‘chipping in’ herself. She told everybody who’d listen about her efforts on my behalf, and how she “had a feeling” that I was going to get it. I didn’t get the job, but the disappointment was immediately allayed by the recognition that Our Lady of the Wayside had let me down. A-ha!

Of course, this was one of those rare instances where it sucks to be right.

At times, I wish I could live in her fantasy-world. My mother thinks that she has beaten the system. She has discovered a prayer that will make your wildest-dreams come true, and if they don’t, you didn’t really want them to come true anyhow.

No amount of reasonable prompts and suggestions will cause her to reflect critically on her little racket with the man upstairs, but I keep prodding, mostly because she makes for a fascinating case study.

A Pavlovian Response

2010-10-25T01:44:00.001+01:00

While the efficacy to date has been questionable, my girlfriend's ongoing attempts to cultivate me into a fully-functional, socially-fluent human being show little signs of fatigue.

Over the past four years, we have logged a considerable amount of time watching films together, and yet, I'm still not sure what to do during those moments when her face crunches up and her eyes emit a salty discharge.

Derisive comments, for example, don't really work. We were watching Marley and Me at the cinema. The dog is the emotional vehicle in the film. The dog gets sick. It's sad. Then, (SPOILERS!) the dog dies. The characters on screen cry, and so do the estrogen-fuelled audience members. To make her feel better, I leaned into her ear and whispered "Well, there's a surprise!". To show that she appreciated my attempt to make her feel better, she punched my arm.

Now, if you're thinking "Sully my boy, you shouldn't be so confrontational", I'd say you're onto something. At least I would, had I not tried a gentler approach some months previous. We were watching I Am Legend at the cinema. It's a crap movie with crap CGI and a crap premise. Will Smith is craply moping around some strikingly empty metropolitan areas with his dog. The dog is his only friend, and the only semblance of his past life, before he lost (SPOILERS!) his wife and daughter. The dog becomes a zombie-dog and attacks the Fresh Prince, but doesn't survive the encounter. Will Smith has killed his only friend and reminder of a normal life, and is sad. He weeps in a manly fashion. I'm so busy scoffing that I don't realize my hot date is blubbering until a big ol' teardrop hits my hand. Thinking fast, I decide that drawing attention to a ludicrous emotional reaction to a terrible film is the best approach. I lean into her and ask her "What the hell are you doing?" She thumps me.

My problem isn't that I'm emotionally crippled, it's that I can't suspend my disbelief. Moments likely to cause her to choke up and remark "that's so sad" will make me think "that's an interesting technique to evoke emotion". More often than not, the techniques are hackneyed and convey little power, but my girlfriend, so filled is she with the milk o' human kindness will have a cry at them anyway.

I could keep you all day with examples of my emotional-callousness being rewarded with indolent bursts of violence, but not, dear reader, forever. I managed to break the cycle, and I owe it in part to Pixar.

We were watching Up (a quality film, by anyone's metric) on a tiny TV with fuzzy sound in her living room. Despite the technical limitations of the screening, it was a slice of heaven to be with her on the couch, watching a film we had put off watching until the other was around with our bodies arranged into that just-right comfort you don't want to disturb lest you can't recreate it.

During the opening montage in which we observe a young boy and girl become friends, fall in love, grow old together, and eventually part ways due to pesky mortality, it occurred to me that this family-friendly cartoon had put together a segment more engaging and profound than any film in recent memory. We both watched, rapt, and as it drew into the inevitable silent climax, my mind was processing what I had seen - the music, the lighting, the animation - was the flexibility of the medium a major advantage in this segment? My mind was buzzing with excitement. I looked down at her, as she clung onto my arm, and saw that she was, unsurprisingly, in bits.

She looked up to meet my gaze, bewitching me with those beautiful brown eyes, magnified by glassy tears. It was a beautiful moment.

I didn't want to fuck it up. But I had to give her some reaction! I pushed out my lower lip into a pout to register my sadness for the fake cartoon-people on the telly.

She pulled herself upright and gave me a little peck on the cheek. We settled back into our nook and enjoyed the rest of the film. It was pure heaven.

Since that moment many months ago, I've been repeating the habit of pouting during sad parts in films to win positive reenforcement for displaying my emotional intelligence. I didn't realize that I had made this a habit until my last plane journey. Whilst watching a heartstring-tugging scene in the (2010) Karate Kid on a 4" screen, I pushed my lower lip forward and held it there until the scene ended. Well I would have, if the air-hostess hadn't come along first, looked at me funny, and asked "Chicken or Pasta?"

*Artist's Impression

How many dumb Europeans will this kill?

2010-10-13T10:20:00.001+01:00

When I'm browsing the internet in Ireland, my computer knows I'm in Ireland.

This information is used to automatically redirect me to region-specific sub-sites, deny me access to my favourite foreign TV shows, and entice me with hot young girls in my area who want to "have sex tonight".

Okay, so I sound a little begrudging, but at least it makes sure that I'm only exposed to pertinent advertising. Like this PSA from the American Heart Association...

Dial 911 at the first sign of a stroke? I'll have to bear that in mind, and forget about that Irish emergency services number I had committed to memory...

Delta Airlines lost my luggage and all I got was this lousy t-shirt*

2010-10-02T09:30:00.006+01:00

Every now and again, my routine trips Stateside become an adventure.

Yesterday's trip was one of those days.

Due to some rough weather in JFK, I had to take a taxi to La Guardia to make my connecting flight to Chicago, (why exactly an airport 20 minutes away by car was unaffected by weather is beyond me).

Delta did an admirable job of getting me to my destination only a few hours late, but as expected, my luggage didn't make the trip. I went into the baggage office to work out the details of getting my stuff sent to me, and requested an overnight bag. (It didn't seem that it was going to be offerred unless I asked).

I have to say, I was quite happy with the schwag within the bag:

1 Disposable Blue Toothbrush with absurdly soft bristles
1 4.25g (.15oz) pouch of Colgate Vacity Protection Toothpaste
1 10g (0.35oz) pouch of Detergent (with instructions printed in mirrored fashion)
1 Disposable Razor with 10ml (0.35oz) shaving cream
4 Cotton Buds
2 Cotton Swabs
1 Foldable Hairbrush
1 13g (0.46oz) Deodorant
1 Large White SkyTeam T-Shirt

Also included was a card with a little apology in 10 languages, and a logo on the back that read "SkyTeam - Caring more about you"

"We regret that your baggage was not available on arrival. You may rest assured that we are doing everything possible to return it to you. we apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your understanding"

All in all? Not a bad bit of schwag to keep me going. The bag may replace my toiletries bag (assuming I ever see it again). Granted, the Toothbrush's bristles are so slight that I don't believe that 'bristle' is the correct nomenclature. The 'Large' t-shirt is absurdly oversized for this normally XL sized blogger, and there's no contact lens solution or toiletries so that the weary traveller doesn't have to go shopping before ending his 20-hour day of travel, but it's better than nothing.

It's been 24 hours since my original expected arrival time, and the bag has yet to materialize. If I'm kept waiting another day, I might stroll into the Delta Airlines Baggage Office completely starkers to protest.

Law #45 of Internet Commentators

2010-10-02T00:42:00.000+01:00

A common problem with reporting on the importance of scientific findings is that the PR department responsible for spreading the word has a tendency to overstate the significance of the research in order to gain the attention of the newspapers, which is then further spruced up by the papers so as to be noticed by the readers.

This results in such frothsome headlines:

As I'm aware of the laws governing Internet commentators, I know that anything pertaining to space and alien-life is going to bring out the conspiracy-theory whackjobs. I couldn't even finish the article before skipping down to the comments section:

I love the internet.

MySalesGenie Scam - PrimeTime Investigates

2010-09-26T01:46:00.000+01:00

A week after teasing my full investigation into the MySalesGenie.com pyramid scheme, and before I got a chance to post about my findings, I got scooped by RTÉ's Prime Time series.

Serves me right.

I can't begrudge them - it's nice to think a gap I felt the need to fill isn't as obscure as I thought, and they've fairly nailed the investigation. There's a few things that they didn't touch on, so I'll write up that once I get a chance.

In the meantime, I highly recommend that all those with access to the RTÉ Player (those of you with an Irish IP address) check out the documentary while you can, and if you can't get it, here's a handy rip that I found on YouTube:

Old News: The practice of Irish oneupmanshit

2010-09-22T23:56:00.001+01:00

I've always maintained that anything the yanks can do, we Irish can do too. We just do it shittier.

Television shows. Fashion. Women. Roads. Obesity epidemics. Anything they do, we Irish will chance a second-rate knockoff.

One thing that the nutbag yanks like to do is manufacture controversies about the theory of evolution's veracity. Let's have a look at an Irish take on this phenomenon, eh?

One of the more notable items from the news in Ireland last week was the short sightedness of Conor Lenihan, who is our Minister for Science (among other responsibilities) for agreeing to launch a creationist book. The inevitable backpedalling? He was attending in his "capacity as friend", not as a person with intellectual responsibility. Shitty Irish politics from a shitty Irish politician.

There was a bit of a shitstorm that played out on the blogs, columns, and letters pages, but what caused it?

A manic depressive by the name of John J May.

John J May has self-published a pathetic treatise on why evolution is a sham, called "The Origin of Specious Nonsense". He is promoting it with a series of inane videos on YouTube in which he lists some incredible scientific facts about reproduction, and argues that the mere act of considering these vast odds proves that the theory of evolution is false.

He's a shitty author, a shitty thinker, and he has a very shitty website. Let's look at the website, in all it's 2001 school-of-web-design splendour:

Not pictured: Terrible Soundtrack

The site has a dazzling range of keywords to lure in the punters. Including "evolution, birth death, charles darwin [...] Sam Harris, Daniel C Dennett [...] religeon, muslim, orthodox faith, atheism, life, babies, pregnancy, cancer." (And yes, they misspelt "religion" in the keywords.)

Of course, the effort to cast a wide net with the keywords has been nullified by the background music that can't be disabled, thus making spending any time on this website even more of a chore than it ought to be. Since the website is clearly a steaming pile of excrement, the author has wisely decided to over-compensate with breathless enthusiasm for the book's content: "You will be shocked, mocked,amazed, dazed, confused, amused, enraged, engaged, but most of all thrilled and mentally fulfilled by the information you are about to read.. After 18 years research & 18 months writing comes" THE ORIGIN OF SPECIOUS NONSENSE""

I'll hold for a moment if you want to take a quick vomiting break.

All flushed out? Jolly good.

Perhaps being aware of the popularity of lists on the internet, the author has compiled the seven reasons that he "rejects and detests evolution". Here comes the science!

1: It teaches us to be satisfied with - not understanding origins.

2: It promotes the dangerous nonsense of no first cause - no supreme scientist and suggests order came from disorder.

3: It is a metaphysical speculation, a doctrine dressed up in scientific garb.

4: Anyone who teaches evolution is either ignorant or deliberately suppressing the known scientific facts.

5: It is a toxic poisonous mind virus which destroys the hearts immune system against hope and common sense.

6: It is an anesthetic against reason.

7: It cripples sanity, promotes myths, obscures reality and elevates matter above a maker.

Actually, wait a sec. These are all emotional reasons! This troglodyte has no interest in a scientific discussion, despite his repeated appeals to reason and sanity. This jackoff deserves no interest from me, you, or the media. Those of us itching to have a dance-off between the forces of enlightenment and medieval superstition can go home disappointed. This lunatic represents no threat to the theory of evolution, his appearance on the radar serves only to highlight the incompetence of yet another Irish politician.

I'm going to leave the last word to Dr. Steven Novella, from last week's Skeptic's Guide to the Universe:

"Have you guys taken a look at John J May's book or website? This guy is the living embodiment of the arrogance of ignorance - the Dunning Kruger effect [...]" The less able you are to assess your own stupidity, the smarter you think you are."

Yep. Sounds fairly spot on.

Misadventures in Small Talk: An Indecent Proposal

2010-09-16T00:53:00.000+01:00

I indulge in small talk every so often. I’m not very good at it, but I give it a try.

[Source]

I was at work, dealing with enquiries with a normal looking guy. The conversation ended on a cheerful note, but he didn't leave. He was hesitating. Then he said the weirdest thing:

“Can I quickly pitch something to you?”

I looked at him sideways, he felt the need to lubricate his pitch.

“It will only take two minutes”

Okay, I’ll listen to your pitch, hombre.

I nodded.

“Have you heard of My Shopping Genie?”

Blank look from yours truly.

“Okay, it’s this GREAT application for comparing prices online-”

A dozen price-sharing websites went through my head. None of them had 'My Shopping Genie' in the title. I grunted at him to show that I understood.

“- and it’s absolutely exploding in popularity right now.”

My sideways look was now at about 45 degrees.

“It will be bigger than Google in a few months at the rate it’s going”

My head was now spinning around like a propeller from his ejaculation. Unperturbed, he continued:

“It’s this thing that you can use to make money. I just started making money on it now because I signed up for it three weeks ago-”

I started to look around for something else, some reason to leave. Hopefully there’s a fire. He continued:

“You can make so much money on it -"

Drat. No fire. Maybe I could start a fire...

"-You just need to get people underneath you.”

Hang on a tick, did he just say "get people underneath you"?

“There’s a woman above me, a stay at home Mom -“

Did he just say “a woman above me?”

“She has two kids. She looks after them, she does some things on the computer, she makes €2,000 a week. It’s incredible.”

What the hell is he talking about? And why is he talking so quickly?

“I need to do what she’s doing so I can make that kind of money-“

I thought this dude was recommending some software. What the hell is going on?

“- so do you think that you’d be interested in signing up and taking part?”

Silence.

Oh yeah. That’s right. It’s my turn to talk:

“Sure. What’s the URL again: My Sales Genie dot eye eee?”

“Shopping Genie”

“My Shopping Genie dot eye eee?”

“My Shopping Genie dot eye eee.”

“Okay, I’ll look into it, thanks.”

“No, don’t just go to that site, go to this one”

He handed me a torn up slip of paper with the URL and a seven digit code.

"I'll look into it later"

Mercifully, he left. I reflected on what had just happened:

"I'm pretty sure that this guy is involved in a pyramid scheme" I said to myself.

"I should look into this, it might make for an interesting blog entry..."

Harvey Norman's Vaguely Impressive Piffle

2010-09-07T09:30:00.002+01:00

There was great excitement at work last week when an unmarked envelope was handed in at reception.

Inside was a letter from Harvey Norman (an electronics and furniture chain that have an outlet nearby), inviting me to a special VIP night as I was a "Valued Customer"

There are a few things about this letter that I find incongruous:

1. The envelope was blank, yet the salutation within is to a 'Valued Customer'. I don't think they really cared who opened the envelope.

2. They called me a "valued customer". I've spent practically nothing in Harvey Norman over the past two years on account of the underhand tactics employed by their TV shillers. I don't think they really cared who opened the envelope.

3. The letter advises the valued customer, who is valued for the custom they have brought to the business to "contact the store on 061-422800 for directions". Maybe a lot of their valued customers are forgetful. Maybe they didn't really care who opened the envelope.

4. The letter recipient is told to "feel free to extend your invite to family, friends and neighbors to take advantage of this wonderful night of savings" - they're essentially saying "it's a VIP night for people who aren't particularly important."

5. The letter promises "staff prices throughout the evening", but the letter itself has that phrase in quotation marks. They're effectively saying I'm giving you a "discount".

6. Attendees will get exclusive offers with "never seen before prices". Just because the price hasn't been seen before doesn't necessarily mean that it's lower.

7. It's the "First Annual VIP Night". Exciting! But the previous night had "over 1500 attending" But this is the first one!

Y'know what would have been a better idea? To announce that Harvey Norman are having a late-opening sale. Maybe they could say that they're liquidating stock. That would get me excited. Would anybody actually go for this bizarre marketing ploy?

Well, I went along at about 8.30pm to see if it worked. There were only about 20 people in the building, workforce included. It was only about two hours into the evening and the staff seemed to be begrudging the whole affair. When I approached the running 3D TV demo-unit with my friend and picked up the glasses to witness the paradigm-shifting goodness, some pissed off employee came running towards us and yelled "You okay, lads?" to startle me into putting back the anointed eyewear. Surely a VIP is deserving of a "Sir" when he's being rebuked for trying out the fucking demo-unit that they've been pimping on the radio ad-nauseam?

One of the best deals I saw was an iPod/iPhone TV docking station for €99. I called in again today (a week later) to see that the price was now €99, and instead of a big "VIP EVENING" A4 sheet drawing attention to the price, there was now a small square pricetag, the same as everything else.

I went to the VIP night with two friends and an open mind, and Harvey Norman proved to me that their staff are surly, their hyperbole about great prices and unbeatable sales is unparalleled, and they conduct their business in an underhand fashion for no good reason.

Google Latitude - Reports from beyond the velvet rope

2010-08-31T23:08:00.000+01:00

Back in May, I treated myself to the HTC Desire, which runs on Google's Android operating system. One of the benefits of this operating system is that it acts as an intravenous delivery system for Google's rather nifty mobile applications. The Gmail client is solid, the Google Maps with turn-by-turn directions has saved me countless hours wandering around badly laid out Irish cities, and Google Translate allows me to swear at my phone and have it translated into a foreign language, instantly rescuing me from boring conversations at parties!

Google Latitude is a rather unusual service from the search giants that makes known your (phone's) current location to anyone you've granted access. Pretty simple idea, but Google have built some cool features on top of this simple idea.

Since I have an Android phone, and most of my friends don't, I feel like (for the first time) the cool guy who has been to the exclusive club, so I want to share with you plebs what kind of exotic delights you're missing out on.

Exotic delights like a handy pie-chart representation of how you spend your time:

(See the gap between July and August? That was my blogging hiatus)

Ever wondered "What's the furthest I've been from home?"

5,145 miles for me! (Since May 2010, anyhow)

Can't remember all those countries you've been to? Now you don't have to!

This barren map makes me want to spend obscene amounts of money to add a bit of colour

What are the places I visit most often? (Do I spend more time at my mother's or father's house?)

No wonder I spend more time at my mother's - look at the extra amenities!

Latitude can also be used to trigger proximity alerts. These SMS or E-mail alerts can trigger when you or your friend "are at an unusual place, filtering out routine alert cases at home or work", or "are at a routine place but at an unusual time". Neat! Hopefully things like this increase the amount of "chance encounters" with the kind of friends I'd hope to run into.

Bored? Why not watch a sped up version of the last 500 locations you've visited? Just click on the 'play' arrow in the top right corner of the map and watch your life being pissed away by going to work, driving around, going home, and sleeping over and over and over again!

The service as a whole is cool, but it's not quite perfect. I was immediately offended when it suggested that I spend a mere 22 hours a week at work on average, but I realised that Latitude thinks I'm half a mile away from my current position when I disable the GPS on my phone to save battery. It's no wonder that the 'out' slice of my pie-chart is so meaty. Also, saving the last 500 locations in the history might sound like plenty, but in practice it only goes back a few days - if your phone pings your location every few minutes for a couple of hours, each ping is logged as a separate location. If each recorded 'location' represented a different set of coordinates, the history feature would be much more useful.

Well, what about the privacy implications? I had only planned on leaving Latitude switched on long enough to populate the dashboard with some information, but now I'm starting to enjoy it. The amount of consideration that Google has put into privacy seems almost excessive, even in light of the Google Buzz fiasco. By default, e-mails are sent out monthly with the subject line: "Reminder - You are sharing your location with Latitude applications", which is a good thing too, because I had almost forgotten about it after I first activated it.

If you want to throw caution to the wind and share your location with everyone, you can create a location badge, which you can put on your blog for your fourteen yearly visitors not to give a shit about. Google is wise enough to offer a pared-down functionality, in which only city-level data is shared.

So far, I only have one one friend set up on Latitude, and it's been novel checking the widget on my phone and seeing how far away he is from my current position. I take it he enjoys the novelty too. Mere moments after I touched down in Shannon after a fortnight in the States, I got a text message from him that read "Welcome home!" Creepy.

A meme worth sharing

2010-08-25T00:08:00.001+01:00

Memes are a fascinating subject. Observing these discrete units of behavior patterns, practices, or even products makes me wonder about who started them, and the kind of people who propagated them.

Top ten lists. Lolcat pictures. Folding toilet paper in hotel toilets so you know the cleaner has been in. All memes that have stood the test of time, and will likely exist as long as their respective mediums do.

All these memes pale in comparison to what I witnessed a few weeks ago.

After a few weeks away from home, I showed up with my girlfriend in tow. Had this been a normal visit, I would have tried to ensure that the house was reasonably clean to hide from her the level of squalor in which I am willing to live, but on this visit, I was completely at the mercy of my housemates' lax sense of sanitation. The sense of trepidation in stopping by was heightened by her announcement that she wished to use the "restroom".

Happily, on this occasion, the communal areas of our residence indicated that ours was not a fetid shithole. All the same, I warned my missus that I wanted to check the toilet before I let her proceed.

I had figured that the upstairs bathroom would be in the best shape, but hadn't anticipated the extent of the moulting season that one of my housemates was going through. After a few minutes of wrestling dark scraggly hairs into drains and scrubbing week-old skidmarks off the porcelain, the lavatory was again safe for human operation.

My ladyfriend was waiting patiently downstairs, standing in the middle of the kitchen - as if to avoid touching anything. I told her the coast was clear. She told me that while I was upstairs, she checked the downstairs toliet.

"You're out of toilet paper"

I poked my head into the outhouse under the stairs. The toilet lid was down, and the cardboard core of an empty roll of toilet paper was perched atop it.

I cocked my head sideways.

"Huh." I exhaled.

"Oh yeah, I put the empty roll on because I didn't want anybody to-"

I grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her a little

"You did this? You put the roll on the lid?"

"Well yeah - I didn't want anybody to start and then realize-"

"That's genius!"

"Well, it would be a shame if somebody-"

"Where did you see this?"

"What, putting the roll on the lid? I dunno, I just did it now."

"That's incredible… It's genius."

"Darling…"

"It sends a clear message, and it obstructs the would-be-user from even using the toilet…"

"Honey…"

"Even a total fool wouldn't be able to misinterpret this. It's so simple!"

"Sweetheart"

"It's averting potential toilet-disasters! Sparing the desperate use of hand-towels -"

"HEY!"

"Sorry. What's up?"

"Can you let go now? I have to use the restroom"

Stupid meme that. 'Restroom'. Does anybody rest in there? No! I could live with 'relief-room', or even 'evacuation-room', but 'restroom', that's a meme I cannot abide.