On the radio

This evening broadcasting history was made. I suspect only about 4 people witnessed this event and 3 of those were in the radio suite at the Huddersfield Student union. And I was one of those 3. The other 2 were my co-presenters.

None the less it was good stuff. Radio gold as they say. Another notch on my ever growing CV.

I worked out I need to pen about 400 words a day to have finished my case study by March 1st. This means I need to pull my finger out and get those interviews done that I’ve been pestering people about.

Incidentally, if you know anyone that works in media, be it magazines, newspapers, radio or TV, online or offline (though preferably online) and they could spare 30 minutes of their busy schedule before March to take part in an interview about the work they do then shove them in my direction.

On another note, despite my loathing of the service I appear to be using Twatter a bit more recently. This may be because I have the new sparkly phone and it has Twitter integrated into it but it may also be because even after 3 years of being on there, I still only have 43 followings, none of whom are vacuous celebrities.

Also on another note, I appear to not have shaved since new year and I am sporting some fine facial hair. I hope it doesn't put local news reader Nina Hossain off when I meet her tomorrow.

BBC News & Look North

The cringeworthy Charlie Stayt and Susanna Reid were being particularly awful on Friday morning on BBC Breakfast. Everytime I switch on my telly on a Friday morning I just see them being vacuous, poorly researched and generally crap at their jobs. Now it would be big headed of me to say that as a media & television graduate I would be a million miles better than them so I won’t. Instead I’ll say it as it is. A skip full of decomposing monkeys would be a million times better than them.  Their interview technique and loud brashness just make BBC News look and sound like it’s presented by morons. Which, conversely, it is.

What’s worse is the local news. In case you’ve been hiding in a box in Sumatra for the past two weeks, Yorkshire has been under a blanket of snow and ice recently. For the past week everyone’s favourite Tango lass, Christa Ackroyd (who had the pleasure of meeting me face to face last year), has been presenting the evening show from the comfort of outside her house. Every bloody story has been about the snow. How it’s effecting the region and how schools have closed and how some postman used a surf board to get from one side of his village to the other and so on and so borkingly forth.

That is…until Wednesday of this week, the snow almost melted…but then Harry Gration, who had also been presenting the evening programme from outside his house, announced “The snow causing CHAOS to the region has started to go but new problems affect the region with…”

Can you guess what it was?

Can you?

No?

“….Black ice!”

Black ice. Not terrorists. Not earthquakes. Not mutant radioactive snails. Black ice. Chuffing black ice.

The terror meant that people crossed a road on their hands and knees. These same people were featured on the programme and Harry Gration presented the article as though the Queen had died.

It seems like those that produce the news have been going through a really dry patch. I imagine that we will hear more and more about Haiti for the next 2 weeks unless something worse happens. Of course…they could switch to this story.

Dance pants

I’ve had an idea for a new TV show. Looking at current and past trends in British TV shows I think any programme commissioning bod reading this would be foolish not to create the following television programme. It would be a definite success.

The Dancing DIY Property Developing Fashion Disasters On Ice Factor

I think that covers all the things that seem to be popular at the moment.

It could be presented by Brian Cox (since his return from the US he seems to be on everything these days), Ant and Dec (modern day Cannon and Ball), Cat Deeley (modern day Cilla Black) and Graham Norton (a Terry Wogan/Larry Grayson fusion). With extra bits by Davina McCall and some entertainment (in the form of song and shouting) by John Barrowman.

It’s a sure fire rating success. 

Ice ice baby

There now follows pictures.

Buying stuff

In March my contract with my mobile phone provider, O2, is up for renewal.

After much deliberation, illness and snow bound cabin fever I pondered my options. I could end my contract early (costing £60), start a new contract early or just wait until March.

March seems like forever off. It isn’t. But it feels like it is. Besides, I haven’t had a gadget fix since I inherited the wife’s laptop. So I did a little spreadsheet and worked out my current spend through my current contract.

My contract allows 400 minutes and 500 texts per month but no data discounts. Which, in hindsight, is daft as I use data services a hell of a lot these days. My previous contract also lacked data service and looking back at my bills I was paying ridiculous amounts of money to faceless executives allowing them to play golf in Surrey on Wednesday afternoons.

I currently have a Nokia N95 8GB which is a good phone. It does it’s job, it allows me to make and receive calls, send texts, take photographs and video, find my way to places using the GPS and play Snakes when I’m bored daft.

Sadly it doesn’t really allow me to write notes without mucking about and the proprietary software that allows the phone to communicate with my PC sucks hairy monkey balls.

Coupled with the fact that lots of the kids I see these days have iPhones which, to me at least, just seem like fashion accessories and expensive ones at that, getting a new phone this time was going to have to be thoroughly investigated.

Initially I was going to opt for the Acer F1 to go with my Acer desktop and Acer Laptop. I was all set to click “BUY NOW” but I thought I’d better check the GPS first as GPS is something I do rely on at the moment for Geocaching. As it turned out some reviews claimed that the GPS functionality of the Acer F1 was a bit pants so my itching mouse finger held off clicking “BUY NOW” until I compared other phones for their reliability.

And there it was. The HTC HD2. The phone that I just had to have. I watched videos of people reviewing it, I read articles, sought out software and even tidied up my Outlook in preparation.

By this time it was Wednesday afternoon, I’d found the best tariff for my needs on buymobilephones.net, compared the competition and benefits via my spreadsheet, filled in the application form and clicked send. It was 3.30pm, the site hinted that it very well may be possible that I could have my phone within 24 hours, which I thought, would be Friday…or Saturday at the very least.

Buymobilephones.net sent me a confirmation email an hour later. Excitement swelled inside me causing me to cough more from this wretched cold I’ve been suffering from. More mooching and reading and trying to find anything I could about my new toy.  The confirmation email said that they would send another email when my phone had been processed.

I waited

And waited.

Waited a bit more.

Still nothing. A whole day passed. Snow storms had cut off most of the UK and yes…I thought maybe a bit of snow would hamper my hopes of getting my phone for the Friday. Indeed by 6.30pm that Thursday evening, a further email was sent by Buymobilephones.net to say they were coping with a 24 hour back log due to “seasonal demand”.

Fair enough, I thought, the weather and excess demand would hamper anything. By Friday evening I was getting restless. I still hadn’t received any further emails. Three days had passed. Where was my order up to?

Saturday. Same thing. No email…nothing….

See…this is what happens to me. I buy things online with the expectation that they’ll come a day or two later. When they don’t I get really miffed. I miss the high street store option of walking into a shop. Mooching round for the item I want, going to the checkout. Paying for it. Going home. At least then, the excitement was contained by my journey home. This waiting for buymobilephones.net to get their act into gear is killing me. Now I’ve got the little voices in my head saying “They’ve lost your order” and “There’s a problem with your new mobile subscription set up”. 

Had it not been for my horrid cold, the snow and the ice and the lack of high street shops selling sim free mobiles, I’d have risked the drive into town to buy one today. This is symptomatic of the culture of now (CON). I have given into the CON. CONsumerism has bitten me and I must have a new toy…I must I must I must.

I looked at the prices of my old mobile phone, my old Acer Laptop, my old Playstation 1. All of these items cost shit loads when they were new. Now…you can get all three for just under £200. I need to remind myself….electronics and keeping up with the Joneses….bad game to play. I never win.

It’s Snow or Snever

Thought I’d share some pictures of the lovely snow. Fortunately I don’t have to go to Huddersfield this week. Snow and blurgh don’t mix.

Cold

I don’t know the meaning of cold.

I do. It’s just that when people say to me “It’s bloody cold” that’s my stock answer.

It’s bloody cold.

Therefore I don’t know the meaning of cold.

I then usually go onto talk about my first flat and how I managed to try and keep warm during my days as an unemployed workless youth.

My first flat was above a fishing tackle shop on Smithdown Road in Liverpool. You can see the flat from the main road if you’re ever down that way.

 

My old flat is the top three windows.

 

In summer the flat was so hot you had to have all the doors and windows open so that you didn’t melt into a pool of flesh. Furthermore, the wearing of clothes during this time was seen as foolish as the heat would cause you to sweat buckets full of perspiration.

The flipside though was the winter. During the winter that flat was so cold, you would come home from work (or in my case, from somewhere warmer)  to find polar bears sat round holes cut in the floor trying to catch fish, while Inuit tribesmen would try and barter cigarettes for blubber and animal furs. 

The windows were those awful sash window jobbies. The sort that when the wind blew, it would come up between the top and bottom sashes and be like sheets of sharp cold steel piercing the air and stealing what little warmth you could generate. The window gaps soon got sealed with newspaper and the frames were shrinkwrapped with that double glazing plastic bobbins, you know the type that you heat with a hairdryer?

The mains electricity was delivered through an old 50 pence meter….and I mean old 50 pences. I had to buy the old coins off the landlord. With coin metered electricity you really don’t get a good deal. 50p would last you about an hour in cold weather.

To heat the flat, the landlord provided a calor gas heater and a two bar electric fire. The two bar electric fire only increased the temperature after I managed to procure 2 red bulbs to fit to the “Real flame effect” thingie that the fireplace had. So I think that was psychological heat anyway.

The single calor gas heater was as much use as a cigarette lighter and just made everything taste funny. Further fortune befell me however, when I managed to procure a second calor gas heater. That made it feel a bit cosier.

So with 2 calor gas fires and a two bar electric fire with real flame effect lighting you’d probably think you were nice and warm enough to hibernate for the winter. Well bollocks to that pal. It was still cold. More heat was generated by an electric fan heater (donated by the parents) and by switching the hot water boiler on. Yet it was still too cold.

So to further combat the chilly knives of doom the only line of defence was the clothing. Pyjamas were worn under everyday clothes and over underwear and a fleece coat was also employed in the “lets keep warm” fashion parade. The pyjama legs were tucked into socks and the sleeves were tucked into fingerless mittens. Gok Wan would have been so proud of my fashion statement.

So you’d think that you’d be nice and snug with all that going on….well you’d be wrong. On the couch I had a sleeping bag AND a spare duvet and in the bed I had an electric blanket and two more duvets. Honestly! It was so cold in that flat….Sleepwear consisted of two layers of pyjamas and the fleecy coat under a fluffy dressing gown.

Morning routine involved getting out of bed half an hour before you had to get up and switching on the shower so that it had time to heat up. With the shower switched on, the smaller calor gas heater would be moved to the sitting room (the bathroom adjoined the sitting room too) and switched on to heat both the sitting room and the bathroom.

The larger calor gas heater would then be switched on with the kettle, the electric blanket and the TV and a further half hour in bed was claimed while the shower heated up.

The dash to the bathroom helped generate some body heat and a long shower was often had because leaving the warmth of the hot water would often be too much. On finishing the shower, the body would be wrapped in two towels and the fluffy dressing gown, a further cup of tea was had and, money permitting, a bowl of microwaved porridge consumed in front of the small calor gas fire and the electric fire on one bar (to conserve electricity).

After dressing quickly (well as quick as you can when you wear 4 layers of clothing) the flat would be left to cool down and the day’s activities, whatever they were, were conducted, usually in the free warmth of someone else's flat, the pub or in the city centre shops, cinema or library…..

And to think I moan about the cold now…..ha!