What happen?

Just had a look at my monthly hit stats on Uberbeard and… shock, horror! What a steep drop, if I were a metaphor I’d snowboard down it.

I guess it shows just how big a difference my lack of effort in writing posts makes. That’s right, I went from an average of around 550 views a month to a level 100.. Which isn’t terrible, but could probably be attributed to spam. In an effort to boost interest, I have enabled an old friend of mine, WordPress Falling Snow!

Sucka’s will be runnin’ for some uberbeard now – somebody set us up the bomb!

Old Stuff

I’ve found my blog going a bit soft lately. I’ve had reams of sickly nostalgia wash over me like a hot flush and Uberbeard.wordpress.com (son of a bitch) has been the toilet bowl I have been using to expel it from my body.

Hmm, no. There’s something wrong with that metaphor, and not just contextually. A correction, the internet has been the toilet bowl, my blog has merely been the friend holding my (metaphorical) hair back. Of course, now I think I’m obsessed with dark metaphors.

Anyway, in aid of this horrible backwards-thinking obsession I’m developing (the nostalgia, not the metaphors) I have created a new sub-category under ‘Journal’ called, rather poetically, ‘Old Stuff’ in which you shall find a collection of re-posts of creative content I am too nauseatingly sentimental to merely trash. Lucky you, eh?

Picture unrelated, but never-less hilarious

Limericks

I found these limericks in a text file taken from my old PC. Some of them were a bit raw, so I’ve cut them out, but there are a couple of hilarious entries I’m rather proud of:

There once was a young man called Nathan,
He liked to eat lots of fresh bacon,
He ate them in rashers,
He also liked badgers,
And then he got stabbed in the eye.

There once was a person called Joe,
Who’s trade mark was often hello,
He used to say hey,
But got told that it was gay,
So now he says it anywhere he goes.

Ten Years of Music

As an interesting idea for a blog post, I thought about making a list of my favorite CDs from the past 10 years. Of course, most of them I found to be within the last 5, even if they originally released a while ago. Taking this into account, I decided to limit myself to music I was actually listening to that year, which cuts out a lot of brilliant stuff I’m sure you can presume I listen to and appreciate now.

We’ll start a good decade back (and one), to 1999, an interesting year of anticipation for the new millennium, joining secondary school and starting the interesting part of my teenage years was a fantastic opportunity for me to cultivate my interests away from the terrible taste I had as a child. This was one of those awkward beginnings for a list where I’m forced to reveal that, yes, I was only 11 years old and yes, I was still rocking out to bands like Backstreet Boys and Five, and hadn’t quite found my appreciation for the Beatles or Queen.

Still, it was the beginning of mainstream poppy rock and I was getting into this band called the Foo Fighters. They weren’t very popular before (as far as I knew) but they had this guy in them who was in Nirvana, and I knew I was supposed to like Nirvana so I gave them a go. There Is Nothing Left To Lose is still one of their best albums, and listening to them suddenly made me feel a bit cooler. A false cause and effect, perhaps, but it was a stepping stone at least!

2000

Contestants: Coldplay, Parachutes or Radiohead, Kid A (which is a bit of a retrospective choice, as I did not find this for another two years. Actually, screw that)

2001

Of course Stereophonics, Just Enough Education to Perform was contending against albulms like Sum 41’s All Killer No Filler and that oh so memorable Tenacious D.

2002

Was the year I was introduced to Badly Drawn Boy by About a Boy, Coldplay followed up with A Rush Of Blood to the Head

The Old Me

I found an old news post I wrote back when I was a young’un at Toynbee Secondary School. It was an edgy, thought provoking piece that amused me so much I felt inclined to paste it on the internet.

And today at the quiet place of Toynbee a volcano erupted… aaaargh I’ve got lava in my shoe! Anyway, Mrs. Ode the nicest teacher you could ever meet; hot, sexy, sweet so and so here is a picture I have of her…Wait a minuet? Oh my god I’ve been talking about the wrong miss Ode, yuk! Well anyway young Rachel Stevens (not actual name) has been the victim of her skitsoism, and here is the actual conversation today Brad (I’ve always wanted to say that)

Rachel: “miss can I go to the loo?”
Miss Ode: “Yes but come back quickly!”(5 minutes pass Rachel comes back in)
Miss Ode: “and where have you been?”Rachel: “to the toilet.”
Miss Ode: “did I say you could go?”
Rachel: “yes.”
Miss Ode: “no I did not now you can have a detention for that missy!”
Rachel: “but miss!”
Miss Ode: “no butts now get back to your seat!”

As you can see this horrible, horrible tragedy is still happening and we should nuke Miss Ode because she offends me and all the other students. Over to you Brad (I’ve said it again, yay!)

Cloud Reel

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/read.php?CATEGORY_PK=&TOPIC_PK=1942

http://www.spacify.com/products-515-175-Catt.Dylan~Bed.html

http://www.virtual-laser-keyboard.com/

http://illusion.scene360.com/design/5096/phantom-bike/

If form equals function, I think this is beautiful: http://www.maltron.com/maltron-kbd-single.html

R.I.P Interactive Media

It’s been a while people (Greg) and I’ve left my blog to rot like the moldy sweet potato in the back of my cupboard. No longer is it recognizable as part of a food group without first peeling back the layer of old crust to figure out if I still log on and check it’s comments, but aha! I can still cross confuse analogies like a man on fire, so I guess all hope is not lost.

I’m writing in the middle of putting my foot down, which as you can imagine is quite a challenge, but not as bad as rubbing one’s stomach and patting one’s head at the same time. I’m getting on with some work! No more slacking, “c’mon James, get to it!” Uh. Guess that’s not working out, actually, because here I am, procrastinating and writing a blog article instead of following through with the plan.

It’s cold in my house, and I’m feeling pretty demotivated, it’s hard to type as well so I shan’t be throwing out one of those essays like I oft could do before. I have had a lot to write about recently, going back to uni, getting a piercing, what I did in my summer, meeting up with people I haven’t seen in a while, there are some staple blog articles I could have pulled out but instead I’ve chosen to dabble into the rather repetitive “sorry it’s been so long’” post before moving onto the inspiration for my writing.

Interactive Media! Or it’s death, not as a whole, but as the course I am on. No longer is it unique in it’s alienation from what seems to be a well structured education system, they decided to try and improve the course by changing it into something more recognizable, and utterly bland. No offense to those who are on Digital Media courses, you guys pretty much do the exact same work as we do, but merely labeling ourselves as something different made us stand out! I’d much rather have a degree in Interactive Media then the latter, it’s more interesting, and the approach was different, that may not even have changed but now some people will never know! Luckily, I still managed to pick up an FdA in Interactive Media, but it’s not got a mark! One of those other ways we were different last year was that it was just pass or fail. Not remotely what I wanted, sure, but it was different, and that is totally art school. Fuck yeah.

So Interactive Media is dead and along with that is the older course aims. I was part of the end of a generation and for once it seems to have favored on my side, instead of all those time I came out of school or college watching them improve everything as soon as I left. I don’t feel so bitter, although I’d love to get my full degree in Interactive Media.

Anything to feel a bit special.

Oh right, they changed the name of the University I’m studying at too, which also sucks… But that is a story for another time! (perhaps tomorrow?)

RE: Pudding

This article has had a lot of interest since its posting.

Interestingly, not because people are interested in how much I like Christmas Pudding but actually because of the link to a Ninja Panda. 

Thanks to the power of WordPress stats, I know that the highest search term to link to my blog is ‘dougie poynter’ with, at the time of writing, 475 views. Behind that is ‘badass’ with 180 odd and then, amusingly, ‘ninja panda’ with a solid 90, of course ‘panda ninja’ also has 45 so collectively I put that at 135. Other amusing (but less linked) terms are ‘christmas jumper’, ‘evil panda’, ‘my vajayjay is painin’ and ‘midget pun’.

There is a reason for me to bring up this amusing (pointless) fact, however, because today I took a trip down to the corner shop near uni and, amongst the sweets, gossip magazines and inane collection of household items you might want in an apocalypse there was a ninja panda.

That’s right. For £1.99 I could be the proud owner of an awesome ninja panda toy, an offer I couldn’t refuse! I gave up my lunch for this strange hybrid of Kung-Fu Panda, Bruce Lee and Wolverine! That’s how dedicated I am to the cause, folks, all I had left was 16 pence for a Chuba Chup!

Anyway I have run out of interesting things to say so bugger off.

It’s so wrong…

That I have had 73 links to my blog from the tag ‘Children’s Porn’.

That is all. =<