25 Things

I've succumbed to the thing that's doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment, and written 25 (supposedly) interesting facts about me. It took me forever to think of 25, I'm obviously not that interesting, so I thought I'd get some additional mileage out of it by posting it on here.

1. I've kissed a total of three women in my life, just to see what it was like. It was fine, softer than a man, but didn't do a lot for me. I don't know how many men I've kissed.

2. I'm technically a cockney, but Mummy raised me to speak properly so you wouldn't know it.

3. I was mugged three times when I was growing up. I still feel afraid of people sometimes when I'm walking around, but I hide it.

4. I know how to knit and I enjoy cross-stitch.

5. I'm more interested in politics now than I ever used to be. I'm a capitalist, and I'm considering voting Conservative at the next general election. I don't like it when people use labels or hackneyed phrases during a political discussion, like 'nanny state' or 'she started a war to win an election'; I think it's lazy and shows a lack of understanding of the topic.

6. I'm quieter than I'd like to be, especially in social situations or with people I don't know. People often take this to mean I don't like them. It doesn't.

7. I hate being contradicted. I tend to think I'm right (I usually am), and don't like it when someone disagrees with me.

8. I'm petty and will bear a grudge really, really badly. If I decide I don't like someone it's unlikely I'll ever change my mind.

9. I like studying languages, especially new ones, and don't like it if someone can speak something I can't. I'll often start a language but only learn a bit before I move onto another one though. I speak French and Italian well, and have at times studied Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Swedish, German and Spanish.

10. I've never taken an illegal drug. Although I'm sometime curious, I'm too stubborn to break a vow I made never to try them when I was about 14. My opinion is they're illegal for a reason.

11. I came out to my Dad in front of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I wasn't ready, and it was one of the hardest things I've done.

12. I was quite badly bitten by a dog when I was about 5, and still don't trust dogs I don't know. Its owners gave it away before the police could destroy it.

13. One of my best friends drowned when I was 6. I sometimes wonder what his life would have been like if he'd survived.

14. I enjoy watching You've Been Framed, even though I know it's really low-brow.

15. I, rather sadly, view having a cup of tea as a bit of a treat.

16. I can be a bit smug and like to show off what I know. Number 9 is a prime example of this, I didn't need to list all those when "I like studying new languages" would have done.

17. When I was little I wanted to be a chef when I grew up. I wanted an 'A La Carte Kitchen', one of those ones you push along, but was bought the (cheaper) Magic Glow Oven instead. Now, I probably only cook dinner about 3 times a year.

18. I would like a better build, but overall I'm fairly happy with my body and how I look. I wish I had better energy levels and a stronger immune system though, as I'm often ill and sometimes feel like a burden.

19. I'm not very spontaneous and have trouble making decisions in my personal life. I over-think things and could do with loosening up more. Saying that though, my cautious attitude has served me pretty well so far.

20. I like children, but don't know if or when I'll ever have any of my own. If I can be a really good uncle to someone else's, that might be enough for me.

21. I really like to dance, even though I think it is out of character for me. I don't see the point in going to a club if you're not going to dance.

22. I'd love to write a novel, and then see it on the shelf when I go into a bookshop.

23. I feel like I have a very fortunate life and I'm grateful. There are very few things I'd want to change about where I am in life right now.

24. I sometimes worry about how much I drink, but not enough to change it.

25. I sometimes feel bad that I haven't done something more challenging for my career. This is mostly due to people asking me why I haven't done something more challenging for my career. I like my job though, I like that it doesn't stress me out and that I can leave it at the office when I go home.

Twitter news. Twews?

I've been getting more into Twitter lately. I've started to follow more people and have picked up a few more followers of my own, and once you do that the whole thing starts to make more sense. I've also experienced twice in just the last couple of days something which I'd heard people talking about: being on the edge of the information curve thanks to Twitter, and finding things out well before they appear on any news website.

The first was yesterday and was fairly banal. I heard that Gmail was down, it stayed down for a couple of hours, and then I knew within minutes of it being back up again, without needing to try to log in once.

The second, today, was a bit more consequential. A 'breaking news' line came up on the BBC News website saying a plane had crashed in Amsterdam. Their breaking news thing can be quite annoying because it's just a single line, and it'll sometimes take them ages to replace the 'more soon' with an actual article. Twitter, on the other hand, was immediately awash with information. Someone was tweeting right from the scene (thanks @nipp), and I was able to read his eye witness reports of what had happened, and even see photos of the site. The news corporations got wise to this pretty soon, and I gather he was overwhelmed with agencies like CNN and the BBC calling him for information they could report, while their own correspondents were stuck on trains trying to get there. He was also incidentally a bit disturbed at how easily they got hold of his phone number.

I'd say I knew what was happening there at least half an hour before the BBC were able to put any proper details on their website. Some of the information like confirmed casualty numbers took longer to come through, but that was because no-one knew those things until the rescue services had done most of their work.

It was really fascinating, and made me wonder what else I might hear about first on Twitter. In some ways it's more interesting than Facebook; you find out things you didn't already know, rather than hearing what your friends have been up to that day. I like them both, but they're really different. And Twitter only starts functioning properly after you've been using it a while.

(Days healthy - 6)

This is getting silly now

OK, I don't want it to seem like all I write about on here is X Factor, but once again I find myself going WHAT???? after the most recent episode. It's just SO ridiculous! Even Simon Cowell knew it was just getting stupid this week, as for some bizarre reason they had Laura and Ruth in the bottom two. OK so Laura's wasn't her best, which I blame on her choosing to play the piano as well as sing. Why over-complicate it for yourself? Her singing clearly got better once she got up from the piano and could focus on it. But anyway, that's not the point, the point is we still have Eoghuoounn there, based solely on the fact that he's a stupid child, and we still have Daniel, based solely on the fact that his wife died and he then devoured her corpse and turned into a massive Jabba The Hutt in a suit. I can't believe it! Laura was a really good singer, and neither of those two chumps can actually sing! And still they don't even end up in the bottom two!

I did like very much though the way she and Ruth just ignored Dermot's attempts to host when he announced who was going, and carried on hugging and consoling each other despite his calls for Ruth to bugger off so he could examine Laura's best bits.

So anyway, the whole programme has just turned into a farce. Amusingly, loads of people had immediate Facebook statuses expressing their disgust, and when I searched TweetScan for 'x factor' lots of people had written various angry comments on Twitter, mostly calling for Fat Daniel to be executed as soon as possible. I just don't get it, I really don't. You may as well roll a die and get rid of one of them that way, and save us all three hours - it's that random.

Cheap gay Facebook

I joined a group on Facebook a while ago, set up by some company that was setting up a new social networking site for gay men and was looking for site testers. So I thought OK, that might be interesting, and I put my name down.

It took a while for them to reach the stage where they were ready to start letting people join and test the site, but eventually on Monday they sent a message out saying everyone should now sign up and start letting them know what they think.

Oh. My. God. It was SO rubbish! For a start, it was called Cockbook. That's just crass, predictable, and I'm sure that lots of people might not want to have loads of cockbook.com URLs appearing in their internet history at work.

So, name: crap.

Then there was the 'Create your profile' bit. They'd basically just taken all of the fields you fill in on Gaydar and used those, right down to the type of guy you are (twink, bear, etc.), the type of guy you like, and even the 'Rather not say' option for any of the more delicate questions like manhood size. Oh yes, and the form didn't work particularly well either.

Content: crap.

And then there was the design... How can I describe it? Oh yes: imagine Facebook. Now imagine if you asked a retarded eight year old to draw a picture of Facebook using blue crayons. That's what it looked like. It was almost exactly the same as Facebook (old Facebook anyway, the new design was probably a bit hard for the retarded eight year old to render with crayons), right down to the shade of blue used, the bar at the top, and the Account and Privacy links down at the bottom. I'll be surprised if they don't get sued for infringement of copyright!

Design: crap. Possibly the worst design I've ever seen on a 'professionally made' website.

Oo oo, and I almost forgot the best bit. To start with your account is 'Not verified'. When you click on why, it says that in order to stop people using profile photos that aren't actually of themselves (sadly this does happen on Gaydar, when people are too ugly to use their own pictures) they have set up a system of checking. In order to get your account 'verified', they want you to write on a piece of paper a FIFTEEN CHARACTER random verification code they give you, hold it up, photograph yourself holding it and looking like a complete knobhead for going to all this trouble, and then email it to them. Only then will they believe you actually are the person in the photo. What a completely ridiculous thing to expect people to do! That was the last straw for me.

Usability: crap.

So I clicked off of it, went back on Facebook, and left a scathing message on the group wall about how pathetic the site is.

And now they've deleted my message, because clearly when they asked for feedback they only wanted people to say nice things! Losers...

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Facebook justice

I had a weird group invitation on Facebook this morning, similar to a few I've had recently. It was inviting me to join "Karen Matthews - Unfit Mother". I did a quick search for groups just now, and it's not the only one, there is a whole plethora to choose from:

Keep Karen Matthews in Jail for a Long Time
Karen Matthews is gutter trash
Karen Matthews sad excuse for a mother
Karen Matthews is a fucking discrace!!! (I think this one should be more concerned about their spelling)
Throw Karen Matthews in Prison and he pedo boyfriend too...!!!!!!! (excessive exclamation marks in my opinion)
Karen Matthews and all that knew where she was are arseholes in my opinion (er, grammar anyone?)
I think Karen Matthews is an evil bitch and should be hung (it's hanged, dear)
Karen Matthews is scum
Someone should tell Karen Matthews that marcus nash is a cheat (I think this might be a different karen matthews)

See? Many many options for expressing your hatred via Facebook, and I find it really weird! Yes, clearly something very peculiar went on in the Shannon Matthews case involving her mother and some other family members, but that is pretty much all the information that has been released. And yet everyone is already baying for blood and would most likely lapidate Karen Matthews if they saw her in street. It's based on practically no information, why are people rushing straight on to condemnation and punishment when they don't actually know what they are condemning yet?

And, even more weirdly, why would you start a Facebook group about it?? Are they hoping to find like-minded people so they can sit around going "yeah she's a bitch, she clearly stuffed her into that bed herself, she's probably a devil worshipper n'all"? It's like an odd form of e-lynch mob. Facebook groups are a bit strange at the best of times as most of them are just a statement of opinion and then people join in order to say "yes I agree", but this is just bizarre.

So anyway, no I won't be joining any of the above groups because they are ridiculous and I would rather wait for the criminal justice system to take its course, or at the very least for someone to tell us what she actually did or is alleged to have done before I start polishing up my pitchfork and lighting my flaming torch.

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New blog

I have decided to ditch the LiveBlog application in facebook because no-one could actually read it very easily. So I'm now trying out Blogger, and using a nifty little application called Flog Blog to feed my posts into my facebook profile. I guess I could feed it into lots of other places as well, and saturate the whole world with my opinion, that'd be nice for you all wouldn't it?