If real Muslims don’t do something to stop this sort of thing, they shouldn’t call themselves Muslim

This is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read, but I ask anyone who calms their self to sleep at night, under the illusion that one day all religious will find a way to live together in harmony, to read it and understand that the same thing is happening to someone, somewhere, right at this very moment.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/iraq.humanrights

“..he choked her with his foot on her throat, [her brothers] joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.”

Her crime? A passing conversation with a British soldier who was trying to help her stone age ass into the 21st century.

If that’s the sort of religion Muslims want to follow; the sort of behaviour Allah commands them to observe, we’re all doomed.

This is really happening in your body right now!

The incredible nature of life.

Brilliant music video

vlc are teh goodest video thing

Lucy downloaded a video which wouldn’t play and, in my advice to her to download VLC, I remembered that ages ago I’d promised myself I’d tell all my loverly blog people about it too.

Fact is, if VLC doesn’t play it, nothing will. This is because, with the very rare exception of playback types which have been deliberately crippled, VLC taps into the sexy underbelly of open source software projects which are cunningly crafted to look at the data file you want to play and try to pretend to be the software the video prefers to play back in, without actually having to install any extra gunk on your PC.

This is a particular problem for clips you’re not supposed to have, like TV programs you forget to record or watch when they were on which some kind soul has subsequently made available for you on BitTorrent.

Since many broadcasters don’t own the rights to re-distribute content via the tubey-webs for more than, say, 10 days, sometimes to watch an older program you have no choice but to technically break the law and fetch it from a P2P network. Unfortunately, while certain hardware capture cards which take an input from an analogue TV source and turn these videos into a file which playback perfectly well on the machine which made them, other machines (like yours) which don’t have that particular capture card manufacturer’s software installed, simply give out an esoteric error message, about how the world is about to end if you don’t install VidTits_not_a_worm_virus_honest.exe

This is where VLC steps in. It can save you hours of searching for freeware which recognises these obscure playback codecs. It will even make an attempt at rebuilding damaged or incomplete files so you needn’t trash a file that’s 99% completely downloaded, but which BitTorrent refuses to resume that last segment.

VLC is available for a whole bunch of different operating systems, but it comes into it’s own on the Mac, as it’ll think nothing of playing various file types wrapped in Windows Media Video as well as many of those strange AVI and MP4 clips of people falling off fast moving bikes and trains, which you have no idea why you keep, because you’ve already watched them a million times on YouTube and LiveLeak.

Downside: You need a good computer to playback certain High Definition clips.
Upside: Every time I think about Lucy, a dumb grin spreads across my face

Download:
VLC for Linux
VLC for Mac
VLC for that thing by the richest man in the world

Lydia on bass

This is another one of those if you look for it, you’ll find it moments, by the way. Only just this morning Lucy has been texting me about her lust for bass and, as if eavesdropping on my internal dialogue when deciding to send her something to get into, my mate Dave - who’s been playing me music which I’ve never heard before and immediately fell in love with for the best part of the last 20 years - calls me up and puts me onto this young lady…

I’m always blown away by those moments you can’t explain; where things appear to fall in line specifically to serve the will of the individual. You can see how some might call it the power of prayer. I call it having a mate called Dave who isn’t deaf - but, I digress.

You could do a lot worse than subscribing to Lydia’s channel on OooToob - some of her other clips are cool too and she’s a great player.

Is Ben Stein dangerously brainwashed or just drawn that way?

In this comment, Kim linked to a story over on friendlyatheist which links to a video on a Christian broadcasting site showing an interview with Ben Stein, who’s film on so-called Intelligent Design is the latest attempt to legitimise “teach the controversy”, in the war against reason and truth in our classrooms.

I did intend to screen-rip the video so I could post it in a more accessible format to YouTube or Google video, but I got 5 minutes into the interview and had to walk away for a moment, so as not to inflict some serious damage on my computer.

These people are frightening. I’ve never seen such blatant lies dressed up as serious debate in my life. What on Earth are we going to do to help these strangers in our midst wake up?

Truth be told, I was considering walking away from posting any heavy duty blog entries for a while, because - well - summer is upon us here in the North of England and Satan only knows it’ll only last a couple of short weeks, so I had planned on spending as much of that time as possible with Lucy, mine hotty, rather than stuck in front of the computer.

But, the other day, I was up at my son’s school and while I was waiting in reception I noticed that the school magazine was riddled with references to doing things “the Christian way” and it sent a shiver down my spine.

Without going into the whole long and complicated reasons as to why I’d never realised his school had a leaning in this direction before, it did sit on my mind for a day or two and bring home the frightening fact that this isn’t just one of those wacky yank things we Europeans find strangely endearing about you guys across the pond; it’s happening everywhere and it is really super scary.

In the opening remarks of the Stein interview, he asserts that the scientific method rules out the possibility of understand how life on Earth originated from a supernatural perspective; the complexity of the cell and how the planets stay in their orbit. You can’t make this stuff up, but - seriously - the guy interviewing him, actually nodded in agreement. Someone really should buy these people some grade school science books that haven’t been written in the body of Christ (up his sacred arse hole presumably).

Of course, Stein knows full well that these are in fact exactly the very subjects which science is interested in. He knows that by simply making up his argument as he goes along (rather like Joseph Smith) he’ll raise enough hackles in the real world, so as to appear vindicated in concluding his film’s overarching theme, that no one is allowed to challenge Darwin’s fact of evolution through natural selection, without being branded dangerous and either fired from their job or shunned in some other way because of it.

We normal folk, who wouldn’t dream of clinging to a belief that has been proven false, should recoil in horror every time we encounter someone who forces themselves, or is being forced by others, to act opposite to the entirely human instinct to trust what we can prove truthful. The very ability to think logically and reasonably like this, requires a great deal of faith in oneself; that being on your own (metaphorically speaking) is no bad thing.

Because there are no other voices in your head, unless you’re a paranoid schizophrenic, engaging in that internal dialogue between what we want to say and what we feel, we can be sure that our thoughts are our own. But what about the terminally Christian? I wonder how their brains divide, from a numerate functioning point of view, between what they know to be true and what they’re telling themselves is true, despite the many contradictions which ordinary people see so clearly?

Unfortunately, an answer to that is probably very difficult to definitively find; since the vocabulary of religious indoctrination pre-programs theists to see their own will as the will of an exterior supervisor and not, in fact, from their own head. Dan Dennett, in his book ‘breaking the spell’ suggest that certain people are more likely to actually physically and emotionally need religion for some very good evolutionary reasons.

I’ve written before about the idea of Cro-Magnon man instinctively knowing not to go into the cave after dark; there are bears and wolves. And professor Dawkins’ book ‘The ancestors tale’ was hugely insightful in this area in comparing it to other possible explanations for how we developed the instinct to trust certain of our senses more than others, millions of years before we were even remotely capable of forming complex thoughts about our origins through verbally handed down creation myth and folklore.

But I’ve yet to find anything (which I’d appreciate links and comments for) on the study into the religious brain and how so many billions of devoutly mislead people, manage to live a relatively normal life, despite having no higher functioning mind of their own.

Perhaps they’re the Ben Stein’s of this world? Perfectly capable of chewing and walking at the same time; even managing to string sentences together with fairly complicated words in them, not just for their own lips to form, but for the lips of others as well. And yet utterly incapable at the same time, of having any real perspective on anything at all, even for a single second - which is all it would take if they gave themselves that second, to have a hand to forehead moment at the utter shite that comes out when they speak without thinking.

This is my mate’s band, Dirty Weekend

Their first promo video, for Men in White Coats, was recorded at another mate of ours studio, called Shush.

For more crack and tour dates, see myspace.com/dirtyweekendtheband

An open letter to Sir Richard Branson & Virgin Media

Thank you to Andrew Mather for contacting me via telephone earlier today (Reference: 2913650 and 9109700) to assure me and the millions of other broadband internet customers across the UK, that Virgin Media has no plans to use software from Phorm, using live private customer information, without requesting permission from those customers first - even as part of a technical systems test “at this time“.

Thank you also for confirming that Virgin “have signed a provisional agreement with
Phorm to find out more about how the technology works” but that “nothing has been
decided“

I would have liked further confirmation that customers who do choose to opt-in to the test will have it fully explained to them that the Phorm system involves analysing their private web browsing habits in order to better target them with in-browser advertisements, should Virgin Media decide to go ahead with any such simulation.

Sir Richard. I am not the kind of person who follows particular brands, just for the sake of having a badge. However, as an exception to that, like many people around the UK and the rest of the world, I do feel that Virgin, along with the likes of Apple, do stand out as being the top most trust worthy names in technology, because of a proven track record for listening to what their customers actually want.

Simply put, I do not feel that there is any significant benefit to the consumer, from the Phorm habit tracking software, which Virgin ISPs around the UK are considering installing on their servers, as BT and Carphone Warehouse have already done; in fact I believe the system would be extremely damaging to the trust customers have for the Virgin brand, especially given the very public concerns of analysts, the BBC and members of parliament, such as Dari Taylor, who sits on the commons select committee for security.

Because of this, and the larger worries over security in general, not limited to concerns for what Phorm might do with personal information, besides use it to distribute yet more unwanted advertising - for my small part - I would like it to be known, Sir Richard, that should your company, Virgin Media, decide to go ahead with the Phorm scheme on an opt-out basis, even in a test scenario, I will have no hesitation in cancelling my Virgin telephone, cell phone and broadband internet subscription with immediate effect and encourage my friends and family to do the same.

I am sure that you agree, that there is little enough protection from the gradual creep into our private lives, which corporations increasingly abuse these days, without any serious opposition from either individual citizens or an ever less effectual government. For myself, in all conscience, to continue paying for a service from your company, which is so clearly geared towards increasing the spread of this intrusion, is completely unacceptable, on many points of principal, not limited to the moral implications of a third party company using my data to endorse the illusion of demand for yet more intrusive surveillance.

Phorm, I am aware, argue the complete opposite of this, by insisting that no personal information about individual users is tracked and that, if anything, their system is better than the current modus operandi of targeted advertising algorithms which traverse the IP address of the visitor to a site, without their consent.

This, in my opinion, is a smoke screen to Phorm’s actual ambitions, which is to harvest vast quantities of consumer on-line shopping habits in order to then sell that information on to yet another third party, who themselves could sell it on again.

This is clearly proof that the only people who will actually gain from the Phorm scheme, long term, are the very people who responsible on-line advertisers are so keen to distance themselves from, such as phishers, viagra spammers and front organisations for serious organised crime, who exploit the legitimate and worth while commercial opportunities of the internet, for their own selfish ends.

Not in my name.

Om nom nom nom nom

I’ve got a girlfriend who’s better than me

Nice cans

In case you don’t know, E meters are used to audit at various stages of courses in scientology.

Reasons to buy a Mac: Buyers guide.

Every time anyone finds out I use computers for music, photography and video, they assume I can fix their ageing Dell PC, simply by telling me what error message is always popping up when they’re trying to surf for smut.

In fact many of you reading this, by showing even the slightest outward signs of being computer literate, have - I am sure - heard all of the usual lines from friends, neighbours and family, on what is wrong this week with the ubiquitous machine sitting on 90% of the world’s home office desktops.

They range from the sublime, “When it was new it didn’t do it, but now I have to wait 10 minutes for it to start”, to the ridiculous claims, which only people who, to be fair, don’t really know what they’re talking about could possibly allow themselves to come out with; like “Every time I use Firefox I get a virus”, or “I need to use Windows because it came with my Internet cable box thingy”.

I have, literally, heard them all - to the point that for the most part I’ve actually stopped trying to help people who come to me with these problems, because there’s only so many times you can say, “Buy a Mac”, only to be completely ignored and a few weeks later have the same person with a different problem, coming back for more of the same advice - which they clearly just don’t heed.

I have had my share of successful switcher stories, however, and one in particular stands out more than others. Mark, a friend of mine who runs a “male vocal harmony group” (boy band with backing tracks), has a PA system rig, which also houses all the controllers for the lights and the power amplifiers for the speakers. Somewhere amidst the web of neatly cable-tied wires and leads, is a trusty Mac Mini running OS X Tiger, which he uses to trigger all the MIDI and audio which effectively runs the entire gig.

A few years ago now, he was having strife with the Windows based system he had been using and my simple advice of “Buy a Mac”, chimed with him to such a degree of success, he has now ditched Windows entirely on all of his home and business machines.

Going all Mac in the creative industry isn’t as much of a chore as it might be in, say, accounting and finance. I wouldn’t know where to start giving someone who works in banking, advice on non-Windows reliant systems which calculate taxes and wage slips, for example, across a large workforce - but aside from that (and simply because I’ve never seen such a system not be Windows based) Mac is streets ahead of anything Windows can muster.

All too often, unfortunately, when it comes to explaining the many compelling reasons to ditch Windows altogether, people are seduced at the last minute, by seemingly seductive deals at the local stack-’em-high PC retailer. That “free” scanner and printer and a years free subscription to a photo printing service or a legal MP3 downloading site, which in reality you’ll simply never use, all add up to the vast majority of sales which customers who originally entered the store intending to ask about Mac, end up being distracted by.

Know what you want.
Buying a PC is easy. Pick any random box from any random manufacturer, hand over your money, go home, set it up and wait 6 months for the warrantee to run out, before repeating the whole process again.

Buying a Mac, however, is a bit more of a challenge. You’ll be immediately put on your guard by the nice salesperson, who will ask all the usual questions they have been told to ask, which are designed to steer you towards the system their company makes the most money on and which they stand to make the most from in sales commission.

Of course, if at all possible, this can be avoided by going to an Apple retail store, but since they’re not as common in the UK as they are in the US, we’ll assume you are buying from a bricks and mortar store; most likely PC World or any one of the Dixon’s group owned electrical stores, found on every out of town retail park from Glasgow to Gwynedd.

Buying on-line is just as strewn with sales tactics, designed to steer you away from Mac - so always shop at Apple.com - even though the prices on the surface appear to be higher than many of the third party resellers tout on their flashy web sites. The reality of these lower prices is that they are selling older systems - and since you’re paying a premium for the Apple brand in any case, you want to be sure you’re getting the most up-to-date system, covered by all the benefits from a warrantee point of view which come with buying direct from Apple.

In that context, I’ll mention here why, unlike just about any other area of major (over £500) purchases, taking out an extended warrantee is a good idea, when it comes to Mac computers. In fact, I’d go as far as to say, that the extra £150 for Apple Care which I spent on my iMac, is the best £150 I’ve ever spent. Why? Because when something went wrong with my old machine, Apple gave me a brand new machine. No questions asked, simple as that.

The fault in my case wasn’t anything to do with the machine itself. A repair tech from a third party company came round to replace the hard drive (even though I don’t think there was anything wrong with the old one) and accidentally damaged the screen when he was taking the case apart. So Apple, with just two or three phone calls to head office, replaced the entire unit with the latest model, AND I still have another year and half left on my original warrantee.

What’s the best Mac for me?
In 99.9% of cases, where someone wants to simply ditch the home office PC for a machine that will actually work, instead of need baby-sitting every five minutes, my advice would be to buy the entry level iMac.

Most people look at the £799 price tag and say, “what am I getting for that which I couldn’t get for half as much from a Windows PC?”

Apart from the vastly superior balanced system performance, which comes from having all components in the machine, designed to be used together, the biggest selling point for Mac is the operating system itself and the applications, known as the iLife suite, which come out of the box, fully working with every new Machine.

A big highlight of the iLife suite is iMovie. Plug your video camera into your Mac, click around in the easy to read application window and, without having to know anything at all about what you’re doing, you can edit together slick, properly compressed home movies and one-click upload them to YouTube or your own web site.

You don’t even need an existing video camera to get started on your epic video blog, because all new Macs apart from the Mac Mini have built in web cam (called an iSight) and a high dynamic range microphone - both of which are accessible as a recording device from within all of the applications in the iLife suite.

GarageBand: Music creation software anyone can use. If you’re a budding DJ and you want to drag and drop MP3s of your favourite music into a new remix, or if you’re a song writer who needs some easy to use but extremely powerful arrangement and composition tools, GarageBand is everything people previously had to learn how to use Cubase or Logic to do, all in one application you can get very professional results from in less than a few hours.

A feature of GarageBand which I use every day, is the built-in library of studio loops and samples - because setting up a ‘jam’ between yourself and the computer is a great way to practise playing over chord progressions in a variety of different musical styles; such as Latin, rock, blues and the many permutations of jazz standard arrangements, which you can one-click customise GarageBand to play while you work on your chops in any key, any tempo.

iPhoto: Anyone who’s ever had to fumble through gigabytes of pictures, just to find that one shot taken at a party will know how frustrating it can be to do this using Windows Explorer. iPhoto, on the other hand, automatically dates and categorises your entire library and instantly makes your collection available to all the other applications in the iLife suite - so you can browse your photos from inside iMovie, for example, without having to open iPhoto first.

Front Row: All new Macs ship with a remote control unit which can browse your Movies, Music, Photos and DVD folders in a slick full screen application. Many people buy the Mac Mini machine, for example, simply to use as a media centre in their home theatre set-up.

Again, it’s worth underlining, none of these features are optional extras; they’re all default with every new machine. Bear that in mind and, purely using Front Row as a comparison, go have a quick look around at the prices many of the Windows PC retailers are asking for a Media Centre capable of hooking into your TV set, out of the box, with no extra costs associated with getting the right cables, or the right software to control the unit once it’s actually installed (not including Windows built-in media centre software because it just doesn’t work).

Connectivity.
All new Macs have 802.11n wireless networking built in. So if you already have a router all you should need to do, to connect to the internet once you’ve taken your new Mac out of the box and plugged it in, is to select the wireless router from the “Do you want to use this wireless base station” windows which pops up and the job, as they say, is a good ‘un.

You should also find it just as easy to connect to your Bluetooth phone, since all new Macs have Bluetooth built in too. There’s also a full complement of USB, Firewire 800 and Ethernet around the back of all machines, with the exception of the ultra-portable Macbook Air.

Again, let’s stop and look at the hidden extras you’re charged by the Windows PC resellers for a full complement of connections and interfaces.

Overall user experience.
When Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sat down for a conversation interview at the D conference, hosted by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, the Microsoft founder wasn’t over exaggerating when he said that the thing he admired the most about Jobs was his sense of style. It’s that style which governs the Mac experience. Friends of mine who I’ve converted to Mac, immediately notice the sheer elegance of being able to do the simplest of things, exactly the way you would intuitively want to do them.

Compare the loops you have to jump through to install or remove an application under Windows, to the simple act of moving an icon from one place to another under Mac OS X. This simplicity belies some super clever software under the hood and all of it based around the rock solid reliability of UNIX.

You will never again have to open esoteric registry editors, just to remove something you didn’t want installing on your system in the first place. The Mac OS X system control panel, shock horror, actually controls the system - unlike Windows, where many of the underlying system settings you need to edit to really get anything done, are hidden away behind 6 or seven mouse clicks; right click on that, choose properties on that, click ‘Apply’ on this and then, you guessed it, restart. Repeat ad nauseam.

Gaming and productivity.
Read my lips. All the major gaming titles for Windows are also available for Mac. Microsoft wrote the XBox system software on Mac, because back when it was being developed, Microsoft chose to base the system around the PPC microprocessor from IBM which at the time was the chip used in all Apple machines.

Apple now use the Intel microprocessor, which makes it extremely easy for software developers to bring Mac versions of their applications to market at the same time as Windows.

As part of the bail-out package, which Apple drew up in the late 1990s when Steve Jobs came back to the company, Microsoft agreed to develop Office on the Mac before Windows. Simply put, to this day, Microsoft Office is a Mac application which also happens to be available for Windows. So if you’re worried about sharing documents written on a PC, worry no more.

“I’ve just bought a printer and there are no Mac drivers on the CD ROM”
Walk into any print shop or commercial press and see if you can spot the PC. There might be an old Windows 98 thing in the corner, which the stuck in her ways secretary refuses to let go of, but without exception printing is the domain of the Mac.

Indeed there would be no such thing as desktop printing were it not for the original Mac, back in 1984. Increasingly, however, printer manufacturers are bringing cheep printers to market, which are cheep for a number of reasons - the biggest being that they make their money back on ink and by removing all of the system software from the device itself, and seeding it to the operating system, which is invariably Windows based.

Happily Mac can bypass this Windows bias at the cheeper end of the printer market by falling back on a number of generic printer drivers which are built into the Mac OS X operating system itself. I have yet to come across a printer which Mac couldn’t use without having to install any third party software.

As a rule of thumb, if in doubt, plug it in and try it anyway. Chances are Mac will “just work”. All manner of USB devices available in retail stores around the world, very rarely have a “Works with Mac OS” sticker on them, but the simple fact is, I’ve never come across any device, from video cameras to wireless routers, which don’t work with zero configuration on Mac OS X.

John C. Dvorak rips Windows Vista a new one

Not known for his subtlety, This Week in Tech regular commentator and cranky host of a number of tech podcasts, John C. Dvorak in his day job as columnist with PC Magazine, spells out exactly what’s wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2286065,00.asp?kc=PCRSS03079TX1K0000584

As the man himself points out, the list could have been much longer, but from my experience (remember when I revealed that in the interest of balance I had secretly been using Vista for a week?) his list just about nails all the major points.

The worrying thing, which I think a lot more people will pick up on in the coming weeks and months, is that, love them or hate them, Microsoft are a HUGE part of the American economic general well-being, which can well do without adding another major employer to the list of companies on the cusp of an economic winter.

The technology sector needs Microsoft to be strong, because they - along with Intel, AMD and all the usual suspects from the Silicone Valley end of the NASDAQ - are bellwether stocks. The last thing any of us need is an economic meltdown at the same time as a dip in general confidence that the whole Windows ecosystem is spiralling out of control.

Microsoft seem so busy with a possible Yahoo! buyout, you’d be forgiven for thinking the whole thing is just a distraction from the fact their flagship product looks like having to wait another few years on top of how long it has waited already, before it is ready to compete on every major level with its nearest competitors - which in some areas is Linux and in others is Mac OS X.

As an Apple user I’d love to say this was a good thing, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m under no illusions as to Mac OS X’s readiness to step into the role of the dogsbody OS where Windows currently sits, in terms of its ubiquitous sprawl among office workers and embedded systems.

Mac OS X - at least in its current guise, simply put, is never going to be THAT kind of operating system - and if it isn’t going to be Windows, it has to be Linux.

Is Linux ready for this sort of exposure? Absolutely. In fact you’d be amazed how many major systems already run it. Every time you get a delivery from UPS and you sign that little screen with the pen that slips all over and makes your signature look like etch-a-sketch, you’re looking at embedded Linux.

Are yet more huge global businesses ready for Linux of this kind and larger? Absolutely. Could Windows vanish without a trace in less time than you can say OS/2? Undoubtedly. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again - but not without a great deal of unforeseen chaos in our modern day-to-day life. The scary part is I just don’t think Microsoft realise how important it is for them to wake up and fix their roadmap, before it’s too late - and if they do realise it, all signs indicate they just don’t care.

A point by point debunking of EVERY SINGLE CLAIM made by Intelligent Design

[Direct link]

The above is simply a brilliant independent film, made by someone who cares about giving people within the I.D. movement a chance to speak for themselves.

I will probably use this site 10 times a week

How many times have you worried that GMail or ThePirateBay might be only off-line for you, and everyone else is fine?

www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com does one thing and one thing alone. It tells you if you’re MAD, or if there really is a problem with a particular website.

*JOY*

The perfect scrambled eggs

Lucy mailed me today, wanting me to buy her lunch. Well, I couldn’t make it in time, what with her living about 100 miles away, so I got Gordon Ramsey to knock her up some scrambled eggs on toast instead…

I love how top cooks always manage to make the perfect version of common place dishes. Couldn’t you just DEMOLISH that right now?

Fucking Skype, fucking sucks man.

AGES ago, and I do mean FUCKING AGES ago, I typed some random text into a chat with some unknown recipient (possibly Lucy, possibly Kim, possibly some other random f’nuke who’s never met me before).

The other night Skype decided to send all of this random text, entirely out of context and out of sequence, into one long message to Lucy - who, quite rightly, (being as she is after-all only a women) duly interpreted as being a confession of my having another bird on the go. (Oh how the feminine brain doth work?!?)

As I write this, THANK FUCK, Lucy has finally realised this was a software error and is, as we speak, sending me a string of e-mails that, truth be told, are crashing my mail server, but that’s a good thing - thankfully. She appears to be understanding, albeit slowly, that I only have eyes for her and that the misunderstanding was on her part, not mine.

The lesson here? Skype isn’t very good for chat and every now and then it fucking lies and screws you right up!!!???! BASTARDS!! A plague on all the houses of the people who wrote that thing!

More than that, however, the lesson here is this. When your new(ish) boyfriend / potential boyfriend / someone who thinks you’re super duper wants you to get in touch. DON’T IGNORE THE PHONE ALL NIGHT WHILE HE PULLS HIS BASTARD HAIR OUT TRYING TO CALL YOU WORRYING THAT THE REASON YOU’RE IGNORING HIM IS THAT YOU HAVE ANOTHER BOYFRIEND!!!

I’ve been crying me. I don’t mind admitting it. Seriously. Tears and that. Upset as fuck.

Puppy pic make things better?

Ahhhh yes. Puppy dry the tears. Om nom nom. Heezz show queue ‘T!!

Fizziks

Brilliant.. ..no BRILLIANT short film

Gotta love the Australians man.