#oneaday, Day 92: M.C. Tinny Distortion

It's mid-morning. You're sitting on the waterfront, looking out over the water, the slight morning breeze wafting through your hair and sending a slight chill over your skin. Not uncomfortably so, just enough for you to feel the wind's caresses and appreciate the sunshine when it does hit you all the more.

You can hear the water sploshing against the wall down below as it sloshes back and forth, back and forth, never still, always moving. You don't look into it too deeply as it's almost opaque with green crap and the filth from a million motorboats passing through the area, but right now it doesn't matter because this is your moment. You are, for once, at peace.

Then, a sound from over yonder. You can't quite make out what it is. It's quite harsh, and tinny, and… sounds a bit like Dizzee Rascal.

It is Dizzee Rascal. But a version of Dizzee Rascal that appears to be completely devoid of bass, just masses and masses of treble, so much so that the sound of the whole track is lost in a wash of what sounds awfully like white noise with a babbling idiot on top of it.

You frown at the tracksuit-clad young gentleman as we wanders past you with a similarly-attired companion. The sound seems to be coming from his pocket, and the two are talking and smoking. You frown a little harder, willing a pair of psychic daggers to fly out of your eyes and embed themselves firmly in the two boys' colons. Sadly, the sharp implements do not manifest themselves so you are reduced to making a distinctly middle-class tutting noise.

One of the boys turns around and gives you a sneer that seems to say "fahk off mush, you is such a neek init lol". You counter with a raised eyebrow which seems to say "I'm sorry. I don't understand your illiterate juvenilia. Kindly return from whence you came. And throw that noise-making monstrosity into the Solent while you're about it, you bally young scamp!"

The moment passed, the two boys wander into the distance, muttering something about "fahkin' neeks". Your little mental haven of calm shattered, you reluctantly get up and head for the ice-cream parlour in an attempt to drown your sorrows in a wash of soft ice-cream and crumbly chocolate.

Then you go home and cry.

Oh, why do people persist in doing this? Other than to annoy people like me, of course. There is no reason on God's green Earth for mobile phone speakers to exist. With GPS technology being what it is now, if your phone detects that you are outside, you should not be allowed to use its speakers.

I'm not just saying this to be a miserable bastard, though that is of course a big part of it. I'm saying this to encourage people to give music the respect it deserves. I hate Dizzee Rascal, shitty hip-hop and whiney R&B singers, but those artists spend a lot of time and money producing their work, so to completely remove any degree of production from the track by playing it through a 0.5 watt speaker roughly the size of one of your pubes seems rather… disrespectful, somehow.

And have you noticed that no-one is ever playing good music through their phone speakers? I'd still feel the same if I heard someone blasting some Maiden through their phone – that shit need to be loud, yo – but it'd be nice to hear something that isn't just for pasty white tracksuit-wearers to pretend that they're badass black gangstas from the hood to.

The cream of this, of course, is when said pasty white tracksuit-wearers decide that it's time for them to start their own rapping career and feel that a mobile phone provides an appropriate amount of rhythmic "oomph" to put behind their sorry attempts at rocking some rhymes. Sorry, buster, but you just look like a twat babbling crap in front of your pyjama-clad friends.

#oneaday, Day 91: Hipstamatic-o-matic

It's been a while since a photo post, so I thought I'd treat you all to one. (As if you care.)

Now, we all know that mobile phone cameras are crap. Put that hand down. All mobile phone cameras are crap. You can have all the megapixies in the world painting the little pictures inside your camera, but if you have a lens the size of a pin head and a sensor to match, you're going to get crap pictures. You might get slightly bigger crap pictures, but still crap pictures. You may well have a flash, which means you can take crap pictures in the dark. But they are still crap pictures. If you want to take good pictures, buy a proper camera and stop pissing about with phones.

With this in mind, some enterprising young individuals have created the Hipstamatic app for the legendarily-crap iPhone camera, promoting it with the tagline "Digital photography never looked so analog". The app simulates the titular 80s camera, complete with a selection of virtual lenses, films and flashes available for use. A few are included with the app, and others are sold via microtransaction within the app itself – though a friend discovered that by using the "shake to randomise" feature, you can actually make use of the premium equipment without having to pay for it. Sometimes it takes a bit of shaking to get the effect you want, though.

Anyway, the fact that the app is deliberately trying to simulate a thirty-year old camera means that the normally-crap cameras of mobile phones can be put to good use for once. Namely, rather than being in denial over the fact the iPhone camera is crap, the app embraces its crapness to produce a selection of stylised shots, most of which are way too dark, or overexposed, or coloured completely wrong, or have burnt edges, or too much vignetting, or… You get the idea. It basically gives you the opportunity to create the sort of pictures you see all the time on Tumblr at the touch of a button.

With that in mind, I went out for a little walk in the glorious sunshine today and ended up spending an hour taking pretentious photos of absolutely nothing of note whatsoever. But, should you be interested in the results of this clever little app, take a look at the gallery below:

There's more info on the Hipstamatic app here, and it's currently available from the App Store for the very reasonable price of one-pound-somethingorother.

#oneaday, Day 88: The Leaders' Debate

Our potential leaders had their first ever American-style televised debate tonight. And, for the most part, I think it was a resounding success as a format. There was every possibility that it would become car-crash television – ITV's cheap, nasty sets that looked like they were recycled from a 1980s episode of The Krypton Factor didn't help – but it wasn't. I was only half-watching due to being over at a friend's house, but the parts I saw looked pretty interesting.

Sure, the three party leaders continually came out with their favourite soundbites (so predictable were they, in fact, that Dave Turner came up with the Official Drinking Game of the Leaders' Debate right here) but as an opportunity to see the three of them at work in a non-Parliamentary situation it was a good thing. Nick Clegg, in particular, who has been the butt of numerous comedians' jokes for being the "third place" candidate, doomed to obscurity by not being leader of one of the "big two" parties, came across rather well. And opinion polls conducted after the programme aired suggested that well over 40% of viewers felt that Clegg "won" the debate. Of course, there are two more to go yet, and some have suggested that Cameron and Brown were too concerned with getting their claws into each other to consider Clegg a threat this time. Perhaps it will all change next time and be more of a fight for the LibDem leader. But, importantly, this debate showed that he is indeed a contender in the coming fight.

Twitter was fun to watch. The #leadersdebate hashtag had an entertaining mix of jokes but also some decent discussion and commentary, too. A large number of tweets seemed to be very positive towards the LibDems, too, so could this perhaps be taken as an indication that change is a-comin'? Or is it just a sign that most people on Twitter are LibDem supporters? Who knows.

One thing's for sure: this election is actually going to be worth watching for once. Many of our politicians are stuffy, boring, corrupt arseholes and this fact normally switches me off entirely from the whole thing. But this time around, it's going to be quite a fight for the top spot, I think. (He says, from his woefully ill-informed position.) It's certainly not a foregone conclusion by any means, and many people are already talking about the possibility of a hung Parliament. I can't even begin to imagine how they'll get anything done if that happens, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how things go.

And, you know, vote.

#oneaday, Day 87: Staying Up The Latest

I don't know why I like staying up late. Perhaps years of doing so have buggered up my body clock beyond all recognition. But I know for a fact that I can happily occupy myself until two, three in the morning without feeling any ill effects. Okay, sure, sometimes actually getting up the next morning is a traumatic experience, but for the most part there are few ill effects.

I've even pulled a couple of all-nighters in the past, but usually only when necessary. Okay, sometimes when I'm alone in the house and there's a really good game/film/DVD box set to get through. But mostly when it's necessary. The last one, I think, was before a trip over to Toronto to meet several members of The Squadron of Shame. We'd recorded a podcast shortly before our trip, so being chief edit dude, I took it on myself to get it done before the trip. And I did.

I think my favourite staying up late memory, though, is the time I was at university and received a text message from a friend at approaching 2AM.

"Are you awake?" it said.

"Yes," I replied.

"Good," came the message back. "Because we're downstairs. Want to come to the beach?"

I turned off my computer – I think I was playing Baldur's Gate II at the time (a game I am yet to finish, incidentally) – and headed downstairs. Sure enough, there was the car, ready to go. And we did indeed head to the beach.

Now, those of you who know Southampton will know that, despite being on the waterfront, there are no beaches. So "going to the beach" involves a not-inconsiderable drive through the New Forest, which gets rather dark at night-time. Still, we made it safely in the end, and found ourselves on a completely deserted beach after 2AM.

It was strangely eerie and beautiful at the same time. The night was cold but clear, so the moonlight lit up the beach quite nicely. It wasn't the nicest beach in the world – very few beaches in the UK are any more – but it was our private little hideaway for that short amount of time we spent there.

No-one had the guts to actually go for a swim, but a few among our number had a paddle before running out rather quickly due to the extreme coldness. Eventually, we tired of the dark beach and went home having not really achieved anything, save putting a memory in our minds that will last for a very long time.

There's a How I Met Your Mother episode called "Nothing Good Happens After 2AM". It is nonsense. Awesome things happen after 2AM.

#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.

#oneaday, Day 85: The Artist Formerly Known as Top Searches

I was all set to do a post on the top search terms on my blog today, after Rhiarti did such a good one the other day. But it turns out that they're rather mundane, sadly. Still, I've started now, so let's get this over with.

Turtles in Time Reshelled

I wrote one post about this. One post about this game and it's been consistently in the top search results for my blog ever since. You really want to read it? Knock yourself out – it's here. Actually, you know what? I remember being quite pleased with that post. I guess I should be flattered that so many people are looking for it. Thank you for your support, everyone.

Pete Davison

My name! Amazing. I was genuinely surprised to see that the second-to-top search result was actually my name. Apparently people are looking for me. Given that I am looking for work, I assume that this is a good thing. That or my mother is taking an over-active interest in Googling me.

Divine Divinity

I was something of an evangelist for this excellent PC RPG a while back. It's excellent. Read more here. And then go buy it on Good Old Games. Avoid its sequel though, which is less good.

no.one.lives.forever

I don't know why the searcher put dots in the name. But this game is another that I wrote a few posts about a while back, and the term has stayed in my search results in various forms ever since. Also a great game, and a reminder of when first-person shooters had remembered what "fun" meant.

divine communication tumblr

Now this one I have genuinely no idea about. It's a kind of hideous cross-breed of several different posts – most likely this one, this one and this one. But quite why someone felt the need to search for those three words together is anyone's guess. Maybe they thought God keeps a Tumblr. Probably called "fuckyeahomniscience.tumblr.com". I wouldn't be surprised if that actually existed.

The next three are search terms just from yesterday. These are much more interesting.

doctor who spitfires won't work in space

Of course they won't. That doesn't stop it being awesome.

farmville co-op what happens if you let

No! Don't stop there! I want to know what the rest of that question was. Don't be shy. "What happens if you let…" what? Your sheep run amok? Your crops wither and die? Your child have easy access to your credit card for the purchasing of premium items?

highest lvl in borderlands

50. You're welcome.

Right. Enough. Good night!

#oneaday, Day 81: The Unspoken and NSFW Language of Gentlemen

[Warning: This post involves crudely-drawn pictures of dicks and the discussion thereof, and is thereby probably unsafe for work.]

There are two unspoken understandings between men. One of them is this:

[EDIT: Dear Channel 4. I'm trying to promote your material. Why not let me embed a video of one of the funniest scenes to ever be shown on television? Grrruuuuu.]

And the other, less safe for work one, is this:

I have no idea what it is with guys and dick drawing. But there's something universally understood by it. Perhaps this sketch wasn't far from the truth:

…though to be perfectly honest, I don't remember that lesson myself. Maybe it gets erased from your mind, like Men in Black.

I do remember, though, sitting next to a kid named Daniel in my first year at secondary school. It was a Humanities lesson and for some inexplicable reason we took it on ourselves to draw at least one cock on every single page of a textbook called "Discovering the Past". And we succeeded without being spotted. It was a triumphant moment for the pair of us, and one we never quite managed to recapture the magic of. The book just lent itself to obscene drawings. On one page, there was some sort of flask which Daniel thought was ideally suited for a bell-end to poke out of the end of. And for some inexplicable reason, he added a speech bubble reading "I SCREAM! I SCREAM!"

That image has stuck with me for many a year. I'm not quite sure what I should make of that. And you're probably not quite sure, either. I apologise.

Still, the fact is that doodling cocks on pieces of scrap paper is something that remains appealing to a large proportion of the male population. There are those who do it and admit to it, and there are those who do it and don't admit to it. If you speak to a man and he denies ever having drawn a crude todger on a bit of loose paper, he's probably lying. I personally consider it a sign of close friendship when you're able to not only hurl light-hearted obscenities at each other verbally, but visually too. Of course, there's absolutely no question of any real tallywhackers being whipped out – that would be, as the kids say, "a bit gay". But if you're with male friends, at a loose end – particularly when you've been drinking – and there's some loose paper around, just see what happens. I have numerous photographs of whiteboards we had in our house that will attest to this. No, I won't burn your eyes with those right now.

I should probably be faintly ashamed of my sex's predilection towards drawing its own genitalia. Knobs aren't, after all, the most photogenic things that there are. But in some ways, it's nice to recapture that inner child with a childish doodle of a dong.

I hereby apologise for the crudeness of the above post. But I have been drinking. And I needed something to write about. And since our drunken game of Munchkin tonight involved just as much drawing of obscenities on pieces of paper as it did actually playing the game, this seemed as good as anything.

Good night to you. *tips hat*

#oneaday, Day 80: Lift! And down. And lift! And down.

I started "playing" EA Sports Active again the other day, having got out of shape during my abortive attempt to return to classroom teaching. And yes, I blame the latter for the former. Partly because the 80-mile round trip daily commute I was doing meant I got back too late to go to the gym, and also that the stress caused tiredness and lack of motivation. Finding myself currently with relatively little to do (it's the Easter holidays, so I'm going to have to wait for supply teaching work) I decided to start it up again.

Those who have known me a while know that I used to keep a blog here. I'm thinking I may start using that again, as it was an excellent self-motivation tool. Even if others weren't particularly interested in reading about how many chest presses I'd managed that day, the act of writing that stuff down helped.

EASA takes a similar approach by constantly offering you feedback and achievable goals. God, I feel like an obnoxious management-type just saying those words, but it's true. For once. Start on the app's "30 Day Challenge" programme and you're automatically set some goals – a number of calories to burn in your first week, a total number of hours to achieve in the month and a number of workouts to successfully complete in the first week. You can also create your own goals, which is nice – though I'm quite happy with the ones it's set for me so far. There's also an Achievement-like trophy system that rewards you for completing workouts, burning certain numbers of calories, completing certain exercises several times – it's surprising how motivating adding these "game-like" elements is.

EASA also has the benefit of actually working. Unlike Wii Fit's all-you-can-eat buffet of exercise with no structure whatsoever (though I understand the Plus edition fixes this), EASA gives you a decent structured workout to do that isn't the same each day. Some days you'll be concentrating on the lower body and doing things that will make your thighs hurt for days afterwards. Other days you'll be using the included twangy red band to work on your arms. The band itself isn't very strong, so I've taken to wearing wrist weights while undertaking the workouts. They're not THAT heavy, but they add enough additional challenge to be able to feel the strain a little bit.

EASA will also get you breaking a sweat quite quickly. Again, unlike Wii Fit, whose only really challenging portion came in the bizarrely featureless monochrome world of the yoga and muscle exercises. Today I had a lot of jumping around, which looked ridiculous, but which was also genuinely hard work. This is good. If I come off a workout feeling tired, then I feel like I've achieved something. It may not be the most pleasant thing to be sitting there sweating, but hey.

Anyway, I shall be continuing with my 30 Day Challenge and seeing where it takes me. I'm also going to try and pick up my gym routine. Motivation!

Now, if only all this stuff I was doing was earning some money, I'd be sorted.

#oneaday, Day 79: Morning!

Good morning! 2am today. BED ERROR.

Actually, I have a marginally good reason for it this time – I was waiting up to see if there was a response from a PR representative for an article I was writing. This is something I've not had to do before. I probably didn't need to wait up quite so late as I did (and play a bit of Game Room) but, well what are you going to do? (The PR rep did respond in the end, incidentally.)

So… what to talk about this time? How about the election, seeing as how it's on everyone's lips and Twitter feeds at the moment. Unless you're not British, in which case you probably couldn't give a damn what feckless idiot steps up to the plate to run our country further into the ground.

It's going to be a strange election this time around. The government we've had in for the last God-knows-how long ("Labour", for the non-British readers out there, a party traditionally associated with socialism but which has seen something of a drift towards the middle as time has gone on) has disillusioned rather a lot of people. The fact our leader is one of the most uncharismatic, doublespeak-speaking arses in British politics at the moment (not to mention the fact that we didn't elect him) has, amongst other things, pissed off a lot of people who are ready for a change.

But the alternatives… we have the Conservative party (traditionally the "other side" to Labour, but which has again drifted rather towards the middle as time has passed) fronted by Captain Middle Class, also known as David Cameron. To give him credit where it's due, Cameron is a better public speaker than Gordon Brown, but he is unashamedly and completely middle-class which I can't help feeling is going to count against him. While there are a lot of middle-class people in this country, there are also a lot of working class people who think he's nothing but a posh git. Hell, there are plenty of middle-class people who think he's a posh git, too. Smarmy, overly-Photoshopped advertising campaigns haven't helped, either.

Then there's the Liberal Democrats, aka "the ones that never get in". Traditionally, people have voted LibDem when they don't like the other two. There's going to be a lot of that this time around, with Labour having disillusioned a lot of people with the failures of the last thirteen years and the Conservatives alienating entire socioeconomic groups by being incredibly white and middle class. It, sadly, wouldn't be surprising to see more radical parties like the BNP (aka "the racist ones") get more of a foothold in Parliament.

Of course, I'm stating all this without any great understanding of the whole proceedings. This is just my opinion. But early buzz seems to suggest that we may well end up with a "hung Parliament" this time around, with no party holding a clear majority. I have no idea what that means for the country. It might actually make this election interesting for once, though.

Pity none of our politicians have the charisma of Obama. Whatever you may think of the President's policies, you can't argue with the fact that the man knows how to speak to a crowd.

#oneaday, Day 77: Who?

Back to after midnight again. Whoops. Oh well.

Watched the new Doctor Who today, a day late, but fortunately it was repeated on the normally-awful BBC3. It's a cracking start to the new series, and enough to make me want to watch again. Jane and I missed most of the last series as we kind of got out of the habit of watching it, but this first episode was good enough for Jane to want to watch it twice.

Matt Smith, despite everyone's initial misgivings, makes an excellent new Doctor with just the right amount of quirkiness to hearken back to previous iterations of the hero and still make the role his own. Early scenes see him clearly channeling Tennant, which hardcore fans will tell you is actually just how it should be, as the new incarnation of the Doctor adjusts to his new body and life. By the end of the episode, he's found his own individual style, though, a style rich with sarcastic one-liners and slightly supercilious grins. But never obnoxious. It's a fine line between "wacky" and "irritating" and Smith treads it well.

New assistant Amy Pond, too, despite driving Daily Mail readers wild with either indignation or sexual frustration – they don't seem to be able to make their mind up either way – is a fine addition to the lineup of companions. She's feisty and sassy and, yes, has lovely legs. Plus, much as everyone is brought up to believe that redheads are somehow subhuman, you can't possibly tell me that this (right) isn't a fine example of spectacularly hot womanhood?

All right. I have a mild redhead "thing". But it's under control and I can quit any time I want.

Uhh, what was I talking about again?

Oh, right, Doctor Who. Yes, this first episode was great fun, alternating between moments of comedy (with the already oft-quoted "You're Scottish – fry something" clearly the best line in the show) and ridiculously overblown "OMG THE WURLDZ IZ ENDINGZ" drama. There was a great soundtrack, too, giving this first episode a suitably epic feel despite being largely based in an idealised version of quaint English country life.

The seeds have been sown for this season's plot arc, too, with something about "Silence will fall" clearly being an omen of what is to come. Plus the trailer totally spoiled that there will be Daleks, Cybermen, vampires and Spitfires involved at some point. Oh, and the Spitfires are in space. YES!

Approval on Twitter and around the web has been almost universally positive so far. The Daily Mail article linked to above has been the only negative comment I have seen so far, citing unnamed "message boards" and "forums" as its source, so perhaps take it with a pinch of salt – or more likely a handful, this being the Mail and all.

I'll certainly be interested to see where the series goes from here. And no, not just because of the delectable Amy Pond. It looks like thoroughly silly and epic fun, which is just what Doctor Who should be. If you haven't seen it yet, the first episode is still available on BBC iPlayer at the time of writing. So what are you waiting for?