You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
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.
