On my way to work I saw people spilling out of a club. Drunk men of such ugliness of the spirit and face I knew sudden violence was imminent. And bouncers who didn’t care: stood like Michelin Men in front of the gaudy facade of the club that didn’t care what crimes its patrons commit. Drunken men my age and older, out for a shag or a fight. This is Ivegate now. This is Bradford now.

Work is full of people younger than me and women who watch Soap Operas. Ambition is measured in the acquisition of jewellery. I pride myself on doing my job well. I like most of the people around me. But I stand apart. As much as I am one of them I will never be one of them.

As I get older I listen to the Rolling Stones more. Chart music seems to be ever shallower, karaoke iterations of bland truisms sanded down to remove any interest. Is Lady Gaga really that good or just the sole purveyor of music with intelligence amidst a sea of mediocrity?

I should have my current course pretty much completed the week after my birthday. Christmas will be relaxation ready for taking two more in the new year. When the economy rebounds I want to be best placed to take advantage.

I used to know someone who variously described natured as “untarmacced state” and “green is the colour of mould”. I was never quite so strident, but I do like the trappings of civilization. I like technology. I like engineering. Big machines fascinate me. And I get hayfever.

Today I was in an edifice dedicated to consumerist excess. Minding my own business, travelling down the escalator. I felt something on my neck, a tickle. I thought it may be a stray hair and moved my hand to brush it off. Searing pain in my finger and some form of yellow and black striped insect dropping to the ground.

My finger felt like it was on fire and swelled up. The pain eased some but is still there now (some seven hours later) and, at one point, my hand had pretty much swollen up and gone mottled. At one point the pain was bad enough to cause me to pass out. I think it is safe to say I am allergic to bee stings. I’m working on the assumption it was a bee because wasps have never had this effect on me.

I saw The Surrogates on Friday. It touched on similar themes to Gamer but was much more even and considerably slicker. The direction wasn’t nauseating and there wasn’t the feeling there were 3 or 4 competing films vying for screen time. It did, however, share a problem with Hostage: it veers into routine Bruce Willis saves the day with a gun territory rather than following the more interesting premise of the film to conclusion. It’s also too short to properly ruminate on some of its themes. It is visually consistent and features some neat touches and competent special effects.

Kanye West has become an internet meme. The basic joke is that you place him in a photo of an event and paraphrase his invasion of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to include details relevant to the photograph. For instance, you would have a photo of Kanye West invading Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech and have Kanye West at the side saying “Yo, Kanye, Imma happy for you and I’ll let you finish but I have to say that Jarvis Cocker wrecking Michael Jackson’s performance at the Brits is the best musical award show invasion of all time. of all time.” and the meme will have successfully eaten its own tail.

Speaking of which, I am sure he had a point. On the other hand, he was there in the first place which is a tacit acceptance of the rules and ridiculousness of the whole event so perhaps he should have held his tongue?
I have no strong opinion, I find it all faintly ridiculous these days.

David Cameron has been accused of being a con artist by Nick Clegg. Who reminds me nothing so much as David Cameron. David Cameron has also realigned his party away from the centre left in the European parliament and alongside lunatics from Poland. Who wouldn’t even be in the European parliament if it weren’t for the federalists. I am sure the irony is lost upon him.

I went and saw Gamer last night. It is a watchable and sporadically entertaining film that is, to say the least, confused. There feels to be 3 films merged clumsily into one and the crediting of two directors goes some way to explaining the schizophrenic nature of the film. Gerard Butler is largely under utilised as the growling bloke and the lead from Dexter given too little screen time as the main villain. But he is genuinely unsettling, which is a nice touch. Visually it is sometimes great and sometimes nauseating and does have some interesting points to make about online gaming. And also makes me glad I re positioned myself as a more hardcore gamer after years of fluffy mainstream play.

Before Gamer was a trailer for Ninja Assassin. This is from the creative team behind V for Vendetta and has been delayed by nearly a year. Normally a delay of that magnitude is worrying (to say the least) but it looks absolutely incredible. Probably going to be a very nice surprise to end the year on.

Oh, and I start evening class on Tuesday. With a second to follow soon on Wednesdays. So I think I will be online less and possibly less social.

Last weekend I saw Davod for the first time in over a year and saw his son for the first time. I saw people that I haven’t seen in years and spent the time explaining who I was. I feel I look the same but I have mellowed a lot. Or it could be I am not memorable. Juliette looks just like I remember her. She hasn’t aged a day in 8 years, even after the baby. Davod looks the same as his dad, just with fewer white hairs. His sister looks an elfin teen. I felt undistinguished and liable to age badly.

I have upgraded the computer. I may go into it in detail (mind numbing, spirit crushing detail at that) later, but the basics are:
Many SATA 2 drives have the facility (through jumper settings) to allow the user to force them to work as SATA 1 drives, this means they are effectively backwards compatible with a lower data transfer rate without corruption while enabling you to reuse them when the motherboard is finally replaced.
I have read a lot on short stroking. By using the higher capacity of a drive at an exterior edge compared to the inner portion of the drive for distance traveled by drive head I can get much faster seek and transfer times for data. Oddly Windows loading doesn’t benefit massively from this. Loading applications within Windows and general responsiveness does benefit though. Some programs load instantaneously and typing faster than the refresh of the computer can handle is a thing of the past.
Dual boot Ubuntu. Which I will be taking advantage of once I have an internet connection working with it. The idea of being able to code PHP and see the effect instantly appeals to me greatly. I know a WAMP implementation is possible but it feels more right, more proper, this way.
Google Sketch now works. A soft benefit as much as anything else.

I bet on Middlesbrough to stay up. I thought 16 to 1 was impossibly generous odds for such a result. They weren’t.

I saw Crank: High Voltage tonight. Whereas Crank was a pure action film, stupid and adrenaline fueled, Crank 2 is an altogether more insane beast. Starting with an altogether more improbable premise and afforded a budget which allows it to indulge it’s madder whims. This isn’t an action film, it’s a full blown acid trip that I would recommend to anyone. Anyone who isn’t offended by anything. Or squeamish. Or inclined to actually think about narrative structure or logic.

The cinema was virtually empty. A couple who no doubt intended it as a date movie left within minutes. Weak stomachs or a lack of sense of humour, the film didn’t even get going till after they had gone. In the rafters two girls laughed like drains. I was reminded of the time we went to see From Dusk to Dawn and stumbled across a pensioners’ day out at the cinema. Disapproving tuts to our every guffaw . . . .

The recurring soap opera at work inches forward. Apparently someone I tangentially knew (but strongly disliked) used to work where I do. And died of a heart attack. In the office. I shall find a delicate (not at all) way to ask about it.

The Post Office down the road is for sale and I have seen the listing. The asking price is 113,500 pounds. Apparently the weekly turnover is 5,000 pounds and the stipend for being a post office is 33,000 pounds per year. Something in those figures does not add up. At all.

Toni and Guy in Bradford appears to be closing. Where will the chic denizens of this multi cultural and cultured metropolis go for sleek bobs and avant garde hair now?
I seek to start unsubstantiated rumours it will be replaced bya shop selling naught but Kappa, LaCoste and velvet tracksuits. Or do I mean velour?

I had a dream last night. I probably dream on lots of nights but it is rare that I remember one. I was helping to supervise a school trip with the people I work with largely being the children on the trip. We were on the coast (although we were in Calderdale, which is land-locked) and I wanted to look at some huge motor or engine (not sure what the distinction is, to be honest) and the children/colleagues wanted to go and see Mickey Mouse. So I ended up watching a man in a not convincing Mickey Mouse costume do the same thing over and over again while I never saw my beautiful engine/motor and the children loved it while I stood at the back. Fuming.

At work today (he says, by way of segue) a girl who works in the main office (I work in the little adjunct where things actually get done and people aren’t desperately scurrying around trying not to get noticed) was dumped by her boyfriend. Who works in the staff canteen. Via text message. First he tried getting another girl (who I also work with) to tell the girl he was dumping to move her stuff out as he needed more space, then he just ended it via text message. She looks about twelve and I have never seen him, but I have an image of a spiky haired urchin who is all swagger and practiced nonchalance. It felt like I was at school, only this time hanging out with the normal kids and bemused by them rather than sat finding out about technology or drawing.

The bane of my working day is an advert for Coral Windows. In it, the announcer puts on a really strained American film trailer voice and tells anyone unfortunate enough to be listening about Coral Window’s sale. Initially it was a ten day sale, so as much as I hated it I knew it would be over. Now, unfortunately, the sale has been extended. And gives no firm date as to when it finishes. I fully intend to boycott Coral Windows and would beseech everyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, this course of action would leave them with excess inventory that I now know they will advertise indefinitely. In an annoying way.

Throughout the history of Cinema the Oscars have served to celebrate the best of film making, the most convincing and powerful performances, excellence in technical aspects and visionary direction. The list of winners through the years is long and illustrious. In the best picture category alone we have had:

Gigi (1958)
Oliver (1968)
Braveheart (1995)
Titanic (1997)

Of course, in these years there were films that weren’t even nominated that some may consider to have been overlooked:

Touch of Evil (1958)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The Usual Suspects (1995)

There are great films nominated and didn’t win in years with far less worthy winners, but not even considering a great film at all, particularly genre movies, has happened on too many occasions. And this year is another of them.

The Dark Knight has not been nominated for best picture. The Dark Knight, which is in step with the prevailing climate of anxiety and discomfort and decay, that has layer upon layer of complexity and ingenuity, that dares not have a happy ending and happily encompasses a whole spectrum of moral ambiguity, has been left uncounted as Hollywood again seeks to reward the trite, the boring and the self satisfied.

Slumdog Millionaire, in particular, makes me angry. Slumdog Millionaire is written and directed by a couple of nice white people who have a set of assumptions about India that seem to have been gathered from telephone conversations with call centres, having watched “Goodness, Gracious Me” and “Gandhi.” It’s a variation of a rags to riches tale in which there are actual brown people! In starring roles! Of course, it’s nearly all in English, makes little to no sense, has some awful acting and is as moral, trite and predictable as one can imagine. To hide this the locales are a little unusual and there is a sprinkling of sadism on what is otherwise the most moralistic and predictable tale imaginable. The betrayer? Gets to die redeeming himself!
The bad guys? Get killed!
The hero? Does anything for love, even giving up money, so he deserves happiness and riches!
This is a festering turd of a movie. It’s family fare with a slight calculated edge to hide the fact it could have been made by Disney.
And the sodding Oscars want to reward it in place of anything that may make you think or reflect social concerns, moral ambiguity or actual craft and inventiveness.

Wayne tagged me on one of those seven facts memes. To my memory I did one once before when Sam tagged me for the same thing. I am not sure I know seven people who keep up to their blogs enough to tag going forward, but here goes the facts of no consequence:

I briefly did both ballet and tap dancing lessons as a child. The first known instance of me breaking a promise is “I will keep doing ballet” in order to shut my mother up on the subject.

I’m effectively tee total. I drink on occasion but, when I do, tend to drink to excess and forget parts of the night. I also can’t escape hangovers no matter how much alcohol I drink and what form it takes.

I don’t have the first clue how to drive a car but have some ability on a forktruck. Hopefully cars are easier to reverse.

I watch far, far more “television” online than I ever do sat in front of an actual television. I don’t actually understand the mindset required to watch some programs, especially soap operas.

I hate shaving and have spent the vast majority of my adult life needing a shave.

I’ve always found Neil Gaiman and Mark Waid overrated and the current failure of The Spirit film makes me hope that Frank Miller will reappraise his current work. Also, Quentin Tarantino isn’t very good, really. He appeals to people who take pride in recognising his riffs and people too stupid to realise they are.

I love the Dark Knight even though, deep down, I know it is too reliant on coincidences and contrivances.

We had the hottest, sunniest day of Summer for months. Seeing as it is now effectively autumn and no one can hope to benefit from it. I heard a radio advert the other day saying (and I am paraphrasing here) “If there is global warming, then why is it so cold? If it is a seller’s market, why can’t you sell your house?” and then something else. Truly, truly awful. And displays a singular lack of understanding, hugely poor timing and, in so far as I can’t remember what the advert was for, fails on every level. But, yes: global warming. Wet summer. Cold weather. Desalination of the oceans causing undersea currents to shift, changing the climate. Increased water levels causing increased rain. Oh, and the housing market at its lowest ebb since well before I was born.

We did Bilston Market yesterday. I did the morning and Adrian did the afternoon. The people on Bilston market are odd. Probably odder than Wolverhampton. We don’t have the drunks but we have the druggies and the bail hostelees around the place. I saw two men in flipflops, one with shorts on, umpteen t shirts and one guy who shuffled like a zombie. His head lolled to one side and drool was dripping from his mouth. Sadly I hope it is a disorder, if I find it to have been the effects of something self inflicted like drugs it’d make me worry about what people are doing to themselves.

There is another WordPress version available. I think they update it more than I do the webpage I run using it. Which probably shows how much I neglect this place.

New South Park: absurdist and very funny in places. Cartman and Butters play off each other wonderfully. Stan does the incredulity thing.

Son of Rambow is dire and unwatchable. The Cottage is ok but never as good as it thinks it is.

I made tea for Adrian and his family. Charlotte refused to touch it but Dan ate no problem. Which shows some traction, hopefully.

WordPress has been updated. The number made it look like a point release but the under the hood stuff is pretty drastic (at least cosmetically). I’m not sure how much I like it or what benefits it bestows on me, but I am convinced I need to rework my theme to work in IE (boo, hiss) and to take advantage of widgets.

I’m going home this weekend. It’s only been four months. Based on the usual changes I see every time I go home the entire of the city centre will be rubble and the remaining shops will all be pound bargain land or Eastern European.

Jo Whiley is kind of creepy. She’s doing the down with the younglings thing that Janet Street Porter is now not allowed to do since she picked up her bus pass and it’s as embarrassing as your dad trying to be cool and using slang. Old crones shouldn’t pretend to know what is fashionable or where the emerging trends are. She’s been ancient ever since I was young enough to care and I am much too old to have a clue what people like, want to look like or listen to anymore. And I wear slippers around the house.

I will be back in the UK tonight. I am actually flying out and arriving at night, which will be a first for me. I am also going into Leeds/Bradford, which I remember as being about the size of a garden shed.

I shall miss Peach Jam and Peach and White Grape Juice. Also lean pork, cheap meat that isn´t reconstituted and the man who paints mannequins. Mannequins here are all personalised.

It has been stormy the past few days, thunderstorms all night and people using umbrellas when it so much as spits with rain. The beach is a deeper brown from the weight of water it has absorbed and it feels fresher.

Oh, and I saw a woman in a motorised wheelchair pulling along a man in an automatic one. He was clinging to her handles.

I have taken to reading to fill the nights. I have found out that Brad Meltzer, in distinct contrast to their comics work, is more enjoyable novelist than Greg Rucka. Irvine Welsh likes showing how good his ear for dialogue, accent and dialect is to the point of making nigh unpenetrable books and About a Boy is actually quite funny. Also read a book called something like “The Errol Flynn Novel” which is awful. The back assures the reader how funny it is. It lies. The book has flawed internal logic, a ridiculous and unentertaining premise, no likeable or particularly believable characters and events that occur purely to sustain the plot rather than for any other purpose.

Madeline McGann´s parents have been deemed suspects by the Portugese authorities. The venom and bile that will be unleashed should they have actually killed their daughter (I have always felt they were cuplable, and long suspected they were responsible) will be inccredible. More than any other case in my lifetime, I suspect.

Tomorrow I believe will be spent swimming and walking around, as the week ahead is meant to be unsettled and cloudy, and after that I suspect the temperature will have dropped some, so it may be my last chance.

In one of the central plazas in Torremolinos (the one with the Mercadona on, not the international square) there is a stage that the local television station uses to broadcast from a strange little thatched hut, or have novelty acts on the stage. Usually this is to absolutely no public interest whatsoever, with the stage viewed as an inconvenience when crossing the plaza rather than as a focal point. Yesterday, with a young girl flamenco dancing, a crowd formed around it. Which was a rarity in itself.

I walked past a stage on the beach being operated by TVE this morning. They were packing up, but it seemed to have been something to do with beach football. A little further on I spotted a minor British celebrity recording for “Wish you were here” and coming back up to the plaza with the stage on it I stumbled across a British crew seemingly doing man in the street type interviews. Seemingly I am in the broadcasting nexus of the world, on a Sunday.

It´s got up to 37 here today. I went walking for a couple of hours just to soak up the ambience and poartially from boredom. I am finding certain types of shops, puzzlingly, don´t exist here. There are umpteen shops that you would think have small chances of success but others (and, I have to admit, I am going by the British experience) that don´t exist that you would think there is a crying need for.

I am clean shaven, which seems to be really irritated by heat and sweat. But then again, it is always irritated by cold and wind. Maybe my skin is just not meant to not have a layer of fur on it.

Tiscali are incompetent toe rags. We had a problem with the phone line the ADSL was on at work and this led to a line test being set in motion on the line (either by BT or Tiscali, both deny it) which was never teminated. This killed the ADSL connection. For three days I yelled at Tiscali and BT until discovering this and then ordered the ADSL reconnected. Tiscali told me it would take 3 working days. Yesterday Adrian contacts them to find out why it has not happened and it turns out they never actioned the order and it will now take seven days. So we are migrating.

One of our staff has a problem with the concept of a customer buying all of a certain line. If, hypothetically, one is to buy all of a certain line then the stock need not be pre sorted as it is all going to the same destination. However, if the declaration that all stock is to be bought is false, then it makes sense to sort the stock so as to take the best units. An important and salient distinction. Beyond the ken of our staff.

Leeds have only been docked 15 points for the disgraceful pitch invasion at the end of last season. Hopefully this is enough to see them relegated yet again. They could still cease to exist altogether though, which has to be the aim.

The flight over here this time was turbulent. The pilot flew us over the mountains to the north of Malaga rather than around them which had the disconcerting effect, when combined with the turbulence, of making all those jagged and sharp pieces of rock appear much too close for comfort.

Spanish transport seems to follow different rules. Apparently it is the deliveree´s responsibility to ensure that the roads are wide enough and sufficiently low in traffic for the canneon (lorry to you or I) to get through regardless of the time. Rather than the canneon coming at the requested time (chosen for ease of access) and actually have planned a route using a knowledge of the country. I suppose I should also sweep the roads to ensure no debris gets in the delicate canneon´s path. It´s been a bloody awful day with what can euphemistically be described as a steep learning curve.

My spam keeps telling me how myriads of people are sending me postcards. Rather than emails. Or anything interesting.

LFGComic.com is really good and everyone should go and read it.

It is a source of amusement to people that I would make a crap tramp. Apparently the reasons for this are the fact I don’t drink (so would not spend my time drinking awful and cheap alcohol) and that I am very quiet (so could not rant at passers by). I am not quite sure why people find it as funny as they clearly do.

Diet Coke with Lime tastes like metallic water. In fact it is metallic water. Avoid unless you really need a conductive brown liquid.

Oasis apple and blackcurrant tastes like wood foliage landing in your mouth from a branch hitting you in the face. More flavourful but also to be avoided.

theuksource.com continue to be horrendous. The mobile phone battery they sent me (specifically listed as fitting my phone) does not fit my phone. They have nothing listed about returns and the package came without indication of who the sender was to return the item.

Zodiac is quite good but has a flabby sequence entering the final third. I still dread the Simpsons movie.

I am in the process of moving to Spain. This is to expand out business and hopefully make a lot of money. I need to do the following:

- Pack everything either to go into storage or to be sent across.
- Sort out a Spanish bank account as, despite what we were informed by our business bank manager in England (a man who makes more mistakes than right decisions and I am fast losing all faith in), we need one.
- Sort out a landline telephone and attendant internet (I am planning to go with Tele2, anyone got any thoughts?)
- Sort out a mobile telephone with cheap calls and a Symbian or Windows Mobile handset so as to run Skype on it (I have no idea what company and think this will take the bulk of my research time).
- Get printing and incidental associated things sorted out (stickers, loan agreements, flyers, card transaction system, update webpage).
- Buy a new computer motherboard, CPU, thermal grease, DVI cable and large scale back up device. I am also considering a 32″ television and a Nintendo Wii.
- Cancel my gym memebership and severely change my phone contract, if not cancel it.

Spain is very hot, the people work hard and at a fair pace but they do take a break for several hours in the early afternoon. Internet cafes seem relatively cheap and plentiful, food and most basic items are cheap but cotton clothing and electronics are relatively expensive. My new gym is about 30 Euros a month, which is a big saving on my old one.

I need to work out how to adjust my diet and make sure I get enough fluids. Hopefully I will get opportunity to work on something that I have been having slosh about in my head for a bit. I wont be getting the same constant comics fix that I have been used to.

Gordon Brown is touring deluged Doncaster, soggy Sheffield and hydrated Hull. He has promised 14 million in public funds to help deal with the problems caused by the flooding. According to the head of Hull council it is a drop in the ocean. In seriousness, he looked statesman like as he went around, but I can’t help but feel councils in areas at risk of flooding should have contingencies in place. Similarly, people without insurance are now discovering what insurance is used for. The state can’t be seen to come in and solve everything, or it absolves poor decision making and recklessness.

I went into Primark today. The most obnoxious child I have ever encountered stood behind me and made howling sounds till his mother removed him. Incessant, calculatedly annoying sounds. I hope he was stoned and burnt on a pyre. Also, why are goths in Primark?
They don’t sell anything in black and they don’t play My Chemical Romance. Bugger off and write some crappy poetry.

Leeds United continue to spiral to new lows. Now they are apparently unsold to Ken Bates and potentially will be unable to start the new season as they are in receivership and may be till September. In this instance I love the Inland Revenue.

We’re changing transport companies. The one we currently use has a local office that lies to us at every opportunity.

Ah, July 4th. When Americans ask people of other nationalities if they have a July 4th. As if all our calendars are misprinted and follow a different numbering sequence. Of course we do.

Do non-Americans actually celebrate America declaring its independence?
Of course not. Why would they?

However, being British, I do sometimes bristle. This is the day that America stopped being a colony and became a country in its own right. Arguably lots of little countries with diverse and contradicting agendas held together by a union, but independent of us none the less. And then I realise, with the hindsight of their history and their general oddness, that we simply divested ourselves of them. So here it is: Happy Good Riddance Day.

Now to blow up a portion of my great nation with fireworks and eat poorly cooked meat from a barbecue.

We’re running a compressor. The motor forcing air to high pressure is running intermittently and giving me a headache at the base of my skull. Adrian is out and I blasted through what I needed to do this morning. Presently I will make ugly hacks to a website that is pure of code and aborted of design. Soon it shall look right, and be a rickety mess of programming.

I have been reading a couple of Greg Rucka books. Finished A Gentleman’s Game and it underwhelmed me. Started reading his first novel (can’t remember what it is called) and he kills the most likeable character off very early. It’s actually quite effective, and makes the obviousness of his later work seem odd. Did he learn more of them form and, in adhering to it, weaken his writing?
My mum has the opposite opinion.

Megatokyo seems to be undergoing a slight shift in style: fewer containing lines, yet less sketchy and more expressive. Personally I thoroughly approve.

Tomorrow is 3B July!