200 OK

So that’s one resolution firmly shafted, a blog post a week haha its the 6th of Feb and I haven’t even bothered with one! shocking. Truth be told there have been a fair few things in my personal and working time that have sucked into my enthusiasm to write the blog.

So what are these things and what have I been upto this month you cry? I can hear your edge of the seat heavy breathing even now, well?! well?!!! what?!!….. Nothing exciting i’m afraid, i’v mainly been back to my old habits of being a digital whore with tv shows and computer games.

First of the bench is the game Assassin’s Creed 2

Ok so I randomly watched a review for this game and thought hey that looks freaking awesome and a great improvement over the first one.  The only problem with this was the fact that I never finished the first game and had uninstalled it from my ps3.  As a lot of people know i’m very much a sequence freak, I cannot deal with media out of sequence. I can’t miss an episode of a TV show and then just carry on next week watching the next one, skipping a season is stomach turning! heh its the same with computer games.

So of course before playing my shinny copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 I had to play through and complete the first game! It was not as repetitive as the first time I played it, perhaps my anticipation of installing the new one kept me going though the boring bits. It’s still a great game and once finished (literally) I installed the new game.

Now where the first game is a great game, Assassin’s Creed 2 is nothing short of a masterpiece of a game. I wont go into it in detail  as review sites (see below) can do that a lot better than I ever could or would want too. Needless to say this is a monumental improvement over the first and from the moment I installed it I was actually hooked. It is truly one of the best games I have played in a very long time. So how much time did this rack up? well the game tells you how long you have played and when I had completed it I had racked up a good 36hours not forgetting playing through the first game which would of been at least the same if a little less.

Reviews:

Gamespot Video Review
GameTrailers Video Review
IGN Video Review

The Shield

Now I watch a lot of American shows, Sopranos, Lost, Oz, Prison Break etc etc… But good golly miss molly have I been missing out on cop shows over the years. After discovering and devouring all five seasons on The Wire last year and loving it, my attentions have moved onto what other police based shows there are out there that i’v missed, very quickly I came across one called The Shield and once again I am hooked!

The show is basically around this fictional Los Angeles special police department and the corruption and drama and grittiness and oooo its awesome. I am only at the end of season 1 and there are 7! seasons, so i’v got my work cut out in getting through them.

I love discovering shows that have finished with such a big run of seasons because if you like the first you can generally assume you are gonna dig most of the others and the prospect of having so much good stuff to watch is great, often following a show from the outset can be disappointing if it is cancelled prematurely. I loved shows like Space above an Beyond and Invasion but they are just one season footnotes of what could of been classics.

So this has racked me up a good 11-13 hours getting though. S’ok only another 75ish episodes to go heh.

Court

So for the past two weeks I have been on Jury service. For those not in the know, if you are on the UK electoral role and between the ages of 18 and really old you may get called up for jury service, This happened to me and its pretty much a legal requirement to do it. I think I am going to save the details of my jury service to it’s own blog post as this one is getting pretty long already.  All i’ll say that it was a long and actually quite draining experience but kinda rewarding at the same time.

Of course this meant I was not at work for the best part of 2 weeks, now working where I work this isn’t really possible.  Since I manage a lot of projects and we are constantly working to deadlines I did have to work in the evenings a fair bit after my days in the court to make sure everything was still running smoothly. Vegging out with some shield or assassin’s creed 2 was about all I was up for come 7-8pm most days.

Lost

Oh lost, lovely mind fuck argh addictive omfg what’s going on Lost. I am a lost fan, if you are still into lost well done you must also be in the ranks of the obsessed if not you are one of the ‘its bollocks’ camps, lost is like Marmite. The FINAL (6th) season of Lost kicked off this week and i’m back into it like a paedophile in an orphanage.

Now you may think that this could not of taken up much time since it only just started I could only of watched a couple of hours of stuff, you’d be wrong.  I am a sado when it comes to lost, I not only watch each episode twice I look up theories on blogs for other things i didn’t spot, I have even go as far as to load up old episodes from other seasons to check-up on stuff.

Without going into a rant about how I think it’s going to end (again another blog post or several) all i’m gonna say is they better do it well. If they leave it even somewhat ‘wtf’ or up in the air i’m gonna find out where the writers live and send them some chocolate cake in a box.

Dum dum darrr, Its been like two months since I wrote a blog post, crazy I know. I’d say I have been more focussed on other hobbies and interestests but I would in fact be lying and i’v just been lazy, very lazy. Getting lazy with something like a blog is a bad idea and will normally spell the death of it as that apathetic ‘meh’ takes over and you just think ’sod it’ i’ll just watch another episode of voyager on virgin 1. I don’t want my blog to die so have decided to keep it going in 2010 with at least a post a week and maybe more!

Its so easy to get very very enthusiastic about those two words ‘new’ and ‘year’, the fact one of them is the word new right away inspires hope and rebirth and a drive to improve your self and everything around you. Like turning a fresh page on a sketch book and leaving the previous unworthy page of scribbles to the ether as you sit there sharpened new year pencil in hand, eager to start the scribble all over again, this time though, this time it’ll be a master piece.

Or so you tell your self. You may go back a few pages in that sketch book and see page after page of senseless scribble, yet there is something about this blank new year page that cannot and will not dent your faith that when that pencil starts drawing, good things are gonna happen.

Its that blank sheet, the endless possibilities and imagination it inspires… as soon as you start drawing though or living the year (this analogy is flaking apart) your actions choices and dedication are going to be the things that result in that master piece, as inspiring as that blank paper is, it is just a blank piece of paper.

I’m just as bad as anyone, I sit in awe of my blank sheet of paper I get each year and end up scribbling away. I don’t think I have the formula for a master piece yet I don’t think there is one. heh Quite uninspiring really, I don’t have the answers to make your new year grand and action all the great things you want to happen, but if it gives you any comfort i’m drawing away with you.

Some things I aim for in 2010:

1. I want to finish learning to drive and overcome the opinion that the DVLA are a bunch of corrupt nazi fucks.
2. I want to be more involved with the geeky toy solider hobby I have and the people I know who share this hobby, this includes playing and painting more with the lil 2″ mens.
3. I want to care more about my physical fitness as the odd grey hair has told me that I am in fact getting older and although I can still drink like a mur fucker and stay up till the sun comes up,,, its not doing me much good.
4. I want to do something drastic with my hair, I’m not sure what but I know I want it to be drastic
5. I want to spend more time and energy with friends and family that matter and less time being that person everyone knows
6. I want to take up some kinda of fighting related hobby, this kinda depends on point 3.

That’ll do for now, sure i’ll think up more.

So last weekend I decided that my drunken ways needed a look at. I have been going out every weekend and spend a fortune every Fri/Sat getting my self totally blotto for a long long time without break. This weekend was that break.

I’v been hounded this weekend by the normal texts and messages to go out for which I have politely declined and just kept my head below the radar. Some might argue why can’t you just go out and not drink, or just have a couple? I have realised that this suggestion is not compatible for me when I’m in the vicinity of an alcohol serving bar.

Being wasted just makes the whole experience worthwhile, once I have about 3 pints thats the point of no return. Why would you want to go out and sit in a noisey room with tables and chairs and maybe a pool table and sit there all night drinking diet coke and chatting with people… lol people really are not that interesting (including me), their lives are generally fairly dull and in the week since you last saw them nothing much has happened. You can talk about shared interests etc but you might as well do that anywhere at anytime.

Alass getting smashed in a pub or club is in my opinion the only reason to bother with them. Yours might be different, you may love to dance all night or um.. play pool.. or try and pickup some drunken teenager like a scumbag? heh.

Its Sunday morning and I feel great, you see there is the dark side to getting smashed and thats the physical, psychological and financial implications. I normally would wake up between 12-2 after a night out and proceed to do nothing for most of the day with much joint pain, head aches and a total feeling of low self worth and general urgh. Bank statements normally show up at least £70+ spent, owing to how much I can drink and also the fact a proportion of folks in the bear and esq (where we normally end up) are flat losers who can’t afford rounds but will happily accept a drink off you.

I’m trying to figure out what i’v lost by not going out this weekend but can’t.  I chat to my friends when i’m not out drinking and most of the people I only talk to when I see them out  I honestly couldn’t give a shit about, however much I’m nice and chummy when pissed.

Methinks i’ll keep my sober ways up for as long as possible and concentrate more on other things.

I recently upgraded my current PC’s graphics card and it kinda made me reflect on my history of owning computers and the sheer ammount of time over the years I must have spent glued to a square box of light tinkering away on a game or some code or browsing the Internet etc…

I thought it might be interesting to do a blog post (more for me than anyone else) to do a little time line of the computers I have owned over the years, so here goes:

1. Acorn Electron - Late 80’s - early 90’s?

The Acorn electron was a bit like those old BBC Micro’s you used to get in schools if you were born in the early 80’s. If you were not born in the early 80’s you might wanna skip down the page a bit as you’ll prob have no idea what these clunky looking boxes are.

To be honest the Acorn electron was second hand, and in the late 80’s it was very out of date! but back then PC’s were not cheap like they are now and my parents were not exactly loaded so these things combined resulted in mr electron.

I’m glad I got it in retrospect because it opened the past up to me without it ’seeming’ like the past if that makes sense. I was  pretty young so I didn’t know a whole lot about computers but it defo set me on the path to where I am now.  This little bad boy was so old you loaded up games from a tape! Many sunday afternoons were spent playing such classics as frogger, repton!, and the old old school classics like pac man and space invaders.

This was probably one of the last generations of Micro computers and to put it in perspective it could store and any one time 32K of data, These days a single MP3 is like 3000K plus! truly this machine is olde!

2. Amiga 1200 - Mid 90’s to Late 90’s

So after the electron I spent a few years being a console kid (like most teenagers do) until my folks decided I needed to learn more and do homework as well (poor misguided fools) so they bought me an Amiga 1200. Amiga were a family of computers that exisited in the 80’s and 90’s. They were produced by a company called Commodore and were separate from PC’s in their hardware and software (kinda like macs today).

The Amiga had a cult following back in the day, people loved them and I was no exception. At this time I even had a lexmark inkjet printer, truly I felt rather grown up.  I dabbled with programs like painting apps and word processing. The operating system was called Workbench and was fairly similar to Windows so it kinda set me up with a basic understanding of files, copying pasting and all that stuff.

Needless to say however at such a young age I was very much a fan of the games! (still am) and I literally had about 100 Amiga games. Games like ‘The Setterlers’, ‘Frontier Elite 2′, ‘Alien Breed’, ‘Monkey Island’, ‘Cannon Fodder’ ‘Syndicate’… the list goes on and on and I played them a lot! I feel a bit sorry for people who didn’t grow up with these kind of games/experiences because its so easy to take technology today for granted. These games were on floppy disks, the Internet was but a novelty… no one was actually ‘on it’, these were times when life was simple and I miss it sometimes.

3. PC: Nick1: 1997/8 - 2001

Woooooooo my first ‘PC’ computer with the Nick name (I’m on Nick5 now but we’ll get to those later).  This was a intel (dum dum dum dum) pentium 166Mhz with a whapping 32meg of ram and a 2GB hard drive.  It came with windows 95 and sported that classic off white case colour along with it’s 14″ monitor. This PC was another pressie from the folks for school and what have you. A bit more grown up now I did tend to use it for such things but of course games were never to far away, at last I could play Doom 2! which I did for months.

I  have fond memories of this machine but its funny looking back as to how times have changed in 10 years. To put things in perspective my current MP3 player stores 32 times! as much data as this PC’s entire hard drive did.  Imagine what that was like, you had to be really careful about what you stored.  My current PC has 4GB of ram which is 125 times more! Crazy just crazy.

The biggest impact this machine had was my own personal connection to teh Internetz. My mate John had had a similar new machine and was tinkering about on the Internet already and we used to have teenage nights of fucking about in chat rooms pissing off rednecks and other long forgotten shenanigans.

The Internet was a different beast then, still with a mild sterotype of geekyness and no where near the integration it plays in life today.  No Facebook, Google was just some new search engine a few folks used, Old sites now purchased and sucked into coporate machines existed like eGroups and CDNow, everything was very basic and fairly new still and I feel really proud to of experienced this time, its kinda like some weird digital history… like remembering your old house or old friends.

Back then I had a 36k modem which without going into the technicals, was slow. Webpages were a lot smaller (try loading facebook on a 36k modem now) so it wasent all bad and really thats all we had ever known so that long pause for a page to load was fine back then, now of course everyone uses broadband and you’d never expect one web page to take 30secs-2mins to load, you’d be ringing up ye isp!

Since I was on a modem back then it cost per minute to use the Internet like a normal phone call! Needless to say some tears were shed by my moms when a certain quaterly phone bill came in and was about 300 quid. Anyway going off topic, if you wanna checkout what the internet used to be like go here.

4. PC: Nick2: 2001 - 2006

Off to university now and this is the first PC I bought all by my self, almost actually grown fully up! This was an intel (dum dum dum dum) 1.5mhz pentium 4 with 512meg of ram a 32GB hard drive and a 128meg graphics card and Windows XP.

For its day it was not really top of the line but a significant upgrade on what I had before, I was a student afterall! over the years I think i upgraded it to 1gb of ram and put in a more powerful graphics card and a second 250GB hard drive.  Played the likes of Half Life and GTA III etc etc…

This PC lasted me a Looooooong time. Partly owing to being a poor student for 3 years but also due to the XP plateau. The XP plateau is an effect where by a PC just does what you need it too with no significant reason needed to upgrade. This is generally the case with PC’s that run Windows XP, they do everything you want and even to this day I would imagine that a significant number of desktop PCs running today are more or less the same as this one from 2001.

I could still be doing with a fair speed most of what I use a PC for on this machine with no issue, however I am a gamer and a geek and once I got an actual actual job it was time for an upgrade.

PC: Nick3: 2006 - Now

I decided to get a new PC in 2006 really for gaming and to have a bit of a speed boost all round. I went for a intel (dum dum dum dum) core 2 duo 2.67mhz, 2GB of Ram and an Nvidia 7950GT 512meg graphics card, 75GB raptor hard drive and a 300GB storage drive.

The silverstone case is a beast and it as about a million fans and dvd writers usb ports and ports I cant actually figure out to this day.  Again not the highest spec pc of its day but respectable and decent at running newer games from Doom3 up to Crysis.  I have added a 32″ TV to my desk and plugged that into it, I also have added a 19″ wide screen monitor. Inside I have bumped the ram up to 4GB and have added a more up to date graphics card.

I started out on old faithful windows XP, then had a brief fling with vista but we got divorced and now i’m fucking her sister windows 7 and life is gooood.

Hard to have nostalgia about this machine as its fairly new and not much to say about it as most folks know what modern PC’s are like.

Here is how my desk looks today:

I have upgraded this enough to keep me going a couple more years I think. Come 2010-2011 I think i’ll get another machine, problem is the case etc I have now are great quality, There isn’t really a need to go full whack and buy a totally new machine, methinks it will be more the case that Nick3 will just keep getting face lifts until he’s something totally different, bit like the late MJ.

Nick4/5

I was gonna write more but this post is getting far to bloody long (again!). Nick4 is a little asus eee netbook I bought that I never use because the times i’m out I wanna forget about pcs! lol. And Nick5 is a little desktop machine I have on 24/7 as a server so I don’t have to have my main machine chewing up power and dust.

Bit if a quick blog post really but its quite useful.

Right so as some folks know I have just reinstalled my PC with Windows 7. Everything is great but I have noticed something online I was not seeing before on crappy Vista, adverts! lots and lots of flashing banner scummy adverts!

Then I remembered that on Vista I had modified one of my files to block those pesky swines.

Here is a guide on how to do it, If you are not at least 45% technical then maybe don’t bother with doing this as you might mess it up:

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Before and After

So here is a print screen of the radio times website before changing a file (was worse online both the banner ad’s flashed like a fucking fireworks display):

And here is it after, No advets, looks great:

The Tech Bit

The link in the intro basically provides you with a list of domain names which websites use to embed adverts on their pages (kinda like a webpage inside a webpage). You add this list of domains to a file called hosts which is part of Windows. Each line looks something like this:

127.0.0.1  fr.a2dfp.net

Basically what this does is bypass how your computer normally tries to find a website and instead it redirects to 127.0.0.1 which is the address of your own machine! So basically you are tricking your PC to go to it’s self when ever your computer tries to access ‘fr.a2dfp.net’ and therefore the advert does not show! Simple yet genius. There are hundreds of these lines in the guide above which basically account for most of the ad servers on the Internet.

The Moral Bit

Some might argue that it is a bit rude to do this. These sites need adverts to stay running right?, fair enough. The truth is most people will get confused as to how to do this or are simply not Geeky enough to bother. These are the same people that probably click on these adverts in the first place, get infected by viruses and fall pray to email scams from Nigerian morons.

These people are the sheep of the Internet and like sheep they outnumber the badass Wolves. Sheep are simple and get fucked but they don’t cause trouble, Wolves eat sheep and don’t play by the rules but there will always be more sheep. What i’m basically saying is unless a sudden burst of intelligence sweeps the general Internet population these sites will lose no ad revenue, so fuckem.

Just a quick (edit: turned into a fucking essay) post, I may be doing a few top ten posts now and again to keep the blog fresh while I bother to write other stuff.

bad⋅ass

–adjective Also, badassed.

1.	(of a person) difficult to deal with; mean-tempered; touchy.

2.	distinctively tough or powerful; so exceptional as to be intimidating.

–noun

3.	a mean-tempered troublemaker.

Here is a list of my top ten movie and tv badasses. These are people that you really would never want to fuck with if they were real. You probably have your own and there are likely loads i’v missed of my own, however these at this moment in time are the most memorable for me. They are people that ‘kinda’ could exist, not science fictional types etc…

In no particular order:

1. Furio Giunta

Name: Furio Giunta
From: The Sopranos (tv)
Why: Just look at his name ffs! Furrrrrrrrrrrrrio. Furio is an Italian mafia thug brought over from Italy by Tony Soprano in the popular HBO show. He really is a stone cold badass, he’ll carry out orders to the extreme. In one episode it just ends with a knock at some guy’s door and it opens with Furio just stood there, then the episode ends! There is no need to see him cripple this poor helpless fellow, you just know it what is gonna happen.

Furio has a different side though, he often has heart warming olde Italian stories about where he grew up and is very kind and taken to Tony’s wife. So much so they end up having a mini affair which ends up with Furio legging it (he ain’t THAT badass) and thus leaving the show.

One of Furio’s most brutal scenes.

2. Simon Adebisi

Name: Simon Adebisi
From: Oz (tv)
Why: Oz is one of my fav shows of all time. It used to be on Ch4 late at night years ago and my mate John and me used to always chat about it at school. For those not in the know check out the link above. Being a prison drama there are a fair few badasses in Oz and to be honest shows like this and the Sopranos could have their own top ten badasses picked solely from their cast. Not wanting to list characters from multiple shows I picked my fav of the Oz badass bunch and that my friends is Mr Simon Adebisi.

Simon is in Oz for beheading a cop with a machete, lets face it you could stop there and you’d get the idea but I shall continue. Adebisi is probably the most violent and unpredictable inmate in Oz, everything about him is badass from his unusual dress sense to his strong and deep Nigerian accent. His drug addiction further adds to his unpredictable but calculating nature. He truly is not someone you wanna be ever sharing a cell with. Please note the video below is not for the faint of heart.

Dodgy music on this vid, but shows one of Simon’s sickest highlights, 1:40, evil.

3. Nicholas “Nicky” Santoro

Name: Nicholas “Nicky” Santoro
From: Casino (film)
Why: Just like the better known film Goodfellas, Joe Pesci plays a violent mobster who you really don’t want to mess about with. In both films his character is similar in his attitude and viciousness but for pure badass factor the character of Nicky in Casino (who is incidentally based on a real person!) stands out more as someone who really just does not give a shit. He is the long time friend but ultimate thorn in the side of the mobbed up but all round likable character of Sam “Ace” Rothstein played by Robert De Niro. When ace is asked by the mob to run a casino in Vegas Nicky soon moves up and attempts to milk Vegas in the traditional mob way e.g. fear, intimidation, robbing etc etc… In the end Nicky gets a bit to big for his boots but I wont spoil the film.

Yep, You knew what scene it’d be.

4. Jules Winnfield

Name: Jules Winnfield
From: Pulp Fiction (film)
Why: I’m not sure I really need to talk about this guy to much, I think most people have seen Pulp Fiction but if you haven’t then you probably hate Tarantino so meh. Jules is played by Samuel L. Jackson and is one of the definitive moments of his badass persona. Jules is the coolest badass in my opinion of the many badass roles Mr Jackson has played. Ordell in Jackie Brown springs to mind as the character in my opinion of almost an equal badass score with Jules.

Jules is an enforcer for the gangster Marsellus Wallace and is mostly seen with his partner in badassness Vincent Vega played by John Travolta. The video below is the most well known from the film and all that needs to be done to illustrate this most awesome of badasses.

Yea I know, cliche.

5. Bullet Tooth Tony

Name: Bullet Tooth Tony
From: Snatch (film)
Why: This is more of a homage to every hard man Vinnie Jones plays in films. Vinnie Jones just has one of those faces that you just have to look at and think… hard-case. He has those kinda eyes that if they were right up in ye grill you’d be forgiven for leaking a little piss. The other notable role Jones plays as a badass is in Lock Stock another Guy Richie film. He’s pretty typecast in this role as a rough talking east end nutcase but in Snatch I think is where he shines the most, if only for the scene in the video below:

Never not smiled or laughed at the end of this scene.

6. Gene Hunt

Name: Gene Hunt
From: Life on Mars(tv), Ashes to Ashes (tv)
Why: Gene Hunt is a police man in the two popular uk tv shows above, without a doubt he is one of the best characters I have seen on uk tv in a long time. He is un pc sexist homophobic bigot but in a comical way due to his iconic one liners and moral core. He’s an all round good police bloke but he’ll twist a few rules and arms to get the job done. He’s not the most violent on the list but there is just something about Gene that screams badass, an x factor of badasstry if you will. If you have never watched Life on Mars or Ashes to Ashes check them out, he’ll leave you in stitches with some of the stuff he comes out with.

Few clips of Gene in action

7. Omar Little

Name: Omar Little
From: The Wire (tv)
Why: This is a new character I have discovered of late. For some reason since it first aired in 2002 I have never watched The Wire until a few weeks ago and I must say I am hooked. It seems to be one of the lesser know HBO shows in the UK and in my humble opinion should be checked out by anyone who loves gritty crime dramas.

In the show Omar is a gay! street wise stickup man who robs drug dealers and takes care of folks, he’s got quite a strict code of conduct in this regard and seldom swears. On the face of it he does not sound like much of a badass but believe me he is up there with the best of them. From the tune he whistles as he approaches a scene with his trench coat and signature shotgun you just know this character is something special.

I have not finished watching the all the seasons of The Wire but from all I have seen Omar steals the show with his wit, calculated violence and charm. All he need say is his catch phrase of ‘Indeed’ and the badass scale rockets.

‘Omar Lisin’ hah badass

8. Tommy Hatcher

Name: Tommy Hatcher
From: Green Street (film)
Why: A lesser known film and an even lesser known actor Geoff Bell. This is a film about football hooligans in the UK and is somewhat of a little hidden gem. It is very very brutal and believe it or not the staring roles is Elijah Wood aka Frodo muthafukin Baggins as an American student who gets involved in the hooligan life style, yes I shit you not pretty boy Elijah Wood fist fighting!

I digress. Bell plays Tommy Hatcher (another badass name) who is the older leader of a rival gang of hooligans and a very nasty piece of work. Geoff Bell brings a rare kind of intimidation and fear to the table and its a shame he is not in many other films, I couldn’t even find a picture of him on Google of him in the film! I had to end up using a random one where he really does not look as hard as he does on screen. Another lesser known but awesome film he is in is a film called The Business where he plays a similar cockney hardcase.

Not as brutal as some of the vids above but really leaves me feeling uneasy.

9. Yvonne Atkins

Name: Yvonne Atkins
From: Bad Girls (tv)
Why: Ok so I didn’t want to be sexist and not include a lady in the list. Women can be badass too right? well unless they are in science fiction or dodgy action films it is actually quite hard to find one that is a badass in a believable setting, Yvonne Atkins is one of these people. Bad Girls was a uk TV women’s prison drama that i’ll admit I liked, even if a lot of it ended up being eastenders in prison it was still pretty gritty and am all round good show in my opinion.

Yvonne Atkins was the wife of a London gangster banged up in Larkwood prison for reasons I forget. From the get go she just has the presence of a complete badass, you don’t cross her or you are gotta get a beat down make no mistake. Like Vinnie Jones she has those eyes that cut right through you. One of her main rivals was a woman called Shell Dockely who wasn’t so much of a badass as evil, needless to say Yvonne dealt with her and was something of a hero in Larkwood.

heh how old does the actor look on eastenders now!

10. Michael Corleone

Name: Michael Corleone
From: The Godfather Part 2
Why: Yes Michael Corleone played by Al Pachino not his Father Vito played by Marlon Brando. If you have not watched the first two Godfather films then you’ve not watched two of the best films ever made and I could go on about them but this is about badasses and this entire post has taken fucking ages to write. Most of my badasses above are rather hands on no holes barred nutters which personally I enjoy watching, Michael Corleone however is different.

The story of Michael in the films is nothing short of epic, he starts of as a positive wide eyed war hero and ends up surpassing his Mafia boss father in his level of badassness. Yes that’s right i’m sorry but as a badass Michael is twice his father Vito. Its the cold calculating borderline evil approach that Michael has to his business and family life that just make him stand out as probably the baddest badass of all time. Would he win in a fist fight with ‘any’ of the above? probably not, after his beating however would their entire family be decapitated in their sleep afterwards with them left alive to see it before they were shot in the face? most def.

no video, you cant appreciate this character without watching the entire trilogy

Finally!

Shit me this was a lot of effort and poorly written as hell! Have I missed loads of badassess out? yep loads but as I said these are some of the main ones that come to mind. I have tried to stick to my personal tastes and shows/films you might not of watched or paid much attention to, I could of just listed out the likes of Tony Montanna, Hannibal Lecter, Dirty Harry all those cliches but how boring would that be. I can guarantee there is a character in the above that you probably haven’t heard of or paid much attention too. If there isn’t and you are female and not wolf ugly you may marry me if you wish.

Just a quick post about this website. If you have never been there or do not know what it is about, basically you create an account and pick various topics you are interested in. You can then hit the stumble button and random websites about your topics will come up. You can randomly get sites about all of your topics at random or just pick one topic and constantly get random sites about say ‘gardening’.

It is an amazing way to kill time and find interesting stuff on the Internet. It is all user generated so it’s what other people with the same interests like! I have been using it for a few years but never thought to let anyone know about it!

Warning: Before you click and sign up, this is going to enhance your Internet experience a lot and in doing so you may find hours and hours pass without you noticing.

check it out

Here are my topics I have setup:

Action Movies    Alcoholic Drinks    Alternative Rock   Ancient History    Archaeology    Astronomy    Atheist/Agnostic    Beer    Computer Science    Conspiracies    Cult Films    Evolution    Firefox    Guns    Heavy metal    HipHop/Rap    Horror Movies    Medieval History    Movies    Mythology    Nanotech    Online Games    PHP    Paranormal    Personal Sites    Philosophy    Photography    Punk Rock    Robotics    Roleplaying Games    Science Fiction    Space Exploration    Terrorism    UFO’s    UK    Video Games    Web Development

First off I can’t spell maltesers, I just tried to google the word about 6 times to get the spelling right, each time google telling me to sod off. I got there in the end and have it copied to my clipboard for the rest of this post :P.

Anyway… I’m not sure how or when (recently) it happened but I have really developed a longing for maltesers! Even the packaging is appealing!

I think it might of been partaking in a maltesers milkshake recently which is basically chocolate milkshake with a packet of maltesers you can drop in and pickup with a straw spoon thing, argh i’m starting to want one now while i’m writing about it!

Now maltesers I think are ‘fairly’ ok to crave since I’m pretty sure they are no where near as bad for you as say a mars bar or boost but the problem I am having is the quantity I can get through. I started off small with said milkshake, then a normal packet on a couple of lunch times and now I can eat one of the big bags in one sitting and crave more! I am one step away from buying one of the huge buckets they do and saturating my self in a big malt honey comb chocolate mess!

I thought I had it bad with my thirst for diet coke but this product is slowly but surely taking over. Now i’m not a small bloke and my body cannot afford to have a maltesers addiction. Why can’t maltesers have the same nutritional value as broccoli? Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins are very much correct when they bark on about how there is really quite honestly no fucking god.

Maltesers - they make girls get tits out: Win

Maltesers - you can do tricks with them: Win

Age, Its odd.

It is that time of year again, 365 days have past since the last time and I am now a year older. My twenties are on the downward spiral of running out and I must say it is rather strange.  As you get older I think you kind of reach a plateau where age does not seem to mean as much as it did.

For example I have a really diverse group of friends (age group wise) to those I had when I was 18-21. Back then I generally hung around with folks who were also about that age with a few exceptions of older people who in your youth you look up to some what just because they are older. Now that I am that older(ish) person I seem to know and hang out with people ranging from 20ish all the way into their 40’s and the age gap each way seems a lot more ‘ok’ then it did when I was younger. The mainstay of the people I know is still around my own age but its interesting how as you get older the line seems to blur about how you interact with people of varying ages.

I guess this is impart due to the ‘finding your self’ factor in that by your mid twenties you generally know who you are, what you like and are fairly secure and rounded as a person. You can chill with older people and not do it since they’re ‘cool’ because they’re older but because they have reached this level too and are just refining it, not making vast changes. You are on their level of maturity but still keep back a a bit of humbleness and respect for their extra years.

With younger people that you know, you can see the steady growth in them and you may well be that ‘cooler’ older person in their eyes but it is not a feeling of superiority. You see interesting stuff such as how they show signs of the paths you followed but often come up with interesting and new takes on the world that you didn’t even consider.

I am talking about normal people here, not chavvy twats etc… These people never get past the mental age of 13 because that’s where their reading age stopped.

So being my age is kinda nice, I’m still young enough to have a laugh and enjoy my self but have some years and experience behind me which really pay dividens in this shindig known as life.

Why do I not celebrate my birthday?

People get a bit dumbfounded when I tell them I don’t celebrate my birthday and it really just comes down to two key reasons really.

The lesser of these two is that I really don’t like being the center of attention. Now this may seem a bit strange because anyone who knows me knows i’m not really an introverted type (especially when drunk!) I am quite loud and often crass and it can get me in trouble at times. Its just when all the attention is directed at me in something like a birthday setting that I get uncomfortable I just don’t like people being nice and making a fuss of me en-mass.

The second and main reason is the same as why I don’t really celebrate Christmas, I don’t see the point.

See it sounds very miserable an Scrooge like when you put it like that but it couldn’t be further from the truth! I think people should value and look after the people in their life all year round. I don’t feel a need to celebrate and have a fuss made of me just to mark another 365 day cycle of when my mum had a very painful day ;). It is not important to me that this day of all days should mark some kind of Nick free for all.  For me it just (even if it isn’t intended) comes across as false and a way for people to release their guilt for not being a very good friend/partner/parent/whatever over the last year, no one treats you normally on your birthday its silly, there is no difference between today yesterday or tomorrow or next week…

I try to have a good time with people and make sure they are ok throughout the year, sure I don’t have time to pay everyone the attention I’d like or i do it in funny ways but I know they know if they need me i’ll be there. That is what is important really and wearing a silly hat, eating some cake and getting smashed isn’t a celebration of my life, the people in it and the day to day relationships I have with them are!

This is just my opinion on it and i’v not met many others who share it. A birthday is such a fundamental concept that’s been drummed into our heads since before we could talk that it’s hard for people to see my logic and even if they do it’s normally brushed aside as silly.

I’m fine with other people celebrating their birthday and inviting me out (please continue!) as it means something to them which is fine and i’ll have a great time with them. It’s kinda like having Christian friends who get married in a church, I’ll come along to the church and be happy and enjoy their wedding… does not mean I’m gonna find Jesus :P.

Thank you to all the people who called/texted/facebooked/emailed/msn’d even though they know I don’t celebrate it (hehe its that childhood brainwashing, ye cant help it) today. As I have said before just keep being my friend, talking to me, inviting me, listening to me, helping me, letting me help you, all year round and that’s the biggest pressie you could ever give me.

Now i am not a great cook, my timing and measurement skills leave a lot to be desired. However there is one thing I can do and do well and that is the humble bacon sandwich!

The times this skill has saved me from many a hang over is uncountable! Here is my way of doing them, it may not be to your tastes but you should at least try it for the awesomeness.

1. Get frying pan and whack a bit of vegetable oil in it

2. Get the bacon and whack it on there, I do this right away and don’t bother heating the oil up. Now you wanna be liberal with the bacon here, like most of a pack we’re aiming for two sandwiches using four slices of bread

3. Whack the bacon on the hob and turn it right up to full. The bacon is likely stacked on top of more bacon, this is fine as it’ll be half the size in a minute or so.

4. While the bacon is heating up butter two sides of bread. The bread should be med/thick and white (rolls will do), don’t ask me why but white bread just makes it taste better. Put a thin layer of tomatoe sauce on each slice, if you don’t like tomatoe sauce then stop reading.

5. By now the bacon will need a bit of attention. Get a spatula and flip it about the pan a bit for a few minutes as it browns. Once it has lost it’s raw look you need to grab some Herbes de Provence and liberally sprinkle them on the bacon with a bit of pepper, at this point turn the heat right down. Keep turning and moving the bacon for a few minutes until it looks and smells too nice to be left in the pan. If you have done it right the pan should be pretty full of juices and whatnot (didn’t say this was the healthiest meal)

6. Get the spatula and evenly deal out the bacon onto each slice of bread, the bacon should be fairly distorted but still in somewhat of a shape. Do not cut any of the fat off, it’ll task so much better with the fat. Slap the other two bits of bread on top and eat with a cup of coffee.

Optional Extras:

I often like to fry some cherry tomatoes in the pan towards the end, seems odd with tomatoe sauce i know but its lush. Sometimes I also use a bit of chopped up garlic or onions in the pan too. You could use basil or something in place of the the Herbes de Provence but it wont taste nearly as nice.