It has been a long, long time since I got any chain mail. I’m not sure if this is because my spam filter is picking it all up, or people have actually become so stupid that they no longer know how to click the forward button, and thus can’t send any chain mail on unless simple instructions to do so are in the actual message.

Hey it is tara and john the directors of MSN, sorry for the interruption but msn is closing down. this is because too many inconsiderate people are aking up all the name (eg making up lots of different accounts for just one erson), we only have 578 names left. If you would like to close your account, DO NOT SEND THIS MESSAGE ON. If you would like to keep your account, then SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. This is no joke, we will be shutting down the servers. Send it on, thanks. WHO EVER DOES NOT SEND THIS MESSEAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE CLOSED AND YOU WILL COST
10.00 A MONTH TO USE. SEND THIS TO EVERYONE ON YOUR CONTACT LIST. NOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. PLEASE DO NOT FORWARD THIS or REPLAY. COPY THE WHOLE EMAIL. GO BACK TO YOUR INBOX AND CLICK ON NEW. AND PASTE THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. It’s no joke if you don’t believe me then go to the site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1189119.stm) and see for yourself. Anyways once you’ve sent this message to at least 18 contacts, your msn dude
will become blue.

I actually got a very similar e-mail to this one back in January 2006, so perhaps they are on some sort of rota. Regardless, I really can’t comprehend how stupid someone has to be to actually believe this and send it on to their friends; the language alone looks as if it was written by a 12 year old dyslexic boy that wets himself and has a bizarre compulsion to chew on anything bright and made of plastic. Well, that practically sums up the intellectual capabilities of the vast majority of internet users anyway, doesn’t it?

I’m actually finding it hard to rip this one apart. It’s just so stupidly written that I have to sit here quite perplexed by the overwhelming stupidity of the people who read these and send them on. How do they actually live? How do they manage to walk the earth and butter their toast in the morning without falling into the cupboard or putting their socks on their elbows? The fact that they are able to sit at a computer and click a few buttons is nothing short of a miracle, really.

Anyway, I had better go and send this to 18 people so that my MSN dude turns blue. I wouldn’t want to be charged 10.00 or become victim to 2001’s news.

I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.3 and I put a somewhat minimalist theme together. I’ll make a few changes, but I quite like the simplicity of it.

Has it ever occurred to you that cats are entirely incapable of imagining that there is nothing interesting behind a closed door? It’s as if they believe that if a door is closed, somebody is hiding something interesting from them, and from that moment onwards they make it their soul purpose to shout strange, incomprehendable words at the door, until the secrets beyond are revealed.

This usually happens when the person inside the room becomes tired of a cat shouting at a door and opens it, at which point the cat bounds in like a melodramatic gay rabbit on a trampoline, and begins to inspect the room rather thoroughly, occasionally announcing its presence in a very “Yes, I am here.” manner.

I wonder if, in the future, we will have technologies that allow us to translate what animals say into a language we understand. I wonder what a cat says when it is standing outside the magical entrance to the treasures beyond.

“Hey man! Open the door! Dude, open the door, please! I gotta see what’s behind it, maaaan! Whatcha hidin’? Whatcha hidin’ from me, man? Open the dooooor! Duuuuude! Open it, pleaseee! I gotta see! I gotta see what’s behind it! What’s behind the door! Tell me, man! Are you hidin’ somethin’? You got kittie drugs!? Kittie drugs, and you’re hidin’ them from me, ,man!? C’mon! Open. The. Door!”

Perhaps Lost in Translation, from my previous post, can help us.

_ man of hé! It opens the door! The type, the door, satisfied is
opened! I took by, for what_s of vedergli, maaaan! Hidin de Whatcha of
hidin of Whatcha _ _ of me, man? It opens the dooooor! Duuuuude! It
opens it, pleaseee! I took to traverse, the end to see! I took to
traverse, for what_s of vedergli! What_s behind the door! Legend I,
man! , you he are, hidin of somethin _ _ this that you kept them to
drugs from the kittie! Drugs of Kittie and hidin of you_re _ he of me,
man! C_mon! Opened. Carriers! _

I love my cat, but sometimes I do wish he could become ethereal or something. Having a cat that could become temporarily non-corporeal to pass through doors would be pretty awesome.

My friend TigerDX pointed me to this website, which basically translates the text you input back and fourth from English through 5 different languages. It displays the result of each translation so that you can see the stages. The results are very, very funny.

Here are some of mine:

Original English Text:
If a cat ate a banana and then sicked on a tree, the tree would be most displeased and would probably spend the rest of the day quite irritated.

Translated back to English:
If a then cat to eat a banana and in a tree sicked, the tree to be of
the forehead and the rest of the caused newspaper very happens
probably.

Original English Text:
The spoon was on the table that was in the room that was painted brown that had a door that was made of chalk in a house in the jungle amongst the trees filled with apples under the sky that glittered purple

Translated back to English:
The spoon was in the vector, that one that it was in the space, that
was brown was painted, which one had a door, that one was given to
form is of the chalk in a house in giungla under the trees, that one
fulled above of apples under the sky, that has ignited high-red

Original English Text:
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?

Translated back to English:
How much a cramp of marmot of America works with wood, if marmot of
America that a wood would play

Original English Text:
Knock Knock?
Who’s there?
Repeat.
Repeat who?
Who who who who who…

Translated back to English:
Effect of the effect? Here who is? Retort. You relaunch, of whom? Who
the one that this…

This is fantastic!

Interjections generally have no grammatical purpose, and are just used to express emotion, yet when you speak to someone online, typically the word “lol” is uttered more time than you’d imagine the participants of a conversation to be able to laugh.

Therefore, I am going to (attempt to) abstain from using the acronym “lol” when talking to other people.

Too often do I see people use it as just a simple reply, when not even a smile can be seen on their lips.

This is my rebellion.

A few weeks ago I bought Guitar Hero 3 off of a friend. I’ve never really played it much, but when I got it playing through it on Medium wasn’t overly challenging, though there were a few struggle moments. However, I did get a weird RSI that I have never gotten from playing the guitar.

The thing I find hardest when playing Guitar Hero is the chord shapes. Obviously the “picking” technique is very different to that of a guitar, but I find the chord shapes where you have to hold down two buttons, especially when they’re far apart, quite unnatural.  I suppose this is primarily because when I have to play those shapes, I treat them as power chords on a guitar, but moving up and down the neck becomes very difficult, especially when I try to play on Hard mode, which I just can’t do.

Now, I’m not one of these people that says “Oh yeah? Well I can play that song on a real guitar!” because honestly, there are very few similarities between Guitar Hero and a guitar. Personally I find that songs on Guitar Hero are much harder to play than on the guitar, but perhaps that’s just because I have been playing the guitar for a fair few years now.

Having completed the game on Medium, I’m trying to progress through Hard, but playing the chord shapes is giving me real trouble. I’m simply wondering if other guitarists have played the guitar and thought that they might be having difficulty because they have played the guitar for quite a while.

I’m not really looking for an excuse as to why I suck at the game, more looking for an answer to whether being a guitarist can effect your skill on Guitar Hero.

What do you think?

Why do people see it necessary to walk around, and get everyone else to walk around, as if they just spent the night stretching their cheeks across their face in an attempt to win the annual freak teeth-exposure competition?

I’m not fucking depressed, okay?  I just don’t see the need to walk around grinning at everything like the voice in your head says “Say cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese” from the moment you wake up.

Smiling should only be necessary when something is funny, or something makes you smile. The rest of the time you shouldn’t have to force a smile to confirm the fact you’re in a good mood. I don’t smile that often, it’s true. That doesn’t mean I’m a depressed lunatic bumbling about in a world populated by teeth-showing idiots.

Get over it.

As many of you know I went for an interview and got the job working as a Copy Processor at the local newspaper office. I started on Monday.

The office is huge, and I mean huge. It reminded me of the typical American offices you see in movies, only without the cubicles. There are two floors, and the top floor is just a big open-plan office. The department I was working in was right in the middle. The canteen was down a staircase about 15′ away from me, so the smell of the chef’s finest lingered about, mixed with the cold cigarette smell of a few of my colleagues, who frequently went outside to increase their chances of getting cancer.

The position wasn’t something I was overly interested in. Simply receiving adverts from clients in a few different formats, and having to insert them into their database so that the other departments can do things with them before they are printed. Basically, the department I was in acted as the link between client and company. So, naturally the position involved a lot of typing, which isn’t something I was bothered about as I can type relatively quickly.

After about 4 or 5 hours into my first day, having finished learning how their system works in about 20 minutes and already wanting to approach the IT department to tell them to stop being lazy fuckers and make a lot more of the stuff they have to do computer-based, I hated it. The thing with working in such a busy department is the fact that everybody is so busy, there is no time for interaction except for at lunch time, and even then most people are busy doing something, usually eating at their desks. On top of that, the majority of the people in my department were socially starved people who couldn’t really talk about much other than the soaps that were on the night before. If you’re working in a position that really doesn’t mentally grip you, you need something else to cling on to, to make the position interesting and fulfilling. I began to question how long I would actually be working there.

I left at 6pm, relatively tired because I had done nothing but flat-out mundane work for the whole time I was there, part a 20 minute lunch break. My mind had been damaged, and instead of my imagination being filled with unicorns, rainbows and butterflies, all I could see were spelling errors. I visualised myself being tied up and placed above a fire as apostrophes danced around me and prodded me with sticks, and I realised that I had practically taken a head-first dive into dealing with people who write things like “pea’s”.

I was actually quite depressed, and felt rather run down for the rest of the evening. When I found out I got the job I was excited, and my family and friends were pleased too, so telling them that I already hated the job felt like I was letting them down. I tried to put on a smile, and didn’t let on that I disliked it as much as I did, but I feel my Mum got the gist.

When I woke up on Tuesday morning I didn’t feel so great. I felt sick and had a bit of a headache. Tallis left for college, and I bumbled around emotionlessly, getting ready for work. When I was about to leave, my heart went crazy and I had a panic attack. It lasted for ages, and there wasn’t anybody to calm me down. It was interrupted by me managing to run to the bathroom and throwing up, and then falling asleep for a couple of hours. That hadn’t happened since around August time, when I really wasn’t enjoying my time at COSMIC anymore, and simply felt so drained and down because I had to go to work Monday to Friday, not getting enough sleep, etc.

So, I contacted the agency and said that unfortunately I would like to step down from the position, because the experience showed me that it’s really not what I am looking for, and here I am. Sitting at my PC, having woken up an hour ago, feeling somewhat jaded and like I have let a lot of people down.

I had to take a few typing speed tests recently, but coincidentally my friend Nemphtis linked me to this one, which I haven’t seen before. Here is my result (first go):

People are often surprised by my typing speed. I suppose some of the speed and dexterity come from playing the guitar, though in honesty I’m not an insanely fast guitarist. Also, I don’t touch type; I simply know where all of the keys are. I could actually type a lot faster if I could coordinate all of my fingers and my thumbs. I only type using the index and middle finger on both hands. I use my left hand pinky for the shift key, and my right hand ring finger for the return key, and apparently just move quite fast.

Anyway, have a go at this typing test and see how you do. Type or link your results in a comment.

On another note, I have tried to make sure that I spend 10 minutes or so of my day on www.freerice.com. By getting the definition of a word correct, it loads the next question and another advert. Each time an advert is displayed, a donation is made (in simplicity). It’s good for improving your vocabulary, and you are actually contributing, as opposed to the company sitting on a big pile of cash and simply wasting your time.

As you may or may not know, I have been floating around in the unemployed world for the past few months. It hasn’t been all bad, but unfortunately there aren’t many companies that want to employ an 18 year old that is aspiring to be a journalist/website developer without the required experience or qualifications.

During my time off, I somewhat selfishly refused to apply for job seeker’s allowance, and all of that. That was primarily because I really didn’t want to condemn myself to actually being unemployed. I’ve always seemed to find a way of worming my way out of tight situations, and things generally go my way, so that would have been the last nail in the somewhat repressing coffin.

At the end of last year I managed to land some freelance website development work, which I am working on now. I hope to get more of that throughout the year; but as a great start to the new year, I applied for a job at the Express and Echo (the Exeter newspaper company) through an agency called Spring. I first went for an interview with the agency, where I had to fill in plenty of forms and such things, and then got offered an interview for the position. About thirty minutes or so after the interview, I was offered the job.

The position involves working in the copy control department of the company, which is quite large, part-time (Monday – Wednesday, 10am – 6pm). During that time I have to extract text and images, amend them if necessary, and insert them into a database relevant to the newspaper they’re being published in. There is a lot of terminology and a lot of acronyms to learn, but I think it will be quite an experience. The majority of the day will just be data input from one source to another, which isn’t the most exciting thing in the world – but as one of my previous colleagues used to say every time I had to set about a mundane task, “it’s all character building”.

I’m still hoping to get into a journalism role at some point, but this at least gives me an income, and adds another line and another reference on my CV. Perhaps there will be a way of progressing through the company, all will be revealed on Monday when I start.