Nerd + Geek = NEEK

I am referring to Microsofts new Vista SP1 Advertisement. It features some kind of band rocking their way through a song that features such lyrics as “When they see the improvements in security, desktop and mobility, and productivity, they’ll say Vista, Gotta Get me some“ , sung by odd looking men who look like they shouldve stopped singing 15 years ago with the same wannabe groupie making appearances all over the shop and strutting like a chicken. What WERE they thinking? I hardly think this is going to appeal to anyone. Are they trying to funny adverts like Dairy Milk? If so, this isn’t funny, it isn’t fun and it is nowhere near as good the Glass and a Half full production adverts. Microsoft need to rethink their advertising as this is going to make them a laughing stock.

I have Vista and I hate it. It recently updated on my laptop and it just wouldn’t stop, I had put my computer on standby and it decided to update with out my realising. I turned on the laptop and there it was still updating and restarting but not actually making any progress. It wouldn’t let me into safe mode or anything so I had to wipe the disks, and that made me lose about 30 pages of Coursework and notes. Yay me. The only thing I like about Vista is the way it looks, I may go back to XP but I doubt it.

In case any of you didn’t click the link in the first paragraph, I will embed the video of the oh-so-rubbish Vista SP1 song called Rockin’ our Sales by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band.

 

Look into the the swirling shape, concentrate on it, watch it turn. Now, you can feel your eyelids become heavy and you want to fall asleep. Concentrate on the shape, now when I count to three, you will go into a sleep whilst still listening to my voice. When I clap my hands, you will arise from your sleep and will want to subscribe to theneek.net and read it every single day. You will comment all TheNeek’s blogs whenever a new one is created.

If you haven’t guessed yet, today I will be talking about hypnotists in the news. I don’t know if I believe hypnotism works or not because I havent had it done to me so cannot judge it. I think the idea of it is cool but wether it works or not is another thing. Normally hypnotism is used for medical treatments and sometimes in stage performances. Medically it can help people quit smoking, relieve stress and more. However, lately it has been used for acts of crime, a thief was hunted in Italy for hypnotising supermarket staff to make them hand over the money from the cash registers. He told the staff to look into his eyes and the next minute the tills were empty and he was gone. The staff had no recollection of the attack but the man was caught on CCTV.

Hypnotism isn’t always used by criminals thankfully, most recently a man hypnotised himself to not feel pain during an operation. “He was fully aware of everything going on around him during the procedure but was free from pain.”  The Hypnotists name was Alex Lenkei and he has been practising hypnotism since the age of 16 (he is now 61). The operation involved saws, chisels and a hammer yet no pain was felt.

The stories above make me believe that hypnotism is quite possibly real and it makes me uneasy as I could have been hypnotised without realising. I may only be writing this post because I was hypnotised to spread news about hypnotists. I’d really like to go to a show to see hypnotism but I would never be hypnotised myself as it kind of scares me as once you’re under the hypnotist could make you do ANYTHING.

To anyone who is reading this, have you ever been hypnotised, or are you a hypnotist? I’d really like to know.                               

Lately I have become more aware of computer viruses, my friends are encountering them, they’re all over the news and I’ve come across tutorials on how to send a virus (not deliberately). I don’t understand why people get off on sending other people viruses, you could seriously ruin they’re work and cost them a lot of money if you do some real damage. If you want revenge on someone, deal with them in the real world!

Doing my daily BBC surfing I found out that there are over 1MILLION different computer viruses in circulation right now. Symantec have stated that most of these viruses have been made in the last year and says that “the growth in malicious code down to the increasingly professional digital criminal underground”. So people are being paid to destroy other peoples computers, I understand that someones always going to want to destroy someone else but why do they have to hurt all the other people? I’ve had virus problems before and I know it wasn’t because a criminal mastermind had a vendetta against me. (Me and The Godfather already sorted out our issues, and I’m sure he’s not the kind of guy to attack me with a virus). So why are we targetted? Do computer techies get their rocks off by knowing that they’ve damaged someones computer? They wouldn’t like it if we destroyed theirs. Can anyone tell me why people send out viruses for no reason?

There was an interesting take on computer Viruses in the paper the other day. MIT Media Lab’s grad student Alex Dragulescu turned famous viruses into Art. He used algorithms to find recurring patterns in the source code of viruses and used this to Visualize the viruses. To visualize the viruses he simply colour-coded the codes, set a virtual position camera and added some causal lighting effects.

 
Trojan Gentil3                                   MyDoom Virus

Perhaps by visualizing them people will realise that Virus do exist and they wont go away. So if you’re reading this, I suggest doing a virus scan right now and reading up on your viruses as you never know when you could be attacked.

If you don’t know how to prevent yourself from getting a virus or other computer diseases then go to Computer Penguin, a new website/blog by a highly experienced technician. He offers up knowledge of viruses and malware such as the Trojan Horse, links you to programs that will stop viruses and also gives you technical knowledge of computers.

If any of you have encountered a nasty virus, how did you get it? and what did you do to get rid of it?

Today I came across “the house of the future” at the BBC News Site. It shows us the ‘Living Tomorrow’ project in Brussels. It all looks very nice and all but how long in the future? 50 years ago people were saying that by the millennium we will have flying cars, hover boards, robots e.t.c but that never came true did it? Whilst we have made advances in technology there are no flying cars. However, this Living Tomorrow” project is far more realistic as it is just things that we already have but in larger form. For instance, we have touch screen objects already such as the iPhone and in this future home we have touch screens that control everything from the blinds to the water usage. The home even tells you about CO2 is in the house. Very Eco friendly.

I hope to see this coming to us very soon, as if they’ve already made it then it shouldn’t be long before we get it ourselves. It will probably be expensive but I’m sure there are ways of downsizing the prices ready for the average man or woman. What I want to know is, what is your dream future house? Will it be compact-able at the press of a button so you can take it with you, or will it be in space? Leave me a comment and tell me what kind of a house you’d like in the future and even what you’ll be doing in the future.

My dream house would be a minimalistic house quite like the ‘Living Tomorrow’ exhibit, some of the products I’d like would be a hoverboard, computer enhanced glasses and a little pet that looks like the Adipose from Doctor Who. My ideal future would probably be like the Back To The Future 2 movie but more hi-tech, minimalistic and clean. That Back to the future film was actually set for 2015, so maybe in 7 years we’ll be just like that.

 
Adipose from Doctor Who                                                            Marty McFly and his hover board

Everyone who has followed the Skins Series 2 throughout would have been watching last nights Series Finale. Following Chris’ death everyone I spoke to was shocked by the exit and I had assumed that there would be more shock endings in the finale. However, there wasn’t any horrifically shocking moments last night (Monday April 14th) but there were pleasant endings/cliffhangers and a few comedy moments.

(excuse the poor imagery)

This week we saw:

• A-Level results being received.
• Chris’ funeral (Chris is Joe Dempsie)
• The final paths each character takes

Instead of doing a whole recap episode I am going to do a summary on each character instead.

Sid (Mike Bailey)

Sid is visited by Chris’ dad who tells him he cannot go to the funeral. Sid runs over to Tony’s house even though they aren’t proper friends anymore (after the Sid/Michelle antics). Tony and Sid steal Chrises coffin in order to hold their own funeral, but get chased around town by the funeral director and Chris’ father. They get away and bring the coffin home only to be told by Michelle and Jal to take it back. Sid and Tony seem to be good friends again which is a very good thing. When they open their A-Level results Sid gets some pretty good results, 2C’s and a B. In the end Tony buys Sid a ticket to New York to go and find Cassie, we see him walking the streets and looking for Cassie where he stands outside the Cafe she’s working out without realising she’s there. Then the Episode ends (nice little cliffhanger)

Tony (Nicholas Hoult)

Sid wakes up in Tony’s bed even though their not friends, Sid got locked out his house so came back drunk to Tony’s and being the new nice guy that he is, Tony lets him stay but is a bit freaked when Sid starts sleep masturbating. Later on Sid comes to Tony’s and the coffin chase proceeds. At the A-Level results Tony got two A’s and a B and him and Michelle take Sid to the airport, at the airport he tells Sid that he always loved him the most, low and behold the friendship is firm again, they hug and Sid gets on the plane. In the end Tony and Michelle have a little “when I first met you” thing and it seems that even though they’re going to separate universities they’ll be okay.

Michelle (April Pearson)

She spends the day comforting Jal over the death of Chris. She takes her to the Zoo and tells her about how she first met Chris in the aquarium and persuaded Jal to take Chris’ attitude and just “fuck it”. She gets her good A-Level results and delivers Sid to the airport. She tells Tony that from the moment she met him she knew she “wanted to fuck him”, they giggle and they seem to be okay.

Jal (Larissa Wilson)

She’s in Michelles bed and doesn’t want to get out. She climbs into the actual duvet cover with her just like her and Chris used to and tells Michelle that she had an abortion. Michelle takes her to the zoo where her and Chris first met and Jal asks Michelle if she thinks she made a mistake by having an abortion. Michelle replies “I know that you have made the hardest decision anyone has ever had to make”. In the aquarium Jal is persuaded to be strong and just have Chris’ carefree attitude and “fuck it” like Chris always did. At the funeral (they all stood on the hill overlooking the funeral) she makes a lovely speech about Chris’ hero Captain Catinga (may not be the right spelling) who jumped from a hot air balloon above the earth armed only with a parachute just because he could. She said this was like Chris, everyday he jumped from a hot air balloon (not literally)just because he could. The Funeral ends and fireworks are set off. Jal sits in the rain near Chris’ grave and his dad visits her and they talk about Chris a bit. Jal got good results as expected.

Maxie (Mitch Hewer)

Maxie and his boyfriend plan to go to London to live there. Maxie got an A and an E for his A-Level results. Him and his boyfriend get on a coach and invite Amwar to come and he does.

Amwar (Dev Patel)

Amwar is worried about his results, the group made a pact not to open the before Chris’ funeral but he does anyway. We find out later that he got two E’s and a U despite all his hard work, looks like he’ll be working his Father. He goes over to Sketches house and she asks him where he thinks he’ll be in 5 years, he replies “hanging out with my friends” but realises that all his friends are too busy to hang out, just as Sketch suspected. Sketch tells Amwar that they can still be friends together, offers him a trip to the cinema, ice skating and just for good measure, some sex. Amwar doesn’t really accept or decline. In the end Maxie is waiting for him to say goodbye to him at the bus station. Maxie asks Amwarto come live with them in London and he accepts, so he wont’ be working at his fathers.

Cassie (Hannah Murray)

She doesn’t really pop-up much, we see her working in the cafe holding the golden casino coin she got from Chris (who got it from Jal before he died) for luck. At the end shes working and Sid is right outside the window but it isn’t shown that they see each other.

Sketch (Aimee-Ffion Edwards)

Sketch tries to persuade Amwarto stay with her, her plans are to stay put right where she is. In the end Amwar leaves for London and she, having accompanied him to the bus station, is left dreary in the dust.

 

Just a summary, but lets you know what happened if you missed anything. Unfortunately the whole cast has now been axed as Channel 4 plan to renew the cast every two years as the characters are shown as going to university now. So at least we will have more series of skins and I may know some of the new characters as my friends whom are twins went for an audition. For all you Skins addicts (like me) it’s a shame that it is over but there is a new English program about teenagers called the “Inbetweeners”, I’ll watch it to see how it goes. I don’t think i’ve missed anything in this recap, but if I have i’ll make sure to edit it.

 

I have been a watcher of SMart since it began and my favourite was Mark Speight, I found him really funny and always used to sit in front of the TV drawing all the things that he showed me. His life began to spiral downwards when his Fiancee Natasha Collins was found dead in their flat. She died after a night of cocaine taking. She was found with 60% burns after she ran a bath and left the hot water tap on, she fell in after collapsing with suspected heart problems and was found dead. Speight said that after she died a part of him died with her. Speight went missing on April 7th 2008 after he didn’t turn up to a meeting with a family member. He was reported missing and the last time he was seen was on CCTV footage in a tube station. Yesterday (April 13th) he was found hung in a building in the Paddington Station area, a post mortem is still being carried out.

It’s presumed the grief of losing his fiancee was just too much for him, maybe he felt partly to blame as he took part in the cocaine binge. The stress of being accused of the murder of Natasha would have been a factor too, thankfully he was not charged and her death was ruled out as misadventure but this and the grief would have been huge, if not the only factors for his presumed suicide. It’s a sad loss as he entertained children for over a decade and was a prominent figure in charities such as Child line and others.

Well Mr. Speight, If there is a heaven or something like that I hope you get re-united with your Natasha. Rest In Piece my friend.

I woke up this morning, the sun was shining, birds were singing and though “Ah, this is going to be a good day”. Boy was I wrong, I sat around got ready and realise that I had no plans and had not the funds to do anything. So I decided to take my sister to the park and that turned out to be a mistake, 20 minutes later we were home and drenched. I wasn’t going to blog today but then I realised that when bored, make a topic about boredom! So I’m going to sit here and think of 100 ways to beat boredom and if I cant reach the target, it’s easy to change the blog title. 

 
• DANCE. This always provides me with at least 20 minutes of fun, put on some music and just go crazy. You’re in the comfort of your own home and you might find out that you were a born dancer.
• Create a blog.How obvious is this one? You’d think so but a lot of people who view blogs do not actually think they have anything good to say in their own blog so don’t bother making one. Every single one of you has something interesting to talk about, be it about your day, Karate, Design, Tap Dancing or you may even want to create a list of recipes online. So go for it and then link me to it so I can see it. Create a free blog at WordPress or  29ms.
• Join a community that interests you. If there’s a specific thing you like, for example Design and Graphics, then find a popular community/forum that will enable you to chat to other like-minded people. (For Design I’d recommend MickM or even the DeviantART Forums)
• Create your own forum. If your own blog is not for you then create your own community forum. If you don’t have your own website use places like ForumsPlace to get your own PHPBB forum for free.
• Watch TV. Pretty Standard, if theres nothing on TV then why not invite some friends round for a DVD day?
• Learn a special skill. Perhaps you’d like to learn something special like Parkour (LearnParkour), maybe you’d like to know how to design in Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Pixel2Life, MickM, PhotoshopLady)
• Remix your own song. Is there a song you really like but you’d like to hear in your own way? Go to Audacity where you can download a free music editor so you can remix any song you like!
• Bake some cookies. Cookies are really easy to make and everyone lurvess tha cookies. The ingredients aren’t hard to get and its likely you already have them in your fridges/cupboards. For a  ton of brilliant cookie recipes go here.
• Write your own song. A follow up to “Remix your own song”, if you think it’s too hard to remix a song then why not start from the basics and write your very own song? Write about something that feel or like or whatever you wish.
• Tidy your room. Okay, not what you want to hear but a tidy room makes a happy person and a comfortable nights sleep. Go all Mary Poppins on your room, put some music on and sing/dance/listen whilst you tidy, it goes a lot quicker and your parents won’t be on your case.
• Exercise. If you’re feeling out of shape or just want a good work-out, don a tracksuit and go for a brisk walk, fast run or a medium jog. Don’t forget to warm up and warm down so you don’t injure yourself!
• Play your games console. If you have a games console then play it, if you’re bored of the games you have then restart them on a difficult setting! Improve your skills. If you don’t own a games console then think about saving up for one if you want one or play games at Miniclip.
• Surf the net. If you can’t surf the net as you have nothing in particular to find then go to/download StumbleUpon, StumbleUpon can take you to a random web page that you may find interesting. Click the button to get to any random web page and keep clicking till you find what you like.
• Invent your own Language. Confuse your friends and family by speaking in a made up language. For example maybe you can mix your words up : Mum: What are you doing Charlotte?. Me: Computer playing on the I am. (a bit like Yoda)
• Ebay. Look for discount items that are a must have or sell unwanted toys and clothes you’ve grown out of.
• Study. Speaks for itself, if it has to be done it has to be done. Don’t avoid it as it will bite you in the behind.
• Design/Write your own Novel. Write a fantasy, comedy, romance or scary book! Plan your book, do some cover art, brainstorm for ideas and then begin to write. Cures boredom for months and months if you keep at it and do a chapter a day.
• Produce your own film. If you have a camcorder, go crazy! Redirect an already made film, Create alternate endings to films such as Star Wars or 28 days later. Release the film maker in you!
• Take pictures. Grab your Camera and take pictures, of sunsets, scenery, people, events. The world is your oyster.
• Read a book. I find time flies when you read a book, go top the library and get a book on something that interests you.
• Create your own game. When Joey, Chandler and Ross were bored in Friends they created random games that kept them entertained. Create your own game that doesn’t involve much thought.
• Go for a walk. If the weather is good, go for a walk. You can see the world and you might even meet new people (don’t talk to strangers but you might meet someone who isn’t crazy)
• Go window shopping. Take a stroll to your local shopping centre and peruse the shops. Something might catch your eye and you can get it the next time you have money (unless you brought money with you, if so, woo!)
• Design your own fashion line. Put pencil to paper and design your own turbo trainers, or a really cool t-shirt.
• Last but not least, Start your own TV Show. Sign up to Youtube, create your own Drama or Spoof News report using your web cam or a camcorder.

Thats 25 ways to beat boredom today, I may do some of them myself! Ill create 75 more things to do over the next week!

 

 

 

“Who wins? You decide!”

Today I had a boring day so came across nothing to talk about, when I have nothing to talk about I go to the BBC News website and look around the pages seeing if anything catches my eye. Nothing really caused my brain cogs to stir until I saw this:

Britney spears’ tiny little crash is ahead of 5 innocent Brits being killed and 12 others being injured in a bus crash. Reading both of these stories I can see that no damage was caused to Britney or the other two cars involved and no real damage to the cars, obviously the damage in Ecuador was a lot more damaging due to the fact that there were deaths. However saying this, Britneys’ no harm crash seems to be running ahead of the people whom died. I don’t understand this at all? Who cares if Britney had a crash? If she had died, yeah I would expect it to be top story news but she didn’t and the others did. Are celebrities all we care about now?

Rebecca Logie, 20, Lizzie Pincock, 19, Indira Swann, 19, Emily Sadler, 20, and tour leader Sarah Howard, 27 were all killed in the crash and I feel that even though they weren’t famous celebrities, they don’t deserve to be behind Britney Spears whose car crashes and antics should be ignored now as they happen all the time. I think we all need to reassess our values and realise that though the bus crash may be old news very soon it is much more important than Ms. Spears. Some of you may say “but we don’t know who those kids were, so why should we care?” and I will reply “You don’t know who Britney is, shes not your friend, so why should you care?”. Britney brought music to our ears and then went into a downwards spiral, these kids could have contributed a lot of things to this world that no-one knows about.

If you think I’m being silly, fine by me. Yes, the crash is in fact the second most read story in BBC at the moment but Why is Britneys’ crash even in the top five? This world is insane.

Two things I’d like to say that aren’t linked to this topic:
1. To the Thompson family, I’m sorry for your loss and good luck at the funeral tomorrow.
2. Everyone check out the new Goldfrapp Video (my friends are in it several times)

I realise I talked about death twice and then suddenly linked you all to a video about “Happiness”, may be tactless but 1. I wanted to show it in the beginning, 2. It might cheer someone up.

Its only been 4 days and I’ve had 77 views on my blog, wasn’t really expecting any so I’d like to thank those who have viewed my blog and thanks in advance to those who will view it in the future. This blog can now be found at www.theneek.net as my kind friend Chris bought it for my birthday. I showed my father my blog today, he liked it and is thinking of doing his own, I like influencing people :3

Today I went shopping and boy was it hell. Stereotypically, us women are supposed to love shopping whatever the circumstances. Normally its a friendly outing or something you do with family but the only way I can do it is if I am on my own. I can’t take shopping with another person and this was further justified by my far from amazing expedition to the shopping centre with my Mother. We got there and everything was fine, she even bought me some shiny silver trainers a shirt and earrings. Then it was half an hour into the trip and I wanted to scream. I like to shop in an orderly fashion but we were all over the place, being dragged to find all the stuff my mother needed and it was pain. She has specific needs for shoes and lucky for me shoes is what she wanted, we went into shop after shop and every shoe she found would not fit her. We spent what seemed like forever in Shoe Zone and even when I told her there were no shoes left to try that would even remotely work, she asked a shop assistant and lo and behold the assistant said exactly the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong, shopping is indeed a fun thing but when I have to cater for other peoples needs and they don’t follow my usual rhythm then it just gets my back up. Also, I don’t understand why casual shopping stresses people out so much! If they were shopping for a soon to come event like a wedding, funeral, party then fine, but if you’ve come to shop just for the hell of it and you come back with nothing then don’t get so stressed. Yes, we’d all like to find the perfect shirt or dress or thong (thongs? they look too.. eroding for me) but if you don’t then don’t throw a paddy about it. My mum dragged me out of the centre to all the high street shops to find that perfect dress and we only found it when my Father and Sister sent in the support and rescued me from this dastardly outing. I have a feeling I won’t be shopping with her without support again. I hereby declare myself a solitary shopper, sounds quite lonely but it gets the job done. 

Are there any more solitary shoppers out there or am I a special race of human being?

“It was an extraordinary day” - This is what my sister said when I asked her to describe her day today. We spent a good ‘ol sisterly day together which I rarely ever do. I took her swimming and once we got bored I took her to the Park and then stopped out for some lunch. Lately she’s been telling everyone how amazing I am and it really makes me smile that she looks up to me. I don’t hang out with her often enough, we’re into different things (obviously because of the 3 year age gap) so can’t share much. She’s extremely active like I used to be at that age but even though we do Karate and stuff together I’m more into relaxing, computers, reading, e.t.c. So the odd day where we go out together just us two is lovely, I may take her swimming once a week now.

Now I’d like to mention my last post about Mr. Webber, I realise that I started off my blog with a rant but you know, its just how I felt. I spoke to my father about his views on it today and he replied “Well, you don’t have to watch it do you?”. He’s right but I still diasagree with it wether I’m forced to watch it or not.

Today I’d like to talk about… Helter Skelter Food!
I am referring to the amazing restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany where you can order your food via touchscreen and wait for it   *drumroll*   it’s delivered by a Helter Skelter!  It’s an automated eatery so I guess you don’t need to be worried about complications such as rude waiters, long waiting times and possibly wrong orders (that is if it actually works). The kitchen to this place is located in the roof so gravity can work its oh-so-sweet magic and deliver it downwards direct to your table via the helter.

I think we all feel a bit worried when we think of food whizzing uncontrolably down a metal slope (that’s what I thought anyway) but the food/drink is placed in a tray and this is latched onto the bars and neatly moves down the slopes and gently stops at your table. It will allow people to have a nice lunch in their small breaks without worrying about the long wait as it is so much more efficient. I’d quite like to give this ago, but I suppose it will be years before this is even thought about over in the UK.

Advantages: Fast service, Modern, Efficient, Don’t have to tip waiters, the robots clean themselves.
Disadvantages: May be a cold atmosphere if you like to be served by a waiter, the helter skelter might look slightly unpleasant to some.

If you like to see the video of the Helter Skelter restaurant, go here.