A head emerges from the red tent, shaking in the winds, all around, a blizzard is sweeping across the ice ladden widerness that layed before me.

The artic tundra is no place for men. You come here when you know there is no hope. The air is cold yet stale like cheese that’s been left out of the fridge a wee bit too long, and all the while, not only does the wind chill you to the bones, you feel the cold icy chill of the reaper upon your soul, pulling you down into the abyss.

They have an oinkment for that I hear. Or is that little blue pills instead?

Moving swiftly on from frozen death, I have to confess that it’s been a more non-productive week than in previous weeks as I decieded to leave the work once I got home and behave much in the fashion I used to, surveying all I could see, which was the front room, and out the window while in my jim-jams.

I have also hit a very bad realisation this week after reaching certain levels of naughty, I have become a fully fleged member of the “geek” culture, a group of creatures with fear of sunlight, spots which if burst would produce enough material to make an omelette.

My brief audio email as mentioned yesterday, did not display a man who has legions of undead at his command but instead a small fellow asking strangers to walk into the local newsagent and buy a dirty mag, maybe with some chocolate milk.

On the one hand this has had me feeling fine, after all this type of stuff has been my bread and butter when reviewing items of ill-repute on the podcast, and therefore I am interested in such nonsense.

It would be jolly nice to do that for a living, the pays rubbish but you get more out of it. Of course there’s that nasty “real-life” going around that I’ve heard so much about and it seems to break everything. What lets me down is my writing style, as in I don’t really have one.

This is fine for blogging about the time I went to the vet to be put down or posting pictures about throwing up, but for real articles about manly things such as tyres and tractors with other subjects beginning with t, you need to have the writing knack. An quality which compels people to come back for more, descriptive in many ways and as much I try, it’s still some way off.

In fact, along the realisation of the “geek” culture, comes a nasty feeling like “Ok, move back a moment, you’re living in a scary place (Telford, more than likely) with the Adams family and Jeff Goldblum when he was in the Fly as neighbours, your feet are turning into tenticles, and the smell from your bottom is getting slightly worse.” Only a random appearence from a superhero (or at least someone with underpants over their trousers) can save us!

I was too damned late for one such social thing worthy of interest.

I had no idea that R.E.M for example were playing at the Royal Albert Hall the end of March, with the tickets having gone on sale mid febuary. It’s all to promote their new Album, which from early indications is meant to be the dangly bits in-between a dogs’ legs. When it was announced that they were performing staduim dates here too, it came as a bit of a “bugger” moment.

After all, I had seen them in 2005 when they were last down in London just a week after the London bombings, and they were fantastic. Of course met some very nice people there, who have kept in touch, and I had said to myself earlier that when they were back, I would go and see them once again to sing along badly to Man on the Moon. No piggy backs this time though, I’ve grown old….

It seems as a result of the knucle down attutude I took, I ended up missing quite a number of events, all of which would have served to keep me stable. Well, ish.

I have a small confession to make on this mammoth post, it’s a bit of strange time for me at present, looking towards the future as to what I am going to be doing in a few months time and it seems that life has to pass me by for at least another three months yet before anything else can be taken into account, and then I can actually get on with my life.

Seems rubbish to me. I finally understand why getting older is your dad’s saggy soiled pants. So much is expected for so little a reward.

Anyway, to stop the brain seeping boredom setting in too much or perhaps just to delay the effects, there was a bit of a crack on Team Fortress 2 for the first time in ages, as that program hadn’t been used since the beta version last year was released to all who bought the Orange Box.

Seriously, it’s been that long. And I sorted out my Steam profile at long last, the link to which has been posted on the side there for you to have a butcher’s at. Darth Tater will lead me to victory, just you wait.

Also, to reconnect with the outside world (one baby step at a time, aversion to sunlight and all), I took some time out to catch up with a few people which once again through apathy or whatever, I just hadn’t kept in touch and I have to say it’s been a rather sad week in some respects when finding out what has happened to some unfortunate souls out there.

A friend of ours we met through another friend, whose friends with said friend who has other fri…anyway, he has been on the road to recovery after suffering a stroke which occured towards the start of the year and it was rather a shock. Granted it was more a shock for him than us, as he was the one suffering.

He is recovering well and he should be only out of action for another 6 weeks. So we can only say: Get well soon Andy, and yes we need a drink when you come off the drugs. Drugs are bad, except when they’re good. I think…maybe.

That’s your lot for today campers, I’m pretty sure that there was something for everyone on this edition of the AWOL. Join us back here next week for more atric tundra-ness and dilly-dallying with news on things that involve me. Wow, this should be posted on the BBC website surely?

All yesterday, there was turmoil, because things shook around here as a result of an earthquake which has caused people to react with horror, and then proceed to make the same f**king joke all day: Did the earth move for you last night? (Cue the waa waa music)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a right dirty minded scamp at the best of times but at the very least give us some variety to the same old stories, it was akin to the undead captions of “phew, what a scorcher” and the hundreds of Nazis references when England play Germany.

And actually it goes to show that that was the most urgent matter of the day that things moved about a bit for a few seconds. I had no idea, until the morning, and others all around couldn’t stop talking about it. Are we just that bored as a nation?

Although afterwards we received reports via text that Preston was devastated. The damage estimate was between £10 and £20. Mercy!

A rather strange thing occured during this week. It appears I was featured on another podcast boring people to death about PC gaming after recording a rather long audio email, being pretend techincal etc, and because I am in the mood to show off, like an old man with his medal collection and regaling you all about the time he defeated the Russian army single handed and hoping on one leg, I guess a link to the site is more than sufficent.

However, when I heard it back, it was strange and rather cringeworthy to me, because:

1) I didn’t reliase how long it was.
2) How many pc components did I mention, when going through how thing run, seriously were people going to be interested in system specs? Christ I need some more naughty….

Despite this feeling that oh b*****ks, I ended up giving them a duff message question thingy, Rob (one of the presenters) commented that he could listen to me all day, and Shawn said I am witty?!?! It’s rare that the Lord of Leisure recieves such praise and because I didn’t want to flood Gamers with Jobs with too much more drivel and an academy award speech which thanks everyone including the people who make my underwear, I’m posting here instead, thank you very much fellas. And I got to say boobs on there too, what more can you ask for?

Forever trying to find further ways to faff about I present you all with a look at an upcoming product which may amaze you. Or not.

Now of course, everyone now knows about my guitar woes of late with the PC, and the fact is, that has now gone into the either with some cashback my way to pay for the latest batch of cocaine I need to survive today’s trival lifestyle of going to the pub and getting reponsibly rat-arsed as we are told to in all those drink and drive adverts that we see everywhere.

So when news of this little baby crossed my soggy filth ridden path, I decided to have a good look and don’t ask me how they are going to do this or if it’s just a pipe dream which will never see the light of day, but in any case take a look at the video below for a Guitar Hero type experience…with a real guitar of your own choice hooked to the PC or Mac.

Guitar Rising

In essence if this is correct, this is the first real true 100 attempt at learning a guitar using a computer interactively as part of entertainment, something which Guitar Hero can never attest to and will actually start causing Nigrera Falls amounts of sweat to drip from all those people who have denounced GH because it’s not the same as playing a real guitar. Of course it bloody well isn’t! We’re not that silly, but hey ho, They were still busy coming out and saying this silliness because they had nothing else to do and so why not spoil people’s fantasies? Buggers.

If they show you actual notes in Guitar Rising with full tutorials etc, it could be the way forward, and would look far more respectable than that fisher price plastic thing we all jump around with, with the neighbours calling the police fearing there is a madman on the loose.

Well there is, but that’s besides the point…

I’m lost in the widerness, the wind howls through the trees like a box of cereal, and all the while the fear of being alone for all time fills my veins with frost. In fact it could be summed up with a jolly nice picture like this:

If only there was some funky dance track to accompany this post just like from the show.

Because of my recent change of heart in terms of being absent for great periods of time, I decieded to take some time out of my busy silliness, and work on the blog once more, tweaking it’s various aspects because some of the site has been broke for a fair amount of time.

So as you may have noticed, we have had a fair amount of updating to the site recently in terms of content, some plug-ins have been updated, the RSS feed has been fixed at long last and the one person I know who used it, Mr. Nigel Parsons can once again browse the feed without ever having to come to the site proper, yes I know it was such a pain to actually look at the actual webpage for you.

We also now have a snazzy little favicon for the site which adds nothing really of extra what-so-ever but it’s the little touches.

The importantish work actually has been proceeding at a resonable pace today too so all in all it’s not been a bad outcome for today’s events which for a saturday is quite good!

Right, I’m off to disappear for several more days. Honestly sometimes I feel like I spoil you all.

And now we come to the fight of the week, for the chance of eternal glory and the showing of accolades by many virgins, we have two champions of truth:

In the red corner weighing at 170 pounds, wearing some woman’s thong that he stole the night before, WINDOWS XP! And in another corner, though he hasn’t quite made up his mind which one to choose, weighing in at 77.111Kg because he’s gone metric, WINDOWS VISTA!

Ladies and Gentlemen, LET’S GET READY TO RAMBLE!!

So at long last, dear readers of ooh sometimes, we come to an event which I have been promising for so long now, my toothpaste turned into a fossil fuel while I was writing, gaming, sleeping, doing naughty, you know.

Comparing Windows XP 32-bit to that of both the 32 and 64-bit versions of that lovable rogue which seems to just annoy so much, it may has well come out of the closet of being Hitler’s brother, Windows Vista Home Premium.

Regretfully this whole area of which windows for me type silly has been done to death, the result of which has always been; all the fan boys have been up in arms complaining about the fact that their favourite vacuum cleaner doesn’t work anymore, and that Vista is a serial killer, killing various types until he has a guest spot on Midsummer Murders.

Put simply Vista has been more a PR disaster than a technical one. No-one likes it because it is slower. Hell, XP forever banners may as well have been put up in the streets, and I swear the villagers are getting anxious at night when they hear the cry of the Vista monster, praying on another herd of sheep.

IT’S WITCHCRAFT! BURN THEM ALL!

Well, that’s mainly because Vista is now only a year old. Windows XP has been on the market since 2002 and in that time, has gone through refinement and is at the moment, quite a decent OS (No, I’m not taking money for that statement, though it would be nice) which meets people’s needs and they already own a copy because it came with their shiny toy.

Price of course,is a major factor. My copy of Vista cost £129 with an additional £11 pounds to Microsoft for the 64-bit disk. XP came with my machine. Of course depending on where you get Vista and what version you get, you could pay up to £360 for the damned thing. There is also the real possiblity that you need a newer machine to use vista well owing to the increased system specs and to get the most of of it.

That’s a lot of pocket change for everyone, and a bitter pill to swallow. Add to the fact that apparently another version of Windows is heading for retail next year according to many sites, you wonder what’s the point? Well, that’s what we will find out here.

Now I could bore you all to death with that technical crap that so many journalists like to spurt out to pretend they know what they are talking about, of course lacing the text with excerpts from erotic novels to wake you all up when it’s time to finish. But nope, instead, I’m going to approach this from a different angle if possible with as little techincal naughty as possible.

How good is each OS for everyday tasks that you can expect to do on a computer these days, and sorry taking over the world is still not one of them, much to my dismay.

This can be broken down into:

• Games
• Office rubbish (doing all that typey-typey that people seem to like)
• The Media Centre (playing DVDs, music and all that other stuff which people steal from the Internet)
• Internet Naughty (at last, a legitimate reason for viewing hard-core porn in a flash movie window)
• What works and what doesn’t work on all platforms
• A special topic for me, recording in Adobe Audition

At the end of it all we will have to make a conclusion with a recommendation. Sounds simple so far? Well there will be some technical stuff because frankly you can’t get away from such things when trying to explain, and I promise to keep it to a level I can understand. Any questions, feel free to raise your hand during the article. And then after feeling foolish for doing so, put it down as you are reading a web page and not asking the teacher to go to the toilet. Numpty.

Games

The games tested were some of the latest and greatest pieces of “quick, shoot the bugger” mixed in with the occasional party game, and a few classics to see what issues were encountered during the testing.

To put some of you out of your misery, the settings were all set to the highest possible, which normally will show the stress better than playing at really low resolutions. Except for Crysis, that’s a bad thing to do.

Anyway the games “tested” were:

• Crysis (both were using DIRECTX 9 version with all set to high, but DX10 was tried seeing as Vista had it and the Geforce supports it)
• Guitar Hero 3 (because I love the thing, sorry!)
• Bioshock (both were using DIRECTX 9 version with all set to high, but again like with Crysis, DX10 was tried)
• Call of Duty 4
• World of Warcraft
• Splinter Cell Double Agent

There’s this utility you can download from the internet, called FRAPS which is used to see if there were noticeable performance drops because it has this handy little counter in the corner.

Now, in honesty both Windows XP and Windows Vista achieved the same throughput from what I was noticing, the game which were supporting DirectX 10 did look slightly nicer, albeit slower but not enough to cause major headaches all the same, But that’s the hardware at play, you would see major differences on older hardware. All versions of Windows were handling the games through their stride and it was only the limitations of the machine itself which was a factor here.

Except for Guitar Hero 3.

Had I played that game under Windows XP when I reviewed it all that time ago, it would have gotten a 5 instead of an 8. The reason why was because when playing, the little coloured circles stutter. A Lot. Almost to the point where you feel the devil will possess your body and rain hellfire on humanity.

What a load of crap! For something that relies on the fact that the notes are meant come down the screen smoothly with the music, this was like being promised a date with Jessica Biel and you end up with Saddam Husain’s corpse.

Need any more illustration of my dismay?

Good.

I had a support ticket open with the porters of said offending item, Aspyr. Their response was nothing more than the standard “Have you turned it off and on again” stating the obvious things to look for.

And to top it all off, Windows Vista had no real problem, hell the stuttering went away completely when using the 64-Bit version so this is one of those games which reeks of badly rushed software.

I really wish I could swear until the cows come home about that, and launch into a full blown personal rant about bad coding and a trend which seems to be evident on the PC scene, scheming like all those mothers who say our children are being warped by elbows or whatever it is now they are upset about.

But perhaps this is not the time or the place to do that and the correct editorial context to do so. So let’s press on like the friendly people waiting in the giant wooden horse, who are just dying to say hello to the trojans.

In the games though under Windows Vista, there was no hardware acceleration of the games in terms of sound which could be enabled.

You see, Microsoft in their wisdom, after so many years, have adopted a new sound system in Windows Vista, and plumb forgot to put in full hardware support for the older sound software which may mean some performance determent.

Creative at the time of writing, are the only ones I am aware of to create a “workaround” for this, in the cunning disguise of Alchemy, a nice little program which re-routes the old sound stuff to the shiny HW accelerated OpenAL thingy which then the sound card then does the business on and spouts it all out into thy ears.

Unfortunately at the moment, this function appears to be dodgier than a Welshman in a field of sheep. Bioshock crashed under Vista when Alchemy was configured to keep an eye on the game’s directory and other games still didn’t allow the EAX effects to be enabled. Though it transpires that Bioshock doesn’t need the application after find this out from Gamers with Jobs.

So in essence, because Microsoft have supported an open platform audio system, they have also buggered up HW acceleration for existing software. B*****ds.

During the benchmarking using Fraps and 3DMark 2006, nothing really different was drawn in terms of performance. Vista was 500 marks behind the bench mark of 11704 of the XP install, which is not a big difference so in terms of speed you won’t go wrong with XP or Vista, it’s up to you which one you choose.

FRAPS did show up an issue unexpected on Vista 64-bit, when that program is enabled, the video gets corrupted when running some programs and games, even when just watching a DVD which is covered later, the screen gets corrupted sometimes.

Office Rubbish

We all have work to do these days using the modern day contraptions we have sitting on our desks. There’s always another post to write on a blog, an entry on Wikipedia to deface stating we were the ones who invented the steam engine, and all those spam emails to reply to, asking for a year’s supply of Viagra and x-rated tent pegs.

So in order to gain the best impression of how the systems would perform, the software being road tested was a mixture of Adobe Creative suite with Adobe Audition 3, and Office 2007. Being a student has its advantages in terms of saving a fortune on the software, that’s all I’m saying!

But what crap could I conjure up to really test it to its power consuming evilness? If only I was on a degree which involves writing lots of crap which no-one in the right mind would read? The type of long winded death notes that, if I were to write “there is a crate of beer waiting for someone who reads this, just mail me at blah” only to find no mail even a year later, my suspicions would be confirmed.

WAIT A SECOND!

So during what is considered normal usage in Office 2007, writing this in Word, doing a cash spreadsheet which makes no sense in Excel or designing a make believe User Interface picture in PowerPoint for a degree subject which is f**king stupid to say the least, all programs responded as expected with no real hiccups. Speed was actually acceptable on all the operating systems, so all even Stevens. What a bunch of Stevens has to with this, I don’t know.

Only MS Outlook gave pause for thought, as it itself paused for thought on more than one occasion, possibly to admire the view of whatever it could see, smell a rose or just to think “What’s it all about?” It seemed to want to take it easy on all the OS tried for this little experiment so I guess that’s just Outlook.

The real difference was in using the Adobe creative software which consisted of Dreamweaver and Photoshop; the speed response in accessing certain features was certainly noticeable. Dreamweaver was most flaky in response when working on PHP pages connected to a virtual server, and crashed on occasion. This tended to be at it’s worst on Vista 32-bit, but this also occurred a fair amount regardless, so I guess, that all Adobe’s issue to sort out.

Photoshop was good on all platforms in terms of response and rendering at my command the horrible images I was throwing together for your dining and dancing pleasure.

The software used for creating the podcast, Adobe Audition 3, was working fine on Windows XP without too many issues around the stuttering which occurs on the playback when there are lots of sound files all bunched together being played at the same time, this was more pronounced on Vista.

Whether or not it was because of the Audio support issue mentioned earlier or not, I have no idea, but installing some 3rd party driver software (their called ASIO for those who are interested in such matters) did speed up the process slightly.

A special mention here has to go to the 64-bit Version of Vista, which was a lot better in getting the bulky Adobe software to do whatever it is it does, responding to my commands and the typey typey that I wanted to do. Whether or not because it handles things more efficiently I don’t really know. So for standard office writing, you could use any of the OS in all honesty.

Windows Media Center – Performance

Yes I am one of those people who actually use Windows Media Center to play my naughty adult videos. It’s all because I did the stupid thing and badgered OCUK for one of those remote controls that Microsoft palmed off to people with Media Center and therefore it’s always been easier when sitting on the settee to browse for content using that interface.

The ultimate tool for the fat b*****d.

Anyway, the experience was at it’s best in, wait for it, Vista 64-bit.

All versions took time to catalogue the files with nice pretty pictures but the 64-bit version seemed to be doing a hell of a better job at it. Except for when it came to playback of Divx or for that matter anything other than MPEG 2.

The problem is, and this is where my lies come true and I have to be a wee bit technical, you need a 64-bit version of the codec in order to playback anything under Media Center 64-bit and naturally Divx Inc. don’t make 64-codecs at the moment.

There were a couple of 64-bit codecs I found after trawling the interweb, but it caused Media Center to crash more often than not, and even then it was prone to stuttering.

A real shame because Media Center on both 32-bit platforms, performed alright when it had catalogued everything but navigation and use of the online aspects were buggy and slow.

Internet Naughty

Now despite the fact you would be thinking that I would use this part of the writing bit to talking about viewing various amounts of questionable material which is not suitable for showing on CBBC, unless of course you wish to explain to your kids, why that woman is not being hurt by the man and what the noises mean when the woman makes them.

No, it’s just about the various activities you expect people to do, the web browsing was a fine experience at various sites (FHM, Playboy), Windows XP with IE7 was a bit suspect to freezing on random pages and causing issues with Explorer where a lovely error called “Runtime Error 217” flashed up randomly until, for now at least, I fixed it by reinstalling the Flash Player 9 ActiveX control (that page that tells you to install flash basically).

The same couldn’t be said entirely on Vista. It did respond better and of course without the naughty issues of telling me something is wrong when there isn’t. Kind of like the global warming fanatics who want to rob us all blind to “save” the planet.

Firefox was the same regardless of what I was playing around with the thing on. So some more consistency at least.

Here’s a good use you wouldn’t expect: Windows Explorer to connect to an FTP site.

Now that does raise an eyebrow. Why use Windows Explorer to connect to an ftp site, when you have better packages on the market like cuteftp, or smartftp for that very purpose. For the ultimate, why not use Directory Opus?

Simply because it comes with Windows, it blends in without having to deal with too many issues and it actually does the small job I need to on Ooh Sometimes. The ftp broke on Windows Vista 32-bit. I couldn’t delete any files from the server, and uploading speed was awful at times. Other times it worked fine at a hasty pace! You got me as to why.

Windows XP and Vista 64-bit were better experiences, though again under Vista, uploading varied from time to time (not as much as Vista 32-bit). Those Microsoft minutes remaining coming into play once again.

What works and what doesn’t work that I haven’t already said earlier

Catchy title, as always I pride myself on snappy writing. Anyway, here’s the part where I cover things that I haven’t done already in great detail. Under Vista 32-bit, when playing around with the Aero interface, Windows Explorer seems to respond slower for some strange reason, considering this was running from a uber powerful Godzilla Geforce 8800GTX 768MB it was most confusing as to why? Turning the fancy thing off did yield some performance improvement, under Vista 64-bit, the speed was fine without issue.

File copying was another issue in Vista, even XP with the Microsoft minutes left to copy a large 4GB FRAPS file took far less time than under Vista. Having then installed Service Pack 1, this did speed up quite a bit, so when SP1 comes out for Vista, make sure you do actually install it.

In terms of looks, Vista did look very nice with the Aero interface turned on, with nice wizzy transitions and other bits that Apple seems to already done. The sidebar was useful though again you can get that for Windows XP if you know where to look. And switching it off again saved some system resources.

Some programs don’t support the 64-bit platform, typically programs only written for the 32-bit Windows Explorer, or older programs from the days of Windows 95/98 (ah the good old days when if you had the thing running more than a day without issue, The various gods were smiling on you.) I ran into Audioshell which didn’t work, and also the DVD region software I had purchased ages ago to watch my M*A*S*H* DVDs from America before they went and brought them out over here for the same price and without the region coding. Swear words.

I have indeed ran the 32-bit versions of Windows on a 4 year old machine, and frankly the speed difference is huge. XP runs away, while Vista is coughing and wheezing while having another cigarette to ease the pain. Clearly the new OS is good on new hardware only. Which again brings back the price point made earlier.

Conclusion

From all my shenanigans with extensively playing with all three versions of Windows, I can’t honestly say one of them wins 100% out right all the way, because they all have aspects which go in their favour.

But here is the nice easy to read summary:

• Windows XP has the speed, and the fact that everything works.
• Vista 32-bit works with most things, and is slower in most things.
• Vista 64-bit works with most things, but has some show-stopping issues with video codecs on the 64-bit side (made slightly worse when FRAPS is on it seems), but is just as fast if not faster in some respects as Windows XP.

So stick with XP if you have no issues at the moment, such as that bizarre Runtime Error 217 I had for a while. It’s more than capable for your daily needs, without the need to spend more money and has more support at present.

I could just throw in that spanner again about the next version of Windows but it’s not here yet. And the problem with technology, there is always something better coming along, so you could always end up waiting. If you are in the situation where your current platform runs XP but would need a lot to run Vista, then wait for the next version of Windows then upgrade everything at once.

However if you want to make the jump to Vista, and you have a machine or are planning to rob people to pay for a machine capable of running it, I really do suggest going for the 64-bit version, despite some issues. It does an awful lot of what you can under XP, faster in some ways, just be prepared for compatibility problems from older software and video playback.

 

 Episode 1A: The Filler: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sorry dear readers and indeed listeners but there hasn’t been enough time this month for a full length podcast with music and proper award winning material. I couldn’t leave you all hanging like that though, so as a preview to the next full episode, here’s Episode 1A: The Filler.

We should have the next one ready towards the end of March all being well.

As usual you can subscribe to the show via the feed URL: http://www.oohsometimes.com/podcasts/feed.xml which you place carefully into your program of choice such as the free programs Juice or Doppler.

You also have the choice of searching the iTunes store, searching using either Paul Hughes, or Ooh Sometimes and subscribing using the software.

If you like what you hear or you don’t then please let us know at: podcast@oohsometimes.com and we’ll respond at some point.

Music:
None this month.

Credits:
Paul Hughes – hangs his head in shame at failing to bring entertainment to the masses…
S.L. Slaughter – Mr. Voice Over Man

Background Music by Kevin MacLeod (Kevin’s Website) and Williamson from Magnatune. The title music was by Seismic Anomaly who also feature at Magnatune. Some SFX have been used from The Freesound Project.

This
work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Not often am I a hore for advertising other blogs, in fact there aren’t that many I consider to be worthy of mention simply because we all know that most blogs are written by people who are up their own arse. I am happy to be one of those people, under the delusions that I will gain a fan club of at least three people and a range of clothing with my face displayed for all to see with catchy slogans such as “You can use my face for that kind of cash” and “Warning! Low bridge ahead.”

But for once, it gives me great plesure on the blog to point you all to a full geniune real life roadtrip currently in progress. My good friend Matt, having got bored of Broken Britain, has cast off his shackles (and clothing on the odd occasion, but that’s another story) and has traveled to the prison country down under to remark on many sights while there, and abuse the free wireless as much as possible it seems from reading what he’s wrote so far.

Have no fear gentle and violent readers, he is not alone there, as he has his trusty rusty sidekick, Sox (a sock puppet) with him at all times, possibly to fend off the natives at a moment’s notice.

Take a look at Uncle Matt – The travelling Fraggle and continue to leave various comments about washing powder if possible.

but for now we will leave you with another haunting image from Matt’s Gallery:

Day 4 of my self imposed exile away from the blog, the gaming and basically most people and it basically blows harder than one of those friendly women in Amsterdam. I find myself lost in the urban tundra, alone, desperate to do naughty, but unable to unleash the beast of Doombah to quell the tax accountant that has taken resident in my ever decreasing sense of child-like wonder (aka the brain). Cobwebs are starting take up space, and all the while I’m starting to think if Father Jack had life down to a tee: DRINK! FECK! ARSE!

OK, well the truth is, at the moment I have nothing interesting to post so I figure I’d write a load of crap to keep myself sane more than anything. There was something interesting from the Weekend, which I am more than happy to post here, a slightly naughty skype get together with some people for the Gamers with Jobs podcast at 1am Sunday morning. That went slightly wrong due to this modern day wonderful stuff we use every day, so that was rescheduled for the weekend after. Which brings a bit of a quandry to my salty head wound.

The weekend this week is meant to bring a night in Wolverhampton on Saturday, and Paintball on Sunday. But I can’t really make them without throwing out the work plans. I basically want to get the stuff done as quickly as possible, and it seems there is always something which wants to throw brown stuff all over those plans. And as much I really really really…..(three hours later) really want to go, the time comes when you are meant to do what a man’s got to do. So come the weekend, bugger knows.

For now dear people, I will return on Saturday with extra postings, and the article of which is better out of XP and Vista, which is a rather lengthy tale of woe, and sadness. There is heartbreak, the world is brought to the brink of destruction, and a gratutious sex scene. Which is actually harder to do than you think, when comparing Operating Systems but where there is a will there is a way.

There maybe another post in the week, but alas dear readers I cannot promise anything. I have become boring and therefore whatever I could offer you at the moment, would only serve to drown you all in your own vomit if only to stop the pain.

That’s all for now folks, I’m off to dodge the draft and start a tribe that celebrates the use of alcohol and nail clippers as a form of entertainment.

So yes, today is Febuary the 14th, and yet another year of men running around Tescos last night, looking for roses, a card and chocolates, all to make sure that their respective ladies does not visit harm upon their souls. It was amazing, how many men were running around the store, just seeing what was the best.

It’s almost to the point where you just go through the motions of doing the dinner thing, giving all that crap over to the loved one, just so you have an easier life for one evening. Now I should point out, this is the second Valetines’ Day I’ve been with the Russian Assassin, Miss Levkovska, so already you could argue I’m on borrowed time before the inevitable battle on a cargo ship where I meet my end with some terrific special effects and witty dialog.

But I also want to take great pride in stating; I was not one of those men rushing around looking for aformentioned bits of tat to make the Lady of Leisure happy. Instead I was purchasing some jelly, the ready meals of joy which as we all know is the cornerstone of a balanced diet, and some bananas for my bizarre habit of eating breakfast, while trying to drive to work one handed at various (safe-ish) speeds.

I swear that’s the only thing I do while driving one handed.

Moving on, I am not worried that I don’t have flowers and all that. Why would I bother? After all, surely if you love someone you show that more often than just one day of the year? Just think of the messing around you are meant to do, finding a restaurant at the last minute, because you simply must be out on the 14th, f**k the fact there are other days in the week which are better for that and that everyone will have been trying to the same thing which means the place will be crowded, the people there smell, someone farts, it’s a terrorist attack etc.

I suppose to an extent, it’s also pressure. The pressure is there, to show that you do in fact care about the one you do various things which are hidden with a CENSORED black message box because it’s not family viewing. The pressure also comes from other people, who remark on where they are taking the naughty scamps for the blasted event. “Oh yes, I’m taking her to meet the Queen, and afterwards going around London hunting for swan.” Who actually cares?

Though, actually that whole debate can extend into what society expects of you, that you are meant to find someone, do naughty and pop out a billion babies in time for tea, which then the cycle then repeats itself over and over with events like this being a shining beacon of “This is what you are meant to do.” That’s why the single people resent it so much, they aren’t fitting into the norm and feel low as a result.

That and of course, as we “Higher Plane of Existance Gods amongst Men” know: It’s all b*****ks.

Nah, just like christmas, easter, and every single event like this, they are just meaningless days designed to rob you again of your hard or easierly earned d’argent, and if you aren’t out there with someone, you feel out in the cold and have to hide somewhere in a bunker till the fallout is over, and the radiation has dropped to an acceptable level. Christ let’s go further and stone the useless b*****ds for not being with someone. Well, even as someone in a relationship, sorry I’m just not buying into it all any more.

Here’s the gist of it: Birthdays are speical, Christmas to a degree, though I made my thoughts on those more than clear in the past. But the other times of the year, just move along, we’ve got better things to do, like mugging strangers for drugs.

Besides if I were to get Natalie something for Valentine’s day, it would be this:

Ahh, happy times….when was the last time you massacred a village with your loved one?