A Guest Post!

Here, for the first time on The Blog of Thog, is a guest post!

It's from my dad Graham, aka Ravanna/Oshune/Ellene for those Ravenswing gamers out there.  He's an excellent writer (far better than me!) so do enjoy.

Another post is in the pipeline too :)

Thog.

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GREETINGS.

I like to think of myself as a very thorough reader, indeed I can take ages reading just one page sometimes. It due to having a vivid imagination you see, I can visualise scenes that the words conjure up as it were, and I also find it easy to imagine that I can pronounce all those long words, and even know what they mean 

A pen friend in Wales recently wrote and spoke of the joys of a rare welsh event, not only had it stopped raining (briefly) but it was also the International Eisteddfod, and so she had taken off with her partner to enjoy the parade. Everyone was having a wonderful time, there was singing, dancing and impromptu dances on the Maes. I took the latter to be English interlopers who had bought up welsh country cottages and were busy breathing welsh air and corrupting the local population in foreign ways.

A time honoured welsh tradition no doubt and highly commendable for sure. I mused if the abandoned gaiety had excited the spirits of summer for strange events were afoot all over it seems. Not only had the rain stopped (briefly!) and maes were being danced on but our fireguard had completely vanished for the second time recently and the bank had sent us a strange letter demanding that we comply with their Global Fortress initiative – failure to do so would result in a £50 monthly fine!! Do this by September 7^th or else!

If we did comply then we would be charged £3.50 admin charge for erm, complying.

‘Global Fortress Initiative’ is gobbledegook for “We will handle all your online sales and make sure it’s safe”. We don’t do any online sales, none, this is something we don’t do.

Thinking as one might “What the ****!” I took the bank letter and informative booklet to the bank and asked one young assistant “Er what?” She duly arranged for someone to see me and within barely 15 minutes I sat down with another bank person who said “Erm, I have no idea, sorry. You’ll have to see a Business Specialist.”

An appointment was made a few days later I saw a business specialist who chatted in a friendly manner about the current economic climate, how it was hard for everyone these days etc. Eventually we managed to get him to look at the bank’s letter and informative booklet. He read the letter that the bank had sent us very carefully indeed, looking like a man who had not the slightest idea about what he was reading.

He had not the slightest idea about what it was he was reading.

“Ah, you will have to contact um, this specific department – I think they are down south somewhere, I’ve no idea what it’s all about really – and they will sort you out.”

“Oh by the by, you have approximately one week to sort it out, otherwise they will instigate the monthly £50 fines.”

(Graham thinks to himself – “But we don’t do arrgghhh kill death violence riot! I envy the Greeks, they firebombed their banks!”)

“Erm, we don’t do online sales, never, it doesn’t happen.” We don’t sell online, we don’t buy online, we don’t bank online – it’s just not safe (in our own opinion)

“Hmm” the business specialist said “well I am sure you will have to comply anyway.”

He looked at us and we looked at him. “So, can you sort this out for us?” I asked.

“Oh no, I’ve never seen this” – he waved the booklet about – “before, you will have to go online or talk to someone on the phone … I’m, I’m sure they will be able to help you.”

He smiled and looked relieved, the sun was shining and he had done his duty.

So, the bank has no idea what the bank is doing; gives you a kind of warm glow doesn’t it … come the revolution (long overdue)

When we got back home sitting in the bedroom (Why? How?) the fireguard stood innocently resting against a box of books. How it had gotten there is a mystery. How we hadn’t noticed it for over a month is a bigger mystery. I can only assume that it has been visiting a parallel dimension where all sorts of lost items go to for their summer holidays.

Graham Raven is a published author and partner of the company Raven.  Raven's facebook page is here and benefits from regular updates and pictures, do feel free to like!

I'm nearly ready!

For anyone that runs their own website, today I found a really cool tool for you.  Nibbler carries out an automated free test of your site, and tells you basically how good it is - it covers technical specs, if the website has been tweeted about, and basically gives you some guide as to what you should work on to make your site better.

If you want to see the report for my blog it's here.  One of the cool things about the checker is that it gives you "badges", like achievements in games, good and bad ones.  They even run competitions sometimes to get bizarre badges.

Which is why I'm about to say "Ni! This is a dead parrot! Brian!"

And deoxyribonucleic acid.

(I'm really pleased I wrote that right - my dad used to be an industrial chemist and I wouldn't want to have misspelt a chemical!)

Read their blog too, it's really cool. Almost as good as mine! :)

Anyway, so far I've got a score of 5.3 out of 10 for my blog, 885 points, and 12 badges, including W3C Rebel (basically my blog is so bad at complying with web code it's James Dean) and Ink Waster (I'm missing a print style sheet apparently - so don't print my blog or bad things will apparently happen).  It promises to be very addictive as I try to fiddle with stuff to increase my score.

So apart from that, I've nearly got my stuff together to do my Guild synopsis video on Saturday.  No details yet though, you'll have to wait until you see the video.

One thing though I'd really appreciate - when I do post the video, I'll tell you where it is and all that.  It'd be a big help to me if you just watched the video, and maybe Liked it if you've got a YouTube account (or a Google account, they're the same thing), I'd really appreciate it.

Bye for now!

Warning: Blogging Is Seriously Addictive

I am so addicted to blogging.

I love being creative and being able to get stuff out there, it's so cool.  But it's difficult to try to impose quality standards on yourself to make sure that what you put out is half decent.

I've had this blog going for just over a month now and I wanted to thank you all for reading it.  Over the time I've had something like 110 unique visitors to my blog and somewhere between 700 and 800 pageviews.  Not exactly a massive amount but from nothing just a month ago I'm very happy.  Something like 25% of visits are for more than a minute too so not everyone is just coming on, going "oh my god" and leaving.

Just 65% of them :)

Interestingly after the UK the most popular countries visiting my blog are France and Canada, so if you're from France or Canada - thanks! Bonjour!

My dad is going to be producing a guest blog in the not too far distant future so stay tuned for that.

But it's weird how much effort I put in to getting the blog promoted.  I've signed up to numerous blog directories, I've got a t-shirt with my blog address on it, a load of blog business cards and a handful of blog postcards (all very cheap - thanks Vistaprint!)

We're having a bit of a clear out at the moment prior to the launch of Mists of Pandaria next week, so I'm tempted to do a bit of a giveaway to people willing to promote my blog for me.  I'll have a look round and see if I've got anything anyone would want.

Apart from blogging I'm getting stuff together for making my The Guild Synopsis video on Saturday.  For those that missed my last post, The Guild Season 6 premieres on October the 2nd, and they're asking for the community to do video synopsis of seasons 1 to 5.  I've got a draft script but I just need to make my props.  As mentioned in the last post, if you'd like to help do let me know.

Anyway - got to go and play some WoW!

Safety signs - too many or not enough?

You know those really stupid safety signs?

Like this one:

Of course grapes on the floor can be tripped on.  You're in the fruit and veg section of a supermarket, check where you're walking!

I think I need more of them.

I just took a big sip of a hot chocolate and spat it down my t-shirt because it was too hot.

The clue's in the title Mike :)

The worst thing is not long ago I completed a certificate in health and safety!

Today however, I found a new, even better warning.

On a tube of Asda Antiseptic First Aid cream - you put it on small cuts and spots - the warnings on the pack include "Avoid contact with eyes, middle ear, brain"... whoa, hold on a second. Brain?!?  Who damages their skull and decides to treat it with some antiseptic cream?!?

The warning further explains that you should avoid contact with the brain "if using [the cream] in a surgical procedure".  Now I like Asda, I often shop there - it's near to my house, things are generally inexpensive, I find it a good place to do a lot of my shopping.  But I do think that I'd be worried if, when in hospital for an operation, the consultant came to me and said "Right then Mr Raven, the procedure shall go as follows - we'll give you a general anaesthetic to put you out, then we'll take a saw to cut away your skull, we'll then lightly cover your brain with Asda Antiseptic First Aid cream, replace the skull and sow you up before you wake up again. Any questions?"

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Volunteers welcomed!

Had an amazing day yesterday.

I was honoured to be asked by my friend Alex to be his best man at his wedding.  The weather for the day was absolutely perfect, tons of people turned out and all had a great time.  My son's mind blew up when he discovered that he could walk up to a plate of chocolate brownies (at the chocolate fountain), take one, and eat it - and attempt to repeat this another seven or eight times.  He also massively enjoyed running RIGHT ACROSS a rugby pitch.

Apparently I look like Winston Churchill.

All in all it was a great day and most importantly Alex and his new wife Julie were (and I'm sure still are) very happy.  Congrats guys!

Changing topics, season 6 of the Guild is coming out on October the 2nd.  If you haven't seen any of this hilarious web show, go watch some.  Very funny.

And to celebrate the launch of season 6, the show's creator, Felicia Day, posted this:

Basically, she wants people to submit 90 second videos outlining the plot of seasons 1 to 5 of The Guild as if to someone who hasn't seen the show before.  The more creative the video the better.

The best one will go on the season 6 DVD and be shown on the prelaunch show on the 29th of September, but all videos will be featured on the Geek and Sundry playlist.  Deadline to get videos in is the 25th.

I'm going to do a video but if anyone else wants in on the action let me know - you might want to be in a video, or speak in a video, or shoot the video, or edit it, or maybe you've got some cool props, or some cool ideas as to what we could do in the video?

Saturday 22nd September is when I'm planning to make my video, so if you want to get involved, get in touch before then.  Various contact paths to get to me:

Mike on Facebook
Mike on Twitter

Right - time for me to get the little one up!  Have a good Sunday folks.

I accept the embarrassment.

Something that I did in my past keeps coming back to remind me of how...odd... I can be.  So to deal with the various people thinking that they can embarrass me by referring to it, I decided to blog about it.

About 4 years back now I went to i36, one of the LAN parties organised by Multiplay.  Had a great time (as I always have done at an i-series, get down there)

Now at the opening ceremony, they were dishing out free stuff, t-shirts, lanyards, the usual stuff.

Plus some of these:

These is a Sennheiser PC 350 headset.  A very nice piece of kit, great for gaming, an all round excellent headset.

And not a cheap one.  Even today you'll do well to pick up a pair for less than £100.

Anyway, they threw one set into the crowd, and kept the second back to do something with at the end.

I thought to myself   They're going to make someone do something embarrassing on stage, then give them the headset.

I kind of have an objective when I go to i-series.  The tickets to go cost about £95 now (less if you book early) so I kind of like to try to get free stuff to the same value or more.  This sounds tricky but bearing in mind at another one I also won a Intel Quad-Core processor which I then sold for about £150, it's surprisingly possible if you take part in the various competitions and games (which I always think forms part of the festival experience anyway)

So, I made sure I got my hand up first.

And went on stage.

And did this.

For those unaware, I was attempting to replicate the female night-elf dance from World of Warcraft.  I'm aware that I missed a chunk of it out (you can see it here) and obviously wasn't that good, but at least the crowd (and many people who have seen it on YouTube since - I never thought about it being recorded!) got a good laugh.

Surprisingly to me, I got a lot of positive feedback afterwards, from people impressed that I was willing to do it.

The other thing I get is people asking for a repeat - I always say that if they're willing to give me another £100+ headset for a minutes work I'll consider it!

Am I pleased that I did it?  Ultimately, I guess so.  We're on this planet for such a short time (where we go from here we all have our own views on) that shouldn't we really make the most of it?  I'd rather be considered weird than boring.

And just to put up some pictures of other people doing stuff...

Here's a photo of my dad playing Just Dance 3 on the Nintendo Wii.  With his first attempt ever using a Wii, and using the controller with his other hand (he's left handed) he still did better than me.

And here's my son controlling the touchscreen on my tablet with his nose.

Is anybody on Twitter real...

Following on from the virus last week, it's now hit my other half pretty hard, plus my son seems to be coming down with it this morning as well which is worrying. It also seems to have given my system a kicking in general so I'm waiting for advice from my consultant and being very careful what I eat (translation - not much) so altogether I'll be happy when we're all better.  On the plus side losing a pound or two wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

I keep getting followers on Twitter, which is really cool.

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a "microblogging service" - basically you can write tweets, which must be a maximum of 140 characters, which then everyone who is following you can see.  You can follow people yourself, to see what they are tweeting.  Popular celebrity twitterers (twitterati?) include Stephen Fry and Lady Gaga - the latter has almost 30 million people following her, which is just insane if you think about it (or not for the matter).  Personally I recommend The Guild, Geek & Sundry, Felicia Day, and Wil Wheaton.

My twitter account is at RavenswingThog if you want to follow me.

But how many (I presume) fake Twitter accounts are there?  I have, at the moment in time, a huge 68 followers.

Of the 68, about 44 are work related in some manner.  A few more are friends, but there's a few which are clearly fake accounts.  When I say fake accounts (lets call em zombies), its usually a female with a random name that includes "xxx" in it and all their tweets are random garbage like "once I went outside but it rained".  Quickly scrolling through I can see at least nine zombie followers.

It just seems odd to me to have zombies trailling after me, listening to my tweets. I guess the reason why is that they follow real people in the hope that they follow them back, they then have a long list of followers and sell tweets to businesses (for $100 we could tweet to all of our followers about your urinal cake business!)

More worrying, I did a quick search on the net for "fake twitter followers", which led me quickly to a website that would check how many of these you had following you.  But to do this, the website would have permission to post tweets on my behalf.  I wonder how many people sign up to something like this, and then the app happily goes along tweeting about whatever it wants on their account.

Facebook apps do the same.  If you're not careful all types of Facebook games and the like take the ability to post on your timeline about themselves.  Generally I try to be fairly careful and reject those apps that want too much access, or if there's an option of "who sees the posts from this app" I set it so that only I can see the posts, and it doesn't bother my friends.  After all, I generate enough noise without apps helping!

I made a video!

I made a video!

You may remember that I opened up my YouTube channel recently with a (quite bad) video of me reviewing Realm of the Mad God.  The video, to be honest, isn't great, but I basically got a bit excited and uploaded it anyway.

If you want to see it it's here.

Nevertheless, as a result of that, I got a subscriber.

For those not familiar with the term, basically if you have a YouTube account, you can subscribe to other channels.  Then, when you log into YouTube, it shows you what new videos have been uploaded by your subscribers.

As an aside, this is different to subscribing to a blog (you can subscribe to my blog if you really want) - either use the icon on the right hand side with the text "Subscribe in a reader" if you use some kind of reader software, or down the bottom of the page there's an option to subscribe by email so you get updates emailed to you.

Let's get back on track.

So, I was excited that I got a subscriber.

I made them a video to say thanks.

Here it is.

The video sound is a bit low so you'll probably need to crank the sound up (and remember to turn it back down again afterwards!) but it's been pretty well received so far :)

It's a virus!!!

Hi folks,

I've been off the blog for a few days due to illness.

Monday night I had a really bad night sleeping, to the point where I was up for about 2-3 hours in the night watching videos on YouTube because I just couldn't sleep.  A sore throat had turned up out of nowhere (Monday daytime I was absolutely fine) and on balance Tuesday morning, although I wasn't too ill I was tired from lack of sleep and my throat was aching a good bit, I decided the best way to see off this cold was to take a day off work, rest up, and get back on Wednesday.

I was wrong.

Tuesday night I had as bad a nights sleep as the night before, but my throat decided that it wasn't going to do any of that throaty stuff like swallow fluids or anything, it was far too painful for any of that.  Simply making a swallowing motion was enough to make me wince in pain.

Wednesday morning I began throwing up, but I noticed that there was blood on it, and after the third time, each time the amount of blood was increasing, I thought I ought to make sure I was okay.

I went through my symptoms on the NHS Direct website and was advised to see my GP today.  Now the issue is that currently my GP's practice is down on staff (one doctor has left, another is leaving shortly) so although you can get in there, I'm reluctant to take up their time if it's not really needed.  So, I decided to use the NHS Direct telephone service to get an opinion from a medical professional.  For those that haven't used it, it's excellent.  We've used it five or six times in the past, and it's great - you get through to a healthcare worker who goes through an assessment with you, and agrees action from there.

Anyway, I got about six questions into the assessment with the healthcare worker, and she said:
 "You need to go to A&E and get checked out.  Can you get there okay?"
 "Yes, sure." Oh - might be serious.
 "Can I double check your contact number just in case?" she added.  This was definitely beginning to worry me.

As it happens we live about five minutes drive away from Hull Royal Infirmary, so I got in there and saw the A&E reception staff.  And waited.

And waited.

This isn't a rant about the NHS.  In my view, the NHS are excellent.  They get a lot of negative press, when the bottom line of the NHS is, if you are ill we will look after you.  I'm not saying that they are perfect, but when in many other countries people who need life saving treatment must have medical insurance or face a huge medical bill, I like having the NHS in the UK. I remember when my other half was in hospital getting ready to give birth to our son, and it took a while.  But in particular, I remember one point in the birthing suite where they were having a problem finding his heartbeat.

And the room filled up with staff.  Suddenly, they were needed.  And they were there, doing all the stuff you want them to.

He's been busy this week pooing on the lawn but that's another story, and shows that they did their job okay then.

So anyway, I waited ages.  I did get to see a triage nurse, and someone took my blood to check, but I waited about two hours, then my other half turned up - I was so glad to see her, it surprised me.  Then we waited almost another two hours before we saw the doctor (which took about 10 minutes as you expect).

Bottom line, I have a viral infection in my throat.  Because it's viral antibiotics have no effect.  Basically it's rest up and drink lots of water (which has been really hard because it was hurting so much to swallow - you don't realise how much saliva your mouth produces until you have to force yourself to swallow it).

I slept on and off for about 17 hours after going to hospital, and I've spent the last two days resting and basically doing as little as possible.

One fun point was the use of technology for communication.  I had to get a message to my mum after hospital to tell her that I wouldn't be going round on Thursday, and that she needed to go and tell my gran this.  This sounds straightforward, but...

• I can't speak due to throat, so the phone is out
• I'm too tired to go and drive anywhere
• My mum checks her emails and Facebook page once a day (at most).  She doesn't use Facebook chat.
• My mum plays World of Warcraft (I don't have a live subscription)

So, I went on Facebook, and found an old friend (hey Abyss) on there.  I asked Abyss to contact my mum on World of Warcraft to tell her to check her Facebook, and I sent her a Facebook message.  She then rang up to see what was going on, so my other half explained what was going on.

With having some downtime, I have actually started playing World of Warcraft again.  It's a nice and fun game and lets you be social with people (hey Guild Ravenswing!) and the new expansion, Mists of Pandaria, looks like it is going to be really good.  I just need to learn how to play my hunter - I've never really been happy since they took away my mana bar and changed it to focus - but that's just me whinging!

Anyway - catch you later!

Thog