Pat Condell - the crazy old man at Christmas dinner

When I first heard Pat Condell's videos on YouTube I enjoyed them, quite a lot if I am being honest. It's not that I agreed with the points he made, or felt that he was justified in his claims, but there was always an angry charm about him, like the crazy step-aunt that comes over for Christmas dinner and makes racist or homophobic remarks. You know that you shouldn't, but you can't help but snigger – it's just what they're like; they mean no harm really.

And for me, Pat Condell always was just a funny, crazy guy, and for a short while I did subscribe to his videos on YouTube. Not for information, not to appease my political stance, but simply for entertainment.

Over 24'000 face legal action in 'The Hurt Locker' fiasco

There's been a large influx in interest in BitTorrent piracy recently due to the record-breaking 24'000 plus US residents currently facing court action and possible prosecution over allegedly illegally downloading the Oscar nominated film, The Hurt Locker. This high-profile case highlights the scale of the problem of piracy for the movie industry, and the lengths that they will go to in order to make sure potential viewers 'cough up' their cash for the legitimate experience, yet it also highlights a fundamental problem that both helped initiate and exacerbate the sheer mass of piracy we see today.

The fundamental problem that causes the most piracy is: property price and monotony distribution throughout the film industry. You see, films made huge profit for many companies throughout the 20th century, brining perhaps tens of millions of pounds in profit per film. This money allowed for great investment, high-profile advertisements and a rapid saturation of the market.

WOW! It's a whole awesome new design!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is that time of the year again - the time of the year when I once again find a fatiguing monotony with this website's layout and have to completely overhaul the design for the new season - like if Gok Wan was a web designer!

It's been busy recently for me, finally getting to university; settling in, meeting new people, making new friends - I just haven't had time to focus on web design. Even the old Green Leaf App's desperately needed redesign and maintenance was abruptly halted mere pages from completion to make way for the transition to perpetually intoxicated slobbishness that the 'student initiation' consists of.

Article: iPad, or Something Like an iPad?

It seems that every time Apple introduce a new device into the market there is – perhaps within a matter of days – dozens of cheap imitation ‘Apple-killer’ devices, running similar or lower specifications and open-source imitation operating systems. It was seen with the original iPod and its apparent 'killer', the Creative Zen; it was seen too with the iPhone and its numerous ‘iPhone-killer’ devices such as the Nexus One; and it’s been seen countless times with the iPad too, with hundreds of Android based tablets being announced or introduced to the market within the next few months, such as the Galaxy Tab.

This creates rife competition and gives users a choice: to buy Apple branded products or other, similar yet alternative products. But, after all, even Apple isn’t perfect; so I argue:

If I wanted ‘something like an iPad’, I’d buy an iPad: the great problem with tablet design

Amsterdam, from what I can remember

As I mentioned in my previous post, a trip had been organised for Amsterdam over the summer, and Amsterdam I did visit. I was, for the second time in my life, sitting on a Easy Jet flight at an ungodly time in the morning head-bound for Amsterdam airport, trying desperately not to drift off into a slumber.

The flights to Amsterdam from the UK are short - very short. The plane barely seems to level out throughout the entire journey; more accurately, it simply spends the first twenty-two and a half minutes of the journey taking off and the latter twenty-two and a half minutes landing: we spent more time waiting at the airports' various checkpoints than on the plane!