Michael Jackson dead?

So it seems.....


Detroit Free Press Link

Despite the wierdness, that's still a shocker. The guy could definatly write a tune and has influenced every single corner of music from POP to Metal.

R.I.P

Bank Charges (and claiming them)

This week I decided to take the first step of claiming back at least some of the thousands of pounds I've recently paid in bank charges.

I found the website moneysavingexpert and the financial expert Martin Lewis who actually runs the site, and used some of the template letters they have on the site to send to my bank Natwest.

Well it was posted on monday and I'm yet to hear anything back yet but I'll update as and when I hear anything back from my branch, or from anyone higher up. I've decided to only ask for two years of information to claim, as I currently have 2 current accounts and a loan with them, therefore I would like to try and avoid any problems with them closing accounts or demanding even larger amounts from me, just to claim £1000 or so back from them.

I would basically like to pay my overdrafts off, then I would be happy.

Google not "image-ing"?

It seems that googles image searching is down. I first tied to search for this









Which I thought was wierd. So I thought i'd try something that would be more popular...

But apparantly thats not popular.
Hmm wonder why?

Reviews and stuff

Two small things this time round.

I went to see Hot Fuzz last week......

Another Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg collaboration hits the right spots again. Now I've been a fan of the two since Spaced, and this doesn't dissapoint at all. The casting is brilliant, the usual faces show up such as Nick Frost, Bill Baily, Martin Freeman And Julia Deakin and loads of UK comedy A listers like Steve Coogan, Kevin Eldon and Adam Buxton. However the stellar cast of Oscar winner Jim Broadbent, former James Bond Timothy Dalton and screen legend Edward Woodward are backed up by new stars like Lucy Punch and Rafe Spall.

The basic plot line is quite simple.

Nicholas Angel is a top metropolitan police officer and after a prolific arrest rate, his immediate superiors, played by Martin Freeman and Steve Coogan, decide that he is too good and send him to the sleepy west country village of Sandford, to stop him making them look bad!! Angel then slowly finds that the sleepy village has a seedy underbelly.

Now I'm not going to say much more, but with it being a Simon Pegg film watch for the pop culture references, and as usual the superb action scenes. The Gunfight is genius and there is a large homage to a certain movie trilogy in the post car chase scene.

My only criticism is it is a little slow to start, however this does follow the theme of the slow town.

My next review is something I watched last night after my girlfriend got it on DVD.

Nathan Barley is a series from Channel 4 that was shown in the later half of 2005, and was written by Charlie Brooker of TVgohome, and Chris Morris of Brasseye fame. I couldn't understand the point of this. Its basically a satirical comedy, poking fun at youth culture trends and modern media outlets, such as the Internet and digital TV. The main character is actually not Barley in fact, but Dan Ashcroft, played by Julian Barratt, (who would later go on to find success with The Mighty Boosh) as a writer in Sugar Ape magazine. Sugar Ape is a magazine in the vein of The Face or more recently Vice magazine. Ashcroft then writes an article about the "idiots" as he calls them, who ironically are actually the only people who read his scribings, and becomes adopted by them as their spiritual leader, much to his dismay.

Now I'll admit I only watched 2 episodes of it, and was yet to find anything really funny about it. I've read that it takes more than one viewing to really find it funny but unfortunately its not something I want to watch again. The fact that the humour derives from poking fun at the very people that would probably watch something like this, while mirroring what happens in the series, is just not funny.

I was yet to find any seriously laugh out loud scenes, or likable caracters to latch onto. Its also nothing like anything Chris Morris has done before, so fans of Brasseye, or the day today will probably not have anything to identify with it either.

Personally, and bearing in mind I've only watched an hour of it, I think its crap.

31 days 12 hours 54 22 secs....

As I wrote the headline anyway!

This is until the kick off of the new F1 season.

Now not many people I know share my love of F1, if I would describe it as a love, more of a fascinacion. Not only do not many people share the love, they can't understand why. Personally, watching how the teams work together, altering certain things, the technology on the cars, is amazing, down to the fact that the pit crew can notice a problem, then electronically control the car, limiting it, so there is not more damage done to the car. Again most of you won't even care!

This season I'm gunning for Honda again, maybe because I'm a honda owner, and maybe because hopefully this year they will sort out the reliability issues and show the form they showed over the latter part of last season.

One of the cool things, (or geeky things, i'll let you decide) is the advent of another fantasy formula 1 league. The premise is simple, each car, chassis, engine, driver and test driver is worth a certain amount of money, upon signing up get awarded an imaginary amount of money to choose the best team you can. I finished 400 and something out of nearly 19,000 last year so I was quite happy with that!


Anyway if you wanna join up for yourself, check out http://www.fantasy-f1.net

Smash Something....

Another strange american internet thing, people are buying popular Consumer electronics good, via donations from a website and then, well, smashing them. Someone spent the time and effort to wait in line for a PS3 then video them smashing it.
Now I can't work out if thats a cool idea or not?
See the story I stole from ananova.com

Practical jokers in New York waited for hours to buy a PlayStation 3 - then smashed it in front of shoppers behind them in the queue.
The pranksters took a sledgehammer to Sony's latest offering as stunned gamers looked on, reports ITN.
The consumer terrorists are from the website smashmyipod.com and more recently http://www.smashmywii.com, which ensured Nintendo's console received the same treatment.
They began their practical joke campaign by raising £210 on their website, which enabled them to buy an iPod and smash it outside a store.
A statement on the website claims to have nothing against the companies making money but 'exists for the sole purpose of providing satisfaction to people who hate the Nintendo Revolution'.
The project also says: "This is only a social experiment, for the entertainment of the donors, and visitors of this site."

Things people do to kill time.

You tube and the web version 2.0 (or whatever the hell its called)

There was a time when I used to sit on the computer, breaking it and fixing it, making it do things its not supposed to do, making web pages photo editing or learning about stuff I didn't know about before. I used to even play games on it.

But now I find myself completely engrossed in forums, photo blogs, social networking sites, that I don't even like, and god damn Youtube. I see mto spend my time using the massive source that the world wide web provides just killing time that I didn't intend on killing. I sat the other day wondering why I never spend time reading through emails that I get sent, with contacts from msn that I have never spoken too, sending me questionnaires, and reading things from people I used to speak to a long time ago.

I was thinking this while I got a message on my push email telling me a comment had been left on myspace, only to log in to find the message, plus a questionnaire from someone I've never spoken to and a bulletin from someone I used to go to college with!!

I was also on Youtube, watching some old old wrestling videos wondering what happened to the guy I used to buy obscure old wrestling videos and realised that, he probably has put them onto youtube by now, or rather someone else has and in turn put him out of buisness.

Nothing has actually changed from what I can tell, its just become waaay easier to do the things I used to do, way more user friendly, I mean what did we all do before flash could handle video, infact what did we do before flash?? How did we organsise a night out, or pimp a show or movie we were going to, or a band we liked before myspace. from what I can tell, with much more difficulty.

The internet is no longer a challenge anymore, its slowly becoming an integral part of, not just mine, but everyone's life, even to the point where its ritual, get home, get changed, check mail, check forums, have tea, post a bit on a forum, watch an old program's or a few vids on youtube, check for forum replys, go to bed, get woken up at 3am by your blackberry with a topic reply as an American answers what you said.....And the circle continues. At least thats what my sad life appears to be heading at the moment