#oneaday, Day 162: WTF?

Yesterday, my evening was brought to a screeching halt by the discovery of what happens if you go to Google, type in "2204355" and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky". (Hint: it's this.) This particular work of art is evidence of why the Internet is something that no-one will ever be able to understand. Thinking about that animation and trying to explain it is enough to make OMG HEAD ASPLODE.

Couple that with the fact that some people seem to be convinced that the number "2204355" has some sort of significance (a fact which I did some immensely frustrating and unfruitful research on today) and you've got yourself a proper mystery. Conspiracy theorists would say that the people who claim to know what "2204355" means but won't tell anyone really don't actually know and are just fucking with everyone. It's entirely possible. I've given up thinking about it and just taken to enjoying the dance and the music. CHIKKUN.

Of course, this isn't the first time that an inexplicable meme has swept the Internet. We've had this. And this. And this. Not to mention the many different cats who can do incredible things. And let's not forget the immortal Keyboard Cat, of course. Fatso may be long dead, but his legacy lives on to bring joy to millions.

Love them or hate them, internet memes like this are here to stay. They appear, explode in popularity virally, get overplayed and generally by the time parents or grandparents start emailing them to you as a .wmv file accompanied by size 18 Times New Roman type in bright pink, it's time to leave them alone again. But by then, something new will have appeared.

The thing that pops into my head every time I see something like this is "who came up with that… and how?" Who thought it would be a great idea to get a pixellated video of a black dude dancing and eating chicken and combine it with a hypnotic rainbow background and a chiptune version of the theme from A.L.F? Who realised that saying the words "badger" and "mushroom" over and over was inexplicably funny? Why combine a spinning leek with a Swedish folk song? Why are cats so awesome?

These are questions that will never be answered. But for every idiotic, ill-informed, racist, twattish, knobhead dicksplat that you come across on the Internet, remember, somewhere out there there's someone who will come up with one of these masterpieces of viral pop culture, whether it's through creativity, insanity or both.

Today, I salute those people. You make the world a better place and can brighten even the darkest of times.

#oneaday, Day 143: Formspring Durch Technik

I'm not sure what it is that appeals to me about question-based-sort-of-social-networking-web-2.0-nonsense Formspring, but I find it hugely addictive. I'm not the only one, either. High-profile online figures such as Leigh Alexander and Jeff Green seem to be having a blast with it, too, as are plenty of others.

The concept is simple. Anyone can ask you a question, either with their username attached or anonymously. Most people choose to ask anonymously. And it's actually more fun that way, because you then have the sort of metagame of working out who asked you what. And if you get a slightly questionable, err, question, it becomes all the more exciting to answer – was it one of your hairy male friends asking sarcastically, or was it asked by that hot chica you've got your eye on?

I think the most fun thing about it is that in coming up with creative answers to the very creative questions people come up with, you get the opportunity to talk about yourself. This is the very worst sort of narcissism that Web 2.0 brings out, of course, but it also gives you the opportunity to share things about your past, your personality, your hopes, your dreams, your tastes… all sorts of things that might not come up in conversation unless you blurted them out randomly like some sort of Fact-Tourette's sufferer.

A friend commented that the whole thing smacked of the sort of questions you get on dating sites. That's sometimes true, of course, but the difference here is that it all depends on what people choose to ask you. If people choose to ask you dating site-type questions, that's what'll happen. If people choose to ask you a series of increasingly-outrageous "what if?" scenarios, then that's what you'll get. Or in my case, you get a mixture of both until it becomes very confusing and you have no idea who asked what any more. Largely because for the most part you didn't know in the first place.

It's a service dependent on interaction, of course. If your friends are the sort of people who baulk at typing anything into text boxes, whether or not they have to bother signing up for a service beforehand, then you won't get much out of Formspring. If, however, you have creative friends who enjoy coming up with ridiculous things for you to answer, then you'll have a hell of a lot of fun with it. And your friends might even learn something about you that they didn't know before. You might even learn something about yourself that you didn't know before. Deep, huh?

If you want to ask me a stupid question, I have a list of the last few ones I've been asked somewhere to your right in the sidebar that you can click on to see my responses. Or you can just go here. You don't have to sign up for the site to take part, but if you do sign up then you get email notifications when someone asks you a question or when someone answers your question, whether or not it was anonymous.

#oneaday, Day 135: Blurred Socialization

"Social games" are crap. There, I've said it. Now everyone else can breathe a sigh of relief that the elephant in the room has been well and truly pointed out.

But why are they crap? Well, the main reason is that they just aren't very fun to either play as games or use as a means of socialising. I've tried out Mafia Wars and We Rule in particular. And neither of them are very fun.

Both of them involve a lot of clicking and waiting. Click on a button to complete a task. Wait for something to happen… in real time. While you wait, why not spam your friends to "help" you by clicking on the same button that you did? You'll both get XP! Yay XP! Of course your level means little more than how long you have bothered to waste your time playing what is basically an Access database, but that's beside the point.

The social angle is flawed too. There's no interaction. You can request "help" from other players but there's no means of actually playing together concurrently. In some games you can't even send messages to each other.

Then came Blur. Blur single-handedly shows the correct way to develop a good social game: by building a good game first, then a social network around it. Too many other titles do this the other way round, and that's what causes them to be the shallow, meaningless garbage that they are.

Blur is different, though. Even without the social features it would be a great racer featuring the "why hasn't anyone done this before?" combination of realistic racing and Mario Kart-style powerups. But add in the ability to taunt friends publicly via Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the incredibly solid "Friend Challenge" system, and you've got a winning experience on your hands.

Playing Blur is actually remarkably akin to logging into something like Facebook. Starting the game greets you with a "Previously on Blur" feature showing you the next milestones you might reach, a bit like Facebook's News Feed shows you recent happenings. Then you might want to check your messages, so you look at the Friend Challenges screen. You see that three of your friends have challenged you to beat their times, so you while away a short while beating them senseless… or not. Then you take on some of the single-player, and achieve something you know none of your friends have, so you post it to Facebook. Then… the list goes on. All the while you're having a good time playing a great game AND sharing the experience with friends.

So, social game developers? Please stop being satisfied with the derivative shit you're coming out with. The shit you are deriving your new shit from wasn't very good in the first place. So actually hire someone who has played a video game before to design your game, then build the social features around it.

Rant over. I'm off to play Blur.

#oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet

Dear The Internet,

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that's beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word "tenacity" to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying "less is more" is not always true. Consider these two sentences: "Pete is a dude." and "Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people." Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/"quotation marks" combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

"LOL" is not a punctuation mark. It means "laughing out loud", something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type "LOL". I've heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type "LOL" and they're not actually laughing, please?

I've bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis' first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn't know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn't annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn't feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it's possible to stop people saying what I've bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That's why I chose to buy it over the thing they're recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I'm fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I'm sure their thing is really good too, which is why I'm not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like "information superhighway" and "global village" were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn't suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn't suck because they think it doesn't suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn't suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don't suck, and I don't think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I'm sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison

#oneaday, Day 114: Social Peril

My good friend Mr George Kokoris had this to say about people and social media earlier. Go read it. He has some very valid concerns, especially in light of Facebook's increasingly cavalier attitude towards personal privacy.

I used to like Facebook. I used to like it because it wasn't like MySpace – I remember saying this to several people. I tried MySpace and didn't really get it. It seemed to be a friend-collecting competition with some of the most hideous web design you can possibly imagine. Facebook used to be different, though. It used to limit you to people you actually know. In fact, you used to have to say how you knew the person you were adding as a friend, much like immensely boring but practical professional networking site LinkedIn still does. As a result, it became a great way for keeping in touch with family and friends. Everyone felt confident and secure in the fact that your information was yours, and that the only people you were sharing it with were people you had specifically approved. In short, it felt like a secure means of communication. I liked it for this.

As time passed, we all know the story. Groups. Applications. Pages. A dwindling sense of security. Employers using employees photographs of drunken nights out as grounds to mistreat them. Until we reach today, when a large number of people I know are seriously considering ditching their Facebook accounts altogether in favour of alternative, more secure means of communication. Or, ironically, Twitter, one of the most open and public means of communication there is.

But at least on Twitter it never claims to be anything other than public. Your profile on Twitter consists of your avatar, your username and 140 characters of "bio". Your conversations are public (unless you specifically choose to protect your tweets, which kind of defeats one of the main objects of the service) and anyone can chip in at any time. It's a simple, effective means of asynchronous communication which means that people speak frankly, briefly and candidly.

This gets people in trouble. Sometimes, a lot of trouble. Paul Chambers found this out the hard way.

"Robin Hood airport is closed," he tweeted as his trip to Ireland to meet a girl he'd been talking to on Twitter looked threatened by the UK's complete inability to deal with a bit of snow. "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

A flippant, offhand remark. But a flippant, offhand remark that recently landed him with a thousand-pound fine and a criminal record on the grounds that his message was "grossly offensive, or of indecent, obscene, or menacing character". A flippant, offhand remark that gave him the dubious honour of being the first person ever to be convicted of a "crime" (and I use the term loosely) in connection with remarks made on a social networking site.

I mean seriously. His comments weren't in the best taste. But by successfully prosecuting this case, it sets a dangerous precedent that has made everyone rather more conscious of what they say. In effect, it's stifling free speech, a concept the Internet is built upon – not to mention the fact that the life of Chambers, who was training to be an accountant, has now been devastated.

See also: Gizmodo's behaviour with regard to the new iPhone that was left in a bar. Gray Powell, the engineer who misplaced the phone, lost his job, perhaps understandably, given that he left an immensely valuable trade secret just lying around. Gizmodo reported on the new iPhone. They ripped it open and looked inside it. Perhaps not the best thing to do when Apple were already pissed off. Then they ripped open Gray Powell's life, using information from his entire Internet presence to make him a global laughingstock. Was it not enough that the guy fucked up and lost his job because of it? Apparently not.

George points out that there are people out there who hate success and will do anything to destroy the efforts of people with ambition. It makes me sad to think that in a world where our exchange of information should be free and open that incidents like the above can happen. Just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be done. The fact that we can communicate instantaneously with anyone in the world should be a wonderful, life-affirming thing that brings the global community closer together, builds bridges and draws us closer to a peaceful sci-fi utopia. But instead, shit like this just gets people paranoid and worried, until we're going to find ourselves even more closed off and isolated than we were before the whole social media thing started. And that's sad.

Is it just human nature to use things that should be positive for evil, deceitful purposes?

#oneaday, Day 113: Mini-Memes and Offensive GIFs (NSFW)

I have no idea who Bernard Pivot is. The only thing I think of when I hear the word "Pivot" is the array of moderately-to-extremely offensive stickman animations entitled Battle of the Sexes that my friend Sam and I produced using the piece of software of the same name (Pivot, not Battle of the Sexes) while we were back in university, a selection of which you can see at the end of this blog post. That was a very long sentence, wasn't it? Never mind.

Anyway, the reason I bring up Bernard Pivot is Daniel Lipscombe's recent post of the same name. Apparently something called Inside the Actors Studio always featured a questionnaire by Mr Pivot that everyone featured would answer. I'm sure Daniel can explain it much better than I can, so go and read his post for more details. I'm just going to answer the questions in a memerrific manner.

Yes, I'm feeling lazy. But I did go and dig into archive.org to go and find those GIF files, previously thought to be lost. I'm good to you, I am. So allow me a little laziness, particularly as I had a job interview today and had to spend seventy-five fucking pounds getting the train to Brighton (65 miles). Ripoff!

I appear to be procrastinating against answering these questions. It's not deliberate. Here goes:

What is your favorite word?
"Ostensibly". I'm not sure it's actually my "favourite", but I certainly use it a hell of a lot. I guess you could say that ostensibly my favourite word is "ostensibly". Maybe. But that would make you a prat.
What is your least favorite word?
"Accountability". Nothing good ever comes of someone using that word. See also: "leverage", "monetize", "transparency", when not used the context of discussing a physical object that is not opaque.
What turns you on?
Porn! Errm, you didn't mean it like that, did you? An in-depth and deeply, deeply nerdy conversation would be the next best thing.
What turns you off?
Staff meetings in hot, stuffy rooms. I can't help my eyes getting heavy. I've never actually fallen asleep in one but I've come perilously close lots of times. Also, spiders.
What sound or noise do you love?
That bubbly sound when you put a straw in a glass of drink and blow.
What sound or noise do you hate?
Bits of polystyrene scraping together.
What is your favorite curse word?
COCK! Said with aplomb.
What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
I am currently profession-less, technically, unless you count supply teaching. In which case, video game journalism, which I'm sort of doing already anyway. For something completely different, I wouldn't mind doing something involving driving.
What profession would you not like to do?
Anything that involves sick, poo or blood.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"Well done for surviving My many challenges that I have thrown in your way! You win my Grand Prize."

Do have a go at answering these questions in the comments below because I like comments and they make me feel loved and appreciated. While you wait, here are some offensive GIFs involving stickmen and women. I present Battle of the Sexes, a 2005 production of Angry Jedi and Rampant Goose. Click the pics to see the animations, since WordPress doesn't seem to like displaying inline animated GIFs, at least not in this theme.

Episode 1: First Meeting

Episode 2: Anyone for Tennis?

Episode 3: Man's Best Friend

Episode 4: Uneasy Alliance

Episode 5: Raging Horn

Episode 6: Supermale

Episode 7: Kiss and Make Up

Episode 8: Big Sister's Story

Episode 9: Happy Home

I'm sorry. 🙂

#oneaday, Day 112: Hyperbole Squared

Sometimes you come across something – or someone – so utterly wonderful you want to share it – or them – with everyone. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will already know what – or who (okay, I wish I hadn't started this now, it's getting tiresome) – I'm talking about. Those of you who have been confused as to why I keep shouting "BAP!" at semi-regular intervals – well, consider yourself prepared for an education.

If you're wondering who the girl on the right is, this is Allie Brosh. Allie, a self-confessed "sexy lion", is 24, lives in Montana and has a Boyfriend with a capital B. She also has ADHD, a copy of Paintbrush and a gift for writing things so utterly charming that you can't help but want to follow the chaotic saga that is her life. Her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, ping-pongs around between heartfelt lucidity, infectious childlike enthusiasm and some of the funniest, most surreal imaginings you'll ever come across in your travels around the Internet. She also invented the term "mandatory sex party", which went from being a three-word Googlewhack (so not a true Googlewhack, but I'm not picky) to having 28,800 pages mentioning it in the space of a year. And she apologises for saying fuck a lot.

I have no idea how I found Allie in the first place. I was looking in my Bookmarks Bar in Google Chrome and saw that mysterious » symbol mocking me at the end as if to say "ORGANISE YOUR BOOKMARKS, YOU TOOL!" I clicked on it just to see what forgotten secrets it was hiding and saw a peculiar-looking entry in the pop-up menu that appeared.

"Hyperbole and a Half," it said. "Come and look. That's an intriguing title, isn't it?"

It didn't actually speak. That would be weird. But anyway, I clicked on the entry to see what it was and was confronted with this post. It made me laugh. A lot. Particularly because of the drawings. Well-done bad MS Paint drawings are always amusing, but Allie has a real talent for drawing hugely expressive faces with the simplest of shapes. This, coupled with the prose, made me know immediately that this was something I wanted to keep reading. So I checked out the featured posts she had in her sidebar.

After reading the first paragraph of this post and looking at the picture, I was literally crying with laughter for a good five minutes. That's not an exaggeration. Any time I look at the "BAP!" picture (in fact, any time I even imagine the picture) I start giggling uncontrollably. It was perfect – even more so because I know that I've done something similar before. The word "COCK!" became a useful, if moderately offensive, shortcut to fill dead air in a conversation for my friends and I some years back, and even as I creep closer to 30 I don't see that situation changing any time soon. (I'm in touch with my inner child. Sue me. I am rubber, you are glue and all that.)

Also, this.

Once the giggles had subsided, I decided to delve back into Allie's archives and read her posts from the beginning, which turned out to be the middle of last year. Her blog has evidently changed a lot over time, with it starting out as an opportunity for her to get the things that are seemingly racing around her head out onto a page and shared with the world as quickly as possible. She writes like I imagine her talking – quickly, enthusiastically, jumping from one subject to another and often getting distracted by something, veering off onto a complete tangent and oh look a squirrel that's nice isn't it? And she writes about everyday things people get excited about. Destroying snow. Getting drunk and going down a slide, only to find yourself giggling on the floor for a good few minutes afterwards. Grammar pedantry. Imagining monsters in the ice.

Okay, so some of the things she writes about aren't exactly "everyday" things. But at times, there's a beautiful, childlike innocence to the way she writes and at others, there's a wonderful sense of heartfelt sincerity and honesty. There'll be at least one story she tells on the pages of her blog that everyone can relate to, whether it's the description of her shower being incapable of anything except "lava water" or "liquid ice", the tales of her weird neighbour who always collars her for "therapy-time" or her account of the mission she went on to hijack someone's Wi-Fi just so she could post.

Peppered throughout the blog are more of her hugely expressive MS Paint creations, always there to support one of her stories in a hilariously visual manner. I haven't yet caught up with the "present day", but I guess (judging from the recent posts) at some point she started to move more towards the "humour" angle and further away from the "personal stories" angle. In some ways, this is a shame, as the stories she tells about herself are always incredibly entertaining, but fortunately she has a wonderful sense of comedy, too.

So if you're at a loose end, looking for something to read or want cheering up in a hurry, I strongly encourage you to go and check out Hyperbole and a Half. Be warned, though, once that sexy lion has her claws into you you won't want to let her go!

#oneaday, Day 98: Have You Heard...

It's always a pleasure to find something entertaining and new to enjoy. A little while back, I discovered Kevin Smith's podcast, or SModcast as he calls it. I'd been following Smith on Twitter for some time. He tweets a lot, and the fact that he makes all his replies public irritates some people, but I've always found him extremely entertaining. He's not afraid to speak his mind, at least, not on the Internet, as he claims he'd be a "pussy" in real life. I can identify with that. I speak my mind on the Internet too, but I sometimes find it difficult to do so face-to-face.

His podcast is such an entertaining listen because it has almost nothing in the way of structure. It's a simple case of him and at least one other person sitting down and chewing the fat (no pun intended) about something or other, usually something that's happened that week either in the news, or to the people involved personally. The talk is always spattered with absolute filth (even more so since his sponsorship deal with male sex toy maker Fleshlight) but it never seems to degenerate into total nonsense, despite Smith's love of sparking up a doobie in mid-recording. There's always a point, however much they may get off it throughout the course of their discussions.

The thing I love the most about the SModcast, though, is that it's like sitting down with Smith and Mosier (or whoever is sitting in for him) and enjoying a thoroughly silly chat with them. You know, the sort of chats you have with your friends late at night when the drinks have been flowing and the "party" atmosphere has died down a bit. The kind of conversation that usually starts with "You know, I found out the weirdest thing today…" and generally meanders throughout diverse topics, including complete nonsense, without really settling anywhere for some time. The kind of conversation that easily falls into fits of the giggles. And Smith often gets the giggles, big time. I think I enjoy his giggle fits more because his laugh reminds me a lot of an old friend from school that I unfortunately haven't seen for a long time now.

SModcast breaks every rule about what should be a "good" podcast, except for the "you should be regular" one. Smith and his team make sure there's something for fans to listen to regularly. Each one may be completely different in terms of subject matter (but it's a fair bet that there will be at least some mention of jerking off or anal sex in there) but they're always entertaining. And they're not always filthy, too. A couple of episodes a month or two back involved Smith talking to his mother and reminiscing about the "good old days". Smith isn't afraid to be a pottymouth in front of his mother, but the stories they told, despite their relative mundanity, were extremely compelling and interesting. Smith is nothing if not a good storyteller.

So if you want something interesting to listen to in the car or at the gym and don't mind a bit of filth creeping in here and there (yeah… it's totally not for kids) then you could certainly do far worse than show a fat man some support. Head over to SModcast.com and have a listen.

#oneaday, Day 94: Year 7, Years Later

Times change, especially when it comes to kids. As new parents inevitably say at some point or another, "they grow up so fast". One minute they're a mewling, puking, shitting machine that whinges and moans about everything. Then they move out of their teenage years and leave home.

I jest. Actually, no I don't, really.

I spent today doing supply teaching work for a local school. A local secondary school, to be as specific as I'm going to get in this post. As far as days at school go, I've had worse. Largely because I knew I was leaving at 3pm and that I was only there for a day, which meant that even if it was a nightmarish experience, I was going to escape pretty quickly anyway. This meant I could take a fairly relaxed attitude to the whole day and not get wound up by children who obviously do their very best to drive their teachers nuts at every opportunity. Water off a duck's back. It was a new feeling. I liked it.

What I didn't like so much was the discovery that Year 7 are into hardcore pornography, and aren't shy talking about it in rather loud voices in the middle of a music lesson.

Now, I may have led a somewhat sheltered existence being a rural, country village boy, but I don't think I even knew what "hardcore pornography" meant when I was in year 7. As I recall, most of my conversations in Year 7 revolved around whether the Sega Mega Drive or the Super NES was the best, and whether it was pronounced "Rye-oo" or "Ree-oo". Much like today, in fact. The most anything even vaguely sex-related came into conversation was if someone fancied someone else – and even then, it was never talked about in terms of sex, just in terms of an Alan Partridge-esque "ooh, I'd like to… kiss her". Oh, and there was the one time someone put a condom over a shower head in the boys' PE changing rooms and turned the water on. We were all delighted to discover that said prophylactic would reach all the way down to the floor if you kept filling it with water.

But no porn. At least, no-one talked about it, anyway.

Part of the reason for this shift in the, ahh, "interests" of 11-year olds is clearly due to the Internet. Most of the discussion that these kids were having (and ignoring requests to please shut up about it, I might add) revolved around the sites that they liked to visit. There was no shame in this discussion, no taking the piss out of each other that "urrgh, you're doing that so you can have a wank!" – just pure, unadulterated filth. From 11-year olds.

Now, all right, the area that the school in is, shall we say, not the best. But I was still pretty surprised and shocked to hear these sorts of things come out of the mouths of 11-year olds.

The regular teachers at this school seemingly weren't, however. "Miss says this class is sex-mad, sir. Sex-mad! Sex sex sex," one helpful young man informed me. I wasn't arguing.

The moral of this story, dear readers, is clear, then. If you're a parent, then for God's sake take an interest in what your kids are doing on the Internet. Talk to them about what is and isn't appropriate for them. By all means talk to them about offensive content and what they should do if they come across it (get your mind out of the gutter) but don't just leave them to their own devices. From that springs porn-addicted, shit-talking, ill-informed arseholes who will inevitably grow up to become /b/. And do you really want to create an entire generation of /b/?

#oneaday, Day 86: Tuesday Night Tweetup

Brief post tonight as it's late, I'm tired and a little drunk.

Went out to meet strangers tonight. This is weird, as it's something I'm not good at.

Fortunately, said strangers and I had something in common: Twitter. Yes, this was a "tweetup", a fine example of some Web 2.0 shit happening all ova yo' face. Or something. Numerous Twitter types from all over Southampton came together in the pretentious purple basement of "Dock Gate 4" to exchange polite greetings, drink things and gradually divide into "the iPhone corner" and the "not-iPhone corner".

I had a great time. I'd just recently started chatting to a couple of very fine and lovely ladies known as @neicey and @Amy_Walker thanks to our mutual love of pointless but super-addictive geocaching game/tourism thing Gowalla, and they convinced me to come along. Actually, for once, it didn't take very much arm-twisting. I often have a spaz attack at the last minute when presented with social situations – particularly those involving strangers – and decide that no, I don't really want to put myself in that uncomfortable position, thank you very much.

Tonight was a bit different though. I arrived and people were chatting. People chatted to me. I had things to say that people were interested in. (At least they seemed interested, anyway.) There were enough people there that there was a nice mix of different interests, but not so many that it turned into a Heavy Rain crowd scene with me having to hold down R1, X and batter the Triangle button to keep my cool. Which was nice. Apparently sometimes there are a lot more people there, but I feel that now I've gone to one and met some of these people (and now follow them on Twitter, naturally) I could face that same experience with a few more people there. Which is good!

Funny stories were told. Private jokes previously confined to the online realm were shared. And everyone was in agreement that the urinals in Dock Gate 4 are spectacular. They have a damn water feature behind them, for God's sake. One shudders to think where the water to produce this effect is recycled from, however. Perhaps it's best not to think about it too much.

Anyway. I feel it is time for my bed now, much as I would love to beat @neicey in another game of #stayingupthelatest. My eyes are closing of their own free will and the amount of Strongbow I drank is causing a pleasantly cloudy sensation in my brain. So on that note, good night to y'all.