I'm on the move

After "a good hard think" I have decided to make the switch away from Blogger. Not that Blogger is crap or slow or full of spam blogs and is generally seen to be the AOL of the Blogging world or anything. Blogger has served me well over the years but I want more control over my blog, how it looks, functions and is accessible. I am going to buy a domain name, some webspace and host a WordPress blog there. I will also amalgamate this blog, my Photao Photoblog and Music Club blogs into one giant tri-headed beast. Wordpress will also allow me to create sub-blogs for subjects - so I could have a personal blog, a tech blog and a blog about my pet rock, Mr Stone Knee Boy (joke! - honest). I kind of have a picture in my head of how it will all pan out and work - but we shall see. Webspace and a platform like Wordpress will allow me to customise the site to my needs. The Newlinks boys made the switch away from Blogger quite a while ago and are still going strong on their nice Drupal based platform. Drupal is also possibly "in the running" for providing the front end for my new site. This is even more customisable than Wordpress but may be too much for what I need. I have got a website to design for Flights-Physiques.co.uk and wish I had got him to purchase a business hosting service so I could install Drupal or Wordpress. At least then he could update the news section of the site himself! Taoski.co.uk is available as a domain name and I can use Wordpress to import all my Blogger posts and comments - so watch this space suckers! Related links: Wordpress for beginners, Wordpress Themes, Working with Wordpress. Technorati Tags: blogger, wordpress, blog, drupal, newlinks, pet rock, hosting, site, photao, music club

Radio Scum

I am not known for my outspoken views - or even for my beliefs. In fact - I have little opinion about very little - and what I do have an opinion about, I usually keep to myself. Last night during my usual 9pm Sunday night shower, I was listening to "The Sunday Surgery" on Radio1. An Agony Aunt style program where listeners can call in with problems and the smug doctor and presenter can advise them on where they went wrong. As part of this format, they have a section where the listeners can call in to give their opinion and advice on someone elses problem. This time, the person who needed the information was a 17 year old girl who was deciding if she should have an abortion or not, as her 21 year old boyfriend said he would "stick by her" and "do good for the baby n' nat". She had not told anyone else about this though... This is wrong on so many levels.

• The fact that Radio1 should entertain a public airing of such a contravertial issue.
• The fact that Radio1 chose it to be a "free for all" allowing the public to call in to help.
• The fact that the girl actually came on the air and talked about the problem to millions of people - but she could'nt tell her parents.

Poo to Radio1 for allowing this to go ahead. I never heard the ending, or any of the comments that "the public" gave - but I can imagine what they were like. I'm glad i'm a Radio4 man. They have much better programs. Technorati Tags: radio1, abortion, agony aunt, chav, pregnant, doctor, advice

Fantabulosa

I was watching a program the other night called Balderdash and Piffle, relating to the origin of words and phrases, their meanings and their definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. The BBC has been attempting to enlist the help of the public to, for example, get the earliest meanings for terms such as "Pear Shaped" and "Pass The Parcel". The program was rather dull and even the minxy feline presenter was not attractive enough to keep my attention. Apart from one section...

"That charpering omi is a dish! Troll over and vada his basket for me!"

Polari is the name used to describe British gay slang from the 50's and 60's when the subject or practice of being homosexual was rather frowned upon. In an effort to keep the movement underground, a secret language was developed and used by the gay community so you could converse in public about the size of "that bloke at the bar's todger" without getting arrested, beaten up or both. Polari, or pallare, is also used to refer to the internal slang languages used by other groups such as sailors, gypsies, circus folk and vagrants. So possibly "can you spare 10p for a cuppa tea guv" could have some other sinister hidden message the public have not yet grasped. Kenneth Williams, a popular gay actor and comedian in the 60's (now deceased) has been partially blamed for destroying the now seldom used language by using it frequently as part of a comedy radio show, Round The Horne. The show was listened to by millions of the British public and such mass exposure to the terms ensured that no-one was safe using them any longer. Also, the eventual acceptance of the homosexual communities ensured that Polari was no longer needed - as that bloke at the bar now knew his enemy and could beat you up even if you weren't talking about his todger anyway! A list of common words, meanings and a brief history of Polari can be found here. And just for the record. I am not an omi-palone, a meese or a riah shusher! I was just intrigued by this stuff I had never heard of before! Technorati Tags: polari, pallare, language, slang, gay, homosexual, kenneth williams, round the horne, OED, BBC

Finally... a good Podcast!

Yesterday, whilst I was supposed to be helping babysit SwimPigs daughter, I was playing with his PSP and noticed that he had downloaded some MP3 Podcast's to his 1Gb Memory Stick. I have "dabbled" with Podcasts in the past and have a few subscriptions in my iTunes which I usually delete after a few weeks of not listening to some nasal american whining on about how great his Mac is or some half drunk english guys who are supposedly funny. In my opinion, 99.9% of Podcasts are all total crap. It might be the latest "big thing" but I read enough useless WOBBs (Waste Of Bandwith Blogs) - I don't want to hear them talk in my head too! SwimPig had downloaded the previously unheard of to me, Ricky Gervais podcast and when I went to the Podcasts page in iTunes, I found that it had overtaken the Best of Chris Moyles Podcast (which I already had subscribed to and deleted) as the most popular. I have downloaded all 5 episodes to my iPod and have just been pissing myself in the toilet (pun intended) , trying not to laugh out loud. And that is only 9 minutes into the first one! It is very good - and well worth the download. At last! A good and funny Podcast! Until I get mine done of course! Technorati Tags: ipod, podcast, ricky gervais, chris moyles, itunes, toilet, laughing, humour

Dons Gone And Been Dones

Yet again the MK Dons have been beaten. And its all my fault. But why? When I put FIFA 2006 into my XBox for the first time and selected my local team as my favorite, it offered me the chance to play against the World Classic VII. They totally whipped my ass! Damn you Cantona! At least I got two of them sent off injured. "Thats it... hobble away old man!... fat has-been!" I have played the FIFA series on PS2, PC, GBA and Xbox for years and have really enjoyed getting beaten all the time. I am really crap at it - I admit! If and when I get onto XBox live and play someone - they are gonna kill me. Unless it's some spotty schoolkid who's shins I can hack away until I get the game abandoned through too many red cards against me. The latest version for Xbox, FIFA 2006, is visually amazing, fluid, realistic, fast and fun. So i can get beaten in real graphical class! Definitely a must have game! On a side note, I have actually bought my first real retail game for my Xbox! Halo 2 from Play.com for a tenner!. Hard to pass up really. Especially if I get the 360 and can play it online too! Technorati Tags: xbox, fifa, fifa 2006, football, soccer, xbox live, MK Dons

Xbox 460

I was in my local Game store this weekend and found, to my surprise, that they had some Premium Xbox 360 bundles in stock! The only problem was that they were only willing to sell them for £460, bundled with 4 (crap) games. What a load of fucking tosh they are! Trying to squeeze even more money out of me so they can sell more games! Thats an extra £190! Since my matey Swimpig has got himself a PSP for xmas and I have put in a good few minutes on it - I am pretty impressed with it. I am now in a quandry over getting a PSP - or getting a 360. Maybe I could get a PSP and then a 360 in the summer but I am not sure. The thought process behind getting a PSP means that I could play FIFA when the missus is watching her soap opera stuff. It might be worth me holding out for a non-retail PSP with some nice old-school firmware so I can load homebrew apps and emulators on it. I can then sell my GBA-SP to part-fund the venture. The problem is - I really want BOTH of these items - but feel that if/when I get one of them I expect I will feel terribly unfulfilled. I'm not sure what it is about me and these kind of things. I obsess about them until I get them and then.... nothing. A real anti-climax. I have been the same with my iPod. I do use it - but not as often as I thought. It's a good job I have'nt got much money - otherwise my house would be (more) full of crap! Technorati Tags: PSP, xbox360, xbox 360, microsoft, sony, playstation, game

Twenty Oh Six

Please wait....

Re-publishing your blog for the 200th time... please wait. Ever get the feeling you spend too much time farting with little CSS niceties in your template when you should be sleeping? 2 hours to make the comment background to alternate between grey and dark grey! Wahoo. I get the feeling it was not worth it now. Then again - I did it myself!

Hats, Twats and Throatyaches

Christmas greetings to all. But not to the retarded customers at the local supermarket who were all wheeled and bussed in and had special "day out visits from the institution" just to piss me off and get in my way as I tried to gather some basic supplies yesterday. I am normally quite deft at avoiding other "obstacles" when I am crusing the aisles but they just wanted to die! 10 points for a crusty, 15 for demented, dirty slob parented children and 30 bonus points for bashing the shins of the employee who decided to drag out a cage of stock right in front of me! He deserved it. I'm sure it was'nt all that bad. It may have had something to do with the fact that I have been off work all week with another throat infection. In my last post about... the last infection... I used a photo of someones tonsils I found off the net - but those ones above...are really mine! Come to papa! I have also spent the time I was not hallucanating from the effects of a 4-a-day dose of 250mg of Penacillin, making cardboard christmas hats for when we go and spend a few nights at the in-laws over the xmas weekend. Apparently it is a family tradition they have (strangely left out of the ten christmas's I have spent with them) to wear ellaborate hats at the christmas dinner table. We (i) appear to have ended up making 11 hats for the people in attendance this year and I present the current state of play, modelled by some annoyed children (click em' to Big Em' Up in Flickr): In order from left to right: 1. Sister In Laws Hat. She has recently got herself a Moto RAZR V2 phone and is generally one of those people whose phone and mouth never stops, so i modelled one for her! My wife and I did the eyes and mouth together. 2. Ethan's Hat (my youngest). He is mad on trains and Thomas The Tank Engine so I modelled him Thomas running on the tracks across his head. Thats him too BTW. 3. Father In Laws Hat. He owns his own video production company and is also the editor/cameraman. I tried to make this look like a camera. There is a fish jumping on the other side as his area of expertise is in filming and making the best and most popular fishing videos in the UK (and world!!). That hot model is me BTW. 4. Corin's Hat (my eldest). This is finished apart from the spray paint, but is supposed to be Darth Vader. Possibly the most difficult hat to make so far. And when he came down in the morning and saw it, he complained that he wanted a Father Christmas hat instead. Thanks mate... love you too... 5. My Wife's Hat. She is renown for stealing all the gravy at the dinner table. This started off as a hat for Corin but began to look too much like a weird blow-up-doll - so we changed it to my wifes instead. 6. Lily's Hat (my niece). Supposed to be a sort of Cleopatra type hat. What you can't see is the glittery hair at the back but the snake was all modelled by me out of cardboard! 7. Joe's Hat (my nephew) This is supposed to be a "chiselled jawed pretty boy" hat as he is an image conscious teenager. It reminds me of a gladiators mask or something though. 8. Mother In Laws Hat. Obsessed with cleaning and cleanliness, this hat features her rubber gloves and cleaning materials. She made it actually - but we finished it off for her. 9. Luke's Hat (my nephew). He is currently at Bath University studying "commerical music" so we thought a hat with Symbals, a bass drum (he is a Grade 8 level drummer) a mic, and a guitar amp would be appropriate. 10. My Hat. What else? An iPod hat! It sits on my head in it's own "dock" and features real (cast off) headphones glued in. Its yet to be sprayed but will end up gold. I will also stick on an iPod screen too so it looks authentic (and even more geeky). I did toy with the idea of being able to remove it from the dock too and carry it around... but that was just silly! Just one more to go... and I think I might have to make a harmonica! Fecking hell! Don't think I will be doing this again next year! Merry Xmas to all. I'm off to bed to watch the drugs do their work on the 70s light show cinema scape that is the inside of my eyelids! Wahoo!

I'm missing out on something

Advance Wife Warning: When I see a 360... I will buy it! If there are other regular readers of this Blog who have an XBox Live gamertag, let me know and I will add you to my list. Technorati Tags: xbox, xbox360, microsoft, xbox live, live, gamertag, gamer tag