Tony Blews

Calls for Singer to Resign Following Insensitive Lyric

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 20:02:13 +0000

Ofrock, the rock music watchdog, will decide today whether to launch an investigation into a lyric by Fish, the singer of Marillion, about alcohol abuse among railway staff.

The controversial vocalist, real name Derek Dick, made his comment on the 1985 studio album "Misplaced Childhood", in the "Lost Weekend" segment of the song "Bitter Suite".

Bemoaning the plight of the lonely Scottish train worker, Dick sang: “a train sleeps in a siding, the driver guzzles another can of lager”.

Several recent rail incidents have involved working with traces of alcohol in their blood.

This morning the EMI said it had received 2 complaints about the song, with Ofrock also confirming that it had received an unspecified number of calls about the lyric.

The complaints come in the week after the BBC was shaken by the pointless row over obscene phone calls on Radio 2, and the overblown media hype over Jeremy Clarkson's comments about truck drivers on Top Gear.

Alcohol welfare groups said that the remarks were insensitive. A spokeswoman from Scottish Railworkers Union said: "This is a truly heartless comment.”

Hamish McTeagle, director of the YEFEGGER Project, an Edinburgh charity said: “I just think it was highly distasteful and insensitive. Maybe people at EMI should think a bit more before saying some of the things they keep coming out with".

Mr. Dick, who actually left the band in 1987, was unavailable for comment.

3 Mobile Huawei E220 USB Modem

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:50:51 +0100

In the past I bought a 'phone that did proper internet access. I even reviewed it here and here!

Well, now I've gone and bought a 3 Mobile Internet dongle thing. Specifically, the Huawei E220.

So, what do you get for your 50 quid?

Apart from the device itself, the DVD style box contains a SIM card, a manual that I didn't bother even opening, two USB cables and some padding that I didn't bother to eat.

No installation CD? Nope. The clever little chappy installs all it needs from an built in memory stick type thingummy which pretend to be a CDROM. Take a not, USB device makers: This is the way forward.

One of the USB cables is a standard 6 inch one, which works ok but means that the modem is hanging about where I usually have my mouse (never having got used to the crappy touchpads that most laptops have). The other is a much longer affair with two Type A connectors at one end, just in case your computer can't push enough power out from one socket. This is fairly useless to me, as the added cable length means the device needs the two plugs to be connected, and the two USB sockets on my Dell are on opposite sides of the case. It works great if I have my "media slice" connected, as that gives me 2 extra USB sockets on the back, but it also triples the weight of the machine, so I usually leave it to gather dust.

I'm using the long cable to connect to my telephone instead.

What you probably can't tell from the photo, is that the sim card holder is held in place with sellotape. It won't fall out during normal use, but did pop out a few times while in my bag. Hence the classic British engineering fix.

So, how fast is it?

Firstly, here is what I got through my phone on a good day:

And here is what the new dongle gives me:

A bit faster, as you can see. I managed to get up to about 2900kbps by standing outside the house and getting a clear line of sight to the nearest transmitter, which is about 300 yards away.

With this "proper" internet modem connected, rather than the mobile phone, Three aren't restricting what I can access. So now I can waste my time on b3ta, and won't get an electronic telling off if I accidentally try and watch some young flibbertigibbet shaking her udders on YouTube.

So what does it cost to run?

Well, you have a choice: £10 for 1gb, £15 for 3gb or £25 for 7gb.

A nice range of prices for you there. Being a bit skint, I opted to only spash out a tenner, and my 1gb lasted a week.

Luckily, you can stick on as many addons as you have the money for, and don't need to wait until with end of the month. Next time, however, I will be getting the £25 top up (assuming that I get hold of some money).

I'm quite happy with it, currently. When I get the chance, I'm going to have a wander in to the countryside, and see how well the modem (and indeed the AMOI phone) function when quite far from a transmitter.

Update: Thanks to 3 Mobile Buzz for linking to this page!

How to be offensive, in case you forgot.

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:17:48 +0100

Today, while searching for pictures of Tony Gubba (for an animation which will appear soon), I stumbled upon a list of ethnic slurs on wikipedia. It truly is fascinating stuff.

Did you know that the Austrailians referred to the Viet Cong as "Nigel", rather than "Charlie"? (I was a PFC on a search patrol, hunting Nigel down. It was in the jungle wars of '65.)

"Eskimo" is offensive?

"Honky" was derived from an African-American pronunciation of "hunky", the disparaging term for a Hungarian laborer?

And finally, that "Gubba" is an Aboriginal pejorative term for white people? (not just the sandy haired clowns).

Amoi WP-S1 3/Skype Phone - 5 months later

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 02:22:31 +0000

Last November, I bought a 3 Skypephone, AKA an AMOI WP-S1, AKA an AMOI 8512. My original review of it is here.

(blurry photo taken on my old phone)

After five months of continuous use, I've decided to take another look at the phone.

And it is in remarkably good shape, despite being dropped, splashed, almosted drowned, and generally abused. The magnet holding the battery cover in place hasn't fallen off yet, which is unexpected. Some of the rubberised coating has become a bit worn, but thats not really a big issue.

Remarkably, neither the screen nor camera lens have suffered any damage at all. The buttons all still work, and the USB port has failed to go all loose and wonky.

Physically, it seems about as indestructable as my old Motorola V600 (but I haven't thrown it at a wall yet - most likely due to not having anything to do with O2 these days).

Skype:

Well, yes. I've used it twice, and that was just to see if it worked. I only know one avid Skyper (who will admit to it, anyway), and I never bought it for the Skype functionality anyway. It works.

MSN:

It works now, after 3 finally got around to supporting it properly, but the app is a pain to use on the handset.

PC Connectivity:

To start with, the software seemed overly complicated and tedious. Why, I thought, couldn't I just plug it in and use it like a USB memory stick? Well. After I found the MicroSD card taped inside the packaging (just as I was about to chuck all the needless cardboard into the recycling bin) and installed it, thats exactly how it works. It's just a pity that it won't work that way with the internal memory.

MoDem:

This is the best thing about the phone. True, the connection speed is only ~~115.2kpbs~~ 180kbps download / 43kbps upload at the moment, but that is double what I was getting through the internal modem on the laptop on a normal dial-up connection. Sadly, the modem now refuses to work when the AMOI's drivers are installed, but that is hardly a big loss as it was just causing me to run up big phone bills at work.

Pretty much everything i've tried is working over this connection, with the exception of the YouTube multi-uploader. I haven't tried World of Warcraft yet, because I'd like to retain some of what little of a life I have left.

The connection speed may sound low, but its enough to watch videos without them stopping all the time.

3 do have annoying policy concerning what they term as "adult" sites, though. You can't access them. No chance. This is annoying as i used to use b3ta a lot, but now I can't (apart from one day last month when their policy got relaxed - or got broken, more likely - for about 6 hours). Also, quite a few of my friends' sites have been tagged as "adult", as they are a sweary bunch of troublemakers.

All this talk of data transfer brings me on to probably the most important thing about a mobile phone...

Running costs:

Calls to normal numbers cost 12p per minute, with texts at 12p each. You can buy add-on bundles to make these cheaper, which I only tend to do for texts, as I try to not to ring many people (apart from taxis, pizza delivery places and pubs).

Data is charged at a quid per megabyte, which sounds expensive because it is. However, the internet add-on bundles can save you loads of money and cost 50p for a day, £2.50 a week, or £5 a month.

I'm still not sure what the "fair use" data limits are for the weekly and monthly blocks, but daily seems to be about 100mb. Which isn't bad.

I tend to stick on a load of daily blocks in one go, as its easy to exceed 100mb in a day (if, for example, you decide to watch all the Happy Tree Friends episodes whilst drunk), and you can move into the next day's block without having to wait until midnight.

All in all, it cost me about £20 every three weeks.

So whats wrong with it?

The camera doesn't have a light or a flash. <sarcasm>Oh shame</sarcasm>.

The microSD card was cunningly hidden in the depths of the packaging and nearly got binned. And doesn't come with an adapter.

I can't get the modem to work with the built-in bluetooth on my laptop, yet it works with an external dongle. Not really an issue, as anyone likely to want to connect a laptop to their phone will probably have a USB cable on them.

And thats it.

Verdict?

It is still a brilliant and cheap little phone, and works almost perfectly. I'd like to see a new version that does full mobile broadband without me having to carry an additional dongle, and maybe a future one will. I'll upgrade to that when it comes out, but for now I can handle the slower speed. You should buy one now.

Oh, you want a rating? Right. Which 80s popsters had a song called "System Addict"?

Thats right. Five Star.

EDIT: In the end, I did my a mobile broadband thingummy. See it here: 3 Mobile Broadband.

I have in my hand a piece of paper

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:22:40 +0000

"I have in my hand a piece of paper," famous words, once spoken by Arthur Neville Chamberlain as he got off an aeroplane and announced that there would be "peace in our time".

To quote James Tiberius Kirk, "those words were spoken by me" (apart from the peace/time bit), last time someone telephoned me while I was on the khazi.

But enough of me re-iterating quotes to try and look intelligent, when all can plainly see the joke is based on a 1990 era Viz cartoon, let us get on with this pointless log entry (oh behave).

Not many days ago, I recieved a package containing a copy of my very own ~~rubbish~~ quality book "How many Goths does it take to change a light bulb?"

Now, once again, "I have in my hand a piece of paper". And, I'm in the toilet (as that, oddly is where the best lighting in the house is), and i've used my cameraphone to take the picture. _{Feckin' quality
linking that was. Unless anyone noticed the tense-change...}

So here is physical proof of the book...

Hmm. Something is missing, but I can't think what... Oh yeah, the FRIGGING TITLE! Still, at least my name is on it. Anyway, let us look inside.

Actually, i'm quite happy about the whole thing, apart from the cover. Honestly, I spent minutes thinking of that title and might as well have used "Coppulam Eam Est Se Non Posit Acceptera Jocularum". There are a few printing errors that didn't appear in the original version (such as the footer line breakage that i'm pointing to up there), but I'm still happy with it. And I'll be even happier if you click here are buy a copy to feed my nicotine, alcohol and curry habits.

Also, I can now say I am a published author and you are not. And that, in a very small way, makes me better than you.

Stick a fork in the socket, and see how green the power is...

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:22:12 +0000

This is a change from the normal rubbish that you might expect to see on this site.

Normally by now you'd be reading some self-deprecating drivel about how my latest animation is a pile of frozen equi-piddle. And then you'd probably watch it just to see how bad it was.

This post is different. This post attempts to make a valid point about the "Green" bandwagon. It will fail, but that is no excuse not to have a damn good rant for a change!

And, as the great Brian Blessed once advised us, "Lead on my brave Hawkmen!"

Over the past few weeks, a number of my associates (they cannot be called friends anymore, as I refuse to be friends with idiots) have become high-and-mighty about changing their electricity supplier to one which, and I quote, "only provides electricity from green and renewable sources". How very noble and fluffy. Tossers.

Have these people had a team of workers outside their houses putting new power lines in? No. Do they realise that they are getting their Watts from the same coal burning/nuclear/hydroelectric mishmash that I am? No. Does one of them think that a special device in the local substation is filtering power so that he only gets the "environment friendly green power" (his quote)? Yes.

Now I'm sorry about this, but it matters not a jot who you think you are paying for the juice to light your bulb. It is all coming from the same grid. Your electricity, just like everyone elses, is generated by either burning fossil fuels, disrupting wave patterns, exploiting Algerian peasants, annoying yokels, the beauty of wind-turbines, or smashing atoms together. (only one of those was false).

You, my candidate for Idiot of the Month, are paying more to power your toaster, merely because your brain is feeble.

Ah, you say, by my energy supplier is planting trees to offset my carbon footprint.

Ah, but I say, give me one shred of proof. A lot of companies say they are planting trees to offset carbon emissions, but i've yet to see any actual evidence. Most companies can't be arsed to answer the phone within ten minutes, never mind plant a tree.

Um. maybe thats it. "All our operators are busy planting trees. Your call is important to us, but not as important as the threat to the planet. You may be sitting in the dark, but Dave is out planting a tree".

i'm like in with you.

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:33:03 +0000

Oh look, another social networking site. But, it seems, one with a difference.

This one is called "i'm like in with you", and makes as much sense to me as Quantum Mechanics would to an earwig. Sure its got lots of pretty colours and makes nice noises, but so do those things you attach to prams to keep children amused, and I grew out of those when I was about 32. Still, its not as bad as MySpace.

Anyway, if you can work this bloody thing out, please hesistate to tell me about it. And, as usual, if you want to sent me information about your latest medication offer, the address is hello@floppycock.org.

The Rovers Return

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:14:20 +0000

Apparently one of Britain's most loved pubs is set to close. People are up in arms about this.

Sadly, the public house in question is a fictional one. From a soap. From a crap soap set in a ficticious part of an alleged Manchester.

"Oh," but these people moan, "you can't get rid of the Rovers!"

"Oh," I hope, "you fecking well do!"

I'm sorry, but the sort of sad bastards that campaign to save a fictional pub are the sort of people that should be excluded from our elections. Actually, I'd go so far as to say they should be excluded from the right to breathe.

If these couch-bound halfwits actually turned off their television sets and went out for a drink, maybe they'd realise that the pub trade is dying. And it's all their fault. Pubs are empty because of people sitting at home watching illusionary lives in illusionary pubs. Get out and live the life! Get a life!

You stopped us from smoking in the pub, so now come and drink in the smoke-free atmosphere. Alone, because we are all outside. In the smoking area which you have no right to be in, so just stay out. Ok?

Anyway, there are more important things in life to worry about than the demise of a fictional Manchester pub which somehow defies the laws of space and time (the toilets would actually be in next door's kitchen).

So I hope your Rovers Return becomes a Mexican restuarant, or a Chinese, or flats. It has happened to my local in the past, and I hope it happens to "yours".

Facebook is now as bad as MySpace

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:22:17 +0000

I did like Facebook for a while. It seemed like a more sober and sensible version of MySpace. Now look at it.

I do not want to be a vampire. My skin is pasty enough as it is, and I shun sunlight anyway.

I do not want to be a Werewolf. I'm hairy enough right now.

I do not want to have a Poo Fight with you. That is just disgusting.

Why the hell would I want to join a group called "Make Brian Get His Hair Cut"? Maybe I should start a group called "Balding Longhaired Ukulele Playing Ex-Goths With Shite Cameras". No doubt I'd get 732 members within a week.

Ok, so I would like to be a pirate, because I look good in a pirate shirt. But i'm always going to be more Barbossa than Sparrow, so I'll decline that invitation too. Actually, i'm not even cool enough to be Barbossa. I'm not even the fat idiot who hangs about with the bloke from The Office. I'm not even as cool as the monkey.

I'm bored with your likeness quizzes, fed up with that world travelling bear, utterly tits-off with whatever you've written on my wall today, and not only cheesed off, but utterly fondued off with the whole bloody thing.

I'm about 3 microns (because saying "this far" won't work in a typed rant) away from deleting my facebook account. If you want to contact me, use email. Or the phone. Don't frig about using a crappy social networking site that annoys the teeth out of me so much that I will never need to see a dentist ever again.

Oh, by the way... Buy my book... but don't complain if its crap.

Amoi WP-S1 3/Skype Phone

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:22:15 +0000

Whats this? Two reviews in on day? Holy crap.

Anyway, on with the motley......

This week I got a bit drunk and bought a new phone, a 3 Skype phone. In reality, its an Amoi (no wok included) WP-S1, and this is what it looks like...

Snazzy, eh?

For £49 its not really a bad bit of kit. True, it is on the 3 network, but after being frigged about by O2 and Virgin over the last two weeks I'll try any alternative.

So, what does it do?

Well. It does all your normal phone crap, plus it allegedly automatically uses Skype when you want it to. I say allegedly as I can't even get mine to log in using my Skype details. And 3's usually unhelpful customer support have no idea what to do.(But at least they can't beat the O2 monkey who asked me, twenty minutes into our conversation about why my GPRS had been cancelled, if I owned a mobile phone. No, Sherlock, I can process GSM signals in my head.)

Anyway, thats not important. What can it do?

For me the big win is that you can use it as a modem and get 'net access. True, its only about 116Kbps, but that better than I was getting from O2. The downside to this is that the software supplied completely screws up all your existing modem drivers. Not a big loss for most people, but bloody annoying nonetheless.

Sadly the internet service is somewhat restricted. Mail and Web services seem okay (with exceptions), but thats it. FTP is blocked, as are MSN Messenger (probably a good thing) and no gaming stuff will work.

For some reason, POP access to my gmail account won't work, but I can still access the gmail website. Odd.

Access to sites like B3ta are blocked, but thats probably a good thing for me.

A big problem is Facebook. I was never a big fan of it (see elsewhere) until I got the phone. Now I'm on it all the time, mainly because you can access straight from the phone. This is my biggest U-turn since I suddenly decided that VW campers were indeed a bit cool.

The FTP thing is annoying, as I have to update these pages via FTP. I means that I have to go to the pub and use the WIFI machine. Like I needed an excuse.

So... ultimate verdict, is it any good?

Yup. Best phone i've had in ages.

Update: Yay! FTP / IM / Flickr uploader.... it all works now!

Another update: How am I getting on with it? Amoi WP-S1 3/Skype Phone - 5 months later

How many Goths does it take to change a lightbulb?

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:12:28 +0100

Holy shuddering crap, whats this? The Blews has finally finished the often talked about book!

Yes the amazing "How many Goths does it take to change a lightbulb?", 40 pages of rib-tickling gothy mirth, is available now from lulu.com.

Just click on the cover image below, and part with your money. Its only £3.99 (plus P+P), and the 76p I make from each copy is all that stands between me and an empty glass. Buy 3 copies and I can afford a full pint!

Villains.co.nr

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 14:35:11 +0100

A very long time ago, I ran a site at www.villains.co.uk. Now, I've dusted it off, uploaded it once more, and parked it at www.villains.co.nr.

Project Galactic Guide Articles

Tue, 01 May 2007 20:01:16 +0100

Project Galactic Guide - I wrote several articles for this. If you do a search for "Blews"", I'm sure that you'll find them. Oh, actually, here they all are:

Random Dot Stereograms

Stafford, England, UK, Earth

Train Journeys, Ten Ways To Liven Up

Passive Drinking

Live Action Roleplaying

Mopeds