Suppose I'd better moan about something.

It's been a while, my collections of crazy thoughts have gone uncharted for a few weeks.
Some of them could have been lost forever, some of them could have been real important. I might have solved world debt/poverty/cup etc but since i forgot to jot it down, those problems will remain a little longer.
Well, lets run though a few things in my life.
Yesterday, i watched Cloverfield. I did get quite interested in the whole internet backstory, it's still out there on the net somewhere, involving some Japanese corporation and a flavouring in a drink called Slusho which somehow set a monster lose in NYC.
The general idea is like Godzilla. In fact, the idea IS Godzilla, but the monster doesn't have atomic breath.
Oceanside city get trashed by a large sea monster which walks through the town destroying everything, and the Army shoot it, find out bullets don't work, then trash the city themselves.
How they managed to get a shaky-cam version of Godzilla (but, like a new updated one, set in New York instead of Tokyo... just like the last remake of Godzilla...) past the financiers i have no idea.
I'm starting to think i directed the film and forgot about it, as everything happened just as i would have expected.

Talking of obvious film scenes, how many times have they done that "cut the blue wire" thing? I don't even need to mention bomb disposal do i? You already can picture the scene, and what happens in the end? They cut the red wire.
Is there a terrorist training manual that specifically states what colour wires should be used? Why even have 2 different colours. I'm sure i couldn't be arsed to track down some blue wire for something i'm about to blow up.

Current news, fox attacks twin babies in London. I'm not going to bother with the whole city folk vs country folk, as that argument is always country folk trying to prove they are better by living 15 miles away from a petrol station, the place always stinks on cowshit, there is only one pub nearby and the barmaid has already told you to take a hike.
City folk on the otherhand just carry on being awesome, and couldn't give a toss about some bitter yokel trying to prove how great and worldly wise they are 'cos they own a 30 year old landrover.
What i did find slightly amusing was the newspapers that had to run a picture of a fox in the story.
Not the fox, just any fox, for those who don't know what a fox looks like.
I'd like to think everyone knows what a fox looks like, it's just an orange dog.
Apparently there are 50k foxes in the UK, with 30k in urban London, so maybe citydwellers should now be classed as more of an authority on foxes.

Another news story that pissed me off a little was a paper reporter that found a .22 shell casing after the recent Cumbrian shooting spree. They dragged it out to a full column on how they were better than the police who were searching for them, and how it could be important evidence. They told police, and someone later collected it.
WELL DONE, there will be a medal in the post, with the famous "point scoring" ribbon, handed out only to those who can prove they are better than the cops by finding evidence of a shooting at the scene of a shooting that the entire country knew about.

Well, that made me feel better.

The End

Alcohol, the cheaper version of Sodium Pentothal

There once was a drug, a magic truth serum, which made all subjects only tell the truth.
This was called Sodium Pentothal, what the C.I.A didn't realise is there is already a drug that does the same, in easier to administer doses.
This other truth drug is called...
ALCOHOL...
Alcohol is a depressant, that doesn't mean it makes you depressed, quite the opposite, infact, it depresses the normal controls you have on civil life.
Currently, i am under the effect of plenty of bottles of San Miguel and Vodka/Red Bulls, and what does it do?
Well, the effects are quite simple, they remove the barriers of common decency, what was previously off limits is now a great topic of conversation.
So many times have i heard the line " i didn't mean to say that, i was drunk", and i guess it is true, they never MEANT to say it, but they thought if.
It's the thought that counts, and the phrase in the UK goes..
"Never a truer word said in jest".
In reality, "never a truer word said when drunk"
If you really need to know someone, get them drunk beforehand.
Why bother with injections, when 6 bottles of pilsner will do the same trick.
Always be careful of what you say when drunk. You might mean it, but you also might mean to say it at a different, quieter time.
Never a truer word, spoken when drunk.
And i'm well pissed up, so therefore, what i say id true.
Here's to alcohol, the cause of, and end of, all of life's problems.
The End

Lib-Demographics

Firstly, i'd like to say LOSERS!!!!
I'll come back to that point later. Anyway, The whole guessing at elections was getting a little crazy.
The Daily Mirror, usually quite a moderate newspaper, took to some rabid support for the Labour party. That's fine, there is a lot of Labour supporters out there, so undoubtedly there would be at least one paper following them, but the reporting was pure bullshit!
Stories would lead with "Cameron gets a battering in the polls and Brown stands firm!" or similar, and then they would have a little coloured icon, the size of a £1 coin showing Conservative still ahead and Labour trailing.
In other words, the front pages and headlines were pure fiction that the general readership scanned straight over and believed.
They also sent a chicken to follow Tory Dave.
A chicken...
There must have been a real smooth talking guy at the counter of the fancy dress shop...

So with rose-tinted, chicken-lovin' newspapers aside, lets move on to the party that never stops.

So what happened with Lib-Dem? Looking at the opinion polls, they were matching Labour right up until the end.
If you went anywhere near the Internet, you'd assume you've just hacked your way into one of Nick Clegg's dreams.
Twitter and Facebook was full of "fans", and i mean fans in the "i'm mildly interested, and haven't done much today, so i'll click this FB button" fans.
Tory support was almost non existent apart from a few forums. It almost seemed socially unacceptable to be a Tory.

Historically, the UK was always a 2 horse race, with a mysterious donkey that trots in as they are handing out the medals, and this morning was no different.

What seemed to happen was a face was put to a newcomer, it suddenly became fashionable, and everybody was Pro-LibDem.

As the results show though, "everybody" wasn't actually everybody at all, but a small section of fashionistas with a loud voice, And this is what Demographics is all about.

Demographics as i understand it (i've never bothered to actually look up it's definition) is like classifying groups and identifying patterns in them. You'll never get a true picture of an average, as the average is always tainted.

Do a survey on a highstreet on a monday morning, and the results will be different to a saturday morning.
The views of the people haven't changed, just that monday's questionnaire is full of jobless people spending money, housewives, and people who have enough money to free them from 9-5 slavery.
Twitter and facebook is plagued with the narcissistic people that want as much attention as possible. The internet attracts a certain type too.
The cross-section visible on the 'net, and where-ever the polls were done were heavily tainted with the Liberal fan club as to totally overpower the true data.

I fell for it, i must admit. For a lot of it, i thought that Lib-Donkey has amazingly turned itself around and was possible for a photo-finish for second place.
I even had a contingency plan of a fast boat tied up at Dover incase of a shock win.

And how did it end? Lib Dem LOST 5 seats.
LOST!!
If you believed the hype, they were going to steam-roller across the country, painting the towns yellow, and they ended up doing worse than the last time, when no one even knew who they were!

Lib-Dem is the Apple of politics. It looks good, your mates all like it too, but if you look closer, you'll notice it has big problems that people pretend they can't see.
"It just works"
Really Mr Jobs? It doesn't work with Flash though does it?, it doesn't run countless professional softwares, and forever i am seeing people asking about trying to sync iTunes.
Take the iPod, i once came across a Chinese company making clones. They make some awesome kit in Shenzhen, and they had MP3 players that looked just like an iPod.
Someone asked it they worked with iTunes.
Well, it's a windows based MP3 player, it works with anything you stick on it. Doesn't need syncing, special file types, specific software that goes crazy if you have 2 PCs, it... and i'm dying to say this...
It just works with everything...
Fashion and hype strikes again. Everyone wants to be seen with white headphones on.

If you carried out a Poll on twitter for best computing format, you'd see something similar, everyone would say Microsoft sucks, Apple would be the clear leader, and Linux would be something to be feared by both.

Back in the real world, what have we got. Microsoft dominance.

Demographics is something you have to factor into everything you read.
Yes, i'm so cynical, i'd need to test myself first before i'd believe it, but there is a rock steady reason underneath.
For any stream of info, for any opinion, for any questionnaire, is it a true representation, or is the average group below average...

The End

ps. LOSERS!

New Tactics!

When i first started this, i was full of amazing stories and opinions i wanted to force upon the public, and it was great. Thing is, i've felt i've kinda set the world to rights, and finished.
I often spend time thinking of new articles to write, and i've just realised that blogging isn't about that.
I've had "online magazine'o'crap" on my mind instead, so whilst you may get the odd directed piece, i'll probably swap to a more flowing, general style.

Now i've got that crap out of the way, lets discuss the current issues.
First up on the agenda is a missing cat. He's black, pretty big for a cat, and he's also gone A.W.O.L.
He is (i'm not going to say was just yet ;) ) about 13 or so years old, getting on a bit, and called Gyver, after an anime show that was on TV about the time we got him as a kitten. If anyone is familiar with the Gyver "bio-boosted armour" which is a defence system were a kid suddenly grows incredibly sharp appendages, they'll probably figure out why kitty got the name.
He was last seen one night as i put him into the garage, as usual for the last 13 years or so, and the next morning he wasn't there for breakfast.

Quite rude in modern society, but we all have our off days. That evening, no sign, and no traces since.
The odd bits are he is in good health, i'd have expected him to slow down a little, go off food etc if he wasn't feeling well, so an illness would have to be pretty sudden.
As in within hours.
Also, sick animals tend to go somewhere quiet to die, and the trees at the bottom of the garden where he would hang out didn't show any traces.
He went missing between about 12pm and 6am, and was streetwise enough not to go near anyone when outside of the house, so that rules out him getting a kick up the arse from a passing drunk.
It would also be too late for him to be getting shut inside a shed or similar.
That only leaves a couple of options left.
Human/feline foul play is unlikely at this time of night, but maybe hit by a car?

Well, i don live on a pretty major dual carriageway, but the cat grew up here, and i've never seen him venture out past the front garden wall towards the road.

Would he do that in the hours of darkness? still unlikely, as i spend most of my time sitting near the window, like now, in a darkened room watching the traffic and people go by.
Plus, i'm out of the house long before the council bodysnatchers (yes, there is actually a department that pick up roadkill) and no dead cats about.

The neighbours are dogwalkers too, and there network hasn't seen anything either.

It's seems the concrete jungle just came alive and took him, no bodies, no blood...

There are often mentions of big cat sightings in the UK, most of which happen to be idiots zooming in on a regular cat, or just videoing a dog, and pointing out every detail that screams "dog" as evidence it is a cat, but in this case, the mystery is why the lack of big cat sighting...

I'd put a pic up, but haven't got any to hand, but black, furry, greenish eyes etc...
you know the drill...

The End

Politicians- Rogue Traders...

This is an entirely unscripted entry, I'm just taking one topic, opening my mind, and letting it all spill out.
What Politics is, in my opinion, is the art of selling nothing, claiming glory for one's self, and delivering nothing.
At one point in history, people didn't like who was in charge, and chose someone else to do it, and from there on, we have forever, and will forever, be stuck in a cycle of ego-maniacs trying to get the best for themselves, whilst pretending they are getting the best for you.
There is a General Election looming for the UK, and it seems to be going less on what the parties say they will do, but how good they are and avoiding answering questions. A good politician can give a lengthy speech on a question and after an hour, say thankyou and wander off without giving an answer.
It shouldn't be a popularity contest, he who kisses the most babies isn't automatically the best leader.
One thing that has always annoyed me is how the cabinet reshuffles will take the minister for health or something, and then shift them to be the minister for transport, or education.
That clearly shows political jobs would have to be advertised with "no experience necessary" at the bottom, as there is no way the best person to make decisions on one field will be the best person in something else a week after.
The same is with Sales really, a huge number of salesmen know sweet FA about what they are selling, it's the fact they can talk/bully someone into buying something they didn't really want.
There is no brand loyalty, one week they will tell you they have the best product on the market, the next week they'll swap to a competitor for more money and say the same thing.
Wave a cheque infront of one, and he'll lie and say whatever you need to hear for him to get the money.
They aren't interested in you getting a good deal, they just want to make themselves happy, at any cost.
Politics is the same. A politician will say anything for a vote, and the money that comes with it, as all it takes is a change of mind a few months later, and the promises die off.
Every week i get leaflets from some faceless lying scumbag with grainy pictures of what they have done, trying to make it look like they care.
There are photos of balding middle aged losers standing by potholes which they ring up the council, the council do the work and fill them in, and then Chubby takes the credit on another job well done.
Do they care? No.
All they will do is visit a few pensioners and sit bored whilst they moan about kids riding bikes too fast, or someone with a different skin tone parking their car in non British way, then pop outside, take a pic of some litter, ring the council and get someone else to clean it up, and head off for lunch, making sure they get a receipt to claim back for the steak and a pint in the local.
Feet up, big smile, another person suckered into a vote.

Get enough votes and you win a seat in the House of Commons, where you can have free lunches every day, a free house in London, and best of all, you don't actually have to go the the House of Commons!
There isn't a register or actual working hours, you just turn up for a while, maybe vote on a bill you weren't really listening too as you filled in the crossword, and then back to the flat to organise getting some decorators in!

You can see why they will be knocking on doors looking for votes, it's a ticket to the big easy.
Just remember, if someone asks you a question, first say how good a question it is, repharase the question, state the real question is something else, and keep on going til they look bored, and run off.
The expenses scandal was great. Everyone would claim for what they could if they were told it was allowed.
If your job gave you a free car and house, you'd jump at the chance.
The politicians took as much as they were told they could, but unfortunately for them, it was all leaked, and everyone could see they were just regular people looking for the most they could get their hands on.
Everyone does their job for money, it makes the world go round, but politicians spend so much time pretending that they are doing this just for the people, it does look bad when it turns out they aren't the saints they claim to be.

So to sum up, as a natural skeptic, my gift is x-ray vision, i can step back, ignore the glare and see what lies beneath.
The only people who are really selfless are the unknown charity workers who stay out of the press, and rebuild African villages. It's an insult to mention a politician in the same sentence (I did have a full stop between those sentences to cover my arse)

And as a final point, disregarding the fact that politicians are arseholes, what about the democratic system?
Take the usual comment of "half the people you know are below average".
Even look at yourself in the cold light of day, you can't really say much more than the fact you are also pretty average.
That's what average usually means. Yes, there has to be half the people you know being "above average", but a little bit of modesty should keep you quietly confident you might be a bit better than the rest.

Back to the voting, the people who say who runs the country are the huddled masses of the UK, average, below average, and maybe a few that are actually interested in governments and actually have a clue.

Most of the people voting either don't pay too much attention to that whole world, or are the welfare state scroungers, living in council houses, claiming government money to pay for the fact they couldn't be arsed to buy a condom, or they figured out having a kid at 15 means they will never have to work again, and other people can pay for them.
One things that scares me about having kids is how much they will cost. I can kiss goodbye to anything fun i used to do to buy overpriced GAP jumpers that will be too small in 3 months time.

Not a problem for Donna and Wayne and they just claim more for clothing.
I see their views all the time. Racism always seems to be linked to low intelligence.
It's always the stupid people moaning about how the Polish are taking all their jobs when they'd run a mile from anything the jobcentre has to offer, whilst the Immigrant will run towards the job.

Am i saying the UK's workforce is lazy? No, what i am saying is that the Polish, Lithuanian, Slovakian etc migrants who make the effort to move countries looking for work are far better than the fat dossers that sit at home claiming taxpayers money.
I'm sure those countries have lazy slobs too, but you won't see them as they wouldn't get out of bed, let alone change countries.

Now it's these more stupid people who can have quite a big effect, voting for stuff they don't understand.
Even the average people like you and me are hardly qualified to say who is the best for running an entire country.

It looks like the democratic world has walked into a trap where idiots carry the same weight as the smart, and whatever way you vote, you'll end up with the same breed of smug salesmen selling an image of an angel, and delivering a snake.

And i bet they'd even write Angel on the box, and not poke any airholes for the snake, and the snake would arrive dead.

I've now got short while before the TV debating competition starts, the idea is whoever can make the other look worse, wins the biggest house.

The End

The Magic of Magic.

There has always been magic of some description. From the very basics, anything that couldn't be explained was put down to magic.
By that reasoning, Magic in itself just means "i don't understand" and it was separated out into different possibilities, religion being one explanation, aliens and UFOs are a current favourite these days too.
Arthur C Clarke once said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" and it's true, anything that isn't understood step by step can be passed off as magic.
As we all know (at least, i hope we all know...) there isn't any such thing as magic, just unknowns waiting to be known.
Some, such as the numbers based stuff, is just maths, but hidden. You've probably seen the sites where you add up a whole bunch of random numbers, divide them, multiply them by something, and at the end, someone has predicted the final answer.
Others can use science, like magnets, to make objects behave in unusual ways.

If you want to be a firm sceptic, question everything, and watch what they don't want you to watch.

Your average magician is far more disciplined than they make out, every move, word, even mistake, is well planned to distract you. The simplest part of magic is confusion.

Have you ever seen those tricks where someone is sawn in half, or stands in a box with swords being thrust in?
The trick here isn't surviving the swords, or being cut in half. That's just what you are programmed to believe from all the theatricals at the start.

To find out what happens, you need to pick your jaw up off the floor, screw on your sensible head, and ask yourself a few questions, "can a person be cut in half? can someone survive being stabbed with swords?"

Usually, without a massive team of surgeons, you can't. If it was really possible, why is it done in a box so you can't see the blood and guts? I'd like to think everyone does realise it can't happen, but part of them wants to believe.

I suppose the first thing to remember is that the impossible is still impossible. Cross that bridge and you can go on to understanding what you have just seen.

So now that you understand that what you think just happened, didn't happen, start thinking of ways to make it seem like it did.

Forget about all the "show" for a second, and think what could have been done.
For the sawing in half trick, you know that the head part is going to be real, and you know that a body can't be cut in half, so logically, the whole magician bit is in the first half of the box.

For the sword tricks, you know that you can't survive being stabbed repeatedly, so the swords mustn't have entered the body.

CONGRATULATIONS! You've just figured it out!

It really is as simple as that, for most magic tricks, what you think they must have done, is exactly what they have done. Remember when i said "the trick here isn't surviving the swords, or being cut in half"? Well, now it's time to address the real tricks.

Some people now will be screaming "BUT HE..." or "I SAW HER...." something or another. Now that bit was the real trick. The illusion was a person being cut in half, but the trick was making you think they didn't just pull their feet up.

It's far easier to hide moving about inside a box than to survive some real dangerous weaponry. Loads of these little tricks are then employed, often making as little fuss about them as possible, eg. one half of the box will wiggle it's feet without being asked, or without having your attention obviously drawn to it.
The illusionist knows you will see it, but they want it to be your own discovery, as you will take onboard something you find out yourself far better than something you are told.
You'll eventually add up these trick-lets, convince yourself the quick idea you had at the start can't be the right explanation, and leave putting it down to magic.

If you question everything, you'll start to notice odd things that are done for seemingly no reason. You will try to be distracted from these, and even if you aren't, you'll probably not spot the link, and forget about it.

Take for example David Copperfield's disappearing Statue of Liberty.
New York didn't notice it missing, the viewers weren't able to see it in the act of disappearing, and they were also only allowed to see just the statue.

Put simply, you can't make it disappear, and the obvious solution is the viewers were looking somewhere else. With the large curtains at the side, and vision blocked, all that needed to be done was turn the seating area slowly, and then show a patch of blank sky. The trick here is to hide people being moved on a turntable.

All of a sudden, "the amazing disappearing statue" turns into "the amazing being turned slowly so you don't notice" and it becomes far more believable. It's a lot easier to do that, but that wouldn't get you the viewing figures.

I'm not being a magic sceptic to ruin magic, i just enjoy the challenge of unravelling someone else's smart ideas, brain vs brain.

Keep an eye on the next tricks you see, watch the magician's other hand, ask why he dropped it below the table, watch what he does with it when he shows his other hand.
Watch the backgrounds, the assistants, somewhere, you will spot the clues.
Was the amazing prediction that turned out to be true revealed before you heard the true story, or was it after?

However you think it was done is usually the right answer, now question what makes you think you could have been wrong.

I admire the skill of magicians, often they use very risky distraction and do something in plain view in the hope that everyone was distracted, and they usually get it done perfectly.

It's just that i prefer staying a step ahead...

The End

10 facts about Google

1 - Typing "google" as a search query into Google will destroy the universe.
2 - 8 out of 10 cats prefer Google, down from 9/10 in the early 80's.
3 - Google records 36 million results for "where are my keys" so it can be inferred that either Google is watching a lot of people when they come home from work, or it is infact Google that hides them.
4 - NASA planned to install Google on the space shuttle to help find new worlds, but the project failed as people only knew the names of planets they have already found.
5 - Google Street view is mostly made of up images of just 15 streets, but photoshopped and mirrored, to give the impression of covering the entire globe.
6 - Google knows the location of Atlantis, and as a result doesn't understand why it is referred to as The Lost City, and it assumes you are looking for a different, still hidden, City
7 - Google was born in Connecticut. It's parents were a Dictionary and a Phone book, and it's first job was at a Help Desk for AOL. It was there that Google learned to love answering questions, and to hate the human race.
8 - An anagram of Google is Le Goog, which may or may not be French slang for Google.
9 - Google's autocomplete doesn't actually list the most popular searches, but uses wifi to find out what your subconscious mind is really looking for. Due to documented phenomenon stating that if you actually knew what your subconscious was thinking, you would instantly go insane, it pretends that other people were as twisted as you are.
10 - Google originally started out as an internet forum, but quickly realised that there were too many people asking really simple questions out of laziness instead if researching an answer for themselves, and becoming an actual search engine would cut it's workload significantly.

Will Troll for food...

Although prostitution is claimed to be the oldest profession, that's only because the humble Troll asked for nothing in return for their services, merely the joy of seeing someone really wound up.
It's always been about, but only within the last 5-10 years has the word "troll" become commonplace, and that's due to the faceless playground called the internet.
Trolling is almost like a new art, the aim is to control other people, and guide them down a path they don't want to take without them knowing.

The simplest form is the Devil's advocate, where objectionable or pessimistic responses are made to queries just to explore other options. Quite often, it's pretty valid, for example, when someone is planning their holiday, and going on and on about how they'll be relaxing on a beach, you can just remind them they are in a tsunami zone, or ask them what they'd do if it rained everyday non stop.
It can be valid, even not a bad idea to have backup plans, but the main point is you get a bit of peace and quiet as they are knocked back down to planet earth.

On a bigger scale, is the "kicking a wasp nest" strategy. I don't know about you, but i've always found pissing off wasps to be hilarious, and being honest, they deserve it. They really are nature's arseholes. If you don't have a wasp nest handy, but want to see a small war break out infront of you, you can always do it online.

Most forums and message boards are clever enough not to fall for it, so you might need a little planning and acting beforehand. Get it right though, and you'll have a little action movie play out on the screen.
The simple ones would be telling an Apple forum that Microsoft is better, or a Starwars group that Jar Jar Binks was the best character, and the 70's/80's films were crap.
Within a few hours, there will be 20 pages of arguments and insults, and many people getting wound up over little points that aren't really important.

Sometimes you will be caught by some, and you'll get the standard response of "don't feed the trolls" as a message for everyone else to ignore it, and calm down.
It never works though, coming back to my earlier post of group mentality, there will always be people whipped up into a frenzy and will walk straight into the trap they have just read about.
You may even come across the legendary reverse trolls.

Whilst the general internet can be described as stupid people pretending to be clever, the troll is a clever person, pretending to be stupid.
The reverse troll is at the top of the Troll hierarchy, a bit like White Knight, defending the people with knight-like skills.
Rememeber not to confuse this white knight with the internet brand of white knight.
The internet white knight is the guy who will always jump to the defence of anyone he suspects to be female.
The ironic part is some of these online women are just men trolling as it's funny to watch half a forum bend over backwards in the hope of actually speaking to a girl.

Reverse Trolls rarely win though, the aim is to annoy and upset the original troll, and get them to go ballistic at their PC. When it does work out, it is an amazing sight to behold, but don't wait up for one.

The best trolls go unnoticed. As someone famous once said (I'm thinking Verbal Kint from the Usual Suspects) "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist."
The good (or bad...) Trolls are the same, they will play an entire community with a smile on their face, and no one ever realises.
It can be very simple, just keeping a thread alive, agreeing with other people, to throw a bit more fuel on the fire.

The "acting stupid" method is another good hidden technique. All you need to do is pretend you are an idiot, and a crowd will soon form to get a kick in.
You can really go to town on being stupid here, tell a motoring forum you decided to change to diesel in your petrol powered car as you heard you get better economy, and ask them why your car doesn't work anymore.
Maybe look for help on an electronics forum after you have just washed your phone under the tap to clean the dust out.
Advance techniques include not mentioning the real stupidity at the start, and let people slowly draw it out. Guide them to ask you the right questions, and they won't realise your cunning plan.

The last form of Trolling, is the private joke. Numerous common ones have appeared over the ages, some have even broke into the mainstream, such as the Rickroll.
Originally, there was no rick, only a duck with wheels.
Yes, a duck... with wheels, and this was the duckroll. This first appeared years ago, sourcing indicate that ebaumsworld did it to start with, and an enticing link would be placed which just redirected to a picture of a duck with wheels.
With the creation of Youtube, and handy video sharing, came the Rickroll.
Instead of a picture, a link would be posted to a new music video, or a great clip, and you'd just end up Rick Astley's "Never gonna give you up".

A more text based version is the classic "Bel Air"
To pull off a Bel Air, you need to start a long story, and draw the audience in close, then graft in the complete lyrics to the theme tune of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Some great (and no so great) examples...
raepmykipz Bel Airs Christian TV

raepmykipz again, this time with Rickroll

A famous, although almost universally accepted as trolling, account of a guy who tipped an energy drink into his Motorbike.

Malodrax, either the worlds greatest troll, or most twisted maniac.

You'll see them, they are out there, you can even join them, but whatever you do, don't get wound up by them!

The End

Facial and Social Recognition Strategies and Guinness

If there is one thing a seasoned Guinness drinker will tell you, it's that it tastes better in Dublin. Maybe i need to try some in Dublin, as i can't stand the stuff.
To make matters worse, i'm supposed to be Irish too.
To me, it's a thick black liquid with a ferrous flavour, that probably comes closest to what my idea of used engine oil would taste like.
It's often said that Guinness doesn't travel. Well, it does, you can get it all over the globe, but to be more exact, "It doesn't travel well".

Generations have remarked on how the Guinness always tastes better in Ireland. Guinness themselves aren't too keen on statements like that, as it suggests most of the world is getting a substandard product. Guinness themselves even have travelling officials that make sure the pint is poured correctly, and contains the regulation shamrock on the top.
Drawing pictures in the foaming head of a drink is serious business for Guinness, and if the correct settlement time and logo are both to the directive, the pub or bar will receive a certificate saying the bar staff can pour drinks.
In all fairness, it's a reverse-touristy thing, it's meant to convey a special atmosphere and feel to an otherwise quite common drink.
The real Irish pubs rarely bother with shamrocks in the top, and tend to keep a knife handy to skim off the head before passing it over.
That isn't as fancy for the general populous, so a little more ceremony is added.

Back to the travelling, Guinness say it's the same anywhere, (and the official certificate helps) and the only difference is the fact the Dublin atmosphere and holiday feel (or familiarity of the local for Dubliners) is the cause of the perceived change.

I'm 50/50 on this, i can see each side, but i can also see a reason for each statement, so a non Guinness drinker like myself is really going to struggle finding the truth.

On to another point from the title, is the Human capability to recognise very slight genetic clues in a person's face. On a larger scale, there are some pretty familiar faces and races around the world. It's not hard to figure out that Reginald VelJohnson, the chauffeur in Crocodile Dundee, wasn't of Aboriginal descent, and that Mr Kobayashi in the Usual Suspects didn't have an ounce of Japanese in him.
Why Hollywood can't find actors of the correct ethnicity is beyond me, but that's all part of life's rich tapestry.
On a more local scale, tests have been done with ethnically similar people who have managed to recognise people from their home town. This is unlikely to work for London, but it shows there are very subtle differences that your unconscious mind can pick up on, even if you can't see it.
A similar, but more obvious form of recognition is Social recognition. Whilst in LA, lots of gold jewellery and a jogging pants would be seen as a wannabe for Desperate Housewives, in the UK, it's the complete opposite.
Here, big gold earrings are an anti-status symbol. The more people wear, the more you know they are still paying off the loans for them.
In Italy, it's pretty suave to be flying round the piazzas on a moped, in the UK, it tends to be annoying teenagers. What you might recognise as one group in your home town, tourists and travellers will be unaware, and likewise, on holiday, you'll struggle to spot the high fliers from the bottom feeders.

Linking these ideas together is another one of my theories. Previously, i called it the holiday effect, although thinking about it, the Guinness effect is a bit more catchy.

Even if i just travel to different towns, let alone different countries, i always get the feeling that the women are more beautiful away from home.
Back in my city centre, i'll be able to recognise the kind of people that would shake your hand, and those that would shake you down.
When i'm in a different country, i can't spot them at all. Being out of touch with the social structures in different countries means i've got quite a good chance of asking the local thugs where the nearest cashpoint is.
Crime upon tourists backs this up, with out of touch foreigners being easy pickings for the criminals.
Together, this shows that you always rely on an instinct based upon what you see, which frequently doesn't work anywhere else.
You could add the pure holiday effect into this, and say that away on a fun filled holiday adds to the poor population you've forced yourself upon in the tourist bars.
Tests done on football fans showed they they felt more attractive and confident when their team won, so certainly blue skies and sunshine is going to boost your own ego.

Another possible aspect is the deep desire to mix genes with others. Could the aspect of recognising distant relatives in your hometown put you off in favour of something more exotic?

Overall, it's unlikely that everyone in the world happens to be born in Uglytown rather than Hotville. (Apart from people from the UK town of Grimsby. The town synonymous with fishing, bears a name taken from the Viking invaders, and it actually translates in Danish to.. yep, you've guessed it, Uglytown...)

A common phrase used in many places across the world is "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence", and that sums up The Guinness effect perfectly.
The grass isn't greener, it's just a different green, and that difference is the factor that draws people in. Failure to spot undesirable giveaways, and an optimistic outlook makes something different appear better, but for no tangible reason.

So next time a friend comes back from holiday, telling you how it was full of hunks/babes, ask them how the Guinness was...

The End

Я скучаю по старой России

For those who can't speak or read Russian, or can't find google translate (http://translate.google.com/), the title says "I miss the old Russia"
The Russia language is quite fun, once you figure out what the Russian letters sound like, you realise how many English words are used, or Russian words that you've heard of.
России is "Russia", P is R for example.
Anyway, i don't want to take anything away from what it is now, but the old USSR was awesome. The Americans had this odd hatred of Communism, it was like a red rag to a bull, but a lot of the other countries just saw them as a sleeping, although industrious, giant.
There were Apple to US's Microsoft, and not a threat to anyone apart from the USA.
I guess even the language and Cyrillic alphabet added to it, it was a massive country with a Space program, it's own vehicles and planes (as they had to do everything themselves), and a huge army.
Everything seemed so familiar but yet so different. Locked away by themselves, they continued on a path parallel but just that little bit odd and mysterious to attract attention.
Talking of similar things,
Concordski
Looks familiar?

The USSR was a very confusing place for the rest if the world to understand, rich and yet poor, amazing technology and science, but also agricultural and backwards at the same time.

I know that times were hard, i guess i've just bought into the communist propaganda, but the place was awesome, military parades, such a sense of pride, great posters and a catchy national anthem.

They were always the bad guys in films, James Bond spent a lot of his life thwarting their plans, and US paranoia made crazy films such as Red Dawn (Red Dawn at IMDB) where Soviet paratroopers invade a small midwest US town.

One thing Russia was famous for was nuclear research. They had top scientists, plenty of nuclear weapons, and quite a few nuclear power plants. Personally, i think dealing with nuclear waste is far easier, cleaner and "greener" than current power stations, but the add accident has demonised the whole thing.

Chernobyl is one of the first things people think of when they think of Russia. (It's actually in Ukraine, but at the time was part of the Soviet Union.)
You can read the full and chilling sequence of events here- Chernobyl on Wiki
Stories of firemen picking up odd honeycomb sections without realising they were part of the reactor core...
The town where the workers lived, Pripyat, was evacuated in hours, and has been a ghost town ever since.
Pripyat in pictures
It's like a modern day Pompeii, a complete town frozen in time. Urban decay has often been a draw for the more curious, to see a town being reclaimed by nature, tarmac giving way to trees is truly thought provoking.
Take a quick look through Google Image's cache of Pripyat pictures. The city itself has been used as the backdrop in many games too.

Today, Russia has changed, I deal a lot with vehicle electronics and software, and Russia is a major centre for homebrew tech. With the changes has come uninmaginable wealth for many. Even Hollywood has changed its clichés from the big bad communists to "Nouveaux Riche" millionaires.

A great place to check out what it's like now is English Russia

"Everyday something interesting happens in the countries occupying 1/6 of the populated world."

You can see even more at Dark Roasted Blend
Remember to take a look round DRB if that interests you, it's a great site, which can either match everything you ever wanted, or totally blow over your head.
Keep an eye on ebay too, ex Soviet era products are big business, there was a certain style and charm to the Red Star.

I'm happy for the people of Russia, it's a new world with new opportunities for the West and East, away from problems and poverty faced by many before, but i do miss the whole atmosphere of the Mighty Soviet Union.

До свидания!

The End

Science, Religion and Obama...

Seemingly, there isn't much that links the three topics, you could have war i guess, but i was thinking of something else.
First off, I'll lay my cards on the table, I'm an Atheist and a Scientist. I studied Geology for 5 years.
It's a subject pretty close to Tapas, you have a little bit of everything, but can't really say you did one thing by itself. For example, Chemistry (of rocks), Physics (of rocks), biology (dinosaurs, evolution etc), earthy stuff like volcanoes and earthquakes, and the Space one where you learn about planets and stuff. It gives a pretty good rundown of how the universe works, space and life, and you have this clarity of understanding everything just enough to be happy. That's my religion, and it all works.

Some people manage to be religious and scientific, the Muslim world were leaders of science years ago, easily as good as the western greats you are taught about at school. In my world though, you can do one of two things, ask questions, or accept answers.
Yes, i suppose you need to accept the answer to the question you just asked, that's not the point, what i mean is you either accept what you are told, or you question it, finding out the answers for yourself.
My "conversion" to atheism came from questioning what i was told in the bible, plus my uncanny ability to spot apocryphal tales (ie. Urban Legends, stories that have a moral kick in the ass to teach you a lesson).
I'm not going to go into the Science vs. Religion debate, (i'll save that for a rainy day) as it's been running for thousands of years and still no one won, so i'm unlikely to summarise it in a blog post and end theology.
What i do want to talk about is some of the themes that always crop up, the humility of man is one, which is the one that goes something like "we're pretty awesome, so something else must have made us, as there is no way we'de be this awesome left to ourselves".
Another common theme is the carrot and the stick. Be good, and you'll go to heaven/paradise, be bad though, and you'll burn forever in a fire.
That's a pretty crappy end, but if you did get burnt at the stake for being a witch, it would be quite ironic that your punishment would be like the first day of eternity, and no big deal.
The idea of an afterlife gave people something to work to. In the same way that if the world was to end in, say 2012, for example, and the world's governments knew, they wouldn't say anything, as there would be complete anarchy.
All the great punishments involve a factor of time. Murder would get you years in prison, but if the world was to end tomorrow, there would be no consequences, and no decent punishments.
Religion has always had reincarnation, or a heaven type place to go to afterwards which was something to look forward to, but what do the scientists look forward to?

The answer is still the same, heaven, or rather the heavens. Space.
The only thing is, it's not looking too good. Obama has pretty much cancelled the Space projects, and i can see why, it is a pretty expensive hobby to collect moon dust, but there was always the draw of getting out there in a space ship, and popping round to see the neighbours.
Throwing my cards down again, i do believe there will be life out there, but i also believe they haven't come anywhere near us, and they don't spend their time abducting drunks, drawing in the grass, and hovering over cities where everyone has a cameraphone, but only one person actually notices and youtubes it.
Another important point is just how big space is.
The nearest planet outside of the solar system is about 15 light years away, so even travelling at a speed so fast that even the laws of physics can't keep up, it'll take 15 years to get there.
Add to that -
Note to Captain Kirk: Warp speed will kill you
the fact that at those speeds, you'd get mashed up by some of the smallest, lightest things ever.

So we can't really travel about to different places, and research into different places has been cut back, so it looks like we're stuck.
It's not a bad planet, this one, but it's a little claustrophobic to think we'll always be stuck here.

There just might be a way out, and it's the odder bits of physics, quantum physics, Relativity etc. In short, the theory of Relativity is the 4th dimension curved space one with worm holes and warp drives, and quantum physics is one that says that stuff acts differently depending on whether you are looking at it or not, and that is somehow knows it's being watched.

Whilst religion is happy knowing that it'll get past the pearly gates, Science is crossing it's fingers that we'll figure out a way off this planet.

In the end, Science and Religion do share some common ground, we all need something to look forward to, and we're both pretty sure it's up.

The End

10 Super Whales facts

1) Moby Dick never existed, but Capt. Ahab needed to tell his wife something why his boat was wrecked.
2) Whales come with a socket on the top for a parasol in sunny weather.
3) They often beach themselves if they have finished their swimming early.
4) Whales communicate with deep tones in an unintelliagable language called Welsh.
5) The largest Whale recorded was seen in Dukes nightclub, Chelmsford in 1986.
6) Whale Sharks are pretty tetchy about their name, and being associated with Whales, so prefer the Vietnamese name Ca Ong, or "Sir Fish".
7) Whales can't chew, bro, and avoid potato chips because of this.
8) Breeching occurs when Whales become lost, and look for landmarks, which unfortunately are few and far between at sea.
9) The Jonas brothers were swallowed by a whale for 3 days and 3 nights, and this was recorded in many different religions.
10)Whales avoid competitive sports in favour of Jogging and Rock climbing.

The End

Facebook fails

Facebook is a handy resource. I know people from all over the country, and it's nice to see what they are getting up to, where they are going etc, but it also has a bad side.
Apart from the often quoted "facebook fails" involving an office junior slagging off the company, with a glib managerial response, i see a lot of retarded groups forming. So many with titles containing major spelling errors, usually in ALLCAPS too.
ALLCAPS IS SHOUTING, SO DON'T DO IT ON THE INTERNET.

I guess it's a result of having "Groups" freely available to any keyboard masher, who decides to become e-famous overnight.

There are some other types that fit the description of a virus in some ways.
Over the last week, i have seen a few groups with semi-interesting titles, usually regarding a picture or similar that require you to sign up to the group to see what all the fuss is about.

I'm not so stupid to click on any group like that, but it seems many of my "friends" are, so i'll receive frequent notifications about gullible people joining poor groups to see a picture that doesn't exist.
By the time they realise it ain't all that, they have already sent updates to everyone they know, stating they will fall for anything.

It's the same as chain letters. Usually some e-mail carrot of interest (which, more often than not is made up) followed by the stick of "pass it on" or something bad will happen.
Many even go so far as to suggest years of bad luck or death if you don't forward it to 30 people in the next hour.
Seriously, if i receive an e-mail like that, i feel embarrassed for the person that sent it.
They have just advertised to the world that they are pretty stupid, and beleive in anything people tell them.

If you hear an unusual story that you simply must tell everyone about, check www.snopes.com first, as you'll probably find it's a poor urban legend, and passing it on makes you either a liar or a simpleton.

No one knows the reason behind these odd messages, some of the groups are uninformed Daily Mail readers, looking for the next cause to get upset about, some are life's dregs hoping to steal a little culture, or gain the moral highground by pretending to care about some emotional crap, and some are e-mercenaries, trying to become famous although the common factor is a lack of traceability of the stories.

The next time you see a group "10,000 people who..." or "I carnt belife this pikture", ignore it!

Evolution is an ongoing process, hampered these days by compassion for stupid people, but at least try to even the balance by shredding e-mails, ignoring groups, and killing off Urban Legends.

The game is on, you are already a player.

The End

Getting old.

Just to clear things up, the title is about the concept of ageing, not the usual facebook cry for sympathy or attention (must remember that for another rant...).

To me, age has always been just a number. So much so, i quite often forget how old i am as it not something i dwell upon a lot, and i don't fill in countless forms looking for my age.
I'd guess i'm asked about 10 times a year max. how old i am, and most of them are on the day i got to the pub slightly earlier than usual, which would be my birthday.

At school, it was always a big thing, you'd push around the year below, be pushed around by the year above, and there was a law not to mix with other years. You never really notice yourself getting older, just everyone else getting younger. I remember the year 7's starting one year, and i thought to myself how tiny they were.

Once i was out of school for a few years, working with different ages, i started to notice a few odd things. One was old people still act like kids, tell jokes, trip people over etc.
Workplace pranks are often far better than anything ever pulled off at school. The idea that old people were boring, and no fun was all a big myth.
Another thing that got me, was without the different years at school, i'm real crap at estimating ages.
I'm in awe of doormen being able to pick out underage kids, the best i can do is a shaky "older than/younger than" and that's usually wrong.

The group of friends i hang about with vary in age quite a bit, i'm pretty much the oldest, but not by much, and the ages spread down by over ten years and i don't really notice it.

By now, i guess some of you are thinking i'm in denial, but i'll present a few bits of evidence to the contrary!

Looking back, through the history books, WW2 in my opinion was fought by kids. Spitfire pilots were 22 years old, soldiers were 19. OK, given the drama going on in those days, i'd probably be heading down to the RAF recruiting offices myself, but it's not something i'd feel ready for if there wasn't real urgency.

These days, 40-50 year old people i know are on facebook, 30 y/o's are still playing away on XBox360's. Jeremy Clarkson hasn't even considered giving up jeans either.
When i had a SNES, no one older than 18 paid much attention to them. Age seems to be disappearing as a barrier to anything.

There now is a massive middle age, were kids grow up quicker, and stay at the same level right up to 60+, tweeting to each other, Multiplay on Call of Duty, before they finally get pushed into a home.

I can't see it being long before old folk's homes have a PS4 or Xbox720 in the tiny little flats.

So if you're worried about ticking clocks, thinking about writing "gettin' old :( " as you status somewhere, relax.
Somebody out there, a lot older than you, is going for a killstreak.

If you are feeling old, that's only 'cos you've let yourself down. Don't feel it's time to grow up and be sensible, you are only as old as how you act, and as Shakespeare said "Tha world's a stage, and all tha bro's and ho's merely playa's"

The End

Mass hysteria!

Although people fainting, collapsing, or streaming with tears would normally drag out my sympathetic side, there is a few cases when all i want to do is an Airplane! style backhander, with a "Pull yourself together, man!"

I've always been amazed at group mentality. Hook 500 computers together and you'll get something superior to the sum of the parts, stick 500 people together, and they'll seem to locate the stupidist, and elect them as spokesman for the group.
Many people have struggled with the concept of artificial intelligence, it's detection or classification, but put simply, if you have a little home network that performs poorly, you've probably discovered AI, and Skynet is on it's way.

It may work for animals too, if a group of chimps gang together and escape from a pen, they have proved themselves to be regular beasts.
If they started screaming at things, then they hold the key to humanity.

The worst cases are Mass Hysteria and it drives me crazy. I start to feel embarrassed about being Human, but i do have a get out clause.
I'm a man

The very word Hysteria was thought to be a female condition, linked to the Uterus, and it does seem to be a female thing.
Ever seen crowds of crying teens at a pop concert? That's exactly it, and it drives me crazy. I just can't see how having the latest pop act spoon fed to their fans makes them burst into tears.
Maybe it's a subconscious cry for help from the real brain trying to escape the forced drivel. It's the complete opposite of the emotions they should be having, and it's precipitated by the fact there are loads of people around them.

There is something about crowds that drive women insane. Take a look at the yearly security videos of January sales, it's like a swarm of locusts that will climb over the bodies of the fallen, and riot, to get that dress.

Men may show similar traits, often in football grounds etc. but nowhere near the same degree.
Maybe women just get themselves into these situations more often, if there were bands popular with solely teenage boys that could pack out a stadium, you might see similar, but somehow i'd have faith in the boys not screaming "i love you" before fainting, and generally being far cooler and self restrained.

It's not something that would ever happen to me, I'm impervious to the effect.
If i was in a crowd full of crying teens, I'd fly into a furious rage, shouting at them to get control of themselves.

Oh.. hang on...
Mass hysteria strikes again.

The End

10 Amazing Internet facts

1. The Internet was created as a college project by Al Gore, and it's initial construction took 6 months, used 350ft of timber, and approximately 1000 nails.

2. Fishermen experimented with the Internet for deep sea fishing, but found they could not filter out dolphins as easily, so returned to regular nets. Norton is working on Dolphin safe Internets, but it is feared the cost may be too much.

3. The Internet is one of the most popular games on the PC format, selling over 12,000 copies on it's first day of release. It was first completed 14 months after release by a Korean programmer. He described the end boss as challenging, but slightly predictable.

4. The Internet has no snakes on it anywhere. A legend describes St Patrick driving snakes out of the internet, but glaciation and the lack of landbridges are the more accepted theories in the scientific community.

5. Star Wars was originally set on the Internet, but the lack of Ewoks moved production to a small moon, where filming took place.

6. The Internet is approximately 7 miles wide, and 4 miles high. To walk across the Internet, you'd need sturdy boots, and a sensible jumper, as some parts are in Russia.

7. Voting has been banned for the Internet, so it can not take part in any local, national or international elections, but it is allowed to pass on the votes for others.

8. The Internet picked up a speeding fine in California in 1996, which remains unpaid to this day.

9. It has only had 2 safety recalls, one in 1993 for faulty electrical wiring, and one in 2004, when it was discovered that under certain conditions, it may catch fire.

10. In 2002, The Internet sparked controversy by changing its listed Interests to "Hookers and blow", but quickly retracted that statement, claiming the comment was taken out of context.

The End

How to be a stalker, or avoid one.

I've always been pretty good at "Internet Research", and i'll be the first to admit, there is a fine line between just being creepy and stalking someone, and using the tools given to you to find information on someone, for whatever reason.

Firstly, lets cover the legal aspects, most of the searching and info you can pull from the 'net isn't really covered by privacy laws, if it's been published so anyone can see, without guessing passwords (or hacking - technically, guessing a password isn't hacking, but there are people out there who know what they are doing, and can get past security without needing passwords) it is fair game.

You'd be very unlucky to attract the attention of a true hacker, most don't really have the time to spend trying to get to you stash of "favorite" pictures, but people running websites may express a view that will focus attention on them.

Those firewall warnings that pop up occasionally aren't cyber-criminals trying to steal your photoshop serial number, but usually automated computers looking for open ports. I guess you could imagine an open port as a door or window on your house. Most traffic comes through the front but some needs to come through a window...
OK, so that simile doesn't work...

Back to the topic of personal privacy, one of the first things EVERYONE needs to decide is how much info they are happy with giving out. If you run a business, you'll often have to accept that you'll always be known, and contactable by anyone.

The next part of this long, fascinating, and un-proof read 'blog will explain what people can find out about you, and also what you would need to do to keep yourself under the radar.

First off, you'll need to get yourself into detective mode. Internet leads are far easier than the stuff Police need to follow up, it's like tracing the branches on a tree, but you can do it from the comfort of your own home, and there will be less leads, so it'll have a finite end when you have found everything.

Start off with search engines, and do a search on the username/forum name of the person you are looking for. People will often try to find something unique, and you'll often find they have the same name on many different forums. This is usually known as the ego-search, as i bet everyone has tried to see how e-famous they are.

From the different forums/websites they contribute to, you might often find more details in the profiles. Many forums have locked profiles, only visible to members, but some are open, and will hand out your e-mail address like a cheap nightclub flyer. It's not a big deal to register on a forum either to get a better look inside too.

In the posts made on forums, image hosting sites like photobucket may give away more details. Be wary of automatic geotagging. One particular brand of fruit named mobile phones can add the GPS co-ordinates into the EXIF data of a pic. The EXIF data is usually techie stuff, like camera type, exposure settings etc, but if could also direct anyone to whatever object you have just snapped.
Any post with an image will have the album's address in it. That album may give away another username used by the person when they set up their image account, or searching for that username will find other images posted from that account that might be under other aliases.

One links to the other, so if you have multiple personality disorder, make sure you also have multiple image accounts.
Remember to have your main album locked, as otherwise, someone can backtrack through the image of last night's dinner to find that pic of that rash you had.
The above actually happened too...

Even if your main album is locked, the pictures are usually free to view by anyone with the correct URL. If me4.jpg is posted, expect the curious to look and see what me3.jpg might be, or worse still, me7.jpg and all of a sudden, people can see if you recovered from the rash you had...

Digital cameras can name pictures in a way that makes any others obvious. I saw a site that actually listed the default picture names for cameras. DSC_3384.JPG will give people an idea what to look for by changing the numbers and other similarly named pics can be found. This is what would be described as phishing.

You'll often find a randomiser on your image hoster for naming pictures if you can't think of a name which is a solution to that problem.

So by now, you can assume that quite a few of your pics have fallen into the wrong hands, and your email address has been found, along with a list of other interests you may have.

Google and Yahoo will often be able to find ancient info from whenever those e-mail addresses have been used, so check yours out, and see where it leads.

The google cache can store info for months even after it has been deleted, so you may often need to sit that one out and wait until it drops off the list. That still isn't perfect, as http://www.archive.org/ - The Wayback Machine, will store vast sections of websites for years, and they never time-out.

If you have a name, there are a few people-based search engines that are specifically for finding people. They'll trawl Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc and often even grab a thumbnail userpic to help make identifying the right person quicker. School reunion sites will allow you to search via names, rough ages and areas.

At one stage, the UK electoral roll was easily accessible with just an name and area, and it would go as far as listing the names and addresses of your neighbours too.

Now, they have a list of your classmates from school, your home address, and even know who lives next door too.

If you are the owner of a website or business, registration details will often give out home addresses too. http://www.domaintools.com/ can tell you who has registered a website, and where they live. Companies House will also have an easily accessible address for the director of a company.

You can protect yourself from website registration, by choosing not to display registrant details for personal users, or using a management company for business registrations.

The main game-plan is keep putting every bit of info you find through a search engine, and keep going until you hit a dead end.

Last but not least, is the threat of social engineering. This is the very stuff that most con-tricks work on. It is the art of dragging more information out of someone by just asking questions, in the right way.

For example, you might often have seen people complain that their Facebook or MSN has been hacked. This is very unlikely, as places like these have massive security.
There are plenty of password brute forcers out there to download and set up automatically. These programs can try different passwords at rates of 100's a second, and they try every possible combination of letters and numbers until they find the right one.
That's the reason why many login pages allow only 5 attempts before locking someone out, or they introduce a pause before confirming whether a password is correct or not.

So how did they get into your MSN then? The flaw in systems like that, is that people often forget passwords, and the security questions are often very easy to guess. Even if you can't guess, you can use social engineering to just ask them.

A simple way would be a short conversation, a basic question like where someone grew up wouldn't attract attention, and the engineer could then claim that their parents were from that area. Next, they suggest that their parents were from there, and both your parents might even know each other, and with that, they can ask for your mother's maiden name, which is a basic security question used by everything from Instant messaging to Credit cards.

If someone gets into your hotmail/msn account, they can then read any emails you have, or even ask places to resend a password under the guise of forgetfulness and deeper they go.

Always remember, anything you say on the net can usually been seen by anyone, and it can lead to a massive papertrail right upto gaining control of credit cards, getting into ebay, adding more postal addresses, internet shopping etc.

Protect yourself by trying it out for yourself. If you can find out the information, so can others. Be wary of what details you pass on in harmless chat as it can be used against you.

It's simply a question of knowing the right places to look, and it does have it's good side. I've found lost friends for people, and once even tracked down a girl whose number i got in a bar, but lost my phone in a taxi on the way home.
I felt horrible for a while saying i'd give her a ring, and then never call, and it was maybe a month later i thought back, remembered she'd mentioned where she worked, found an email address that fitted, and sent an email saying "You might think i'm crazy, but did you ever meet a guy in XXX on YYY who said he'd call but never did?"
It was the right one in the end.
We went out a few times, nothing much came of it, but it would have been bugging me for ages if i didn't stick to my word.

There are good uses, and bad uses. It's always handy to know how to use the Internet to your advantage, but always make sure people can't use it against you. If you get a free hour or so, see what you can dig up on yourself, you may well be surprised.

The End

It ain't like dustin' crops, kid!

You know the scene, or maybe just remember the scene from last summer, but the sky will be an amazing azure blue, Little fluffy clouds dotted about with smug grins as everyone likes them, and they have their own theme song, and a couple of trails from high flying jets.
I don't know about you, but i always look up an imagine who is on that plane, and where they are going. There will be over 100 people sitting up there, looking out the window at the suckers down below, whilst deciding what kingdom to classify the various food products in the in-flight meal under.
You can see the roads in the sky, the trails running parallel for miles, then turning off to hit other skyways. Life is good for those up there.

Not everyone thinks the same though. "Field of Dreams" had a tagline, "build it, and they will come". Back in the real world, the tagline is "do it, and they will think it's a conspiracy"
There is growing concern from the edges of humanity that the trails aren't just condensation from the jet exhausts, they are chemical sprays put down over cities for mind control.
Obviously mind control doesn't work on these enlightened few, so they will try to help the rest of us break free of our chains with the truth.

9/11 was prime for conspiracies, my favourite being a commercial jet was fitted with missiles un-noticed by hoards of plane-nuts, and it fired a missile into a building it was about to crash into, like a giant missile.
That's like slapping someone round the face before you shoot them, it's far wiser to explain a flash as lens flare from polished aluminium, than an invisible missile that was unnoticed at a major airport, and unneeded when a plane was about to hit the building. Were they concerned the skyscraper-spec toughened glass might bounce the jet off?

That's pretty easy to point at laugh at, but there are plenty of others to take it's place.

The Chem-trail one is even better though.
The fans of this theory believe these jets are spraying chemicals at altitude to make people ill on the ground. Prince (the one that looks like a Bond henchman) agrees with this theory, noting that fighting and arguing increase in his neighbourhood after a plane flies over.

This has to be some of the weakest theorising i have ever seen, from stating that they are unmarked military/NATO planes, to thinking a vapour spray miles up in the sky will reach the ground in any meaningful quantities.

A telescope, or a pair of binoculars will help identify the plane as civilian jets, a radio scanner or even Internet air traffic control and scheduled flights lists will be able to tell you what the plane is, and where it is going.

Even a quick check on air corridors will show you where the highways in the sky are located, so where does this "black-op" idea come from?

I have a strange feeling that someone will admit to starting it as a joke a few years ago, and be proud of how many people they sucked in.
Until then, we will be presented with youtube videos of the secret network of thousands of jets, and films titled "-you decide..."

Grab you tinfoil hat, head into the basement, get yo' proxy on, and have a wander round youtube before the Government gets to you next!

The End

Legendary...

IQ tests have been around for quite a while, MENSA adverts in the newspapers, Tetrapak milk cartons, and online questionnaires.
This is all well and good for Facebook application bragging, or breakfast cereals, but what if you wanted to demonstrate how stupid you were to work colleagues?
Many of these would assume you are a well rounded person, a contributor to society, unaware that the crossword you did at lunchtime contains more fictional words than an American Newsreader's telepromter.
Maybe you are at the other end of the scale, incredibly intelligent, and have a crush on Shania Twain, but wouldn't want her to write you off as a Rocket Surgeon, or Brain Scientist...

Luckily, you can convey these messages loud and clear with the help of an Urban Legend. One Urban Legend states that Urban Legends were created by the government to build a database of who to save in the event that anarchy breaks out from the hysteria related to an Urban Legend.

I'm always impressed by the conviction of the target that the story is true, and the look on their face as you cut them off, mid-tale, and reveal you've heard the story four years ago.

Where it goes from here is my favourite bit, like the anticipation of opening a Kinder-egg, hoping you get the helicopter, and not the scale model of a park bench.

Some of the story-tellers will take the point that you know the story of "Batman in the wardrobe" as further proof that it is true, and happens all the time.
Strike whilst the iron is stone cold and bet them you can guess their bank details.

The others can break down, trying to figure out just how much of what they know is infact garbage, and how many people they have told the story to already.

Urban Legends are pretty easy to spot with a little training, they will usually follow a pattern of somebody doing something they shouldn't, or often something that others might not want them to do, and in the end, the worst possible scenario happens.
Don't be frightened to throw a little technology and rough science into the mix. Guessing facts is better than not knowing them at all, right?

Microwave ovens become nuclear powered, and energy drinks ironically contain B******s.

These legends are like rainbows, the closer you try to get, the further away they originate, but someone had to start them.

Somewhere in the world, someone must be making them up.
That person, to me, is a true legend.

The End

Auto-tuUuUuNe!

Back in my day, just after Marconi had had sold a few of his "wireless sets", you had singers, who would sing.

Lots of things can make melodic noises, it was something to do with evolution, that's why all the dinosaurs are dead (couldn't hold a note), but wet wineglasses are hugely successful at other people's house parties.

Lions can't sing either, so you'll notice they are endangered. I can't remember the last time i saw a wild Lion.

Humans did well, as they could use their vocal chords to pass on information, like how much warmer it is for the time of year, or to sing.

Singing is quite an important part of the mating ritual. You'll find that many men will start to sing when attempting to attract a mate in the depths of nightclubs.

The lights are low so those with "unlucky" faces are on a level pitch with those more gifted, and suddenly, all the males will start to sing along to Oasis, or show off the fact they know all the words to Ice, Ice, Baby.

Good singers could frequently rise to the top on their talents, mate continuously on tour, and pass on their genes.

Evolution in action.

But ever since Cher, there has been a new force in action, that even Darwin didn't spot.

Autotune.

Cher, unhappy with Father Time seemingly using her face as a punch bag overnight, realised she needed to get back that evolutionary gift, the art of singing, to swing the odds back in her favour.

Deep in Cher's laboratory, under a dormant volcano, teams of scientists put together a a secret computerised weapon to make any rusty steel door swing open to C minor.

The weapon, known as autotune, was put to effect on the track "Believe" and she was instantly catapulted back into the spotlight.

With the extra revenue, her face was accelerated to 88mph and sent back in time to a more youthful look, and everything was going just swimmingly.

The secret weapon didn't stay secret for too long though, Paris Hilton, from her own secret base disguised as a hotel, reverse engineered the software and also became a famous singer, despite being able to hold a note for about as long as being able to hold a conversation on Particle Physics.

Autotune broke cover, and now appears in many chart singles, from songs about a plague of fireflies to Hip hop artists describing cars that they hired for a video shoot.

The effect of singers using Autotune could probably best be thought of in terms of Art.

Imagine if Claude Monet thought, "You know, this rubbing coloured grease malarkey is wearing a bit thin, why don't i just take a photo, as it'll be far more accurate than i can ever produce."

Could you call him an painter if he just snapped a quick one on his iPhone, and mailed it directly to Flikr?

"Check out my new painting of these waterlillies that were like awesome, bro."

sent on my iPhone using OldMasters app.

Seeing as you don't need to be able to sing to be a singer, why do we need all these talent shows?

Out of thousands, they'll whittle away to just a few acts, and finally choose one to become a popstar.

And as soon as they have proved they can sing, Autotune comes in and makes it all a moot point by doing the singing bit for them, all they need to do is read the lyrics out over the phone and a microchip does the rest.

On the bright side, Autotune has some good sides, fitting small autotuners to Lions will undoubtedly save their species from extinction.

Work has already started with Pandas-

http://www.botjunkie.com/2009/09/18/taiwan-wants-singing-robo-pandas-that-shoot-guns/

Finally Cher, who famously sung Rescue Me, has rescued the Giant Panda.

As a short sidenote, a comment in the above Panda article caught my attention.

“You can imagine a robot shooting down balloons, like in the wild west, using two revolvers, or three, but much faster than a person.”

Yes, yes i can. Wild West robots with guns was the main theme of theme-park-phobic Michael Crichton's novel, Westworld, and just to recap, it didn't end well.
The End

The Art of Twitter

If one thing spurred me on to start this, it was Twitter.

I joined Twitter a couple of weeks ago, as i wanted to make sure i didn't miss the technological boat, but as a "watcher" on there, life is pretty quiet.

The first thing i felt about it, was how much it was like having famous people send you text messages of the less interesting things they do. OK, so not like totally dull, but more like the kinda stuff you couldn't have a TV show on.

After that, a huge number of points came out, like that fact that the messages you see are largely one way. I will @ reply someone occasionally, but deep down, i know it will be lost in a huge rush other posts, and never seen again.

Still, whaddya expect? Steven Fry to pop round for a cup of tea after?

The main things i see these now are people wanting to be followed. Nothing wrong with that, but give something back in return, at the very least, if you can, re-follow back. It's just manners. Secondly, be interesting! I've seen people beg for followers, and when you check out their page, there is nothing about them, only countless @replies to popstars which will be ignored.

There are other tweeters, the comedians, and these come in many different shapes and forms.

Because of the 140 character limit, you can get some sharp one-liners, and that's the payback for a follow. These people put it out there, and see who cares enough to follow them.

Others work in reverse, hungry for e-fame, they'll tweet up terrible topical "jokes", or even worse, steal someone else's.

Some of the names make me cringe too, hundreds of young girls adopt the surname of whoever won Talent Factor, or whatever you have locally. I can imagine them writing out their new married name in the back of a school book over and over again.

Still, the boys will be drawing skulls, flaming cars jumping barrels, and robots, so i guess we were just as stupid when young, but stupid in a different way.

The Paradox

So this is it, the End has started, but this is actually the start and not the end. If you have no idea what that means, that's probably because it's a paradox, a contradiction in terms.

I've never done a blog before, infact, i don't even like the word blog. At the very least, it should have an apostrophe at the start, " 'blog", but it's well established, so i'll have to stick with it.

So sit back, relax, and skip through the first few posts as i'll probably write allsorts whilst it still has huge novelty value.

And we all like novelties, don't we?