Worth a shot

Telegraph | News | Five free concerts on Live 8

I may not be the biggest fan of Bob Geldof (get a haircut! hippy) but you've gotta say, the man knows how to throw a party. I really think that every country except for Britain is getting screwed over in terms of line-up (esp. with murmurs of the Spice Girls being announced for Hyde Park). But the other venues sound a lot better than Hyde Park, the Brandenburg Gate (Berlin) and the Eiffel Tower (I shan't patronise with that one) and the Circus 'freakin' Maximus in Rome are really unique venues for such unique events.

I know 'it's not for charity it's for political justice' but I think people should pay for their tickets rather than the random texting ticket lottery because awareness is fair enough, but money is needed as well. Right?

There's No House Like A Student House...

It's official. Our House is trying to kill us. Like Bone et al, we've experienced many a problem with our beloved Home Sweet Home, including a shower that's never worked, broken garage doors and damp and mould to name only a selected few. And our landlord does nothing except getting his missus to come round and make me cry regularly.

But this morning tops the lot. I was minding my own business in my room when I heard an almighty crash outside. I ran out, expecting to find Scott lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, but instead I found him in the bathroom looking at the heavy glass shower door which had fallen off the wall and landed on the floor, where it had made a hole, and where helen sleeps in a cabin bed only inches from. Chris managed to sleep through the whole incident.

Ironically, this house was once nicknamed the 'Palace' by my friend.

S'pose we can kiss goodbye to the bond now...

Dear Miss Shore, Many Thanks For You're Interest in Tena... SCOTT!

Yes, this was in fact a letter (sorry 20 letters) that Helen and I (and even one for Chris) received through the post the other day. The poor postman had difficulty getting them all through the letter box. Scott obviously hadn't learnt from the whole shower door/toilet seat practical joke of last eurovision night and decided to try and send Helen and I lots of free packs of TENA LADY (that's pads for the older lady with weak bladder problems for all those lucky enough not to know). But his plan was foiled by the stingy people at TENA who informed us that we can't receive anymore free packs and should buy them from the chemist instead. I'm not complaining, Helen used the free one we got to mop up a glass of juice she knocked over. The absorbancy was pretty impressive!

Been working all weekend so am pretty knackered. I appear to have got over my period of insomnia with the help of Dido and my newly tidied room. So i have one exam left now a week tomorrow. A half an hour German Oral. On Mass Tourism. I'm heading back to Windermere on Tuesday for inspiration. And Food.

Just to finish the photo-fest it seemed appropriate/mean post Richard and Matt (L-R) in a post-club photo-op. It may seem as if they're being nice to each other, but the whole episode did begin with Matt saying "hey Andy, lets punch Richard." So after we'd punched Richard I diffused the situation withthe aide of my trusty (and old) Sony DSC-P51. 

The beard from another angle. (mit smile and Chinese dictator on t-shirt) 

END OF WEEK BEARDWATCH UPDATE: I can't believe I went on a night out with the carpet attched to my face. The fact that I went out last night is abundantly clear from one of the pictures. The only picture makes it obvious that I wanted to avoid looking hung-over, and all this during the exam period! It's ok though, I have till Thursday to re-learn everything from my Globalisation module. Back to the beard, it's really annoying me now, and it looks oooo-gly. And only men want to stroke it, thats not the aim! 

Our Great Compensation Adventure

As this is the student blog, it seems like a good idea to publish an account of our great efforts to get compensation from our landlord, as our flat this year was a bit of a hole..

We signed the contract for it in January 2004, little knowing the great amount of hassle that it would cause it. After moving in, in late- September, we quickly noticed that a lot of rubbish from the previous tenants was still in-situ (we had to remove it all ourselves), and that the alley that led to our front door had no light, making negotiating in the dark a slightly tricky exercise.

In the months that followed we experienced broken boilers, showers, lights, radiators, beds, toilet seats, and sinks, as well as having no gas or electricity safety certificates until last month. Thanks to Paz's tireless phone-calls, letters, and emails, most of the stuff eventually got done, but the sheer amount of hassle that we had to go through makes this a quite salutary tale: choose your agent and landlord carefully, and make sure that you take pictures of anything wrong with your flat, and preserve any documentation regarding the flat.

After a 2 1/2 hour meeting with the agent and landlord on Wednesday we got £50 compensation each (we were asking for £125, but it's better than nothing), and Paz should now become a much more relaxed individual.

We're going to spend our money on a piss-up, which should be quite good fun. Perhaps we could also spend it on creating an effigy of our letting agent, which we could burn ritualistically..

The second coolest person on the planet

Cool Hunting

There's a bit of hipster in all of us, Josh Rubin is clearly lord of all hipsters, if you can't find an awesome t-shirt over at Preshrunk (are you blind?) then this is the spot to head for, that and other random cool stuff I want to buy but can't afford (cough, ads, cough).

It's Over! Finally!

Hey Hey Scenesters (The Cribs!), you'll be delighted to hear my open exam/essay type thang is finally finished! Hopefully tonight I'll be able to have a good nights sleep - after the measly 15 hours maximum i've had over the last 3 nights. And I've been going to bed about 11pm and just not sleeping til 6am! I think my head's too full of essay... amongst other stuff... So anyway, I'm off to hand the dratted thing in. Be glad to see the back of it...

What else exciting has been happening? The other day Helen and spent the entire afternoon jumping up and down trying to impersonate Billy Elliot at the end of the film. It started with watching Strictly Come Dancing (or some similarly cheesy dance show!) and progressed into me showing her what my sister and I do everytime we watch the film... Oh the joys of being a student!!

Oh and my bigguybigcity T-Shirt came today, and it's fantastic... I'm gonna get some proper sleep before I submit my photo to Bone though... Mmmmm Sleep...

Buy Run Lola Run Now! Watch it Now!

Well, technically not right now, because you'd need it delivered, but you get my underlying point of the awesomeness of this film (I'm a sucker for that red hair).

Its part of the evolution of the site that whatever DVD or CD I buy and like will become the new Amazon link. I don't expect anyone to become a dedicated follower of the Bone's media collection, but you never know what links you'll find.

THURSDAY BEARDWATCH UPDATE: It's damn itchy and I still have a week to go, I do not yet look sophisticated.

Beckham stories are ridiculous

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Beckham's dreams of space travel

Now I expect this kind of thing from the red tops, but the BBC? Sadly though the headline is only mentioned in the first paragraph. Good to know that he like "jamon" and "percebes," and that he is used to sleeping in the day.

Sometimes I just weep at such a hard time he has.....(sarcasm!)

Is this the end?

Of my parking nightmare.... yes, well, kind of. I received a card on Tuesday, which the ticket machine swallowed at the first opportunity, so I was very pissed off and shouted at the ticket box (the ticket box does have an option to speak to an operator, I ain't that crazy). I was so angry that I was literally shaking, so I came home and shouted at the NCP customer service, who magically delivered a card to me by 8:30 this morning (how did it take so many weeks to get the others). And it finally work, it actually works!

Now all I need to do is get back the £200+ pounds that I've spent in the car park since coming back to uni....

Ooops I Did It Again

Ahoy there! Yes, this is what you have all been waiting for, and it'll remain a feature of Bone's Blog for many weeks to come I hope... Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah Dah... Claire's Very First Drunken Blog! Bone promised to subsidise all the alcohol I have consumed in order to get one!

Well, it's 4am guys and I'm still awake. Dedication to the cause, that's what I call it. Even all the fricking birds are singing. It'll be getting light soon and I have to carry on with this darned open paper exam tomorrow! English Words In The German Language. The most interesting topic of the 8 questions... and that's really saying something...

Tonight was weird. I cried my little heart out in front of a whole bunch of assembled drunken students in Toffs. What a LOSER! Reasons are totally understandable, but totally too personal to talk about here yet. Not drunk enough - give it time, give it time! Dude is what I have to say about that. I shall no doubt reveal the more interesting details of the night tomorrow, which involves 6 shots of Baileys and a dance to Amarillo which cheered me right up, so stay tuned Blog lovers!

Oh and by the way, someone's saved the (Green) Day. Gotta love that pun...

Stupid things students do no.93

Well, as a student we often do stupid things, with that in mind.

I'm not going to shave until the end of my exams.

It just so happens that last time I shaved was the day before my first exam, I'm halfway now and just have to go another 9 days till I can look like less of a hobo. Why a beard you ask? Well, people with beards are often intelligent. Stroking a beard makes me feel clever, which should aim the exam process. I'm lazy. I can't be bothered to recharge my electric razor. So the answer was obvious, don't shave, but making it some kind of crazy challenge makes it a lot less tramp-like, and more of a student-hero.

More Threadless news

The fine folks at Threadless managed to go down in my estimation for about a minute, then went straight back up. I e-mailed them because my order was stuck in processing, which was a server error apparently (which they apologised for). The next e-mail I got from them was the bad news, my Flowers in the attic was actually already sold out when I ordered it, which is a huge disappointment, but they managed to cheer me up by refunding my money (including the amount that it added onto the shipping) and gave me a $5 coupon off my next purchase.

This means that shirts that were $17 last week went down to $10, my coupon then means that the shirt would be $5, if I send them a picture of me in said shirt, I get $1.50 of street team points, so that shirt would cost $3.50! Thats like 2 British pounds! Unbelievable!

When did this become the Threadless blog?

Totally wish I'd made my order this week

Threadless are having a t-shirt sale until June 6th where EVERYTHING is $10 (before postage), a slight contrast to when I made my order last week and paid $17 per t-shirt, but hey, it's pretty cheap either way.

Students, save money, eat well!

Whilst I never really want to become someone that helps people (this blog is ego massag, people), I am a student, and helping the heavily debt-laden, sleepy, lazy student population is in the interests of all. With that in mind I am posting this handy guide about eating well on a budget, its an American article by someone called Barbara Keck, of vidaville.com or you can e-mail 'Barb' at barb@vidaville.com. By the way, it looks a bit hypocritical, because I'm the worst student ever, steak anyone?

Shopping on a Shoestring

Eating properly for health on a limited budget is always a challenge. One of the biggest money gobbling culprits is ready made processed and packaged foods and too many trips for fast food. Although they’re quick neither of these ways are cost effective. When it comes to shopping on a shoestring and planning great tasting menus at home you’ll be surprised how well you can eat following these simple guidelines.

10 healthy ways to keep food costs within budget…

Make three meals a week without meat and watch your food bill drop. You won’t even notice the meat is missing when you experiment and combo flavorful foods for meals. It’s easier than you think. Include other forms of protein to complete your required nutrition.

Cook regular rice it only takes 10 minutes longer than Minute Rice (which actually takes 5 minutes) and it’s half the cost. This works for many other products as well.

Left over rice, corn or other vegetables? Add it to tomato soup or any other favorite soup the next day.

Cook (boil, bake or microwave) enough potatoes to fry or prepare in any other favorite potato dish for your next meal

Shop from the outside aisles – this is where most of the non-processed foods are. The inner aisles of grocery stores are all packaged and cost more

When your favorite vegetables come in season, buy lots. Peppers are easy to freeze – no blanching required, just cut in slices, bag them and freeze them. Prices can be 1/3 of what the out of season vegetable costs.

To avoid throwing out food you haven’t used make a plan for the week that includes the foods in your fridge that need to be used before spoiling. This also takes the guess work out of what to have for dinner or lunch every day.

Cut your juice down with water. Most juices are heavy with sugar or glucose. Using this idea can make a can of juice last twice as long and cut your sugar intake as well.

Plan your weekly menus with tasty meals from your favourite recipes that use inexpensive ingredients. You will be amazed at how this plan helps avoid fast food meals.

And of course never shop when you’re hungry!

Following these 10 ideas will make a big difference to your food bill at the end of each month. Remember there are many meals you can add to your meal plans that won't take much longer than quick cooking foods which cost more.

This is so 3 months ago!

Flash � Learn to Dance with Napoleon Dynomite

I know that Napoleon Dynamite has slightly lost its culty edge but this is still awesome, especially for someone as dedicated to the art of dance as me. If you haven't seen the film then it will only serve as an educational tool, which is good anyway.

Nerd note: one of the 'moves' says "Exit, Stage Left" but he actually runs to his right, is this correct? Perhaps it's a theatre term from the p.o.v. of the director, who one would suspect would be sat in the seats. Goddamit Bone, just enjoy the damn flash application!

Time to get down

There may well be some downtime on www.bigguybigcity.com over the next couple of days as the design is updated and the relaunch is implemented.

I guarantee that the new look will blow your socks off (not an actual guarantee), it's mighty nice, has a function to allow news to be propogated to the masses, and (hopefully) there will be random bigguybigcity.com related images to brighten up your day. Or maybe they won't be random, I'm no HTML genius.

Death Of St Green Day...

Dude. It's sad days. We have to sell our Green Day tickets. I've been looking forward to Sunday 19th June, Milton Keynes, for a long long time. Unfortunately this gig has been a logistical nightmare and one long long stress. Still not sunk in that I will not be listening to the strains of Holiday among other classics on this aforementioned day.

But then again, how can I possibly be so upset when I've just had the most amazing day. I raced for life! Yes, I took part in the nationwide sponsored run in aid of Cancer Research. It was truly motivating be running alongside over 5,000 women for a great cause. I was saddened however, to see how many runners were racing for life in memory of lost love ones. It makes you realise how many people are affected by Cancer and I felt almost proud to be contributing to help these numbers decrease and I was inspired particulary by a lady displaying this simple statement - "I've beaten the big 'C' twice."

On a lighter note, Eurovision last night! I was quite shocked to see the UK perform so poorly again, after all, Javine really wasn't as bad as many of the other acts who received more points than us. However, the star of the show had to be the Granny from Moldova. Bang that drum grufti! I also didn't sleep until 3am. That was largely to do with my friend Phil's Thriller moves... I'll say no more. Only this, this time last year I broke my toilet! But that's a whole other story...

merchandizzle

hey woke up for a fine weekend of lazzyness and how nice it was to see that my new tshirt has arrived.(see gallery when bone puts it on)

also i felt it was the day in which my hair must be cut and with a new t-shrit i felt a new hair do was required so i have gone for a crazy mohawk! i feel however that i may look like a penis so will likely shave it off

haha unlucky man u sometimes it just doesnt go your way but what can u expect from americans trying to play soccer. mayb they would have benefitted from half time monster trucks and added time multi-ball!

anyways must dash back to the sofa to watch episode 1 then off to see episode 3 tomoz

tigg

He's right you know...

This post will be properly written, with capitals and everything, because Andy told me to, and I am clearly his bitch...

Design approved for spreadshirt, which is nice: we've been having some difficulty getting this guitar one through, because it's fairly complex, but they finally accepted it yesterday. This is a portent of a whole new world of designs with lines that overlap only a little bit (highly technical this tshirt lark).

In other news, we're all going to watch the eurovision song contest here this evening, following the rules that were originally created for the junior eurovision contest in the dark days of the first year. Not sure that we're going to get so hammered this time, as it's the middle of exams, but it should be fun nonetheless.

Satis.

Onwards and Upwards

Richard has finally managed to have one his designs approved for the store. Unusuallu for me, that isn't a dig at him, he has been trying for weeks to create a design that the Spreadshirt overlords will find acceptable, now that they have we can work on a whole new range of merchandise.

In my own humble opinion, the new stuff does look v. nice.

Disguised no more...

I just wanted to make a quick link to the newest fan of this particular slice of the web pie, she's called AnnieO and she's a fair bit more high-brow than me in terms of posting. Maybe it's time we added more syllables (I'm so sure I mispelt that, and its not even ironic) to the blog. Or maybe just more pictures of me in various hats, yeah, I should stick to what I know.

"You and Me, Are Meant To Be..."

Yes I saw Morcheeba last night! They were red hot! My day didn't start so well as I woke up 10 minutes before I absolutely have to leave for my lecture, so it was a case of get dressed and run. Year Away Preparation was ok, I decided to leave my handy little book at home, Charles 'Make My Day Punk' Russ is a total legend, but I don't think even he's cool enough to handle my Pigeon licking comments.

So off we went to the Refectory at Leeds University Union, having again done bugger all work for today's exam (which was a pile of poo by the way). After nearly witnessing a fight in Wetherspoons, Jenni & I realised that the old saying is right, there's no chav like a Leeds chav (apologies to any Leeds chavs reading this post). The support 'act' were 'Husky Rescue' from Finland, more hypnagogic than psychedelic (get me... actually I stole it from Jen)... that's boring as shit to you and me. So we were glad when Morcheeba finally arrived. And did they arrive! It was a relief that they played some of the old stuff as well as the new album. And a moment of pure happiness arrived when they finished their set with those 7 magical words from 'Rome Wasn't Built In A Day.' I was elated... or was that just from breathing in the smoke from a guy smoking weed in front of me?!

How very odd...

Cool Hunting: Secret Wall Tattoos

There are some weird and wonderful people in this world. And it seems that vandalism/criminal damage/graffiti isn't a problem in their world.

Such a hipster

Duncan and I placed an order on Threadless earlier tonight, and our uber-cool and fairly rare (for the UK) t-shirts should be flying across the Atlantic within a matter of days. I know, I know, I'm helping to fund 'the enemy' but when the shirts look that damn good what am I supposed to do?

Other than buy one of my own designs of course. Incidentally, yet more of Duncan's bigguy purchases arrived, so we walked around the city centre talking various pictures of him, and getting looked at rather oddly for our impromptu photosession, which included standing outside of establlished, so-called, fashion chain stores, goading (sp?) them with our superior design and ability to see our our agenda, and not be controlled by 'the man'. Who that man would be, I don't know, he's purely fictional.

Pictures will be on the Flickr page some time tomorrow.

"Ich wette du bist ein Taubenlecker"

Ok, granted it's unlikely you are going to be able to understand this statement, but it's a quote from an interesting little book I bought the other day from HMV - 'The Little Book of Essential Foreign Swear Words' (RRP £2.50 before 10% NUS discount!). I thought it best to swot up on some of my favourite expletives in German for when I'm forced to go live there for a whole year in October. The terrible two Ben & Chris again thought it amusing to interrupt my power nap & sit in my room, Chris reading every single one out & Ben trying to guess them. Without the headache I would have found it hilarious. So again I kicked them out...

I wrote about 50 words of a research project today before I got bored. It does not bode well. In true student style, I didn't get up until 1pm (all that late night Phantom watching), feeling ill so I didn't go into school for the afternoon to help with an English Literature class. I could cope with the Year 13s with my post-Toffs hangover, but since they've left for study leave they've assigned me Year 8. Yeah right.

Oh and by the way, it means 'I have you down as a bit of a pigeon-licker'. I'll have to remember that one.

capital letters..?

tell you what's odd.

i emailed a quick report to my parents on how i'm doing at uni yesterday, got picked up by both of them for not using capital letters... not that surprising, they're both over 50

i posted on the blog yesterday evening as well, and i get picked up by andy, who is, i believe, only 20! it's the internet! grammatical convention etc doesn't matter!

ahem

i hope that post wasn't too self referential..

How much do I love The Arcade Fire?

A lot, find out why by watching this magical video

It's in quicktime, which music videos have a habit of doing, but its still very watchable.

Everyone enjoying the newly expanded bigguybigcity.com team?

Link via Little Paper Planes, technicaly she's a rival, but I think I'll let it go just this once (and the other million times).

Phantom Of The Opera... zzzzz

Well, look who it isn't! Clairey Fairy has entered the cyper world that is Bone's Blogworld. So be prepared for blog after blog of crazy drunkeness... well I think that's what Bone's expecting, but I am actually sober for the majority of the time, i just tend to get more outspoken when I've had a few... but don't we all?!

So it's 1am and I'm sat on the sofa with my lap-top in front of the most BORING film I have ever seen. Phantom of the Opera. Apologies to any Phantom fans, but really is sending me to sleep! (slight pause as I watch about the only interesting part in the entire thing) I'm also feeling quite guilty as I have done absolutely no work today after our German Tutor spending an hour telling us how important work outside the lessons is... Ooops. I've got my first exam on Friday and have barely started revision, using the old excuse "You can't really revise for this exam" - something I told my parents many a time throughout my school days! But how can I possibly think about revising when I'm excited about seeing Morcheeba on Thursday night! I dread to think what it's going to be like as the lovely Sky has been replaced with a more gritty voiced Daisy, but check out the Antidote, their new album... it's great!

Anyway my bed is calling... it was ambushed earlier by my housemates Ben & Chris. They got a bit silly after I'd begged them to remove a moth from my room (which they wouldn't do so I had to myself) and they promptly trashed the place the minute my back was turned!

So blog readers, until the next time, I implore you... don't waste your £3 on hiring Phantom... it's boring as shit!

richard's journalism update

bit of an update here on that last post, and ben's comment on it.

happily i do speak and write pretty good french: 7 years of studying it at school has had some effect, but a year spent in france teaching english to french kids/ adults should polish it up a bit. i'm thinking of doing an italian course at uni next year as well, as it's also a romance language, and so built on the same (latin) framework.

i phoned up my cousin piers today, and after some initial confusion regarding my identity he seemed perfectly happy for me to interview him at some point over the summer, and also asked if i'd like to do work experience at fhm as well.

it would be rude of me to say no..

tigg in the blogging zone

woo i am now officially blogging.

i have purchased a t-shirt from the store and am looking forward to recieving it.

cant think of much to say about the world at the moment coz i have been a social recluse with the amount of work.

however when i do eventually do something interesting i shall keep you informed (note on the 28th may i am having an official funnel day for my housemate colins bday, which means ANY liquid on the day has to be consumed through the funnel only)

adios for now and i shall take a pic when i get my new shirt

tigg

NC-fucking-P

Apologies for the swearing (a bigguy blog first, I believe) but the NCP are an absolute joke. It has now been a month since I made contact about starting a new season ticket, only to be told that they hadn't cancelled my old one.

Admittedly the time that I have spent waiting has been cut down from the previous average of 15 minutes to about 3-4 minutes, but getting to incompetence quicker doesn't necessarily make the situation any better. I'd happily have waited 40 minutes the first time if it actually got sorted. But here we are on the 13th call with no positive action.

Apparently my card is in tomorrow mornings post, I've chosen to believe that, but only because I'm an eternal optimist (I still believe I'll live to see Newcastle win the Premiership) but if I don't receive it by Thursday or Friday I still won't be hugely surprised.

I then asked about my credit situation - again, and how they owe me money, yet want me to pay for the previous 4 weeks that I haven't got to use, at all. So the customer services bloke goes "yeah, I see on the computer that you have credit from April 9th till May 20th." No part of that sentence is correct. The credit period should run from March 19th, and I have a letter from them that says this. Also, the credit period should run till April 23rd, since that was when it was restarted. And there's no way that that period of credit could only yield £52 credit. So I was put on hold again, and eventually started speaking to Shelly, who my mum started talking to about a month ago, who claimed that mum said that the credit period should come from April 9th onwards, thats just balls. So apparently she's gonna call me back tomorrow, but that was what she said a month ago.

I hate that company, so, so much.

Lucky

So I went to my exam this morning feeling pretty darned scared, cos the module was from before christmas and I'd never studied any political thinkers before. I know that should be surprising for someone whose meant to be passionate about both History and Politics, but I'm a contemporary fellow and prefer subjects like nuclear proliferation, modern power relations, pretty much anything after 1900. Anywho, I procrastinate, like that time that I built the electric procrastination machine and travelled to the palce, with the thing, and the joke kind of... slowed down.... and I couldn't find a punchline.

Exam! Got in there, had a nice seat overlooking the park, looked at the first few questions and got a bit scared, then at no.4 there was a question about Locke's theory of property, my class essay was about Locke's capitalist leanings in the Second Treatise, Excelsior!!! So I managed to belt out a three and a half pages in an hour, probably not the best stuff, but all relevant, maybe not first class, but certainly enough to warrant many syllables in sophistimicated (I know, I made it up) words.

Onto question two, me vs. Rousseau, and his ideas of the General Will and its differences from the 'will of all', which just so happened to be what I did my class presentation on, and the last thing I read about last night. Hazzah, the pages literally fly off my pen (note: not literally). I finished five minutes early with a feeling that I'd gotten over the first and biggest hurdle in my two week exam marathon.

1 down 3 to go.

to surprise andy

andy thought that there wouldn't be many more posts in the next few weeks due to exams. this is just silly! i only have two of them, two hours long each, two questions each, and they're not going to be that difficult..

i've been trying to work out what i'm going to do after graduating for the last few days: in a year's time i'll be released into the big wide world. i'm figuring that our t-shirt business, despite its merit, won't provide me with enough money to live in any style, so alternative careers have had to be considered.

so far, i'm thinking of spending a year teaching english as a foreign language in france, followed by doing a post-graduate course in international relations or something similarly angled, then trying to join the foreign office.

i'm not sure that i'd have thought of doing something so establishment a few years ago, when i was a budding, if not very ideologically committed, young communist (for the record, even the british foreign secretary jack straw went through this stage, as did the highly respected if slightly large eared political commentator andrew marr) but age seems to have tempered my political views to a rather more pragmatic standpoint, and it would be nice to have an office on whitehall overlooking st james's park.

on a different note, as a writer for the university newspaper, i'm going to try to interview some interesting/ famous people over the summer. brian may, thom yorke and tony robinson are potential candidates, pending enquiries, and my cousin piers hernu writes for fhm (a british lads' magazine) so i might ask after him too.

over and out

Not even out of context

Overheard in New York: You Keep Saying It, We'll Keep Posting It

This is Overheard gold, I love that site, they must have a massive following, and so easy to see why.

Do I link to them? Think so? Can't remember, see this whole exam thing has got me questioning the whole bigguygbigcity.com empire.

blog, interrupted

I have my first exam tomorrow morning, so the posting probably won't be quite as usual from me, and it's unlikely that we'll see anything from Richard and Duncan fo0r the next couple of weeks until we finally remove our heads from the books and get back to indulging our writing interests on the net.

I am considering adding yet more contributors, figuring the more I have in the arsenal the more articles will be published, which *should* lead to more readers, but I am well aware that my sparkling wit is one of the reasons people here, but I figure that if I like the way these people write then the webosphere may well like them too.

Well, back to the wonders of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, even typing their names bores me.

We want the things we can't have

Akihabara News : Your Leading News provider on Gadgets and Hi-Tech stuff from Akihabara in Tokyo Japan and in other Asian Countries

I love gadget blogs about Japan, not because these things are especially amazing, just because the chances of them arriving in ole' Blighty are practically nil, so I want them like crazy. Like Japanese gadgets seems to be a lot like ours, but that little bit more practical, eg a tv with a dvd player in it, that can also catch, gut and grill fish.

Anywho, I bookmarked it, though not one of those crazy 'live bookmarks' that the kids are on about nowadays, so I thought it was worth a quick post.

There. Is. A. God

Geek Fantasies

Am I immature, yes. Am I going to apologise for this. No.

Just noticed it's a paysite, I'm sure as hell not gonna pay for it. Also it could be NSFW, but I can't play the previews because when my laptop is hooked up to the TV I can't view videos on this little screen.

Although I did say I wasn't going to pay for it, how would you pay for it, there's no register button, member login or nuffin, it must be really new.

My first blog post ever..

Well, Andy's finally given me the 'keys' to his blog, which is nice of him, and indicative of a level of trust which I really am not worthy of.

I'm Richard, one of Andy's many flatmates, and I study History at the University of Leicester. As well as this I'm the other half of the bigguybigcity.com partnership, (hopefully) providing some new designs, and contributing about 50% of the capital. That is to say, about £4.98.

With any luck Andy won't be too harsh in his censorship of his blog, though I will try to keep slanderous outbursts about his 'habits' to a mininum

Highly questionable

ohnotheydidnt: Band states all videos moving forward wi

If this isn't a steaming pile of balls then TBS are taking emo just that little bit too far.

Also, check out the comments underneath the 'article', these people are so far up their own asses that I'm surprised they can even hear music.

if anyone happens to get to me from the Ohnotheydidnt community, I do like the site, but the people on there are just so bitchy that I wouldn't dare expose myself to the flaming, although it is a gossip site so what would I expect?

Link an R.E.M song to this post

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | North Korea raises nuclear stakes

Dammit, who was it that decided that we could invade Iraq but not North Korea?

By the by, I am well aware of the reasons, having studied International Security since Januray. Nut even so, at least Saddam had a bit of character to him, North Koreas leadership just seems ridiculous. Out of any country in the world, I really think they're at the top of the list for the likelyhood of actually using a nuclear weapon for offrensive means. I would be scared, but come one, I live in Leicester, we have any number of Gods on our side here.

Seriously, it's all they do!

The NCP, who are supposedly handling my long-term car parking here in Leicester (we can't park outside the house) are an absolute joke. Over the past three weeks I have rang them 8 times (each call on a national rate line for about 30mins each) and still not received my barrier card. Actually thats not true, I did get a card today, even after being told this morning that it hadn't been created, but it didn't work. How can one company be so incompetent that I speak to 7 different people who all say that the situation will be sorted, and it isn't? And they keep sending invoices to my home address (which I asked them not to do) which have different amounts of money that I supposedly owe them.

I owe them nothing!!

They owe me!!

They've decided that I'm only owed £52 for 5 weeks parking, now I'm no 'scientician' (I was thinking of ridiculous science-esque words, and was about to write scientologist, but then I realised it was real) but I'm pretty sure that paying £26.25 a week, and being refunded for 5 weeks of non-use actually adds up to £131.25...... I have been drinking so those figures may not be entirely accurate.

Anyway, I'm pinning my hopes on Andrew Strange of NCP's season tickets department to solve my woes, and to be fair he is the first one to apologise to me, although the tone of my fax (who uses fax nowadays anyway). I really hope he doesn't google himself any time soon becuase I assume that calling his colleagues incompetent is going to speed up my claim at all. I say claim, it is rightfully mine, as they aren't providing me with a service I've paid for, in fact they actually want me to pay for the current four weeks twice.

Normal hilarious service will return soon.

For when you just don't want to work

freeloader.com : Don't work play games!

You can't study all the time, and Lord knows I don't, but work should be rewarded, and happily I've found a site that offers free games, legally, that actually work on my laptop.

That totally sounded like an advert, but I swear, the only thing I get out of linking to them is the knowledge that I'm helping waste hours that could've been used more constructively.

schneaky

Whenever I'm reading on my lap top and have earphones on so I can listen to music without distrubing the others, no one ever asks me to get the door when the buzzer goes because they think I cna't hear it. Its awesome, I might just leave them in all the time!

I am so NY baby...

I e-mailed some dude from the NY Times about an article that he had on cockeyed.com and I got a reply 37 mintues later. Funny thing is, I was e-mailing to to complain about the NCP not replying to any of my e-mails, or taking action with regard to my phone calls!

The British General Election 2005, the big guy's views

This isn't going to be a very typical politics based post, as it goes against the point of voting.

As I'm sure you're all aware the British General election happened on Thursday (5th May) and Labour won, albeit with a reduced majority. My election drama came a week before this date. As I don't live in my home constituency I can do a postal vote or not vote at all, so obviously I did a postal vote. My problem was that I simply couldn't decide who to vote for, on a local, national, party, or individual basis. Being distanced from my home candidates it was hard to find any literature that could advise me who to vote for, so essentially all my info came from the early campaigning int he region, and the national stuff that I've taken in over the past couple of weeks.

As I sat there on Friday morning before setting off to London for the weekend I really found myself agonising over who to give my cross to, eventually I gave in and just crossed Liberal Democrat for both ballot papers I had, not because I wanted this person/party to win, but because I didn't want to make any difference to the outcome. I wanted to stand up and be counted, but I wanted to count for nothing.

Election night came last night and we stayed up late watching the results come in, around 04:45 I went to bed without the Westmorland and Lonsdale result being announced. I get up around noon to find that the Liberal Democrats have taken control of Westmorland and Lonsdale. Oh. For the first time in 99 years the Conservatives hadn't won that seat, and I was part of the group of people that did it, I had unintentionally and unwillingly created history. The majority was 257, and considering the average constituency size is around 60-70,000 people, my vote actually did make a difference

I've tried telling myself that my opposition to Tim Collins (the former seat holder) makes the result ok, but it just doesn't sit well with me, as a student of politics I feel as if I've failed myself.

I shoulda just voted Independent, at least they'd actually appreciate my vote.

Now I'm del.icio.us

The expansion of fashion-blogging continues, I've become one of the del.icio.us army!

It's really interesting, kind of like a website popularity index, except you know that the kind of people who would submit to del.icio.us will be more web literate than most net users, and that you will get more of an idea of what is 'net cool'. You also find a lot of really interesting website (read: stuff that I can whore for here).

New designs added today

In a slight shift of focus for ther store we've added in a couple of designs that aren't based upon the cult of me (shock horror)!

Neither of them were designed by me either, well, that isn't strictly true, I did design them but I don't claim credit because they weren't my ideas. 'I treat objects like women' was thought up by co-contributor DUncan sometime last year back when the talk was all "it'd be cool if we could make our own t-shirts", I like it and think that it could sell well, not that that's the point, of course. The other design had 4 people working in unison upon its creation, making use of the larger TV screen as a monitor. The idea for 'not cheryl... not interested' was born in the pub when Newcastle were getting beaten 2-1 by Man Utd, and whilst that was a depressing day a brilliant design came from it, which is why we've made so many different versions of it. The cult of Cheryl Tweedy in our flat is in no way creppy, just so that we're clear. Also, I must give Matt the credit for the idea, stroke of genius that it is.

There was also a good 40 minutes of group brainstorming over new slogans, which was very productive and a good laugh which is a very important part of the process, since this project is meant to be fun above all else.

All designs are available over at this slice of webspace.

Blog stereotyping continues

We (the blog is now a we) have added a flickr badge on the left to highlight the quality products available from bigguybigcity.com though it might not necessarily be a promo only page, maybe we'll add in contributors photo's (Duncan, Richard and me) or perhaps from group outings.

So now we have AdSense, Flickr, a .com and are listed in the popular blog communities, we probably won't give in to MySpace though, there's some stereotypes that just can't be done.

Big guy, say hello to Big Ben.... in the Big City! This makes me look like a giant, which of course I am, being as I am at least 3/4 the size of a giant clock tower. After this we walked up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, which was packed with tourists, which ruins the atmosphere, but its not like I expect them to close it off just for me, I'm not that famous...... yet. 

Finally, someone recognises that I deserve a halo around my head. The halo is of course, the London eye, we didn't go on it since it's pretty costly and I've already been on it before, though the weather was perfect for it. I felt like such a tourist walking round the south bank and around this area, and whilst I am technically a tourist I'd like to think that I'm a bit more au fait with the workings of London than most. 

Here I am in the classic thumbs up position in front of Westminster, House of Commons, Big Ben etc. I've just noticed that the site counter has been reset, woudln't it be sad if I only had around 100 hits from 18 months blogging. 

Hey look, it's me in front of St Pauls Cathedral, which incidentally can be seen from my brothers flat (apartment), fancy eh? The pictures taken from the Tate Modern, which is as confusing as ever to all but about 1% of visitors, and I'd say I'm being generous with that figure. Highlight of the gallery is a glass of water that has been turned into an oak tree, not by actually doing anything to it, it is just a glass of water on a glass shelf, BUT it is ACTUALLY an oak tree, not a representation. I'd say the curators were taking the piss since it was one of the few pieces with an interview next to it explaining what it was. 

Back baby!

London was very tiring, but I still had a great time, and the next few posts will be a few picutres of me in front various London monuments. Duncan couldn't do any updates over the weekend cos his computer's messed up at the moment, and I didn't realise till I got back as my brothers router doesn't allow access to this site (it even stops hotmail!) otherwise I woulda done a short post just to keep things rolling.

My bigguybigcity.com t-shirt arrived on saturday, and as soon as I got back yesterday I had it on. Without trying to be a salesman I have to say I was very pleased with the results, it looks good, though it does smell a bit funky after a nights drinking and dancing, so at least I'll be able to check the washability of the garment soon. Photos are gonna be up on the Flickr page soon (along with Richards shirt which arrived today).