A Guided Tour of Everything

My new comedy piece has made it onto the front page of the BBC’s Comedy Soup site.  You can view it here.

I’m amazed I made the Current Pick.  I’m not funny enough for the BBC.  I was so pleased to see it there though – I feel I’ve really achieved something!

Because of it’s success, I’ve decided to make it into a series and will be working on episode 2 as soon as I get the time.  At the moment, I have to get to bed since I’m up early in the morning for a 2 hour Latin American lesson.  Lovely way to start the day, I’m sure.

Hey, I just realised the time — Happy Hallowe’en!  I sincerely hope none of you get abducted by aliens or sneeze on a ghost instead of a tissue.

Return of the Mack

Well, I’m not a mack and my name isn’t Mack, but it’s a good song so I put it in the title.

All of that in English = I’m back to blogging.  Cut a lot of stress out of my life now and hopefully it’ll stay out until Christmas Eve, when I realise I still haven’t done any Christmas shopping.

That reminds me; I was in Boots the other day and noticed little red and gold baubles hanging above the door.  Cute, but a tad pointless – there were only about 3 baubles in the entire shop and they were above these huge doors which no-one’s tall enough to see over.  I only noticed them because I was so bored waiting in the queue that I started looking at the ceiling.  Which is another thing; department stores have such bizarre ceilings!  They seem to go on forever and are filled with loads of those weird tubes like you get in vacuum cleaners – looks like something out of Futurama.

Man I’m lame.  Blogging about ceilings.
I do love seeing Christmas decorations in shops though – even if they are put up ridiculously early.  They seem to be putting them up earlier as each year goes by nowadays – soon they’ll be putting them up in the summer.  Mind you, Australia have Christmas in the summer, so I suppose there is some relevance there.

Taking Time Out

You’ll have noticed the lack of blogging from me nd I’m afraid it’ll continue that way for a bit.  I’ve been really ill recently (rushed to A&E last night after a dance class) and it’s all caused by stress – so I’m told.  I will return to blogging, but goodness knows when.

Thank you all for your consistant support.

Vintage Television

I was browsing YouTube (just for a change) and came across some old television from the past couple of decades.  It was bizarre watching collections of all the old BBC2 idents and children’s TV shows.  Actually, it was more than bizarre – watching the old idents physically scared me and I had to mute it.  Not sure why, maybe it was just too uncanny and freaked me out.  Programmes like Sooty and Co., El Nombre and Noel’s House Party I haven’t seen for about ten years, and some programmes like Poddington Peas and The Animals of Farthing Wood I’d completely forgotten about!

I love nostalgia, so these were brilliant finds for me – although technically it was Ollie who dug them out for me.  I even got the chance to see my childhood heroes – the band, North and South – perform again.  And that’s something I never thought I’d ever witness again for the rest of my life.

Long live classic television.

YouTube

We all know how brilliant YouTube is; its one of those things that’s so addictive, we don’t realise how much we rely on it. This blog post is really just so I can praise the wonder that is YouTube, and share with you some of my favourite clips that are definitely worth viewing (although they include British humour so you need a dry wit to fully experience the laughter).

And no, I’m not commenting on Google buying YouTube out because my thoughts are moot – let’s just say I’m surprised. :-)

That’s Numberwang!
Benny Hill HIGNFY
BOris Johnson on HIGNFY

First clip is taken from That Mitchell and Webb Look, and the last two are taken from the legendary Have I Got News For You.

Good Things Are Worth Waiting For

I have made my childhood dreams come true.  Yesterday, I bought Rayman Advance and stayed up all night playing it on my DS.  That was the first part of my dream – to be able to play the original Rayman game in all it’s glory again.  Check.  Then, this morning, I found what I had been looking for for years.  The full, original Rayman OST.

I haven’t stopped listening to it all day and I feel like I’m seven years old again.  It’s brilliant; long live video game music.

Tough Love

I’ve just started a new drama class which is great, however.. it’s showbiz. I almost find it funny, but practically everyone there are some of the most evil people you will ever meet. One of my pet hates is fake friendship, and this place is full of it!

The minute I entered the building I knew I wasn’t going to fit in there – which is why it’s lucky that I’m an independant person. It’s survival of the fittest in places like these; on the outside, everyone looks friendly, but then they turn against you because they all want the lead role.

It didn’t really help that I missed the first week, so I was looked upon as the ‘new girl’ anyway, and everyone knows that ‘The New Girl’ has diseases. During the first break, everyone huddled together in their groups whilst I sat by myself in the corner. Then I saw someone I knew, so I went over to say hi – only to be completely ignored. I ended up talking to the drama tutors. In singing class, the chairs were placed in a circle and I was first in the room, so I sat down in the middle and everyone else left an empty chair on either side of me. They clearly thought my ‘new girl disease’ was contagious.

Coming from a dancing background, I’m more than used to these backstabbing, evil people and surroundings, and as long as I stay out of it, it’s actually quite funny to watch.

Internet Browsers: Review

So much kerfuffle goes over these things nowadays. Internet Explorer used to be the only one known, but then other companies decided to take them on; and now there’s more choice on how you browse the web than there are types of chocolate. Here are my opinions on a few of the main ones.

Internet Explorer

Ye olde faithful.. but it’s had it’s time. You only need to try out one of the newer browsers to notice how Internet Explorer will only ever reign the browsers of yesteryear. It’s pop-up blocker never did the job for me – it blocked windows I wanted to view, and allowed advertisements – and even when I disabled it, it continued being stubborn and blocking the wrong things. It also appears to load sites noticeably slower than the newer browsers. The shiny effect just doesn’t work for me. Overall: 3/5 – it’s legendary, but I personally think IE’s been overtaken now.

FireFox

Genius. A revolutionary internet browser which still turns heads. I always use FireFox personally, and I know an awful lot of people who also do.  I have to think hard to come up with any faults, and the only thing I can think of is that it occasionally crashes when loading PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Professional.  But that was with version 6; 7 might work smoother.  FireFox is simple, fast and the themes allow you to suit it to the look of your computer.  I’d swear by FF – if you haven’t tried it yet then DO!  Overall: 5/5 – I’d use nothing else.

Opera

Now I can imagine this being very good, but I just don’t get it.  It’s UI is so different from all the others that it takes a lot of getting used to, and certain parts of it can be misleading.  To be fair, I haven’t used Opera enough to give it an all-over review, but first impressions told me I wouldn’t like it, and I didn’t have the incentive to carry on with it.  I wasn’t very attracted to it to say the least.  Overall: 2.5/5 – not bad, but there’s better out there.

Flock

Just been introduced to this and I’m using it to blog right now; although I’ll be switching straight back to FireFox afterwards.  To be honest, Flock is practically FireFox anyway, but with very slight differences.  It comes with more to offer than FireFox, granted,  but I’m one of those people that once they’ve found something they like, they don’t want to change without a brilliant reason.  Out of the extras that Flock has to offer, I’m not drawn to any of them enough for me to switch from FF.  Flock also has pretty much the same UI as FireFox with the same options and menu layout.  Overall: 4.5/5 – a very good and impressive contender, but not for me personally.

Overall: FireFox.  Takes the biscuit again – download it now!

Note: Yes, I’m aware of the other browsers such as Netscape and Safari, but if I blogged about them all, I’d still be here at Christmas.