Uhhh - not again

I'm a member of a site called Urbis.

Urbis is a writer's forum, but not in the sense of normal internet forums (though it does have one of those) but more along the lines of a writer's group like you might get as part of a teaching course. The jist is that you post up pieces of your work, and then other writers offer critique.

Now, there are quite a few of these types of site on the intarwebs, but what sets Urbis apart is their use of a credit system. This works like money - for every review you write you get credits, which you then have to spend to unlock the reviews people do of your own work.

It's quite simple, but very clever (as are all the best ideas) because what it means is that everybody is forced to contribute in order to get what they want - critique of their own work. Normally on writer's sites, everybody posts their stuff, but nobody bothers reading or reviewing it. And if they do review it, then they simply give you slap on the back and tell you you're great - even if you're not.

At Urbis, because you have to pay for reviews and the system is finely balanced so that, very roughly speaking, one review you write unlocks one review of your own work, if someone gives you a rubbish review, you can ask for a refund and then spend the points getting at reviews that actually help you improve your work. Also, things are done anonymously, so you can't really be prejudiced when writing reviews.

However, and this isn't really a complaint about the system, I do seem to find myself making exactly the same points over and over again.

There's a book called "Techniques of the Selling Writer" by Dwight Swain, and what this book does is to lay out all the fundamentals of modern fiction writing. One of the points made in the book is actually that there's no such thing as a set of hard-and-fast rules, but as far as these things go, that's what he gives you - a set of basic rules, the mastery of which will set you in good stead.

Some of the absolute basic ones are:

• Show, don't tell;
• Nothing happens at the same time - only sequentially; and of course
• Review your work several times before you show it to anyone (for both spelling/grammar and sense).

And I seem to have to keep making those same points about things I read on Urbis over and over again.

But the worst part is that I was the same when I started - someone on Urbis told me about the book. So in many ways I feel honour bound to pass this information on and tell them about the book, but it doesn't half get depressing when within the first 5 sentences of a 5,000 word piece someone has done all three of the above :(.

42

I've tried not to include politics in the blog as, well, it's not all that interesting, but I've been kinda intrigued by the issues over the extension of the detention without charge powers to 42 days.

In theory this power is only for use with terror suspects and will allow police to detain them for up to 42 days without charging them. This is important as, since the signing of Magna Carta way back in the early 1200's, every person arrested or detained by Police in England has had the right to be released unless charged within 24 hours.

It's called Habeas Corpus and it's essentially seen as a fundamental human right. They cannot hold you without formally accusing you of an actual crime. It's important because it's what separates us from despotism and dictatorship - this is your real and actual freedom that people who talk about freedom actually mean when it comes down to it.

This power to hold was extended for those suspect of terrorism up to 28 days a while back now, and has recently been approved for extension up to 42 days by the House of Commons.

Really, this, for me, is a very scary thing, because it's the thin end of the wedge. Where does it go next? What other suspects of crimes might start to have longer periods of detention? How long does it become? 84 days? 168 days? 365 days? As long as the police need in order to manufacture evidence?

But the really scary thing is that, apparently, surveys indicate three quarters of the UK population agree with the move. To me, that's staggering, and it seems it's because it's about terrorism.

For some reason, people have become so brainwashed about terrorism that they somehow feel it is okay to abuse people's human rights because of it. And here's the key point in this - these people are suspects. They have not necessarily committed a crime.

There seems to be an attitude that if you're arrested for terrorism then you must be guilty. But what about those that aren't guilty? This is the fundamental point about freedom and why it is so important - everyone has the right to due process. Even the bad guys.

Of course, to some extent, I believe it to be a little academic, as I don't see why the house of lords won't just throw the law out the window, but bizarrely, this means that the unelected part of our democratic process is better able to safeguard our rights than our actual elected representatives :/.

bring on the rain

Following on from yesterday's bloggage, it's been so sunny, I washed my car yesterday evening. Such are the advantages of the lighter evenings in summer.

But then, guess what? It's rained overnight. How come that always happens? If I wash my car, it's almost guaranteed to rain on it :/.

I also took the opportunity as the family I lodge with are off on holiday right now. I always prefer to wash my car when they're not around. Partly, that's cos I'm so fat and unfit I get a real sweat on and it's a little embarrassing if they can see me, but mainly it's cos I don't want to talk to them about it.

I noticed the first few times that every time I went to to wash my car one of them would pop out for a chat about said car washing activity. Now, as I say, bit embarrassing with me panting and sweating, but also it would always start with that joke.

You may know the joke I mean - it's the "you can wash mine while you're at it" joke. For some reason this joke always really annoys me. No, you can wash your car, and I'll wash mine. How about that?

It's a silly thing and I've no idea why it gets my ire up so much, but there it is.

New monthly Japanese mags are on the way apparently :) and I think I've broken the back of my previously mentioned obsessiveness. Now I just need to drag my overdraft back into the black.

fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun

It's been really sunny and warm here the last three or four days.

Now normally I would be struggling with this. Being one big-arsed fat fuck, hot weather is generally not the most comfortable thing for me. My eyes are also very sensitive to bright light, so I end up squinting and still being nearly blind. Also, I need a lot of sleep every night and I find it difficult to get to sleep if it's warm and sticky. Hot is almost always accompanied by sticky in this country.

However, at the moment I'm actually kinda enjoying the hot weather.

The reason is that the last 2 years have been really bad weather wise. Now I kinda like rainy days, but this last couple of years it's rained almost continuously, with entire weeks of torrential downpours.

I also prefer it cooler, but this last couple of years it's been bone-chillingly cold. Even in spring and autumn I've had to have my heating on full blast, which is unusual for me. On top of which fuel costs have spiralled, of course, so it's been costing a small fortune.

So given all that, I'm almost glad it's sunny and warm - even if it's just because it represents something of a change :/.

scanning

Scanning stuff is a bit of an odd activity.

Well, it's not odd as such, but when you do it a lot, and you do it for a particular area like anime as I do, you end up with some slightly peculiar attitudes.

I mean, the fundamental truth is that the things you scan are not your own, as such. You scan artwork that was made by someone else and probably took them quite a lot of time, effort and a whole heap of talent.

But it's you that buys the book and, in the case of anime, has to pay quite a lot, since it all comes out of Japan. And at some level as the end consumer you're going to be the one paying the shipping costs, even if you buy it from a company local to your country.

So you're investing quite a bit of money.

Then, in my case, and I know I'm more at the extreme end, you take this book apart (you pull out the staples or use an iron to melt the glue and then slowly pull the pages apart). This is actually quite a time consuming process.

But what's even more time consuming is that you have to actually scan it. I have an A3 scanner so there's not much I have to do in more than one pass, but still, you need to scan at quite a high resolution - at least 400dpi - and that means it takes a good minute or so per page. Multiply that by, on average, around 100 pages, and you can see scanning a book can take around another 1.5 hours.

Having scanned them, you generally have to process them before you can save them. Often times this means rotating them slightly so that they're properly vertical, cropping off unwanted parts outside of the page, and maybe adjusting the levels slightly to compensate for colour problems. More time and effort.

If you're a real nutter you'll even go through the process of cleaning and tidying up the scan - if it's a 2 -page spread sticking it together, for example. If you do that it can take hours.

Then you save as a high quality file. Now if you're doing this as a dedicated activity, you're going to amass a lot of scans pretty damn quickly. That means a lot of big files, so you need some way to store them. For me that meant buying an entire external hard drive to put them on. But not only that, you need to back them up as well. That means burning them all to CD/DVD.

In other words, you have to pay money again to store the scans, as well as the time and effort spent archiving them in this way.

So my point, in summary, is that scanning artbooks (and magazines) in any serious capacity is not a quick and easy thing to do. It takes time, money and effort. And as such, what tends to happen is that you kinda become attached to the scans.

As I say, they're not "yours" as such, but you start to feel that at some level they are yours. It's your effort that's gone into making them.

And this is sort of where the problems start.

Because having done the actual scanning, most scanners then want to display their work on websites. This can take several forms - they may upload it to a public site (minitokyo, AnimePaper, for example) or they may have their own site (APA, ferricorp, for example). If you upload to public sites then normally it means you'll have to do some additional processing on the scan. The actual scan you made will probably too big for the public site and may also need additional tidying up. More time and effort. If you have your own site then you may not do quite so much tidying up, but you have to pay for the site. It costs money to have internet hosting.

But anyway, the fundamental issue here is that the scans become available for other people to download.

Other people who have absolutely no appreciation of the time, effort and expense that went into making those scans.

Other people who will re-upload your scans onto other websites, claiming to have made them themselves (or at least, not saying who did make them).

Other people who will give no thanks or acknowledgement whatsoever for what you've done to get the image available for them to re-upload.

These things are extremely annoying if you are the person who did make the scan. You see, it's not that you mind them having your scans, it's not that you mind them re-uploading them, it's that they do not acknowledge your efforts.

It becomes worse at sites like AP where they operate a system of exchange - for uploads you are enabled to make downloads. This means these unscrupulous people can "profit" off of your efforts and also affect the running of the site by effectively leaching their bandwidth.

It's why I've never really uploaded stuff to 4chan's /hr. In many ways sites like 4chan could be an answer to some of the issues above - you don't really need to tidy it up to the same degree (other people can if they want), the files can be really big and you're not paying for the hosting and bandwidth.

But /hr is also absolutely dripping with all those fuckwits that will re-upload your scans onto other websites and not acknowledge the source. Indeed, most of the uploads onto 4chan are such images - stuff taken without then being credited.

It's ungrateful is the problem - as I say, you have no problem with them having the scans, or even uploading them to some extent (though doing so en-mass is a piss take) but not saying who actually did the scan is just plain ungrateful.

There are a couple of ways around this (well, outside of not uploading your scans, but that sorta defeats the point). Firstly you can add a sig to your scans, saying who may it.

The problem with this is to some extent it disfigures the image, and that's not why you're a scanner. But also, you come in for a lot of flak. Which is so ironic it almost hurts - people who did not make the scans, and have no appreciation for what it takes to make them complaining that you've put a sig on and these same people are the ones who then steal your scan if it's sigless.

The other way is to try to police the internet. By which I mean you go to sites like mt on a regular basis and trawl through the scans to find the one that are yours. To say this is tedious is understating the issue on a biblical scale, but also, many public sites don't actually care where the stuff was stolen from.

Sometimes I do think "fuck it - I'll just upload my shit on 4chan. Let them steal it - it'll save me all the hassle." But every time its the lack of gratitude that stops me clicking the submit button.

... got a bit carried away there :).

stuck in my brain

Don't you just hate when you get a song stuck in your head?

It just keeps looping around and round and you find yourself singing the words under your breath. Sometimes it's okay if it's a song you kinda like, but even then it can get a bit tedious after a while.

The worst is when it's so lodged in there you can't sleep cos you mind won't relax enough to stop it from looping the song endlessly over and over.

Maybe it's worse for me. I'm fairly sure I'm a bit OCD (Obessive Cumpulsive Disorder). I don't say that in an emo pity me sort of way, I just used to be really quite obsessive about things and occasionally still find myself utterly fixated.

I guess the best way to explain my particular thing was that it was to do with patterns.

Draw a small square with the tip of your finger on the palm of your hand. Right, now where did you start? It was probably at one of the corners, right? And you kept your finger constantly on the palm, rather than lifting it off to draw each side, right? What direction did you go in? Clockwise of anti-clockwise?

Well that's all perfectly normal. My problem was that, having drawn the square once starting at one corner, I would then have to redraw it starting at the other four corners. Sometimes I'd also have to redraw it four times starting at the different corners going in the opposite direction too.

If I didn't do this I would feel... odd. If I did do it, it would be, I dunno, pleasurable, I guess. Like finishing a good book or something - a pleasure in a sense of achievement.

Also, it wouldn't generally involve actually drawing the shape, just mentally picturing the action of drawing it. And the shapes were more complicated than squares, but not so complicated as to prevent their easy repetition.

It's not something I still do (nowadays I obsess over things like Civ3 for short periods - you may have noticed in previous blog entries) and it was probably not OCD, I was just reminded of it with this bloody song going round and round in my head like the patterns I used to draw.

Pigskin chasers

God I hate football.

Well, no, actually I don't really hate football. What I hate is the culture surrounding football.

I hate the fans - neolithic, tribal idiocy at its worst. I hate the money involved - most players could build hospitals with their yearly salleries. I hate the sheer volume of coverage - thousands of hours of half-wits kicking pigskins about. I also hate that the sport never seems to fucking end - there's supposed to be an off season during summer, but nowadays that literally last a couple of weeks... during which there's normally some other damnable international competition.

But most of all, the thing I really hate the most, is this assumption that everyone is supposed to love the sport. And if you don't, then you're the weird one.

You may have detected that fecking Euro2008 starts soon. And no, I won't be "following it".

tonnes of crap

Thought I'd do this as a separate post - the new megami showed up the day before yesterday with lots of lovely posters again.

But I'm again struck by how not having watched any of this seasons shows impacts on how you view the posters. Not knowing the characters means the posters are more all the same, which is to say I don't have any particular favourites.

In previous years I've had chara's I liked and so was more into their particular posters. This season I mostly don't know them from Adam so they're all just pretty girls.

I am sooooo behind with everything at the moment.

As I say, I've not seen any shows from this season yet at all - actually that's not true, I've watched chii's sweet home, but those are 5 minute shorts and so don't really count. The only saving grace is I've been keeping on top of the torrents, so at least I've got them 'ready to go'.

I've got something like 15 artbooks stacked up waiting to be scanned.

I've also got all of last months magazines to scan, and this month's magazines are starting to show up. Plus I've not been through and sorted the scans from the month before, so they're clogging up my hard-drive (I transfer them to a separate portable hard-drive brick once I've been through and named them all).

I've not finished the reviews I mentioned on a previous blog and so I've got all that entails for updating my site pending.

I've planned out the newest version of scan-city.org, but haven't actually started working on it.

Plus, I've set myself the mission of ploughing through the huge stacks of unwatched anime and unread manga. Partly so I can sell off some stuff on e-bay and release some capital admittedly, but that doesn't mean it's any less stuff to watch.

Plus I have lots of normal film and TV series DVDs and regular books to read. Also, I've an entire series of 13 one hour long episodes of a show I PVR'd recently to watch.

I need to go though my CD collection and get rid of the rubbish on e-bay. Similarly, my boxes of crap need sorting again as they're starting to fill up my room.

Then there's all my half-finished or just started walling projects, the unplayed games and not to mention I've got the urge to write again... The list just goes on and on :(.

I really need to pull my finger out.

But how did it get this way? Well couple of things:

Recently there was a lot of stuff on normal telly that I was watching, which sucked up more time than normal. This should ease off a lot over the summer, as things like Big Brother and Euro2008 have absolutely no interest for me and will take up a lot of air time. Plus, the shows I'm currently watching are coming to an end, and generally over the summer good stuff is much lessened.

But the real problem just recently has been Civ3 - I've just been playing it incessantly and it's killing any free time I have to do stuff I should be doing. I should either ration it, or try to convince myself that if I do other stuff now then I can always come back to Civ3 later... yeah, that'll happen.

Separate blogs

I've been wondering whether I shouldn't start a separate blog and put some of my writing up on it. I read somewhere that publishers like to read blogs and if someone whose manuscript they've read and liked has a blog with stuff on that they can read then that isn't a bad thing.

Of course that sort of presupposes I'm going to be a bit more dedicated with writing stuff - I couldn't start a blog like that, post one or two things and then abandon it as I think that would have the opposite effect.

I guess I could sample some stuff from my more dormant projects, plus put my older short stories on there.

Hmm, something to give some thought.

I've been struggling with my back again just recently. It's my own fault - all those hours sat in the same position playing Civ3 at home have clearly not gone well with my back.

I first did my back quite a few years ago now and have had a few minor twinges since then, but this is the first really proper hurts-like-a-bugger type relapse I've had.

The problem is actually a trapped nerve, and I'm told that were it hurts isn't actually were the nerve is trapped. The nerve is trapped somewhere in the spine, but because of where/how the pressure is on it, it actually feels like it's in my lower back. This means that the pain is slightly counter-intuitive. The positions you'd imagine would hurt don't but moves you'd think would be fine are agony.

Guess I need to lay off the Civ3 for a bit, but looking on the bright side it means I have a legitimate excuse for not doing any scanning - sitting in my computer chair for hours on end was what caused the problem, so I can't do that until it's right and that's where I do the scanning.

To console or not to console

I've been debating whether or not to get an xbox360 or playstation 3 games console.

The reason is that the next incarnation of what is probably my favourite series of games, Civilization Revolution, is only going to come out on those consoles. The reason for this is that it's specifically designed as a console version of the game.

And there in lies my dilemma. I've recently been going through a bit of an obsessive time playing Civ3 and it's brought out to me what I found disappointing about Civ4. It was too simplified. In Civ3 I always play huge maps with slightly fewer races than recommended.

The reason for this is that I like to build a huge empire with lots of cities. Micro-managing all these cites is then what I deem to be a big part of the fun (I know, I'm weird). I like to build them all up to be as big and as good as they can possibly be, with as many improvements as possible and lots of specialist citizens. It's only then does my attention really turn to global conquest, with the added advantage that by this time all of the modern units are available, as well as railroads and transports to move lots of stuff around quickly.

In Civ4 that's not what you're supposed to do. Micromanagement is still there to some degree, but things like corruption and War Weariness have been removed, making the job basically easy.

Also, in Civ4 the idea is to have specialist cities - ones that produce great people, ones that produce units, ones that do science, ones that do culture, etc. That's not what I like to do.

Also, the world scales are considerably smaller, and this is another thing that doesn't appeal to me - I like big empires as I say, and not necessarily because you've conquered stuff, just big worlds. To me this is what Civilization is really all about, and it was taken out in Civ4, predominantly in the name of making the game more 'fun'.

And that's the problem with CivRev - it takes that Civ simplification (or dumbing down) concept even further. Yes it's gonna look a lot prettier even than Civ4, and it'll have a proper online experience (not that I play games online) but the stuff I like is not gonna be there.

But the other side of the coin is that this will be the first Civilization game I won't have bought and played, and that feels like a bit of a shame. Still, it also means I don't have to buy an expensive console just to play one game.

Bitten to Buggery

Something got at me this week-end.

While I was asleep on Saturday a bug or bugs have bitten my arms in several places. It's been quite a while since I've had an insect bite - the last time was when the landord's cat got infested with fleas and they hopped their way into my bedsit. It took several sprayings of flea stuff to get rid of them. Christ knows what all those chemicals in the air did to my lungs, but I was left in tatters after a few nights of them biting me so it had to be done.

It's not fleas this time - the bites are very different. I recognise them from when I was a kid. The culprit this time is mosquitoes. A mosquito injects you with its saliva while it bites, which stops the blood from coagulating and also slightly anaesthetises they bite to stop you noticing. It's because they take so much blood they have to do that.

Unfortunately this saliva is something my family has a bit of a history of reacting to - when bitten by mosi's my mum used to swell up like a balloon - and that's something I've inherited to a lesser degree. So now I've got big lumps on my arms where the bites are that itch like a right royal bastard. To make it worse, the bites are in places where they keep getting brushed by my clothes, etc, so just as they're starting to fade a bit, I'll rub them and suddenly that sets them off again.

Bloody insects.

That's some good reading

Started re-reading Empowered Volume 3 last night.

I have a thing with Trade Paperbacks/Graphic Novels where I always read them twice. I dunno why I started this - I think it's cos so much of my stuff ends up packed away in boxes or fairly promptly re-sold on e-bay it helps me feel I've got better value for money out of it. It's a bit like watching both the dub and sub version of an anime - one time you can appreciate the story, the next you can look more at the art.

Anyway, the point of this post is to say I really think Adam Warren knocked it out of the park with this third volume of Empowered.

For anyone not in the know, here's the wikipedia article about Empowered. Basically it's one of those "If super heroes and villains were really real what would it actually be like?" ideas. A bit like the telly show Heroes, but a bit sexier and funnier and better and with Adam Warren's lovely art skillz.

I've been a fan of Adam Warren's for quite a while - his Dirty Pair stuff was around at the time I was first getting into anime and manga and I find his stuff quite funny and his techno-fetishistic-ness appeals too. You can get a look at what Mr Warren is all about by checking out his deviantart page here. He also pimps Empowered quite a bit, so you can check out stuff about it there.

Anyway, back to the point again - Empowered volume 3 is very good.

Empowered apparently started as a commission that developed into something more, and if you check out the books you'll see Volume 1 is lots of very short (2-4 page) stories. The stories have generally gotten more coherent and formed a single narrative arc as the volumes have gone on and with volume 3 we have some of the longest tales, but the thing I like is that they still vary in length.

Because the volumes are released as larger trade-paperback style it gives more of a freedom that allows each story to be just the right length, and I like that a lot.

Another thing I like is one of the characters - the caged Demonwolf. I guess the best description I could give of him is that he's a super-villain in a kind of Lovecraft-ian vain, but his essence has been trapped in an alien belt-like device that therefore renders him powerless. In fact, all he can do is talk and see via some sensors.

It's a little difficult to express quite what's so awesome about the caged Demonwolf, but think early Stewie from family Guy - arch super villain utterly trapped by his circumstance. It's the juxtaposition of pretensions of grandiosity with the mundaneness of reality.

He's not in volume 3 so much, but what is in volume 3 is very good, with some really meaty story arcs and some interesting character development, with few laughs and some genuine yaoi doujinshi too... Anyway, you should definitely check it out.

The end of the world as we know it

There was a program on Channel 4 the other day that looked at what would happen if we humans suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Really it was all fairly obvious - nature would simply reclaim the space - but it was interesting to hear how quickly it would happen, and there was some great stuff from Chernobyl.

I'd love to go to Chernobyl. Unless you're close to the reactor core, it's actually pretty safe now (if it wasn't the wildlife wouldn't have come back).

But then I've always loved the whole post-apocalyptic future stuff. I even had a go at writing a sort of one called Infection. You can give it a read by clicking here if you really like.

In fact it was actually writing Infection that kinda made me think I'd like to have a go at actually writing properly. Before that I'd written a few short stories, but Infection had more of an arc.

Since then I've struggled to actually realise that goal. What you don't realise is that writing is hard work.

I mean, you kinda know that - an average novel is about 80,000 to 120,00 words so it obviously isn't 'easy' - but what you don't realise is how draining coming up with those words can be. I don't mean like as in writer's block, but simply the act of generating stuff and laying it down in a sensible and coherent way is draining.

I mean, you can write quite a lot in a day, but then what you find is that the next day you feel like the life has been sucked out of you, and the next day too. So you end up writing in splurges and it feels disjointed and a little incoherent.

Or the other way is to write a little bit each day and deliberately hold yourself back, but then it feels like you're getting nowhere - you check how many words you've done all the time, think about all the stuff still to do and it seems never-ending.

In the beginning you sort of wonder how writing can be a full time job. After a while it becomes clear.

We won the cold war, but it means we can never win Eurovision

So I watched Eurovision last Saturday.

I know it's not the coolest of cool things and I'm not watching because I enjoy "camp" stuff particularly, but as Terry Wogan says, it's always a good chance to laugh at Johnny Foreigner.

We came last.

Now this isn't new - in the last few years we've come either last or very near the bottom every time. But there was a legitimate reason for that - our songs were shite and deserved to do badly.

However, this year's song was okay. Eurovision is never the height of musical endeavour, but as pop songs go it wasn't half bad. It was also well performed and fairly anthemic, which often does well at Eurovision.

But only two countries voted for us - Ireland, who you might call our only neighbours, and San Marino, which, I would guess, contains a fair few British ex-pats. (But then saying that, Malta didn't even vote for us and that's basically an actual part of Britain - I don't quite get that one.)

Anyway, the problem this year is that the voting has become all skewed and messed up. Don't get me wrong, the voting's always been political, it's just that now it's gotten silly.

Previously it didn't matter if Norway always voted for Sweden and vice-versa, because there weren't that many neighbours to vote for and so the half-decent songs would tend to rise to the top because they'd still get decent marks from Sweden and Norway, just not the top marks.

Now, there are so many former Soviet satellite countries that they all vote for each other to such a degree (not just the top votes, but all the votes) that nobody else stands a snowball's chance in hell. Plus there's an added issue in this new structure.

Every year the French never vote for us. Because they don't like us. This issue has been magnified over too. If Russia and Western Europe are at odds (e.g. they've assassinated someone in our country), the Soviet-satellites aren't going to vote for us for that reason too, so it's a double-whammy.

The real winner this year was Greece, as they consistently got the most votes, and, of the 'traditional' Eurovision countries, those like Greece that are maybe a bit more 'neutral' are the the only non-Soviet-satellites that might win it. But clearly the word had gone out this year that Russia had to win, so they just couldn't overcome the onslaught of high marks Russia got.

As I say, Eurovision has never not been political, and there's always bizarreness, but when you put in a perfectly decent, well-performed song and you come dead-last it just rankles a bit.

And I wouldn't mind, but Eurovision is paid for by the European Brodacasting Union (EBU) and we (along with a couple of the other old-skool countries) are the ones that actually pay for it.

So we pay a fortune for the ex-Commies to tell us just how much they don't like us!

I think a solution would to proportionalise the voting more. Most of these countries are tiny and yet their votes count for as many points as ours do.

And speaking of Banks

Bit of a flurry of posts this morning I think, as I couldn't be arsed (read: was playing Civ3 almost non-stop all w/end) to post on my blog over the bank-holiday week-end.

While I was sorting out the overdraft issue I also took the opportunity to cancel this insurance thing I have on the credit card. I've had it for years and never really thought about it. The idea is if you can't pay for some reason, then this thing covers the payments.

Well, I've not really used the card in ages and was intending to slowly pay if off and eventually get rid of it (I'm lethal with credit card spending - hence the unwatched DVD mountain I've accumulated). As such, the effects of this insurance have become apparent to me. Here's an example of what happens, using some easy numbers:

Get the statement, see that the minimum payment is £50.00

Pay the minimum payment - balance goes down £50.00

Interest is applied - balance goes up £30.00

Insurance is added - balance goes up £20.00

So, interest + insurance = minimum payment. In other words, the balance never changes!

I'm not sure if that's ironic, or just plain annoying.

It's my own fault for not really thinking about it before, but this is what the bank's rely on - people not thinking things through properly.

Whoops

I cocked up last week it seems and instead of putting my credit card number for something I gave my debit card number. This meant the payment came directly out of my actual account, which, of course, didn't have quite enough cash in :(.

And the upshot of this? I went a smidge overdrawn and so got a nasty letter telling me they were going to charge me for the privilege.

Fundamentally, I don't mind actually mind this - I fucked up, so I guess I should pay the price. What I do mind is the difficulty and problems I had trying to fix this error. I apparently went overdrawn on Thursday, but then they didn't send me a letter 'till Friday. Obviously, it takes a day in the post and so I got the letter on Saturday morning.

However, the bank isn't bloody open on Saturday (I ask you - in this day and age, they're closed on a Saturday?). It's also a Bank Holiday week-end, meaning the bank was actually closed until Tuesday.

But they charge for every day it's overdrawn, meaning Thursday right through to Tuesday. SO HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO GET MONEY INTO THE ACCOUNT?

Okay - I try Internet Banking. I've got a credit card with the same bank - surely I can get money from one to the other?

No.

I've got another bank account with a different bank (who, incidentally, are open on a Saturday), but although I can transfer money via the internet I know it takes a ridiculous amount of time (something like 7 days!) for the money to move over, by which time the bank's open again anyway.

Note that this is the internet. Where things happen instantly... unless you're a damn bank, apparently.

So I phone them up - the solution? Arrange an overdraft facility online and that will stop the daily charges.

The customer is always right. Unless you're a bank, in which case the customer is there for the shafting.

Dude, you suck at this

I first realised I was rubbish at games way back when I was a kid.

We used to have an Amstrad cpc 6128 computer. Back then, a huge amount of memory was defined in the kb range, not the gb range. This tended to mean that the games we used to play were different to what they are nowadays. The sheer graphical demand of FPS's, for example, meant nobody had even dreamt of doing them - not even in the arcades.

Anyway, a game we used to play a lot of back then was this winter Olympics sports kinda thing, and the sub-game me and my sister were obsessed with was the Bob-sleigh. That's the one were 4 blokes jump into the sleigh at the beginning and then in careens down a narrow open-tunnel sort of thing at around 100mph.

You the player basically used to have to do the steering down the course, trying to go that little bit faster each time. My realisation came that I was rubbish at gaming when I could not for the life of me beat the pre-set fastest time on the score board. I think I got up to third position as my best ever time.

Since then, every single game I've ever played has been played on the easiest setting, and I'm pleased as punch if I beat it. Normally I can't, so I end up cheating (if available). Though tbh, I do that mainly so I get maximum benefit out of the game, which has probably cost quite a bit of money - not at least seeing all of the levels seems a bit of a rip-off to me.

Wibbety wobbety

I've been working on the company website today. Surprisingly, it actually feels like I might actually be getting somewhere.

The company site has always been a bone of contention with me. Initially when I joined it was a pug ugly lump of arse that just was not fit for purpose. That was created a very long time ago and since then many things have changed.

Several years ago I attempted to overhaul the site myself. Now I'm no web programmer and I've not got the greatest visual flare, but my main aim wasn't really to change that side of it, it was to update the contents.

However, what I really wanted to do was refocus the site on a much simpler message.

It did not go well.

See, the problem is my boss has a tendency not to want to make the site too focused. Instead, she'd prefer to make it all things to all comers. But the trouble with that is it ends up being no-use to no-one.

In the end I just ended up adding more stuff than removing it.

A few years later and my other boss is wanting to improve the site. This time I'm not really involved, other than to suggest a few things. In the end the work ends up beign done by outside contractors.

One of the key changes is to remake the site in asp and to make it so that we can edit the contents easily on-line. These aims were achieved, and so that's what I'm doing.

The problem is we still have this awful, clunky structure that needs hacking and slashing and trimming down and refocusing like I wanted to do all those years ago. I therefore wasn't looking forward to the task when I was told the boss is thinking of an update.

However, I bit the bullet and basically went through what I think si wrong with it. And, happily the boss seems to agree. I think she's been on the site and seen it looks pretty now, but was herself overwhelmed with the sheer volumes of, well, stuff on there.

And so I may be getting to actually make proper changes to the structure rather than just cramming in yet more stuff.

Like a part of me

On Saturday I popped down to my opticians to pick up my new pair of glasses.

My prescription hadn't changed much, but I'd been getting a few headaches and that's normally a sign it's time for a change.

I hate getting new glasses. The thing about my eyes is that I'm really short sighted. I mean really short sighted - I almost can't see past the end of my nose. As such, I wear my glasses basically constantly from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.

Well, when you wear something so constantly and they perform such an intrinsic function to your every day life, they basically become a part of you. For me, wearing glasses is part of who I am, and the specific glasses I'm wearing are like my arm or my leg - you kinda forget they're there, but if something changes about them then it's the only thing you can think about.

My new glasses are a heck of a lot heavier than my old ones, which were extremely light. So now it feels like I've got a half-pound weight perched on the end of my conk (even though it's only a matter of a few grammes).

There's also always a period of me adjusting and fiddling with the things that keep them on your face (the arms and the supports that sit on the bridge of your nose). This is the worst bit - it always feels like they totally don't fit and I'll never get it right, even though I've been through the same process dozens of times before.

Obsessive gaming

This last couple of weekends I've been struggling with something of a gaming addiction/obsession.

What makes the obsession worse is that it's not for some hyper-cool, modern, totally immersive FPS like Call of Duty 4. It's for Civilization 3.

That's not even the latest version of Civ, it's the previous one in the series and must be getting on for 5 or six years old.

I've even started building custom maps and scenarios... I think I need to get some help.