The only problem with the sound insulating quality of my new headphones is it's very hard to judge how loud you are talking if you have them in.
This is compounded when talking, which I often do, both metaphorically and physically, out of my arse.
Walking through the underground to work this morning, music on, and in a world of my own, I felt the familiar gentle pressure in my colon, and despite the fact that I knew someone was a few steps behind me, and another person approaching, I relaxed slightly to reduce the pressure. This is normal practice when farting in public. A slow controlled release whilst carefully listening for any tell tale signs that it's coming from you. If silent, just carry on regardless, and if it smells, just keep that poker face and look accusingly at everyone else. It was easy to get away with on an elderly care ward, and still pretty easy in most areas of the hospital.
But this morning I was in a staff only section, and had forgotten the key flaw in my usual fool proof plan. I couldn't hear my own arsehole.
And even more foolishly, in my early morning fug of confusion and low caffeine content, I got cocky. Hearing no noises myself, I started to relax my sphincter....
As a child growing up, we had several different words for farts based on the noise, or lack of noise they made.
A pleb was a small staccato fart, audible, but not overly wet.
A veep was one of my favourites. A long high pitched whine through very tight arse cheeks, and often slightly moist - as best demonstrated by Gav Hatt onto Matts head. It even gave it's name to a character in the Spanish role plays me and Nick used to have to do for GCSE. I have fond memories of the exploits of Senor Sticky Veep and Senor Eggy Guffer at the cafe Jumbo Whiffy.
A whiff was not just a smell, it was the gentle breeze of a warm, but silent fart - like the Mistral blowing through your pants.
And a quack was about as onomatopeic as it gets. Like a large duck stuffed down the back of your trousers. Expulsed at a forceful high speed to maximise the volume and pitch, it also held the inherent danger of following through, ripping your ringpiece, or even both.
So what started as a whiff this morning, transmogrified into a veep as I grew in confidence, until with a probable strained expression on my face I tightened up every muscle in my abdomen and turned it into a full blown quack.
If I was sat on a chair I'd have been rolling onto one cheek...
I can only assume from the disgusted look on the woman approaching me that she could hear what I could not. Poker faced, I walked on - avoiding eye contact.
And the woman behind me was stepping into the vapour trail so obvious that I may have well attached a Red Arrows style paint job to - I certainly wasn't about to look around and check if she was also glaring.
But I'm sure she could also hear the other thing that escaped my ears. The sound of me giggling like a child at a fart that I was more proud of than ashamed, and just wishing I'd had the pleasure of hearing it myself.
05 August 2009
03 August 2009
iVedied
A friend died this morning.
After nearly three years of dutiful service, my iPod has stopped shuffling, and just shuffled off.
I should have seen the warning signs. It's not been well for some time. The screen had developed faint black lines across it like LCD crows feet, making video playback useless. It's memory had been full for over a year, and failing fast, and every new thing it had to remember was at the expense of something else. It had become increasingly neurotic - even when I played my favourites on shuffle, it kept playing the same ones, and completely ignoring others.
A few months ago it coughed up a lung, or part of it's headphone, into my ear canal, but rather than retiring it, I tried to nurse it back to health with some lovely new headphones (Goldring GX200's - with Comply foam earpieces that work like earplugs - block out pretty much all extraneous noise. Fucking sweet. Thanks Gingerwarrior for the tip), but to no avail.
It was tired of amusing me, so after playing me a podcast from Adam & Joe last night we both went to sleep.
It never woke up.
I tried to resuscitate it on three different chargers, used the 'magic sequence of buttons' to try to initiate a soft, then factory reset, and plugged it into the laptop, but to no avail. The laptop wouldn't even recognise it as an external storage device.
It's dead. I'd like to think it didn't suffer. It probably enjoyed a little chuckle to Adam & Joe before it slipped away to technology heaven in it's sleep.
So after a brief period of mourning, which took about as long as it takes me to walk to work whilst listening to nothing but the traffic, I decided I should replace it as soon as possible. It's what it would have wanted.
I managed to stay at work for at least 4 hours before I gave up for the day and headed into town (Fuck off! I'm owed hours, alright?), and straight to the Apple shop. Once I finally managed to corner an assistant amongst the throng of people who weren't there to shop, just wank over the shiny white goods, it was a quick process.
"My iPod has died, I need a Classic replacement"
"Black or silver?"
"Black."
Box out the draw.
"Card or cash?"
"Card."
Assistant had a hand held card reader.
"Do you want a printed receipt or an e-mailed one?"
"Email."
Key my e-mail address into his card reader, and I was out within a minute of making eye contact. Job done.
Safely home, I need nothing out of the box except for the iPod itself. The dead one was only 60GB, and since we have way more music, audio books, videos and podcast subscriptions than that, I had to manage the content manually.
Now I've just connected it up and said "knock your self out".
As I type it is now 'copying 6100 of 12484'. Greedily devouring the contents of my hard drive like an electronic baby suckling at my digital breast.
Trouble is, just like a greedy child, once it's done, I'm going to have to burp up some of the shit that it should never have swallowed.
I keep a pretty eclectic library. Some things that are not really my cup of tea were allowed to reside on the old iPod just in case they were ever needed on group holidays or gatherings. Cheesy party tunes and 'classics' by the likes of Abba, or Britney.
But there is stuff in the Library that has been added to make playlists for specific occasions, or to rip into a 'significant' cd for someone, that I will not have on my new iPod, for fear it might accidentally play it at the slip of a button. Better safe than sorry.
The other problem is this new child also needs to be taught not only what it should never have swallowed, but what is actually very tasty and nutritious. Part of your musical 'Five-a Day'.
Because I had to manage the old iPod manually, and both Mrsslippy and I used the same library, all my playlists and ratings were in the actual iPod itself. I don't have to rank all 12,500 songs, but as I like to use smart playlists, I am going to have to tell it what I would rank as 4 or 5 stars, so if I want it to play a selection of all my favourites, or stuff I quite like from the 80's, it can do.
And the best part? Not only do I have a nice shiny new iPod that I can fit all my stuff on, with plenty of room for more, I also have yet another pair of shitty white headphones that came with it. I think that makes six pairs between the two of us now. They're not even coming out the packet. They're going straight into the big box of wires and other such gubbins in the loft where all electrical equipment goes when it dies, along with a very dear, but very dead, old friend.
After nearly three years of dutiful service, my iPod has stopped shuffling, and just shuffled off.
I should have seen the warning signs. It's not been well for some time. The screen had developed faint black lines across it like LCD crows feet, making video playback useless. It's memory had been full for over a year, and failing fast, and every new thing it had to remember was at the expense of something else. It had become increasingly neurotic - even when I played my favourites on shuffle, it kept playing the same ones, and completely ignoring others.
A few months ago it coughed up a lung, or part of it's headphone, into my ear canal, but rather than retiring it, I tried to nurse it back to health with some lovely new headphones (Goldring GX200's - with Comply foam earpieces that work like earplugs - block out pretty much all extraneous noise. Fucking sweet. Thanks Gingerwarrior for the tip), but to no avail.
It was tired of amusing me, so after playing me a podcast from Adam & Joe last night we both went to sleep.
It never woke up.
I tried to resuscitate it on three different chargers, used the 'magic sequence of buttons' to try to initiate a soft, then factory reset, and plugged it into the laptop, but to no avail. The laptop wouldn't even recognise it as an external storage device.
It's dead. I'd like to think it didn't suffer. It probably enjoyed a little chuckle to Adam & Joe before it slipped away to technology heaven in it's sleep.
So after a brief period of mourning, which took about as long as it takes me to walk to work whilst listening to nothing but the traffic, I decided I should replace it as soon as possible. It's what it would have wanted.
I managed to stay at work for at least 4 hours before I gave up for the day and headed into town (Fuck off! I'm owed hours, alright?), and straight to the Apple shop. Once I finally managed to corner an assistant amongst the throng of people who weren't there to shop, just wank over the shiny white goods, it was a quick process.
"My iPod has died, I need a Classic replacement"
"Black or silver?"
"Black."
Box out the draw.
"Card or cash?"
"Card."
Assistant had a hand held card reader.
"Do you want a printed receipt or an e-mailed one?"
"Email."
Key my e-mail address into his card reader, and I was out within a minute of making eye contact. Job done.
Safely home, I need nothing out of the box except for the iPod itself. The dead one was only 60GB, and since we have way more music, audio books, videos and podcast subscriptions than that, I had to manage the content manually.
Now I've just connected it up and said "knock your self out".
As I type it is now 'copying 6100 of 12484'. Greedily devouring the contents of my hard drive like an electronic baby suckling at my digital breast.
Trouble is, just like a greedy child, once it's done, I'm going to have to burp up some of the shit that it should never have swallowed.
I keep a pretty eclectic library. Some things that are not really my cup of tea were allowed to reside on the old iPod just in case they were ever needed on group holidays or gatherings. Cheesy party tunes and 'classics' by the likes of Abba, or Britney.
But there is stuff in the Library that has been added to make playlists for specific occasions, or to rip into a 'significant' cd for someone, that I will not have on my new iPod, for fear it might accidentally play it at the slip of a button. Better safe than sorry.
The other problem is this new child also needs to be taught not only what it should never have swallowed, but what is actually very tasty and nutritious. Part of your musical 'Five-a Day'.
Because I had to manage the old iPod manually, and both Mrsslippy and I used the same library, all my playlists and ratings were in the actual iPod itself. I don't have to rank all 12,500 songs, but as I like to use smart playlists, I am going to have to tell it what I would rank as 4 or 5 stars, so if I want it to play a selection of all my favourites, or stuff I quite like from the 80's, it can do.
And the best part? Not only do I have a nice shiny new iPod that I can fit all my stuff on, with plenty of room for more, I also have yet another pair of shitty white headphones that came with it. I think that makes six pairs between the two of us now. They're not even coming out the packet. They're going straight into the big box of wires and other such gubbins in the loft where all electrical equipment goes when it dies, along with a very dear, but very dead, old friend.
02 August 2009
Fantasy Football
As the nights draw in, and the air starts to feel like winter is just around the corner, my mind turns to football.
Hell, it may only have just turned August, but it is a bit nippy out, and having done the necessary research (ie been watching Sky all day), the Premiership season does indeed start next weekend - or sort of. It's the Charity shield or whatever they're calling it this year, and a full fixture list for The Championship and leagues 1 and 2.
So all of a sudden it's time to think long and hard about fantasy teams.
My first foray into Fantasy sport was way back in the early nineties, with cricket. I'm pretty sure The Daily Telegraph was the first place to do it, and as the years have gone by, there is a Fantasy version of everything. I was even asked to sign up for a Fantasy Tour de France this year - sorry Matt - I didn't even reply, having no knowledge or interest in the sport.
Football soon followed suit, courtesy of The Sun. In the early days, you paid to submit a team, and then got updates and scores printed in the paper. To check out your own team, or have a mini league with friends, you had to all add up your own scores and compare.
My early attempts were ok. Not winning amongst my peer group, but still doing myself proud. Scoring was pretty basic too. Points if your player scored a goal, minus points if a defender or goalie let them in. Points for a clean sheet for defenders, and minus points for cards.
As the years have gone by, and the advent of OPTA statistics, scoring has become more convoluted, and more websites have sprung up running similar style competitions.
A few years ago I was running a league based out of the Sun for colleagues at work - this time just for The World Cup, with £10 in for each team - winner takes all. It was starting to get a bit easier to manage leagues, as The Sun was publishing all the players scores on line, so sticking everyone's teams in a spreadsheet and then just copying and pasting the pages from The Suns website meant I could produce a new league table in a matter of minutes after each evenings games, rather than scouring the papers hours on end for each individuals players and scores.
I was planning on distributing the scores as I had done with the previous years Premier League - via works email.
Shortly before the tournament was due to start I received an email from a very senior member of management, entitled 'Fantasy Football'.
'Shit', thought I. I'm going to be told not to do this on work time. I can explain away that all I do is send an email with the scores in, because not all the players have a home email address. I don't do any of the updating or preparation of tables at work (but only because the website is blocked by works firewall). I'm not making any money out of it, It's not gambling, it's just a friendly sweepstake.....
As it turned out it wasn't an email telling me to cease and desist, rather one asking me very nicely if he was allowed to play, and if so, here was his team, and to whom should he give his £10?
Fucker went on to win it too. Very begrudgingly I had to go to the Management Suite to hand over the cash.
"Have you got an appointment" said the receptionist.
"No" said I, "but I think he'll want to see me if you just buzz to let him know I'm here. I have his gambling winnings for him".
Now the multitudes of websites are free, and the game play even more sophisticated. You can start with a whole squad rather than a team, and pick which 11 actually play each week, allowing you to swap your keepers if your 1st choice is going to be playing against Man Utd, or drop players if they are injured. That is if you can be bothered to log in everyday and micro manage your team. I had Torres captaining (double points) my team for around 6 weeks last year before I decided that I should probably log in and make some substitutions being as he was injured and not playing.
Team selection can take hours, as you decide whether to blow your cash on a killer strike force, or go for a balanced approach.
You ca spend a fortune on 'big players' who either get injured and score nothing, under perform, or who everyone else has bought anyway, so you gain nothing by having them, but lose everything if you don't. Do you save fuck all for defenders so you either have cheap players from big teams who never get off the bench, or whatever you can afford from Fulham, and then just hope that the amount of goals they let in is offset by the millions that Anelka and Berbatov are going to score?
I've decided that most of it is down to a little bit of common sense, and a lot of luck. It's that £4.5 million that you have left to spend on a defender or midfielder. You can't afford anyone you want, so you just look at the price list and pull someone at random, and then they go on to bag up hundreds of points for you. That was Joleon Lescott for me last year. This year he's £7.5, but because he did well for me last year, I've stumped up the cash - as have 16% of other people who have registered at the official website.
I've spent a grand total of 10 minutes and £100 million selecting my squad, and as usual, I hope for success, but expect mediocrity.
If you want in, I'm playing at The Barclays League site. If you want to join my mini-league, contact me via email, FB or Twitter for the pin number. The more the merrier, and the further down the points table I can slide.
I'll still do better than Grimsby though...
Hell, it may only have just turned August, but it is a bit nippy out, and having done the necessary research (ie been watching Sky all day), the Premiership season does indeed start next weekend - or sort of. It's the Charity shield or whatever they're calling it this year, and a full fixture list for The Championship and leagues 1 and 2.
So all of a sudden it's time to think long and hard about fantasy teams.
My first foray into Fantasy sport was way back in the early nineties, with cricket. I'm pretty sure The Daily Telegraph was the first place to do it, and as the years have gone by, there is a Fantasy version of everything. I was even asked to sign up for a Fantasy Tour de France this year - sorry Matt - I didn't even reply, having no knowledge or interest in the sport.
Football soon followed suit, courtesy of The Sun. In the early days, you paid to submit a team, and then got updates and scores printed in the paper. To check out your own team, or have a mini league with friends, you had to all add up your own scores and compare.
My early attempts were ok. Not winning amongst my peer group, but still doing myself proud. Scoring was pretty basic too. Points if your player scored a goal, minus points if a defender or goalie let them in. Points for a clean sheet for defenders, and minus points for cards.
As the years have gone by, and the advent of OPTA statistics, scoring has become more convoluted, and more websites have sprung up running similar style competitions.
A few years ago I was running a league based out of the Sun for colleagues at work - this time just for The World Cup, with £10 in for each team - winner takes all. It was starting to get a bit easier to manage leagues, as The Sun was publishing all the players scores on line, so sticking everyone's teams in a spreadsheet and then just copying and pasting the pages from The Suns website meant I could produce a new league table in a matter of minutes after each evenings games, rather than scouring the papers hours on end for each individuals players and scores.
I was planning on distributing the scores as I had done with the previous years Premier League - via works email.
Shortly before the tournament was due to start I received an email from a very senior member of management, entitled 'Fantasy Football'.
'Shit', thought I. I'm going to be told not to do this on work time. I can explain away that all I do is send an email with the scores in, because not all the players have a home email address. I don't do any of the updating or preparation of tables at work (but only because the website is blocked by works firewall). I'm not making any money out of it, It's not gambling, it's just a friendly sweepstake.....
As it turned out it wasn't an email telling me to cease and desist, rather one asking me very nicely if he was allowed to play, and if so, here was his team, and to whom should he give his £10?
Fucker went on to win it too. Very begrudgingly I had to go to the Management Suite to hand over the cash.
"Have you got an appointment" said the receptionist.
"No" said I, "but I think he'll want to see me if you just buzz to let him know I'm here. I have his gambling winnings for him".
Now the multitudes of websites are free, and the game play even more sophisticated. You can start with a whole squad rather than a team, and pick which 11 actually play each week, allowing you to swap your keepers if your 1st choice is going to be playing against Man Utd, or drop players if they are injured. That is if you can be bothered to log in everyday and micro manage your team. I had Torres captaining (double points) my team for around 6 weeks last year before I decided that I should probably log in and make some substitutions being as he was injured and not playing.
Team selection can take hours, as you decide whether to blow your cash on a killer strike force, or go for a balanced approach.
You ca spend a fortune on 'big players' who either get injured and score nothing, under perform, or who everyone else has bought anyway, so you gain nothing by having them, but lose everything if you don't. Do you save fuck all for defenders so you either have cheap players from big teams who never get off the bench, or whatever you can afford from Fulham, and then just hope that the amount of goals they let in is offset by the millions that Anelka and Berbatov are going to score?
I've decided that most of it is down to a little bit of common sense, and a lot of luck. It's that £4.5 million that you have left to spend on a defender or midfielder. You can't afford anyone you want, so you just look at the price list and pull someone at random, and then they go on to bag up hundreds of points for you. That was Joleon Lescott for me last year. This year he's £7.5, but because he did well for me last year, I've stumped up the cash - as have 16% of other people who have registered at the official website.
I've spent a grand total of 10 minutes and £100 million selecting my squad, and as usual, I hope for success, but expect mediocrity.
If you want in, I'm playing at The Barclays League site. If you want to join my mini-league, contact me via email, FB or Twitter for the pin number. The more the merrier, and the further down the points table I can slide.
I'll still do better than Grimsby though...
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