23 Oct 2009

Fish Pie




Breafast news shock!

This morning, I was watching a news report, and a seagal appeared in the background!

You don't see that every day!



21 Oct 2009

What's going wrong with Twitter

Now, I like twitter, but I have noticed some underlying problems recently, mainly in people's behaviour:


Firstly, there seems to be a follower plateau. When I first joined twitter earlier this year, I would often have a snoop around people's profiles. If I liked the cut of their jib, then I would click to follow them. 9 times out of 10, they would have mutual jib admiration, and follow me back.

In the last month I have followed 50 people, and not a single one of them has followed me back.
So what has changed? I'm still posting the same irrelevant comments. Have they just now just become, err, ir-irrelevant?

No, I think that many people are on the sheer limits on how many people they can physically follow. In fact, some are maybe over their limits.

If you are a twitter user, ask yourself this question. Do you read every tweet that comes through on your feed? If you answered no, you may be over-following.

So here is my breakdown guide of the average male and female twitter user, for you to compare (comparethebadgermaker.blogspot.com) yourself to:


AVERAGE FEMALE TWITTER USER

FOLLOWS:
15% female friends
10% men with nice eyes
30% men with nice arses
10% celebrities to bitch about
15% gossip column feeds
12% diet tips
8% makeup guides

FOLLOWING THEM:
15% female friends
75% men that fancy them
10% weight loss products


AVERAGE MALE TWITTER USER

FOLLOWS:
10% male friends
15% women with nice faces
70% women with nice tits
5% celebrity men they aspire to be (man crush!)

FOLLOWING THEM:
10% male friends
5% women with nice faces and/or tits, who feel sorry for them
75% sex product companies
10% gambling industry

NOTE: Your own profile might not exactly be like this. There is a 2-3% margin of error.


The second problem with twitter is the number of 'bot' followers.

Now, as an academic student of artificial intelligence, I would be the last person to deny a robot a social circle. But these 'bot' are very sinister. The chances are that, once they are following you, they are analysing everything you write.

This shouldn't be a problem for most people. For instance, I only casually mention my bank account details and pin number once or twice a month. If that.

But the fact is, no-one really knows what they are using your tweets for. So the sensible thing to do is block these users, right? WRONG!

Such is the nature of human vanity and public image, that most twitter users would rather have hundreds of these phantom bots recording their every word, rather than blocking them and looking like a billy-no-mates.

Well I took the plunge and managed to remove almost 200 followers, leaving me with around 45 human beings. I also locked my timeline so they would not pick up anything I wrote, and start following me again. How do I feel? Like Billy-no-mates retarded younger brother. You know, the one with the halitosis problem.


The third and final observation is the celebrity code of conduct. This can be concisely written as a series of rules:

For ease of readership, I will call celebrities - celebs, and non celebrities - muggles.

  • A muggle must follow a celeb

  • A celeb must not follow a muggle

  • A celeb must converse with fellow celebs, in order to generate more muggle followership kudos

  • A celeb must not converse with a higher grade celeb. To them, they are a muggle
    i.e. Stephen Fry does not follow Paul Danan

  • A muggle may tweet a celeb, but must not expect a reply

  • A celeb may tweet a muggle, but must expect an influx of further conversational tweets, with requests of friendship and 'meeting up for a beer'


As long as everyone follows this guide, then celebrities will be free to self promote and indulge in instant gratification whenever they please. And in return, the average Joe on the street may get a say in what wallpaper David Mitchell chooses for his downstairs loo.

14 Oct 2009

Secrets of the Open University

Today was not a good day.

Firstly, I could not sleep because I had an exam this afternoon. Secondly, I could not do my exam, because I didn't have any sleep last night.

But lets roll things back a bit....

The time was 2:17pm.

I was stood outside my designated Methodist church, to sit the three hour exam on 'Natural and Artificial Intelligence'. I'm not sure whether the Open University conduct all their exams in places of worship. Maybe I can confirm this when I get my next exam allocation at Finsbury Park Mosque.

My first task was to get into the building. Seems like a easy starter? Wrong.

Like all good churches, the doors were locked tight.

I wasn't alone in this predicament. I managed to join a group of fellow idiots, bashing and shaking anything that resembled an orifice to the building.

Just when I was going to reluctantly (and speedily) admit defeat, an old gentleman (we'll call him cock) opened one on the doors and said 'Oh, have you been their long?'

After this masterclass of organisation, I was looking forward to the main event. The pre-exam shit.

Normally, most people hold back on the loud raspberries when in a public toilet. But thanks to 'cock', this was a 3 minute in and old job. I felt in good company as an orchestra of arses, trumpeted their final nervous gasps.

At this point, I would like to apologise for the speedy deterioration of my blogging prose. My only disclaimer is, it's funny.

I quickly dashed into the exam room and took my place in the hall. There was a grand total of two people taking my exam, including me. As the exam started, the other guy was nowhere to be seen.

How was the exam? Terrible. I had to answer four questions, and only did two of them well.

It's wasn't all bad though. I enjoyed the irony of answering questions on Darwinism, while sat in a church.

I also enjoyed to post exam banter with fellow OUers. It seems the OU has become a playground for middle age men. Rather than getting to 50 and buying a sports car, they seem to be embarking on career changes in archeology, sociology, or any 'ology' where there might be chicks and no ex wives.

That's it for now. I'm going out. Cya

P.S. Does anyone know when the resits are?

13 Oct 2009

One giant leap for man, one step for mankind.


Recently, a features editor from The Guardian newspaper phoned me about creating a daily blog of my exploits.


My first reaction was 'surely there has been some sort of mistake?'. 'Surely they have got the wrong person?'


The editor painstakingly checked his details, and I was right. He had.


But this gave me an idea. Every man and his dog is writing a blog these days. (check out FarmerGilesandShep.blog for a beautiful love story)


If 'everyone' can do it, then I can do it. Because I'm a bit like 'everyone', only smaller in number.


So here I am, people of the English speaking world. And here I am, foreign language users of Google Translate.


Behold my worldly wisdom, and enjoy my mental vastness!


And so, to start you off, I leave you with this recently acquired fact:





Dane Bower's phone number is only one digit different to mine.