Nintendogs is like the cutest game ever. I got it half an hour ago. I called it Maynard. It can sit and roll over. It makes me grin far too much.
just went to virgin. nice little poster on their window.
CHRISTMAS VACANCIES. HAND IN CV IF YOU CAN ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:
1. Whose new album is called ‘Employment’?
2. Which character does Ewan ‘i don’t do blockblusters, but i do’ McGregor play in Star Wars?
3. What is the new Xbox called?
handed in my CV, going to manc on thuirsday hopefully..i’ll see if there’s any more vacancies, and i’m sure kim will let me know if they have christmas jobs at Woolies. (stop fucking relating everything to heeeeeeeer!) 
someone posted this on our forum..it describes the area you live in. just whack in your postcode and you’ll see.
mine:
Category: 4 Moderate Means
Group: K Asian Communities
Acorn Type: 38 Low Income Asian Families
Mainly young Asian families live in these terraced streets in some of our major towns and cities. The rest of the population in this type is ethnically diverse. Living alongside the families is a 12% student population sharing rented accommodation.
These are low cost housing areas and the tenure divides evenly between those that own their property outright, those with a mortgage and those renting Social Housing.
There are very few people with qualifications and unemployment levels are high. Incomes are low, and most people are working in either manufacturing or the retail sector. For women in these areas their primary occupation is bringing up their families. There is also a significantly high number of single parents and, for them, work may not be a practical option.
With low incomes, car ownership is low and people rely on public transport or walking. They choose retailers like Kwik Save and Asda for food because price is key to them.
There is very little money for luxuries although cable TV is popular. Holidays are a rarity, but these people will tend to relax by exercising, playing sport, cooking or shopping for clothes. They like to buy clothes from retailers such as Burton, Top Shop and Matalan.
These people read a range of papers, but the Daily Mirror is by far the most popular.
This type is found in Southall in London, Leicester, Blackburn and Birmingham.
hey youguys. i’ve found a couple of atricles in the new york times that i think you might be interested in. the first is about internet movie piracy, it’s apparent heirarchical structure and what hollywood needs to do to combat it. here’s a small extract.
“The Internet was designed to facilitate file transfer. That’s what it’s all about, so whether it’s in e-mail, instant messaging, music or films, it’s all going to increase as sure as the sun comes up tomorrow,” said Mr. Fleischer at BigChampagne. “I think the movie business is in the same place the music business was in 2001 and 2002. They’re just sitting it out and not doing much to put legitimate movie offerings online.”
HOLLYWOOD veterans say they are well aware of the momentous changes afoot. “Our industry is trying very hard to make sure that what happened to the music industry doesn’t happen to our industry,” said Barry M. Meyer, chairman of Warner Brothers, which was one of the first studios to mount a serious antipiracy campaign. “We don’t want this to become mainstream behavior.”
click here to read the entire feature. (sorry you have to sign up, but it’s free)
the second article i think you guys would be interested in is about the current situation between google and cnet. this is about the reaction by google ceo, eric e. schmidt to a cnet article dated 14th July about his personal financial state of affairs. the twist here is, as you may already know is that this information was collatd by the cnet reporter using google’s own search engine. eric e. schmidt didn’t take kindly to this article being written however, even though less that an tenth of the article referred to him. this information is freely available on the net anyway - here’s an extract from the cnet article.
“Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn’t reveal much about himself on his home page.
But spending 30 minutes on the Google search engine lets one discover that Schmidt, 50, was worth an estimated $1.5 billion last year. Earlier this year, he pulled in almost $90 million from sales of Google stock and made at least another $50 million selling shares in the past two months as the stock leaped to more than $300 a share.”
for a direct link to this article click here.
personally, i don’t care that schmidt has made so much money, i mean it’s expected, so why is he so annoyed with cnet for revealing freely available information? the point of the cnet article was to explore the issue of privacy concerns regarding internet entities such as google - however it has resulted in a vow from the google ceo that his company will not talk top any cnet reporter for a period of on year.
here’s a link to the nytimes article which analysis the situation. i have to say as a disclaimer though that the nytimes have seemed to have taken a slightly anti-google stance, as can be seen in a previous article which accuses the company of being ‘evil.’ read at your own risk!
Syed might be ineterested in this.
Looks like Dreamworks are close to snatching the film rights away from Paramount. Perswonally, didn’t even know Paramounts had the rights to the film in the first place, but there you go.
Anyway, Daniel Pyne , who is the writer from Manchurian Candidate will script the film so it has a slight chance of being decent.
So. Extras is over. It makes me sad, but the way they left it I reckon series 2 will be great, they left it in the position they were in (first timers making an all new series for the BBC, coming from practically nothing aside Gervais’ 11 ‘o’ Clock Show stints, etc.), so they should have loads of material ready. If they work it right, it’ll be excellent. If they do it wrong, it’ll be abysmal, they’re gonna have to walk a very fine line to make it good I think. I reckon they can do it, though.
Patrick Stewart was excellent. I think Jude Law was supposed to be in this one but dropped out (they had a dig at him by showing a Jude Law poster for ‘Alfie’ in the final scene), so they got Stewart in, but he was a great choice. I can’t really be bothered listing the best moments in this one, but this is the episode that confirmed that I cared about the characters to me. Some great emotional bits.
The listing goes:
1. Kate Winslet.
2. Patrick Stewart.
3. Les Dennis.
4. Samuel L. Jackson.
5. Ross Kemp.
6. Ben Stiller.
Kate Winslet and Patrick Stewart, possibly other episodes as well, may be switched around when I A) watch Stewart again and B) watch them all as a whole.
Brilliant series - Gervais and Merchant did it again. Here’s to series 2 - Extras party next week…
Beware, this is a large download - upwards of 28 Megs - but that’s because it replaces nearly every graphic in your system. But this is a very polite mod, in that if you decide you would like to revert to your previous settings, and I mean exactly how your machine looked, it will do that for you when you uninstall.
$67.32 - That was the New York closing price of crude oil last night. It’s also a nominal record. Why should you care? You, personally probably shouldn’t at the moment, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. The record it actually broke was reset on the 12th August, although it is only 22 cents more. Why is this happening and what does it mean? Well at the moment supply and demand are perilously close to each other. Basically, there’s about a million extra barrels a day produced to cope with any surges in real demand, so that’s why the markets are so shaky. Traders are buying up stock, anticipating an upsurge in demand, however this perpetuates the problem. Then you have rising prices creating a rise in general prices, where really, there needn’t be.
The fact that the U.S. Department of Energy announced that stocks had fallen by 2.3m barrels instead of the expected 1.5m sent shockwaves throughout the commodities markets. If this situation continues to perpetuate then it doesn’t bode well for the world economy at large, so what’s the alternative?
The U.S. Government, quite ironically some might say, has invested U.S. tax payer’s money into researching alternative fuel technologies. One of the main areas have been hydrogen fuels which are pollutant free and would greatly reduce the problem of fuel scarcity which sees prices rocketing and the environment suffering. This is all well and good, however the problem lies within the incentives or the drive behind the decisions to research these areas by the U.S. government. The reason the current administration gives is that they would like to reduce their dependence on foreign sources of fuel. This is worrying as the U.S. is the world’s largest economic power and if they reduce the level of imports it will have a detrimental effect on the world economy at large.
With all the hoopla about the new Google Talk & Desktop 2, I decided to put my own view of the situation on the net. Just a personal view; probably not representative in any way.
Google Talk - I’ve tried this program and I have to say I love its simplicity, it’s brilliant actually. Simple is always the best and Google have cause on to this idea. Now, I’ve not used the voice call option, however from reviews around the internet, it has been described as extremely clear as it used the new VoIP, which is separate from the systems used on rival programs such as MSN. The only problem is, no one uses it at the moment. I know this is not a nice way of putting it, but as soon as it becomes popular I’ll switch!
Google Desktop 2 - I have to say that the sidebar is probably the best I have seen - the only problem is I find them annoying so i don’t use it. However, again I love its simple design. The little stock ticker, the news box from sources around the world, the little photo box! It’s all good, oh, not forgetting the pc performance monitor and email box. It’s great for people who want their information as soon as they load up their pc and need constant updates, while exerting minimal effort. Finally i love that fact that Google have extended their support for different file types, the most notable for me personally is the option to search items within the outlook calendar, task lists and contacts. Brilliant.
OK, now back to Google Talk. This is the part which I think is great for the internet community as a whole who rely on IM technology for everyday communications. I’ve taken an extract from the New York Times article entitled ‘Google Gets Better. What’s Up With That? ‘
“…Google Talk aims to end the ridiculous era of proprietary chat networks. At the moment, AOL, MSN and Yahoo each maintain separate, incompatible networks. The big boys each want to be alone in the sandbox, and the losers are their customers.
Google Talk, however, is based on an open, published standard that the company is making available to all. Already, Google Talk communicates with popular chat programs like iChat, Trillian, Adium, Psi and GAIM, but that’s just the beginning. Google is making overtures to Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft about making their chat programs compatible…”
I hope Google succeed, I sincerely do.
update - I’ve decided sidebar is class now, coupled with that new theme I have - amazing! The little photo section! I have it streaming images from flickr, it’s top. The little webclips section goes and fetches the news stories you are intrerested in depending on the type of sites you visit - how cool is that!
Starting to get everything back to normal now. Using Opera again, need to do all my bookmarks again (had about 50 before the crash ). I forgot to mention to you guys - Steve, amazing techno computer guy, SAVED MY FILES.
*hugs*
Run down of the specs from what I can gather:
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (runs at 2 GHz I think)
768 MB DDR RAM
128 MB nVidia GeForce FX5200 DVI/TV graphics card
80 GB hard drive
16X DVD drive
DVD-RW (I think just 1X - they’re two seperate drive now, rather than a combi-drive. It can use both + and - DVD-RWs)
In short - it’s pretty damn mint.
Ahhh yes, the digital ink on the Google Talk release is still wet, and already the app has got its first mod. This how-to walks you through diverting your system audio to a Google Talk voice session, instead of being limited to using the microphone.
i’ll be streaming some mp3s to you mase, toniiight 
…is it exciting to fuck up computers and then fix them? It’s a geeky thing I don’t like doing but kind of do, where you NEARLY mess up a computer totally and then pull it back from the brink. Total adrenaline rush, totally nerdy. I’ve done it like 3 times in the past hour with this PC, using system restore points for safety. Wasn’t all intentional, it was all accidental, but fixing things makes me feel good.
I HAVE A GREAT COMPUTER.
GOOGLE TALK.
Instant messaging, Google style. I expect to be testing this with you both later.
…with the amount of posting. Seriously guys, it isn’t a competition, you’re wiping things off the main page way too quickly. We’ve probably all missed comments and stuff because one of us has pushed stuff off the main screen. Chill it a bit.
I’m still in a shit mood, but better than last night. I want to type about my weekend and I know what I want to type, but I’m in this frame of mind where I just can’t be bothered. Once I start typing it I’ll finish, but it’s getting to start which is the problem. I’ll start in a minute. Don’t expect to see me on MSN too much or at all in the next day or so if this mood continues, I just want to be left alone but I don’t at the same time. I dunno. Probably end up on MSN later on anyway. See you later…
Yeah, my weekend was mint. Got there at 12.15 on Saturday afternoon and went back to Vikki’s, looked at/taunted the bird and cat with her and one of her brothers. Went to meet some more of her friends on Saturday night, I’d only met Claire and Hema before. Seen Claire a few times, only seen Hema once. Hema couldn’t come. Met her friend Nai mainly, Jess was working behind the bar so only said ‘hello’ to her. I was all shy and not talking about probably looking boring and ignorant, but I explained to Nai while Claire and Vikki went to the toilet that I wasn’t usually “this uninteresting” (probably am though) and that I “wasn’t being ignorant, I’m just shy”. It was alright. All just went after an hour and a bit.
Sunday was class. Went on a random adventure out into town, saw this antique’s fair thing. “Bargain hunt!” Wandered off from it, went to see the ducks. I called a mallard a ‘maynard’ (like the coach company) by accident. This sygnate swam past and I went ‘WHOA what’s that?’ because it was amongst all these ducks and for some reason I thought it was a giant duck for a second. Vikki: “…..It’s a baby swan.” Those were proclaimed comments of the weekend, such were their idiocy. Then we wandered back towards town…ahhh a quid to get in…yeah we went to the antiques fair. It was a laugh. Vikki kept going “can I touch it?” to people; we were such newbies. Some guy was trying to make us buy a ring. Got out of it. Vikki bought some old coins for her dad. We’ve decided that once we get our student loans we’re gonna set a limit of £50 and go to an antiques fair and do our own version of Bargain Hunt. We’re not sure if it’ll be 3 items or just upto 3 items, but yeah, we get £50, then we’ll sell them on eBay and see who makes profit. A version of Car Booty using a similar limit of £50 may also happen, need to get to a car boot. If that one happens it’ll probably be around here, so might be able to get you guys to join in the challeeeeenge.
Had a good wander round Oxford and went to Zizzi, Italian restaurant we used to go to when Vikki was in Oxford all the time. I kept finding games shops. Vikki kept spending money. She’s a sucker for these ‘3 budget games for £10′ deals in GAME. Also, pink shoes that are also a tenner. Women. Was shit leaving.
Right, I actually feel better now so Turon’s just come online and I’ll be his mate without being a grouch. See you later…
Update: Couple more things I forgot to say. Showed Vikki a HD-TV in Dixons. Brilliant words from her: “…That’s the first thing we’re buying for our house.”
Also, she’s been bugging me about Nintendogs because she can’t wait until 7th October. We both have copies on the way from VGP, she bought them and I’m paying her back when my loan comes through. I wanted to wait until the UK release but I knew she wouldn’t stop trying to win them on eBay for ridiculous amounts like 4 quid to try and convince me until then, so I went FINE.
