Kids with Phones

It's been a long time since i did anything on this blog, but today i saw a very insignificant bit of news (or so it seems), it seems Jamie Oliver has done something that i think a lot of parents should do and has banned his 11 y/o girl from having a mobile phone.

I think it's about time parents started to realize that their kids shouldn't be getting mobile phones at an early age. Nearly all of us have a smartphone these days, there doesn't seem to be a lot else worth having anymore, smartphone or not however, every phone seems to have the ability to take, send and receive pictures, they also all seem to be able to access the internet via WiFi or mobile data connection.

This for a teenager (and younger) is open to MASSIVE abuse, we all know what you have access to with modern mobile phones and it doesn't matter what measures/filters are in place, kids see that as a challenge, an obstacle to be overcome and more often than not, they manage to find a way. I mean let's face it, it's almost impossible to police the entire internet and every social media website.

Having smartphones at an early age just opens up all sorts of doors to kids that shouldn't be available to them yet, they have access to 18+ material at their fingertips and there's no way to stop that, as well as the adult content available, they also have the ability to send and receive pictures, i don't think i need to elaborate on that, i think we all know what the average teenager is like, we were all there ourselves once...

Aside from all of those problems there is also the simple fact that a smartphone in hand or up to the side of a kid's face is a massive target for thieves, an easy one at that. Is it really smart for kids to be advertising their very expensive phones at school and out and about?

There is however one or two positive points to a kid/teenager having a mobile phone and that is the ability to keep in touch with friends and family and is very good to have in case of emergency (hopefully it wouldn't come to that for most kids) 

This got me thinking...

I remember one of my very first phones when i was a teenager, it was the Nokia 3310 (most of us have probably owned one at some point) and all it could really do was send and receive TEXT messages and phone-calls...

Instead of having to ban kids having mobile phones, why not make newer mobile phones that only have SMS and the ability to speak to people?

There should be some kind of law that permits a kid having a mobile phone with a camera & access to the internet. Let's face it, there are plenty of other things we have to wait to be 18+ to use or view, so why not do it with smartphones too? 


That would mean that as soon as they were old enough they could have a full-featured mobile phone, but up until then they only have the ability to call and text. This would limit exposure to things they should not be seeing or doing yet. 

I know it's probably impossible to enforce, but i think that it's disturbing to see the kinda stuff that kids have the ability to view these days, i mean not so long ago i heard that an 8 year old boy raped a girl! He shouldn't even know what sex is at that age! (well.. not much about it anyway)

I know i sound like an old git saying that kids shouldn't have smartphones, but when you think about what they enable kids to access, it's actually a bit disturbing... give them simple phones that allow nothing but text messages and calls, this will also lessen the likelihood that they'll get their phones stolen.

What do you think? 

Do you think this is a good idea? 

Let me know!

Garden Photography... Again!

I'll keep this post short, the weather has been nice again today but a lot more cloudy, so spent more time indoors today, i popped out a short while ago there (around 8pm ish) and took a few more pictures out the back. If you read my previous post about the Great Tit that is nesting in our Bird House then i have a great update on that! If you haven't read it, check it out HERE, this time i managed to get the Great Tit whilst sitting on the fence so i didn't need to use motion capture, that means i was able to use a much higher picture size and quality. I'm very pleased, although i still worried it was going to fly off so i didn't take time to center all the pictures.

So here are some pictures i took out the back a little while ago today...

Top of the tree you see in the following bird pictures and a very grey, cloudy sky.

Cloudy Sky again, i like how the clouds look though in these pictures.

And here it is... The Coal/Great Tit that's living in our Bird House, perched on the fence!

I zoomed in on the previous picture so you can see it's cute fuzzy head!

Another picture of the Coal/Great Tit.

Nice wings in this one.

Is it a bird? No it's a plane! I couldn't resist it as it went overhead. See all the little bugs in the air too?

Lovely Weather Today **UPDATED**

Hello people!

Aside from dinner, Danielle & I have spent most of the day in the Garden with her father and our little Dog Cocoa. The weather has been amazing today and i think we've both been sunburnt. While we were out there i spent a while taking pictures of Cocoa, Danielle and some other random bits with my new-ish camera.

We've also got a little birdie nesting in our bird house attached to one of the sheds, so i set up the tripod in the hopes of catching the little cutie going in and out of it. I think i tried about 5 or 6 times to capture it going into or coming out of that bird house before i finally got results.

I used the motion capture setting on the camera, which takes around 30 pictures in total at the rate of 5 pictures per second! Which is bloomin quick (there's probably cameras a lot better than this but for me its great), but no matter how quick that camera takes the pictures, getting it to focus and start taking the pictures before the bird disappeared into or out of the house was very difficult. I found i had to try and see it a while before it enters the house and as for exiting, the second i saw its face i clicked the shutter down (it was already being held in focus)

After hours of sitting around i finally managed to get a half decent series of pictures showing it going in the house and another series of pictures showing it coming out. It was going in and out of the house every 15-30 minutes, most likely feeding it's young.

The only downside to using the Motion Capture setting on the camera however, is that the image size & quality is reduced. Most of my images are shot at 4608 x 3456 and are 16 mp. But the images from motion capture are only 640 x 480. (For the sake of putting tonnes of shots on here & to show you how well it works i turned the pictures into two seperate animated GIFs)

Other than the bird, i tried out my Super Macro function to take pictures of a couple of the plants that have flowered in our garden. We're needing more plants with colour but these came out quite nice i think.

Anyways take a look at a few of the many pictures i took today & let me know if you like them!

Hope you all had a great day too!

Note: You need to click the birdhouse pictures for the GIFs to play for some reason.

Cocoa Looking rather content in the Garden

Cocoa being playful (This picture was cropped, guess why lol)

Knackered Cocoa

Finally Realised that she can rest like the rest of us & not run around the whole time.

Tried using Super Macro on an Ant, showing you the original & zoomed in picture

One of the flowers in a small basket on our back steps

Flowers at the side of the Garden, i love the beauty of the flowers next to the bricks. Kinda works.

GIF 1 - Bird Entering the Bird House.

GIF 2 - Bird Leaving the Bird House 

**UPDATE** Thanks to Andy Moore on twitter, who left me a comment about the pictures above, i now know the type of bird nesting in that house. It's called a Great Tit. Just so that you can get a better idea of what this bird looks like standing still (which mine didn't seem to want to do) i found a picture on the web of one that looks almost exactly the same! (See below) 

**UPDATED AGAIN 03/06/13** Managed to get a picture of the actual Great Tit standing still on our fence, check HERE to see it!

My Birthday (29th April)

As you will have guessed from the title, it was my birthday on Monday (29th) and i had a fantastic day. I spent the day chilling with my fiancé Danielle, had a takeaway, cake and beers and still managed to find time to fix a problem with her Mum and Dad's PC. 

So other than getting a year older (25 now!) I got some cool prezzies and some money to buy some stuff with.

I got some cool games from Danielle, had a lot of fun on them already!

Danielle also got me the best film I've seen in ages, a film I've been waiting years and years for and my sister got me the latest Bond film. (not one of the best I've seen but i have all the others)

And finally my favourite present of the lot, you guessed it, from Danielle. My new camera that I've taken all these pictures with, what i'll be taking all of my pictures with from now on (the pictures in the last post i did were also taken with this camera)

So thankyou to everyone who gave me money and the amazing gifts and a massive , massive, special Thankyou to my darling Danielle for making the day so great and giving me such amazing gifts! I love you very much!

So now that I have a better camera to take pictures with, i can update this blog a bit more often. The next posts will likely be the pictures i have taken of my Final Fantasy figures, ones i got months ago. 

Thanks for reading!

BGT? Hungary's Got Talent! VIDEO

I've not done a blog post in a while but i'm going to keep this short and sweet.
Firstly i dont know why acts from other countries are even allowed to participate in BRITAIN'S got Talent but to be honest I'm glad they are because if they weren't i would never have seen the group called "Attraction" from Hungary. They make pictures and show stories using their shadows. This has to be THE best unique audition i have EVER seen!

Check it out!

Black Ops II - League Play thoughts and observations

After joining the Team Deathmatch series league half way through and doing league play for the very first time this month, i thought i'd share some of my observations and thoughts on it. 

After my first five placement matches (of which i won all of them) i was placed in the platinum division. Which to my knowledge is the top 20% of active players. I was quite proud of this alone, especially considering there's only 1 division above that and that's the master devision (top 2%). I'm not entirely sure how they work it out but i guess i was there for a reason. 

Anyway, the league finished on Monday and after struggling the past couple of weeks to get in the top 10 and stay there, i failed to do so *sad face*, but i then realised that i had joined the league games half way through season 4. If i had joined from the beginning i think i could have managed the top 10. I managed to reach 7th place but that was very short lived after a few matches with idiots on my team, then managed to claw back from 19th to 8th and again more idiots took me back to around 15th. 

So after a lot of back and forth in the rankings, i finally finished the season at rank 18 *yay*

So at least out of the 250 people in my sub-division i managed to get in the top 20.
Im currently waiting on my league best emblem to appear on my playercard.

So a few of my observations about the league play. It could be a lot better but i guess it could also be a lot worse. I think one of the worst problems with league play is the matchmaking system, to be quite honest i would have expected to be matched with people in the same division/league as me, instead of that i found that i kept getting people who were a lot worse on my team and people that were a lot better on the other team. For example quite a few matches i would end up with people in lower divisions and the other team would have more than one master on it. 
That makes for an unfair advantage for the other team. I also found that sometimes, regardless of whether or not you have people that look like they could be good on your team, they turn out to be utter rubbish.
More often than not i found myself to be on the losing team, even if my own personal score was good there would be 2 or more people with scores like 5-15 or something like that, that meant that because of other people's failings i more often than not, lost a large amount of points. 

I personally went into the league games expecting a challenge and a higher class of player, only to find that there were still plenty of idiots who would continually run into someone camping in the same spot over and over and die, more often than not, those idiots were on MY team.

I didn't really enjoy the league play as much as i thought i would, mainly because of the idiots i kept getting teamed up with. I'm all for a challenge but when i have utter morons on my team, a challenge becomes "the impossible". 

So my advice is this. If you want to play league play on Black Ops 2, RUN IT IN A TEAM. I unfortunately don't have a group of people to play Black Ops 2 with regularly (although i am hoping to stumble across some) but if i did have one, i'm fairly sure i could have done a lot better. Being paired with bad teams not only takes it's toll on your sanity but your score in the leaderboards too. 

In fact i'd suggest trying to find a team for any Black Ops 2 game modes, because of the popularity of the game and the lack of needing to actually have a brain to play it, it means that you will more often than not, come across total morons on your own team. 

If it wasn't for the fact i want to finally achieve the top prestige in one of these games, i would NOT bother playing it as much. It makes me despair at how dumb half the population is. 

I did like the XP that league play gave me and the ability to choose any weapon i wanted (pretty much), i did like the games when i didn't have idiots on my team, but unfortunately that was not often enough. If i were to do it again, i'd definately find myself a team to do it with.

Good luck with the game people!

Feel free to leave any thoughts in the comments below :)

Quality Spammage

Haha what the F*** is this!?

I felt the need to share this high quality spam comment posted on my TV in Recent Years = FAIL post.

hello!,I like your writing very so much! percentage we communicate more approximately your article on AOL? I need an expert in this area to solve my problem. Maybe that's you! Looking forward to peer you. Feel free to surf to my weblog Juice fasting

Percentage we communicate more approximately your article on AOL? --- WHAT?! 
Looking forward to peer you. --- hahhah errr ok then?

It's safe to say i did not surf any weblogs there!

God i love random, pointless and unrelated comments on my blog posts. 

So please unless you are being funny don't send me trash like this. I mean it is funny but wtf haha!

Just thought i'd share this hilarious spam comment with you all :)

Peace.

Spawn Trappers are scum. Black Ops 2 #blackops2

As you may have guessed. This post is about spawn trapping or whatever you personally call it. I think this has to be the lowest, most annoying thing that can happen to you in Black Ops 2. I've had plenty to moan about with this game and the people that play it but of all the things that have annoyed me this is the worst!

I have the unfortunate tendancy of being thrown into games that are already in progress and on the team that are getting absolutely fucked up. Not only that but now i've noticed, more often than not, getting messed up like that involves getting spawn killed. I joined a game earlier and was repeatedly spawn killed straight away, i literally couldn't move as the opposing team had every exit covered. It threw me into a rage. 

1. Why the hell should i have to put up with getting put into teams that are losing all the time?
2. As if it's not bad enough that i'm put into a badly losing team, why should i then have to deal with getting spawn killed.

If i get a good team i am more often than not, in the top 3 on my team. But all i keep getting is teams of fools that get me killed either directly or indirectly (the scorestreaks that kill me because they keep dying) I'm getting totally sick of it now and it's ten times worse at the weekends.

Anyway onto my main point.

When i started playing this just after Christmas i never encountered this problem, i mean it did happen but it was a really rare occurance. But lately i've noticed it happening more and more. Every time i end up on a team bad enough, we end up getting spawn trapped/killed. I can usually get out of it but the rest of my team are usually too dumb to escape.

The thing is, i can understand that spawn killing people is easy kills for the other team but seriously, how do they feel good about doing it? I think i've done it once and i felt disgusting for it, it's seriously such a low thing to do, it's like shooting fish in a barrel you're almost guaranteed to be able to keep killing people as they spawn. I mean if they flipped that situation and the people doing it were the ones being slaughtered they'd be raging and probably leave.

Why do people feel its ok to do it when they know they'd hate it done to them?

I don't understand what people get from it, there's no skill involved, there's no challenge, it doesn't make you any good at the game. It's mindless, pointless and very low. The whole point in the game is to test your skills against the other team and try to win. Not to just trap the other team and get easy kills. There's no skill or challenge in that is there?

I can safely say it's something i'd never do again and i would hope that the people doing it feel like scumbags and stop doing it.. but i know that nothing will change. 

It's just stupid that the people doing it, would hate it done to them... I hope they feel the rage when it is done to them and realise how low and disgusting it is.

So if you're one of those people, SHAME ON YOU SCUMBAG.
If not, i feel your pain because it has to be the single most annoying, angering thing that can happen to you on Black Ops 2.
Good luck people.

Thanks for reading!
 

TV in Recent Years = FAIL

As you can probably guess from the title, I'm not very impressed with the television in recent years. 
I've noticed (and its not hard to notice) that all there seems to be on the tv these days are reality TV shows, documentaries and cooking shows or reality tv and cooking shows combined (you know what im talking about). Between all the reality TV the fictional series' are just as bad! They are based far too much on real life, shows about law firms, country singers and awful sitcoms.

Im genuinely fed up of it all. 

If it's not bad enough that there's nothing but shit on the tv anyways, with the occasional decent program on to break the monotony (American Dad, Bob's Burgers or occasional good documentary), they decide to repeat all the programs we've seen an hour later on another channel (+1) and as if it's not bad enough that they do that, they then repeat programs that were on the same channel earlier on in the day and or a couple of days later!

Fantastic program, Check it out!

In summary:

Shit on tele --> Repeated on +1 --> Repeated later on in the day on the same channel --> Repeated again on +1 and then repeated again within a few days.
So not only do you see the same tripe on the tele multiple times in a single day, you then get it on the tele again within the week!

The rights to this picture are owned by www.CartoonStock.com

I really don't know why people pay for the privellage of being shovelled excrement to their tv's.

It seems that nobody has any imagination any more. When i was younger (and i'm only 24) there used to be more on the tv that was totally made up, imaginary, things that told a story. I mean TV and Film are supposed to be things that take you away from every day life for a few hours, something that you can relax in front of and enjoy, something to take your mind off of any stress or worries and entertain you for a while.
But instead, it now has a tendancy to remind you of just how appalling the world is and remind you that you're still part of it. 

Star Trek TNG in the 90's Fantastic Show!

Lets do a comparison between 10 or more years ago and now. (before anyone is too picky i've not researched every program that was on tv back then and what there is on tv now, i'm just voicing my opinion)

Back in the Day:

Star Trek - Science Fiction.
Fresh Prince of Bel Air - Funny family comedy

Sliders Cast

Sliders - Science Fiction
The Avengers - Fiction
Spooks - Fiction (loosely based on reality i suppose)
Jonathan Creek - Funny Crime Fiction
The X Files - Science Fiction
The Generation Game - Family Gameshow
Take Your Pick - Family Gameshow
Catchphrase - Family Gameshow
Family Fortunes - Family Gameshow
Wheel of Fortune - Family Gameshow
Thunderbirds - Fiction
Criminal Minds - Crime Fiction
Captain Scarlett - Fiction
Stingray - Fiction
Batman (TV Series) - Fiction (not the cartoon)
Superman (TV Series) - Fiction (not the cartoon)




and many many more things that required an imagination.

Now:

Come Dine with me - Reality TV/Cooking Show
Family Guy - (people will hate me for this) Unfunny "comedy" where they string jokes out too long.
Dinner Date - Reality TV/Cooking/Dating Show
Four in a Bed - Reality TV
The Only Way is Essex - Reality TV

The Wonders of Jeremy Kyle *sigh*

Geordie Shore - Reality TV
Embarrassing Bodies - Reality TV/Medical Show
24 Hours in A&E - Reality TV/Medical Show
Take Me Out - Dating Show
One Born Every Minute - Reality TV
Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners - Reality TV
People Like Us - Reality TV
Gypsy Weddings etc - Reality TV
Storage Wars - Reality TV
Jeremy Kyle - Reality TV
Pawn Stars - Reality TV
I'm a Celebrity Get Me out of Here - Supposed Reality TV
Big Brother - Supposed Reality TV
X Factor - Reality TV/Talent Show
Britain's Got Talent - Reality TV/Talent Show
The Real Housewives of  ___ - Reality TV shows
How i met your mother - Poor Sitcom 
Bob's Burgers - One of the rare things worth watching Fictional/Animated Comedy
American Dad - Another thing that's actually funny Fictional/Animated Comedy
Most Haunted - Meant to be Reality TV but is actually Fictional shite

and there's loads loads more where those came from...

I think I've proved my point, regardless of whether or not you and i watch a couple or all of those programs on that list and whether or not you or i like them is irrelevant. There just seems to be a major percentage of TV shows that are now based on reality. Even the fictional TV shows are based largely on reality.

With the introduction of all these different services that allow you to watch programs that you missed, there surely should be no need for +1 channels and repeats of show. 

I think it's time to change more than the channel, TV programs themselves need changing!

 I think there needs to be a major overhaul of the TV channels and what is showing on them. Scrap all the +1's and repeats, start to produce and air some original and creative tv shows, shows that use imagination and actually entertain people. Shows that actually get people thinking and shows that make people forget (just for a little while) where they really are and their stresses and problems. Bring back some fun family gameshows and tone down some of the cruder shows aimed at only adults. I guess a much shorter version is that i think fun needs to be brought back to TV and the seriousness of every day life shouldn't be bombarding tv screens. After all, it's supposed to be Entertainment.

I think until decent tv shows start to make a return, i'll stick to my ps3 thanks. 

Even films aren't as good now... but that's a rant for another day.



Thanks for reading!

Selling some stuffs

Hi there folks,

Just a short post to tell you all that i'm selling some things that i no longer want or need. Things from many a year ago and a few things my partner has given me to sell (thankyou Elle) so feel free to check out my ebay listings HERE

Elle is also selling a few things so if you would like to check out some of her amazing bargains, please click HERE

Thanks for reading, I'll be posting some more stuff soon. As you may have noticed I've taken a short break from blogging, this is because there's been a distinct lack of feedback from anyone and to be blunt i can't be bothered if nobody else is bothered lol

So if you do want to read/see more, let me know!

Thanks

Marcus

Have a good weekend

Hi all!
I'd like to start by saying i hope you all had a good valentine's day, i hope you all treated someone and or got treated yourselves! I had a lovely day with my fiancé, she's the most amazing person ever! We spent the day watching tv together, we were meant to watch Valentine's Day on dvd but we never did for some reason, i took her breakfast in bed and she treated me to a day off cooking the dinner with a lovely Chinese and had a nice Strawberry and cream tart after :) 
We watched Ghost Adventures, Hollyoaks and Fake Reaction, amongst some other less interesting things lol It was just nice to spend some time together and i didn't play any games so that we could do that. 
We got each other a little something too, but the gifts didn't last until the day, they were opened a good few days ago! haha she got me the ARTFX Shadow Creeper, to go with Bahamut Sin, so i'll be showing you that later on sometime and i got a Mally Makeup set that she wanted from QVC. 
We don't generally bother too much about valentine's day as such, it's more that yesterday was our 4th year engagement anniversary. What a fantastic four years it's been too! I hope you all find someone who is as special to you as she is to me! I think most of us deserve that in life. She has her own blog too and she's playing Resident Evil Director's cut on and off, so head over and check it out, it can be found HERE.

So that's just a little update about my fiancé and myself, i'll be adding more stuff to the blog soon, more figures and i'll add another section of my Final Fantasy I gameplay soon, either today or tomorrow. I'm going to start on Final Fantasy XII soon because it's bugging the hell out of me, i literally do not remember a thing about it, but i have it in my game collection, so i MUST have played it at some point. It's so weird. I remember all the other games i've played. So yeah once i have my emulator sorted for it (so i can take screenshots and don't need to hook up the ps2 slim) i'll get playing that!

I've also been playing Black Ops II lately. So if anyone is alright at it and actually knows how to play anything objective based please feel free to add me, my psn is PeachUK, just make sure you let me know you've added me because you read my post or something because i have a tendancy to decline random friend invites.lol. I generally play Kill Confirmed and Demolition, but demolition does my nut in! I always end up on the team who doesn't seem to realise that when defending the bomb, all you need to do is camp near it and make sure no F**ker gets planting the bomb! Instead i end up with fools rushing around the map trying to get kils and inevitably getting themselves killed in the process. I cannot count the times i have saved our team from a close detonation or from losing due to not planting the bomb, i often see that i've had the most plants and defuses in a game because i'm the only one trying to do the actual objective! lol So if you treat demolition like team deathmatch, please, please don't bother.
Anyway, rant over lol

What are we all doing this weekend? I hope people have something good planned. I guess even relaxing is good! I don't really know what i'm doing, probably TV and games. I want to try do something nice for my lady, she's always putting up with me on games, patience of a saint! So i'll try come up with something to make her a happy lady.

Feel free to get in touch! Barely anyone has! 
And i wish you all a Fantastic Weekend!

More Final Fantasy I Gameplay

Between black Ops II Sessions I've been playing more of Final Fantasy I. So here is the next installment of my Final Fantasy I game. I will be posting pictures of my new addition to my figure collection soon, so check back regularly for more updates etc...

Well i guess I'll have to go somewhere else then, for now...

Oh here's that vampire some folks were talking about...

I guess he wants a fight...

So this is what he was guarding... I'm sure someone told me a particular giant likes gemstones...

I guess they were right! Handy...

I'm sure many women will disagree with that statement!

Clever man, i'm glad someone knows what to do next!

I don't like the idea of probing a vampire's chamber...

Right! Probing it is then...

Guess I'll probe here then...

Thanks for clearing that one up for me...

Rude...

Time to teach him some manners!

That's him taught, Vivi fell asleep...

Cool, a talking crystal.

About bloody time i lit one of these up!

Woohoo! We win, let's go through that portal behind the crystal...