Upon the page loading, I noticed that it had been given a little facelift, with a nice fresher-looking login screen.

After getting in, I noticed a myriad of new links on the left-hand side, and one which piqued my interest long enough to delay me sending my text for a while, was this “My Usage” tab. Inside was basically a breakdown of all my calls and texts, similar to what you would get on a bill. It definitely reaffirmed the fact that I don’t actually use my phone very much!

However, I began to notice the charges in my usage history were not adding up too well with the advertised 29c a minute anytime to any network or landline plan I’m supposedly on.

Looking through this history, firstly I was confused by all the ex-VAT numbers. All the text charges worked out (€0.0992 = 12c with VAT), all of the call charges did not. Particularly the two and three second calls – where I hit voicemail and hung up immediately (I don’t do voicemail) – in which I was charged 10c on both occasions.

So, it was off to Twitter (@Meteor_Mobile) and it was confirmed that I am apparently charged a 9c connection fee for every single chargeable call.

Nine fucking cent? Particularly when the call per minute is only 29c, a text is only 12c, and I get charged it every single time I connect, even if it’s straight to voicemail? That’s a lot of bollocks right there.

And yet a Google search for this indicates that all three major networks charge this connection fee for their PAYG customers, and Meteor had only increased the charge from 5c just a few months ago!

This is a load of bullshit, in the future I’m just going to continue to send texts since it’s only 3c more than the connection fee, and I’ll probably be able to say more than I can in 6 seconds on the phone!

NGame, flagged...?

When the bloody fuck did that happen? I had been watching the site without any problems 3 hours before that and got nothing in my way. A quick look on Twitter shows that other had been experiencing the issue too. Since I have faith in Avast, I went ahead anyway and had no issues at all.

I will point out that at this point in time, the Safe Browsing diagnostic page for NGame was completely clean, nothing mentioned.

Fast-forward to about an hour ago, and…

Say wha?

Jesus, where the hell did that come from. But on further reading I notice something else – IT’S CLAIMING MY SITE IS INFECTED NOW TOO?!?!?!

Sure enough, I go to visit my own website, and I’m greeted by the exact same big red error page. And the diagnostic for me:

...for fuck's sake.

Upon checking my Google Webmaster Tools, I was told that the page on my site in which I embed my NGame channel page was what had caused my site to be flagged also – bearing in mind they said nothing about just the physical stream video itself on my homepage – so I went to go file for a malware review after privatisation of that page until this issue blows over…

EXCEPT THERE’S NO FUCKING LINK ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND.

As they claim: “Very rarely, it can take up to a day for malware warnings (and links to the malware review request form) to be visible in Webmaster Tools after your search has been flagged in search results. If you don’t see a warning in Webmaster Tools, but your site is flagged, please check back later.”

Searching around for other instance like this show that this is the complete opposite of “very rare”, rather it’s more of a “happens all the fucking time”.

Moral of the story? Google is shit. Go disable this stuff in Options -> Under the Bonnet -> Privacy -> Uncheck “Enable phishing and malware protection”. And then go download Avast, which has been a hell of a lot more use than this browser “feature” has.

Not much has really gone on over the past few weeks. I’m still making my YouTube videos, doing a lot of streaming over on NGame, and getting pissed and annoyed with a few people as always. The NASCAR, F1 and IndyCars have also sucked away a fair few hours.

More recently however, there has also been a couple of cases of conflict in areas.

Aspies

Over on one of the many forums I regular, it was noticed that there was a member on the forums who seemed to have quite a bone to pick with a few people with regards to having an opinion on things. I really can’t remember what sparked it at this stage.

A few threads later, and after a temp forum ban iirc, another brawl brewed between herself and a couple of people, during which I noticed that she claimed to have Asperger’s. Upon noticing this, I took it upon myself to try and use that common ground to try and reason with her and to try and figure out what was upsetting her and causing all this conflict.

Nope. Got my attempts at calming thrown right fucking back in my face.

It was then in that same reply that to me pretty much read out like she used her Asperger’s as a defence whenever things go wrong. This pissed me off to no end. I can understand people with Asperger’s having trouble communicating and getting things across, especially as it took me the best part of primary and secondary school to get around several of my issues when it came to anger management, social interaction and the like. But using it as a shield so that after you cause havoc, you can hide behind it and feel untouchable? That’s just fucking wrong.

Edit @ 2011-11-08 00:03 - Just to add more to this, this is the same person who says:

Why are boards.ie moderators some of the most corrupt individuals on earth? The site is a joke and seems to do little to improve it’s reputation. You may as well call the “Dispute resolution” forum “Forum where you get to be shouted at by a SECOND mod”. I am deadly serious, they are some of the most disgusting people I have met online who do nothing but abuse their power and defend each other.

A quick browse of the DR forum, I seem oddly drawn to this thread!

Comment Trolling

So, I had a video up recently which has a bit of a questionable motive about someone I had had a few problems with recently; when not too long after it going up, I started receiving a ton of spam from people who really didn’t grasp the full extent of the situation.

I’m not sure what these people are thinking, but it is obvious that they don’t understand the full extent of the situation, are are attempting to use my mental health issues as ammunition against me. I really don’t know where the hell they all came from, especially as only a few weeks ago I would have considered most of them to be alright people, but now they are seriously turning into asshats.

Donation Streams

The whole donation stream aspect is also complete bullshit to me. Why the hell are people, like UltraJMan, who make videos and play games for the Internet looking for their viewers to foot their bills by sending them money to buy new equipment or whatnot? I paid for all of my equipment out of my own pocket: my 360, my PC, my Intensity Pro, FRAPS, XSplit, everything; and I don’t even get all that much a week. Yet people who work for ages – or in same cases, don’t seem to work at all – are looking for money from the everyday viewers.

I wouldn’t take so much offense to this if it was maybe $100 every year or so with a small amount from loads of people. But no, they can earn from $500 up to $1000 for all of this. And sometimes they do it at least twice a year! I mean, just check JMan’s last donation stream he did with someone else, where they gleaned $1130 from their viewers, and they even specifically state that they money is going straight to them! I’m sorry, but that is just the epitome of laziness. If you want money for your videos, get a partnership with Machinima or something (like raocow recently did) and earn your money that way, don’t suck the wallets of everyone who watches you. It’s not a full-time job until a proper contract is signed, don’t work to rule or for a bounty provided by everyone else.

I’m done ranting here, I’m off to play some video games, and stream and make videos for the Internet for no reward other than self-esteem and experience.

While I thankfully haven’t had to rely much on the bus service since the train line opened – which by the way has always been pretty much on time, no sudden cancellations, or instance of just plain not operating – I did hear quite a few horror stories, including numerous tweets from Elly and George over the snowy period in which DB were too scared to send the 25B’s to Adamstown – i.e. their only bus service – as well as other stories on Boards of buses not turning up for an hour, 39A’s stopping in the City Centre for no reason and no notice to passengers, and some routes just not running at all owing to a lack of passengers.

Yesterday, I had the misfortune to fall foul to an instance of a bus just plain not bothering to run at all. The plan was to leave the village on the 1402 departure of the 270 to get into the Blanch Centre for about half two, in absolutely plenty of time to meet up with a few friends in Leisureplex for 3 (off topic a bit, but since when has the Plex been free entry? I’m surprised they’ve stopped being bloody gits in that sense…). All seemed grand, so out of the house about half one, down to the village for a quarter to, into Spar for about five minutes for lunch, and then across to the terminus by ten to.

Now it was a bloody cold day, and I hadn’t exactly tried to dress for the weather as: 1. There was to be a lot of physical activity with my friends when I got there; 2. I wasn’t exactly planning on having to wait on a bus that long; 3. It wasn’t really all that long of a walk from the bus stops to the places I needed to go to.

Two o’clock comes and goes with no sign of an arriving bus. As does 1405, 1410, 1415… At this point it’s started to shower slightly, so I trudge down to the second bus stop on the route since it actually has a bus shelter – and on the way not even a bus waiting in the set down area on the way into the village. 1420, 1425… And now arrives a normal 70 – obviously the 1330 departure from town. But wait, still no 270, which was supposed to have left the Centre at 1332 and been back there for 1432 to leave again? Fuck’s sake…

1435, the normal 70 is leaving the village, and given how close we’re getting to the meeting time, I have no choice but to get it down to the very end of Littlepace, then walk through to Huntstown to wait for a 39 to drop me down to the Centre.

And yet, on the way back home after all of this, the 1832 from the Centre was running no problems, having been in the set down area at the Centre since about 1820.

I am going to e-mail DB to complain about this, but in reality, what sort of thing is that going to accomplish? Are they going to reprimand the driver? Nope. Are they going to apologise? Doubt it. Are they going to possibly blame me? Maybe. Are they going to bin it? Almost guaranteed.

Mainly this issue affects Source engine games, in particular Left 4 Dead 2 and Team Fortress 2. It’s an issue that really irks me as I can’t stop it, it just happens randomly through no fault of my own, and it’s not very clear what I’m supposed to do to alleviate it.

It’s an odd problem to describe, but I’m going to try:

• Upon starting to play whatever sound, game locks up, loops the last half-second of sound and freezes the game.
• Sound then loops through the same half-second of audio for a few seconds, sometimes changing what is looping while my screen is now black while it reloads.
• About 5-10 seconds later the game comes back, and hurriedly catches up to where it’s supposed to be. However sometimes upon coming out of the crash, it crashes again.
• On checking my Process Explorer, I see that before the game crashes it is using over 1GB of RAM. After BOTH my screens reload (that is to say when it crashes it locks up both the game and my other screen), I find it’s RAM usage down to under 700MB, and before it works again, the RAM usage climbs back up steadily to what it was at.

I really am stumped as to what it causing this. I recently updated fucking everything, including graphics drivers, audio drivers, verified game files, adding a page file to the drive that the games run from, disabled Windows Aero while it’s running… And still.

Also, when trying to enjoy just a little bit of GRID, I find it happening there too, but a little bit different: On crash the sound doesn’t loop, and a few seconds later the game comes back having not paused at all, so I’ve still continued in whatever direction at whatever speed for a few seconds, and when the screen comes back it’s very drained of colour and massively bright until I pause the game at which it returns to normal.

Fuck’s sake, why can’t this shit just fucking work like it’s supposed to…

• Shower cubicle leaking even more than before, now affecting downstairs.
• An Post apparently not even bothering to deliver a massively huge parcel containing two pictures, it being so big it wouldn’t even fit in the car and so the boot had to be left hanging open with my sister squashed in behind my seat and the picture.
• Finding the hammer that was supposed to be in the cutlery drawer in the toolbox with the other hammer. When sliding the toolbox out to get it, something fell in behind it and so when having to take everything out of the cupboard to lift the thing to slide the toolbox back in – which I think was the massive extension cord – something fell out and left a huge gash in my left foot.
• The last Lucozade bottle of the pack, after my sister had been at them getting one for herself, practically exploding on me at my desk.
• While attempting to remove the address from the parcel to prepare for recycling, after removing the bit that was taped on, to find a part-written address underneath on the main layer.
• A very weird dream in which all of a sudden my relationship with the rest of the UKCS TF2 admin team takes a massive nose-dive after I join a game around half 9 in the evening, spawn as Pyro and literally 2 seconds later die to a Sniper headshot, before uttering “What the flying FUCK?” in the presence of Funky, Odgor and someone else, causing them all to suddenly turn on me. Even this one doesn’t make sense to me.
• Going to bed before 11 after almost falling asleep while watching another one of my YouTube subscriptions, finding myself lying awake in bed at half 3, and unable to fall back asleep for the next hour, hence me getting up and finishing this off.

FML

Love KFC

The first was finding out of this odd promotion being run by KFC here in Ireland, known as Love KFC. In return for offering vouchers for two regular meals for a tenner, people can submit their names for a possible new limited-edition burger. I decided for a laugh to put the bear in, in the off-chance that he somehow manages to win it by using his cuteness and charm across his social media outlets on his blog, Twitter and Facebook.

But now towards the end of the day. I get the feeling that this is going to turn into a popularity contest over the funniest and weirdest burger name, rather than helping based on the person themselves. Case in point, the bear managed to grab 200 impressions in the first day and was quite out in front for a while, until a wave of retweeting on Twitter which started with Mulley means that the “Human Centipede Burger” is now king…

ETF2L

The other thing was a practice match with some of the college folk in Team MonG for the ETF2L Highlander competition starting up soon. Y’know, the one where you can earn fancy badges to put onto your TF2 characters in-game so long as you complete your group matches. Well, we had a good match tonight, but the one thing that really pissed me the fuck off about the opposing team was their Natascha Heavy.

This weapon is 25% weaker than the Heavy’s regular Minigun, but when it hits it slows their speed down to a crawl, thus making them easier to hit with more bullets and keeping them massively slow. Under normal public circumstances, Heavies generally can’t go on a rampage as much since there’s so much more that can take them out, like multiple Snipers, or a hail of Soldier rocket spam. But in a Highlander environment, the single Soldier can’t do enough damage to take out the Heavy while he’s being healed by his Medic, the Sniper’s being taken out before he can kill the Heavy, and the Spy can do nothing as he’s convinced the enemy Heavy was using sound mods to more easily hear our Spy decloak.

It was especially infuriating for me since I was playing the Scout, the really fast moving class, and it was as if everywhere I turned that damn Heavy was there and I was dead no matter what. Even the enemy Scout, while annoyingly good, wasn’t as rage-inducing as this Heavy. Seriously, Valve really do need to nerf it soon. Reduce the speed cut on hit, reduce the chances for the speed cut, anything to make this damn weapon a lot less usable that it is…

Ugh, I’m off before I end up trolling somewhere with either of these rants…

I’m not going to post the link here, because the entire thing is purely fabricated, maybe for comedic effect, but the point still stands is that what is written is libellous towards me.

I’m aware that I’ve never been the best people person during my life, it is something that I’ve had to work on since a young age, and only a few short years ago did I properly find out the cause and have it officially diagnosed. So there have been a few hiccups along the way with me trying to co-exist with the rest of society. But to read shit like that written up, particularly when it is grossly over-exaggerated, and written from the point of view of someone who is either not fully aware of my situation, or does not fully comprehend it, is practically insulting me.

What makes it even worse is the specific thanks given to that post by a few people I know from college, even more so those I thought I knew fairly well and were good friends with.

Pretty bloody glad I’m probably not going back there now, at least not this year.

The post that started it all is viewable on boards.ie here.

So apparently the timetable for the new Dunboyne rail link has been posted by Irish Rail.
Only the timetable shows that every single Dunboyne train serves Docklands and not Broombridge, Drumcondra or Connolly.

This is fucking retarded. I know a good few people who would be using the new train line who would want to go to Drumcondra as part of their commuting journey. This move by Irish Rail was made without any research or any consultation with people in the area to ensure a satisfactory service for the majority of it’s commuters.

See the timetable here.

An annoying thing that has been happening recently when I’ve been trying to watch streams on Justin.tv, is that the flash ad box on the top-right hand side of whoever’s channel page has been eating up CPU and thus causing the stream to lag to bits, as long as it is within the browser window.

For the moment I’ve been using Chrome’s inline editor/source browser thing to manually pad the stream and chat box so that I can see them without having to see the ad. It’s really annoying having to do this though.

I’m a firm believer in not using Adblock as I don’t think that websites that need to run ads to run deserve having their source of income taken away from them. However, I also believe that ads should not be intrusive and should not impact on a user’s experience, which these ads are clearly doing so.

First in the F1, Massa had his win robbed by his team, forcing him to pull over and let Alonso through.
Then in the NASCAR, Montoya had his win robbed from him when an invisibris caution occured, bunching the field up, dropping him down the order and then his car becoming way loose in traffic and hitting the wall.
And just now, the final straw, Castroneves had his win robbed from him by a very shit blocking call on a restart when he barley moved from his line on a fucking airport runway to make the first turn.

Motor sport officiating has gone to shit today, I can tell you that.

Now I really hate the annoying YouTube “10 minute” time limit – which is actually more of an 11 minute limit – because it means anyone with longer videos either has to edit them down to that length, or split them into parts. What makes it even more annoying is the way that partners have no time limits, yet it’s practically impossible to become one. And even more annoying is the fact that old Director account from back in 2006 still have unlimited time uploads because of the grandfather clause from back then – and if I had known this back in 2006 I would have tried getting it…

So either way, to avoid too much fancy editing and whatnot, I just decided to take the circa 160 minutes of footage and split it at every eleven minute mark, before spending the entire day rendering them before uploading them. The results are seen in this video below:

Seriously, fuck that. I edit them to the exact frame (and yes, I had the quantize to frames setting on, so it really was to the exact damn frame!) and YouTube’s processing thinks it’s 11:01, and rejects the video for that. Go fuck right off…

I really wish that I could just pack up and move to another video sharing service, but the problems with other places are also prevalent. Vimeo doesn’t allow gaming videos and has upload limits I’d surpass in a single video unless you pay them, for example. Plus, I’d have to re-establish myself there, even though I already have a bunch-load of subscribers, comments and views on YouTube.

I wish the engineers or admins behind the scenes would actually get up off their asses, look into the community and take note that many people wouldn’t mind being burdened by stupid restrictions such as these. Sure they upped the file size limit to 2GB, but I’d never use that in 11 minutes even if I tried. Recording on my camcorder at full 1080p with maxed settings – I still get over two hours of footage onto my 16GB card, which is about 15 minutes for two gigs.

Well OK, one major exception to this would have to be raw FRAPS footage. That eats up four gigs every two minutes or so…

But still, I’m rather pissed off at how I’ve lost an entire day rendering only for it to be made useless by a processing bug. Fuck this shit. Now I have to spend the entirety of today re-rendering everything, and I can’t play any games while doing so because Vegas takes up nearly all my CPU…

You may call be a Jimmie Johnson hater or something like that, but I was absolutely thrilled to see him crash out live as it happened. Why? Well, the guy is just too damn good. He seems to win every other damn race, and he makes the sport boring to watch. If we know JJ is going to win, why bother watching? While I’m not annoyed when someone other than Montoya wins (which is every damn race), I am annoyed when someone who was only won four championships because of NASCAR’s silly playoff system wins every other time.

It’s like when Schumacher was winning every race in Formula 1, it made the sport boring. Now though, after being gone for several years, he’s back and he’s shit. Now it’s fun again to watch a race with Schumi in it!

I just hope that a GIF of this crash turns up sooner or later…

Usually I don’t mind being under the weather, but what with recently been trying to make more gaming videos, and this massive coughing fit rendering me completely incapable of doing so, lest my commentary be broken off every minute or so as I feel yet another tickle in my throat.

Another reason for groaning is after noticing how packed up my calendar is looking over the next few months, which is likely to get worse as more things are arranged over the next few weeks. Especially all the few weeks leading from mid-June through July…
If you really want to, the public view of my calendar (encompassing college, gaming, and selected public events – but only showing my free/busy status of personal events) is viewable on the contact page. And then you too can groan with me…

At least you don’t have to see my view of my calendar, which also shows public holidays, Facebook events, Facebook birthdays, sporting events…

So, last Thursday morning (the one with the random snow) I was heading in towards college, hitching a life with my mom who at the time was going… well, somewhere. Half expecting to get off somewhere in Blanch and get a bus to town, firstly I realised the time, and then the fact that she was going via Carpenterstown. So I then decided to give the train a shot, since it would get me into Drumcondra much quicker than a bus into town and then back out would have.

Walking up into the station, fumbling around trying to figure out which pocket I had my pass in. As I’m going by the side windows of the ticket office, I see them shut, which I find to be quite odd, as it’s only 9.20. Round the corner – and the main shutters of the office are closed as well. Well, that’s just fucking brilliant…

The one annoying thing about train travel with the Free Travel Pass, is the absolute need for a manned ticket office to be open in order to get a ticket, as there’s no way otherwise to get through the ticket barriers onto the platform (well, except for hopping them of course). It’s also annoying how the ticket vending machines have no option for people with their pass to get their ticket from it. It’s as if Irish Rail haven’t put any thought into designing their system for passholders.

So I did a little searching around to try and piece together some things. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t seem to have a decent enough result for "irish rail free travel pass ticket office closed", and rather annoyingly has links to the Irish Rail website which just says "Free Travel Pass". However, I did find some half-decent links out there with regards to others in a similar situation.

• Firstly, a link to Irish Rail’s "Guide for Rail Passengers with Disabilites" (PDF). On page 4 (really page 5…), it states:
  

  Free Travel Passes must be produced at the ticket office in order to receive a valid ticket to travel on the train.

  Fat lot of fucking help when there’s no open ticket office.
  The same sort of thing is repeated on the passenger charter.

• A link to a thread on RailUsers.ie, detailing how Irish Rail were forced to pay compensation to a visually impaired man in possession of a Free Travel Pass as well as review their policies on the matter – because of the fact they don’t provide social welfare tickets for any day other than the one you’re getting the ticket on.
• A link to a report on the accessibility of public transport in Ireland for people with disabilities. On page 14, section 2.2.2:
  

  All People with disabilities in Ireland have a free travel pass but must get a ticket for travelling on both long distance and intercity trains. Ticket vending machines are not accessible for disabled people.

  Nail on the head right there.

• And finally, the least "on topic" of all of these, a link to a thread in the Commuting and Transport forum on Boards from three years ago. While not necessarily about the Free Travel Pass, it still highlights the fact that passengers might not have a choice in the matter when there’s no way to get a ticket at the station, either by the office being closed or vending machines being out or the like; and how staff at Irish Rail react to such a situation.

All in all, stuff giving out shit about this.

Oh, in the end I ended up just buying a single ticket from the vending machine there, as I wasn’t going to try "fare-dodge" and risk getting caught – which I wouldn’t have by the way. Thankfully I actually had enough change in my wallet to be able to buy the €2 ticket…

And on a related note, I see Dublin Bus are still sticking with the whole "you need the photo ID, period" sort of attitude after another ticket inspector on the 70 recently; all despite the fact that it is specifically mentions living in Dublin, not Meath. They really should get it changed to say something along the lines of "In order to utilise Dublin Bus services, and Bus Eireann city services in (whatever the other cities are), you need this photo ID". Although at least the inspector was a bit more passé about it and just kindly mentioned to me that I "only have to go to O’Connell St. It’ll take 3 minutes." Rather than the situation of the driver almost not letting me get the last bus back home from town one night.

When what seems like every second blog post I read, every fifth tweet, and every radio new bulletin I listen to mention Haiti, it’s more a case of jumping on the bandwagon rather than genuine concern. Now I can deal with that no problem (I just ignore you…), but what irks me is that the majority of these things also involve somewhere an attempt to get you to go donate money to some random charitable organisation that claim they are going there to use that money to help rebuild and rescue and whatnot.

Bullshit.

And it’s made an absolute fuckton worse when every third e-mail I get is from some random site I’m on sending a circular to all members bugging them to go donate.

I can deal with this thing poisoning my feed inbox, infiltrating my Seesmic, and being blared out by my clock radio beside my bed – but when it starts to get shoved down my throat in my inbox, now that’s just crossing the damn line. If I was going to donate to this crisis, I’d do it of my own accord out of the goodness of my heart. But when you’re agonisingly bugging me – almost to the extent of shunning me when I do nothing – then I don’t see the point in bothering, when all I’m going to end up doing is jumping on this bandwagon.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? How about everyone else on earth living their life as normal, versus a country that doesn’t seem to have prepared for this sort of situation, despite being located practically right next to the edge of the Caribbean Plate, which has had a fair few quakes over the past few decades? (Provided these images on Wikipedia are anything to believe.)

I’m sick of it. All of you bugging me about it have caused me to close my wallet back up and put it back into my pocket. Well done.

I’ll wait.

…

Back? Good. Now I can talk as if you know what I mean

So, after originally starting out with that fairly shit compared to current standards, major battles of Japanese Pokémon Platinum thing, which at the time was recorded with my regular normal Sony DSC-W35 at a resolution of 640×480 with the sound having to be recorded as it came from the DS speakers meaning I had to shut the fuck up, and edited using Windows Movie Maker; I got a couple of fans. Nothing major really, although at this stage I’m still astounded as to how my Elite Four battle video against Cynthia has garnered 1700+ views in little over a year (obviously the kids were really stuck!).

After that, I was originally going to start the new American Platinum full LP – as in full game coverage and commentary – with that shitty camera, when I acquired my current camcorder, my Canon HF100; and at the same time, came across Sony Vegas 9.^† Sure, full HD may be overkill, but then again it gives me room for error before I edit it down to 720p for uploading. But most importantly, it does have that microphone input jack so I can actually have decent quality game sound. That style of proper LP’ing brought in a few more subs.

But I must say it wasn’t until SoulSilver was released in Japan, and I started that LP that I’ve really started to "take off" in regular viewers. Sure it’s not by much, but at least I know I have people out there that do look forward to what I upload – well, I hope. With a new game, new blind running, and new commentary style, I do kinda feel like I’ve got this thing well and truly sorted.

And now thanks to TheAlmightyBear (aka my gaming machine!) and with a little help from Fraps ($37 well spent tbh!), I now have my other side of LP’ing in what is currently Borderlands – as well as the possibility of some other random PC gaming videos. While this itself does need some work to perfect, I think I have this down as well. At least, I know I do now that I’ve figured out a setting to turn off in Vegas to properly line up the Fraps clips, which are unfortunately limited to 3.9GB each, meaning each particular video is actually about seven or eight files mashed into one. And I hope I’ve fixed the sound level problems for the future as well. Since I thought I could reduce the game volume by reducing the general speaker volume – and that not working – I’ve now gone ahead and turned down the volume for Stereo Mix specifically. At least next time I’m running a sound test I can be sure that’s working.

Agh, gone off the point…

Anyway, I’m probably getting way too ahead of myself here, but I’m actually starting to think about what I need to do when if I get popular. Will I need to start setting up fan pages on places? Official fan groups? An official fan forum? Sure, I’d like it and all, but I just hope that people won’t get too ahead of themselves…

…

Actually, I hope none of my subscribers are reading this…

* looks around *

* legs it *

^† Don’t ask what I mean by "came across", alright?

I’m not sure if I really get all the hype over a new year. It’s just a number ticking over the next one because the cycle has ended. If we celebrate a new year, then why don’t we celebrate every new month, day, hour, minute or even second? HAPPY NEW SECOND! And again, HAPPY NEW SECOND! Get over it.

But since when it comes to statistics purposes, a new year is a fresh start, so a few things that I’m saying now that I’m going to do and probably won’t:

• Write something half-decent at least twice a week
• Either write an article on behalf of the bear, or make a bear comic at least every other week
• Do a video rant (well, more of an audio rant) at least every month.
• Bring those game review things I tried back, as well as doing a proper review of them on Shoryuken if not already done there.
• Not change little cosmetic aspects of my site every week. Do it up once, and then just leave it.

Also, one more good thing about this year is that I turn 21.

I’m a little worried about that, not because of the actual age itself, but more the fact that I have four distinct groups of people that I feel I "belong to" that will likely want to celebrate with me. If that means four parties in one week, then woo-hoo!

If your first instinct right now is to scroll right down to that comments box and ask me “Why?”, I’m just going to say right now “Why not?”. There’s not much different to a normal fancy dress or costume party (especially when it’s one of Elly’s!) – you’re just being someone from anime, manga, video games etc.. It’s along the same lines as LARPing (Live Action Role Playing games, for those of you who are uneducated), just not with a game in mind, only fun. So I’d like to see you turn around and tell me it’s not normal.

I’ve already started planning for next year’s anime convention schedule, so that I can hopefully go as part of a cosplaying pair or group, and possibly even have skits prepared for some of the more major cons. Why start planning so early? Well, everyone else seems to be doing so as well. Plus, the more time I have available, the more time I have to actually get something made for it, and that doesn’t look like crap. Or so I can just continually go on about how much time I have left, only to procrastinate and realise two weeks before the con that I’m royally fucked. The latter option is very likely to happen, unless those who I’m cosplaying with start beating me with sticks to get me to get stuff done.

I would start arguing about why should things like this be limited to conventions, but the main thing about that is the point of view of the public, who may not exactly consider this sort of thing to be normal or acceptable behaviour. Yes, this is something probably best kept to group meetings with like-minded people who are actually into this sort of thing. Doesn’t mean that meetings can’t be arranged though. Several times throughout the year I hear of cosplay photoshoots wanting to be held, that would interest me, again if I was actually half-decent at costume creation so that I’d look good on camera – and if that one decent picture of me I found from Eirta this year is anything to go by, I sure as hell don’t!

And if you think I’m already off my rocker with all this, I’m probably going to make me sound even more insane to you right now – I’m even thinking about having a cosplay party for my 21st. Yes, consider me sad if you will, but I would certainly enjoy a party where everybody is in a character not them. Sure it’d probably alienate a fair few of my friends and would probably be just eirtaku peeps attending, but all I’d say to that is that anyone not being there would be missing out big time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off back to deviantArt to go gawp at people…

So, seeing as I had to leave very quickly this morning and wasn’t able to clean up the kitchen downstairs before I left, I told myself I’d go back home much earlier than normal tonight and get it done, as well as maybe making something for dinner with the random crap lying around in the fridge or freezer. With the aim and intention of getting the 1950 to be home by around nine, I left at around a quarter past seven.

Now while services from DCU to town are plentiful and regular, they still tend to come in a clump. And when those clumps generally mean that you only have twenty minutes to get into town and you have no idea how bad the traffic and/or demand for the bus will be, you have the hard choice of risking it in town, or going through Phibsborough and then hopping on one from there to Cabra where you can meet with the bus you actually want. Which is what I did, since I wanted to actually get back home.

So, I arrive in town at just before a quarter to eight, and check the timetable for the 38, which shows one having left town at 1940. Grand so, it’ll be here in about ten minutes, and I can be up at Cabra Cross within another five, meaning I’d only have about a ten minute wait for my 70. Ten to eight – no sign. Probably just slow out. Five to eight – nothing. Eight o’clock – still nothing. OK, maybe he’s just around the corner and I can’t see him and it’s been a torrid night getting out. Five minutes past fucking eight (actually 8:04 to be precise) and he shows up, not even half-full. Right, let’s get on and get the fuck up to the top of the road already. If I’d have known it would have taken so long, I probably would have gotten the 122 that went by about ten minutes ago.

A very slow drive to the top of the road, not helped by a bunch of old ladies (obviously a bingo party) getting on halfway, and we reach Cabra Cross – only to see a bus coming from Stoneybatter-way and going ahead. As I was near the back of the bus, I couldn’t make out the number on the back too well (from far away 39 and 70 do look alike), and was seriously hoping that it was the one I didn’t need.
A minute later when we got close to the back – fuckit. It was my 70. The 38 lost those ten minutes to the 70 somehow for some unknown fucking reason on the way to Phibsborough. At least I was hoping that we’d eventually catch up to it while stopped somewhere, or even overtaking it.

Well, that plan got off to a high when the 70 stopped at the next stop up, outside the Navan Road entrance to Coláiste Mhuire (where I used to get on/off the bus to and from Blanchardstown every morning for the last three years of my secondary education) – and was scuppered almost immediately when the guy who got off it flagged down the 38. And it was only made worse and worse, so that by the time the 70 had arrived at the last possible stop I could have changed at – the stop outside St. Brigids GAA Club on the dual-carriageway – we were stuck down the other end, passing by the Phoenix Park racecourse apartments.

So I give the parent a ring asking if she can drop down and pick me up since I’ve no chance of getting back soon – and I get a response saying there’s not a chance of it happening as the place was left in a state and that I should probably just get a taxi back.

Which destined me to at least an hour and a bit wandering around Blanchardstown while I waited for the next 70 to come, which leaves town at twenty past fucking nine. After wandering for said time frame, including getting dinner in KFC since I knew I’d be home late. So, I sit down at the stop at the Blanchardstown Centre at about nine-forty and wait for him to come.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Until at ten past ten, me and two others who had been waiting on it, give up resigned to the fact that the driver was a lazy ass and decided not to to through the Centre, despite that fact that every normal 70 after seven is supposed to go through it since the fucking 270 stops service at seven for some unknown fucking reason, even though it runs all the way through to midnight on Sundays! – and end up splitting a taxi home, which I could have just gotten myself originally, as despite the fact it was split with one of the others in the car, as the other one was only going to Clonee, I ended up paying him full price anyway since myself and the driver were both having a bad night with the maths.

This shit really pisses me off. Really.

Dublin Bus need to get their fucking act together, before I have to write another letter of complaint…