Pick a project (or two)

With the great summer holiday yawning out in front of me like the Grand Canyon, I'm terrified. For once in my life, there's not much at all I need to do, so I need to work on something extracurricular, something beneficial to me as a person, as opposed to me as a physics robot.

So what do I do? I have no idea. I'm going to try and renovate my dolls' house whilst training to become a Football Association referee, paint some pictures for my new flat whilst writing a novel and start a scrapbook whilst dabbling in getting a basic overview on all the world's religions.

I'm an obsessive learner and hobbyist. I can't help but try and accumulate skills, strings to my bow. Despite numerous internet searches, it seems that nobody has sought to pathologise this fear of idleness just yet, or to research why or in what individuals it tends to occur. Which is probably a good thing, seeing as I'd probably try and develop a working knowledge of that as well.

I can't stand being uneducated or incapable. I'd like to think that you could engage me in conversation on pretty much any topic, and I would come out of it not looking like a fool. Then again, though I try and justify my behaviour, there's no real thinking behind it most of the time. I just think "wouldn't it be good to try and write a novel about this?" and off I go.

I never find that the wheels on a project have come grinding to a halt- very little can stop me when I have something in mind. No, the only thing that will ever put a project to bed is the birth of a new, and therefore infinitely more exciting project.

There is no way on this earth that I am alone in this. Numerous fictional characters exhibit the same trait. Wallace, from Wallace and Gromit, starts every film having just established himself as the local pest control officer or window washer or cheese-seeking astronaut, and is accompanied by various impressive, yet clearly half-baked contraptions.

Wallace is a jack of all trades. A cruel man would also call him a master of none.

Mastery is tricky to define. To call yourself a master is a tall order, and can be done through the acquisition of formal qualifications or to earn your living in that fashion. For us eager amateurs, though, it's a rocky road. To be an amateur used to be an admirable thing. It means "lover". We love what we do. Over the years though, it acquired a sting. A sting which meant amateurs aren't good enough.

I am a jack of all trades, and I am the master of my art. I am engrossing, and powerful in my ways. I am a trier, and never accept failure. In fact, I would go so far to say that any person who dismisses the work of an amateur dismisses their own abilities far more.

When you sneer and call someone amateurish, you spit in the face of their attempts to better themself. Nobody starts out a master. And nobody will end up a master without dabbling a little.

Incidentally, as a final, and appropriately off-topic, word: to all those who commended the Ukranian officials for stripping the England brass band of their instruments, shame on you. They may not be good. They may only know one song. However, they're different, and special to us. If you want to sound like every other awful team in Europe, go on. But we don't have the lungs or the spirit of the Dutch or the Irish. We do pomp and ceremony and delusions of grandeur and for that, we need brass.

What have I done?

So, citizen journalism. It's dangerous stuff.

Well, it is. People are paid to do a job. They are qualified. They study the law, they study their craft and if deemed worthy, they are given a position. Yet, when it comes to journalism, this is being subverted.

Citizen policing is called being a vigilante. It is generally frowned upon, not to mention illegal. You can't just decide that one person needs punishing and another does not. So why can a person be targeted by "guerilla journalists"?

Before I ever get paid work, I will have to get work experience for a few weeks. Then I will have to undergo training. I will be trained to write without bias. I will be trained to understand what I can and can't write about, what will get me into trouble. I will be trained to seek out reliable sources and to verify the factual integrity of anything I try and publish.

Yet, much of the reporting on the events of the past couple of years, particularly those unfolding in journalist-unfriendly parts of the Arab world, has been done by members of the public. Like me. Except, unlike me, they're not me, so I don't trust them at all.

Every time you read some anonymous contribution on the internet, what you are effectively doing is listening to the ramblings of blokes in pubs. Except, because it's online, you can't see the fact that they're having a pint, and that what they've just told you has been directly influenced by that pint. You don't know if they're wearing trousers. You don't know if they've got bits of twig in their hair. What I'm saying is- what makes you trust somebody online when, if they tried talking to you in person, you'd probably jab repeatedly at your personal attack alarm?

I'm not saying that "democratic journalism" doesn't serve a purpose. It is essential, particularly in places where events are unfolding quicker than professional journalists can get to the area. It is also essential to add a splash of colour, a personable note to an otherwise dry news story. However, as in most things, when people contribute their opinions, the opinions are not worth it.

To elucidate this point, I have ventured onto the pages of The Daily Mail Online, which is to the Daily Mail what the Daily Mail is to a quality newspaper. I don't care if I have reduced my chances of employment with that statement- I have a soul.

At the bottom of a perfectly innocuous article regarding a black woman who was not allowed to be adopted by her white foster parents sit the following comments:
"How is this even an article?"
"Social service are a***holes!"
"a lot of social workers are damaged themselves and don't like to see people happy and apart from being dysfunctional they are often thick"

The last one sums it up perfectly. When asked to provide elucidating comments on an article, the gormless masses will leap at the opportunity, for the simple reason that the world owes them something, and that means they can voice their unfounded opinion, and polish said turd until it resembles fact. From my research (actual research) I could find only a handful of insightful snippets, based on real life experiences or statistics.

The rest of it was a vomit-inducing concoction of ignorance and trolling. Trolling ranges from the funny to the downright evil. As Richard Bacon described it, it is "the cowardly new world of internet abuse". Much as I agree with their sentiments, a large proportion of Daily Mail Online commenters read an entire article and, rather than get bored half way and stop reading the website for it's abysmal content and substandard reporting, pretend they are so outraged by the grammatical mistakes and minor spelling errors that they feel the need to post a response. "You should be locked up-preferably with no further access to writing materials" said Jon from Warrington. "awful writing" said Gemma from London.

If you meet either of these people, please kick them in the gonads from me.

If you want to see a troll in action, I would advise Yahoo Answers. This is a simultaneously sickening and addictive service, in that it collects the overall stupidity of the world into easy-to-handle portions.

A cursory glance yielded the question "How can I get lesbians to stop doing number 2 on my lawn? [...] Humane answers only, please." Suggestions included providing a photo for the lesbians to attack instead. Answers can be equally unhelpful, as this website will testify.

I get riled about citizen journalism. I even get riled about the weakness of online compared to print, but if we do insist on never paying for anything, what can we expect? There is one problem, however- I'm one of them.

I'm a blogger. I spout unverified opinions constantly. My information is generally backed up by nothing more than my personal experiences. It hurts me to be on the same level. It doesn't really happen in other professions. Trainee brain surgeons do not start out practising on their friends. They do not have to contend with guerilla brain surgeons making them look bad. Real brain surgeons will not get criticised on the quality of their work by the general public.

For some reason, brain surgery commands an awful lot more respect than journalism. If you walked up to someone and told them your cousin/friend/mentor needed a decompressive craniectomy, and asked them for their help, they'd probably turn you down. However, if you told them you had hours to finish a newspaper and would they write a column, they'd most likely give it a bash. Why? Prehistoric man got the hang of making a hole in the skull long before writing. Yet people think they can do it.

As a result, the quality of journalism has become cheapened. In tandem, the price of newspapers has gone up. We can't keep trying to get our information from the internet. I know I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but... it's all rubbish.

Universally Challenged

I know. I’ve been away. It’s because I’m struggling to express one particular concept. To corrupt a cliché, I have managed to snatch failure from the jaws of success.

Anyone who knows me, or has read this blog before will be mightily aware that I have a certain infatuation with the idea of appearing on University Challenge. The sad fact is, I may be about to miss that train.

I’m the reserve. I’m the cursewording reserve.

Out of the fifty or so who took the test, most were abysmal-let’s face it, most people are at most things. It’s a fact we live with, move on from but still have to put up with at times. There were just six candidates that stood out well above the rest. The team were in that six. I was in that six. One unlucky fellow was also in that six.

I guess I should count my blessings that I’m not him, her, it, zir or em. Another day, different questions, and I might have been. Say, if George hadn’t told me that Niels Bohr had said a particular something, or if I hadn’t looked up the dates of Immanuel Kant that morning. These two facts have now slipped my mind, but they came to my aid when I needed them.

That person is wandering around right now, stunned by the fact that they aren’t as much of a genius as they thought they were. Do they know how close they came?

I hope not. It’s rubbish knowing that you were a whisker from success. It’s rubbish being the reserve. I’m not going to poison the others, break their limbs or anything like that. I can’t pretend I wish them all well though.

They’re my Facebook friends. We went out for drinks last week. I had to sit in the pub with them, knowing that if anything on Greek Mythology comes up I’m going to be eating my own shoes in the audience, despairing that they don’t know any of it- but I do. I had to sit in the pub with them, knowing that I’m not really one of them, and that if I really want to get onto University Challenge, one of them is going to miss out.

If that happens, will they hate me? I want it to happen. I want one, non-specific member of the team to go down with crushing gastroenteritis an hour before we go to film the first round. I want him to gladly give his place to me. It might be bad for team spirit, but I’d love to save the day, I really would.

So perhaps it’s my calling to be the reserve. My brilliance has been confirmed, so my ego isn’t suffering. I probably won’t get onto the program, but there is still a chance. There is a chance of me being the happiest person alive for just a little bit, as a door that was creaking shut suddenly opens for me.

I want it to happen. I know it won’t. Wish me luck.

Hidden Menaces

As many of you who are on my email contacts list are more than aware, my email was hacked this week. I apologise profusely to you all.

The thing is, how could I have prevented this from happening?

According to the lowlifes down at Hacker9 (don't look them up, I wouldn't want to give them the publicity), it is because I am "noob or [have] very poor knowledge of internet". At least I know that nouns need articles.

One other nugget of grammatically infantile information I managed to unearth from the little toads at Hacker9 is that email hacking can be done in three different ways. The first two I almost certainly did not fall victim to. The third, however, is rather more sinister, and could affect anybody. I'm going to run over all three and how you can prevent them from happening to you.

The first is password guessing. This is something that nobody should fall victim to. If a hacker is a close friend (unlikely), or just a manipulative internet acquaintance, they can have up to a 20 per cent chance of working out your password- by simply guessing. A lot of people use memorable names, dates and places as passwords. What's more, the majority of us use the same password for pretty much everything.

So then, give up on nostalgic passwords for high-importance accounts such as emails. Use a combination of random letters and numbers, preferably more than 8 characters in length. If the website allows it, also use punctuation. The official line for multiple accounts is to use different passwords for each, but this is not always reasonable. My advice, which is in no way endorsed by anyone, is to vary your passwords on a theme. For example, if you have numbers in your passwords (you ought to), increase them by 1 for each new account you open. Or, write the same password backwards. Or half backwards and the rest forwards. The combinations are only as limited as your imagination.

Now, I'm pretty over-the-top when it comes to keeping my password private. I most certainly practice what I preach. If an email comes to me from Paypal, Yahoo or anybody else, saying for security reasons I need to reply to the email with my password, I don't suddenly decide I'm a moron and offer them my bank account details and the keys to my house as well. So I can say with 99.9 per cent certainty that it wasn't this that caught me out.

The second method used by weed-smoking maleducates and opportunist sociopaths alike is Phishing. This is a common beast, and typically wanders round shouting, "I'm really obviously trying to steal from you." Phishing works by asking you politely for your bank account details, email password or similar by promising a lovely juicy worm in return. This worm is usually in the form of a free iPod.

You can avoid the Phishermen (or women) by thinking twice before entering your details online. Do you trust the site? Remember, it is very easy to lie on the internet, because nobody can see your face.

Though I must admit to being a little too trusting sometimes, I almost certainly haven't entered my password into any kind of popup, or badly constructed website offering freebies. So that leaves just one more option, one I hadn't fully realised even existed.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the murky world of keystroke capturing. If you want to avoid this one completely, seal yourself in a box and have your nearest and dearest feed you through a straw for the rest of your life.

It works in one of two sinister ways. The first is by using an actual hardware keylogger, which plugs into the back of the victim's computer and records every single keystroke they make. With an experienced eye, the important passwords are identified and the email accounts accessed. Though this approach seems to target just one person, and be of more interest to private investigators than spammers and scammers, how's this for a thought: what if it was stuck into a public computer? Say, in a library. Or a university.

Here it seems we may have stumbled across our culprit. There is of course, the second, even darker form of keylogging- using a software keylogger. This takes the innocent form of a video of a kitten falling off a chair sent to you by one of your closest friends. Only it's not actually from them, and it's not actually a video of a kitten falling off a chair. No, once you stop watching that kitten, he gets to work.

He makes a note of every keystroke you make, and beams that straight to the internet. On the internet, another kitten (kitten here being a metaphor for piece of software) calculates which of those keystrokes is likely to represent an email password. A third kitten then tries each of these possible combinations until bingo! She cracks it, and suddenly all your friends, family, old work colleagues and former schoolteachers are being offered Viagra.

Or worse. Another little scam running around the interweb presently is the idea that person A is being held hostage, and person B needs to send lots and lots of money to person C to free them. Of course, because the email was sent from Person A's account, Person B thinks it actually is Person A, and sends the dosh. That is, providing Person A typically writes in lowercase Courier New.

Luckily, none of my contacts got this message. They could have done though, and that makes me feel quite apologetic. I must do better. Though I am not noob, and have actually relatively snappy knowledge of internet, the second I let my guard down was the second a criminal tried his luck.

I will no longer write or check emails from public computers. It is terrible to have been reduced to this, but the internet is swarming with armies of kittens working for a plethora of the most diabolical faces you'll never see.

Be careful out there.

Name That Cat

I just thought of an idea for a new game show, because I just realised that, even if I wanted to go to bed, I couldn't, because my bed has been taken over by a skinny tomcat called... well, that's just it. My cat doesn't have a name.

It's pretty much up to whoever's in the house to give him whatever name they want. So far, in alphabetical order, he's been called Bob, Bobby, Bobs, Cat, Cath, Chat, Mao, Robbo, Robert, Roberto, Robs and Socks. We haven't even had him three months.

At the moment, my least favourite is Socks, followed closely by Bobs. Up until recently, I pretty much called him Robbo, but the latest guest in our house started calling him Mao and it's kind of got stuck for me. Seeing as I mew at him anyway, to irritate him or something. How do you irritate a cat? It's difficult.

Anyway, any new ideas, send them to me.

I handled a puppy today. Probably not the best idea for someone who sees a dog and instantly wants to kill it, but it had escaped its house, and the owner was obviously struggling to get it back inside. I don't think the owner would have been keen if I'd let it run or just strangled it while I had the chance.

It surprised me how trusting it was. It felt really weird.

It's probably not dogs I hate; it's dog people. The people who think dogs have anywhere near as much value as humans. Well, they can lower themselves to that level, but they mustn't be surprised when I refuse to join them.

Then there's the people who let their dogs defecate in public spaces, and then don't clear it up.I'm sorry! Do these scum think the world owes them something? Do they think it's okay for them to leave actual faeces lying about in the sun for flies to breed in and spread disease? Or for small children to fall over in? (Actually, that's quite funny, so long as you don't have to clean the child in question.)

Next time you see one of these worthless, inconsiderate, expendable wastes of human flesh, tell them that they've dropped something. Do it for me, before I have an aneurysm.

Now it's time for the reviews. I've been revisiting a couple of things in the past few days.

First up, it was The Young Ones. 28 years on, it's still got a certain quality to it. It's a violent-slapstick, alternative comedy look at the nuclear family. Vyvyan will always be one of my favourite comedy characters. Unnecessary violence, the ability to eat everything and short bursts of incredible lucidity and possibly even genius (well, he is a medical student) make him absolutely brilliant. Also, everyone knows a Rick, the revolutionary who thinks Che Guevara is a Mexican restaurant.

I think I'm more of a Neil myself. He's calm, passive, keeps the place neat and tidy. He's the mother figure. That's just me all over. I'm well into peace and love and lentils and the rest of it.

I hate Mike, because he's pointless. He's supposed to be cool, and respected, but he's more of a loser than the rest of them. Aside from Mike, the other bad points were the talking scenery, which I don't think works anymore, and the dwarf in the episode 'Boring'. Dwarves just aren't funny, especially not when they're painted. In fact, they're rarely not.

Though, aside from the mindless violence and cute destruction of even the fourth wall, there is one last redeeming feature: the music. We need music back in sitcoms. Hell, we need Madness back in sitcoms, and not just doing adverts on GOLD. The Young Ones gets 4 stars.

I also re-watched Sherlock Holmes, the Guy Ritchie film. That took me by surprise, because I didn't like it. Everything I loved about that film, it turns out, is just Arthur Conan Doyle, and okay, a nice bit of bromance. There's my point though: get lost, Irene Adler! Mary's not much better, but at least she knows her place. It's not her fault she's just not pretty.

I think the issue Ritchie was always going to have was making a good film without gratuitous swearing or violence. That's what made Lock, Stock so brilliant: in particular, a joke involving the c-word that I won't repeat here.

Oh, it's clever. But nowhere near enough, not after seeing the BBC adaptation, not after reading the books and knowing what can be done. I think the trouble was, I hated the bad guy. Really, you've got to love the bad guy, and hate yourself for it. Blackwood was ugly, and we never saw enough of Moriarty.

Now, Moriarty was something the BBC did oh so well. That line, "Westwood." It just gets me. The film though, 3 stars, though I await the sequel with interest.

Oh, what else? Ah yes. Come Dine With Me. The narrator's mellowing, as are the guests. Bring back the bitching! This week, someone nearly vommed listening to an anecdote about phlegm, and someone else was made to cry. It's not enough! Daggers out, please! Two stars.

Oh, arsehole of the week: bloke who bought the violin I was trying to buy at a flea market for £12 and refused to sell it to me for any less than £30. May everyone urinate haphazardly on his shallow grave.

And now, a rant

NO!

I'm not even anywhere near done on the ranting front, let me warn you.

Right now, I am sitting all sleepy-eyed in my pyjamas when I should actually have been asleep, having done what I needed to do an hour and a half ago. But I'm not. In fact, I just had more hassle than I needed.

This was my plan: today, I would wake up at 0650 in order to buy tickets to Chelsea-Blackpool the second they came out, thus ensuring two seats in Matthew Harding Upper, the best stand by far. It was a brilliant plan, but unfortunately not one that came into fruition as my mobile ran out of battery and my alarm failed to go off.

It would have been a brilliant alarm as well. Linkin Park's 'Given Up' (which is a song that will give a half-awake person a coronary if they don't turn it off in time) with the text "GET  UP. NOW."

As it was, I had a dream about holding a housewarming party with somebody who I'd never met, but I was going to be living with. We had races to open the door to the guests, and it was a bit petty, but then he bought me a scotch egg from the inexplicably noisy canteen next door and I woke up happy.

I wasn't happy about two seconds later when I realised I'd woken up naturally rather than being dragged back into the land of the living. As quick as I could, I typed my ticket request.

At that moment, I felt I was probably entitled to shout "bugger", because the tickets had gone. So had the tickets in Shed Upper and Matthew Harding Lower (East). My dream of watching a decent match in a decent stand was fading.

By the way, if you don't understand football, like a lot of people, you'll have to understand that every match is a pretty big deal. Matches are like plays, there's drama and excitement, and the best soundtrack you could have hoped for. It releases a beautiful chemical enjoyment, and I never got that from basketball or ice hockey, nor cricket.

I did however, find tickets in Matthew Harding Lower (West). This was accompanied by a countdown clock to tell me how long it was before these tickets were given to someone else. 5 minutes and counting. Well, of course, I nearly died, because though it's a reasonable length of time, there's nothing like a ticking red clock to make you nervous. Thankfully I had my debit card in hand, typed in my details and hit Enter.

No. I'd forgotten to tick the box for Terms & Conditions (which, incidentally, I didn't read, no, because I only had 4 minutes 48, 47, 46...) so I had to go back and do that.

No. I hadn't put in an expiry date the second time around. So I did that, made sure none of the other boxes had randomly emptied themselves (which, curiously, they hadn't).

No. Card not accepted. Well, that was it. I tried again, but the same result.

I knocked on my parents' bedroom door and asked for a credit card. My mother told me somewhere the card wasn't, so I ran around the house looking for where it was.

Anyway, I got the card, and started typing in the number. To my surprise, the number on my dad's card was exactly the same as the card number I had already typed into the box. How could this be?

I'll tell you how. In my half-awake stupor, I had seen that, when I started typing my card number into the box, it Autocompleted for me. I thought: how kind. Rather than check that the number was mine, which it wasn't, I simply carried on.

It's even an avoidable mistake! I know my debit card number BY HEART. The thing is though, who thought it was a good idea to Autocomplete debit card details? That's just asking for trouble.

I typed in my actual card details and completed the transaction. I don't want to look at the state of my bank account just yet. I'm going to be keeping my accounts, though, because I have a pretty tight budget for the next year. Well, it looks alright, but I'm sure it'll be tight. I'm looking forward to it, though, trying to be responsible.

Speaking of responsible, I have a driving lesson today. I don't want to go.

I just have the one review for you today, and it's a book: Arthur Conan Doyle's 'A Study In Scarlet'. Well, I thought it was brilliant, and unexpectedly funny in places. Well, I think it was funny. It made me laugh anyway. Sherlock Holmes is undoubtedly one of the most interesting characters ever written, and Watson is so frequently poorly represented in films and television serials. Adaptations often have him appearing as a kind of butler, which he really wasn't.

The deductive process is remarkable. The second part of the book takes you through what Holmes had worked out in the first. A lot of people criticise the book for the fact that Holmes is absent for about half the book, but it doesn't matter in my eyes. You just get a chance to figure out what Holmes already has from much better evidence.

And it's amazing, because it's still believable, it's still achievable. It has dated a little, though, and Holmes is altogether too bright for me. I don't expect people warmed to dark characters like they do now. Four stars.

Films!

A couple of film reviews for you. I watched Brideshead Revisited not knowing what it was about, and usually that's a good thing. I like the actor who plays the main character (Matthew Goode), but there was a lot missing. I don't think you get to see Charles' motivations enough. Towards the end, other characters start pointing out things that you hadn't been allowed to figure out for yourself as if you should already know it. It's a bit like a "butler did it" ending in a mystery.

If it had been longer, it could have been better. As it was, it didn't really work, because I just ended up feeling far too sorry for Sebastian, and also for his father. It has made me want to read the book though, so I might do that once I've finished everything else I still have to read. 3 stars.

I gave my mother a choice of films to watch the day before yesterday, mostly because I thought she'd make the right decision. She didn't. She picked Tim Burton's shaky start: Beetlejuice.

Oh, two stars, before we get any further. It features a sickeningly in love couple who die and end up haunting their old house and despising the oddly contrasting new tenants. The other characters are the idiot father, the evil stepmother and the loveable goth girl. Oh, and the fat, lecherous, rotting Betelgeuse himself. All in all, it's about as funny as cancer and about as clever as stapling yourself in the eye.

Please, God, bring me a film that's worth watching.