Mostly though I wanted some more recognition for my band’s website (opiumtoad.com) which is getting abused by Google at the moment. They so mean!

Of course I’m still maintaining the blarg over here.

So yes, that is it.

Wow. $5.85. Lets just compare that to the UK, here the minimum wage is layed out like this:

* £5.35 per hour for workers aged 22 years and older
* A development rate of £4.45 per hour for workers aged 18-21 inclusive
* £3.30 per hour for all workers under the age of 18, who are no longer of compulsory school age.

(Source: HM and Customs National Minimum Wage)
Before even converting the currency thats $0.50 more, I think we’ll work in pounds since its less converting. Currently (according to Xe.com) $5.85 = £2.80, that is £0.50 an hour less than I would get paid, right now, as an (almost) 17 year old. That translates to a whole £1000 when spread accross a year and at my age that minimum wage isn’t designed to be enough to support someone with their own rent, bills and food. I think I’d always known being poor was hard in America, but this…this is just silly. It seems so wrong somehow that a country so founded on the “American Dream” can basically crush people like this. It’s all very well people getting out of poverty themselves but how can they do it? Seriously. How is it even possible? It’s a wonder survival is even possible really yet people struggle on. And you’ve got to remember that these people are the ones on the tills in the supermarkets or handling your dry cleaning, they’re not lazy and they are probably having to work extra hours just to get by.

It wasn’t that long ago that I basically decided that I didn’t think it was personally worth it for me to bother with a soul crushing job down in one of the shops. I don’t think I’m really the kind of person who can just take that, well, not without needing to and at the moment, I don’t need to. I’d like more money sure, but I think I do have enough. Now that I look at this my own arrogance seems shocking, here I am complaining about that (and being lazy) when there are people working full time for 50p less an hour than I would be getting (more than that actually, since most places pay above minimum wage). People who are struggling to survive. Really, I don’t know how you can possibly justify that. I don’t claim that escaping and making yourself rich is still not possible but it would take a very rare luck and talent that most people don’t have and denying others the possibility to live a live free from the constant fear of financial problems hardly goes about damaging the wealth and well-being of the rich. Hell, giving these people a bit more of a chance might even enrich the economy and actually enhance your country.

Disclaimer: I know that such direct comparisons don’t really work properly as cost of living depends on many factors but I have always been under the impression that living in America is expensive. Also, I know this post is pointless and won’t affect anything but I’ve always believed in standing up for things, regardless if you’re even in the right country to be counted.

First of all it doesn’t seem very logical that a religion founded on the good deeds, the charity and loving care of Jesus would now be selfish conservatives. More than it doesn’t seem logical – it doesn’t make any sense at all. Surely it makes more sense for Christians to be generous and try to help those less fortunate than themselves, I mean, Jesus himself was clearly against materialism. Yet for some reason so many Christians choose the selfish and materialistic conservatives.

This may sound a bit harsh on conservative views but that’s not how I see it. I actually hold quite a few true conservative values myself, I’m a capitalist and although I do support helping people that’s no excuse to not even try and get a job and simply live off other peoples taxes. In fact almost the more I thought about this the more I realised that I actually am quite conservative, its only because of the fucked up politics in the US that I feel the need to call myself liberal.

To be fair, its not just America that seems to suffer this confusion. Here in Britain it seems that Labour (who are supposed to be liberal) are becoming conservative whilst the conservatives seem to be becoming more liberal. Perhaps all this confusion is down to the fact that ideas of right and left are outdated and don’t really make sense any more. Nothing can really be boiled down to being a part of either left or right politics.

When it comes down to war in Iraq it seems to be a battle between all the different points. For liberals there is the want to help others to be free from the tyranny of rule under Saddam perhaps against the view of non violence. In the conservative camp it is wanting to keep out of other peoples business versus wanting control.

In Britain a liberal government went to war under the premise of weapons but surely that is a conservative stance? Once everything was over everyone started claiming that the war was about freeing the people from oppression which is surely the liberal view. So apparently, things started conservative and then went all liberal.

Now I don’t know about anyone else but to me that seems damn well confused. It seems that neither the politics or religion of anyone really makes any sense, everything starts to clash. The fact that so many religious are right wing must mean that there selfishness and need to control outweigh the power of their faith in charity and good deeds as promoted by Jesus Christ, who they apparently love and worship. I think I really have to call bullshit on this one. If anything demonstrates that religion is about control it is this, clearly, for a lot of people, this has got nothing to do with Jesus, or Mohammed or any other special feller and everything to do with control, controlling peoples thoughts, actions, beliefs and apparently, controlling all their oil money as well.

When I was accepted I got an email telling me my username and password, which are both rather awkward and pretty much impossible to remember (and I think impossible to change). I headed to the website on IE (since its not firefox or any OS other than XP friendly) and logged in, through what seems like a bit of a strange pop-up box similar to what you get when logging into FTP. I had to run a few activeX controls but it seemed to be working.

When it came to downloading the first show I first had to download the library which is the part of the program on my computer which manages all the downloading and viewing of the material. After dealing with some connection problems (Firewall etc) I finally got into downloading the first show. It was kinda difficult to tell whether it was actually doing anything though as everything seemed very inactive for a while. You don’t get any info about your kb/s or how many peers you are connected to (it uses P2P technology, presumably to lower strain on the BBC servers) so its difficult to know whether its not working or whether its just slow.

As well as the snails pace downloading my computer had basically ground to a halt as well and I couldn’t really do anything. I tried to close the iPlayer but it wasn’t working. I just got pissed off and reset the computer and didn’t start it back up until a while later. When I did start it up I was pleasently surprised to see that the first of the shows had finished and the others were getting there.  This is pretty strange considering that the program hadn’t even been running but I guess it was a blessing really.

At this point the app seems to be quite clunky and slow but otherwise ok after the original crushing of my computer responsiveness. To be honest I think the whole system needs a complete re-write as it seems completely incompatible with other browsers and operating systems in its current form. The BBC are getting a lot of flak for having it only available for windows XP users and although I didn’t think it was such a big deal since they have basically just targeted the biggest demographic to get it ready sooner the way it seems to operate doesn’t seem to be very multi format friendly. Ultimately it needs to turn into something a bit more like Joost, with no need to go fiddling around in IE to download the shows. I think this will make it easier to put it across different formats and hopefully make the application a bit better in itself.

I just finished watching last weeks episode of mock the week, which I missed. The iPlayer uses windows media play to play the shows, its not exactly the greatest player ever made but it works and I’m familiar with it, which is something.  At the moment the iPlayer is a bit bare and clunky but I’m hoping with time it will turn into something more enjoyable to use.

Similarly now I feel I can go back to doing things I normally do which I had put on hold to make sure that I didn’t collide with any spoilers. I don’t think I can do anything but be pleased at the moment.

How lovely.

I had already planned it out, I wouldn’t dare look at the internet once the book was out, or even leave the house, or anything for fear of getting hit with a spoiler. Now I have to live in fear until I can finally get my hands on it, or I torrent the book and start reading. But I really don’t want to do that.

It was only just a couple of days ago that I read that it was surprising it hadn’t been leaked yet and now it has. I’m not sure that there is anything I can do without finding spoilers. There are fucking bastards on the internet and given that this is the last book there are going to be some uber ripe and juicy spoilers just ready to spread onto the net. I really don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Not to mention people are going to start shouting random fake spoilers, at least if you know that no one other than Rowling knows the spoilers you don’t have to worry about random people making comments as you know its all bullshit. Now anything could be true but its not even going to be as fair as that. Enough people will say the real spoilers that it will be obvious.

AGGGHHHH.

I really don’t know what to do here, I don’t want the book spoiled but at the same time I don’t want an internet lockdown for the rest of the week. I’m not sure anything is safe, I can’t stumble or look at digg or anything. It’s all at risk now.

Damn it.

If only nobody cared I wouldn’t be at risk.

And yes, I am writing as though it is some kind of contagious disease – because it is. You only have to look once and that’s it everything gets ruined, its like how you can’t un-see anything (and hence why you should never click any links), you can’t un-read anything either, or un-hear for that matter.

I feel like I can’t do ANYTHING. There’s a reasonable chance that people at school will have found the spoilers, probably just to go around shouting them just to fucking piss people off.

I can’t even do things that would normally take my mind off impending doom such as play Wow, or…yeah…browse the internet.

I guess I either have to accept that its going to be ruined for me, hide till it comes out or torrent it and do nothing but read until I finish it. UGGHH!

That is really not the kind of decision I want to be making.

1. I seem to remember at the beginning of this whole media frenzy it was mentioned that she had been left alone whilst the parents were having a meal. Woah, wait a minute right there! The parents just went off and had a meal whilst they left their four year old alone in the hotel room? Right from that minute I felt it would be very difficult to feel sympathy for these parents. I still feel that way now.
2. Shit happens all the fucking time, there really is no reason whatsoever why this particular case deserves so much attention, along with all the other stuff the parents have gotten out of it (I can’t really give examples other than a visit to the Pope but since they got that I think they probably got more).
3. Since they going and visiting the Pope, who can do fuck all about finding their daughter, I can’t really come to any other conclusion other than they are enjoying the attention from the media and the apparent privileges that come from that. I personally find that sickening.
4. I’m generally quite apathetic to the suffering of individuals unless I know them. You might think this as harsh but I more see it this way: I can’t be sympathetic to all the bad shit going on for the millions of people I don’t know, at least if I care about none of them I’m not discriminating. Worrying about individuals in such a manner doesn’t do anything, I can’t help them but maybe I can make a difference in general such as helping to end poverty and improving education. The people around me maybe I can help so they are the only people worth devoting my energy to, not because they are “better people” but because they are people I personally know and care about and more primarily I can actually maybe do something to help.

Ultimately this pretty young white girl thing just pisses me off. The media will keep it up until more people change their attitude and see how much bullshit it is.

This new album is much more varied than the previous one, there are areas with much more use of the acordian and violin as well as quieter and louder areas with more aggressive stuff that resembles more of the bulk of the metal genre I suppose. For me that’s great as I really love the folky stuff but it also has variation that I really appreciate and given that I enjoy other areas of metal it all fits together nicely. My first listen gave me a good feeling about it, I’m listening again at the moment and enjoying it even more. I would advise people to buy it (and the first one, totally mind blowing) but

1. No one reads my crappy blog
2. No one cares what I have to say about this album

Didn’t stop me writing this post though eh?

I might see if I can get some Google adsense going to pay these little costs, I dunno whether they would accept me though. I also would like to revamp the site both visually and code wise but I’m going to put most of that off till after my exams since I’ve been told teachers go very easy on us for the remainder of the term. I also ought to do some more university research as well and try and pick out some more places to apply to, I’d like to feel ready by the time it comes to writing personal statements etc. I also need to go on some open days but they tend to be during the holidays so I can’t do that yet.

Ok that really is it for today, I seem to have gone a bit overdrive for some reason.