- Match Of The Day isn't what it used to be. The point of Match Of The Day is that you don't know anything about the games until you watch them, but they now show you a bunch of the best bits from each game in the opening sequence, as if to reassure you that it's worth staying tuned. Message to the show's producers: if I've already made the commitment of locking myself in my room with the internet off and my fingers in my ears from kick-off until half ten at night, making sure I turn on the TV at exactly the right moment so I don't accidentally see the ridiculously placed sports news bulletin that directly precedes it, chances are I've already made a firm decision that I'm going to watch the whole program, so don't show half the bloody game during the title sequence which, by the way, is a lot shitter than it used to be because you've arsed around with the music and made it all jerky.
- Have you noticed that the cleaners at certain railway stations have 'making a difference' written in bright pink on the back of their uniform? Maybe it's some sort of company slogan, but it strikes me as being very patronising. If the message was 'it may look like my life is shit but I'm saving the money I earn here so I can go to university', or even 'yes, I sweep shit off platforms while you're negotiating multi-million pound takeovers in the city, but I bet I'm less of a twat', then fair enough, have a message, but I have an inkling everyone would be a fraction happier with no message at all than the one they've got at the moment.
- Little Miss Jocelyn is offensively unfunny, and even if there is a particular demographic that does find this show amusing, I'm not sure it's the same demographic that Never Mind The Buzzcocks hits every week, so why place the two shows adjacent to each other on a Thursday night? 'Thursdays Are Funny!', scream the BBC trailers; maybe so, but to different people. It's like putting cheese on your ice cream because they both come from cows.
Thursday, 31 January 2008
A Selection Of Unrelated Thoughts
In bullet form.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Solo Album - An Update
I've surprised myself in the last couple of days by actually working on my solo album - I suppose it's not that surprising given that I'm unemployed and surrounded by musical instruments, but I assumed I'd just be lying in bed all day watching DVD's. Anyway, mainly for myself, here's how the album is progressing:
1. Intro - ridiculous electro-metal creation; needs better drums but otherwise done.
2. Unnamed Song With Good Riff - good riff (duh) but needs lyrics, better drums and a bunch of other stuff.
3. Sheffield - my acclaimed (by some bloke on MSN) new acoustic track about being jealous of Arctic Monkeys.
4. Rats - vocally ambitious but surprisingly un-shit Radiohead/Underworld rip-off; needs better drums (recurring theme...) but sounding better than expected.
......
And then I'm left picking through the remains of failures and unwritten songs that exist only as titles. Still, at this rate there's a finite chance I'll have finished the album by the time I leave for San Francisco. Ooh, that's quite exciting.
1. Intro - ridiculous electro-metal creation; needs better drums but otherwise done.
2. Unnamed Song With Good Riff - good riff (duh) but needs lyrics, better drums and a bunch of other stuff.
3. Sheffield - my acclaimed (by some bloke on MSN) new acoustic track about being jealous of Arctic Monkeys.
4. Rats - vocally ambitious but surprisingly un-shit Radiohead/Underworld rip-off; needs better drums (recurring theme...) but sounding better than expected.
......
And then I'm left picking through the remains of failures and unwritten songs that exist only as titles. Still, at this rate there's a finite chance I'll have finished the album by the time I leave for San Francisco. Ooh, that's quite exciting.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Fingers Crossed
Next Monday, Jools Holland is filming the 200th episode of Later. Radiohead are playing. I believe both those statements are accurate, but the internet wasn't hugely helpful on the subject. I and three of my friends entered the random draw for tickets to the filming of the show, and tomorrow we find out if we were successful. It's one of these things where you can't be sure how much of a chance you have; all four of us applied for four tickets, so I think I'm right in saying the night would have to be eight times over-subscribed before our chances of getting tickets dropped below 50% (I sense some bad logic in there but let's ignore it). Then again, not many people seem to be in the audience when you watch Later, so maybe the demand is a hundred times greater than the capacity? I don't know. Watch this space.
No, hang on, I'm not going to ignore my potentially dodgy statistical analysis of the random draw system - I'm going to use my brain to work it out properly. If every entrant can ask for between one and four tickets, each entry is treated equally (regardless of how many tickets the entrant is requesting), and my group of friends has a total of four entries, each time a random draw is made for a space at the event, we have a 4-in-X chance of getting that space, where X is the total number of entries. Actually, when the draw for the nth seat (starting with zero) is made, our chance is 4-in-(X-n). I sense I have made this too complicated, but sod it. Hang on, I can make this a lot easier by taking out this 'four' stuff. Since there's a bunch of seats, let's assume that basically every person has one entry for one ticket, because groups of two, three or four will all have done the same as us and done an entry each - if they haven't, that's a bonus. Ah, I did cock it up to start with. If we effectively have one entry each, my probability of getting each seat is 1-in-(X-n). If there are N seats, the average probability of me getting each seat is 1-in-(X-(N/2)), and hence the total probability of me getting any of the N seats is N-in-(X-(N/2)), or 1-in-((X/N)-0.5). Really, I've made this far too complicated, but I don't care. Let's stick in some numbers to see if this works. No! I've just done it in my head and it doesn't work. Crap! Clearly a Master's degree, even one that features at least three courses in statistical physics, is irrelevant once you spend a few months not thinking about maths. I'm going back to my two-word title's suggestion and crossing my fingers.
No, hang on, I'm not going to ignore my potentially dodgy statistical analysis of the random draw system - I'm going to use my brain to work it out properly. If every entrant can ask for between one and four tickets, each entry is treated equally (regardless of how many tickets the entrant is requesting), and my group of friends has a total of four entries, each time a random draw is made for a space at the event, we have a 4-in-X chance of getting that space, where X is the total number of entries. Actually, when the draw for the nth seat (starting with zero) is made, our chance is 4-in-(X-n). I sense I have made this too complicated, but sod it. Hang on, I can make this a lot easier by taking out this 'four' stuff. Since there's a bunch of seats, let's assume that basically every person has one entry for one ticket, because groups of two, three or four will all have done the same as us and done an entry each - if they haven't, that's a bonus. Ah, I did cock it up to start with. If we effectively have one entry each, my probability of getting each seat is 1-in-(X-n). If there are N seats, the average probability of me getting each seat is 1-in-(X-(N/2)), and hence the total probability of me getting any of the N seats is N-in-(X-(N/2)), or 1-in-((X/N)-0.5). Really, I've made this far too complicated, but I don't care. Let's stick in some numbers to see if this works. No! I've just done it in my head and it doesn't work. Crap! Clearly a Master's degree, even one that features at least three courses in statistical physics, is irrelevant once you spend a few months not thinking about maths. I'm going back to my two-word title's suggestion and crossing my fingers.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
The Longest Gap
Sorry, that was a long silence, wasn't it? Since my last post, I have entered a writing competition that might win me £250 (but probably won't because the thing I wrote is a bit sucky and I wrote it very late at night without any planning), I have quit my job (very nice feeling) and, most excitingly, I have got off my arse and booked my big trip. The running order is:
USA (five days in San Francisco)
New Zealand (a month, arriving at one island and leaving from the other, although can't remember which way round)
Australia (a month, into/out of Sydney but hopefully move about a bit)
Bali (two weeks)
Thailand (a month)
I'm excited.
USA (five days in San Francisco)
New Zealand (a month, arriving at one island and leaving from the other, although can't remember which way round)
Australia (a month, into/out of Sydney but hopefully move about a bit)
Bali (two weeks)
Thailand (a month)
I'm excited.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Welcome?
If my information is correct, an influx of new readers is heading the way of this very blog right about now. If you are one of them, or even if you are not, you are very welcome. Since I don't put too much effort into making these writings particularly relevant or even readable to anyone except myself, I've compiled a list of the least rubbish entries:
Eh? (THE ONE YOU MAY HAVE READ ABOUT)
The Alarm Clock
Bad Poem And Worse Title
A Rant About People Who Rant
Best Of
In case regular readers, should they exist, are confused about this post, I got a call out of the blue last week from the Banbury Guardian, saying they were going to run a story about the Welsh adverts I had noticed on Banbury phone boxes. In posting this "beginners' guide" entry, I am making two assumptions:
Eh? (THE ONE YOU MAY HAVE READ ABOUT)
The Alarm Clock
Bad Poem And Worse Title
A Rant About People Who Rant
Best Of
In case regular readers, should they exist, are confused about this post, I got a call out of the blue last week from the Banbury Guardian, saying they were going to run a story about the Welsh adverts I had noticed on Banbury phone boxes. In posting this "beginners' guide" entry, I am making two assumptions:
- The story actually will contain a link to this blog, and
- The story will actually be published at all.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Smoking
In a café in Brixton I recently saw an NHS no-smoking sign that contained the motivational phrase "don't give up giving up". I'm sure it's been carefully market-researched and all, but it seems a little silly to use a triple negative in there. They appear to be saying you should not not not smoke, which is a very inefficient way to get your point across.
Four Star
When it comes to reviewing music and film, there are those who argue that a perfect, ten-out-of-ten rating can never be achieved because one day someone could make something even better. I have some sympathy with this theory, but only if the reviewer employs a suitably fine scale - a maximum of 9.9 or 99%, for example, should be adequate to describe even the most life-affirming album or film, with the final, impossible increment reserved for the day when Jesus turns up with a twelve-string and reveals the third testament to be a melancholic alt-folk odyssey.
Most reviews, though, don't divide their ratings this finely - they use stars. Perhaps it's because they're conscientious understanders of science, with a knowledge of the huge and unpredictable errors associated with subjective reviews, or perhaps it's because those pretty stars are easy for people to understand. Either way, my point is this: the Radio Times uses stars, so giving the top rating of five-out-of-five shouldn't be too much of a stretch, and yet Monty Python's Life Of Brian was recently given four stars. I mean, this is the best film ever made by the funniest people in the history of Great Britain (yes, I know one of them was American but let's keep this simple), and apparently it's not worth five stars! I can't even be bothered to explain why this film is so good - if you've seen it, you'll know that giving it four stars is an insult. Giving it it four stars ranks Life Of Brian alongside half-decent action films, surprisingly good rom-com sequels and slightly flawed epics, and that just ain't right.
Most reviews, though, don't divide their ratings this finely - they use stars. Perhaps it's because they're conscientious understanders of science, with a knowledge of the huge and unpredictable errors associated with subjective reviews, or perhaps it's because those pretty stars are easy for people to understand. Either way, my point is this: the Radio Times uses stars, so giving the top rating of five-out-of-five shouldn't be too much of a stretch, and yet Monty Python's Life Of Brian was recently given four stars. I mean, this is the best film ever made by the funniest people in the history of Great Britain (yes, I know one of them was American but let's keep this simple), and apparently it's not worth five stars! I can't even be bothered to explain why this film is so good - if you've seen it, you'll know that giving it four stars is an insult. Giving it it four stars ranks Life Of Brian alongside half-decent action films, surprisingly good rom-com sequels and slightly flawed epics, and that just ain't right.
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