In the FiveLive studio

But.  I work from home and listen to (mostly) Radio FiveLive all day.  It’s a superb radio station and the logistical work that must go in to produce a live, 24 hour news and sport channel boggles the mind so my complaints may seem petty but I want news, not editorialising.

This is what I mean: I’d like to go one whole day without hearing a broadcaster use the words ‘insists’, ‘claims’, ‘denies’, ‘refuses to deny’,  – you get the general idea, each of the uses of these words is designed to add a small note of controversy to the headline.  Consider the following two statements:

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger says he is not concerned about the club’s recent poor form…..

or

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger insists he is not concerned about the club’s recent poor form…..

Using ‘insists’ implies a note of disbelief from the reporter, a suggestion that he is not telling the truth.  That is absolutely not the job of an impartial reporting service – I’ll make up my own my mind whether he’s Arsene is lying or not, thanks.

The same applies to ‘claims’ and ‘denies’ and I’m aware it’s all part of the media merry-go-round.  That desire for a news channel to stoke the fires and push the story to the next level is also behind my next complaint; Guest A comes on and makes some sort of statement, a short while later Guest B comes on and is asked “how do you respond to Guest A’s comments?“. Guest B says something and the circle continues.  Interestingly, the word ‘respond’ seems to have replaced the word ‘react’ – maybe they got bored with that one.

Happily, that set of comments now provides an opportunity for another use of the ‘insists’, ‘claims’ and ‘denies’ in the next news broadcast.

I’ve been listening to this radio station since it first started broadcasting back in the early 1990s and I’ve always thought it trod a fine line between tabloid news reporting and a more sensible, sober style.  As long as it stays just the sober side of that line I’ll stick with it – there aren’t many alternatives.

Apple’s release of the iPhone 4s was imminent and Orange were running full page campaigns in various newspapers offering a great deal on the iPhone 3gs, the previous incarnation.  Perhaps they had a warehouse full of unsold hardware but it was certainly a good deal which went something like this: it cost £20 per month (and £5 of that would be refunded to you) for 50 minutes, 50 texts and some data allowance which I can’t remember.  The big draw was a free iPhone.  I work from home so don’t need much of a data allowance as I can use my own wireless network.  It seemed ideal.

It was all going fine until I received my first month’s bill which charged me about £30 extra for data usage which should have been free.  I picked up the phone to Orange to begin a saga which lasted for several months and may still not be rectified.  To be fair to Orange the lady I spoke to was extremely helpful and proactive (as all subsequent staff have been) and sent my query upstairs to tech support which would look into it and get it sorted.  She didn’t want to refund me there and then as it would be better to get it properly worked out.  That all seemed OK except that she really struggled to locate the deal which I’d agreed to; it was as if they’d advertised something which they then forgot about.

As the months ticked by I would phone up after receiving my bill and query why:

• I hadn’t been refunded and
• I was still begin charged for data usage
• The tech guys couldn’t resolve my problem

I told the same story every time and was met with the same struggle to locate the deal I was on.  Thankfully it may now all be sorted; the last chap I spoke to still couldn’t find the contract but instantly refunded everything I’ve been overcharged since I took the contract out.  He also added a data package to my deal which will be credited back to me every month to avoid the data charges.  I’m still not sure whether I’m getting my original £5 rebate back but I’m fairly satisfied for now.

Orange U.K. – excellent customer support but a strangely shambolic billing system.  I’d be interested to hear from anyone who’s been through the same ordeal.

Say what you want about the British Broadcasting Corporation but it has the best television (and radio) sports commentary around.  You can complain about the mythical ‘leftie’ bias at the BBC, or perhaps the mandatory license fee which every household in the country has to pay but there are several things the Beeb does get right and one of those is sports commentary.  Many, such as radio pundit Alan Green, are household names and provide a descriptive and entertaining commentary to what’s going on on the pitch.

The BBC's Alan Green

Of course I’m not here to talk about the commentators I do like, I want to moan about the type of commentary I don’t like and it all comes from ITV.  The commercial, terrestrial television provider vies with the BBC for the biggest sporting events (the ones which Sky isn’t allowed to buy), perhaps the most recent being the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.  I’m sure I can’t have been the only one to cringe in embarrassment at the risible efforts to describe the matches by commentators who never seemed to have done it before.  The BBC have the superb Ian Robertson and ex-player Brian Moore to comment on and critique the game; why couldn’t ITV source someone similar, or perhaps even those two themselves?

Football commentary is equally as bad; the matches are littered with silly, ill-thought out statements which appear to have been written on a sheet of paper beforehand and rehearsed.  Many listeners must do what I do – turn the sound down on the TV and switch the BBC radio commentary on.  That’s fine but the time delay means a goal can be scored on the TV ten seconds before it happens on the radio.  But what the hell, it’s a small price to pay to switch off ITV.

So it was all good then?  Well mostly, but the slightly patchy nature of the internet often meant an inconsistent experience; disconnections, while not common, were nevertheless regular enough to be annoying.  But you accepted this as the price for being the first to use the cutting edge technology.

Online poker table

Things are different now in terms of connectivity but frustrations remain and sometimes they’re the result of the improvements in the software and the user interface.  Here’s an example: the ease with which one can type any old rubbish into the chat boxes.  Why do players feel it necessary to say ‘Hi’ when they join the table?  It may be polite but it just seems pointless.  Even worse are the attempts by inexperienced players to bluff everyone else by claiming they have pocket Aces or some other strong hand; you wouldn’t do it in a live game and it’s still bad etiquette online.

Probably the biggest frustration for most online players though is the unnecessary wait for players who seem to let their timers count down to almost nothing before checking or folding. There’s no need for the delay and it just leaves everyone else wondering if you’ve gone off to make a cup of tea, fallen asleep or are just being annoying on purpose.

It may sound like a minor thing but when you play for several hours at a stretch it can get irritating in the extreme.  What’s the answer?  Unfortunately there isn’t one; you can play the turbo games or just try and maintain your serene patience.

First was shit my dad says, a twitter account of a guy that twits stuff his live-in 73-year-old dad says. This was such a popular twitter account that the guy actually got a book deal before he had the CBS guys on him with their pens an papers.

Then the CBS guys concluded this saved them lots of money and hussel dealing with scriptwriters that didn’t know what they were writing about, and they’ve opted don’t tell steve for a TV spot as well. This time it’s a guy bitching about his roommate (which is not too different from the guy living with his father, after all).

Question: why do we need CBS anyways? If the twitter accounts was so damn good, why turn it into something else? I don’t ask here why the CBS guys did what they did – it’s clear why – but why do we actually want to watch a processed product instead of simply hook up with the original version? Are we still so obsessed with the medium itself (TV) that we can’t simply let go and move on? Does TV really offers in this case something better?

No answers yet, but I stick to the original twits, better than any reheated-Campbell-shit any network can come up with.

Rock3D is a website of Web Commerce Communications Limited DBA Webnic.cc, a company that sells stolen credit cards online. WebNIC has been in business since 2000, and their Rock3D site has existed since October of 2009. This isn’t some savvy geek or two, looking to host their crooked site offshore. This is an organized front company, who may possibly be getting their credit card numbers from unwitting customers who do business through any of their other servers.

What this company makes harms us in so many ways. First, it creates a huge headache to the person whose card number got stolen. Second, they make big trouble for small companies that can’t handle the mess of credit card fraud, and eventually ask customers to pay cash or CC only. And third, they make us suspicious towards small unknown online companies, and helping dinosaurs such as Amazon, IKEA or GoDaddy become even more massive and intact.

So my sad advice to you people, after suffering myself from the results of Rock3D or like-companies, is to stick with brands you trust. At least online, at least when you pay with your credit card. Even if you just want to play on 888 casino or some other Roulette Casino, make sure you use your card wisely.

They were not that old, maybe around their 50s. One of them sat in front and the other one sat next to me. They were both working for a bank, and all they talked about during this long ride was gadgets.

Now, I love gadgets. I don’t buy them normally but I love being updated and they can sometimes excite me. Just the idea somebody invented a sophisticated small element that does a very specific thing – this is cool. But those guys, they went on and on about different cables to connect your TV to and tiny gadgets to assist your ass keep his still position.

And then was the funniest part. The guy in front showed the taxi driver his ring – then he showed it to me. It was a big golden ring, like old men sometimes like to wear on their thick fingers. But this one wasn’t just a ring – it was a fucking gadget.

Inside that ring the man had a Viagra Pill – and on the back side of the ring was a small screen that kept the time when the pill was taken out of the ring, so the man wouldn’t forget when it was and can better plan his sex life.

Fucking amazing, isn’t it? I thought the ring itself could have been nicer, but I guess it’s not the most sophisticated gadget after all. But if you take Viagra, and you’re obsessed with gadgets, this is the ring for you.

The new spy-button from Facebook will allow users to subscribe to specific users and get all of their activities (excluding private messages etc.). At first it seems like old news – Facebook allowed this since the beginning, without the ‘subscription’ option. But the fact that now instead of actively clicking the profile of that person and checking what has he been doing – you get this information automatically.

What the fuck are the guys at Facebook trying to achieve by this? Indeed the place becomes the land of the bored, annoying, socially-disturbed and generally fucked-up. What’s the deal? How come no other social network is able to beat Facebook with a smarter, more delicate, alternative?

But then again, also BBC2 is only available in the UK.

The internet is less complex, and open code is mostly blessed and praised by the insiders 9and everybody else). The problem starts when the virtual world meets the ‘real’ world (I never understood what is so fucking real in the real world, it’s just as fantasied as any virtual world).

Problem: Say I want to watch the BBC2 show that they put online, using the iPlayer. I get this error, saying I cannot watch the video since I’m not located in the UK. Copyrights issue or whatever, but this is really pissing me off.

Solution: online anonymity. Programs like TOR (free download of course) makes it impossible for the other site to know where your computer is located, and can even send the wrong location, such as, in our case, the UK. Once the server of the BBC thinks you are in the UK, problem solved.

How? Install Tor on your machine, enable it, change the Torcc file (access from your start menu) so it includes the names of the servers that are located in the UK and can be used for exit, and voila.

Hey, it’s not a detailed guide, if you’re still confused google for a better guide, written by a guy is a little more patience. I’m going to watch some good tv online an chill.

See ya.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Current status: pretty shitty. Most of the readers support PDFs only after some kind of a transfer or convert. It’s not as easy as simply plug the USB device and drag and drop your files to the reader.

The other thing is, it’s pretty hard to get those new eReaders. Amazon Kindle 3 is sold out, and buying the iPad now makes no sense, since the iPad 2 is soon to be announced, and it’s going to be a massive improvement from the first one.

Solution: some say get a netbook. This solution is not for me, the netbooks are maybe smaller than a laptop, but they are chunkier than the eReaders normally. And besides, their screen is not suitable for reading text, which was my problem in the first place. Right now I’m considering the iPhone as a middle solution, at least until the iPad 2 arrives the stores. But guys, this is really pissing me off.