Chris Worfolk's Blog

While not having a well though through name, The Pour House does offer quite a nice location by the canal. As such, it made a promising location for an A-Soc Tuesday night social.

There is a saying, “don’t read the bottom half of the internet”. It refers to the fact that while you might get polite and intelligent content at the top of the page, you’re unlikely to once the comments section opens up.

This is a good lesson for live. People are dicks on the internet.

A lot of people don’t seem to have spent much time on the internet though, and are then surprised by the unfriendly comments that they find. Even Richard Dawkins didn’t know until 2010.

But some people think they are unfairly targeted because of who they are. Some people may be of course, but I think it’s important to remember that regardless of who you are, the background hate of the internet generally runs pretty high. Here are some of the comments I’ve picked off my YouTube channel:

All those chicks have no taste though man. SO FUCK U.

There is nothing ‘cool’ about a camera which does a good job of showcasing that face.

what a tard you are

Ur an Idiot Get urFuckin Fact Straight u White Retard

do ur homework u white piece of shit.

umm you looked kinda like you on drugs but yeah i loved that movie and you did a good job

You’re on the right track, kid, but you need to get your hair washed and trimmed.

im reckoning by your dodgy mullet that this is common in your family?? you wouldnt be out of place deep deep south playing a banjo

Fucking idiot.

xmeltrut  ur fucking a dick ibet zain buksh whould fuck ur ugly face ur video sucks and u look like a girl u dickhead

they did die ur fucking dumb

oi u fuck face they did die

Damn you’re ugly.

You look like Trevor from the Trailer Park Boys….

fuck all athiets i hope you will enjoy getting your maginas ripped off in hell death to the athiests

Lmfao, get a gf. Shag her and get a life

you look like a monkey

this guy in the video is an idiot

Lose the drug culture look and maybe i’ll watch the video next time…….Nobody will take you seriously looking like that.

peado’s say i will touch you and you will be healed

haha killing jews lol kill six million jews and burn there corpses lmao

You’re probably thinking that I’ve picked off the worst, most abusive comments. But I haven’t. In fact, the majority of the comments on my YouTube account have been deleted, because the accounts they were posted from have since been flagged as abusive or threatening. What you see above is actually the nicer disparaging comments that get posted.

The take home message is that everyone gets verbally abused on the internet. It’s sad; I wish it wasn’t the case. But for the moment, it is. And much like an insect bite, if you scratch at it, chances are it will get worse.

Here is an inaccurate meme to help you remember it.

It’s inaccurate because posting abusive messages online is not trolling. It’s just being a dick. But that is a different rant.

This is my tenth speech from the Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual, “Inspire Your Audience”. The speech doesn’t start until a minute in to the video.

Here are some videos from our trip to Yorkshire Wildlife Park.

Lemurs. The lemur doesn’t do anything except lick itself, but another one does climb onto the house.

A tiger. You can see it breathing.

A wallaby. Some children try to pet it before it runs away.

The 2013 Annual Report for the Chris Worfolk Foundation is now available to access from our website. The publication gives you an overview of what we’ve been up to throughout the 2012/2013 period. You can find it here.

Earlier this month, we headed to Yorkshire Wildlife Park. It’s fairly small, no where near the size of Chester Zoo or even Helsinki Zoo, but it does have “contact areas” in which you can go in and pet the animals.

A wallaby comes jumping across the path.

A capybara hides under a bridge after it was chased into the water by a rhea.

A lemur diving through the air.

A lemur jumping off the top of its house.

Elina holding hands with a wallaby.

There has been outcries in the past that the Post Office is closing all it’s branches and what a travesty it is.

Good. I hope it does go bankrupt.

It’s continuing existence is a stain on our society. An affront to the basic concepts of free market that have built our entire civilisation. It is, in my opinion, a useless, badly run and incompetence organisation that is unable to do anything right.

Have you been in a Post Office recently? Their customer service is terrible! Go in at lunch time and expect to wait up to an hour if you need counter service. I’ve never seen all the windows open, it’s not that they don’t have the space. They just don’t make enough staff available, resulting in huge queues.

Their credit card is a travesty. Run by the Bank of Ireland, who I assume believe the internet is some kind of dark magic, their online service has an uptime of less than 50% in my experience. Every time I log on, if I can log on, half of the information is missing. Usually the summary, but I’ve also noticed that their online statements sometimes miss transactions that the paper statements include!

What really gets my goat is a recently passport application I put in with them however. Not wanting to take any chances I paid the £8.70 or whatever it is for the Passport Check & Send service.

A week later and HM Passport Office writes to me to tell me that the application is incorrect! What is the point in having such a service if they don’t properly check it?

You would think they would be more apologetic, but they’re not. All they offered was the £8.70 to be refunded, and having phoned an expensive 0845 number to get my refund, they then said they would send me a letter out and I would have to take the letter down to that branch and get the refund back over the counter!

When I add up the value of the petrol to drive over there, and the parking, it basically isn’t worth it, even before factoring in the hour of my time at least that it would take to accomplish the task.

There is a reason all the Post Offices are closing down. I believe that reason is thy are obsolete and incompetent, and they fully deserve all the problems they are facing.

Today, I’m proud to announce the launch of the Leeds Restaurant Guide. It is, in our opinion, the finest guide to restaurants in Leeds city centre that has ever been created. Years of relentless eating, reviewing and indexing have come together to provide a complete guide to where to eat in Leeds.

• 188 restaurants and food pubs reviewed
• Covers every restaurant we could find in Leeds city centre
• Five star rating system
• Unbiased, independent, consistent

The book will be made available in e-book format through all major retailers – Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Kobo, Google Play, OverDrive (Waterstones), Sony, WH Smith and Gardner’s (Tesco). It is also available online at LeedsRestaurantGuide.com. At a later date, it will be made available in print also.

It will be priced at a very reasonable £3.99. The exact time listings will appear on each retailer can’t be determined, so follow me on Twitter for updates.

I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who helped with the book, especially Elina for her eating and proof reading, Gijsbert for his feedback and advice, and James, Norm and Michelle for their proof reading.

Tomorrow, Worfolk Media will launch its first publication, the Leeds Restaurant Guide. This is a comprehensive review of all 188 restaurants and food pubs in the city centre. The book will be available initially in e-book format, and later in print, as well as being online.

The book will be made available through all major retailers and full details will be announced in our full launch announcement at 9am tomorrow morning. Check back here for those details.

For updates on Twitter, follow @chrisworfolk.

Owls are such posers.

This photo was really dark, but trusting my histogram, when I brought it into Photoshop the detail came out far better than I was expecting.

An otter staring at his own reflection.

This lion was sleeping right next to the fence, then woke up and stuck his head up just long enough for me to take a photo.

This was through glass, but luckily it didn’t get in the way of his eyes.

This was just a gull, but I took this photo after it had just snatched some food and flown off with it.