Given the fact that I’ve been missing, presumed dead after all this time, with only choice nuggets of news here and there, it seems rather appropriate that the next post I actually do write, contains scenes of horror, woe and tips on how not to get your brains eaten. No, it doesn’t involve doing your taxes.

“Paul, you magnificent bas****d!” I hear you cry, “how can I get through life without worrying about writing “Oh boy, was I suckered?” with my intestines while some cheery fellow munches away on that brain I was saving for a rainy day, what we can do about it?” Well my friends, I’m proud to be informing you of a way to find out.

Now, I first learned of this bunch of vagabonds from a copy of SFX in the UK, and because it sounded so bizarre, twisted, and yet still better than the Best Of Chris Moyles on Radio 1 podcast, I started to download them and listen.

And by jove I’m glad I did. I even remarked on the thing on the twitter feed, and you all know how lazy I am to do that sort of thing these days….

What makes it worse or better, is that the whole thing also spawned a tie-in book that is being launched nationally by Allison & Busby on 1st August this year: Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary : The A-Z Guide to Staying Alive. Better than getting another bloody book on how to cook food from Asda in overly-difficult and possibly life-threatening ways by the Smith of Delia….

How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse : RELOADED (not that crap Matrix reloaded rubbish so no worries there) presents us with an interesting question. How to make a second show that actually is not only better than the first which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, but also doesn’t infringe copyright law?

Well not the last bit (and that was waiting for a done to death joke), but the first part is a good question. It has to be not only educational but follow simple sequel rules like not having those slow walking away from explosion moments, not have a script smelling like a used nappy, remember it’s core values and still only work with a budget of £17.40.

This year I reckon they can. So do they, hence the show!

You see, not only will you learn how to survive the inevitable fight to the death with a select bunch of friends, knowing one of them will get infected at some point, you will actually get the chance to find out how prepared you are…..cue scary organ music in your head as this is text and thus silent.

Now if they could only come with with a tagline better than “Who says sequels are a bad thing?” or “Brain Destruction Guaranteed.”

How about “Buy one get one free” or “This time, the badgers are rising….” Zombie Badgers, we’d all be in trouble then. Maybe that’s one for the next show; “How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse: That one which is miles better than Scary Movie”

So I say to you fellow campers out there on t’internet, if you are around bonnie Scotland at any point you can get tickets to the show which will be on at the Zoo Southside 6th – 29th August (not 17th & 24th, not sure why, maybe they are just wasting time eating KFC) with the show kicking off at 7.45pm

Pricing is £8 or £6 depending on how you look and of course how could I not be a shameless promoter without mentioning the website: www.howtosurviveazombieapocalypse.co.uk Go there and all your answers shall be revealed.

Oh and in case you’re wondering, yes I am a sell-out whore.

Dr. Dale promised me a ice lolly for this and who am I to turn such a thing down. Look, I’ve already know we fat people are the first to go when the zombies come, so eff it, I’m getting some while the goings good!

Tonight, for once, I took time out to watch the telly for a change and focused on watching an episode of the famous Panorama on BBC1, a show which looks at various issues occurring in the world today, like Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe programme except far less amusing nor containing any swear words for added effect.

But once more I felt the nerd rage build inside me, even prompting me to enter a blog entry for the first time in a while, for this programme was about the “net police” coming to get you for ripping off material you didn’t pay for,, due to a new digital rights bill moving through parliament right now.

The show mainly focused on the music industry, you know, those lovable rogues that fuel the wages of many mainstream artists and of course brought us the likes of Simon Cowell. Yeah, them lot. Already we’re not on their side.

Because I prefer to comment on such things that actually doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, here was a comment I left with them, of course if it got published on the site, I’d be amazed:

I absolutely laughed at some of the comments being made and also could not believe how much was left out.

However in concentrating on just the music industry, and not even really highlighting anything on the TV industry, where waste also reins as much as in music, Video game piracy or some of the solutions being put forward to see where habits could be changed for instance, like Spotify to any great detail, nor even think about the reasons why people do it for free (focusing on students or kids, it’s not exactly difficult to see why they do it.) it feels a great disservice has been done by only covering a tiny portion of the overall situation and something like this, would need a lot more air time to look at everything.

Perhaps the portion with Stephan Timms MP could have been better articulated really….By them, I did infer the government, however the point has probably gotten lost by now.

To be honest, I felt like I could have made a better programme using cling film and a vomiting dog, and for god’s sake, please stop showing us the Pirate Bay on these programmes, there are countless others as well but I suspect the researchers on these lovely jollies never bother looking at anything else.

A bit more research, questioning and perhaps not try to cram everything in a 27 minute film would perhaps go further for the legal cause than what this did tonight.

It’s been some time since the last time I left any deposit of worth upon the Internet. Remember, to build up momentum to write something profound, entertaining or perhaps useful to certain folks takes immense creativity. Recently, my creativity has failed me, thus leading to the point of thinking “Why bother?”

I tried a long time ago to be profound and indeed creative, thinking about why certain things are the way they are, but this was in different times, away from London, where if you let it, the anger builds up until you end up with the title sequences of Macgyver.

You need a break from the cold harsh world that we live in, and as I made an effort to leave the confines of the bat cave that is my hotel room / studio flat / set for a crap BBC 3 sitcom, to head over to the London Comic Con over at the court of Earl, perhaps it’s time to enlighten what occured in a comical, yet highly disjointed manner.

Now considering the rash of geeky, spotty filled posts spread very thin upon thy site, this is potentially the post which signals the Hughes train has derailed off the track of life with all souls lost in a fireball of woe and the government inquiry ruled “Never mind…. Pot of Jam?”

However, not being one to shy away from the sick freak that I have become, or Golem to those in the know, why not force your minds into a coma with some lovely wee-coloured pictures of the day?

Yes, some of them are wee coloured, simply due to two things; terrible lighting and I’m a bit rubbish at taking pictures, though this picture outside raised questions, mainly was the woman smiling, going to make a run for it as she was carrying 60KG of crack?

Mind you, it didn’t really compare to the Tube ride over. A load of people were dressed as what I can only begin to guess was something from those crap Japanese cartoons.

You know the ones, where they talk at 50 miles an hour about crap you can’t possibly understand and then they fight each other by standing still. What made it even better, a priest got on the tube and looked scared at them all the way along. One of those moments in life where you think; Is that seat flammable?

Well, here we are in the Sunday market. Seriously, it was like a Sunday market, except at one end was the people off the telly, and everywhere else, there were lots and lots of stalls selling toys and comics. I’m serious.

But the place didn’t seem to have that much really, you could have had a good look around in about 20 minutes, wonder what the fuss was about, and go off for some scones, muttering all the while about young people.

Don’t get me wrong, if you hung around long enough, there were talks from the people off the telly, Street Fighter 4, and Pie being served for too much money in the cafe thing upstairs, but it’s not enough to keep going for longer than an hour at best.

I suppose that is a true downside to it all. Unless you’re really, really into all this….world of tat, then more than likely you’ll still be recovering in the alley after being mugged for a ham sandwich from the Saturday night before, at least that’s more likely than people turning up to a exhibition with a guy dressed as a dog.

But there was a legitimate reason to be there among the people of Blackpool, and that was to meet some of the people off the telly. And not just any people, I fully intended to meet two people of choice with a third being a bonus in hindsight;

Yes, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of minutes chatting to Mr Michael Ironside, star of tv and film too numerous to appear all here listed, and to add to it all, he is the voice of Sam Fisher from the successful Splinter Cell games. I kid you not, he really is a fantastic chap, even after I asked if he ever had hair in anything he’s done. Yes, that’s true.

But we also had a chat about other subjects, some which did raise an issue about the business practises of Ubisoft (the makers of Splinter Cell) as it goes, and it was only after hearing from the man himself what happens in certain situations when dealing with the French, that you start to think. It was a great experience and if ever I got to talk to him again, I’d have to buy him a beer. Great man, he really is.

And then the last picture of the day….Jewel Staite, the sexy doctor from Stargate Atlantis, and also from the series Firefly. In all honesty, I do have the hots for her, let’s be honest, given the queue for the pictures were 99% men, I wasn’t the only one.

But I did also have a brief talk with her beforehand, and she is dainty. I mean that in a nice way, Jewel really was a sweet, almost innocent woman, and that only helped to make her more endearing. Come on Paul, she’s married, walk away….

But it appears from talking to the lovely Jewel, that none of the Atlantis cast have been approached for any further work on the franchise, like what happened with the DVD films for the original series. Come on MGM, give us more Atlantis!

I did talk to Michael Shanks, aka Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1, but I made myself more of an arse there, so let’s move on from that….err….

So there we have a lot of drivel about the Sunday spent out and about with a lot of people who shared an interest in TV and film stuff. Not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, it did cost a lot for the day with getting in early etc, but I got to meet some really nice people from the showbiz world, and some others there from the day as well, including a one-legged woman who writes porn.

Not often I write that sentence either. Bonus.

Please leave a message after the beep….

Beep.

Ok, so it’s not a good explaination as to why I’ve yet again not been around this past week or so, I would love to fall back on the tried and tested work excuse which actually normally accounts for 99% of why I’m never around that much, however, Thursday Night, this is the reason why:

Yep, the return of Monkey Island to our computers and consoles after far too long was far too much to resist, and well it’s not a bad go at it to be fair.

The story is certainly an interesting one and there is more than enough to keep us guessing for the time being, which itself is going to be torture as there are 4 more parts to be released over the next few months. Arrrr ya saucy barnacles for making us wait!

When they come out with this….you need to walk away….seriously.

Basically soon you will be able to do everything within World of Warcraft, it won’t be long before we just have a lead from our brains into it, and WOW through add-ons shall sustain our existance, though really I can only imagine people croaking “kill….me….” after 6 or 7 hours. Suddenly my knowledge of Office 2007 deployment doesn’t look as bad.

Yes, look at it: The ultimate in PC hardware in a presentable…err….mess one day last week:

Yes it may look like the setting from Mad Max without the huge budget or Mel Gibson, but think of what dwells within.

3TB of storage, Quad Core Processor…..almost make you weep with the sheer number of dodgy xxx-rated filth you could hold, even in HD….and now that is mine, all mine etc (can’t be bothered with the evil laugh) and the bright side is, that at last GTA 4 for the PC remains playable at an average of 37 frames a second as opposed to 20 before.

But there are times where the game still slows to 21 frames on occasion. Dear me, they really could have done a better job with the conversion over to PC couldn’t they? Almost makes me want to review the game in my old self-destructive manner…. In fact that sounds like a plan! Quickly, to the thing that controls the thing on the telly!

There has been some hiccups to be fair, like playing with BIOS settings to make the thing go faster only for the PC for fail to work at all. Ah the forgotten joys of playing with computers….Yeah, you’re right, there are better things to do.

 

 What happens when boredom and booze mix: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well seeing as I had already wasted 5 minutes doing the thing and I can’t think of better things off the top of my head to say, please enjoy my ramblings which are geeky and silly and I say naughty words in this too, so if you don’t know what they are, ask your mummy and daddy. Right, where’s my bottle….

I suppose with all the comments and updates I had been making with Twitter, something was bound to set things off.

In fact one particular comment has taken a life of it’s own….You see in a stupid and geeky moment, I ordered a new Intel Quad Core Processor and two 1TB drives, basically to replace what drives I have already but apprently in the sphere of the internet, that amount of storage means only one thing.

The following is all the updates from the Facebook profile I keep after the purchase was made known.

Nigel Parsons at 14:04 on 09 June
Demand some overtime! (or ask really really nicely)

Alistair Clare at 14:06 on 09 June
nerd!

Russ Hollinshead at 14:06 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Nerd!

Russ Hollinshead at 14:07 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Wow. Uncanny.

Maybe we do have a point.

Alistair Clare at 14:07 on 09 June
Indeed.. any one would have thought we were sitting next to each other and timed that well

Russ Hollinshead at 14:08 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Who needs 2TB of storage anyway? That’s a lot of porn.

Alistair Clare at 14:08 on 09 June
He has a point man.. that allot of porn there!

Russ Hollinshead at 14:09 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Yes. Erm, where did you get such storage… I may have a need for such things afterall.

Alistair Clare at 14:10 on 09 June
Nice!!! You could share it between the both of you.. think of the possibilities…

Russ Hollinshead at 14:10 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Are you suggesting Paul is the porn napster?

Alistair Clare at 14:12 on 09 June
No comment

Russ Hollinshead at 14:13 09 June via Facebook Mobile
But why quad core?

Alistair Clare at 14:13 on 09 June
Watch many thing at once… hard core! hehe

Russ Hollinshead at 14:13 09 June via Facebook Mobile
As in an orgy?

Alistair Clare at 14:14 on 09 June
*shocked and speechless*

Russ Hollinshead at 14:14 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Electrostim and ballgags. Never had you down for that Al.

Alistair Clare at 14:15 on 09 June
Well.. you know….

Russ Hollinshead at 14:15 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Yes. Give them back.

Alistair Clare at 14:15 on 09 June
Sorry man… need to get them cleaned first

Russ Hollinshead at 14:16 09 June via Facebook Mobile
I’ve promised them to Paul next. I don’t think he’ll care.

Alistair Clare at 14:16 on 09 June
True.. always thought he was a bit grubby

Russ Hollinshead at 14:17 09 June via Facebook Mobile
And that’s just his mind.

Alistair Clare at 14:17 on 09 June
Indeed… very true.. hence the need for 2TB!

Vaheed Shadi at 14:17 on 09 June
Fast porn….why else??????

Russ Hollinshead at 14:18 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Fast porn? That’ll be the lube.

Alistair Clare at 14:18 on 09 June
Is there any porn fast enough for mr hughes?

Russ Hollinshead at 14:19 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Gone in 69 seconds?

Alistair Clare at 14:19 on 09 June
That’s optimistic…

Russ Hollinshead at 14:21 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Actually you have a point. Is this device just going to be full of thousands of 2 minute epics? (And that’s including the plot)

Alistair Clare at 14:22 on 09 June
sounds like most things nowadays….

Russ Hollinshead at 14:22 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Why when I have plumbing problems do I never get a big breasted sex mad swedish nymph girl turn up with a spanner?

Alistair Clare at 14:23 on 09 June
Because Paul has not uploaded that episode yet

Keith O’Neill Edwards at 14:37 on 09 June
Is all that machinery just so that Windows runs at a reasonable pace????

Russ Hollinshead at 14:39 09 June via Facebook Mobile
No! Keep up! Its so he can store his porn. I would have thought that was obvious by now…!

Nigel Parsons at 15:05 on 09 June
btw. I cant believe how much porn u watch Paul! But it will not be a good justification to the boss for the overtime

Paul Hughes at 15:35 on 09 June
Basically my friends, with a 16MB connection and time at home, there is nothing beyond my reach….pun intended.

Russ Hollinshead at 15:50 09 June via Facebook Mobile
A life maybe…?

Alistair Clare at 15:53 on 09 June
*harsh*

Nigel Parsons at 16:05 on 09 June
I have never actually spat out my drink when laughin at something – until ur latest update Paul. Well, it was either laughing at something or repulsed by something. Bit of both.

Alistair Clare at 16:06 09 June via Facebook Mobile
well my friend… Even at 16mb.. Thats allot of ’surfing’ to be done to fill that up. Just be careful it doesn’t drop off!

Russ Hollinshead at 16:09 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Isn’t this just for the archives…? God knows where he is putting the incoming stuff…

Russ Hollinshead at 16:10 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Is Paul trying to get a localised copy of the Internet or something…? Have you tried hookers? Could be cheaper…?

Alistair Clare at 16:26 on 09 June
All I can say is that it sounds like Paul is in for a busy night…

James Morgan at 16:57 on 09 June
you’re gonna have a right arm like mike tyson mate

Russ Hollinshead at 17:10 09 June via Facebook Mobile
Blurred vision, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel…

Alistair Clare at 17:57 on 09 June
Life is not looking good mate…. arthritis will set in before the weekend at this rate!

Keith O’Neill Edwards at 18:25 on 09 June
He’ll be calling in sick for the rest of the week…..

Alistair Clare at 18:36 on 09 June
RSI

Moral here for all this: Sometimes the best comedy comes from the internet. And as it turns out, the best porn does too….err….

I mean, it has been yet another week without so much as a “How’s your father?” or “Stop putting that in my ear” comment and with the excitement barely contained after the taste of Spain or something else equally repeating on you a few hours afterwards, you might be wondering if I had gotten distracted again by shiny things or better yet, discovered how to make gold out of bin bags.

Well my friends, I had spent most of last week, seemingly to the lament of quite a few people judging by the Facebook and Twitter responses I received, in Madrid, working away beavering on yet more Office 2007 goodness.

Not content with mastering it the first time round and writing about it for all my sins, here was a fresh challenge to adopt what I had done before, but for those without Admin Rights, and still containing all the bits from before, with the added requirement of making sure no-one could have a play while all of it goes on.

Because the Computer Weekly thing ended some time ago, and some might be wondering how this epic tale will unfold, allow me to add some ray of sunshine onto this new area and the way it’s been engineered:

Calls to VBscript from KIX mainly as I’m scared a fair bit of VBscript (it seems to take far more to do the same damned thing as one line of KIX but there we are) and registering the AutoitX.dll (available from this site: Autoitscript.com) on machines which then allow you to use this code (as an example, think the syntax is good…err…)

Set oAutoIt = CreateObject(”AutoItX.Control”)

oAutoIt.BlockInput on

With that and using the run as option built into the AutoITx.dll as well, you have a truly handy way of getting round pesky little things such as the lack of Admin rights and stopping people from playing with their machines while you’re trying to do something wonderful.

If you package the resultant script as an EXE using something which packages scripts as EXEs…..creative sentence there, it would be a pretty handy way to automate a customised install such as what Office was for use with extra parts.

The only problem would be you would need an admin level account to use for the execution of said program, and that as we all know, if you leave that out in the open, you potentially could find yourself with people abusing that account to do as they please. Guess that is always open to debate whether you should use this method, but if you don’t have a better deployment method for distribution or a small company, it could be the answer.

Yes, My life truly is this exciting….

Yes, at long last the broadband was brought back online today, which made for huge raping of the DSL for various updates, games and other things which are best left alone at the best of times….err….

I suppose that once you’ve gotten used to using the net for most things these days, internet shopping, online gaming, email death threats, to have that taken away for a great length of time, you realise how much you actually depend upon it. And worryingly it was only made obivous how many things rely on a net connection in order to work.

During the offline period at home, I couldn’t play any games from my steam account despite parting with the cash for quite a number, only Left 4 Dead and Prince of Bel-Air, no Persia, still worked, the rest wanted to check on the steam servers for some reason. Makes me wonder if those who remain offline will get the most out their machines and how long it will be before everything will rely on the internet to work. Even our kettles….

I tell you, not even having the beauty of BBC Iplayer to catch up on programmes I didn’t even know were on, well, that was just pure, hence in recent times the best I could do were the videos found on the internet at work which allowed for some small joy in these harsh times. Granted these harsh times aren’t as harsh as someone dying of kidney failure or being forced to watch Dancing on Strictly people’s heads or whatever it is, but still.

So aside from that little escapade, what else has been going on since the last proper updates back in Febuary?

A fair amount as it goes which will be remarked on another time, but there was one major thing aside from the moving out business into the place where even P Diddy with his 743 jets and cheeseburgers can’t afford, it appears that I have become a bit of a f*** clump when dealing with certain friends, family and others and this has caused me to behave in a fashion which has even alienated the Lady of Leisure to the point when she left.

It was fair enough, I was scared of commiting, behaved like a baby and got what I deserved. Pure and simple, I was scared of loosing freedom and lost more than that. In the meantime, it appears I have a few issues to sort out and well, to all those people I’ve hurt, I’m sorry.

What that means from now on is something I don’t know. So there we are, something which doesn’t happen often but here you are: A man admitting he was wrong when it came to a relationship publically, or as publically as it goes for the internet. Being on my own may work for a while but in the end, will it do me any good?

Not a really funny thing to end on, but as the french say “C’est la vie.”