Today saw a visit to the dentist for some root canal work. It was horrible.
Not because of the dentistry, you understand. Because of the huge widescreen telly in reception, pumping out the Chart Show. It looks like these days the number of songs that don't feature horribly aggressive use of autotune-style processing for maximum blandness is about one in five.
Specifically, I'm thinking Ke$ha should be dragged out into the street and shot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I listen to music where the singer's voice is processed to hell with ring modulators and whatnot with the whole idea being to add to the style of the piece, whereas autotuning just seems to be there to mask the fact that somebody's manufactured music sensation can't actually sing a note.
I hate Autotune. It adds to the blandness of modern life.
Friday 28 May 2010
Tuesday 25 May 2010
Red Dead Corrections
I've played a lot more Red Dead Redemption lately and it's time to make some corrections to my Saturday post.
1. Horses can actually be ridden off cliffs in a survivable manner, so long as the cliffs in question are more sort of really, really steep hills and you skid your horse down sideways.
2. Jews are also persecuted unmercifully by shopkeepers who refuse to stock Jewish or foreign products, which is presumably why their store is full of completely useless junk that I never bother to use. Coyotes will attack anyone on foot, not just skinny men in derby hats with strong New York Jewish accents, so good for Coyotes, I suppose.
3. Close not only counts in horseshoes, but in fire bottles and dynamite sticks.
1. Horses can actually be ridden off cliffs in a survivable manner, so long as the cliffs in question are more sort of really, really steep hills and you skid your horse down sideways.
2. Jews are also persecuted unmercifully by shopkeepers who refuse to stock Jewish or foreign products, which is presumably why their store is full of completely useless junk that I never bother to use. Coyotes will attack anyone on foot, not just skinny men in derby hats with strong New York Jewish accents, so good for Coyotes, I suppose.
3. Close not only counts in horseshoes, but in fire bottles and dynamite sticks.
My Weekend, by HG Zinc (age 37)
This weekend I've been engaging in all manner of gun battles, horse riding, lassoing and card game chicanery as well as an encounter with a man in a top hat who may well have been the devil himself.
Okay, before you call the police and/or mental health on me, I have been playing Red Dead Redemption, a cowboy sandbox game from the publishers of Grand Theft Auto.
While like GTA it's an open world sandbox sort of game with a mission-led storyline, it's unlike GTA in one very important way: GTA is all about being a generally horrible criminal who thinks nothing about running through the streets in his underwear, beating strangers with a disturbing purple sex toy found in the local police department locker room (note to those who never played GTA San Andreas: You can actually do this and it is hilariously funny no matter what grown-ups say). Red Dead Redemption, on the other hand, deliberately puts you in situations where you can choose to be nasty or nice. Do you save the passing stagecoach from the banditos, or do you shoot out the driver yourself and split the loot? Decisions, decisions...
Except that for me, there is no decision. I don't know what it is about games where you're given a choice to be nasty or nice, but I always wind up being horribly, sickeningly nice (if you ignore the fact that in video games "being nice" generally means "Only slaughter bad guys"). The strange thing is I do it begrudgingly. I don't enjoy being nice to all and sundry, solving the problems of a million whining digital losers. When someone comes rushing out of nowhere begging me to get back their wagon that some so-and-so has ligged off with, in real life I'm going "Oh for pity's sake! Do I have to do everything around here! I was going to ride into town and play blackjack!", but sure enough I go racing out there after the wagon and bring it back to the wagonless whiner, although it should be pointed out that I don't even bother to disarm the wagon thief. They'd hang you for stealing a horse in the Old West, so stealing two horses and a bit of wood with wheels on is definitely punishable by arbitrary numbers of gunshot wounds upside the head.
Worse still, the evil, evil games designers have added a feature that passers-by will often greet you with a cheery hello. This wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't added a button command to let you say hello back. Imagine what that does to someone who only manages to not say thank-you to vending machines through sheer effort of will! I'm racing along the road and some simp says "Hi there, Mr badass gunslinger, sir!" and I find myself having to slap on the horse-brakes, spin round and chase them down just so I don't seem rude to software!
Anyway, that's what's been eating up my weekend: Being the reluctant hero in computer games that'd let me be the villain if I wanted.
Okay, before you call the police and/or mental health on me, I have been playing Red Dead Redemption, a cowboy sandbox game from the publishers of Grand Theft Auto.
While like GTA it's an open world sandbox sort of game with a mission-led storyline, it's unlike GTA in one very important way: GTA is all about being a generally horrible criminal who thinks nothing about running through the streets in his underwear, beating strangers with a disturbing purple sex toy found in the local police department locker room (note to those who never played GTA San Andreas: You can actually do this and it is hilariously funny no matter what grown-ups say). Red Dead Redemption, on the other hand, deliberately puts you in situations where you can choose to be nasty or nice. Do you save the passing stagecoach from the banditos, or do you shoot out the driver yourself and split the loot? Decisions, decisions...
Except that for me, there is no decision. I don't know what it is about games where you're given a choice to be nasty or nice, but I always wind up being horribly, sickeningly nice (if you ignore the fact that in video games "being nice" generally means "Only slaughter bad guys"). The strange thing is I do it begrudgingly. I don't enjoy being nice to all and sundry, solving the problems of a million whining digital losers. When someone comes rushing out of nowhere begging me to get back their wagon that some so-and-so has ligged off with, in real life I'm going "Oh for pity's sake! Do I have to do everything around here! I was going to ride into town and play blackjack!", but sure enough I go racing out there after the wagon and bring it back to the wagonless whiner, although it should be pointed out that I don't even bother to disarm the wagon thief. They'd hang you for stealing a horse in the Old West, so stealing two horses and a bit of wood with wheels on is definitely punishable by arbitrary numbers of gunshot wounds upside the head.
Worse still, the evil, evil games designers have added a feature that passers-by will often greet you with a cheery hello. This wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't added a button command to let you say hello back. Imagine what that does to someone who only manages to not say thank-you to vending machines through sheer effort of will! I'm racing along the road and some simp says "Hi there, Mr badass gunslinger, sir!" and I find myself having to slap on the horse-brakes, spin round and chase them down just so I don't seem rude to software!
Anyway, that's what's been eating up my weekend: Being the reluctant hero in computer games that'd let me be the villain if I wanted.
Saturday 22 May 2010
Red Dead Upside The Head
Today, I have mostly been playing Red Dead Redemption (and taking dogs to vets to get their skin fungus treated, but you didn't want to know that). I'm still at the early learning stages, but here are some things I've learned.
1. Horses are fitted with poor shock absorbers, do not ride them off cliffs.
2. In the Wild West, Jews still got the blame from conspiracy theorists and were persecuted quite unmercifully by coyotes.
3. Medical science cannot save you.
4. Early 20th-century cartoons involved a lot more drug abuse, tree rape, rectal impalement by stalagtite and toddler matricide than you might expect.
5. Since the Bouchon fuse has yet to be invented, close only counts in Horseshoes.
1. Horses are fitted with poor shock absorbers, do not ride them off cliffs.
2. In the Wild West, Jews still got the blame from conspiracy theorists and were persecuted quite unmercifully by coyotes.
3. Medical science cannot save you.
4. Early 20th-century cartoons involved a lot more drug abuse, tree rape, rectal impalement by stalagtite and toddler matricide than you might expect.
5. Since the Bouchon fuse has yet to be invented, close only counts in Horseshoes.
Friday 14 May 2010
Feedback; it's not just for Heavy Metal anymore
Yesterday's interview went surprisingly well, they've asked me to come in again for a second interview with their King of all Programming. Either they didn't hold my ink-smeared lip against me, or they want me to come back so's their boss can have a laugh too.
"Seriously, you have to see this guy, shows up to an interview with a face full of pen!"
EDIT: By the end of the day, I realised that there was something very odd about this interview. The interviewers were a pair of "consultants" working for the company, determining their IT strategy. Neither the job spec nor the interview itself made any reference to any specific technical skillsets like programming languages or platforms. Aside from a brief interview-sequence where they dug into my background and experience, the majority of the interview dealt with the interviewers explaining the current IT setup mentioning exceptionally vague mobile device projects and then asking me what sort of things I thought the company should be looking at within the IT space.
By the end of the week, I got a callback saying that they were still very interested in my technical background, but that the funds for the project were "on hold". The project that they had nothing at all to say about, other than "we're looking into mobile projects- no, no platform or target device. Or idea as to what we want to do.. What do you think we should be doing?".
Either they found someone with better skills (Unlikely. I am awesome and people should employ me RIGHT NOW for lots of money and biscuits- Also what skills? Remember they never even mentioned any technical skillsets in the job spec), or I got suckered into a couple of hours of free consulting.
"Seriously, you have to see this guy, shows up to an interview with a face full of pen!"
EDIT: By the end of the day, I realised that there was something very odd about this interview. The interviewers were a pair of "consultants" working for the company, determining their IT strategy. Neither the job spec nor the interview itself made any reference to any specific technical skillsets like programming languages or platforms. Aside from a brief interview-sequence where they dug into my background and experience, the majority of the interview dealt with the interviewers explaining the current IT setup mentioning exceptionally vague mobile device projects and then asking me what sort of things I thought the company should be looking at within the IT space.
By the end of the week, I got a callback saying that they were still very interested in my technical background, but that the funds for the project were "on hold". The project that they had nothing at all to say about, other than "we're looking into mobile projects- no, no platform or target device. Or idea as to what we want to do.. What do you think we should be doing?".
Either they found someone with better skills (Unlikely. I am awesome and people should employ me RIGHT NOW for lots of money and biscuits- Also what skills? Remember they never even mentioned any technical skillsets in the job spec), or I got suckered into a couple of hours of free consulting.
Thursday 13 May 2010
Techniques 2: Interview Boogaloo
I'm ba-aaack, and I've got a couple of extra interview ideas straight from the Pentagon's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques checklist:
1. Your time as an interviewer is important; feel free to reschedule interviews as little as twenty minutes before they were due to take place, even though the interviewee may already have spent the last forty minutes thundering down the motorway at breakneck speed. Never give any reason for the postponement as the fact that you felt like a nap or went to play golf with the CEO is probably company confidential. Feel free to phone the candidate at odd hours of the night, asking them if they can attend a new interview first thing tomorrow morning, then phone them up again at seven o'clock the next morning, asking to reschedule for later that week. Perhaps you might like to forget to phone the candidate for a scheduled telephone interview after you've rescheduled it three times already. Remember, since you already have a job and the candidate presumably doesn't, their time is worthless and they can't possibly have any important family commitments or other business to attend to. Constant rescheduling will show the candidate what an important, dynamic organisation they are trying to join and at no point will they get completely sick of your nonsense and stop taking your calls.
2. As an interviewee, making a good first impression is essential, so a good tip is to not notice that you managed to somehow get ink on your upper lip prior to the interview. This conveys an attitude of eager hard-work and absolutely does not make you look like a pen-sniffing lunatic.
3. One fun trick for interviewers is to work in pairs and sit round a table at such angles that the interviewee cannot keep both of you in their field of view at the same time unless they're Marty Feldman . This will induce a sense of increasing paranoia, along with violent head or neck pains as they desperately flail their heads back and forth to maintain eye-contact.
5. If you are given specific instructions to send the interviewer a text message on arriving at their offices, ensure your mobile phone has credit if it is pay-as-you-go and is properly charged, ideally by leaving it behind, still hooked up to the charger.
1. Your time as an interviewer is important; feel free to reschedule interviews as little as twenty minutes before they were due to take place, even though the interviewee may already have spent the last forty minutes thundering down the motorway at breakneck speed. Never give any reason for the postponement as the fact that you felt like a nap or went to play golf with the CEO is probably company confidential. Feel free to phone the candidate at odd hours of the night, asking them if they can attend a new interview first thing tomorrow morning, then phone them up again at seven o'clock the next morning, asking to reschedule for later that week. Perhaps you might like to forget to phone the candidate for a scheduled telephone interview after you've rescheduled it three times already. Remember, since you already have a job and the candidate presumably doesn't, their time is worthless and they can't possibly have any important family commitments or other business to attend to. Constant rescheduling will show the candidate what an important, dynamic organisation they are trying to join and at no point will they get completely sick of your nonsense and stop taking your calls.
2. As an interviewee, making a good first impression is essential, so a good tip is to not notice that you managed to somehow get ink on your upper lip prior to the interview. This conveys an attitude of eager hard-work and absolutely does not make you look like a pen-sniffing lunatic.
3. One fun trick for interviewers is to work in pairs and sit round a table at such angles that the interviewee cannot keep both of you in their field of view at the same time unless they're Marty Feldman . This will induce a sense of increasing paranoia, along with violent head or neck pains as they desperately flail their heads back and forth to maintain eye-contact.
5. If you are given specific instructions to send the interviewer a text message on arriving at their offices, ensure your mobile phone has credit if it is pay-as-you-go and is properly charged, ideally by leaving it behind, still hooked up to the charger.
Interview Techniques
I'm off for another job interview in a wee while, so I thought it might be helpful to list some of my more useful interview tips both for the interviewee and the interviewer:
1. Have the agency send you the wrong address for the interview, as showing up late and panicked always kicks things off to a good start.
2. If possible, make sure that your potential employers forget that they were supposed to be interviewing someone today. This is especially successful if the person who has to conduct the interview has decided to work from home.
3. The best place for an interview is in an industrial estate so new, no-one has it on their sat-navs. Try not to provide any directions on your website as that would be cheating.
4. Try to get so worked up about an interview that you forget any technical skills you may possess, up to and including how to spell your own name.
5. Technical interviews are best conducted in as confrontational manner as possible, with the interviewer deliberately going out of their way to ask questions about technical issues that quite literally cannot happen in the kind of programming the job is for. The interviewer should pitch the questions at a level that will start a fist-fight.
6. Interview panels should always contain one member who has no reason to be there but still feels the need to make a contribution. This person should be as senior as possible to ensure that people hang on their every word.
7. Never, ever get a correct job description from the agency as that will spoil the pleasant surprise when you find you've travelled two and a half hours for a job that doesn't match any of your skills. The ideal job description for example would say something like "WANTED: Mobile application developers for Symbian/S60 platform with plenty of UI development experience!" whilst the job in question would actually be mine clearance in Cambodia.
8. Body language is important, so make yours shout out by eating plenty of starchy foods the night before.
9. If conducting a telephone interview, make sure to pick the noisiest place possible and check beforehand that your phone is properly charged by making lots of calls and playing that stupid 3D snakes game you like so much for a couple of hours.
10. Psychometric tests!
1. Have the agency send you the wrong address for the interview, as showing up late and panicked always kicks things off to a good start.
2. If possible, make sure that your potential employers forget that they were supposed to be interviewing someone today. This is especially successful if the person who has to conduct the interview has decided to work from home.
3. The best place for an interview is in an industrial estate so new, no-one has it on their sat-navs. Try not to provide any directions on your website as that would be cheating.
4. Try to get so worked up about an interview that you forget any technical skills you may possess, up to and including how to spell your own name.
5. Technical interviews are best conducted in as confrontational manner as possible, with the interviewer deliberately going out of their way to ask questions about technical issues that quite literally cannot happen in the kind of programming the job is for. The interviewer should pitch the questions at a level that will start a fist-fight.
6. Interview panels should always contain one member who has no reason to be there but still feels the need to make a contribution. This person should be as senior as possible to ensure that people hang on their every word.
7. Never, ever get a correct job description from the agency as that will spoil the pleasant surprise when you find you've travelled two and a half hours for a job that doesn't match any of your skills. The ideal job description for example would say something like "WANTED: Mobile application developers for Symbian/S60 platform with plenty of UI development experience!" whilst the job in question would actually be mine clearance in Cambodia.
8. Body language is important, so make yours shout out by eating plenty of starchy foods the night before.
9. If conducting a telephone interview, make sure to pick the noisiest place possible and check beforehand that your phone is properly charged by making lots of calls and playing that stupid 3D snakes game you like so much for a couple of hours.
10. Psychometric tests!
Friday 7 May 2010
Brian Cox II: Cox Harder.
Dammit all.
I hate it when people I've taken an irrational dislike to suddenly redeem themselves totally and utterly because it shows how totally arbitrary all my likes and dislikes are. Brian Cox was on Channel 4's alternative election coverage doing a bit about "things that we should actually be worried about", i.e. Supernovas, Supervolcanoes and Supermarket Sweep. Since he wasn't reading from an overwrought script, he was a lot more personable and his voice wasn't nearly annoying. Also he showed the same...
Oh wait, David Mitchell just proposed killing all politicians and putting Mandelson's head on a pike. I have proposed this self same course of action for years (along with lopping Hazel Blears in half with a shovel) and people laughed at me. Now all it takes is one comedian to say it on TV and er... um... people laugh at him too. Yeah.
Anyway, I was about to say that Brian Cox showed exactly the same dismay with politicians' disengagement from science and technology and basically evidence-based reality that I have, so Brian's all right with me, even if he does have a job playing with the largest and most advanced particle accelerator on earth and I don't.
I hate it when people I've taken an irrational dislike to suddenly redeem themselves totally and utterly because it shows how totally arbitrary all my likes and dislikes are. Brian Cox was on Channel 4's alternative election coverage doing a bit about "things that we should actually be worried about", i.e. Supernovas, Supervolcanoes and Supermarket Sweep. Since he wasn't reading from an overwrought script, he was a lot more personable and his voice wasn't nearly annoying. Also he showed the same...
Oh wait, David Mitchell just proposed killing all politicians and putting Mandelson's head on a pike. I have proposed this self same course of action for years (along with lopping Hazel Blears in half with a shovel) and people laughed at me. Now all it takes is one comedian to say it on TV and er... um... people laugh at him too. Yeah.
Anyway, I was about to say that Brian Cox showed exactly the same dismay with politicians' disengagement from science and technology and basically evidence-based reality that I have, so Brian's all right with me, even if he does have a job playing with the largest and most advanced particle accelerator on earth and I don't.
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Things Can't Only Get Better
I 'ate that Brian Cox.
Not only is he smarter and better-looking than I am and have my dream job; not only does he host TV programmes about science that I would really like to watch except his annoying voice annoys me to the point I have to go punch bricks instead (in all fairness, my own voice makes me feel the same way); not only is he married to some woman off t' telly, but he was a pop music star too, being the keyboardist for D:Ream, which most aggravatingly issued forth the pop abomination "Things Can Only Get Better", which to give you some idea of how evil this song is, was used by New Labour during their drive to get Tony Blair elected. This means that everything from having to see Tony Blair's smug grin everyday, the betrayal of the traditional Labour electorate by New Labour, the growth of PFI, Reality Television, the global credit crunch and the Iraq War is all Brian Cox's fault. All of it.
The notion that things can only get better is such a lie. Things can always get worse, always.
You want proof? Look at the forthcoming election; what an absolute shower of morons, monsters and mickey-mousers and that's only counting the main parties, let alone the freaks and weirdos in things like UKIP; I wouldn't trust any of them to organise a binge-drinking session in a brewery, let along vote for any of them. If it is true that in a democracy, we get the leaders we deserve, then frankly I don't know what it is you lot did, but you all belong in prison.
I know what it is I did, of course, and I shall be appealing to the ECHR over the unfairness of the sentence.
My grandmother is ill. It's not the sort of ill you get better from.
Not only is he smarter and better-looking than I am and have my dream job; not only does he host TV programmes about science that I would really like to watch except his annoying voice annoys me to the point I have to go punch bricks instead (in all fairness, my own voice makes me feel the same way); not only is he married to some woman off t' telly, but he was a pop music star too, being the keyboardist for D:Ream, which most aggravatingly issued forth the pop abomination "Things Can Only Get Better", which to give you some idea of how evil this song is, was used by New Labour during their drive to get Tony Blair elected. This means that everything from having to see Tony Blair's smug grin everyday, the betrayal of the traditional Labour electorate by New Labour, the growth of PFI, Reality Television, the global credit crunch and the Iraq War is all Brian Cox's fault. All of it.
The notion that things can only get better is such a lie. Things can always get worse, always.
You want proof? Look at the forthcoming election; what an absolute shower of morons, monsters and mickey-mousers and that's only counting the main parties, let alone the freaks and weirdos in things like UKIP; I wouldn't trust any of them to organise a binge-drinking session in a brewery, let along vote for any of them. If it is true that in a democracy, we get the leaders we deserve, then frankly I don't know what it is you lot did, but you all belong in prison.
I know what it is I did, of course, and I shall be appealing to the ECHR over the unfairness of the sentence.
My grandmother is ill. It's not the sort of ill you get better from.
Saturday 1 May 2010
Laddish Lager Louts Leg it in Lead Ledge Larceny
Late Thursday night (technically at quarter past two on Friday morning), I'm sat downstairs with the lights off, as one does, when I hear some very strange noises from outside. I go to the window and look out to see three young men giving it the excessively casual walk whilst looking in at the house. I hear another odd noise and look round to see two other lads running down the path and across the road into the park, carrying what looks like a small roll of carpet between them.
Since five-to-one odds are what we in Salford call "a recipe for getting your head kicked in", I call t' fuzz and spend the rest of the night playing video games with the lights on and my trusty Spear and Jackson Combat Spade in easy reach. What? No, it's your bog-standard gardening implement, except I don't really do any gardening and have only ever used it once to dig a post-hole for a washing line. It's handy and would probably hurt an awful lot if you get smacked in the face with it, so that's that.
Come the morning, and I stick my head outdoors. There's no sign of them having been round the back of the house, which is what I'd originally thought they'd been doing, perhaps having robbed one of the houses behind mine. Closer inspection reveals a lovely pair of footprints on the bonnet of my car and more on the set of multicoloured wheelie bins that the local council insisted on giving me, despite me not producing enough recyclable waste to justify anything but a small blog and a plastic recycle-your-other-plastics box.
I look up and notice that the porch over the front door looks a bit odd. The bathroom window overlooks the porch, so I go up and take a look out. The reason the porch looks odd is that the so-ons have stolen the lead sheeting that covered it.
Now what am I supposed to do when I rediscover the Philosopher's Stone? I'm not made of base metals, you know!
Since five-to-one odds are what we in Salford call "a recipe for getting your head kicked in", I call t' fuzz and spend the rest of the night playing video games with the lights on and my trusty Spear and Jackson Combat Spade in easy reach. What? No, it's your bog-standard gardening implement, except I don't really do any gardening and have only ever used it once to dig a post-hole for a washing line. It's handy and would probably hurt an awful lot if you get smacked in the face with it, so that's that.
Come the morning, and I stick my head outdoors. There's no sign of them having been round the back of the house, which is what I'd originally thought they'd been doing, perhaps having robbed one of the houses behind mine. Closer inspection reveals a lovely pair of footprints on the bonnet of my car and more on the set of multicoloured wheelie bins that the local council insisted on giving me, despite me not producing enough recyclable waste to justify anything but a small blog and a plastic recycle-your-other-plastics box.
I look up and notice that the porch over the front door looks a bit odd. The bathroom window overlooks the porch, so I go up and take a look out. The reason the porch looks odd is that the so-ons have stolen the lead sheeting that covered it.
Now what am I supposed to do when I rediscover the Philosopher's Stone? I'm not made of base metals, you know!
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