The Place of James Pain

If you’re like me and can’t be bothered haven’t had time to sit down and read George Orwell’s book, 1984, then you’ll be as glad as me to learn that there’s a free, open source, audio version of the book.

Thanks to archive.org, who helped me gain material for documentary’s, they are the people hosting this wondrous thing.

You can download or stream the audiobook at your leisure here: http://www.archive.org/details/George-Orwell-1984-Audio-book

Over the past few days, I’ve been RP’ing with a randomer over email as an audition for…something.

I’m playing Peter, a mid-life travelling (let’s say) salesman. The randomer is the story teller, and will be put in italics.

The story follows.

The stillness of the coffee shop shattered with the glass of the door, and the young man’s hand punched into the shop moments before he fell through. A gasp went up among the shop’s patrons as he landed on his hands and knees in the newly scattered glass.
For a few seconds there was silence. Trails of steam drifted up from paper cups and ceramic mugs on the tables in front of the readers and talkers in the room, but nothing else so much as flinched while cars hummed by and pedestrians on the street paused to look at the ruined entrance.
And then the man moved. He looked over his shoulder at the empty wooden frame of the door he had just come through, and with a low growl he pushed to his feet, seemingly unaware of the blood that dripped from his hands and forearms and the tear on the knee of his pants.
His eyes blazed with fury, and every person in the shop was given a taste of his anger as his gaze swept the room searchingly, his bleeding hands curling into fists as he took a step towards the frozen barista behind the counter.
“Where is she?” he roared.

Peter, after recovering from the shock of someone destroying a perfectly nice entrance, looked back down at his coffee and gave it another sip. He can’t stand nutters like this but guesses that there’s no helping them, especially in this bloody town.
He calmly looks up at the clearly injured man yelling at the shop barrister. He felt sorry for being put though such an ordeal, the least he could do is buy another coffee after this thing gets wrapped up.

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I managed to get my Facebook account back thankfully, in the swing of things I thought I’d get my faulty phone sorted out.

The Nexus One is Google’s new phone that came out not too long ago, not yet out in Europe. After huge import charges, it hasn’t come without its faults.

Picking up phone calls has been the most worrying one. When the phone starts ringing, nothing would come up on the screen. Two taps of the unlock button usually sorts that out.

One I’ve managed to get something on the screen, picking up the call is the next hurdle. The slider you use to pick up calls is a bit temperamental to say the least.

It worrying since you’re not sure you’ve answered the call or it’s still ringing and I need to keep trying.

Among that, a dodgy touch screen is the next thing. The phone things that I’ve touched something else then what I was aiming for. Let’s say I was typing normally, the search box would pop open for no reason.

A call to HTC later and they got me wiping my phone as they think it may be software issues.

I shall report back with my findings.
*salutes*

I’ve managed to lock myself out of facebook and the password reset email isn’t getting through. This is all keepass’ fault!

My process of posting something on the internet. Write a breif location specific status and post on Google Buzz. Remove location specific, add more personal details and post on Facebook. Shorten to 140 characters maximum, make more interesting for a wider audience and post to Twitter. Finally gather all detail and media about what is being posted and submit to relevant blog. Done!

As you’ll notice on the right hand side of this blog in the ‘My Location’ section, you’ll see that I’m currently staying in Germany and will be for a few nights.

Daily blog posts with pictures, maps and details will be posted on my travel blog http://www.tophattraveller.com with the first post being published tomorrow.

That’s all to say about it. I’m not posting much, if anything, about the trip on this blog apart from this post. Partly because top hat traveller has advertising and this blog doesn’t. Mainly that it doesn’t seem relevant to this blog.

You Are About To Recive A Hug Choose Your Hug Style

1. Left Arm Up Right Arm Down 
2. Right Arm Up Left Arm Down 
3. Both Arms Up 
4. Both Arms Down 

You Have Chosen Both Arms Up 

They Have Also Chosen Both Arms Up 

Hug Failed

I’m genuinely annoyed, very annoyed.

We’ve had Virgin Media for about a year. We only got it because Satanta Sports was broadcasting the golf instead of Sky Sports that year. Since it was only costing us an extra £1 a month with our other Virgin Media products, we’d thought we would keep it since it had on demand content that I was fond of.

Infact the full story is that back in the 90’s, we were picked by BT to trial this new on demand technology. We had a physical catalogue book with all the tv shows we could watch, each with a number. We key in that number on our digital box and like magic, there was the show.
Since the trail ended, I’ve always said that when that comes out mainstream, we’re getting it, no questions.
The Virgin on demand service came out around the same time as the iPlayer and other such miracles so I wasn’t too pushy to get it although I clearly wished for it to be in our household.

So we kept Virgin TV after the golf season was over. I enjoyed it greatly, mainly because of the increased quality and not having to set a programme to record if we wanted to watch it. It would just be there, on demand, ready and waiting. The reduced delay was also a slight gain on news channels.

I’ve always tried to get my parents to realise the advantages of using Virgin Media TV with or even instead of Sky+. However, they avoided Virgin like the plague, even despised it. Saying that they “just don’t like it. I just don’t, I like Sky much more.”

During the Big Brother season that they were addicted to, they would sometimes forget to record some episodes. I pointed them to Virgin and how it’s ready to watch on demand. They still refused to even touch the remote controller.

I stopped trying after getting irritated at how there is no logical reason not to use it, since I found it impossible to hate a service that gives you what you want.

This very evening, I took a break from my work and went downstairs to hang out with the family in the lounge. They were watching the Jonathan Ross show which I found unusual since they don’t usually watch this. They reply: “It’s great James, I’m watching this on demand on virgin. It’s got all the BBC programs and such. It’s even much better quality.”

I got quite irritated but thankfully didn’t express it to its full extent in-front of them. Instead I went back to my computer and wrote this.

I swear I did not specifically search for this person, I just clicked the random button on wikipedia and he came up.

But while he’s on my screen…

James Madison Gaylord (May 29, 1811 – June 14, 1874) was a U.S. Representative from Ohio.

Well done to him for becoming a U.S. Rep with that kind of name. That’s admirable in itself.

He attended the common schools and the Ohio University at Athens.

I bet those were the worst years of his life.

He studied law.

He trained to sue all the so and so’s who made fun of him back in school.

He was elected probate judge.

Please all rise for Judge Gaylord.

He was appointed deputy United States marshal in 1860.

You do not mess with this guy, he must have had a gun as a marshal. If you get talked to by him and he tells you his name…and you laugh…you may not be alive for much longer…or at least want to be alive.

Gaylord was elected Justice of the Peace in 1865

This guy should know alot about trying to gain peace from his school days, before failing and having to deal with a broken nose.

That’s all I have to say for this matter. I think I’ll be doing posts like this more often.