Matthew Hughes

Dear myspace... Die

2008-01-23T09:51:00.001-08:00

So I started a new myspace account because some people refuse to join facebook. So I am importing all my old friends, meaning... Well...

(Rant coming. Run for cover)

SOME PEOPLE REFUSE TO HAVE THE STANDARD FORMATTING. I DONT KNOW WHERE THE ADD BUTTON IS ON MOST PEOPLE'S PROFILES.

I am so angry now. Seriously

My myspace addy is

myspace.com/matthewjhughes

Dear myspace... Die

2008-01-15T14:36:00.001-08:00

Guide to geek guys

2008-01-14T13:29:00.001-08:00

http://ifaq.wap.org/sex/geekguide.html

I just saw this on Digg. I am not really into posting links I found on the internet, but this is an exception.

I hope you enjoy it.

Take care

Matthew

New prank call/comedy podcast

2008-01-05T16:29:00.001-08:00

I just had a pretty successful run on ustream.tv. I worked out how to use it and I set up a page. Some friends watched and we discussed if england was a country and made a few prank calls to QVC. You can watch it at

http://ustream.tv/channel/matthew-hughes-live

Anyway, I am starting a new live prank call/comedy podcast. Stay tuned for more info!

Matthew Hughes

Macworld 08

2008-01-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

As a proud owner of a macbook (for two months!), I like to think I am part of the apple family. We are a proud bunch. Turtlenecks are our uniform. We worship at the church of Steve Jobs.

Anyway, I would love to go to macworld, but sadly, I am poor, young and at college. However, thanks to some wonderful blogs and podcasts, I will feel like I am there anyway.

I encourage you all to check out

http://macworldbound.com/

and

http://dailytechtalk.com/

EDIT: On a bonus note, they have some advertising for sale at the conference. If you want a piece of the pie, check out the links above for more info.

I'm back!

2008-01-04T16:57:00.001-08:00

you may have noticed my lack of activity on Facebook, MSN, Twitter or youtube recently. This is because my brother accidentally bricked my modem. Yes. He bricked a modem.

Essentially, I have a BT home hub which updates of its own accord. My brother turned off the modem mid-update. This had the effect of depriving me of the internet for almost a week.

I suppose I am probably a bit addicted. I have been surviving off RSS feeds that I had downloaded and old episodes of diggnation. Anyway, I am writing a bunch of blog posts to make up for the hiatus.

Happy new year everybody!

New projects

2007-12-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

Hey everybody,

Check out my new youtube projects.

Youtube.com/matthewhugheswidnes

this is my non-serious one

youtube.com/politicalmatthew

this is my political one

Prank Calls volume 2

2007-12-10T14:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.archive.org/details/MatthewHughesprankcallsmatthewhughes2

Here is volume 2!

Enjoy!

Cheat at exams

2007-12-10T14:34:00.000-08:00

I, myself, see no problem with cheating in exams. So, here is a nice little hack to help you through exams.

Enjoy!

Blast from the past

2007-11-29T10:24:00.000-08:00

I love youtube. There. I said it. I bitch and moan about it all the time, but I love it.

Why this total change of face? Well I found this.

I remember, back when napster was cool downloading loads of songs from South Park and Sesame Street, sadly, I lost all my old MP3's when I formatted my computer and since then it has been pretty impossible to find all the cool music that was out there.

Sesame Street was a staple of my childhood and I love watching all the old clips on youtube.

New Mac

2007-11-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

So at the weekend I got a brand shiny new macbook. Its, well, the most perfect thing in the world. I absolutely love it. Hats off to you Mr Steve Jobs. You sir, are a genius.

Everything works.

I normally would write a longer post, but I am just so awestruck, I simply don't feel like it.

Stupid Rednecks

2007-11-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91059-1267657,00.html

So some rednecks managed to kill the worlds largest wild boar did they? Congratulations. Now try to read what I just wrote. Aww. Exactly. You cant.

Tegan and Sara

2007-11-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

I love Tegan and Sara. They are probably one of the best times of all time. I fell in love with them through the MOKY blog (check that out at myoldkyhome.blogspot.com, probably the best MP3 blog in the world) and since have downloaded most of their music and got my older brother to bring me back a CD from Canada when they went. Here is a video of their song, nineteen, recorded at the AOL radio studios.

iPhone

2007-11-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

I went to the O2 store today and tried out the iPhone. I only used safari, but I was pleasantly impressed. Blogging was problematic (to say the least) but it looked cool and it was fast, nice and cute. I really want one badly, but as I am currently employed and not entitled to EMA I cannot afford one. Ugh. So frustrating!

2007-11-08T12:44:00.000-08:00

I LOVE The Postal Service. One of the best bands of all time.

This video is fantastic (and makes me look forward to Christmas when I get a macbook).

Myspace

2007-11-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

I have barely been using Myspace, ever since I have discovered Facebook, Myspace has become kinda childish. Its refreshing to use a social networking site where you dont keep on getting messages like

"Lolzorez. You have won an iPhone WTF!".

Recently, I have been coming back to Myspace. It is a bit more refined and since I have instituted "you get hacked you get blocked" policy, I have started to enjoy using it a bit more. So feel free to add me at myspace.com/snoopsy10.

Motivation (part 2)

2007-11-08T09:35:00.000-08:00

So the government, in all its infinite, non existent wisdom has decided to make it a crime for anybody between 16-18 to live their lives as they see fit. The government thinks that it has divine right to meddle with things that do not concern it.

Why am I angry? It will not effect me. I will be too old to be effected when it rolls into place. Well, I am furious for a number of reasons

1.) It will destroy our colleges. Yes, because people are FORCED to attend college, people wont care, wont co-operate and will ruin our existing colleges.

2.) Why can't a 16 year old decide what he wants to do with his life? Perhaps he wants to volunteer for a year at a local hospice. Too bad! You have to go into schooling. And if you resist, we will lock you and your parents up. Thank you officers for going after Britain's most hardened criminals.

3.) We haven't been making people attend college in the past. People in the UK can (largely) read. So why do we have to put this law into place?

4.) Teenage mothers will be unable to care for their children. Why? Because they are in school.

5.) Carers will be unable to care for their dependents. Why? Because they are in school.

So to sum up what I have said, the government wants to waste YOUR money, to put people in college, where they do not want to be, meaning that children and disabled people will have the amount of care reduced.

Great idea numbnuts!

Motivation

2007-11-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

Today, everybody in my college (except me and a few others) got their target grades. Now, one of the main points of target grades is to motivate people. Does that work in the real world? Nope. If you really want to motivate people, don't mess them around by offering a course and then withdrawing it at the last moment. How about this one, if you want to motivate people, try not removing all the things that make college worthwhile.

I will give you an example. There is a company called Opera. In their Swedish offices, employees get free beer on Fridays, a massage every fortnight, free newspapers. In our college we, erm. I will get back to you with that one.

The point is, people need to want to do something to do it well. When people are forced to do crap courses, with no merit whatsoever and in a place that is not very comfortable, then you get badly motivated, unhappy workers/students.

Learn things.

An Apology

2007-11-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

If you have been paying attention to my youtube channel, you might have noticed that the "Modest Mouse" clips are actually from a James Morrisson concert. Sorry! Next time I will view the video before I upload it.

Best. Song. Ever

2007-11-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

This is quite possibly, the most honest, funny and brilliant song I have ever heard. Classic.

Anybody who wants to check his stuff out, go to www.anthonydacosta.com

His youtube channel is http://youtube.com/user/anthonydacosta

An Interview with McKay Hatch, founder of the no cussing club

2007-11-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

Hi guys,

I recently approached McKay Hatch and asked for an interview. McKay is the founder of the "No Cussing" club. Whilst I don't agree with him, especially with regards to swearing and censorship, I decided to offer him a platform to express himself, especially considering the barrage of criticism he has received from the Nobody Likes Onions podcast and Scott Mills.

Many thanks to McKay and his Dad for consenting to the interview!

1.) When I heard about your club, I instantly thought "Wow. If this guy done this in my school, he would not last a second". Why have your friends been so receptive?

At first they were not very receptive. In fact when I wore the shirt I got cussed out all of the time. After it caught on and other people started wearing the shirts, then people thought it was cool not to cuss and they liked it. I get more respect now because if what it stands for .

2.) You have faced criticism from a British radio DJ called Scott Mills and an Internet podcast called Nobody Likes Onions (See episode 245). Why do you think this is?

Anytime you stand up for something good you’re going to get criticism. But for the most part we have received much more positive than negative. In just 2 weeks we covered the U.S. with new members and now we have members in 30 countries

3.) What do you think constitutes a swear word, the way it is said, the intent or the word itself?

Well everyone in the U.S. knows which swear words are the ones that are most hurtful and when people are mad and they use bad words to make other people feel bad, its hurtful. We got an email from a man that said that he always cussed his wife out. Then finally she had enough and left. So swearing does affect people in a negative way. If you don’t have anything positive than don’t say it

4.) What do you do in your spare time?

I’m in scouts. I play soccer and now I do public speaking with my dad on fighting peer pressure.

5.) What made you want to create a rap video?

Music has a big influence. So the rap video is my story on why I started the no cussing club

6.) Have you ever visited England?

I would love to. We got over 2000 emails from England. 90 % were positive the rest I deleted.

7.) Why do you think people swear? The media or just the nature of people?

I think first its their upbringing, next the media and then their friends. They just want to fit in. I would like to see if people could go a week without swearing. Its a lot harder than they think

8.) Imagine this hypothetical situation. You spill a hot cup of tea over your leg. What do you shout out?

I usually yell or count to 10. I really have never had a problem with cussing

9.) Do you think that there should be any censorship of the net to deal with profanity? What about TV or radio?

Yes I do because t.v. and radio have a big influence on the youth. Kids are just following the celebrities and what they do.

10.) If you had your own podcast/TV show/radio program, what would it be like?

It would be a show that is nothing but the positive and the good things people do because the news and tv usually focus on the bad things that kids do. There are a lot of kids doing great things

Again, many thanks to Brent and McKay. You can find out more by visiting their website.

I would like to say, that I do not share McKay's opinions on the matter. I dont think that a word can truly be offensive, simply because a word is just a combination of vowels and consonants. Furthermore, I don't think the media has anything to do with morals or swearing. When Oliver Cromwell took over most of the UK, he banned swearing. This was a time prior to the TV or PC.

However, I think McKay has some valid points. Namely, that emotional abuse, especially within marriage, is wrong.

Prank calls

2007-11-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

Here for your general amusement, is one whole zip file filled to the brim with prank calls. Enjoy!

Click here!

Observations about youtube

2007-10-27T13:54:00.000-07:00

It is fascinating that there are more people who would rather watch a grainy mobile phone picture of a modest mouse concert than watch videos of my and my friends getting bored in college (thats not a hard thing to accomplish) and eating raw jalapeños.

What a sick sad world we live in.

My youtube profile

2007-10-27T13:51:00.000-07:00

Wanna see videos of me in pain? I bet you do, you sick SOB's. Check out youtube.com/user/matthewhugheswidnes.

My personal favorite is of me in pain after eating a jalapeño. Good times, good times.

A clarification...

2007-10-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

Whilst I think that my college is not a very nice place to be *cough*half-an-hour-for-lunch-crappy-lessons-hard-to-do-your-work*cough*, I would like to make a clarification. Whilst there are some pretty crappy teachers in my college, I recognise that the vast majority are dedicated people who work hard and love their job. Reading my blog, you might think I have a negative opinion on school and education. This is not the case.

I just think my college has made some really bad decisions and altered the very nature and atmosphere of the college. Now it is a lot more hostile and it is not a very nice place to be. A few years ago, and perhaps to a lesser extent last year, people could relax in sofas between lessons and do their work. People took courses where they learned things, rather than taking screen shots of links. My college was not a half bad place to go. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

How my college makes it near impossible for me to do my work.

2007-10-27T13:25:00.000-07:00

1.) The stupid filtering system. My college uses a draconian filtering system that blocks everything from pro youth-rights websites, to online newspapers.

2.) The screen capture software. I study theology and will have to write an essay about sexual ethics. Good luck! No really, hate is a banned word. As, at one point, was going. So expect my screen to get captured if I write something along the lines of "I hate that I am going to...".

3.) The tools we are given stink. IE6. Really. Microsoft office? Thank god I have Opera, Firefox, Open Office, Notepad++ on a pen drive.

4.) The lessons I study make it impossible for me not to fall asleep. Really. Part of an assignment was to show I can use a search engine. And a sub task was to take a screen shot of me clicking on a link. Riveting.

Oh well. To make a fair and balanced argument, I will write a few good points.

1.) The coffee machine. Honest to God, if that machine was to be taken away, I would have literally no reason to go to college. Tragic.

2.) You learn things. Not in the traditional sense. You most certainly don't learn things in my IT lesson, but, you do learn self dependency. Not learning programming. Fine then, go to a fucking library and get a book out about Java or C++.

Yep. My college is pretty bad.

Why was OiNK.cd raided?

2007-10-24T02:04:00.001-07:00

As we all know, the popular bittorrent tracker OiNK.cd was raided last night. Now, anybody who knows much about bittorrent is well aware that the tracker holds no copyrighted material, just LINKS to copyrighted material. Would you shut down Google because it has links to pirated material? No! Google is an indexing site, rather like The Pirate Bay and Mininova.

Now, the administrator has been arrested and the site has been took down. But a few questions remain.

1.) Why did the person in charge of the operation claim that the site charged visitors to access the lovely pre-release pirated music? This is not true! They requested donations, not fees!

2.) Why where the IFPI nazi's granted access to the OiNK.cd domain? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty!

These are questions that should be answered by whoever was in charge of the operation as the owner of OiNK.cd has been deprived of his property, has his house, his fathers house and his place of work raided and has been slandered by a member of the police?

Ahh... Freedom. Yeah right.

Save the world

2007-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

I wont guilt trip you into doing anything. But let me break down the whole global warming thing for you.

You dont turn off your lights.

We all die.

So, turn off all your lights. Its the sensible thing to do.

Why Copyright Is A Horrendous Idea

2007-10-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, Let me give you a hypothetical situation. One newspaper writes an article. An educator scans the article and uses the article in a class. That teacher is now a criminal and a pirate. Has she done anything wrong? No! Has she done anything immoral? No! Is she breaking the law? Yes!

Just an example of why copyright is a horrendous idea!

Working On A New Project

2007-10-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

Don't want to spoil much, but I will drop a few hints.

1.) It will be available on lulu.com
2.) It will be available on my blog
3.) It will have a creative commons license (attribution non commercial share alike)

It should be done in a few weeks. I am really excited as I am quite happy with what I have made so far, but it is nowhere near finished.

Firefox VS Opera

2007-10-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

So recently I have been using FireFox a lot more. I used to loath FireFox, although that was more to do with ignorance than actual knowledge.

Now, all the opera fanboys that read this blog, don't get me wrong, I love opera. But I am starting to realise that maybe the grass is in fact greener on the other side.

One thing I loathe about Opera is the RSS feature. Often, it will only check for new messages on the feeds once every two hours. And that is me being generous. Now, I love RSS. It pretty much gives me all my information. My whole life is on my RSS feeds pretty much. I have blogs, podcasts, torrents. Everything. Now, I want my information to be instantaneous. Not every 2 hours. Not every hour. Instantaneous.

One reason I used opera to start off with is the built in bittorrent feature, but now I use uTorrent and Azureus. Why do I need a bittorrent client that closes when I close the browser and offers no encryption?

There are things I love about Opera. I love speed dial. I love the large amount of customisation. I love opera. It is one damn good browser. I love how I can just turn it on, and it works. But, in all honesty, the only think stopping me moving to the dark side is that all my bookmarks and feeds are on there.

Hotel Rwanda

2007-10-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

One of my current favorite films is Hotel Rwanda. Why? Not because of the gratuitous amounts of violence. But because of the fantastic acting of Don Cheadle and Nick Nolte and the brutal honesty of what happened in Rwanda.

What I find fascinating is how the west prides its self on its current intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet the UK and the US lobbied for the removal of UN peacekeepers from Rwanda. Disgusting.

What makes this fact worse, is that the west had full knowledge of the nature of the conflict in the small African nation and yet the West still continued to supply the militias and done little to prevent the mass genocide.

An example of how history repeats itself is the conflict in Darfur. Only now are the AU and UN intervening. And of course, hundreds of thousands have died. And of course, the media really does not care.

And China and Russia even threatened to veto action! Where is Vladamir Putin's and Hu Jintao's sense of decency and... well... intelligence!

I hope the next generation of people to rule the UK are not the lazy, fat, useless tosspots that infest parliament today.

New Domain

2007-10-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
I have registered the domain matthewhughes.co.nr.

Thanks

In Rainbows

2007-10-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hey,
I am trying to get the new radiohead album. Sadly, the server seems to be down. I have told Opera to refresh every 5 seconds, but no luck. I hope to get the album by the end of the night so expect a review in the next few days.

I loathe british public transport

2007-10-08T13:59:00.000-07:00

There is nothing quite like the inefficient, slow, late British bus. The bus I was on today decided to break down and I was left to walk 3 miles home. Trust me, this is typical. If you ever have the misfortune to visit the UK, do yourself a favor and hire a car.

American Media Influence

2007-10-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

So OFCOM is somewhat worried about US influence in the media. Perhaps it never occurred to them that due to the nature of the US media market, some of the best children's tv shows are made in America (Sesame Street, for example).

America has a lot to offer the world, and whilst I don't agree with the vast majority of the policies of the government, I think that America has helped democracies flourish throughout the world. US music is awesome and I was raised on Sesame Street (and even now I am somewhat fond of Lazy Town).

My biggest beef with OFCOM is that regulation, in any form, is censorship. OFCOM try to tell you what you cannot see or hear through the wonderful mediums that are radio and TV.

Ah well. Perhaps we should curb our sesame street habits. After all, Bert is EVIL! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_is_evil

Smoking age the same as the age of majority. WTF?

2007-10-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

So the age in which an individual can smoke has been raised to the same as the age of majority. Typical. Rather than talking about WHY people smoke. Instead of approaching the issue like intelligent people, we decided to impose a rule on an age bracket that is both unfair and unintelligent.

I am a non smoking individual (and I intend to stay that way). I walk to college. All in all, I am a reasonably healthy individual (yeah right). I can understand why people will object to smoking in a restaurant.

We are approaching the point where smokers, people who don't do 30 minutes of exercise a day and overweight people will be refused treatment in hospitals. Where we will be told what we can and cannot eat. What media we can watch, and unless people realise that we have to do something about the position we are in with regards to the freedom of the individual, we may soon find our lives to be structured in a fashion that most people would object to.

Udders

2007-10-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

Today in my english language class, we were talking about chocolate. We were given a plastic bag with names of brands of chocolate and we were supposed to sort them out into neat piles regarding the linguistic techniques found in the names of the products. It got me thinking, Marathon, Wispa, Flyte, Yowie and Caramac. Awesomely tasty chocolate that is nowhere to be found now. We just have the typical "Lion, Mars and Dairy Milk" combo.

I listen to a podcast called "Munchcast" with Cammy Blackstone and Leo Laporte. They talk about predominantly junk food. And there is a reason why junk food is so popular. It is tasty (get that Jamie Oliver?) and inexpensive. One thing I have noticed from listening to "Munchcast is that the junk food in America is a lot more interesting and varied. At one point they mentioned meat flavored gum... What every growing boy needs...

In more positive news, Cadbury announced that they are reviving the yowie. Yay

Udders

My school is so frustratingly frustrating

2007-10-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

I had better start this off with a warning. This is going to be one of those depressing myspace style blog posts. I don't normally write like this, but I just want to vent my spleen. Enjoy.

OK, so I am guessing that you have guessed from the title of my blog, the nature of the vast majority of my blog posts and the subjects that I write about, I am a somewhat technically minded person.

Now, I wanted to go to a different (better) college in my area called Carmel. It is in a town near to mine and it has an excellent reputation. However, due to reasons I don't want to talk about, I have to go to the college which has also served as my school for the past few years (as a side note, I would like to mention that although I am less than fond of my school, there are some good, hard working, people who work there. I don't want to tar everybody with the same brush.).

A few months back, I wanted to be a doctor. Well, things change, and then I realised that the only thing I am especially good with, is computers. Anybody who has read my blog knows that I can get sidetracked easily. I decided I want to learn how to program. That's perfectly reasonable. And since I was not going to Carmel and the school offered a double IT course, that sounded ideal. It had aspects of programming, hardware repair and other interesting things.

Now, my school, being my school, decided to pull said course (although, the course is still offered on the prospectus.). So I have to do single IT.

Now, you may be wondering why I am so angry I have to write a blog post. Well here is why.

We don't learn anything.

Nope. Nothing.

I am serious. Nothing.

Oh wait. We do essays.

Yes. Nothing practical. Essays.

So I am in the situation where if I don't carry on with the subject, I cant do what I want in uni. If I carry on with the course I learn nothing and I am bored to tears.

I feel totally betrayed by my school. Not only do they withdraw all the lessons that are worthwhile, they screw you over with the aim of getting better results. Yes. The school made us sit our maths exams in November instead of may like the rest of the human race. So I done my maths exam in November, got a C. Why is this so bad? Well, most universities worth mention stipulate that you must have at least a B in GCSE maths. So I resat the exam with the morons and retards who failed in the first place and, no surprises here, I got a C. Again.

It is really difficult to trust the school with my future successes when they fail to offer worthwhile subjects and screw you over to improve their results.

So I am damned if I do and damned if I dont. Fantastic.

Another reason why I hate the concept of socialised education.

Blender

2007-10-04T12:26:00.000-07:00

You know when you are young, and you want to make money fast (so you can spend it on what? McDonalds and a computer so you can play DooM? Yes DooM, I am a true child of the 90's), so you try to start your own business, and you do a few drawings and then forget it? Well, you probably dont, but I do. I used to want to make computer games, sweets. It varied. At one point I sold drinks at lunch time, and stopped the week later.

Lets just say that I am somewhat unprofessonal.

I just updated python and installed blender. For you non tech people there, I am making my own 3d designs and a short film. I can see a few problems happening soon... Maybe because my PC sucks. Maybe because I have been using it for the past few hours and I have no idea what I am doing.

Oh dear.

Snap Elections

2007-09-30T06:28:00.000-07:00

The leader of one of the main political parties in the UK, David Cameron, has expressed a desire for a snap election. I expect they will discuss all the things that they normally talk about (things which they should have no involvement in), education, healthcare, the media.

One of the main problems with the UK is that the state has TOO much involvement in the lives of an individual. An example of this would be the prohibition of smoking for minors. That is just retarded. An individual has the right to chose what he or she puts in her body. The way that the state gradually removes our rights is shocking. And what is worse is how people EXPECT the state to do it, of course, for our own good.

Allow me to give you an example. The dreaded OFCOM (I personally think anything with more than four letters in an acronym is evil. Point in question, NAMBLA). OFCOM stipulates that no radio show or tv show can hold a loyalty to a particular political party. There are things you cannot say. Things you cannot show. Disgusting.

This is, of course, only one example, but if we want the UK to remain a world leader, then the state must have less and less involvement in commerce and the media.

If you want to learn more about the opinions I expressed here, you should check out libertarianism. It is the idea that we are each responsible for our own lives and nobody else is, nor should be.

It is not an especially popular idea as it goes against traditional British socialism, but if you want more individual freedoms, smaller government and low taxes, check out Libertarianism.

Drop Bombs Not Beats

2007-09-29T12:14:00.000-07:00

Have you seen those T-shirts? You know, the kind that say things like "drop beats not bombs" and "save the planet". The kind in the Frankie Goes To Hollywood style.

I loathe them. There is nothing on the planet I hate more. They smack of hypocrisy. They are worn by pretentious teenagers with too much money and an obsession with primark. I detest these T-shirts and those who wear them.

I hate the fact that they talk about saving the world whilst somebody in Bangladesh has made the shirts for roughly about 10 pence a hour (and that is probably not hyperbole). I hate the design. I hate the people who wear them. No, I loathe the people who wear them.

To convey how much I hate these T-shirts, if I could go back in time and kill Saddam Hussein before he became what he was or I could kill the person who invented these irritatingly annoying shirts, I know what I would do.

Rant over. Learn things.

I hate indecisisive people.

2007-09-29T11:46:00.000-07:00

The British people are said to be experts at queuing. If it was not the wartime rationing and queueing or standing in line for petrol whenever there is a war in the middle east.

The point is that some people use the time spent in line, thinking about what they intend to purchase. Not today in McDonalds. There was this irritating woman, who HAD NO IDEA what she intended to buy. She was not sure what she wanted to eat. Fucking moron. The point of this rambling post was I was waiting behind her and whilst she was not sure if she wanted fries or salad, I was getting hungrier.

We queue for a reason. It is to decide what we want to eat. Learn things.

Check out this podcast

2007-09-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

The Nobody Likes Onions podcast is the best produced, most amusing and most thought provoking podcast I have ever listened to. The hosts, Chef, Patrick, Johnny B, Dagre and Whitmore are some of the wittiest most outrageous members of the podcasting community and so far, they are 230+ episodes strong and I expect them to be around for a LOT longer. So check them out at http://www.nobodylikesonions.com.

Ahtouchb'hag

I loathe lil chris

2007-09-26T13:54:00.001-07:00

Lil Chris is the worst kind of reality TV musical abomination. One who's success has been based on other peoples hard work

Well, Success is somewhat of a lie. His album sold roughly about 10 copies (and no, that is probably not hyperbole) and his only fans are teenage girls. Look at one of the comments on the video

finnie1993 (8 minutes ago)

evin though the video is a bit weired bt its a gid song
n any scottish lassies ere send us a message

First of all, look at the spelling. Granted, you would have to be somewhat of a retard to like Lil Chris anyway, but look at how she spelled weird. Allow me to translate the first line into non-moron speak

"Even though the video is a bit weird but its a good song and any Scottish girls here send me a message"

I tried to keep the grammar as flawed as the original but there were places I just could not resist correcting.

First of all, there is such thing as correct word order. Try it.

Second of all, it took me about ten seconds to write that in non retard speak. Now, is it THAT difficult to write coherently? Well, in your case, yes, as you lack the mental capacity to spell.

Third of all, Lil' Chris fans are as bad as Lil' Chris himself. You are not only a moron. You are the worst kind of moron. One who likes Lil' Chris.

The point is, Lil' Chris is awful. The fans are just as bad. Lil' Chris can only perform terrible covers and he should be banned from speaking, let alone singing, ever again.

That is all.

New headphones.... Again

2007-09-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

I do a significant amount of traveling. If by car, train, plane or bus, I always have my MP3 player with me. I listen to a staggering amount of podcasts and I can even revise for upcoming exams using it. So, naturally, good headphones are a must. This year, I have had to buy many different kinds of headphones. Not because I am careless. Not because I am irresponsible with my property, but because things wear out. Especially with a lot of use. I have went through samsung, magnavox, Sony, sennheiser headphones so far and it has significantly dented my finances.

I decided to get different headphones for different purposes. I bought some cans for traveling and the smaller buds for walking. The make of both was maxell and so far, I am quite impressed. Will write more as I have only bought them in the past few days

The pirate party are "illegitimate theives"? Eff off Dean Garfield

2007-09-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

So the MPAA thinks that the pirate party are "illegitimate thieves". Well, I am sorry but no need to throw your dummy out of the pram.

Lets pretend, just for the moment, that you have the mental capacity to understand what you said.
“There’s nothing about what the Pirate Bay does or what the Pirate Party does that is legitimate. There’s nothing philosophically principled about it. They steal copyright content and accept advertising dollars based on taking other people’s work. There’s nothing noble about it.”

Well, first of all, there is no advertising on the web page of the Pirate Party. Second of all, the US Pirate Party OPPOSES copyright theft. They support the abolition of it. Third of all, if something has a principle behind it, the fact that it is principled does not change because you are (a moron) not in agreement with it. It is still principled and you are still a moron. Learn things.

Why I loathe Jamie Oliver!

2007-09-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

Jamie Oliver is a fairly well known individual, having amassed a small fortune, all in the name of "saving Britain's children from the dangers of obesity". Now, I don't recommend that all 12 of my readers go out and put on a few hundred pounds, but if you want to go out and do that, I am not going to stop you. I think you are all mature adults with an ability to reason and work out the risks associated with not having a healthy diet, although, I define adult pretty loosely. I think that anybody over the age of 13 has the ability to decide important things in their life.

You may wonder, why I am ranting about this. I am fed up with being patronised and treated with the mental ability of a five year old when it comes to choosing what I put in my body.

I go to a college in the north of England (which I hate) and the choice of food and drink available to me is somewhat limited. Why? You guessed it. Jaime Oliver. Since he started his crusade (sounds like a daily express article) against junk food (neglecting to mention a balance in the process), Jaime Oliver has made millions of pounds. He has been thrust into the limelight.
He is a household name. In other words, he is the David Cameron of cooking (pretending to care about an issue in order to make large financial gains).

I read an article on digg recently, saying that in some schools in london, there have been revolts against the food that they are served. What! You mean that teenagers DONT enjoy eating lightly toasted foccacia with spinach
and essence of cactus?! You learn something new every day.

Why does my college have to be awquard?

2007-09-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

So, as anybody who has used a pc in any college/school, you will know that sticking your pen drive in any USB port is a collosally bad idea. Not only are almost all of the computers painfully windows based, some people like to stick vessels in the USB drives. I hate microsoft office. Its bloaty, ugly, seldom works as it should. I have decided to move to google docs. (Shocker, I haven't had any work lost as a result of crashes. I wonder why?).

Now, since the college school has to be totally awquard, they have decided to "investigate" my use of google documents. Why? Perhaps if you never offered crappy equipment that worked I would not use google docs.

Ok, That was a somewhat incoherent rant. Stay tuned for my diatribe against Jaime Oliver!

Media Defender gets wu-tanged

2007-09-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

Just read the torrentfreak article. It amuses me so much knowing that they got caught trying to cause piracy. Obviously, copyrights are irrelevant. They get paid per lawsuit. Another example of how the copyright system is failing and how much we need to find an alternative that suits the needs of the creators and consumers

http://torrentfreak.com/mediadefender-emails-leaked-070915/
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3806944/MediaDefender.Mail.200612.200709-MDD

Needless to say, TiAMO and Anakata are quite pleased with this revelation, as they have been less than fond of media defenders activities, so much so that they even made a usage policy!

2007-09-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

Last friday I recieved some terrible news. Paul Johnson, A friend of mine, lost his life.

My condolences go out to his friends, his family and those who knew him.

Matthew Hughes

Twitter

2007-09-05T11:17:00.001-07:00

Just a quick reminder to check out my twitter at twitter.com/matthewhughes

thanks!

A few hours later after the PCBSD

2007-09-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

So far, so good. I am really enjoying using PCBSD. The choice of KDE for the GUI was a very good one as it allows people to adjust easily from using windows and certain distro's of linux. KDE is the default enviroment but I think it is possible to change.

Of course, I have only used PCBSD for a few hours. I am quite impressed so far, It is a well designed OS.

I have encountered a few problems. Mainly problems with installed apps. Installing apps is easy. I just dont know how to install them!

I am also having problems installing python 2.5.1. There are no binaries so I have to compile it from source. A major pain in the arse!

I find that PCBSD makes me nostalgic for the old amigaOS, my first computing experience. It also gives me flashbacks from the woefully bad win95. It is by far the most stable OS I have ever used. More so than linux or OS X.

I plan to install Solaris, try it out then revert to BSD. Fun!

Goodbye Xubuntu... Hello PCBSD

2007-09-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

I am a rather tech savvy person. I am familiar with Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. However, as of late, I have looked less fondly on Linux. It does very little for me. I wanted a change. I wanted greener pastures. I have done the unthinkable. I have defected from Linux to PCBSD. I know there is a lot of rivalry between fanboys of the two operating systems (Which is retarded. Its an operating system!). To explain my decision, I will write a list to explain my reasons for leaving the linux camp.

1.) The command line annoys me. A lot.

2.) Linux is not so user friendly

3.) PCBSD does not use a package manager for everything.

4.) BSD is more stable than linux. Especially as a server.

5.) Apple chose to use BSD as the basis of Mac OS X. What does that tell you. Bear in mind that OS X is used more than Vista and Linux.

6.) No more recompiling kernels from scratch. Hallelujia

Linux is by no means a bad OS. But like all OS's, it has its merits and its failings. If the BSD thing does not work out, I will move to react OS. If that does not work, hell, I will give arch linux a go.

All hate mail to creativecast@googlemail.com

motherload

2007-08-23T07:00:00.001-07:00

I saw this awesome game on miniclip today. I dont play many online games, but damn, this is addictive

MotherLoad

Use your digger to excavate as much ore as possible

Play this free game now!!

I passed!

2007-08-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

I got into school at about 10 AM today. I got my GCSE's, and after over 12 years of schooling, I have finally got something that shows all I have acheived.

CIDA at L2: Pass (So 2 GCSE's at grade C)

Mathematics C
Business C (Which was impressive considering I had no coursework)
Statistics D (Meh. A fictional subject)
Science double award B B
French B
Spanish B
English literature C
Religion A*

Needless to say, I am rather happy and I intend to go to college to study computer science.

New Project... and exam results tomorrow

2007-08-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, I would like to introduce you to my knew project, Beginning Computing. It is some videos, hosted on everybody's favorite, youtube, that teach you very simple but essential aspects of using a computer, such as sending e-mails or installing applications.

Also, I get my GCSE results tomorrow.... Exciting! I will post about what I get.

Is it gay that I am excited for high school musical 2?

2007-08-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Yes I have the new soundtrack. And yes, I have the original DVD. And yes, I will get it before its UK release date.

Oh, and I bought some sennheiser MX350's. Brilliant. I will only buy sennheiser headphones from now on. No more magnavox headphones!

Oh, and it was my birthday on august the 4th. Some of the best presents I got were off my best friend Chris. A credit card size travel kit, a magnavox mic so I can make better podcasts and... yes, a rape alarm.

I also got some tickets for modest mouse, a portable DVD player, shirts and some other cool stuff.

How Wikitravel.com saved me from getting scammed

2007-08-14T03:26:00.001-07:00

Hi guys,
I just got back from Italy (it was awesome). I spent a few days in venice and then went down to Rome. Italian food is fantastic (unless you go to a really touristy place. Then it can be not so good). I ate lots of pizza (and, of course, McDonalds where you can get the finest burger ever, the McCrispy Bacon).

Venice was lovely. Possibly my oldest memories of venice was playing tomb raider 2 so I had an urge to start shooting dogs in true Lara Croft fashion. Dont tell PETA!

Rome was good. I looked it up on wikitravel before I left. I saw in the "stay safe" section about men who strike up conversation with tourists and whilst they are distracted wrap pieces of string around their wrists and charge them 20 euros for each piece of string. One man of North African origin tried to try this with me. Because I knew before hand what they tried to do (and the fact he had string in his hand) I refused to talk to him (using some rather colourfull language).

I really enjoyed Italy and can't wait to go again!

Thoughts on italy.

2007-08-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Since I have been here, I have noticed a few things.

Licorice flavored Fanta? What next, Green Tea flavored Coke?

Italian layout keyboard are the most unweildly things in the world

It is not fun when you are forced to use IE 6.

There is a reason why we don't eat deep fried mozzarella cheese in England.

Why dont we have the McBacon Crispy in the UK?

I am really enjoying Italy. I set off by train for Rome tomorrow.

You can check out my Pownce at pownce.com/matthewhughes

In Italy

2007-08-06T05:06:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
I am in italy. Italy is such a fantastic country. The food is incredibly healthy and nice and the architecture is spectacular. I am in venice for 4 days and then I am going to Rome. I will write more later but I only have 3 mins left on my account!

2007-08-02T03:11:00.000-07:00

Hi guys,
Now that I have had a few days of sleep, and, well, real food, I thought I would write a more coherent version of the previous blog post.

I got to Lourdes after a 28 hour drive.I was incredibly tired and hungry as I had mostly been sleeping on the floor of a bus and eating food bought from french service stations (which, for the record, is better than english food. Chicken Kebab Baguettes? Here I come.)

The hotel I stayed in left a lot to be desired. Our room had one large blanket between two beds, and one of the supports on a bed had snapped, so myself and my roommate alternated between beds each night.

Lourdes, in my opinion, is the blackpool of catholicism. In every shop near the demain you can see glow in the dark statues of Jesus, flick knives with Mary on and taser stun guns (thats not a lie).
Its a shame, because, Lourdes is a special place for many people, and it almost deminishes the effect of such a special place when you see shops selling overpriced drinks and tacky souveneirs.

Everyday, we would work with elderly, disabled or handicapped people, and I really enjoyed the work and I got to meet new people and I enabled them to visit the grotto and go shopping.

I look forward to the year 2008 when I can visit Lourdes again for the 150th anniversary of the apparitions.

In the meantime, check out my holiday snaps. http://www.flickr.com/photos/10751691@N05/

And next week, I will be in Italy! God I love Italian food.

My Trip to Lourdes

2007-07-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am very aware that a trip to lourdes doesn't fall under the remit of film or tech (speaking of film, I went by bus. The trip was 28 hours and the Moulin Rouge was inflicted upon me. What a terrible film.)

It was not the first time I had been to Lourdes. The previous year, I went to Lourdes for the first time and I loved it. I met lots of great people. Fortunately, many of the people who went to lourdes the previous year attended this year.

We set off from St Josephs Church in Warrington and drove through Birmingham, London and through France. As I previously said, the trip lasted 28 hours. It was pretty painful as the chairs were extremely uncomfortable. I decided to throw my pillow on the floor and fall asleep.

I often set myself bizzare chalenges. This year, I decided to take a picture of every meal, drink and snack I ate. Dont bother asking me why. I just felt it would be fun. (Actually, I would have put all my pics on this post but my SD card went all corrupt. I had to download a recovery programme. Unfortunately, I could not recover most of my pics. Thankfully, I have recovered the ones I cared most about.

One of the best things about lourdes is that you get to meet people from all walks of life. The Demain (the part which most tourists and pilgrims visit) in a place where people will
simply come up and talk to you because you are there for a common reason. Its actually quite nice.

The food in the hotel was pretty bad. I ate mostly biscuits, chocolate, cereal bars and I drank Beer, Cola and water. Strangely enough, the water that I drank in lourdes was from the spring that St Bernadette found. This makes the water automatically holy water. I find that really hard to grasp.

I met some lovely people in lourdes, people whom I call close friends. I will post some pictures above. I have been up for 48 hours and I really need to get some sleep. This post will be expanded upon a later date.

ten inconvenient truths

2007-07-11T04:44:00.001-07:00

Hello all. The IFPI released a press release recently called "Music Piracy - Ten Inconvenient Truths". Now, there were a number of things i felt were quite wrong with this. I decided to call them up (putting me on hold and playing Keane was quite possibly the most painful thing I have ever endured) and e-mail them with regards to a number of things I feel are misleading. Now, with permission of the IFPI (I wouldn't want to get sued you see), I will now show it to you.

1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment free music rhetoric.

Yes The Pirate Bay has adverts. How do you expect it run otherwise. It needs to pay for the bandwidth and servers.

2. Allofmp3.com, the well-known Russian website, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.

Yes, allofmp3.com the (nonexistent) "Russian iTunes" has not been licensed by a single IFPI member. That is true, but it did pay royalties to a Russian agency. Speaking of criminal proceedings, isn't one of the IFPI member organisations the RIAA facing criminal proceedings in the USA under the RICO act among other things?

3. Organised criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit Cd's to raise revenue and launder money.

That's true. But nobody buys pirate movies and Cd's any more because of the widespread adoption of broadband and peer to peer networks.

4. Illegal file-sharers dont care whether the copyright infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.

Proof? That's right, there is none.

5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on underground artists and more inclination to invest in bankers like American Idol stars.

Hold on. I just had to stop laughing. Virtually nobody makes a career from American Idol. And the record companies are quite content to allow potential bankers such as Morrissey to slip off the radar in order to promote talentless individuals.

6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.

Yeah. That's true. But try and stop it. If you encrypt your bittorrent traffic, it is almost impossible to packet filter.

7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.

OK, to point one, i would like to suggest that you would like to talk to the many thousands of artists that have given their work a CC license. To point two, i would like to ask you to provide proof.

8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle or higher income earners.

OK. This is china! The thing is that you intentionally overprice your Chinese customers so they turn away to pirated goods. A few people might pay, but most would rather get something for free. Plus, that "evidence" is incredibly misleading. The truth is that china is a developing country and the poorest citizens barely make enough to survive, let alone buy your goods.

9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.

Allow me to quote a t-shirt from downhillbattle.org. "home taping is killing the music industry. And its fun"

10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.

Actually, if you visit thepiratebay.org/top/101 and look at the most downloaded music, you will see bands such as The Editors, Smashing Pumkins and Interpol.

If you disagree, or you would like to learn more, send me a e-mail at creativecast@googlemail.com or visit the article mentioned in full at http://www.ifpi.org/content/section_news/20070531.html

2007-07-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

Just saw Die Hard 4.0. I am glad Britney has recovered from her rampant alcoholism and sheer lunacy with a role in the new die hard film. I just wish Bruce was in his old role. Nobody quite can say "Yippie-ki-yay" like The Man.

Ill health, Shrek 3 and the new sound exchange deal

2007-07-05T02:21:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted to my blog in far too long. Sadly, I have been rather under the weather. And when I say, under the weather I mean suffering from food poisoning courtesy of fentucky kried micken. Not nice. Honestly.

I saw Shrek 3 three days ago. I truly think that it is much better than the first two. Controversial, I know. Evan Almighty was terrible though. It is an audio visual crime against humanity.

I think I should do something i should have done on my first post, plug my podcast. Creativecast.blogspot.com, a podcast that features creative commons music. It is pretty terrible though. I made it to learn skills that I would need in my volunteer work at halton community radio. To find out more, please visit their website.

Oh and after the net radio day of silence, soundexchange is considering new royalty fees. Good idea soundexchange. The big question is, WHY NOT THREE MONTHS AGO? Learn things SE. If you drive your customers away, then you get no money. Simple.

How to save net radio

2007-07-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody, as you may or may not be aware, net radio is in danger of disappearing forever. The new royalty fees put forward by the RIAA are almost certainly going to destroy small, local net radio stations that are based in the USA. As a result of this, i was inspired to write this blog post and put forward a few ideas on how to save net radio.

1.) Use fair use to your advantage.

Under US law, copyrighted material may be used without the owners permission if it is used for review, comment or parody. So, before every track, have a few seconds talking about the piece.

2.) Download backing tracks and sing over them

A lot of backing tracks are available off the internet for a low fee. Now, if you have the artists permission, sing over the track and then, use it on your station. You will be paying the writers the fee for the song but the costs of performance will be very low.

3.) Play creative commons tracks

Not sure about this one. I heard on buzz out loud that even if the tracks are CC you will have to pay royalties.

4.) Dont play music, period.

If you have a net radio station, avoid playing tracks. Go to librivox.org and download a bunch of audio books and play them. Because they are in the public domain, it will cost nothing to play them and you can say that you are the radio 4 of the internet.

5.) Move somewhere else

Because this law is only applicable in the US, move to Canada or Mexico. This could probably only be done by a net radio giant like yahoo or pandora, but it would still make them exempt from US law.

Please discuss, comment and share!

All the best

Matthew Hughes