I've Moved!

I've moved over to wordpress now on my own server.

my TLD will forward you automatically but if anyone uses the feeds or blogspot address then you need to update.

www.thethoughtradar.co.uk
www.thethoughtradar.com

News Corp. Hates News

So, it seems Rupert Murdoch thinks he can charge people for 'quality' journalism.

I know that I would be willing to pay to be kept in the loop when it comes to hot breaking news like "Brad loves pool sex with Angie"

It's the hallmark of tabloid journalism to fiddle with peoples name's. I'm not entirely sure why.

I wonder what Katy Murr thinks of this.. I doubt she reads my blog.

Once More

A long one this.. i'll probably shorten it at some point.

The Importance of Being Here

I just keep on treating you dont I?

As always let me know what you think.

Sleeping is the antithesis of life... n stuff.

I spent most of yesterday unconscious.

After finishing a 12 hour night shift one tends to be drawn to one's bed.

However its such a painful realisation when you wake up and someone tells you its 4pm and the day is more or less winding down. Especially when you need to be back at work for 7.

Wii Fit tells me I need at least 7 and a half hours sleep a night and Wired.com tells me if i have more than 9 hours I run the risk of heart disease and other nasty things.

So less than 7 = being yelled at by Wii Fit
More than 9 = dying young.

I'm not sure which is worse.

When Will I Learn

Yet more music for the perusal of the interwebz

Let me know what you think

Some Pop Rock For The Kids

Let me know what you think

Speed.

The Dark

It's 1:40am on sunday morning.

When you're tired you go into kind of a trance. Your body ticks over barely but your mind starts to do things it wouldn't normally do. It's almost as if you revert to a childlike state. Colours seem more vivid and shapes seem more interesting. The trails left on window panes by impetuous raindrops become interesting suddenly and the sound of the rain striking the building you're in becomes hypnotic and peaceful.

Amber lamplight has the effect of dowsing the thoughts running in your head and the way the narrow wavelight of light emitted by the sodium tubes cuts through the early morning haze makes an instant connection with me but im not quite sure what that connection is.

I like the night but mostly I like the things that shine that little bit brighter in the dark.

Just a short little thing

Yet another piece of new music. Just a little phrase really. Comments welcome.

Nick Griffin and the state of politics

Nick Griffin was today pelted with eggs by anti-facism protesters.

While I would agree with the sentiment of covering him with various farm yard animal expulsions this is a democracy and the fact of the matter is that the BNP put up candidates and won seats. They have gained legitimacy. They represent someone.

The Lib Dem leader was quoted as saying it was 'sickening' that the BNP won seats and I fully agree with that. It is not, however, the fact that the BNP exists or that the BNP spouts its hatred. It is the fact that people VOTED for the BNP.

A tenet of democracy is that anyone can speak. It is, as the greek roots suggest, the voice of the people. If the people say that they want a facist government then that must be respected just as much as if they was a liberal government or a conservative government.

Let the man speak and then let us expose his nonesense for the hatred that it is. Throwing eggs at him just gives him ammunition to throw back in form of a 'political elite silencing the people'. If we are to defeat facism we must defeat it by democracy and free expression. Not by hurling embryos at him.

Added a rough vocal track. Thoughts?

Another new song

No vocals for this yet.



Lyrics reallly get on my nerves since I can't write for shit.

Any feedback would be welcome

Channel Plug - ProfMTH

Episode 2 of the Channel Plug series

ProfMTH

Channel Plug - Wizard Jim

A series im doing reviewing/plugging various youtube channels

Episode 1

Pest Problem

I have a pest problem.

I hear noises at night. Scratching and other strange sounds.

My stuff gets chewed, things get knocked over and it's generally fucking me up.

I managed to get a picture of the pest. Does anyone have advice on how to get rid of it?

Statistically Negligent

Let's talk about statistics.

Thanks to our dear and glorious leader Google I have a plethora of data available on the readership of my blog and the viewership (I don't think that's a word) of my Youtube channel. What have I learnt from this? That I have OCSD. Obsessive Compulsive Statistics Disorder. I check my statistics probably 3 times a day. Often more if I've posted something new. Frankly it's becoming distracting from the more pressing matter of checking my email a gazillion times a day.

From this deluge of numbers I've discerned that I have had about 25 unique visitors to my blog of which about 15 come back to read again. I also know that I have a reader in Sweden so hello to my Swedish friend.

My Youtube channel is more popular with over a thousand views on my videos and currently 11 subscribers.

Also I recently put little boxes below my blog posts where people could rate my posts either 'Good' or 'Bad' and so far the results have been all 'Good' except for a single 'Bad'

You may have noticed that so far in this post I have yet to make a point and here it is;

Never before have we had this kind of immediate, global feedback on what we do. Anonimity gives people the courage to speak out and respond. Our exploits become instantly meaningful when we learn that someone actually looks forward to reading what we have written. We become equals with Zefrank and The Vlog Brothers even if its all just for 15 people.

I feel good today. Fuck those 10 people who read once and never came back.

Sometimes you're the bug and sometimes you're the windshield.

Update: Ok I got my figures way wrong I've had 68 unique visitors. and about 40 of those came back at least once more. Rad

Pirate Bay Guilty

So the Swedish courts have convicted The Pirate Bay of contributing to copyright infringement. They have each been sentenced to 1 year in prison. Currently, of course, they remain free pending appeal. The defendants (although I'm tempted to call them 'victims') have also been order to pay $3.6mil to various entertainment companies.

I have 2 issues with these kinds of trial. Firstly I have a problem with the billions of dollars that the entertainment industry claim they lose. It's an entirely meaningless figure which I assume they pulled from some unholy (excuse the pun) orifice. You can't equate 1 download with 1 sale. For example I have, on my ipod, a couple of Goo Goo Dolls tracks. If I had to pay for them they would not feature on my Itunes and yet the RIAA would have the world believe I've stolen about £4 from them.

My second problem is on a technical point and so this might be boring for non-techies. Essentially the pirate bay has been declared illegal for acting as a search engine and host for torrent files.

Torrent files are essentially pointers or maps. They are generated by hashing algorithms which creates garbage numbers which relates to the file. You couldn't use this data to reconstruct the files in any way and technically the hash file would be valid for a theoretically infinite number of files. What I'm getting at here is that the copyright holders cannot claim copyright of these files.

So you can't claim that the pirate bay hosts any copyrighted material.

Presumably then, the courts took issue with the search engine role of The Pirate Bay. This means that Google is also illegal since it indexes many many torrent files.

This leaves the argument that The Pirate Bay facilitates copyright infringement. However it was established in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc that products or services which allow copyright infringement are not illegal providing there is a legitimate legal use for the product or service, which of course there is. I also find it interesting that Sony was the defendant in the above case but was on the other side in The Pirate Bay case. Damn Sony... I hate the PS3 too.

So is filesharing immoral? Yes I think so. People should be compensated for their work if it's deemed worthy.

Is filesharing illegal? Yes you are violating someones copyright, taking away their right to control distribution of their work.

Is The Pirate Bay illegal? I don't believe so. Illegal activities certainly take place there, but there is a ligitimate purpose for tracker websites. The Pirate Bay just has an unfortunate name.

Pointless Geeky Update

Look, I changed the 'Favicon' for my blog.



Pointless.. I even made the icon myself

Exciting news about your ticket

Soooo here we are again Sportsracers.. can't believe our luck ey?

On Sunday night, after getting home from a drive out to North Landing near Bridlington, I decided to check my work email and there, in my inbox, was an email from the National Lottery with the subject line "Exciting news about your ticket". Every time I get an email like this I always get physically excited. My pulse races and I jump around the room like a white rabbit who is really late.

So I obviously rushed my Fox of Fire to the national lottery website to see just how many millions I had won and if I should hire a poor person to mow my 3' square lawn. On arrival, however, I was not greeted with congratulatory elation, nor by a man called Jeffery who would take my coat to a small room entirely devoted to coats and their storage. Instead I received a one sentence message which declared that "Gaming was closed until further notice".

Really?

Is it?

I could be a millionaire here son let's get this shit moving.

So I was in the awkward position of knowing that I might, just might be a multi-millionaire but had no way of knowing for sure. I actually felt I would be perfectly justified reporting the National Lottery to Amnesty International with allegations of torture.

All night I thought about what I would spend my newly acquired wealth on. Who I would be generous to and who I would aim my newly purchased Death-Ray™ at.

Turns out I'm not a millionaire. I won £10 or, as I prefer to consider it, 10 more chances to be disappointed. Awesome

"Generic Emo 101"

I've just finished a rough mix for a new track and I sent it to a friend. He promptly pointed out that I should be ashamed for rallying against 'generic emo' when I produce stuff like this.



It doesn't have vocals yet so I suppose it's difficult to truly assign labels to it.

The question of course this raises is that is it acceptable to make music which doesn't push any boundaries but sounds nice? (I'm not suggesting my song sounds nice but in a general sense)

Originality rarely seems to concern the average music listener. When I used to play in my old band we got relatively good receptions and played bigger and bigger gigs. However, as we started to play those bigger gigs we attracted attention from more scene-savvy reviewers who were quick to mention our complete imitation of other and better bands. They argued that what we did had been done before and better so whats the point in our band even existing? we were surplus to requirements, unnecessary background noise.

I'm not quite sure which side of the argument I sit.

The purist in me believes that music, like any art, should push boundaries and explore new territory. The listener in me can't see the problem with 'more of the same' if the same is good.

Netbook-tastic

This is my first post on my new teeny weeny netbook.

Its lighter and almost smaller than most paperback books. I thought the keyboard might give me trouble at first but I'm typing this with relative ease. The touch pad is fairly generous providing you don't have mars bar fingers and the wifi and bluetooth seem flawless (I'm actually connected to the internet at the moment using my phone as a bluetooth modem).

Now for the question of what I'm actually going to do with it. I'll admit I'm no closer to my Parisian Cafe ideals than the last time I mentioned my netbook but i still feel that the minimalistic, Linux-based device is the future of computing.

5 years ago computers were like cars. It was about power, capability and tech demos which left us speechless. 0-60 was all that mattered. Then we started to see true innovation. Computing wasnt about supercharged, supercooled behemoths. It was about efficiency and design. People began to realise what they ACTUALLY used their computers for not what they COULD use it for. Common sense kicked in and the sensible response to "My car can touch 200mph if i really pushed it" became "So what? planning a race are we"

Although having said that... I still want a sports car.

R.I.C.E

I have twisted/sprained/fucked-up my knee. Probably doing over-extended lunges on wii fit.

I remember once spraining my ankle playing football at school. I jumped to head the ball and landed on the side of my foot, thus putting all my weight onto my ankle at a funny angle. It bruised nicely and I found it incredibly difficult to walk.

I had P.E later that afternoon and obviously couldn't do it but I had to cool my ankle down. The genius solution that my P.E teacher came up with was for me to stand in the changing room with my foot under the cold tap. In effect this meant I had to stand on one leg, with the other foot at waist height in the sink in a kind of perpetual kung fu kick. I stood like this for about 30 minutes until my leg got tired at which point someone suggested i should just change leg if I was getting tired. That person was, and probably still is, an idiot.

The treatment for a 1st or 2nd degree sprain of course can be expressed as the acronym RICE. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.

I assume that's why I'm walking around at work with no ice and no support bandage.

Awesome

Questions for an Atheist

New video on youtube.

Its a reply to this video

Space is boring.

NASA have announced that the exterior camera on the international space station is going to be turned into a 100% live webcam.

Now on the surface of it that sounds awesome. A live look into space. I don't think that's ever been done before. However after watching for a while I've come to the conclusion that space is incredibly boring really. At the moment we are treated with the amazing spectacle of watching someone fix some shit... awesome. Its the cosmological equivalent of supervising a plumber, arse crack and all, fix a leaky pipe so he doesn't nick anything.

Next up: The exciting world of 'Painter and Decorator Cam'

25 Things About Me

I got tagged with the 25 things about me game on facebook.

So I thought I'd repost it here just for fun.

1. I listen to podcasts far far to frequently. I've listened to the Ricky Gervais ones at least 10 times... Including the old XFM shows.

2. I don't own a single hat.

3. I drink about £400 worth of copella apple and elderflower juice every year.

4. I bought a 10MP D-SLR camera and so far all I've done with it is take pictures of my cat.

5. Oh and i have a cat... her name is Sookie.

6. I use twitter even though I still don't understand the allure.

7. I own a 2 bedroom flat in hucknall. Its in a relatively nice bit of hucknall without too many dirty syringes on the ground.

8. I have an old 4th gen Ipod because I'm too cheap for an Ipod Touch, Too snobby for a CD player and not cool enough for a tape player.

9. Part of my job is providing peoples address to 3rd party companies. so if you get junk mail its very possibly my fault.

10. I'm impossibly paranoid and negative about everyone's opinion of me. My genius defence mechanism to deal with this is to try my hardest not to care and appear apathetic.. doesn't work.

11. Part of me wishes I was a plumber.

12. Every time an extended family member asks me what i studied at university and i tell them i didn't go i can see them try to hide their surprise and disdain.

13. I'm not in the slightest suspicious of the number 13.

14. The number 14 however I think is a shit.

15. I haven't played in a band for about 3 years and i hate that.

16. Until a couple of weeks ago i didn't even know how to change a tire.

17. I don't own a bed. Me and my girlfriend sleep on a mattress on the floor and to be honest i really cant tell the difference.

18. I am a strict atheist and will argue the toss with any religious person with the complete conviction that I'm right and they're wrong.

19. My life up to the age of about 15 is a blur. I cant really remember anything specific or interesting about my life before that.

20. I used to own a full length leather coat and i wore it completely convinced i looked awesome. I didn't.

21. I once kissed a girl outside the post office in sutton and she pretended it didn't happen the next day.

22. I was a cub scout and had the most badges because my mum did most of them for me.

23. When i was about 8 one of my friends saw a hot water bottle on my bed and accused me of pissing the bed.. i hadn't and i didn't understand the connection between the hot water bottle and pissing the bed.. i still don't but i never used a hot water in bed again.

24. At my primary school we weren't allowed on the grass if it was wet. so we played football on the concrete.. then they banned the football... so we used a power ball... they then banned the powerball so we used a stone... congratulations health and safety.

25. Sometimes when i lie in bed at night i imagine the eulogy i would give at various peoples funerals.

Technophilia

I've just ordered a Dell Mini 9 netbook. One of the ones with an awesome back cover of course.

The idea of a piece of technology being a fashion accessory is not new but its something I've only recently become intimately acquainted with. This is largely due to the fact that for the first time in my life I have a relatively comfortable amount of free cash and it really shows. I am outnumbered by computers in my house 4 to 1 and frankly I'm beginning to feel a little concerned they might rebel and barricade themselves in the kitchen with a 'live free or die trying' attitude. I've fairly recently bought an electric drum kit too, last year i bought a new digital camera. It never stops.

So why did I buy a netbook? I have a perfectly good full size laptop (A 17" Dell Inspiron 9600 as if you cared). Well I suppose it's the dream of writing my blog on the wrought-iron tables of a Parisian cafe, drinking an expensive cup of coffee which rests rather gracefully on a copy of The Guardian's glossy supplement, which is all only possible with an pixie sized netbook. All a pipe dream of course, fueled by suggestive adverts of attractive young professionals with their computers balanced jauntily on their laps because that's how real work gets done.

Sorry I haven't posted for a while.. I'll try to do it more regularly I promise. I know how much you worry about me. Seriously one guy called the police and reported me missing.