Like millions of other people I have a gmail account, in fact, I admit that I’m a huge Google fan and use both standard google accounts and their google apps account for both my private and business email accounts.

One of the great things about a gmail email address is the address alias feature. Simply put, you add an additional part, the alias, to your usual gmail address by using the “+” sign. So, for example, if your usual email address is john.smith@gmail.com, you can create an alias by using john.smith+awebsite@gmail.com. Now the “awebsite” can be anything you want though there is an unofficial limit of ten characters. Any email sent to this alias address will get sent to john.smith@gmail.com, you don’t need to do anything further. You can if you wish set up filters to look for this specific address and assign labels, mark it as important, star it, what ever you decide.

Whilst you can’t send an email from this email address, it proves an excellent way of filtering and preventing spam when registering for accounts on various websites. A major concern is spam and unscrupulous websites selling your email address to spammers. Using an alias won’t actually prevent spam email but it will highlight who sold your address.

Say you sign up to register on a mobile phone forum, www.aphoneforum.com using an alias gmail address of john.smith+phoneforum@gmail.com then suddenly find you get a lot of spam from a.dodgy@website.com. All you now need to do is check the ‘sent to’ address in the spam email header and if it includes an alias you recognise you now know who sold your details.

I’m not going to go into too many details about the hows for the moment. The reason for writing this post is that today I have tried to register at two different websites and both have said that it’s an invalid email address. This means I have to either opt to use my standard email address without the alias or discount the website completely.

The question one needs to ask is why the website owners (or at least the website’s developer) has decided not to allow these aliases and none of the reasons I can think of are good ones.

Now I am a web developer so I know exactly how easy it is to make sure the plus sign is validated so we’ll straight away rule out any bullshit about it being a legitimate coding issue.

So what reasons might the website not allow an alias?
The web developer is an idiot and should be fired immediately. Believe it or not, this is actually the least most offensive option. The only hope you have here is to contact the website in question and bitch about it hoping that the developer isn’t clever enough to make sure they don’t receive the email first and decide to delete it before anyone sees what an idiot they are.
The website is selling your details. We have to assume that this is the case in many instances. Of course they don’t want you using an alias, they know all to well why you’re using an alias and they know it would seriously hamper their income from selling your details.

So now you have to ask yourself why you’d sign up to a website that behaves like this. Either their web developer is an idiot and thus completely untrustworthy with your details or they’re completely untrustworthy because they’re selling your details.

Am I going to name and shame today’s untrustworthy fuckers? Hell yes!!
Pinterest – www.pinterest.com – A new social site where you can share photos.
Pinger – www.pinger.com – an online service allowing you to send and receive text messages via the internet.

What’s really fucked up with pinterest is that they require you to apply for an invite first. I duly did this using an alias email address e.g. john.smith+pinterest@gmail.com, they then sent me an email to that very address confirming my invite and said I can now register for an account. I entered my email address, the one they contacted me on and guess what, says it’s invalid!! WTF?? There’s stupid and then there’s dumb as lard (being polite about it).

So before you sign up to either of these two services, ask yourself just how trustworthy you think they are and so how much do you trust them with your personal / private email address.

Of course, the other alternative is that you aply for yet another email account just for this purpose…

Quick post, mainly as there will one day be a larger post and I don’t want to forget, which I would if I don’t write it down now.

As an Englishman I have for a long time had various stereotypical ideas about what America and Americans are like. Whilst a lot of this does come from what I watch on TV and therefore shouldn’t be taken for granted I have always wondered for example, if Americans aren’t really dumb fat, gun-totting, hick fucks why do they not complain about the way Hollywood and TV show producers portray them? I can only assume it must be because they’re too fucking stupid and therefore it probably is fairly realistic.

But who am I to judge? … (ha!)

I’m slowly tracking the differences between all things British vs American, everything from politics to general behaviour to food to cost of things. Now I accept that so far I have only experienced first hand one single state (if you exclude my brief visit to Chicago O’Hare airport last July) but I will hope to be adding / editing this post as my experiences broaden.

But for now, here’s a brief look at some of those difference:

Cars – The world and it’s dog knows American made… anything is fucking shockingly shite but I at least expected cars to be cheaper here. Not so. I’ve checked with many makes and types of vehicles and on the whole, they are TWICE the price the equivalent would be in the UK. I think of all the price differences this one shocked me the most and all I can say (again) is American’s you are fucking idiots.

Fuel – Fuel is cheaper in the US than the UK and seriously, you American’s need to stop bitching. At the time of writing we pay approximately $2.10 a LITRE. The other oddity is that the vast majority of vehicles (including vans / trucks) are Petrol (Gasoline) fuelled not, as one would expect, diesel. You Americans are fucking idiots. Diesel is not that much more per litre and if you drive a lot of miles you could probably save a fortune (I emphasis lot of miles, there’s is a minimum where additional cost of servicing and Diesel doesn’t get countered by mpg savings).

Guns – Another shocker. You can’t buy large calibre rifles and no handguns at all in the UK (few exceptions apply) so this is based on shotguns, .22 calibre rifles and air-rifles. ALL ARE MORE EXPENSIVE in the US!! Not a huge difference but enough that it’d nearly always be cheaper to buy in the UK and ship over (if that’s allowed). Seriously, for a nation that misread the constitution and takes gun ownership beyond the extreme, you Americans are fucking idiots for paying so much for guns that are MADE IN THE USA.

Mobile Phone Tariffs – Ignoring the stupidity of calling it “wireless services” the cost of mobile phone tariffs in the US are extortionately high for less than fuck all. The cost of SIM free handsets (I’ll come back to that) is about on par though.
Yeah, SIM free; apparently an alien concept for most of America. Two questions: Why the FUCK would you get a phone where you couldn’t choose what network to use the phone with and why the FUCK do you idiots agree to a three year plan?? IDIOTS.

Food – Food is cheaper here in the US but holy mother of all things fuckable, it should be because it is nasty, horrible shit. As a whole.
Having said that, quality food, especially meat, is more expensive in the US than the same quality would be in the UK.
As for fast food, the burgers are BIGGER in the UK and marginally better. It’s all helped though by the fact that Americans love their High Fructose Corn Syrup as well as MSG (monosodiun-glutomate). Then there’s rBGH (something that is BANNED in Europe and in fact MOST of the world!!!) that they inject the cows with to increase milk supply.

Appliances – Most are cheaper in the UK. One example is washing machines. America is big on those fucking awful top loading washing machines that are horribly inefficient and do a fantastic job of destroying clothes. The only reason I can see for them being so popular is cost (maybe load capacity too). For some fucked up reason, the cost of a front loading washing machine is THREE to FOUR times the cost of the same machine in the UK. What stupid fuck (clever fuck?) decides the prices? Oh, silly me, it’s America…

Healthcare – Bit of a no brainer as we have a National Health Service. If you work then you’ll pay approximately 5%-10% in taxes that goes towards the health care system. But for a typical wage of between GBP20,000 and GBP40,000 you’ll still only pay a total of about 27% in wage deductions. We do have to pay for our dental work / checkups though, there is little (though some) in the way of State Funding for that. We do have the option of Private Healthcare (for those that want their own room and don’t want to wait) but this is a lot cheaper than American health care would be without insurance. It is probably Healthcare more than any other expense that makes the cost of living in the US higher than that in the UK and in the UK I would argue standard of living would be higher.

Education – Wow. America has one seriously fucked up education system. No ifs or buts there, UK / European education is way above that in America. In America education, like so many other things (back to healthcare) is a business and right there, you have a problem. And just like American healthcare, the government tried to make it better but American people fucked it up.

Brands – Going off topic here but I’ll mention it anyway, though this may just be a local thing. There is so little choice “here” compared to the UK. For example, within a 30 minute walk from where I used to live in the UK, if I wanted a loaf of bread I could go to: Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer or Asda (I wouldn’t though as it’s shite and owned by Wal-Mart). A little further out we have Co-op, Safeway’s (also in Canada), Morrisons, not to mention the 100 little corner shops in between. Where we are at the moment we have three “big” names, all comparatively low end stores. The same for clothes, there are so many own-brand shops in the UK it’s almost annoying (you Americans think shopping with the wife is bad, you try it when there’s 2-3 times the number of stores they can go – and still end up back at the first).

Religion – No surprise here. Religious Americans are quite simply… words fail me. Ignorant is a word that goes well here. Blind is another. Fucktarded serves well too. Religion controls so much more here than it does in the UK. Whilst our Monarchy was once decided by religion, I don’t ever recall a time when our Prime Minister (our equivalent to the American President) was decided by religion. You would also be hard pressed to find an example of some kill crazy twat going on a rampage in the UK for religious reasons. For the true-blood Englishman, religion is a slowly dying concept (no pun), though of course it will never truly die out. Unfortunately.

Politics – Can’t talk about America or Religion without talking about Politics since American politics are heavily religious. This topic is a whole blog itself (a book even) but in short you have the fucked up (God made me do it) Republicans vs the Democrats that whilst mostly religious, seem to try and avoid religion controlling their actions. After all, it is written in the Constitution: Separation of State and Religion, it’s just that Republicans seem to fudge over that somewhat. Religion aside, American politics is seriously fucked up but then one could argue that Politics globally is fucked up. It’s the pretence here though that pisses me off. America is one of (if not THE) most Capitalist countries in the world. I’ll go as far as saying that if the people themselves weren’t so Capitalistic as individuals (it’s the American Dream) it would be a state-communist country (please note that state-communist is a slight contradiction in terms and that there is a huge difference between truly Communistic and the form of communism that existed in the former USSR, which was really just a severe case of state-capitalism so yep, you could argue there is a frightening small difference between the political structure now and that of the USSR). The people (Americans, as a generalisation) want Social Services but will fight vigorously to avoid Socialist ideals (recently voting down country wide health care for example). The people want the government to provide more for them but only if some other poor schmuck pays for it. The people want the rich to pay more taxes but think raising taxes is the way to do it (a truly naive and moronic belief).
I guess I could sum up American politics quite simply: They re-elected George W Bush.

Public Holidays – And how can I talk about Religion and Politics without mentioning annual holidays. The UK has it’s own and America has there’s. Though one again, worthy of a mention. We British, in our past, took great delight in finding new lands, slaughtering everyone, planting a flag, calling it a new part of the Empire then sitting down to a nice cup of tea. The mainland Europeans have there share of this too though no one, not even Ze Germans, can boast quite as much as us British. What we British don’t do though is FUCKING CELEBRATE THE SLAUGHTERS YOU SICK FUCKING CUNTS. Yep, I had my first American thanks-giving the other day and what struck me was since I was the only one there that really had the right to any kind of celebration, none of the people thanked me!! After all, we, the Brits, kinda founded Thanks Giving (before shooting the rest of the Indians).

Other random differences (some serving as contrary to “popular beliefs”): Drivers – I’ve been told that places like New York and Los Angeles are different but certainly here where I am now, drivers are slow. And I mean bastid slow. And they hesitate constantly which is fucking annoying. If it’s clear to go FUCKING GO YOU DOPEY CUNT. This extends to the people and again, I stress that I’ve only “met” the locals from one state but damn, considering they’re armed a lot of the time where the hell is the aggression? I expect a lack of aggression in Canada but come on people, if I flick you the finger then walk over to your car I at least expect you to get out of the fucking thing (a recent walk with Frankie where some bitch thought it’d be funny to rev their car as they drove past us a little too close).

TV – So. Much. Worse. No, it really is. We in Britain always knew that US TV was shite and advert ridden but holy fucking Christ, is it any wonder so many Americans are fucktarded? I have to ask again, why do you fucking idiots put up with it? A quick mention of the US media for example, I found out a law was passed to make it LEGAL to report false news. I’ll say that again, it is LEGAL to report knowingly false news. This gives the media near immunity from lawsuits. In the UK, our longest serving news paper was recently shut down because the British people were sickened by the articles and methods used to obtain “news worthy material”. It takes a lot to rile Britain as a country but if we don’t like something, we’ll sure as shit will do everything we can to get it stopped (The Daily Mail is high priority).

Just going back to the cost of things, something worth noting is that whilst America is considered cheaper than Canada and both are cheaper than Europe, Britain is one of the most expensive places in Europe to live (outside of Scandinavia – that’s Norway, Sweden and Denmark for you Geographically ignorant Americans). If you were to compare many mainland European countries to the USA then you’d probably find a great many more things are vastly cheaper than they are in the US. On the whole, as a continent, Europe, in my experience is a cheaper place to live than the US. On top of that, Europe is vastly more Socialistic. Dang, I forgot that being nice to each other isn’t the American way so I guess that would spoil it for most Americans.

Next year sometime we hope to travel across the States at which time I’ll write a lot more about the people and experiences we have and the differences I see. Though I doubt very very much I’ll be surprised by much that I see. Hicks are going to be hicks and Yanks are going to be Yanks. I just hope the Twitter twats we hope to meet continue to buck the trend that is typical America.

I’ve said goodbye to my Dad and my Brother. Tomorrow (Monday 19th September) I say goodbye to one of my best friends. My poor Dad though, not only did I tell him last weekend that I was leaving the country, my brother did too. We could probably have chosen a better day than his birthday. Dang.

My previous blog post was a kind of informational post about booking the tickets to go and be with Frankie and this serves as a more emotional post. I didn’t want to include anything I will write here in that post as I wanted it to be a happy one just as that day was a happy day. Here I want to write about my feelings and emotions, leaving my friends, my family, my country behind and starting a new life in [foreign lands] (been a while since I used that) with my new girlfriend, Frankie aka @JstCallMeFrank.

But I really don’t know where to start…

I’ll miss all my friends of course, my friends mean the world to me and I do, rightly or wrongly, often put them before my family.

My family are not close in the sense that everyone tries to visit everyone else as often as possible. Family gatherings are reserved (literally) for major birthdays, weddings and Christmas. There’s a huge number of family members I haven’t seen for the best part of, if not over a year. That kind of makes it easier to leave though the family members I have spoken to and seen are naturally sad that I am leaving the country but all are happy for me.
My friends are happy for me too and when I can make it back to the UK I will be hoping to do a tour and visit them all.
In no particular order: Ruth (& Alex), Simon (& Vicki), Rachel, Luke, I love you all and I will miss you so much.

TV. I’ll miss Doctor Who. I am a huge fan of the Matt Smith series the latest of which is only a few episodes in and I can’t watch it on BBC iPlayer as it only works in the UK (might have to see how I forge a proxy IP address…). The MotoGP and F1 (motorbike and car racing) I will miss to a lesser extent, I should be able to catch up with that. There really wasn’t much else I watched, NCIS was another but I’ll be able to get that on DVD or something.

Colchester. I’ll miss my home town. I’ve lived in Colchester on and off for more than 25 years and I’ve owned my flat (currently mid sale) since January 2000. It was hard leaving the flat behind. The sale is yet to finalise so technically it’s still mine. Walking down the path for the last time, looking back at the flat (a maisonette actually) brought more tears to my eyes. To make it worse there are so many of my things still inthe flat that I wasn’t able to find storage for or take with me. I have boxes and boxes of books (I love books and was proud of the collections I had), a huge box of DVD’s, another of CD’s, my bed, bedding, weights bench and most distressing, a dinner set (plates, bowls and cups) that were a present from my (late) Mum.

I have friends that are trying to do what they can (some have a key to the flat) to collect things together and sort out (yes, it is all my fault, I left things till it was too late though there’s a little more to it than that).

England. I’ll miss my country. There’s so many places I never got to visit but those I did I will miss very much. Cornwall for one, specifically camping in Hayle (nr. St. Ives). I’ll miss the English countryside, the general “Englishness” of it all. I can’t say that I’ll miss the English though it depends on what day you ask me. I love the ‘good’ English people, just that the shite twats (read: “chavs”, “benefit scum”, Londers, commuters, builders) spoil it greatly. If all goes to plan it will be at least a year before I return and it will probably feel good to be back but in the meantime I have an entire continent (or two) to explore and beyond that I will be with Frankie. Their employment at the current work place ends in a few weeks and we’ll be spending even more time together which hopefully means I will spend less time thinking about all these things I miss and allow me to enjoy my new life.

[Frankie, sorry, this next bit will be hard on you, I'm sorry but I can't not mention her]
Sandra. I’ve not written about Sandra and I don’t have the greatest of reasons for that. Sandra is my wife (though we split up and are getting divorced – we split before I met Frankie, for those wondering). Whilst things are far from great between us, there was a time, even after we split, that I thought I’d never be far from her. We were, and are trying to be again, the very best of friends. I have hurt Sandra greatly and moving away has only made that worse. Sandra was the biggest part of my life it is possible to be for over 4 years and to ‘suddenly’ find myself 4000 miles away is somewhat painful.

But our marriage did fail and we are both trying to move forward with our lives. I met Frankie and I fell in love (something else I never thought I could do again) and whilst I mourn for the loss and failure of my marriage with Sandra, I have my new life with Frankie and once again, I am very happy.

But Sandra will always be someone I care greatly for, someone I will never forget and someone I will miss. I hope Sandra can again find love and be happy, she so deserves to be.

I’ll be writing another post soon about the next step in my life (that would be Frankie and crossing continents / oceans to be with them) but you don’t need to read it or know it’s contents in detail to understand why this move is easier than it could be. That’s not to say this was the easiest decision of my life (though it was, to a great extent) but I have to look to my future and my happiness and that in a big way helped me do what I have done.

I’ll miss England, my home, my family and my friends. I’ll miss all the little things, the parks, the walks, the way of life, the eccentricities, driving on the left, well made cars, food, the people (some) and I’ll miss ‘Being’ English, which I feel is not that easy to do when you’re not in the country.

Goodbye England. Take care of everyone for me. I’ll miss you and them.

Goodbye.

Oh, I will be back, from time to time, and I’ll be bringing Frankie with me so look out!

Goodbye England, you beautiful bitch. I love you, always.

Now if you don’t mind I need to go and do something rather soppy…

I’m afraid of heights, as in, when I am high up (depending on situation it could be a 6′ ladder or it could be the edge of a roof) I get the heebie-jeebies. I get a little panicked, I get a bit wobbly, I get an overwhelming fear that I’m going to fall.

When I was about 9 years old we (me, my brother and my Mum) went to the Isle of Wight for a holiday. There was some adventure thingy there and part of it had all these huge plastic dinosaurs. I though it would be great fun to climb up one and sit on top of its head so up I climbed and there I sat, motionless, shitting myself. My brother had to climb up and help me down.

The problem I’ve always had with climbing, be it plastic dinosaurs or trees is that I can get up no problem but the coming down is an issue. For a start I have to look down, for another it always seems so much easier to stretch up to something -a tree branch for example- than it is reaching down to it.

It’s also about a sense of safety. I don’t like ladders at all. I won’t go more than six feet up a ladder except the one to my loft. But I’ll climb up down 30 feet of scaffolding. I don’t like escalators but I’ll look over the edge of a building roof if I was harnessed to it. I’ll parachute out of an aeroplane but I’m not doing a bungy jump.
This time last year (Sept. 2010) I was in Cornwall and whilst there I visited The Eden Project. If you’ve never been I highly recommend it. Check the link for more info but in short it’s a series of bio-domes featuring amongst other things, the worlds largest captive rainforest. The rainforest dome has a platform some 40 meters above the ground, suspended by wires and accessed by a series of stepped decks also suspended by cables from the roof. I nearly crapped myself just looking up at it. The whole thing wobbled. But I paid the £4 and after a lot of chickening out I made it. They say if you can conquer your fears then you’ll be “cured” well I can tell you it’s bollocks. I hated it then and I’ll hate it next time I do it.

In short, I have an (ir)rational fear of heights. There is nothing wrong with my inner ear balance so why for the love of mankind, do people keep assuming / telling me I must have Vertigo? Granted, suffering from vertigo could give you a fear of heights as you associate heights (a common trigger of vertigo) with the nausea and spinning feelings you get when at height but the point is it’s still a physical ailment.

Vertigo is a medical condition to do with balance which is handled by a part of our inner ears. I have a phobia. So now you now. Today you have learnt something (other than I’m a bit of a wus sometimes).

We’re all equal. Just some of us are more equal than others.

For at least as long as I have been riding bikes (at time of writing some 18 years), and maybe I was aware of this even before I was riding bikes, there has existed a “them and us” mentality between non-motorcycle-owning-car drivers and bikers. It’s borderline hateful. Now as a biker you might think I’m biased but until you’ve spent and decent amount of time riding a Motorbike on our roads you really, REALLY have no right to comment. Offer your opinion by all means and I will treat your uneducated, assumption filled, mostly fact-less opinion with the due respect it so obviously deserves. As a biker I am telling you that in my experience as well as those of just about every biker I’ve met, the vast majority of car drivers are complete cunts, especially when it comes to motorcyclists.

Just a little fact for you: I used to drive (a car) a lot. I mean serious amounts. 120,000 miles a year, that’s over 2000 miles every week, week in, week out. I also average over 8,000 miles a year on bikes (which is considered a higher than average amount) and I can tell you now, only ONCE have I had to take avoiding action in my car because of motorcyclist and that was in part due to stupid road layout of a particular junction, at night, on an unlit road. Why I’m trying to defend her I don’t know. That resulted in a rather nasty accident. But NEVER have I had to swerve or brake dangerously or put my life in danger because of a motorcyclist. Something I can’t say for being out on my bike about car drivers.

I will admit I am not the perfect motorcyclist. I do filter between stationary traffic to get to the front of a set of lights. But I don’t see what the big deal is with me doing that. I don’t see why it is necessary for some car drivers, having seen me in their mirrors, to move forward, swinging the car across slightly, blocking my path through. When-ever I’ve done this it has always been at a very slow speed ready to stop instantly should a pedestrian walk out or someone exits a car. It’s not against the law and it is not impeding the car driver’s journey. My bike gets to 60 in about 3 seconds, I am not going to be holding them up when the lights change and I move off.

I am 6′ tall. I jacked the back end of my bike up slightly to make it turn quicker. This has the effect of pushing me well above the height of a car. I wear black leathers in the day time and my bike is bright white. Early mornings or if riding at dusk I wear a yellow reflective jacket. Guess what the most common excuse I hear is when some twat pulls out in front of me. Yup, “I didn’t see you”. This has got so bad in England that now the courts will prosecute any driver that says that on grounds of driving with undue care and attention. In short, they didn’t see me because they didn’t bloody look.

But it gets worse, even if they do look and they do see me they still pull across in front of me. I was nearly killed two years ago by some myopic old bastard who saw me (we made eye contact) and still made a right turn just as I got level with the turning. Unbelievable.

There are many, many pubs in England that will refuse to serve me if I go in wearing my bike gear. Sometimes this is because I might “out off other patrons” and sometimes it’s a simple “we don’t serve bikers”. Funny thing about the second group is that if I go back but drive my car they’re more than happy to serve me. Of course, as soon as it is clear they will serve me I decline and leave.I have NEVER been refused a drink in a pub that I walked or drove to. Ok, not so much a car vs bike thing but just added it to highlight the discrimination.

Why car drivers think it’s acceptable to slam on their brakes when I’m about to over-take them is another mystery to me. As is why they feel the need to cross partly into my lane when I’m on a duel-carriageway overtaking them. And why the need to throw things out the window when I’m behind them. Or speed up when I try to overtake them on a narrow lane just to slow down again after I’m forced to pull back behind them (we have a lot of bends in our roads and I wont overtake on a blind corner). It’s all a mystery.

Now whilst I encounter shocking behaviour from car drivers when I too am driving a car, it’s nothing like the childish, moronic idiocy that I see when on my bike. You turn your car into me at duel-carriageway speeds and I will die. One of those cans of coke you thought it was funny to throw out your window at me hits me and I crash, I might die. You pull across in front of me and I hit the side of your car at national limit speeds and I will probably die. So how the hell is it not classed as attempted murder?

Of course I am not going to sit here and tell you that every biker is an Angel. I see examples of stupidity almost every time I’m out for the day. Sometimes it’s an over-reaction to a car driver, sometimes it’s frustration, sometimes it’s because they’re a GSXR riding prick. But when I see them I normally let it be known to them that they are dicks. The worst being nob-head 16 year olds on their pathetic little scooters. And for some reason, northern GSXR riders.

Yes I have generalise, no not every car driver is guilty just as not every biker is.

Please, car drivers, stop being dicks. And GSXR riders, please, stop giving them reasons. You see, you piss them off then they take it out on me.

Lastly, car drivers, if you ever get a chance, do the CBT bike test. It’s a day, costs about £150 last time I checked and you’ll get a small appreciation of what I’m talking about.

Warning – You should consider this post rated as 18 / R and most definitely NSFW.

This post is a follow on from some tweets I posted last night (July 1st 2011). A lot of this isn’t going to make sense as I’ve not written about Twitter or what I put into it / get from it. However if you do use twitter and you follow me then all should be good.

Additionally, if you are not used to my outbursts of venomous anger this post will shock you. Do I care? Do I bollocks. If you don’t like it then I suggest you fucking rotate now.

I’ll set the scene for you: Actually no I won’t. That would involve a personal conversation that I’m not willing to share. All you need to know is that someone I care greatly about had once again witnessed and been victim to the more loathsome traits exhibited by the vast majority of the population.

First question first: What makes people disgusting?
The simple answer is their nature. I’m sure you all know people you don’t like, people with character traits (flaws) that you find disagreeable. Sure, you might say to me “I dislike them but to go as far as to say they’re disgusting is a bit much” well I’m going to question that. You see, I have a certain view, an opinion, and observation if you will regarding the population of this splendid rock we’re slowly tearing apart. It’s not one shared by very many people, at least not amongst people I have met, online and offline. It’s a view born from experience mainly my own with extra weight added to it by the experiences of others. When I look at my friends and family and the nondescript people that flitter through my day to day life I can say that on the whole they seem to be good people. Friends of course go without saying, family does have the odd bad apple (not me shockingly) and the rest I only see one very shallow side of. However, when I widen that view to take in the town I live in, the county, the country, the continent and the right back to encompass the population as I whole a completely different story emerges.

If we zoom in again, myself and just about everyone I’ve ever know could give you an example of someone at some point in their life shitting on them from a great height. In fact most could give multiple examples. This is a good start as already the crap-o-meter is swinging to the “Majority” end of the scale. And I imagine that every one of you reading this can give one or more examples of where another person has shown themselves to be loathsome bastards.

However, I imagine you’re still sitting there questioning my use of the word disgusting. To me I can’t think of more perfect word.  No better word sums up the low depths of sickness that people will sink to for their own gain and in some cases for no discernible reason at all.
It’s the word most suited because it utterly conveys how these people make others feel. A less offensive word I could use is “ugly”. To me “ugly” can never be a physical trait when used to describe a person but only an opinion about their personality, however, it just doesn’t quite portray my feelings here. One example that springs to mind is men and how they make woman feel when the disgusting lecherous cunts stare at them. Sometimes I’m ashamed to own a dick – until I remember that these fucktards are nothing like me and certainly don’t represent “normal” men. But that’s not the point. The point is they exist and they are disgusting slobs of creatures, ogling and staring at girls, making crude gestures that even Neanderthal man would be appalled at. Of course there’s so much worse culminating possibly in the rape of another person.
But before you all go on a massive man hating rant, woman… fuck… woman can be a whole new level of sick. But here’s a path I’m really not going to take. I don’t need to. My point is made. Look back through the history of our species and you will see a timeline filled with vile disgusting crimes against humanity. Open a newspaper, look at the news, everywhere you turn you will see more examples. Do you get it now? Can you see it?
Of course you’re going to tell me that not everyone is like that and that’s because you haven’t read a single fucking word I wrote. Fuck off right now. Stop reading and just fuck off. Still here? Want to know where you just went wrong? I never said it was everyone. I know that. So now you just look like a cunt. Happy now. And congratulations, you too are now disgusting. For those that aren’t that moronic, the point is that evil, vile people do exist and unfortunately in enough numbers to at some point effected all out lives.

So here we are then. We’ve established that people, as a generalisation (with exceptions) are disgusting. Now we’ve covered that part of it, I want to try and explain why it’s so damaging that we have these people in our world.

There’s a expression people use often when talking to me and one that makes me want to dig my thumbs into their eye sockets:

If so many say / act the same thing / way it must be right.

It is of course such an amazing pile of bullshit as to warrant the gratuitous violence that flashes through my mind and takes every fibre of will power not to act out. The worrying thing about this expression though is that there are darker undertones. You see, the human sub-conscience mind can be influenced very easily by repetition of a conscience input such as sound and action.

I could write pages and pages on this subject but for the sake of this particular post we will concentrate on the negative impact of negative input. Put simply, if enough people over a long enough period of time tell you that you are a worthless piece of shit, chances are, if you’re not mentally strong enough you will start to question it. Then before long you’ll start to believe it. The mind will be focused and in this focused state will start to see what it “wants” to see. To give you a specific example, if enough people tell you you are fat you may well up beleiving it and then when you look in the mirror you will see fat even though you’re not and there isn’t any. Of course this example works well here because it’s also as a result of media and social pressures which in turn go to great lengths to press upon us what an “ideal” looks like. If you listen to social media reports and you read social media articles then you spend a great deal of time hearing and witnessing the same negative reinforcement. The vicious circle spins around and you sink further and further into a pit of self loathing.
The greatest shame of this is that it is exponentially more difficult to do the same with positive thought, though not impossible.

I said I wasn’t going to go into great detail and I’m in danger of doing just that; hopefully my point is made.

How does this all relate to this post? This post is about how people make us feel about ourselves (at least that’s how this is going to be portrayed). I’m 6′ tall and as a yearly average I weigh 210lb. I stand out. I’m big into heavy metal (though there is so much music I love it’s not the genre I listen to the most) and went through the long hair, leather / denim with patches and studs, tight black jeans, boots etc. look. I am also a biker. So again, at least as I have chosen, black leather jacket, (tight) black leather trousers, black boots and crash helmet. What this has meant is that I go through life being constantly judged. At school I got judged for popularity. As I biker I get judged as a person. Sneered at. People avoid me. Pubs and bars refuse to serve me. I used to let this effect me. I used to get very depressed and the effect it had on me was that I started to loath myself. The constant barrage of negative attention eventually made me feel worthless and I spent years filled with self pity.

What’s really sick about this is that the nicer you are the worse you can be effected. Before this world and its virus of a population turn you cynical you might be one of those big hearted (naive) people that thinks the best of everyone. Whilst you may think this is wonderful way to go through life it does make you so vulnerable. If people are horrible but you are so convinced that they are not then the only direction for “blame” is inward. “It must be me”. This is a self destructive train of thought. It doesn’t matter how many people say something to you or act in a particular way towards you or judge you, it is THEIR problem not yours. It certainly does NOT mean there is anything wrong with you.

Don’t get me wrong, whilst spending your life being cynical and negative and angry would turn you into just such a crazy person and whilst I do have these thoughts and beliefs that are with me every single day I am as a whole a happy old soul (and apparently a poet). There has been a massive change in my life that sent me to the very lowest point of my entire life (a place I once thought I could never be at again) but I am not effected by the virus that plagues this world. I’m not a negative person and every day that I am compelled to go out into the world I try and greet it with nothing more than disinterest. Despite everything that has happened and continues to happen, the world doesn’t get me down because I quite simply stopped giving a fuck about it and what it thought of me.

However, that’s me; now I’ve waffled on for far longer than I planned we should get back to the point. As I mentioned way back in the beginning of this post I had a chat with someone I care very deeply for. They were having a moment best described as self-loathing because a mass of people had made them feel disgusted with themselves. All I could do was tell them that it was not them. That is was normal to feel disgusted by other people. They had gone out hoping to have a really good time but instead were made to feel disgusting by the actions of others (not necessarily their words and neither are these but I would paraphrase it by saying they were made to feel a freak, an object of sickening lust). This issue goes much deeper for this person but again, hopefully you can get the gist of this without knowing too much more.

The phone call upset me greatly. There was so little I could do. I couldn’t go to them (at least not there and then). Not that I needed reminding but it did serve to remind me just how disgusting the human race is. And where better to voice such a thought that than Twitter…

For those unfamiliar with twitter you need to read from the bottom up:

And for those that are for what ever reason not able to view images, here’s the transcription with added notes:

People are on the whole, gross disgusting cunts. You (my elite) are obvious exceptions (others apply) but generally, horrible sacks of shit.
[note] The “Elite” are those tweeps that appear on my Twitterati list and to me are great people, people I would gladly spend all the time in the world with. Any time I bitch about people as a generalisation this group lists the exceptions.

People filled with hate (without knowing what hate means), ugly fucking people (that think ugly is physical). I wish you would fucking die.
[note] A bug bear is people that use the word hate when all they really mean is dislike intensely. Dictionary definition may make that acceptable but I don’t. It’s too strong an emotion. It is my belief that you can’t truly hate someone unless you’ve loved them first. Similarly, people that use the word “ugly” to describe someone’s physical appearance. Who the fuck are they to judge someone based on looks. Just because you don’t think someone is attractive doesn’t no one will. Eye of the beholder and all that jazz.

This is not the psychotic murderous ramblings of an insane mind. This is rational thought from someone who sees with perfect clarity.

I am not blinded by guilt or conscience. I don’t need acceptance or defining or approval. I see the world as it truly is because I am free.
[note] Along with the one above: Once you too realise that it doesn’t matter what other people think, that there is nothing wrong with who you are, you too will be free to see the truth about your fellow (wo)man.

But I make one promise to you disgusting cunts. You EVER fucking make someone I love feel like you, I’ll end your worthless life. Painfully.
[note] You take this very literally and seriously.

So in summary: There isn’t really a specific conclusion. Some people read my tweets and got very arsey about it. Completely missed the point in spectacular fashion. One person even accused me of judging them ! What the fuck? So I felt compelled to write this and give you a bit more of an understanding where this comes from.

Oh joy, yet another blog post bashing the iPhone. You’re right, it is old and it is boring now so I’m going to try not to do it. this post is simply about education.

I’m not going to go into the whole iphone vs android vs windows vs whatever and I’m not going to try to convince you one way or another. I leave that up to Steve Jobs. I have used Android as the alternative platform here purely because that is the one I chose and I don’t know enough about Windows for mobile / Nokia Ovi / Blackberries to know what is and isn’t available on them. Please feel free to let me know in the comments. I don’t believe I have the right to tell you what you should buy (because I don’t), it’s your choice to make and I’m sure you will be very happy with what ever your choice is.

What I want to do here is simply point out that if you’re going to make a choice, it should at least be an educated choice. The reason such a need exists is because too many people watch too many adverts and despite appearing to be intelligent, believe everything they see and hear.

Let’s take a look at the claims made in some recent iPhone adverts:

If you don’t have an iPhone you don’t have iBooks so you don’t have your favourite books in your pocket. And you don’t have the iBook store.
Granted, you won’t have the iBook store. But you WILL have just about every other ebook store available and you WILL have your favourite books in your pocket with an alternative platform such as Android. I have two apps called Aldiko and Amazon Kindle on my phone and between them there isn’t a book I love that I can’t get. You may not have heard of Amazon or Kindle but rest assured, they have more than the odd book available for download.

If you don’t have an iPhone, you don’t have an iPod in your phone with your music and your playlists and you don’t have iTunes the world’s number one music store.
No you don’t but what you do have is an mp3 player (in fact, mp3, wma, ogg, and many more codecs) meaing you can listen to whatever you like in just about any format you like without having to convert it and sync it with your PC (although you can if you wish). Like the books above, there isn’t a single song I want to listen to that I can’t purchase with an Android app or listen to using the built in music player. Further more I don’t need to lug about a laptop or find a PC to make changes to what I’m listening to.

If you don’t have an iPhone you don’t have the Apps store.
No, you can have EVERY other apps store available. I currently have about 50-60 apps downloaded and of those 4 I had to pay for. Of that 4, three are only upgrade / donate options – only one app I had to pay for to use at all (after the free 30 day trial expired). The fact that the Apple store has more apps in it is meaningless. With the exception of games you tell me what app exists in the Apple store that doesn’t have an alternative / equivalent in the Android Market. I bet there’s a whole lot more in the Android market that do NOT have an equivalent in the Apple store!

One last thing, this post wouldn’t be complete without pointing out that the following were around long before the iPhone:

• Video Calling
• Touch Screen
• Mutli-touch screen
• MMS

Bottom line, you CAN have EVERYTHING and MORE from an alternative platform. You do NOT NEED an iPhone just to get your favourite books, your favourite music etc. You DO have a choice.

The original title for this was “favourite android apps” but decided it would be more useful if I listed the ten apps that I most think everyone should have on their phone (from the list of apps I currently have installed).

I should also point out that another factor I used when compiling this list was “does EVERYONE use this feature?”. A couple of examples of how that changed the list is the FourSquare App and Tweetdeck, two apps I always recommend but not everyone uses twitter (freaks) or wants their location broadcast to the world.

I haven’t included any Google apps in this list either because I think they’re all fantastic and it should go without saying that you have lots of them installed.

So here then, in alphabetical order are the top ten apps I think everyone should have installed on their Android device:

Aldiko – eBook reader and book store, perfect for those that don’t have or don’t want an Amazon account (but if like me you do then you can also download the Amazon Kindle app and take your eBooks with you where-ever you go on your phone and Kindle device).
The reader itself is basically perfect with adjustments for brightness and font size. There’s also a night mode which changes it to white text on a black background.

The book store contains free publications as well as new books at a great price. It’s not as complete as the Amazon book store (I couldn’t find any James Herbert) but I was interested to note that the store did include the Stieg Larson Millennium series as well as the new Jo Nesbo and Michael Connelly books.
I will take this opportunity to say …Who needs iBooks??

Astrid – Astrid is a task manager app where you can set up tasks complete with deadlines, notes, priority settings, repeating tasks and have friendly reminders. You also have the option to hide reminders until a set time before they are due. It’s gone through a lot of changes since I first used the app over a year ago but mostly for the better. A desktop widget is available and you can sync tasks with Google and Producteev.

Barcode Scanner – Fairly self explanatory this one; it scans barcodes including QR codes which then gives youoptions to find those items on-line to buy, download a contacts details from another phone or a business card and install apps. Very very simple to use and just gets better and better.

Dropbox – Cloud storage with sync facility across PC and phone. Backup all your important phone data as well as any documents, photo’s etc. you want to be able to access anywhere. If you download the Dropbox software to your PC you can then sync everything together and never have to worry about remembering to transfer items across manually.
The free Dropbox account gives you 2GB of storage and you can buy more if required. You can also increase the storage for free up to about 4GB by recommending Dropbox to other people (once they create an account using your link you will automatically see the increased storage).

Evernote – Note everything. Text notes, voice notes, camera images all sync’d with your online Evernote account automatically.There’s a great easy to use widget for your home screen too.
Being the forgetful bugger I am I make great use of this app and use it to record everything I think of or see that I think “I must…” because I WILL forget.

Firefox – My favourite browser. It’s Firefox on your Android phone! Nuff said.
Actually that wouldn’t be doing it justice. You can sync your Firefox session between PC and phone so as you leave home you can continue seamlessly with what ever you were doing before hand on your PC. The sync includes your open tabs, session data and your bookmarks.
One other thing I will add is that you can now install add-ons such as Foursquare (something I thought so brilliant I had to tweet about it).

MyBackup Pro – This is an application for backing up all your text messages (including MMS), application data and phone settings. You can store this backup either on the sdcard or on the MBP servers in case something happens to your sd card (Personally I also upload the backup file to my dropbox account as part of my weekly backup schedule (yes, I know, I need to get out more).
You can set up an automatic schedule to do this all for you and select what you do or don’t want backing up. When it comes time to restore everything you again can choose what to and what not to restore.
It’s all done with a very nice, easy to use interface. THe version I use is the paid version as I change ROMs so often I make use of this app several times a week but if you only wish to do this occasionally, the free for 30 days trial will suit you just fine.

OI Safe – This is a password storage “safe” where you can store all the username & passwords for things like email accounts, social networking logins and online retail accounts. Visually it’s a very basic looking app but that’s partly why I like it; it’s functional and only concerns itself with making it as easy as possible to store and access your passwords.
You can create categories such as “Social Sites”, “Personal”, “Retail” etc. to help organise everything and when you need to enter a password you simply tap the field in the app and your username or password is copied to the clipboard ready for you to paste into the required field.
As with any password storage facitlity, the safe is only as strong as the master password so use the best and most complicated password you’re capable of recalling; remember, using an app like this means you only have to remember one password so no excuses for using your pets name!!

SMS Pop-Up – This is one of those apps that I’ve had on my Android phones ever since I got the Google (T-Mobile) G1 back in 2009 and has been installed on every android phone since. It allows you to completely customise your SMS notifications for both default and on a per-contact bases. You can customise the ring-tones (notification sound), the vibrate pattern and the LED colour and flash rate (due to handset manufacturers hardware choices may not function on every device).
You can also choose to have new messages appear on a pop-up window with options to close, delete and reply and can set to show even if the phone lock-screen has been activated.
Being a bit of a geek, the vibrate pattern for incoming texts is Morse code  for “S M S” – dot dot dot dash dash dot dot dot. If you want to be equally geeky the timings would be 0,120,120,120,120,120,360,360,120,360,360,120,120,120,120,120 remembering that there is a space of one dot (dit) between “on-states”, a dash (dah) is three times longer than a dot (dit) and there is a space equivalent to one dash (dah) between letters. Use a gap of seven dots between words, which using my timings would be 840ms *ahem*
You can make the length of the dots and dashes anything you like as long as the above rules are applied but I found 120ms to be perfect.

Vlingo – Now this really is my current favourite Android app. With Vlingo you can create text messages (including reply), create emails, open apps, get driving directions and call a contact using nothing but voice commands. No training is required before hand but speaking clearly is obviously key to a successful command. So far it has proved a good 99% accurate.
The app has an in-car mode too (see screenshot) with a well thought out and polished design. Whilst in car mode (and can be set for any time a bluetooth device is connected) you can set up a wake-up voice command as well as activating text-to-speech reader which will read aloud texts and emails.
I really can’t rate this app highly enough. It is incredibly well polished, works flawlessly and did I mention, it’s FREE!!!

So there you have it. Ten Android apps I think everyone should have installed on their phone. As I said earlier, this wasn’t my ten favourite apps, just those I think the majority of people will find useful. I haven’t gone into massive detail about them all so if you would like any further information about any of the apps then please feel free to ask in the comments section below.
All screen-shots were taken from my HTC Desire HD using the ScreenShot V1.5 (for rooted phones) app by Kastorsoft.

As most of you will be all too well aware, I’m a huge (geek) fan of gadgets especially mobile phones and lately, specifically android devices.

And unless you’ve been locked away or only recently arrived from another planet, you’ll at least be aware of the Apple iPad. Essentially a 10 inch iPhone with less functionality. In an attempt to grab a piece of this action Google and device manufactures such as Asus, Samsung and Motorola produced their own tablet devices running the Android Honeycomb operating system. The iPad sold faster than they could be shipped yet the Android tablet devices are seriously lagging.

An interesting article on twitter via @thedroidguy titled “Motorola & Nvidia CEO’s Credit App shortage to Weak Tablet Sales” highlights the industries frustration with the lack of sales and this got me thinking. Or rather it got me to re-think about something I thought when I first heard about the iPad – is there really a demand for such a device? At the time I thought not and discussions with friends and colleagues seem to reach the same conclusion. But like I said, it did sell and it sold by the boat load. Some would argue that that proves there was a hole in the market and the demand is there. Well actually it doesn’t mean that at all. All it shows is that with enough advertising (brainwashing) the masses can be made to believe that the demand is there and convinced that demand exists. For me personally I can assure you that never in my entire life have I felt that what was missing from the gadget world was whatever the iPad is supposed to fulfil? It simply isn’t good enough at being a laptop (or even a netbook) and it’s excessive for what little it does do.

So how does this relate to the poor Android tablet sales? I fired a quick theory along the lines of Android users (and others) have always recognised this lack of need for such a device. As a whole, and generalised, “we” were simply but completely under-whelmed by tablets and even our newly founded love affair with all things Android was not enough to change our minds.

The problem we now have from a business point of view is that Apple have created a kind of faux-demand for tablet devices and need to ensure they have something that competes. The devices available now do, for the most part, provide an alternative and they are selling but I think that Google, the device manufactures and the hardware providers need to accept that in the non-apple world, it just isn’t that exciting, needed or wanted.

So the question you’re all asking now is would I buy an Android Tablet? No. For the same money I could buy a bloody good laptop, upgrade my PC components or a dozen other things more useful. But if you forced me to have one then without doubt I’d go for the Asus EEE Pad transformer TF101 with the optional keyboard / mousepad dock. In fact I’d go one step further and say if you’re looking for an Android tablet then this really is the one to get; I’d certainly struggle to find a reason not to recommend this one – go check it out.

[EDIT] If you wanted something as close to the iPad as possible then you may want to look at the Samsung Tab 10.1. That’s all I’m saying on that because I don’t like Samsung mobile devices.

[EDIT2] Playing Devil’s advocate I tried to think of a situation where a tablet would be perfect for me. The nearest I could get to it was blogging, tweeting etc. on the go. Even with just the on-screen keyboard it would be so much easier to type out a days worth of blogs and tweets but I still can’t escape the fact I’d rather take an Ubuntu powered netbook.

After wasting a day’s holiday due to Royal Mail being unable to cope with the recent weather conditions my HTC Desire HD finally arrived from T-Mobile. 24 hours later I thought I’d give a quick review whilst it’s still in it’s unmolested state.

First impressions: It’s huge. I did check a couple of these out before purchasing so I knew what to expect but when you actually get to really hold this phone without security devices attached it really is massive. It’s quite heavy too but slipped into the back pockets of a pair of jeans or the inside jacket pocket it’s actually quite manageable thanks in part to the slimness.

The first question I had to get answered was had T-Mobile corrected their cock-up with MMS resizing? On the G2 Touch (T-Mobile branded HTC Hero) T-Mobile in their infinite wisdom ineptitude shrunk images down to around 9KB when sent as an MMS. Well I’m glad to report a test MMS using a photo taken by the phone’s camera was sent as a 230KB file rendering it a healthy size image at the other end (the end being my G2 Touch / Hero). So we’re off to a good start.

The screen is super responsive to every gesture and overall a very nice display, image wise. The resolution means that you don’t get much more on the screen than you do with the G2 Touch / Hero but everything is bigger requiring a lot less squinting. I can now use the phone at a more comfortable distance. Browsing the web and using apps like Tweetdeck is now a pleasure. Of course you’re not going to beat a 10″+ 1024px+ screen but for a device that still passes as a pocket-able phone it’s a fantastic experience.

I’m not going to talk about the HTC SenseUI because I don’t like and the first thing I installed onto the phone was the ADW Launcher (which you can see in the photo). The wallpaper was designed for the G2 Touch but has worked very well, you really wouldn’t know it.

I am very impressed with how slick the phone is to use. Absolutely no delay or stuttering what-so-ever even with music playing and browsing websites, checking Tweetdeck etc. It’s an absolute joy to use from that point of view. On the subject of delays, there’s a fast boot option which if enabled means in less than 10 seconds after hitting the power button the phone has booted, networks connected and you can launch an app. Seriously impressive. But as I rarely reboot the phone I have disabled the fast boot setting.

Something else I’m very impressed with is how HTC have dealt with the issue of having a large touch screen device when used as a phone pressed against your face. The built in proximity sensor works flawlessly. As you bring the phone up to your face the screen is turned off and deactivated, bring it away from your face and it instantly activated again; no more fumbling to reactivate the screen. Well done HTC.

There was a lot of grumblings about having the 3.5mm headphone socket on the bottom of the phone but I saw the logic of this ever since I read the specs and now I have the phone it really makes sense. It’s so much more natural to put the phone in a pocket upside down.

Now the negatives: My previous and now backup phone is a G2 Touch / HTC Hero that is rooted and runs a custom 2.2 ROM. Going to a stock 2.2 ROM is actually a step backwards. There’s no Picasa sync for starters and of everything I got used to I will miss that the most. Until of course I get this rooted and install either a custom ROM or the 3D gallery.
[edit] I have sourced and installed the 3D Gallery App (see screen-shot on right)and now have complete sync with my Google Apps Picasa account, woot!

The 1.5GB internal memory is an absolute god send. I’m now free to download every app that takes my fancy without a care. There’s still apps2sd but I’m not taking advantage of that as I’d rather save the SD card for music and videos (although most music is streamed via Ubuntu One).

In summary I am very very impressed with the HTC Desire HD and would recommend it to anyone that can cope with the dimensions. In an ideal world I would have loved another pure Google phone (I still love my T-Mobile G1) there is no way I’m buying a Samsung phone, especially one based on the Galaxy S. I’ve not gone into much detail here, I’ll do that maybe later but until then feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them asap. One thing though, there’s finally an FM radio!!