i-Don't Care

There is no real difference between an Apple Macintosh and a Microsoft PC.

There, I’ve said it. May the cool young t-shirt clad things of the Mac world throw their twittering i-phones at me in disgust. I don’t care. May the tweed wearing, goggle-eyed PC aficionados threaten me with their Bill Gates dolls. I still don’t care.

I used PCs for years. I have recently been using a Mac. I’m yet to notice a genuine difference and I have no preference. What may sound like blasphemy to you is pretty obvious to me.

PCs have black or cream functional cubic shaped boxes. Macs have rounded corners and are any colour or even transparent. Woohoo.

PCs accept DVDs on a tray. Macs have a slot in the side. Yeehar.

PC mouses have a wheel in the middle and buttons. Mac mouses have pressure sensitive pads and a strangely erotic nipple in the middle. Big deal.

PC icons are clear and precise. Mac icons are funky and cartoonish. So what?

PC applications minimise and maximise in business-like fashion. Mac applications minimise and maximise dynamically. Yawn.

One of these computers may be fractionally faster than the other at processing binary digits through electronic circuits, but at the end of the day I don’t care what computer I’m using as long as I can send emails, write documents and browse the internet. If one computer can do this a thousandth of a second faster then why would I even notice? I’m not designing space shuttles or modelling the weather.

Whatever the computer looks like on the other side of the screen or inside makes not one iota of difference to whether my boss gets his report on time. If I’m playing a game at home no aliens are getting blasted more efficiently, no cars will drive faster and no Sonics, Marios, pedestrians or prostitutes will react any differently to my inexpert use of a keyboard, mouse, joystick or fake-guitar no matter who makes it.

The differences between PCs and Macs are a triumph of marketing, not of engineering. Marketing is after-all about perception. Cleverly, Apple have managed to position the Mac as the computer of choice for anyone young enough to have never seen a Commodore 64. Apple have seen their profits soar in line with an increasingly affluent Generation Y that have embraced the i-pod, the i-phone and the i-wank to accompany their Mac.

Yet millions of people still successfully use PCs every day. If Macs were really that much better then everyone would be using them.

So face it, the choice between a Mac and a PC is about as pointless as the choice between a Commodore and a Falcon. There’s no difference between them either.

Get over it.

Read more!

Movie Rankings 2008

1. Slumdog Millionaire *****
2. The Dark Knight ****1/2
3. Charlie Wilson’s War ****1/2
4. Burn After Reading ****
5. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead ****
6. Tropic Thunder ****
7. Lars and the Real Girl ****
8. There Will be Blood ****
9. Frost/Nixon ****
10. In Bruges ***1/2
11. Get Smart ***1/2
12. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ***1/2
13. The Counterfeiters ***1/2
14. American Gangster ***1/2
15. Mongol ***1/2
16. Iron Man ***1/2
17. The Wackness ***1/2
18. Body of Lies ***
19. The Bank Job ***
20. Quantum of Solace ***
21. In the Shadow of the Moon ***
22. 3:10 to Yuma **1/2
23. Taken *1/2

Movie Rankings 2007

Read more!

Movie Rankings 2007

1) The Lives of Others *****
2) Letters from Iwo Jima ****1/2
3) No Country for Old Men ****1/2
4) The Last King of Scotland ****1/2
5) The Simpsons Movie ****
6) Hot Fuzz ****
7) Zodiac ****
8) Sunshine ****
9) Michael Clayton ****
10) Breach ***1/2
11) Bobby ***1/2
12) Daywatch ***1/2
13) This is England ***1/2
14) Perfume: The Story of a Murderer ***1/2
15) Curse of the Golden Flower ***
16) The Prestige ***
17) Beowulf ***
18) Notes on a Scandal ***
19) Venus* ***
20) The Namesake ***
21) Fracture* ***
22) Noise ***
23) The Host ***
24) The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford ***
25) Lucky Miles **1/2
26) Black Sheep* **1/2
27) The Bourne Ultimatum* **1/2
28) Transformers* *1/2

*watched on DVD

Movie Rankings 2006

Read more!

Gushing about the i-Wank

It was with great excitement that I learnt about Apple's new i-Wank. As soon as I did I knew that I wanted one and was prepared to go to any length to get it.

The i-Wank comes with an assortment of features that 'traditional' wanks are incapable of. For one thing it has an extended battery life which means you can use your i-Wank more often and for longer periods without having to wait and recharge.

I'm a big fan of wanks as you have probably guessed, so much so that my old wank rarely left my hand. Now with all the new features I almost never want to put my i-Wank down. My wife doesn't like it but she understands that I'm addicted to wanks and when a new wank comes onto the market I'm bound to want to spend a lot of time playing with it.

I particularly like the fact that the new i-Wank is so interactive. It has been designed with the user in mind so has a lot of hands-on features like a real-feel touch pad and an intuitive interface. The touch pad means that with one finger you have access to a whole new world of i-Wank functionality, and even with two fingers you can do things that make the old palm pilots looks like museum pieces. This is important because older wanks often gave you a sore thumb in particular after too much use.

The i-Wank also looks great. It's sleek and black and has none of the cumbersome knobs and fiddly bits of older wanks. I reckon women in particular will love it because in my experience women are much more dexterous with their fingers when it comes to wanks, so this is right up their alley.

I'm particularly impressed that even with all the new features the i-Wank is only slightly larger than the older wanks and still fits comfortably into your hand or pocket.

So of course when the i-Wank went on sale I made sure that I was one of the first in line to get it. You might think it's crazy but it wasn't just about the i-Wank, it was about sharing a wank experience with other wank addicts. Using and having a wank is something that by definition you can only do by yourself even if you are thinking about someone else at the time. So when an opportunity does present itself to get together, as odd as it seems at first, you leap at the chance. Not all Wanks are the same and you'd be amazed at the different things that people do with them and that even I hadn't imagined.

But the i-Wank takes it to a whole new level. Since getting my new i-Wank I've barely left the house. I don't need to. I've got all the pleasure and entertainment I need in the palm of my hand.

Read more!

The Price of Happiness? Two Dollars

My friend Emma loves a budget. Being broke, as she was in her student days, or having a mortgage, as she is now, is not a threat to her lifestyle but a challenge to maintain it that she embraces. It's not that she's cheap. It's more that she's, as my parents generation would categorise it, thrifty.

Emma has a child too now, so when a night on the town threatened a few weeks back it was an opportunity too good to miss. So it was off to raid the piggy bank for Emma, who much to her pleasure discovered she was the proud owner of a handful of coins coming to the grand total of two dollars.

The challenge was how to get the maximum happiness from the two dollars. Here's what a bunch of us came up with. Your challenge is to add to the list:

• Chopsticks: Admittedly this was thanks to our good friend google. As far as I'm concerned $2 for chopsticks is a rip off when you can get a free spork from Kentucky Fried Chicken.
• A helium filled balloon: Nothing brings more spontaneous happiness and joy than sounding like a castrate soprano for 3 minutes.
• A night's accomoodation in a cheap backpackers in Thailand
• A three course meal in Zimbabwe or any other country where there is massive depreciation of the currency. Oh how I reminisce about the end of communism in Eastern Europe, and the demise of the Khmer Rouge.
• A middy of beer during happy hour - so it must be happy!
• Wizz Fizz: Certainly it did the job when I was a kid but I need stronger mind altering drugs these days
• Get a poor guy to do something funny: though that could get kind of depressing after a while
• Donate to charity: Nah - just kidding. We're talking our own happiness - not some kid in Africa.

I've also had a number of asian women offer to love me long time for $2. But we're talking happiness, not love!

Read more!

10 Greatest (Relatively Speaking) Sporting Moments

How does one measure greatness? In particular how does one measure his or her own greatest sporting moments? If success were the primary measure then mine would be a very short list indeed. And does greatness mean that you even need to be a part of the moment? Or is being a spectator being a part of the moment? Is it possible that your scream (or sledge for that matter) contributed to the moment enough to make it change? Or in other words, if one hand claps on the top deck of the Olympic stadium and not one of the players hears it yet the result is a cliffhanger and there's that dream moment where everything slows down and it tips one way but not the other, then do you get my drift?

Here's my list...

• Strike in the final frame of the final match of the 1985 NSW vs VIC junior Jewish bowling competition (3rd grade) winning the only match for NSW in the whole competition. So deep in concentration was I that I didn't notice every other match finish and a crowd of on-lookers gather to watch. I delivered, they cheered, teammates attempted high-fives and connected on more than one occasion.
• Last place, Head of the River, Sydney Boys High Fourth-Four 1986. Indeed we came last in every race we rowed but this was the culmination of 6 months hard training and our last place was met by a rousing cheer from the crowd of private school kids and the rabble from High. It took 1500 of the 1600 metres for us to click into rhythm but it was beautiful to be part of. Sheer and total exhaustion like I wasn't to experience again until climbing mountains at altitude.
• 7/71 for Maccabi in fourth (or maybe it was fifth) grade park cricket 1988/89 season. In a bowling career staggered over many seasons of park cricket it really only ever clicked once. I could do no wrong and bowled 22 overs to take 7/71, the only time I ever took more than 3 wickets in an innings.
• Cathy Freeman winning the 400m at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. A deaf-defying cheer I was thrilled to contribute to.
• SCG 2003, century off the final ball of the day's play ensuring continuation of career as Australia cricket captain. Not me of course. Steve Waugh - and I was there. The biggest orgasmic-like cheer I've heard at a sporting event, since, well Cathy Freeman.
• Running, diving, flying, one-handed at full stretch outfield catch for the Glebe Gypsies in third grade park cricket 2003 right in front of my new girlfriend who was watching me play for the first time. Over the following few seasons she was never to see me take a wicket and only ever score 8 runs. But she did see that catch and she did marry me! The two may or may not be related.
• Glebe Gypsies win their first ever premiership, taking out third grade park cricket after 11 years in competition. Sure I was only eleven-and-a-halfth man, but that meant I could start drinking early and shared all the tension and celebration (and my first Mad Monday) as much as all of my teammates.
• Playing in a winning premiership team - finally. Dragons Indoor Cricket team take out 3rd division 2006. It had to wait till I was 37, but was worth it. Actually that's not true I would have preferred to play in many other premiership winning teams but at least I got a taste. And how sweet it was.
• Losing 6-0 6-0 to Australia's 91st ranked tennis player - 2007. I knew he would be good, he had multiple racquets and a clothing sponsor but he was young and I had previously done well against the club's best juniors. Except he wasn't a junior, he was a coach. The scoreline is no indication of how much fun I had or how competitive I was on approximately one point per game (including a couple that went to deuce).
• Watching sport overseas - whether it was the Test in Mumbai, the soccer in Buenos Aires or Highbury, visiting Lords, baseball in America or watching Rugby in Bath, it's hard to find any better way to meet and mingle with the locals and experience them at their most passionate (and mad). Still on the 'to do' list is the Rugby at Cape Town and Bledisloe in New Zealand and the Winter Olympics in Canada.

Yours?

Read more!

RIP One-Day Cricket

It is with regret that I inform you that the 36 year-old One-Day Cricket passed away in Barbados on Saturday 28 April. One-Day Cricket is believed to have been slowly murdered.

Preliminary reports indicate that One-Day Cricket had the life strangled out of it over a period of approximately seven weeks and was finally beaten repeatedly late on Saturday evening. An autopsy has revealed that at one stage One-Day Cricket was even left for dead in diminishing light but briefly revived before unknown assailants in white hats and dark trousers administered the final blows in complete darkness.

While no suspect has been positively identified, there are numerous persons of interest, including the ICC that has been known to regularly abuse One-Day Cricket and extort it for money and power. The unknown assailants are thought to have been acting on the orders of the ICC.

While the indications of strangling suggest that One-Day Cricket took seven weeks to die, there are no witnesses as the strangling occurred in a number of empty stadiums across the Caribbean.

Initial suspicions revolved around South Africa which has had a history of choking, though this ultimately only resulted in self-abuse on each occasion.

India and Pakistan suspiciously fled the scene of the crime early believing that any problems associated with One-Day Cricket would be fixed.

England and the West Indies, while treating One-Day Cricket poorly and with little respect, had little interest in it and have been cleared.

Ireland and Bangladesh up until recently have had little to do with One-Day Cricket and are also cleared.

New Zealand has only ever had a number of brief and unsuccessful relationships with One-Day Cricket, while Sri Lanka knew One-Day Cricket well and will mourn its departure.

Australia is known to be quite arrogant towards One-Day Cricket to the extent of seeking to dominate it. Nonetheless, Australia stated that while One-Day Cricket was no challenge, it will miss it having been instrumental in its adolescence by introducing it to fat pay cheques, raucous night life and gaudy coloured clothing. Others claim that this corrupted One-Day Cricket and led to its ultimate and perhaps inevitable demise.

It is thought that Twenty20 Cricket, the younger and louder brother of One-Day Cricket, is likely to inherit One-Day Cricket's legacy.

Experts warn that Twenty20 Cricket may meet the same fate as its older brother, being as close to the ICC as it already is.

The Barbados Sporting Times on-line has posted the following obituary: In affectionate remembrance of One-Day Cricket, which died at Kensington Oval, Barbados on 28th April, 2007. Deeply lamented by a large circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances R.I.P. N.B. - The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.

Read more!

No Half-Time Measures

When it comes to half time entertainment the New South Wales Rugby Union continually surprises. Who will ever forget the glory days of the Pal Happy Dogs? Or the men in Sumo Wrestling suits running for cash, bouncing across the tryline much like Matt Dunning would if he ever reached the tryline.

And what about Bob from Tamworth who captivated and packed out the SFS for weeks on end in his futile attempts at kicking goals from half-way. He earned (and milked) his 15 minutes of fame even if he never earned the cash.

Prior to Saturday night my favourite half-time moment wasn’t in Rugby Union at all. Back in the mid 1980s I was an avid Balmain Tigers league fan. To be a Rugby League fan in those days is, to my mind, acceptable. There were plays for the ball, pushing in scrums and contests for the ball, unlike the basketball version of today - five tackles kick, five tackles kick. But that’s for another article.

Balmain were playing Easts at a sodden and muddy SCG. The Balmain Tiger started to cross the field to the only batch of Tigers supporters in the ground. As he crossed the cricket pitch he slipped and fell, got to his paws then fell again, and again. The comedy of slapstick errors ended with him crawling away and then standing up on his tail which promptly fell off, leaving him, almost literally, to skulk away with his tail between his legs and to the amusement of all fans – Roosters and Tigers alike.

(As an aside, Russel Fairfax kicked the winning field goal and Brett Papworth – both former Union players - went off injured)

But last Saturday night exceeded even these gems. A high kick catching competition had just started – a machine punting Rugby balls high into the heavens (where Rugby is played) for contestants from NSW and QLD to catch – until said ball kicking machine broke down - Rugby balls were propelled all of three metres into the air or even better directly into the crossbar or the machine operator. The sound guy was forced to kick a few up-and-unders and ultimately the competition was cancelled. Prior to the break down the Queenslanders, who were inexplicably wearing what appeared to be rubber skull caps, had dropped more than half the ‘bombs’.

While the NSW team may claim to have been potentially robbed by a technological failure I suspect the entire episode is more symbolic of the shambles that is NSW and Australian Rugby this year. Indeed the phrase 'couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery' comes to mind.

What’s your favourite half-time moment?

Read more!

The Early Bird Catches the Plumber

It’s the nature of renovating that one job turn into two turns into ten. And for each job there are tradespeople and costs involved. I can live with all that. It goes with the territory, and when we (and by we I mean my wife) wanted to paint part of the house (I don’t mean physically doing it ourselves – are you mad?) it turned into a 2 month epic of roofers, slaters, painters, electricians, wardrobe designers and builders, curtain consultants, handymen and mosquito screen makers (though he goes under the title of home protection consultant).

Yet despite the massive range of trades involved one thing they all have in common (apart from a white vehicle with a ladder on the roof) is that they all turn up at 7am. What is it about tradespeople that determines they have to start so early? They can’t use the same excuse as swimmers (I’ve been doing this since I was at school and am used to it and I’ve developed an addiction to chlorine). Garbagemen (and I assume there are women but I’ve never seen any but that’s only because I’m never up that early) at least have an excuse, they’re clearing away the smell and clutter while no one is aware of it happening. I’m not sure about horse trainers. Horses race during the day so why train as the sun rises? Maybe it’s for the cameras, all those steam snorting beasts at full gallop in the fog makes for a wonderfully romantic vision if you’re into that sort of thing.

I asked a mate of mine, an electrician, why he started work so early. He doesn’t know for sure, but says he just wakes up early. This got me thinking that maybe a trade isn’t taught (or more precisely apprenticed), it’s genetic. Along with a preference for being paid in cash, dodgy or nonexistent bookkeeping and an early retirement with a bad back, being a tradesperson is hardwired into the DNA. This would be a fantastic tool for talent identification. For every lazy teenager sleeping till noon there’s another one awake at 6am watching TV or updating their myspace profile. Get a wrench or a spanner into their hand and suddenly a career path will be open to them (if you can get them off the couch).

Perhaps a further clue can be found in the fact that not only do all tradespeople start early but they finish early too and go straight to the pub. But which came first? Did the alcoholic take up the trade or did the tradesperson take up drinking? This chicken and egg scenario can be resolved quite simply as it is a well known fact that alcoholism is genetic too and this can only lead to one conclusion: to reduce the skills shortages that we are currently facing we must go to the pubs and sign up the alcoholics immediately to trade apprenticeships, especially those that have been in the pub since it opened, and especially if it opened at dawn (or didn’t close).

And finally, there’s one other thing that all tradespeople have in common – the plumber’s cleavage. Gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘crack of dawn’.

Read more!

The Rolling Maul - Crunchy Peanut-Blog's sister site

So much Rugby so little time. So the Crunchy Peanut-Blog now has a sister site - The Rolling Maul which is devoted to all things Rugby Union. Posts on the Rolling Maul will be mirrored on the Crunchy Peanut-Blog in its own sub menu on the right hand side of your screen, starting now with Do the Waratahs need this anthem?

But rest assured that anything non-Rugby will find a comfortable home on the Crunchy Peanut-Blog (if I ever get the time to do it - I do have a day job you know?).

CPB

Read more!