In a bid to improve my marks last year, so as to give myself some options after this degree, I promised myself to not play computer games during semester. Now I was never a super-avid gamer, and apart from the Half-Life series, I could quite honestly do without games to a large extent, so it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. That self imposed ban has been active for a 18 months, however, my brain works in such a way that it was a dead certainty an alternative procrastination device reared its head á la Medusa, and downloadable TV seems to have plugged that hole for the last 12 months. I’ve downloaded TV shows since I came back from overseas 4 years ago, but thanks to my self imposed gaming ban last year the rate at which I download has increased exponentially. I haven’t counted, but thanks to the ban as well as two brothers who are also dirty pirates, the family downloads something like a twenty separate TV series, from Britain, America and elsewhere.

The Australian winter holidays (all 3 weeks of them !@$!#$!@#$) herald a dry spell for TV. A lot of my British TV (Buzzcocks, QI) run annual seasons from September through to about February, while the jewel of my British crown - Doctor Who - has just finished its run on the BBC. Furthermore, most of the decent American series are well and truly on their summer breaks, leaving Top Gear as the lone downloadable program at the moment. No disrespect to the Top Gear guys - it remains one of my most highly anticipated shows, but the lack of TV has meant that I’ve been forced to cast my net further these holidays, spending a good chunk of time out of town, as well as downloading more and more movies (today I watched the 1989 Batman movie for the first time in about 10 years…. it was awesome) and even testing the waters with odd sounding series that I wouldn’t ordinarily bother with. I tried Gossip Girl, but it reminded me of the vomity feeling I got when I watched the OC. I’ve been downloading old seasons of Buffy, which would have been one of my favourite TV shows in the old days, but now seems cheesy and annoying. Imagine my joy last week when I found a new TV series that looked somewhat interesting - Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Now, after imagining that joy, imagine my horror and foetus-aborting shock when it dawned on me, ten minutes into the first and only episode I downloaded that this show seemed an awful lot like the crummy, daytime TV hogging stalwart of American cheese, 7th Heaven (EDIT - it’s by the same freaking people!#@$#). Christian overtones, soft focus and a ridiculously unrealistic look at Americana, although admittedly focusing on the mature and not-so-daytime-TV theme of teenage pregnancy. Even so, someone should have warned me - midyear American TV stinks.

Maybe I should just spend my holidays looking forward to the next semester, or just drunk - that’s worked in the past…

Pete

Life has returned to normal. The Blues are back to losing, exams are over for another semester and I’ve joined a gym.

Hold on, that last one surely can’t be classified as normal. Pete the lazy, unfit layabout? Joining a gym? Don’t make me laugh.

Pete

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while will have noticed the distinctly higher-than-usual post count over the last week or two, which can mean one of two things. Either its exam season and Pete is procrastinating more, or he’s suffered a spinal injury and is in bed for 20 hours a day.

Fortunately for my mobility but unfortunately for my sanity and social life the former is true. My first exam is tomorrow and in a bid to fend off last minute study this morning I took my sweet time with the newspaper, then realised that last night in San Francisco there was some wanky Apple developers conference, widely tipped to unveil plans for the iPhone in Australia.

Normally I wouldn’t care a huge amount. Although I’d love to have an iPhone (my little brother has a jailbroken one) and I probably will look into buying one myself eventually, I am by no means an Apple fanboy and I don’t really salivate over new tech, but with exam study the only other option I must admit I’ve spent the morning reading up on last night’s announcements.

On the surface it’s all good news. The new iPhone will support 3G networks, meaning it’ll be good to go on all Aussie networks, and the price has dropped significantly - almost by half - to USD$199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB gadgets. There’s also a host of other revisions like the addition of GPS, but they are all secondary issues. What seems to be getting everyone’s juices going is the price drop - but when you look into it it isn’t a drop at all.

Firstly the phones can no longer be self-activated via iTunes. You have to sign up to a plan and get your phone in-store. This means cracking the phone and using it on other networks, while still potentially possible will be futile as the owner will still be paying monthly fees with a specific carrier. This also means the current market for selling phones overseas will most likely dry up.

Secondly, the cost of the cheapest plan for US owners has increased by $10 a month, and this is part of a 2 year plan, effectively increasing the overall cost of the package by $240 - more than the price drop on the initial phone purchase. It should be noted that I’m basing this off US plans - pricing for the Aussie iPhone rollout, due for release on July 11 is still unreleased.

Finally (and I’ll admit this isn’t really a direct influence on the cost of the phone) is the current list of providers in Aus - a choice of Optus or Vodafone, neither of which have a pinch on Telstra’s range or other’s affordability. I’m a 3 user myself, which in my opinion couples affordability ($29pm for all the calls + SMSs I make and then a little 3G content thrown in) with coverage (once outside 3’s limited coverage the service automatically seamlessly switches over to Telstra’s 2G network for calls and messages at no extra cost) quite nicely, so I’d love to see the phone on more networks.

I don’t know - it is after all just a phone. Maybe when this current contract dries up I’ll think about launching myself into the iPhone’s loving arms, but until then there’s just too little information and too much cost to seriously consider or warrant any real excitement.

Pete

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in the blog yet - the parental units have been overseas for over a month now, leaving the three now-adult Hay kids to frollick among ourselves. It’s actually turned out really well - far better than I had thought we’d manage couped up together - maybe its the pressure of exam season or the fact that we’re rarely all home together…

Anyway the reason I brought this up is Sunday has become our regular shopping day. Yesterday afternoon it became abundantly clear that we were running out of household necessities right about the same time that the Carlton Vs. Port Adelaide match started to play on telly. Now there, my friends is the mother of all predicaments - watch the football and go hungry that night, or go shopping and miss the footy?

I chose to go hungry, figuring one night of cup-a-noodles would be fine, however by quarter time it became clear we were going to get drubbed, and so I abandoned ship and drove down to the supermarket. An hour later, all supplied up for the week, we were 40 points down, and I was quietly pleased with my choice of activity for the afternoon.

However, early into the final quarter, led by Murphy, Kruezer and Simpson we kicked the first two goals. All of a sudden there were less than 20 points in it, and the Carlton boys (with the exception of Fevola strangely enough) started to play real footy.

Splitting my time between the kitchen and the TV in the family room I managed to get a 1.5kg chunk of beef into the oven to roast as well as potatoes par-boiled and roasting aroung the meat. The final siren sounded, Fevola kicked his second goal and the Blues won the game by 12 points.

However easily the best part of the match was that the fridge was full, dinner was less than an hour away and best of all I hadn’t witnessed the very ordinary, slippery play of the middle hour. Win/win!

Oh just a comment on our streak - WLWLWLW - that’s quite a pattern in anyone’s books. If only we can string a couple of wins together, then all of a sudden we’re in contention for the eight.

Bring on the pies (for the second time this season already??!?!)

Pete

The new Pendulum album was released a few weeks ago, and although it has moved in a different direction to 2005’s ‘Hold Your Colour’, which remains one of my favourite debut albums, ‘In Silico’ has been played quite a bloody lot on both my iPod and in the car as I’ve been driving around the place.

Although ‘In Silico’ is undeniably still DnB based, its a lot edgier, a lot rockier, a lot live-er than its predecessor. And that in my mind is a good thing - its still definitely a dance album but it emphasises the live element of the band as well, and wonderfully.

The current single Propane Nightmares may sound like the song name from an upcoming Slayer album, but the track surprisingly shows off a Mariachi band (to awesome effect) alongside a stunning synth riff. Granite shows off Mario sounds for the first twenty seconds before the tempo breaks and steamrolls into a typical Pendulum DnB trip. The Other Side features androgynous voices a la Benni Bennassi’s dancefloor filler ‘Satisfaction’ as well as one of the best basslines on the album. And finally, The Tempest is perhaps the strongest final track I have ever heard on any album, save ‘A Day in The Life’ by The Beatles, from the stunning ‘Sgt Peppers’ record. That is perhaps an unfair comparison however, considering just who the Beatles were and how much truly amazing music they wrote.

Pendulum are certainly different from the norm, and by no means everyone’s cup of tea, however the band’s change in sound surely indicates at least a step towards more widespread acceptance, and - I assume - more listeners. It’s just a pity that the guys relocated from Perth to London a few years ago, because as a result the soonest we can realistically expect them back here is November, which is a shame.

Just to close, here is that final track I was raving about - The Tempest. It is one of the rockier songs on the album, and it does go for over 7 minutes, but if you do wait it out, the final 2 minutes (which are lyric-less) contain perhaps the greatest electro-rock chord loop I’ve heard in years, and all around it is a very solid song. That said, I’m a sucker for fake endings and electro-based crescendos. Ahhhh

Pete

I’m sure we all have them - guilty little pleasures that we’d rather not admit to the world. There’s something odd about the human condition where we take great pleasure in that which we shouldn’t. The totally artificial, overly dramatic and brain-wastingly inane. Over the years I’ve congratulated myself time and time again for avoiding what could be considered guilty pleasures. Reality television never really hooked me, soap operas are just terrible, I can’t stand pop music and I’ve never been one for celebrity gossip. To make matters worse for what I’m about to admit, I’ve often looked down on those brave enough to admit their own weaknesses.

But this week I have to get something off my chest. Something that may disgust and disappoint many, many readers (who am I kidding - I don’t have readers to disappoint :P). I have, over the last couple of months become more than just passingly interested in dodgy, American Pro Wrestling.

Just typing those last few words gave me the jibblies. I remember first hearing about wrestling when I was a little under 10. I may have seen one taped fight, and remember hearing that it was faked, and that was about it - free to air TV in Australia had the sense to not show wrestling, so I wasn’t exposed to it (apart from friends occasionally bringing it up at school) for the rest of my childhood or early adulthood.

However that all changed this year. One morning in late January I got up to find about 8 of Richard’s friends huddled around the TV for a live 10am start to some Wrestling pay-per-view. I’d heard of Royal Rumbles, but wasn’t aware that it was actually a once-a-year event that attracted over 50,000 people to a stadium show and millions more to pay for it on TV. I sat down with Rich and his mates and watched it out of sheer amusement (and not having anything more to do that day), and that should have been the end of it.

However, much to my dismay the exact same thing happened a few weeks later - I got up one Monday morning to find Richard and a similarly sized crowd lounging in the family room watching another pay-per-view. I resisted sitting down and watching with them, but later that evening heard all the details of the match and shocked myself at recognising names, moves and storylines. Although I hadn’t realised yet, I was starting to take an interest.

Sometime between then and now I started watching snippets of the three WWE weekly shows on the weekend, and then, slowly I started to take an interest in the ridiculous storylines, obviously choreographed fights and girls in bikinis. That humble pie was mine.

The worst thing is I don’t know how to stop. To be perfectly honest I don’t know if I want to stop - but something I can be sure of is that 6 months ago I spent 0 hours a week thinking about pro wrestling, whereas this week the only thing I could think of on Tuesday morning was to download Monday morning’s extreme rules PPV (that’s right - I’m too much of a tightarse to even finance my guilty pleasure) and watch it.

Oh on a sidenote the Undertaker was robbed, but it was a damn good match. Same for the stretcher match, although I’m much happier with the result, even though no-one seems to like Batista much. Oh god what AM I DOING?!@$#?!@

I hate myself.

Pete

Channel Ten once again broadcast a delayed Grand Prix yesterday (this time being the Monaco GP) and to make matters worse that smarmy English twat won it, but at least the race was thoroughly enjoyable and Webber managed to sneak in at 4th.

Although I still haven’t had the luxury of being able to watch the race and get live timings on el computer at the same time, as promised by Ten HD, I found myself a comfy beanbag and settled infront of the TV at about 10:30 last night for what I expected to be twenty minutes of monotonous street racing before an embarrassingly simple crash by the incredibly ill-fated Mark Webber, followed by my own retirement - to bed - at maybe quarter past 11, half an hour into the race.

It was not to be though - the race, especially the first half, was one of the most entertaining Grand Prix I’ve had the pleasure of watching. Kovalainen started in the pits after failing to start his engine; Button smashed up his nose cone by ramming into the backside of Heidfeld’s BMW two laps in; Rosberg and Glock had a brief rendezvous which resulted in more broken nosecones on lap four; Massa retardedly missed a corner and ended up halfway down a cobbled laneway; Hamilton touched the wall after aquaplaning in the wet and punctured a tire (which actually was a blessing in disguise - he got to refuel and retyre at a perfect time for intermediates); Coulthard and Bourdais had a delightful smash that resulted in lots of carbon fibre on the track and the safety car being deployed for a couple of laps; Heidfeld drove over the front end of Alonso’s car at the hairpin during a particularly tasty bit of racing; Raikkonen raced an entire lap with his front wings hanging like pendulums from the nose cone; Piquet completely obliterated his ride in a single car smashup towards the end of the race which resulted in another 5 or so laps under safety car conditions; and, finally, Raikkonen lost control of his car four laps from the finish in position 5, smashing into the back of Adrian Sutil who was racing the race of his life, resulting in the tragic retirement of the Force India car but not Raikkonen’s Ferrari. That said, that last smashup led to Webber, who had raced a very, very good race with the exception of his timing for putting dry tyres on, coming 4th instead of 6th. Still, it would have been nice to see Sutil take some points - I suppose it was conceivable that he may have ever podiumed.

Anyway I’ve always liked the Monaco GP - racing through the city is damn fun and the Ferrari’s typically stink because their straight line speed is meaningless on the windy track, but this will go down as one of my favourites.

It’s just a pity about that Hamilton…

Pete

Fucksticks.

That’s the last time I stay up until almost 8am just to watch a soccer game. Especially considering I’m quite sick with a cold right now, and don’t really like soccer anyway. Stupid, bloody Man U - haven’t you won enough this year?

I’m going to bed. Grumpy.

Pete

Alice Springs, Northern Territory

A car driver in Australia has been fined for strapping down his beer rather than his young child. Police said they were “shocked and appalled” when they pulled over the car south of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory. They said the 30-can pack of beer was strapped down between two adults in the back, with the five-year-old child unrestrained on the floor. The driver was handed a fine of A$750 (US$709; £362). The fine was for failing to ensure a child was wearing a seatbelt as well as driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle. The car was pulled over on the Ross Highway last Friday.

Constable Wayne Burnett said: “I haven’t ever seen something like this before. “This is the first time that the beer has taken priority over a child… The child was sitting in the lump in the centre, unrestrained.” When Constable Burnett handed over the fine he said the driver “just looked at me blankly. He didn’t get it,” Constable Burnett said.
“I asked him about the fact the child was unrestrained and the beer was, and he said he didn’t know anything about it.” Superintendent Sean Parnell of Alice Springs police said the incident was a “timely reminder” to ensure “all passengers are secured”.

Thanks to the BBC World News.

Stunning. At least he has his priorities straight.

Pete