Right then children, after yesterdays little sojourn into the serious, let's have some fun. This will be a bit like one of those times at school when teacher announced that you would be watching a video instead of doing actual work. God, I loved those days. And it was usually in either Geography or History as well, two of the most god awful boring subjects there are. No offence intended to Historians or Geographers. Deep down I'm sure you're cool.
Today, we are going to have fun in the form of links. Links to some of my favourite websites mainly, the sort of stuff that makes up my RSS bar. I know it's a bit of a cop out, but its fun and easy. It also means that the stack of press releases building up for me to finish off turning into articles won't crush me like a little bug.
Shall we get started? I think I'll do these in a little top 10 list counting down my favourite sites.
10 – Prey Tell
I can't make out if Prey Tell is an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) or real. If it is real, it's amazing. It it is an ARG, it was one of the most captivating out there. You can feel the tension, the need and desperation. You easily want to read on and the whole website is a masterpiece. Check out The Skinny to find out the background, and read it through from the beginning. Masterful.
9 – Ctrl Alt Del (aka Cad-Comic)
Tim Buckley's successful tellings of two gamer best friends inter sliced with one off strips satirising the video games industry. I will admit, I'm a bit of a huge gamer and so love this strip. The characters are well defined and it is quite nice seeing the story telling evolve from the absurd to dramatic. There is also a nice animated series that accompanies the strip should you feel like spending a few hard earned bucks extra.
8 – The Listverse
I love The Listverse. I think I like accumulating knowledge and although you can't exactly take everything you read on the internet as gospel, The Lisverse is always pretty accurate. There you will find lists detailing everything from the wonderful, unbelievable, cute and funny to the disturbing, disgusting and downright macabre. Well worth a good old fashioned SWF browse.
7 – The BBC
Ahh, the good old Beeb. I know that this site is probably visited by most people at least 7 thousand times a day, but the fact it is regularly my most visited website I thought warranted a spot on the list. News, articles sports and the ever wonderful BBC iPlayer. What more can you ask for?
6 – Kissing Suzy Kolber
Now, one of my pet hates in writing is people who just swear for swearings sake and call it humour. It isn't big, it isn't clever and it really isn't funny. That is, unless you write for KSK. Between the merry gang of writers, spearheaded by Big Daddy Drew, their foul mouthed ranting, rambling and genius analysis of the NFL makes for one of the most entertaining websites out there. Although you do need to be an NFL fan to appreciate most of the humour, and being keyed up on the internal site memes doesn't exactly hurt either, I have learnt so many new swear words from that site it is unreal.
5 – Shutdown Corner
Lets get the two NFL sites out the way back to back, eh? Shutdown Corner is actually the NFL blog run by Yahoo! over at their American website. Usually, the inbuilt anti-establishment part of me says that as it is controlled by a major corporation, it will suck. Actually, all of the Yahoo! Sports Blogs are pretty amazing. They have them for basketball, ice hockey, tennis, golf, baseball and a few others. Well worth checking out, even though they are pretty high on the American-isms.
4 – Questionable Content
This is without a doubt my most favouritist webcomic ever. There are currently over 1,500 strips and watching the evolution from the first to the latest in terms of character development, artwork improvement, cast depth and storytelling is a joy to behold. Oh yeah, it is also funny as hell too. Much like CAD, QC was first conceived as a vehicle to poke fun at a specific niche culture. For QC, that was the indie music scene. However, in the 1,500 strips which followed it has evolved into something well beyond.
3 – Justin.tv
I probably shouldn't admit that I use Justin.tv seeing as it is both pretty much illegal and a bit hypocritical of me as I work in a royalty based industry, but still. I love it. My big problem is I spend about 12 hours a day in my office at home. I don't really have any co-workers or anything. So I find it quite nice to just stick on a JTV stream in the background and listen. I can pop up on the chat if I'm having a break and natter on. Oh, it's all jolly good.
On an unrelated note, I do other stuff while I'm working in order to keep me a bit sane. One of the things I do is play poker. I admitted this in front of a potential client once. Didn't get that contract...
2 – Modern Drunkard Magazine
I love this site. Although it varies immensely on how often it is updated – sometimes regularly every 6 weeks and sometimes 9 months apart – all of the content is golden. Modern Drunkard Magazine is a publication that fully supports the finer aspects in life of being a lush. If you picture a 1950's advertising guy wearing a snappy suite and a fedora while drinking martinis, that sums up this website. It is downright drunk fun. I guarantee after a browse you will fancy a wander down to your local pub. Or a quick flight to Vegas. Depends how the night turns out.
1 – The Daily Mash
Imagine The Onion but aimed at a UK based audience. That sums this site up. It shamelessly mocks the news and just needs to be read to be believed. My two favourite headlines this year have been 'Everyone Dead By Tea Time' (also the title of the Mash's new book) and 'Survivors Of Pork Flu To Enjoy Nice Summer'.
That is a nice summation of where I spend my internet time. Have a browse, have a click and I hope I've introduced you to something new. See you Sunday!
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
11th November
I was going to write a post today about how silly my life is working for both UK and USA based people, how I have no body clock and how I fell asleep at my desk only to wake up at 4am with a bit of a headache last night. I was going to write an article saying about how I hate blogs who don't update on time, as I didn't yesterday. When I woke up at 4am I still had a few other articles to finish off and just finished them off and went to bed.
Then I realised what today was. 11th November. If you're an American reading this, it's Veterans Day. If you're a fellow Brit, it's Armistice Day. Suddenly, I felt deeply ashamed about complaining how doing a job I love with all my soul means I keep odd waking hours . At least my day to day occupational hazards are things like carpal tunnel, stubbing my toe on the desk and staring at blank white pages long enough to send me a bit mad. I don't have to worry about RPGs, snipers, gun locks and road side bombs. I don't have to worry about mortar fire, suicide bombs and death.
I'm a big supporter of troops. I don't like the politics behind the current wars our troops are in, but I've always held the point of view that at the end of the day they are there and you have to support them. What they do day in day out is incredible, and I know in my heart of hearts I couldn't do it. I'm also a firm believer of the 'The lowest paid soldier should be given more than the highest paid footballer' theory. If people ask me about my views on it, I just say 'Pro-Troop-Anti-War'.
I've had two thoughts about today. About what it means and all that. I'll voice them now. And I promise I'll make some cock jokes tomorrow when we return to our regularly scheduled sort of update.
I read this post by one of the Kissing Suzy Kolber bloggers, Matt Ufford, earlier, and it shook me up. I didn't actually know that the guy had been to war as a tank commander for the Marines in the initial invasion of Iraq a few years ago. But his piece is just such a human response to the whole thing. As much as soldiering is about bravado and brawn and strength and courage, soldiers are human too. I know to me soldiers are super heroes, so its odd to hear them say they are scared. And I think it is becoming increasingly apparent that that is what makes them the amazing people they are. More and more, soldiers are speaking about not only the times when they won the day, but also what happens when they come off second best. They are scared, and endure. Read it, as it is an amazing piece of writing. It gives a slant on soldiering that most people don't consider.
The other thought is more a rhetorical one.
Tonight, there will be two types of people. One will be sat at home pounding Red Bull's and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The biggest game of the year was released this week, and no doubt Xbox Live will full of people playing it. Full of people shooting and killing, complaining about re-spawns and snipers. Full of pawnage and 1337 and everything. Full of celebrating the big kills.
One will be sat at home pounding a bottle of whiskey and trying to keep out the memories of their time at war. Trying not to think of lives they have taken, trying not to think of any of their friends who didn't make it and trying to keep out of a dark place. I know not every soldier who comes home is broken, but war affects people in many different ways. For every person who took today to pay respects to their fallen comrades and feel the sense of pride that only a veteran is entitled to, there will be someone who hasn't handled combat as well.
In WW1, Sigfried Sassoon wrote the following.
'Pray that you will never know the hell where youth and laughter go.'
On a day where we remember veterans, remember the fallen and give our eternal thanks, millions of the youth will be playing a war game recreating the horrors that defined a generation.
I just think that is fucked up.
Then I realised what today was. 11th November. If you're an American reading this, it's Veterans Day. If you're a fellow Brit, it's Armistice Day. Suddenly, I felt deeply ashamed about complaining how doing a job I love with all my soul means I keep odd waking hours . At least my day to day occupational hazards are things like carpal tunnel, stubbing my toe on the desk and staring at blank white pages long enough to send me a bit mad. I don't have to worry about RPGs, snipers, gun locks and road side bombs. I don't have to worry about mortar fire, suicide bombs and death.
I'm a big supporter of troops. I don't like the politics behind the current wars our troops are in, but I've always held the point of view that at the end of the day they are there and you have to support them. What they do day in day out is incredible, and I know in my heart of hearts I couldn't do it. I'm also a firm believer of the 'The lowest paid soldier should be given more than the highest paid footballer' theory. If people ask me about my views on it, I just say 'Pro-Troop-Anti-War'.
I've had two thoughts about today. About what it means and all that. I'll voice them now. And I promise I'll make some cock jokes tomorrow when we return to our regularly scheduled sort of update.
I read this post by one of the Kissing Suzy Kolber bloggers, Matt Ufford, earlier, and it shook me up. I didn't actually know that the guy had been to war as a tank commander for the Marines in the initial invasion of Iraq a few years ago. But his piece is just such a human response to the whole thing. As much as soldiering is about bravado and brawn and strength and courage, soldiers are human too. I know to me soldiers are super heroes, so its odd to hear them say they are scared. And I think it is becoming increasingly apparent that that is what makes them the amazing people they are. More and more, soldiers are speaking about not only the times when they won the day, but also what happens when they come off second best. They are scared, and endure. Read it, as it is an amazing piece of writing. It gives a slant on soldiering that most people don't consider.
The other thought is more a rhetorical one.
Tonight, there will be two types of people. One will be sat at home pounding Red Bull's and playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The biggest game of the year was released this week, and no doubt Xbox Live will full of people playing it. Full of people shooting and killing, complaining about re-spawns and snipers. Full of pawnage and 1337 and everything. Full of celebrating the big kills.
One will be sat at home pounding a bottle of whiskey and trying to keep out the memories of their time at war. Trying not to think of lives they have taken, trying not to think of any of their friends who didn't make it and trying to keep out of a dark place. I know not every soldier who comes home is broken, but war affects people in many different ways. For every person who took today to pay respects to their fallen comrades and feel the sense of pride that only a veteran is entitled to, there will be someone who hasn't handled combat as well.
In WW1, Sigfried Sassoon wrote the following.
'Pray that you will never know the hell where youth and laughter go.'
On a day where we remember veterans, remember the fallen and give our eternal thanks, millions of the youth will be playing a war game recreating the horrors that defined a generation.
I just think that is fucked up.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
How about some Chelsea and Manchester United feedback?
For those of you who have been living with their head firmly buried in the sand this weekend, let me enlighten you to something quite important.
Manchester United paid a little visit to Chelsea.
Yeah. Bet you feel silly for having your head firmly hidden now, huh?
I thought I should pipe in with some feedback. I do supposedly offer some sporting opinion in the tag line round here. It's only polite. You want to know how I would sum up that match?
The officiating was just plain and simple inept.
I'm a Manchester United fan. We lost, and I hate loosing to Chelsea more than anything I can think of. But, I can be a man about it. Although I think we were possibly the better team, overall Chelsea have been better this year. So long as we can be a comfortable second and don't get dragged into the dog fight for 4th I'm happy.
But honestly, the entire officiating crew needs to be looked at after that mess. From inconsistent calls to phantom fouls, make believe timing rules to making decisions that just go completely against the rule book... it was a mess. In the first half, Terry takes down Valencia with a fist full of shirt in the penalty box. No penalty. A few times the ball crossed the line for corner kicks, and all the officials missed it. People kicked the ball away after play was brought back with no reprimand. Drogba gets kicked in the chest and gets a yellow card for it. Players were left on the sideline after being treated for injuries. There was no compulsory 30 seconds added on to extra time for the substitution. This is just stuff off the top of my head, if I actually did my job and put in some research, I'm sure I could find more.
Oh, how could I forget. The goal.
From the free kick that wasn't that set it up, to the awfully suspicious shoulder that knocked it on to Drogba standing a country mile offside waving a boot in Van Der Sar's face.... just pick some reasons as to why the goal was a summation of the refereeing performance.
I'm not bitter that United lost. I can accept that. I'm incredibly annoyed that we lost, but putting in a strong performance doesn't mean that you get what you deserve. What is the most galling of all is that once again officiating has defined a top game.
I know that all the referees are very highly trained and all that, but they need to stop being the be all and end all of the match. Instead of writing about how Valencia did a better job than Ronaldo ever did against Ashley Cole, or how Brown and Evans were as solid as Ferdinand and Vidic at their best, or how Ancelotti has guided Chelsea to a 5 point lead after just 12 games, I'm writing about refs.
The Premier League needs to do something, as more often than not the top of the table is decided by the handful of games the big clubs play against each other. Maybe give a special title to the top refereeing crews, and say flat out at the beginning of the season “These same guys will handle all the times that the four Champions League teams play each other.” Then stand behind them absolutely. Tell the managers that it is an automatic ban for questioning them, tell the refs to yellow card immediately for dissent and put in the strong officiating that is needed to control and better these matches.
Once again, it is ridiculous that the emphasis of these matches is not on the players after the final whistle is blown.
Manchester United paid a little visit to Chelsea.
Yeah. Bet you feel silly for having your head firmly hidden now, huh?
I thought I should pipe in with some feedback. I do supposedly offer some sporting opinion in the tag line round here. It's only polite. You want to know how I would sum up that match?
The officiating was just plain and simple inept.
I'm a Manchester United fan. We lost, and I hate loosing to Chelsea more than anything I can think of. But, I can be a man about it. Although I think we were possibly the better team, overall Chelsea have been better this year. So long as we can be a comfortable second and don't get dragged into the dog fight for 4th I'm happy.
But honestly, the entire officiating crew needs to be looked at after that mess. From inconsistent calls to phantom fouls, make believe timing rules to making decisions that just go completely against the rule book... it was a mess. In the first half, Terry takes down Valencia with a fist full of shirt in the penalty box. No penalty. A few times the ball crossed the line for corner kicks, and all the officials missed it. People kicked the ball away after play was brought back with no reprimand. Drogba gets kicked in the chest and gets a yellow card for it. Players were left on the sideline after being treated for injuries. There was no compulsory 30 seconds added on to extra time for the substitution. This is just stuff off the top of my head, if I actually did my job and put in some research, I'm sure I could find more.
Oh, how could I forget. The goal.
From the free kick that wasn't that set it up, to the awfully suspicious shoulder that knocked it on to Drogba standing a country mile offside waving a boot in Van Der Sar's face.... just pick some reasons as to why the goal was a summation of the refereeing performance.
I'm not bitter that United lost. I can accept that. I'm incredibly annoyed that we lost, but putting in a strong performance doesn't mean that you get what you deserve. What is the most galling of all is that once again officiating has defined a top game.
I know that all the referees are very highly trained and all that, but they need to stop being the be all and end all of the match. Instead of writing about how Valencia did a better job than Ronaldo ever did against Ashley Cole, or how Brown and Evans were as solid as Ferdinand and Vidic at their best, or how Ancelotti has guided Chelsea to a 5 point lead after just 12 games, I'm writing about refs.
The Premier League needs to do something, as more often than not the top of the table is decided by the handful of games the big clubs play against each other. Maybe give a special title to the top refereeing crews, and say flat out at the beginning of the season “These same guys will handle all the times that the four Champions League teams play each other.” Then stand behind them absolutely. Tell the managers that it is an automatic ban for questioning them, tell the refs to yellow card immediately for dissent and put in the strong officiating that is needed to control and better these matches.
Once again, it is ridiculous that the emphasis of these matches is not on the players after the final whistle is blown.
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