Real users

The other day I was reading an interesting article from the depths of the internet about 'real users', the vast majority of computer users and how they are different from the rest of us.

It was from 2003, some website developer was talking about how on his ISP's home page there was a link to a 'search' page, which had a list of links to that era's top search engines, like Yahoo, and MetaCrawler and so on, sites that have all but disappeared now. The article went on to say that when it was time to revamp the site, the developer got rid of the search page and just replaced it with a google search windowy thing or something, if people really wanted to use Yahoo, or Metacrawler they'd know the URL by now and could just type that into the address bar.

When they changed the website, there was a avalanche of complaints from customers who liked the old 'search page', and who couldn't find Yahoo anymore, it was like it had ceased to exist. The developer couldn't quite understand it, but it seemed the vast majority of people who used their ISP, had set the ISP homepage as their homepage and were otherwise completely lost if they couldn't just click through to search.

They are the real users of computers, people who don't quite understand the way it works or even think they need to understand they way it works.

In the comments people added their own stories of woe, stories of encounters with 'real users' who used computers every day, but didn't quite 'get' it.

Like people who don't use the address bar in their browser, they only ever get to things through having google as their homepage, and just entering everything there. The very existence of a URL is a mystery to them. This still happens, in 2008 the technology blogReadWriteWeb was lamenting how the vast majority or respondents in some market research don't use the address bar.

Even in February 2010 ReadWriteWeb did an article that had the words Facebook and Login in the title, magic google juice flowed and it became the top result when you search google for 'Facebook login'. People arrived at as site that wasn't Facebook and complained they couldn't login, three thousand or so people leaving comments along the lines of

Ok If I have to I will comment,I love facebook so right now just want to log in if thats ok with you..lol Keep up the good work...

They were completely lost.

I've grown up with computers and the internet, I have a little bit of a blind spot for how other people can not have the same understanding. The other day I was asked "What's the difference between Chrome and the internet?" Sure there are gentle answers to such questions, but all I could do was pat their hand and say "Don't you worry your pretty little head."

'Real users' get scared on Microsoft Word when you put on to make nonprinting characters visible. They're having problems with the layout, so you click the icon to see what's going on, and suddenly they protest, "No, I don't want that!", so you patiently click them off, and mystically explain that there's a few tabs there and a section break where it shouldn't be. The 'real user' looks at you in utter disbelief, wondering how you can possibly know such things.

There's something in that "No, I don't want that!" cry, it reminds me of the sort of thing my three year old niece would say.

'Real users' get confused when you move the icons around on their desktop, or if an icon gets obscured by some other window in front of it. If they can't see it, it has ceased to exist. Its like playing peekaboo with a six month old nephew "Where's teddy gone?", "There he is... behind the cushion that I just put in front of him."

Hmm, a six month old can figure this out, why can't 'real users'? What's wrong with them?

I kind of understand, in the early eighties, about eight hours after we first acquired an Amstrad CPC 464, I remember my brother playing 3D Monster Chase, I watched him for hours, my brain/eyes couldn't understand what was going on on screen, its seemed like some kind of coloured bowtie matching puzzle game, rather than the low-tech Doom clone game that it was. It was a few days before I could comprehend the image as a 3D scene.

'Real users' haven't had that epiphany yet, of realising that Windows are representations layers of panes that can be moved about. 'Real users' don't get that nonprinting characters are helpful and don't print.

The thing is, 'real users' can be spectacularly successful in their endeavors. Just pressing enter lots of times to get to a new page in Word doesn't seem to affect the success of their careers. Sure it may mess up the rest of the document if you need to change something on the first page, but that can be fixed easily.

If people knew about manual page breaks then documents wouldn't need to be 'fixed easily'.

The success of Windows and Vista comes down to making computers dead easy to use, so real users can get churning out poorly laid out documents quicker, without having to learn the ropes. Google's success was in getting to porn just by typing the one word then clicking, without having to remember any of that "http://www." business.

As someone who isn't a 'real user', a geek possibly, it dismay's me that rather than making 'real users' understand things and expand their mind's instead life just gets easier for them.

But no no, the vast majority of people are real-users.

In most offices, when you stand up and look around, most people you see are real users. They're working hard, getting stuff done, but they don't know what they're doing really.

Just Joans for New Years No 1

I started a facebook group to try to get The Just Joans song 'If You Don't Pull' to number 1 in the pop charts for New Year.

There are 30 members already and that's just in a few hours with Facebook status updates and a few Twitter updates.

To be honest I'm impressed with 30, the next milestone is 50, then 100, 200 then 500 and so on.

I'm pretty sure the song is on the iTunes Store, but I dunno if its possible to link to it, all the 'puters I have at my disposal don't have iTunes on them. There's no proper video on YouTube, just the track playing in the background to Rowan's robo-spider-dog. So its almost like shooting ourselves in the foot for stickiness, its just a wee esoteric thing. If anyone who hasn't heard of the Just Joans and 'If You Don't Pull' wants a listen, they're gonna have to do some investigating.

I reckon there's still more pimping I can do. Once the membership gets over a hundred I could start prodding DJs, and there's a couple of budding journo's and bloggers who could cover it.

According to wikipedia, before the download revolution, the lowest selling number one was Orson with around 10,000 copies sold. There's little data on how the lowest selling hits compare now that downloads are included. So whilst every member of the Facebook group may not purchase it, if the group membership gets into the ten of thousands, then its just about possible.

Nah, maybe not, realistically that Joe X Factor chap is unbeatable for a second week, and RATM had a few weeks to build up momentum, wassit 300,000 copies apiece or there abouts? This wee venture has no chance, but its a nice song anyhoo.

I don't know about Facebook But you all hate me

I love you all, and I know you wouldn't knowingly do anything to hurt me.

I've just been away on holiday for a longish weekend in Malaga, my dear sweet ladyfriend persuaded me that it would be a great way to spend my birthday, for yesterday I turned 31. I am now a thirty something.

But I was hurt, hurt and distraught when I switched my 'berry back on when I got to the UK to find that no one, no one except Pin Up Nights, Aref-Adib and my brother had left me any birthday greetings on my Facebook page.

Quite clearly you all hate me.

You all wish I'd just go away and quit going to your gigs and club nights and hanging round and saying hi, and blogging and making videos and everything that I do, I might as well just go in the garden an eat worms cos you all hate me so much.

Either that or Facebook have fucked up their privacy settings and broken everything, which is far more likely.

I love you all and as soon as I get my flat sorted, you're all invited to join me for various DVD box set marathons, with booze and pringles, and it'll be great fun, but I don't think I'll be using Facebook to organise it.

Love all around.

Facebook 'Friends'list

Following on from this exchange on Facebook:-

I used google's neat pie chart API tool to render this pie chart of what proportion of my Facebook friendslist I've pulled:-

Aw man, I was a slut, but one to stay in touch with.

A similar pie chart for the people I follow on Twitter looks like this

More men there, and a lower success fraction, maybe twitter isn't in the nature of that sort of person.

Chain Rxn on Facebook - scores and graphs

You will, by now, have become briefly addicted to ChainRxn, its a neat wee game on Facebook. My high Score is just over 25,000,000, after 30 or so games.

This is the highest score in my monkeysphere, but well below the highscores for all of Facebook, this stands at around 99,000,000.

The game is a bit of a chaotic system, this you know, you've got a rectangular playing field with coloured balls slowly bouncing diagonally around, these balls explode when they come into contact with an explosion, you have to place the first explosion. There are twelve levels each one with more balls the the last, and each one requiring a higher number of balls to be destroyed to proceed.

You can have as many attempts at each level as possible. Its an easy and relaxing game.

The levels increment as follows:-

Level 1 - Get 1 out of 5 balls
Level 2 - Get 2 out of 10 balls
Level 3 - Get 4 out of 15 balls
Level 4 - Get 6 out of 20 balls
Level 5 - Get 10 out of 25 balls
Level 6 - Get 15 out of 30 balls
Level 7 - Get 18 out of 35 balls
Level 8 - Get 22 out of 40 balls
Level 9 - Get 30 out of 45 balls
Level 10 - Get 37 out of 50 balls
Level 11 - Get 48 out of 55 balls
Level 12 - Get 54 out of 60 balls

You get points for each ball's explosion. The longer the chain reaction of explosions the more points for each ball. The points increment like this:-

So, what's the secret of getting a really high score?

Well, simply, its to keep playing.

I reckon the system is so chaotic, that its not worth figuring out the best time and place to put down your first explosion, just click randomly. You'll be fine.

For my first thirty or so games I kept a note of how many points I got for each level, so I can make up this neat wee graph:-

And this neat wee table:-

Level	Min	Max
1	100	3,600
2	200	44,100
3	400	56,600
4	2,700	627,400
5	11,700	542,000
6	33,600	1,838,000
7	79,400	6,876,400
8	116,900	5,833,300
9	207,200	6,739,400
10	485,100	5,756,500
11	543,700	18,432,100
12	1,183,100	9,604,400
Total	2,664,100	56,353,800

Those numbers at the bottom represent the highest and lowest possible scores I could get if I was lucky enough to get the lowest or highest score for each level.

In order to get a high score of 99,000,000, I reckon you have to just max out the scores for the last six levels. The first six levels are too small to get any decent chain reactions going, so its all about the last levels, and then its pretty much all about luck.

Sure, in theory you could get each ball to blow in order and get some score in the billions, but its not likely, and judging by the cluster of high scores around the 99,000,000 mark, its really unlikely. That number sounds like people getting 20 million for each of the last couple levels.

You gotta avoid 'clumping', and try to aim for long 'lines'. Don't aim that first explosion at clusters of balls cos you just lose a load of ball for 100 or 800 points each. Instead aim for empty spaces near the corners on just one ball's trajectory, sure it'll take a couple of attempts to complete the level, but it'll be a more highly scoring run. In the corners balls only come from one direction, so there's fewer balls, rather than in the middle where they come from all directions and 'clump' a lot more.

You gotta build up the chain reaction as efficiently as possible, losing as few balls as you can until the scoring for each explosion starts getting usefully into the tens and hundreds of thousands, aye.

If you only need to get 20 million to beat all your friends, then sure, play until the last level. If you want to top the high score table for all of Facebook, start again if you haven't got more than 20 million by Level 10.

More ruminations on Facebook Scramble Highscores

Quite a significant amount of traffic to this blog comes from people looking for information about Facebook Scramble highscores, what the highest score is.

Its a difficult one, for each grid, it actually says what the highest possible score is, if you get every word thats in the grid. It even lists how many words there are for each length up to eight letters, and when you've finished playing, it lists every word too.

This one time I was playing a game against a girl with a huge vocabulary, she got around 350, I was mighty impressed. But on the same grid, I set my own personal best score of around 250. It was a high scoring grid, worth around 2500 points in total.

There's only one way to get a score anywhere near the maximum, and that is to cheat.

Wikipedia has some details about typing speeds, it says that average for a professional is 60 WPM and super ninjas can do 120 WPM. I'm guessing average word length is 4.2 letters per word, which together means you get around 6 or 8 keystrokes per second. Thats for professional typist, maybe transcribing stuff, rather than thinking about what they're typing, but lets ignore that minor detail.

The spread of letters in a grid means that around 5% of the score comes from three-letter words, 20% from four-letters, 25% from both five- and six-letter words and then the bell curve drifts back down for longer words.

For a grid worth 1000 points, in professional keystroke terms, its going to take 260 seconds to get every single word, which is a shame cos you only have 180 seconds, three minutes. Its not physically possible to get every word, you run out of time. If you start with high-value long words and then work down to the shorter words, you run out of time in the middle of the four letterers.

The human brain doesn't even work like that. It looks for shorter words than adds -s on the end and -er and -ers, -ing, -inger, -ingers. The human brain starts simple and goes complex when its looking for words in scramble, rather than starting long and going simple.

I ran the sums.

If your grid is worth 2500 points, its going to take around 600 seconds to type every word, if you're going as fast as your nimble fingers can go, ten minutes. You're going to run out of time in the middle of doing six-letter words.

I reckon with human typing speed limitations the highest score is around 1200, thats ignoring the way the human brain works and ignoring any kind of thinking about what you're typing.

21st Century Rave

Reading this on The Register about how a Facebook flashmob replay of the T-Mobile Ad got an order of magnitude more people.

Original T-Mobile ad


February re-make


I'm wondering whether this is the 21st centuries version of the M25 raves of last century. And although its all about the technology rather than the drugs, I guess the vibe and the kinship is the same. But what's going to emerge as the soundtrack?

Are the music press onto this? Is there even a music press anymore? Can it be a band or a group who make the music, or some kind of mysterious soundsystem?

If I were designing or engineering the sound, it would start with crowd noise and train announcements, but indistinct, no actual words, or twoo distorted to hear words, and there'd be some kind of shibboleth or countdown before conventional 'music' kicks in. Maybe the music would just start off bass-heavy, rhythmic trains before convoluting into something more danceable.

Your polis and security wouldn't be aware of what was happening until the dance music kicks in, but up until that point the rest of the crowd would all be picking up these triggers, these audio cues.

More Facebook Scramble graphs

Hi, after the other day's thrilling coverage of my successes with Facebook's Scramble game, I thought I'd play a bit more, get some more data and churn out a few more graphs.

This graph neatly shows the spread of the highest possible scores when you're playing on 5x5 grids. So usually you can get a maximum of 1400 points and very occasionally you can get 2000 or so. I'm not going to rule out a 3000 point grid, but its very unlikely.

So with all these potential points up for grabs, how do I do?

Looks like I most often get around 80 and 90 points, or less. But occasionally I'm on fire and beat 150. This is rare, but not impossible.

So how come I'm occasionally on fire? Do my neurons just click sometimes, or is it cos the board is a high scoring board, and I just do as well as usual? Lets have a look...

Its kind of a normal distribution, I get around 8% of the highest score possible. Sometimes more, sometimes up to 12% of the total available, but never like 20% or 30%, that's crazy talk. Its more of a balanced spread with the percentages than it is with the actual scores.

My high score as it stands is 167, but going by these graphs, maybe if I got a good board worth 2000 points and I was on fire and got 12%, then the highest theoretical score I got get without cheating is 240.

Hmm, warm fuzzy feelings of success. I just have to keep playing and one day, my luck will turn.

Or will it?

Take a look at this graph of acheived score against highest possible score

Look, Excel has put a trend line in for me, so I can see that for higher scoring boards I score generally higher. Thank you Excel. But really its more of just a random swarm of scores with no correlation to the highest possible. I don't generally get less than 60 points, but when I get a low score, that has little to do with the highest possible score, and likewise, my highest scores don't usually come on the highest scoring grids.

Here, this graph terrifies me:-

As the highest possible score for a grid rises, the percentage of available points I get gets lower. Sure this graph is a bit of a random swarm of killer bees, but you can see it goes downwards. The highest percentages come with the low score grids and the lowest percentages come with the high score grids.

Maybe its not just chance that's causing me to be so crap compared to wimmin with large vocabularies. There was a wee nagging thing at the back of my head, maybe I'm not typing fast enough, I'm running out of time. That would kind of explain the last graph. If I'm just finding and typing words at a constant rate then the better percentages would come on lower scoring boards.

Am I actually just typing all of this with a rod taped to my forehead? It would explain so much.

Rightio, how does any of this help?

Well, it doesn't really apart from proving that the quality of the grid has little to do with my success, and that I'm like a ninja when it comes to Excel graphs, at the expense of being a bit autistic when it comes to scribbling down numbers.

Now where?

Well, you get more points for longer words.
3 letters - 1 point
4 letters - 2 points
5 letters - 4 points
6 letters - 6 points
7 letters - 9 points
8 letters - 12 points
11 letters - 24 points

'Retirements' for gods sake, 'retirements'. Its an efficiency thing. This we already knew, its just its hard to resist. You've got some easy three letterers, so you go for them, completely ignoring the fact that 'retirements' saves you two hundred an odd keypresses.

So my new strategy to slay the competition is to never do three or four letter words. Its an efficiency thing, and those little bastards are wasting your time and my time.

Its like trying to drum up immense traffic to this website by writing popular articles in the hope that google adverts will pay out a couple of pence, when what I could really do with is more modest traffic buying my Shag Times book that's for sale at the bottom of the page for a few quid.

Its a recession, its an efficiency thing.

Facebook Scramble Statistics

I don't think I know anyone who isn't addicted to Scramble on Facebook, or judging by my Facebook thing, I know a lot of girls with large vocabularies.

Anyhoo, this is a cumulative frequency graph of my scores on Scramble. My average score is about 80, but I get around 85 and 95 most often now.

Pondering how people get huge scores without cheating, I thought about maybe its to do with how 'easy' the board is, and maybe wimmin with large vocabularies just hoover up a greater proportion of the possible words.

I mean, on average your highest possible score for a 5 x 5 grid is just over 1,200, and with my average, I get 7.8% of the highest possible, my spreadsheet says its got a standard deviation of 1.89%, that pretty constant, top whack I get 12%. So if a grid has a low highest possible value, I'll get a low score, and if the grid has a huge highest possible, then I'd get a higher score, but then so would anyone else.

Here, this graph shows a little bit of a correlation between the highest possible score and my achieved score.

So, based on the research carried out so far, if I wanted to beat the highest score in my wee Scramble circle, get to the top of my leaderboard, I'd need a grid with a highest possible score of around 4,500, or more than double the highest scoring grid I've seen.

So maybe that standard deviation is the same for everyone. If someone gets and average of 20% of the possible score. The average game for them will garner a score of 240, and if they're playing for a while, they'll get a grid worth 1,900 and if their stars are aligned, they peak at around 25% they can get their high score of 475.

See what I did there.

Advanced IQ test

Took another IQ test on Facebook, calling itself the Advanced IQ test. It gave me a score of 148, despite getting nine of the fifteen questions wrong.

This brings my funky average IQ after taking five such tests to an incredible 127. That old 78 score from when I was drunk at uni still bringing down the average.

Roundup #167 - Bowlie Final Countdown photies

In lieu of Bowlie, this is a round up of all the photies across the internets from the Final Countdown Weekend. That'll be Friday night's quiz thing, the gig at Jamm on Saturday and the picnic on Sunday. Aye

Flickr
Mine
also mine
Mae
Angel Justine
Inuitmonster
Your Funny Uncle
also here
Ms Bexy
Sunshine Pop
James I Skinner
acb
String Bean Jen

Facebook
Astrid
Jens
also here
Reb

If there's any I've missed, feel free to let me know.

Frie

Saw an old friend from school when I was out jogging, I'd seen her on Facebook months ago, and when I first moved to London suggested we went for a coffee to catch up, butit didn't come to anything.

Actually when I stopped to say hey last night, she harried me away. Or it seemed like she did, she did ask what I was listening to. iPod on shuffle, Roxy Music, shuffle is a valid reason for listening to random stuff right?

Hmm, crisis of Facebook over, the married ex- who I thought I'd found the other day, wasn't.

Same name, and in the photies it looked a wee bit like her. After discussions with friends it seems I was wrong about it being about how long you wait before adding them or poking them, its more about how many friends they've accumulated. I suppose its valid and ties in with the Monkeysphere.

Anywho, I poked, she reciprocated, we messaged and figured out we didn't know each other.

Traditional wee nagging suspicion in the back of ma heid that maybe it was her, and for some unspecified crime of the past she doesn't want to ever see me again. Maybe that's just my natural self-flagellation kicking in.

Culture

I was on telly, maybe for as long as four seconds, according to my brother I spoke fourteen words.

The other week I wandered along to a Gresham Flyers gig and there was a film crew there to record The Scaremongers. Between bands Trev Lost, the promoter, grabbed me, the filmer crew were looking for folk to interview, all those years of going to too many gigs must have paid off.

They interviewed about half a dozen folk, and whilst I wittered on for about fifteen minutes, they edited it down to four seconds and then another five seconds of Nat, the other promoter/DJ.

YouTube clip


Or if you wanna watch the whole piece, try The Culture Show on iplayer here, but its only up for a week.

After watching the show, several things strike me, most significantly the sneaking suspicion that the gig and 'The Scaremongers' is a shameless marketing ploy, a publicity stunt to punt Armitage's new book.

This suspicion is founded on the way The Scaremongers have only done one gig, the wee snatch of the bass player saying they've only had one rehearsal, despite the fact that the chattering indie web has been talking about them for months, they've got half a dozen songs and videos up on YouTube, several appearances on Mark Radcliffe's radio show, and dozens of gig promoters screaming at them to play more.

I've been a shy rock star fantasist myself, I had a gig in London once, and there was more than one rehearsal, heck there was half a dozen practise sessions at acoustic open mics and subsequent support shows with mate's bands. With Simon Armitage and The Scaremongers, too all appearances, there's been none of that, and even when he was on stage, he was singing from a lyric sheet. This is despite most of the songs doing the rounds for six months previously.

There's something that stinks about it, that can't just be explained by nerves.

File under Peaches Geldof and Rodnik.

On dating

Recently a friend suggested I try the Guardian's Soulmates webiste, I knocked back the idea outright. Its not for me.

And here's why.

I don't struggle at meeting new people. In the course of my extra-curricular activities, both online and in real life, I'm surrounded. Thousands of people check out my websites, hundreds of people read my posts on message boards, dozens of people go to the same gigs as me. At any point I can turn the girl next to me and say "Hey, how's it going, what did you think of that last one.".

I'll accept that starting off the conversation terrifies me, but after that, its plain sailing, I can be rounded and charming enough to carry it off.

So, what is the problem?

Even when out with friends, I sit at the side, or stand at the back keeping quiet, gazing into the distance, or into my pint, sometimes my mind travels in time. It takes a cattle prod to get me communicating.

I'm not sure how Soulmates will help there.

Since I discovered my cock some time in the mid-nineties, I've have about six relationships that lasted over four months, none more than seven. It worries me, there's something very wrong. I mention it to friends on MSN, my worries. And then every so often in response to me saying something outragous, the friends on MSN will say something like "I can see why it only lasts six months".

I find it patronising and condescending, and it makes me think they're fools. They know nothing of context. I take it too seriously.

Yesterday, I was at Dr Sketchy's, the burlesque life-drawing thing. Keeping quiet at the back with my post-it pad and biro, between drawing tasks, I scrawled a wee list of those lucky lucky 4-7 month relationships and how they ended. And drew a pie chart too. The reasons they ended are diverse, only two reasons non-unique. The most popular reason for splitting up, with 2.5 hits, is 'moved to London'. This shouldn't reoccur, I've implemented corrective action. The second non-unique reason, is my refusal to come back after being dumped and then begged back.

Me saying something outrageous, has never had any bearing on the end of a relationship.

Looking at the list, the other terrifying thing is what could be called the Good Luck Chuck factor. More than half the girlfriends got engaged shortly after we broke up. Never seen the film, but I understand to break the curse I have to hump Jessica Alba. Alas she never returns my calls.

What to do?

Fuck knows.

If I don't shut anything down, or close off any of my options, the possibilities for the future are limitless.

So carry on reviewing gigs, carry on going to geeky internet meetups, carry on drawing pictures, carry on as usual with brief psychotic episodes of frustration, jealousy and anger.

Then again, the friend was also signing up to Guardian's Soulmates herself, so it could have been a round about way of asking me out. But I very much doubt it.

Things and stuff

Wee a slightly unnatural yellow colour, and pain in my stomache where I think my liver or kidneys are. It could just all be in my head.

Got a mention on Sparky's Magic Piano's Facebook

One handed origami video that I haven't posted here before:-


Plimptons gig on the seventh, expect more spam closer to the time

Back to work

Have not been to any gigs in a long time and Rosie's cutting down on her MSN time so I'm going to try to re-ignite the blogosphere with Last Night From Glasgow Indie Eyespy once more, but this time without it being such a money pit.

Need to persuade promotery friends and naive bands to put me on their guestlists and persuade hott single friends to accompany me.

Ooh, London Blogger meetup tonight, back at the Camel and Artichoke. Its almost like having a social life, but without people from Bowlie. I know, I know, its weird and un-natural, but they are nice people.

I can has world donimation?

Ill Theatre strip from several months back


Today's XKCD


What do I win? C'm'ere girl, we got drinkin' and DVDin' to do.

Mouth

Still in agony, woke up twice last night in pain after turning on the wrong side.

Work is okay, but i did get overcome with emotion and had to go and cry in a quiet corner after we managed to get some stuff done on time.

Over on Facebook, Rosie reckons if I change my profile picture I won't remain single for much longer, suggesting first I use a photo of me and my niece, and then an arty black and white one of me playing guitar.

Four hours later and it hasn't had any effect on my singularity, but I do become sad reading facebook.

Over on the nuddy chicks site, after the phenomenal success of my first venture, I'm looking around at work to find a post-it pad to do a quick "YOUR ADVERT HERE $2/week" image of the side column. If you know of anyone who'd want to advertise their wares to around 14,000 people all over the world every week, email me.

Went out last night to meet Rowan and Mark and go on the London Eye, the damned thing closes at 8pm at this time of year so we went to a pub, watched the football and I drank that Fruli's strawberry beer. Its like CAMRA alcopop.

oLD SKOOL

Still pouring through the manufacturing production line in my bedroom churning out CDs and packing, its thrilling stuff, but I got distracted by pictures of nekkit women again, could be the start of my next internet phenomenom.

Facebook tells me that next weekend there's a ten year reunion thing in Bolton, and it looks like a load of my mob are going. I seem to have lost touch with most of the guys from chool, apart from Timbo who I caught up with on MSN until the house intenet got cut off, Sapna who was around Glasgow and the late Big Tom. Facebook notwithstanding, I seem to have let them slip during the last ten years.

So I'll probly roll up to Bolton and put in an appearance, lurking in the shadows and leaving after a token round of hey how's it going. I have this nagging suspicion in the back of my head that I was a bully at school or at least a bore, who folk would chose not to stay in touch with, at least that explains all the non-replies on Facebook.

I thought I could just have a weekend on my own, chilling out doing what I wanna do instead of rushing up and down the country, but alas, next weekend is also a high end audio show which I ought to go to. Could it put pay to Bolton?

Yo yo

Back in London, crouched in my room, catching up on work homework, fending of a ropey net connection and worrying about people.

So on the drive down Westmoreland Farm Shops had no scotch eggs, which really pissed off ma when I got to Manchester, luckily I snatched slice of 'Westmoreland pie' which was nice, had pickle spread through it.

Fell asleep a few many times on the way through the Mid-Lands, almost hit a road sign, so I took to stopping at every other service station for a stroll about.

I now have my guitar with me. The live music scene in this town doesn't stand a chance.

Installed the Compare application on Facebook, apparently I'm marriage material