What happened was, I was walking to work, when I turned round the corner, and see some young chav kid standing outside a shop, about 13 or 14, hood pulled over his face, looking fidgety and anxious, he seemed to be waiting, he dashed into the store, I was still walking towards it, suspicious of this guy. Seconds later, I was directly in front of the door to the shop, he ran out carrying a crate of wine or something, he looked at me, and said two words. “Safe, man.” and ran off round the corner, in the direction I had just come from.

I could have easily grabbed his hood, pulled it off his head, shouted, chased after him, something, he seemed nervous about the whole thing, he was probably new to this life of crime, I doubt he would have fought back very well, I would have taken the stolen goods back to the store and handed him to the guy in charge and he could have called the police, but no, I just stood there.

Ok, so maybe I’m over reacting, this was only a small shoplifting incident, it’s not as though someone was being stabbed, I was also alone, I would have probably been more willing to confront this guy if I had a friend with me, but the criminal might go on to do much worse acts, and I will be at least partially to blame. Also if I had stopped him, I would have felt so awesome and proud of myself, and I could always say to someone that I am a crime fighter, and I would be a hero, at least in my own eyes, for doing what’s right. And also this blog post would be a hell of a lot more interesting.

This started when I purchased a webcam from amazon.co.uk. This was a small device, so I was expecting the packaging to be relatively small as well, however that is not what I ended up with.

This is the box which the actual webcam was housed in, packaged by Logitech so not suitable to be delivered in, of course.

Everything in order so far.

This however, is the box which amazon saw fit to deliver it in.

Granted, the size difference doesn’t look that great because of the distance of the camera. So I took a picture comparing the two boxes properly.

This was the image I saw when I opened the box, although the smaller box was properly secured using the clear plastic shown in the image, I still think this is   wrong. Do amazon not have any slightly smaller boxes to use when shipping small objects? If only to save resources in today’s environment of eco awareness?

The reason I have named this post “part 1″ is because originally I had planned on e-mailing amazon with an enquiry about this, and I still might, it really depends on if I can be bothered or not. So… to be continued… or possibly not! But hopefully it will be…

You can go now…

Anyway, Star Pirates is a free spaceship based rpg, in which you start off captaining a scavenger ship at the Mars space station, as the Earth has been destroyed, leaving you and others like you being forced to survive out in space. You can upgrade your ship and level up your crew through combat and doing scavenger missions, you can also attack and raid other player’s ships for whatever they have in their cargo bay, an aspect of the game I have not partook in as of yet. You can also join or create a fleet with other players, essentially a clan or guild. I have not joined any fleet yet and don’t really think I should be starting my own. Starcorp, the fleet of the webcomic which I discovered the game from, would probably be a good choice, but probably once I have gotten used to it more.

So far Star Pirates has been pretty good, you don’t really need to pay much attention to it, you can just leave it open in a tab and check up on it every 5 minutes or so, making the appropriate upgrades and doing some scavenging in order to earn money, then go back to what you were doing before while your fuel and research points fill up again. As I have said, I have not experienced any combat with other players yet, so I can’t really say much on that, but I can’t really imagine it would be much different to other games in the genre which I have played in the past.

So anyway, my referral url is: http://www.starpirates.net/register.php?referer=9608 so I get all sorts of tasty treats if someone from here clicks it and makes an account… or something… Yarrr!

I set off, equipped with  the usual stuff (phone, keys, wallet, clothes, etc…) a packed lunch (the first one I’ve had in years), a mostly used up pad of paper (which I didn’t find a use for) and my copy of “Friends Like These” by Danny Wallace (at the time of writing I am about half way though and it is very good, also, I should start reading more, I missed out on his book “Yes Man” which I promised myself on this very blog that I would read ages ago). I headed off to my friend’s house and went to knock on the door. Half way through this action the door was opened and I was told that he was getting his iPod and would be down shortly, leaving my fist hanging in the air, ready to knock.

We then set off on our journey, walking across the road to the bus stop, we waited and waited, thinking the bus was late, naturally assuming the driver had started dancing to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give you up” further up the route. It turns out our logical deduction was wrong and we were actually about 30 minutes early for the bus to arrive. When it did finally arrive on time, I dropped the bus fare I had been holding perfectly well for the last 40 minutes and obviously had to pick it up, no big deal. We made it to the train station without any more hassle, with no sign of the talking old bus guy (basically an old guy we sometimes see on the bus who talks to people about random stuff, pretty much what I’m doing now, except not on a bus, that guy should probably have his own blog or something, it would be updated more than this one).

The train journey went well, I read my book, my mate and I repeatedly quoted the IT crowd whenever we were “nearly at the station” (yes, we are very mature) and we laughed at the train driver and his announcements about the buffet cart, sounding like he was licking his lips and was about to tuck into whatever food he was talking about, we got a free half a bag of haribo as someone couldn’t be bothered to finish them (not a random stranger, I’m not an idiot).

We arrived in London, I stepped out of the train in wonder at the St Pancras station, a more amazing thing than any building in Nottingham, I was interested in the station as I had watched a documentary about it being built and it was probably the first time I had gone to personally visit something which the television had introduced me to, which made it all the more fascinating. As we were leaving I made a comment about the lack of bins being “probably to stop terrorists” a little too loudly and was told off by my friend for it. It was around this point that I probably first stepped on the back of his shoe, totally by accident, but they were already torn and I just made them worse as his better shoes were stolen by a friend who is currently away in South America somewhere digging holes to use as toilets… probably. I ended up stepping on the back of his shoe at least 5 times over that day, either by accident, or my shoe really doesn’t like his converse, or maybe my shoes liked his converse a little too much…. and by the end of the day his right shoe looked like a converse flip-flop.

The first destination was the Natural History Museum, which I have been to as a child but have no proper memories about it. I was pretty cool, I looked at the creatures and animals shown in the museum in a different way than I would have normally, as I have tried to do for other things, such as architecture and landscapes, I tried to view it from an alien perspective. I really think it helps as I think many things such as the natural and man-made beauty of our planet is often overlooked and taken for granted, I was inspired, strangely, by the Doctor Who Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, and how the character of Astrid reacted to seeing Earth shops as an alien thing, like you might an alien market place in a movie shown from a human perspective, I try to think of things like that more, and it helps me enjoy an appreciate them more. I noticed how truly different and a amazing the creatures of the planet used to be, and how they are now, still amazing, but in a different way. It also made me realise how truly alien and actual alien race would be, in fiction we usually class them into our own different types, insects, reptiles, mammals, and so on, because they are so different to us, but all that diversity has all being made on one single planet, it is almost impossible to imagine how immensely diverse and different life would be on another planet, it’s mind boggling.

Anyway, more important than this insightful discovery, was the discovery of the perfect smell! In the museum we found a cafe, which was baking something, probably a cake, and the smell wafting from it was simply amazing, it made us hungry, yet also satisfied us, it is difficult to describe, and we ended up spending about 5 minutes just standing smelling it.

After the museum, we moved on to the Tate modern art gallery, nowhere near as astounding as the museum, but reasonably enjoyable nether the less, my buddies shoe flapping away as we walked, his soul (sole) almost torn away from him.

After this we headed to the underground near Saint Paul’s cathedral near which a man shouted out in the middle of the street “would anyone like some of my mother’s fruitcake?”, no one replied and and he just shrugged and began eating. I however misheard him initially and thought he said “would anyone like some homeless fruitcake?”, not that I would want any either way.

We spent the rest of the day looking for new shoes for my friend, and failed, we then had dinner at a nice restaurant called “Giraffe” and I ate a burger with a knife and fork for the first time in recent memory. My friend claimed his meal was the best thing he has eaten in a long time, so I guess that we will be going to restaurants more often in the future.

We then left and got the train back home, with the same driver again, providing us with a few chuckles on the way home.

It even plays the Indiana Jones theme tune when you push down the hat, clearly the greatest toy ever. I will have to make it battle with my Dalek Sec toy, if it ever arrives from Forbidden Planet. (yes I know he is from season two, but the black casing is so awesome, goddammit!)

Anyways, so they found a post apocolyptic radioactive earth, which from what I saw, global warming seems to have started setting in, and they decided to get all the main cast members to stand in some church ruins and look sad for 5 minutes before showing us what they could see, A tad annoying but a good cliffhanger…. though I was expecting dinosaurs… that would have been awesome… a Cylon centurion wrestling with a T-rex… maybe that can be the 3 hour final episode I have heard about…

Whilst I’m on the subject, I have recently come across this interesting concept art for the original series, and was unaware that there were other races apart from humans, cylons and the god like people as I have only seen a couple of episodes, which got me thinking, what if the other races appeared in the new series, it’s not going to happen now, but what would be good is if the creators did a spin off mini-series in the same style as the clone wars movie about the Cylons coming across some of the races from the original series after the first Cylon war, maybe each episode from the perspective of each race as they first come into contact with the Cylon fleet and how they try to resist, with each species overlapping each episode as they try to escape. I dunno, just an idea.

Well it started working again on sunday, but I never got round to posting anything untill now…. well, now that my exams are over, I should probably start posting on here more frequently… I just need to think of something to post…

6. “Pimp and race” games, street racing game, track racing games, generally most racing games

I don’t really like racing games, the 2 main examples of these are the “Need for speed” series and the Gran Turismo series, I just find them incredibly dull and repetitive and.. well I just don’t like them, too realistic for my liking. The only racing games I enjoy are ones where you can shoot at the other vehicles, Full Auto and Mario Kart are the first things that come to mind, The only exception of this would be the Burnout games, although you can’t shoot, there are lots of cool crashes but I don’t really like it that much, racing games in general wouldn’t be my first choice to play anyway even if you could shoot. Unless you count Grand Theft Auto as a racing game, which I don’t.

5. Mini-game games

I don’t especially Dislike these games, I just haven’t gotten around to buying one (apart from Project Rub but that came with my DS ) I got close with Warioware but I still didn’t which is a shame because I seems there are alot of these for the Wii. Examples of this are Warioware, Rayman’s raving Rabbids, Mario party, and Wii Play (I also have this but I got it for the Wii remote.)

4. Sports Games

I don’t like sports, I don’t like sports games. Except Wii Sports (only a bit though).

3. Counterstrike

And most of other Tactical FPS games like Rainbow Six Vegas which I enjoyed at first but now I am sick of it but counterstrike is the main one, whenever I play I can hardly get a kill in before I get shot in the head by an enemy, I do enjoy online first person shooters like Halo 3 and Team Fortress 2 but that is because you aren’t being shot in the face every time you walk round a corner. Maybe it’s down to skill, and that I haven’t put any effort in, but what is the point in practising at a game if you don’t enjoy it in the first place, games are meant to be fun.

2. Guitar Hero and instrument games

I don’t like guitar hero! I haven’t played Rock Band, though, but I don’t really want to, I mean, what other console game genre requires use of the pinky finger!?! It’s madness!

1. World of Warcraft and most other fantasy MMORPGs

Boring! That is all I have to say on this subject. I did try playing the game but really couldn’t get into it and lost interest very quickly, my friend tells me that it is a lot better once you are higher levelled, but it doesn’t interest me enough to get to those kinds of levels so, meh. Maybe if they make a Worlds of Starcraft I’ll give it another shot, but until then, no thanks.

Well, there you go, maybe I will do a list of games I enjoy but I can’t be bothered right now.

Anyway, a few minor things have changed in my life, I made a few new friends, I have a part time job, I’m now legally allowed to drink alcohol (not that I do anyway), and my friend’s band, Opium Toad have decided to knuckle down and try to be more of a band and play music, instead of arguing, and that’s going ok so far, even though they don’t have very many songs yet, and have only played 2 gigs, and have decided to make a website anyway, because obviously they are at that stage in their musical careers. Which is here if you are interested.

My plans of making a webcomic got going, and it was alright for a while, but I didn’t have the time to make them, and it became more of a chore, there were no readers and then the website crashed so I decided to postpone it for now, the ideas are still in my head though, maybe I can return to the world of drunk duck…. if it is still around… it would be easier then getting my friend to sort all that stuff for me, because I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to technical stuff, oh well. While I’m on the subject, I might as well mention that some members of opium toad have expressed an interest in making an opuim toad webcomic, as a parody of themselves, and if it gets going I will probably be involved, we just need to get some ideas, motivation and convince my brother (and their bassist) to do the art, and we are set… maybe it should be a summer project….

Anyway, welcome back me! yay!

I am not a scientist and I don’t really know how evolution works fully, but couldn’t this be some kind of sign of evolution, I mean it is a very minor thing so I don’t think it would necessarily take millions of years  for a species to evolve something relatively simple like this, its not like evolving wings or gills or something as drastic as that, it might only take a couple of thousand years for this. I don’t know, it was only a thought, I don’t think prehistoric man would have been created or evolved from monkeys with the ability to understand words which aren’t spelled correctly, for all we know, when languages and writing was created, if you made a spelling mistake then no one could understand what you had written. This could also apply to other small things humans can do instinctively.

Bah, I don’t know, it was  just a thought I might be wrong.