Archive for August, 2005

US TV is wierd. The network and affiliate thing for a start, here in the UK we have real channels. But also it is such a bitch to get TV listings. NBC have it almost right, you can just pick your timezone and it will give you the listings of stuff on tonight. But that’s just NBC and only covers like a two hour period.

Any of the listings sites require a postcode (thank you Beverly Hills 90210, people needing generic US post codes accross the world are forever in your debt) although I managed to strumble accross some kind of listings thing on Yahoo TV where you can pick a timezone.

Stuff seems to go out at the same time on different timezones. So what, do they delay transmission depending on what timezone it is? IE, places in pacific time get programming broadcast a few hours after places on eastern time so that it all goes out at the same clock time, eg, 7pm, etc?

That’s what seems to be happening. And then when prime time shows are quoted they seem to have different times for different timezones. It really makes you appreciate the UK system, one timezone, channels that actually are channels (I know we have “regional variations” but nobody cares and nobody watches them), it’s simple.

The whole timezone thing is pretty stupid anyway as you are having to work out the variations between the timezones constantly. That is just about managable but throw in the fact that random timezones switch to daylight saving time and it’s just a joke. How can people in the UK leaving west of Greenwich be an hour ahead of it? Daylight saving needs to go.

Just browsing accross the NBC site for Law & Order and Briscoe isn’t in the latest series as he has been replaced by Joe Fontana. This isn’t a new development either, I recognise a photo from a while ago.

Here in the UK we are a little behind, Sky One are showing series 14 at the moment (series 17 starts showing on NBC this fall) so I know that soon, probably very soon, Briscoe will disappear from the show. That sucks! Of course Jack McCoy is the best but Briscoe has to be second and now he’s leaving? Who will provide the dry whit?!?

EDIT: OMG, he hasn’t been killed in some episode has he? It just occured to me that, considering it’s a cop show and all, and a very serious one, that could be one of the ways he exits. Aggh!

Here is something I got started with yesterday. I got talking to someone via the official The Wreckers forum (that’s another interesting story, they are desperate to keep baby Owen pictures off the net as People Magazine paid for an exclusive. Branch Planet has some :P. We’re keeping them sealed until tomorrow, though. Anyway…) and we are planning to launch a One Tree Hill fansite. No name yet but the project is moving along nicely.

I haven’t switched blogs again – I am happy with this one (well at least for the moment :P). But I have launched a new one on Blogger as a sort of blog for Worfolk Online charting their new launches and things, it’s more official. No doubt I will also be posting about any new projects here too.

With my spirit of randomness, I decided to name it Crazy Gray Magnet. See what you think. Sorry about the template ;).

My sister picked up her GCSE results. She managed an impressive 4 A’s (including an A she got my taking her music GCSE a year early) and 6 and a half B’s. Pretty impressive and sizes up to my 5 A’s, 3 B’s, C, D although lets see her get into Leeds Uni :P.

I must renew my protest against these so-called short courses though. They give you half a GCSE what the hell is that about? I wasn’t about to have half a GCSE sitting over my head for the test of my life so I took extra classes to make RE into a full GCSE must most people just get the half.

I don’t like this for two reasons. Firstly, what are you supposed to say to people? I have nine and a half GCSEs? It’s just stupid. And also, when people are talking about their qualifications they just round it up. Most of you people don’t have ten GCSE’s at all – I have ten, you have nine and a half.

Heads up, just launched a Dire Staits forum on xmeltrut.net.

That is quality :P. You’ve gotta love it when cultural references sneak in, such as the CSI: Miami episode I am currently watching that opened with a flash mob. That said, flash mobsh have been over for like two years now.

According to this article, Yahoo are going to close down their chat rooms because of adults luring kids into meetings with them. That sucks! I love Yahoo chat, I have a lot of memories in there and I really don’t want to see them go. I didn’t much care when MSN let theres go, I was a Yahoo user anyway. Now though, this is annoying me.

The whole, adults luring children into meetings thing is BS anyway. Most people seemed shocked when they hear this is going on. Hey, welcome to the real world! Governments have been running ads to promote awareness of this for years. You know what the real solution is – teach your kids to be safe online.

Did promoting absentance stop teenage pregnancy in Texas? No, it has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the US or something stupid. This is the same thing. You might be able to close the mainstream chatrooms down but you won’t close the small websites and the IRC networks down. It’s not going to happen.

I hope when kids are still getting abused five years down the line, MSN and Yahoo will re-open their chat rooms. That said, Yahoo haven’t mentioned it on the chat site nor have they put out a press release so I’m not sure what’s going on at the moment.

Ok, time for a moan about Friends Reunited. First of all, it’s moving heavily over to a paid model. Every single page tells you, you need to get out your wallet.

More annoying, it asks you for your password every page! It’s not good enough you have logged in once, you have to re-enter your password every time you want to edit anything. You don’t have to do that when entering bank details or PayPal transactions, let alone seeing which high school drop-outs learned to use a computer.

Finally, the yearing system is just confusing because what year do you put down? I would say when I left sixth-form, everyone else in my year put down GCSE year. How about the people who left half way through sixth-form? What they should do is register the year you started there.

Finally when I tried the search at the top I just got a blank page each time. Also there are too many adverts on that site. Rant over. For the moment.

Wow has this been the longest day. It seems forever ago since I made some of the previous posts but they were made this morning. I’ve finally made the permalinks static mainly because I want to link one of the posts which I will soon be made :P.