Monthly Archives: August 2008

The first podcast?

Posted by yetanotherdave on

Is not here, I just tried recording it, and there were, issues. It didn’t go well, there were technical issues due to a crap microphone but worse was a lack of anyone to talk to. Talking to thin air is hard. It doesn’t respond, it doesn’t listen, it doesn’t chime in. Coupled with the fact that I’m doing this at 2am isn’t helping, because anyone who overhears thinks I’m a madman. I can’t raise my voice or be expressive because I don’t want to wake anyone. I’ve pretty much decided I can’t do this in the day while my boy is here, as he’s 3 and thinks “shhh” means “get out loud toy vacumn cleaner”.

I reckon I’ll get odd looks if I record in the car (only logical choice remaining), but at least I can park somewhere quiet and out of the way. It’ll be fun, speed podcasting, can I record before the battery on the laptop dies? Place bets now!

Today I had a shocking vision of the future. Take Big Brother, cross it with The Apprentice and fill it with politicians, and there you have the electoral campaign of the future. It’s not that far removed from the primaries going on in the States at the moment though, as far as I can gather.

Sometime I love technology, sometimes it fucking scares me

Posted by yetanotherdave on

I think most people who aren’t one of the affected agree that advertisers and marketers, (along with estate agents, traffic wardens and Bristol City football club fans) are pretty much the lowest of the low. Scraping the barrel of pointlessness and uselessness, devoid of personality and humanity.
They’ve just raised the bar for now much we will hate them. Take the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements, advances in technology, and what is physically possible, and there’ll be an advertiser there somewhere.

Scientists have created a method of transmitting sound, silently, directly to your ear. It’s called ultrasonics.

That. Is. Fantastically. Incredible.

Think about it. You have small children; they’re restless and not sleeping well. You want to watch a film, but are worried that it’ll wake them up, but you have an ultrasonic speaker system, your film is only audible in your living room.

You run a club, all night long you play loud music, and the locals can’t hear a thing. You can have ambient music by the bar, and rave music 2 feet away on the dance floor.

Emergency vehicles can now have their sirens going, but the only people who can hear it are people in front of the vehicle who need to get out of the way. The possibly are endless and in many cases can genuinely help and make our lives easier, removing unnecessary noise from our overloaded lives.

So what happens with this groundbreaking technology? It’s used for advertising. They turn it on its head, instead of being used to quieten our world, our heads become a new advertising platform. Words chucked directly into your brain, that you can’t drown out and can’t escape. Insidious and infectious, headphones are presumably no barrier to this misuse of technology.

Imagine a world where advertising is in your head, all day everyday, every time you leave your house. Roadside billboards preying on traffic jams, bus stops telling you to buy a new celebrity gossip magazine. Messages transmitted at child height (oh yes, the technology is directional) luring children toward sweets without the parents realising. Walk into the magazine aisle in the supermarket and get guilt tripped into donating money to X Y Z charity.

It’s then only a matter of time before an advert using sex (don’t they all) gets heard wrong, a sexual harassment case ensues. A schizophrenic, already plagued by anxiety over the voices in his head can’t cope with the influx of stimulus and hurts himself or others.

This is an area that would usually be the domain of parody and George Orwell. When I read this I imagined the scene in Futurama when Fry first encounters advertising in the 25th Century. But it’s not. This is today, this is now, this is coming, because it will make some large corporations an extra 1% profit. Fuck our quality of life, and sod the good that this could do. It’s all about the bottom line.

I feel I should apologise, the purpose of this website is primarily to make people smile, I want it to be a primarily comedic website, but the world has a habit of making me angry. I wondered about posting this, and it’s not the first time. The other day I wrote an entry about a cardinal who said that atheists shouldn’t be allowed to rule the country or we’d end up in a Nazi Germany like state. Let me tell you, there are no jokes to be had there. I tried, I was too angry. I couldn’t get accross what I wanted to say in the right way. (I think it’s something that will work a lot better when I start up the podcast. )I tried the “comedy angry rant” route, nothing. Bollocks to the world, it’s all too exasperating.

Story source

Transport for all

Posted by yetanotherdave on

I have an idea to improve people’s lives, save people money, help the environment and generally make the world a better place to live.

No really. And I propose to do this by effectively removing one of the biggest inventions in human history, the car.

There are a few undeniable facts, fuel costs will rise, fuel supplies will go down, cars are bad for the environment and everyone needs to travel.

Think about how much you spend on transport a month, or year.

I estimate I spend at least £2400 per year on car related costs, that’s without any car payments, as I drive an old banger. Which claims that running a family car for 10,000 miles costs in excess of £5,685.

The government has recently given free bus travel to all people over 60, country wide. What a brilliant idea, but why not tweak it a little and offer it to the entire nation.

For a flat yearly fee of approximately £1,500 per adult you would get a travel card, which would entitle you to free travel on any public bus, train, tram, tube or bicycle in the country, unlimited use, no restrictions, and a guarantee of service for all areas,

The scheme would be free for under 18′s, over 60′s and the disabled. Full time students and the unemployed/low earners would be subsidised.

In the UK there is an non exempt from fees population of 38,795,400 (statistics.gov.uk), meaning a free of £1,500 would produce a revenue of £58,193,100,000, adjust down by 5% for subsidies and you are left with an annual revenue of £55,283,445,000.
Considering the existing infrastructure expanding the service to adequately service all areas should be more than manageable, and provide many jobs.
To ensure all areas get an adequate service, the percentage of your fee that is set aside for your local area would be inversely proportional to the local population density.

All people who currently rely on the population driving cars would be offered jobs as a priority for the first 5 years of the scheme.
Within 5 years we would have a public transport system that the world would be jealous of, and the lowest pollution levels of any industrialised country.

I’m not proposing banning cars, the scheme would be non compulsory, cars have a place, but with a good enough public transport system, I think it would not be long before cars were abandoned as obsolete by most.

What do you think, dangerous lunatic or world saving idea?
I’m sure I’ll be written off as a communist…

The Apprentice live blogging

Posted by yetanotherdave on

NOTE: in the process of migrating from drupal to wordpress, I’ve copy/pasted this from the old blog, hence the dates/times etc may seem a little off.

The credits run and I don’t recognise most of these people, and I”ve been watching them for 6 weeks!

6:30am and Lucinda looks like she’s about to fly out the window with Peter Pan. Nice bedwear. Having got dressed she’s somehow managed to go from prude to French prostitute.

Siralen still gets the ‘class’ to greet him like they’re in school, I’m not sure he wants any of them to work for him. But I think that every year.

The task is announced. Siralen may as well have asked then to sweep streets for all the enthusiasm shown.

Brilliant, we have the weakest two as team leaders. Cannon fodder week! Michael and Kevin go head to head in the clash of the midgets.

As usual the teams talk themselves up in the taxi’s. The team leaders then wank over themselves in the solo interviews.

Michael decides to tackle a gap in the market market no greetings card company has ever gone for before. Because it will clearly be profitable. Happy boob job!

Raef talks about noses to detract from his hair.

Greetings cards for the environment! Brilliant oxymoron!

Kevin’s key objective is to win. Incisive.

“I have an idea, have more ideas.” Why are these people in the job market again?

Jenny still loves the idea of mass producing greetings cards to congratulate people on saving the environment… None of the others see the flaw in this.

Kevin will always be the only gay in the village for me.

Singles day. “Congratulations, you’re still not getting any.” People who want to be single probably don’t feel the need to celebrate this. Those who don’t will just feel bitter.

Kevin is 150%! good at pitching. Not as good as gladiators at being entertaining, but still impossibly good.

I’d cry if I had to be near Jenny too.

They are going all out for this environment saving through greetings cards thing. A rather embarrassed model has to get his as out for the cause. Margaret is loving this! I don’t think Siralen will be too impressed.

Half an hour in and we haven’t heard a single business plan, targets or objective. We have heard a lot of “I’m creative, we’re team players, I’m creative.”

Michael seems to think the Telegraph (newspaper) is his personal spell checker. Next time I need directions I’m phoning Royal Mail.

Brilliant, Kevin has spent so long talking about how good at pitching, he’s forgotten to prepare it. Jenny and Claire decide to talk about how he hasn’t done the pitch instead of doing the pitch. This is going to be gold.

Apparently the Telegraph was no help, and the apostrophe problem is being solved Russian Roulette style.

Kevin being the ultimate procrastinator is talking about pitch technique, instead of content. Tries to offload it and gets knocked back. Looks constipated, but that seems to be his default expression.

Alex’s coat gets bigger as Kevin announces he’s going to “balls this up”. But in a good way of course.

He’s doing it already by mentioning how many tonnes of waste are thrown away. Look, let us add to it. Jenny is grinning like a cheshire cat – and then manages to point out the flaw in their their proposal. I’m rooting for her to go.

Oh good, the greetings card are a plan B incase G8 fails. I’m glad that’s in place or we could all be doomed.

Wow, that was amazing. Margaret looked like she was going to scream at Michael al la Aphex Twin.

Kevin, after losing still maintains he had a strong idea. I’m sure Siralen has always looked kindly on denial. That’s a quality he looks for I’m sure.

Kevin seals his own death warrant. This is going to be messy. Jenny should have been in there with Claire.

Wow, Kevin’s about to cry! He’s totally digging his own hole. And Siralen doesn’t mess about he’s gone.

The apprentice has become big brother. Everyone seems to hate Sara, unfortunately none of them are eloquent enough to say why, other than because she didn’t get fired. I think Michael fancied Kevin a bit.