The second series of Ashes To Ashes kicks off on BBC tonight, and it’s fair to say that I’ll probably end up watching it. But not necessarily enjoying – I hated the first series. After an epic end to Life On Mars the creators decided to drag back the characters (well, minus Sam Tyler) and try to do it all over again. The only problem was, they’ve removed almost everything that was great last time around.

Please ignore the quote of the front of DVD box-set. Ashes To Ashes is not better than Life On Mars. Take a look at the back of the Spider-man 3 DVD. You’ll see a belter of a quote from Mr Jonathan Ross – “This is Spidey’s best adventure yet.” It just goes to show that these quotes mean bugger all. Let’s move on. What makes Ashes To Ashes so bloody terrible?

First of all – the main character. Sam Tyler has been replaced with an annoying, stuck-up woman called [Note: I had to look this up. Really shows the kind of impact the character made doesn't it?] Alex Drake. So instead of an interesting character dynamic between Tyler and Gene Hunt as they battle to out-do the other whilst solving the crime, we get a corny love story in which nothing of any real interest happens. It’s just a scene per episode of sexual tension. Maybe this would be OK if the main character was remotely likeable, but she isn’t. I would hope she’s killed off in the first episode of the new series – it might make the remaining episodes a bit better.

Alex Drake is a trained police psychologist studying Sam Tyler’s suicide. OK, we all know he jumped off a building to return back to his fantasy world in 1973, but what happened to him in that world? Is he still alive? No. “Dead”, Ray tells us. And let me guess… his body was never found? What a fantastically written ending. But I’ll let that slide – you never know, more may become of this in series 2.

And now to the rest of the characters. Gene Hunt, who was utterly brilliant in Life On Mars is a shadow of his former self. He just doesn’t have the same spark this time around. Ray has gone from the moody, bullying rival to a curly head fool, and Chris would be fine, it it wasn’t for his relationship with “Shaz” Granger – which is almost has unbearable as Drake and Hunt’s. Even the weird-ass clown that follows Drake about isn’t a chilling as the little girl that haunts Sam Tyler.

The storylines, whilst not horrible, aren’t anything worth shouting about. In fact – I can’t really remember what happens in specific episodes. Whether that is a result of poor memory or poor writing is your call. But the main story revolves around Drake’s attempt to save her parents, who are killed in a car explosion when Drake was a child. Drake survived as she gets out of the car moments before in an attempt to retrieve a balloon. Yes. It’s as ridiculous to watch as it is to read. Throughout the series Drake has flashbacks to the balloon, very similar to Tyler’s flashbacks of a woman in red being chased through the forest. Do you see a pattern forming here? Admittedly – I didn’t see the final twist coming (which I won’t ruin for you), so the writers do earn some points there. Reluctantly.

All in all – the whole thing was so disappointing when you consider how brilliant Life On Mars was. If you’ve never seen the original you might enjoy this. But for everyone else, watch only with your standard for enjoyment set considerably lower.

I just wanted to share my two cents on this whole issue.

Here we go: I don’t care. If anything I’ll benefit from the changes. Why? Because I mostly go to YouTube to watch, not to post. As long as my favourite channels continue to upload content then I have no problem. I’ll still watch my favourite YouTubers, but now I can see a whole load of “professional” content while I’m there.

And even if some of my favourite YouTubers get fed up with “NewTube”, they’re not going to stop making videos. Last time I checked there were still many, many alternative video websites to choose from (I’d recommend Vimeo). Plus I (like so many other people) am also following the blogs, tweets and so on of the people I’ve subscribed to – it’s not like the relationship between viewer and brewer will be lost amongst the new corporate content.

The point is YouTube itself isn’t important. The content is, but at no point has anyone been forced to commit their online presence soley to one service. When MySpace went south, everyone started to jump to Facebook. But ultimately it makes no difference. People still had profiles, chatted with their friends, posted pictures arranged events and so forth. Likewise, video content does not start and end with You-frickin’-Tube.

Blunty has made a great video-rant highlighting how stupid all this is. Take a gander if you please.

Hey hey – look what’s still here!

Yes, I’m back. Though it’s quite possibly just for one post, as I’ve got to explain a few things. First of all, it’s time to put Rie Fu fans everywhere out of their misery. My “review” of Who Is Rie Fu? is nothing but a joke. A jest. A wind-up. A pathetic attempt to inject just a slight bit of humour into a blog that was dying in spectacular fashion. Though I didn’t get the “props” I imagined when I first tapped out the post, I did enjoy reading every one of your comments (the reaction the post made for a far funnier read that the content itself – for that I love you).

Sure, I expected to catch a few feelings from a couple of obsessive fans, but it’s been over a year and I still get the occasional comment. Enough is enough.

So please just let it go. I don’t hate Rie Fu, or her music. I’ve never even listened to the album – which is something I thought anyone with an ounce of common sense would realise. Let me repeat: I have never even listened to the album. The review was a joke. I do not hate Rie Fu. There, we’re done.

I know, I know. You’re sick of hearing about Rie Fu, right? I mean, it’s been pretty difficult to avoid the huge promotion for her English debut album – “Who Is Rie Fu?”. Turn on the TV, she’s there. Turn on the radio, her song will be playing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had trouble getting her tunes out of my head with all the airplay she’s been getting.

And as for the high street, holy cow! Her album isn’t due for release until the 3rd March, and as early as last month I began seeing huge posters in the HMV windows. Clearly Britain is caught up in Rie-fever.

But is all this critical acclaim and media coverage justified? To find out, I had a look at her forthcoming album in a track-by-track analysis, to see what the fuss is all about.

1. London (Like many foreigners, Rie Fu’s attempt to list UK cities is short and not-so-sweet – 1/5)
2. Beautiful Words (I guess beauty is in the eyes ears of the listener… or something – 2/5)
3. Decay (Fu’s attempt to highlight the state of British teeth falls flat on it’s arse – 2/5)
4. Life is Like a Boat (Stinks of fish, and people throwing up over the side? – 3/5)
5. Shine (Take That make an unexpected, and unwanted appearance – 1/5)
6. I Wanna Go To A Place… (Don’t let me stop you – 3/5)
7. Negaigoto (Probably has a really deep meaning to it. It’s lost on me – 3/5)
8. 5000 Miles (You better get going then… – 4/5)
9. Tiny Tiny Melody (Tiny Tiny Score – 1/5)
10. ROSE (The CAPS LOCK curse shows it’s face and ruins an otherwise flawless song – 2/5)
11. Realize (Realise. It’s a UK album afterall – 1/5)
    
12. Sunshine Of My Day [Live] (Again, you’re in England, so no Sunshine here. Just ask Rihanna – 2/5)
13. Both Sides, Now (Rie Fu shows her love for threesomes, and I for one can’t wait for the video. Bonus points – 6/5)

Overall, it’s a spectacular entry into the UK Punk Rock scene. There’s no doubt that this album will sell by the bucket load, probably going platinum in it’s first week of release.

And beyond that? Well, let’s just say move over Jacko, because Thriller is about to get kung-Fu’d.

Two-player co-op blogging is a lot more fun than regular blogging – especially for BS posts about nothing.

So I made a fan video made using clips from Bones (Season 2 – “Aliens in a spaceship”). The song is “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley, though you probably recognised it already.

Quote(s) of the day:

“My songs of the day are so lesbian today.”

“Jamie made a video. It’s a fan video. For Bones. I don’t watch Bones.”

With the release of the latest iPod nano, classic and the all new touch – all of which have the Cover Flow feature from iTunes – it’s clear that Apple are keen to make artwork a popular means of browsing your music libraries. Just one friggin’ problem – iTunes randomly loses your artwork.

Take The Sex Pistols – Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols. I know for a fact that I downloaded the artwork for this album. Imagine my surprise frustration when I loaded it up to find it missing.

This isn’t actually the first time this has occured. It’s happening on a regular basis, with the iTunes updates having no effect whatsoever.

When I first got my iPod classic, I went through the tediously long procedure of finding the artwork for as many albums as a could (no iTunes account = no downloading artwork from Apple) and applying them. This should be a task that any iPod owner only has to endure once. Clearly iTunes has other ideas.

So, I’m interested to know if there are many other people out their with lost artwork. Are there any fixes for this bug? Is this a problem across both Windows and OS X? Comment me.

And I might be deleting it soon. Yeah, already. There are a number of problems that really put me off ever using the service. Here we go…

1. It’s a ghost town – I don’t know whether it’s just because the interface is so clumsy, but there doesn’t seem to be an awful lot going on. One photo a day is supposed to push people into commenting more often, but the place seems deserted.
2. It’s impossible to find anything cool - It’s pretty difficult to find any pictures that you’re interested in. No tags, no categories. There are groups, but these don’t make things any easier. Searching Fotolog results in a Google style list of titles and descriptions – no thumbnails. What good is that?
3. The ads - I don’t mind ads in free services, providing they don’t get in the way. On Fotolog they distract you from the pictures themselves. That’s no good…
4. It’s ugly as hell - That combine with a pretty unintuitive interface makes for a pretty lousy experience.
5. The comments - When you do find some sort of activity. There seems to be a lot of MySpace-like BS comments. Also it seems most of the members don’t speak English… I’ve got nothing against that, but if I can’t even understand what anyone is saying, what’s the point?

In short, I’ll stick with Flickr in the future for my photo-sharing needs. I thought this could be like Twitter for photos (restrained in an interesting way, with an awesome community) but the lack of a decent way of finding good content/members ruin something that could have been pretty cool.

My brother got a Wii. I have to say, it’s fucking brilliant. But here’s why we won’t be buying Wii Fit -

Hope you all had a day to rival the birth of Christ.

Sometimes brilliant ideas just pop into your head. J.K. Rowling claimed that the entire Harry Potter universe suddenly appeared, fully-formed in her head while on a train. Well, this is bigger than Potty Harry. Forget starting a blog, running a podcast, writing for a games website, owning my own forum and setting up my own website – this is my most ambitious project yet.

Remember Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everyone”? The UK Playstation forums will be attempting their own version. Each line will be taken by different forum member, recorded individually and stuck together by myself – complete with the full track in the background. Genuis.

Check back in about a week’s time to see how far we’ve progressed.

Before work, I stepped into the nearby O2 shop to have a look at the new iPhone. I had no intention of picking one up (I can’t afford one for starters, and I don’t want one for main course) but I was keen to have a quick play with one to see if it really was all that.

Before I get into it, let me say now that I only played with it for a maximum of 5 minutes. Therefore my opinion matters very little, and is no more than an immediate opinion.

Multi-touch disappointments: Let’s start with the most obvious. The first thing I did on the iPhone (actually I lie, I went to the camera first and took a picture of the table) was go to the photos option and flick through the photos stored on the iPhone. After a couple of flicks, and a few pinches to zoom in and out, the novelty had worn off. Scrolling was the same – cool at first, but it doesn’t make it better to use.

Landscape mode: When I came across a landscape picture, I turned the iPhone on its side expecting the photo to fill the screen… nothing. Broken. I moved onto another iPhone (which worked) but it was neither as fast nor as responsive as I expected it to be. Again, I was a bit disappointed.

Texting: I would just like to re-interate what I said above, as it seems most crucial here: “I only played with it for a maximum of 5 minutes”. I hated the SMS. The buttons just seemed to small and so I repeatedly kept hitting the wrong key – very frustrating. BUT! Many users have said that the texting becomes much easier over the first few days, so I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. I can’t imagine I’d ever be able to use it as well as physical keys, though.

Best iPod ever?: I feel like an utter plonk. I never even tried the iPod function – if I’m honest I completely forgot about it. As I will be in town again tomorrow (and I want to try out Cover Flow mode) I’ll try and find time to pop in again and give it a whirl. Update: I did manage to go in and give the iPod function a go. For obvious reasons I can’t comment on the sound quality, but I was very impressed with the way the touch screen is used to scroll and for Cover flow.

Safari: Though I didn’t stand there for too long surfing the internet via WiFi, I did give it a very quick go. Typing URLs seemed easier than texting due to the ability to surf in landscape, but it still wasn’t easy. Tapping to zoom was useful, though I couldn’t work out how to zoom out in the brief time I spent with Safari. In terms of speed, the iPhone over WiFi seemed acceptable, if not good.

Red Text = BAD // Blue Text = OK // Green Text = GOOD

Overall, I wasn’t overly impressed with the iPhone. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and say the device didn’t actually look that stunning in real life, but I have to admit the OS is brilliant.

The biggest problem I have with the iPhone (aside from, “It’s too damn expensive”) is that multi-touch doesn’t really solve any problems that exist with regular keys, it’s just another way of doing something – and it seems to create more problems along the way.

I’m definitely not green with envy at this point. Say hello to iPhone? “Hello, and Goodbye.”

Buying a new gadget (whether it be a mobile phone, mp3 player or whatever) is always a pretty difficult thing for me to do. I’m always after a perfect device – which doesn’t exist – and it can get pretty frustrating. You’d think it’d get better once I’d part with my cash. But it gets worse. Much worse. At best I’m obsessive, at worse I’m a crazy, irrational pain-in-the-neck – and it’s all about the little things.

Take, for example, the phone I picked up less than 3 months ago (a Samsung D900i if you’re interested). It’s a great phone, and does pretty much everything I need it to do. But there’s one tiny little thing that bothers me…

The slider creaks on the left side when a little pressure is applied. You probably have no idea what I’m trying to describe – so check out the following video to get an idea of the ‘problem’:

That’s it. That’s what is driving me insane. Am I crazy? Based on this topic, and the reaction my brother gave me this morning, I say that it’s a possibility.

It’s irrational, ridiculous, obsessive… I know all this, but I still can’t get over it. Perhaps what’s stranger still, is that it’s probably annoy me less if the right side of the phone also creaked a bit. At least it’d be ‘balanced’.

Quote of the Day:

“I had an injection in my bum.”

Last night, I spent close to one and a half hours sorting out my incredibly messy folder. Nothing was divided into subjects, and it lacked anything like a reasonable order – everything was stuck in haphazardly. Now, it’s possibly the most organised folder ever… or something like that

It’s only a shame I didn’t take BEFORE and AFTER pictures, then you could really appreciate the mountain I overcame last night. Personally, I think it should be remembered in history – along with WW2 and Mr. Blobby.

Remember, and organised folder/desk/drawer leads to an organised mind… or something like that.

Quote of the Day: Teacher (after purchasing ‘macaroni’ and cheese):

“Wait a second! This macaroni is just cauliflower!”

Blog Bits: Speaking of organisation, does anyone remember those old Time Out ads that were on a fair while back?

“I’ve just spent the last hour tidying my desk. How CAN you work in that mess?”

*Window opens, thus the tidy desk is attacked by a gust of wind. The tidiness is no more*

“Noooo!”

This Friday, I get to skip a whole afternoon’s worth of lessons (that’d be 2 then) to go to Speech Day. The school loves Speech Day – any excuse to pretend that the students are achieving something is welcome. This year, I’ve (quite controversially) been given the Psychology award.

Quite frankly, I don’t see why. Not that I’m about to turn it down. It’s also obvious that nobody else thinks I deserve the award either – but screw them.

“Jamie, did you get the Psychology Award?”

“Er… yeah. Though I’m not sure why.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you deserve it either.”

Fuckers.

Oh, and Wellock will be receiving the Religious Studies award. If the school are sensible and the awards go in alphabetical order, that’ll mean we’ll be sat next to each other. Wellock came up with the incredible idea of attempting to record a This Is Podcast – Speech Day Special. I don’t know quite how we’ll pull it off, but I’m determined to make it happen.

Quote of the Day: (After watching an entire Simpsons episode in RS)

“Someone didn’t have a lesson plan.”

Those of you that remain on Daily Grumble for more than a few seconds, you may have noticed a shiny-new addition to the affiliates list in the sidebar – “This Is Podcast”.

But what is This Is Podcast? It’s an incredibly entertaining show hosted by myself and Wellock, featuring our humorous voices as we discuss important matters. Matters such as “Who shot JFK?”, “Did NASA fake the moon landing?” and “How do they really get the jam into donuts?”.

We try to put them out as regularly as possible, but unfortunately we have VERY different timetables this year. This makes planning to do an episode a bit hit and miss. As such, there hasn’t been a new episode for around a month.

Hopefully we’ll get a new one out by the end of the week. Until then, check out the current library of episodes.

Now this is interesting. Since I stopped writing, the visits to my blog have slowed down to no more than a few a day – I wonder if anyone might return now that my fingers have begun tapping away at the keyboard. Somehow it seems unlikely.

For those of you that hate when I talk about technology (Phil, that means you), you’ll be glad there’s no such talk here. I can sort of see how it gets pretty tedious, as I rarely ever say anything that hasn’t been said before (and when I do, I always think that someone else could’ve said it better). Think of this as catch-up post, to make up for my desertion.

Despite Bonfire night not being until tomorrow, it seems everyone has decided that they’d much prefer to watch the fireworks on a Sunday. It’s all I can here right now.

BANG!

Whoosh!

“Oooooooooooooh!”

BOOM!

I’ve just over a month ago I started work at my new job – stacking shelves, helping customers, selling, working the stock room – that sort of thing. It’s not so bad, and I get money – and money is goooood.

This blog could really use some more pictures, couldn’t it? Yes, I agree. I plan to pick up a MicroSD card at some point in the near-future, which’ll make the process of transferring photos from phone to PC a whole lot easier. Samsung do supply some software, but it doesn’t work (at least, I can’t use it- and I’m a geek). Such is life.

Top 5: Things I heard today*

1. Radio Potato is not dead
2. ZOMFG! New video!
3. Phil suffered a heart-attack due to excessive pleasuring.
4. Booth** and I may in fact be the same person – though we are still awaiting confirmation
5. I’ve been spelling “yesterday” wrong all my life… what an embarrassment.

*or yesterday.

**If you don’t know who Booth is, then find out.

For now, I’m sticking with Twitter.

On Twitter, I have a small group of people that I enjoy reading tweets from and a (smaller) group of people following me. I’ve communicated with many of these people through twitter (replying to tweets, direct messages etc.) Do I really want to start all over again?

No, I don’t. Jaiku is prettier, has a few more features (most of which I don’t use, eg. I turn off most RSS feeds when I subscribe to new people – leaving jaikus, tweets and photos) and Google.

I don’t even care about threaded conversations. For me, sending short sweet responses easily from my phone is great. How easy would it be to comment in a thread from my phone? Not as easy.

Twitter has simplicity, and (currently) has the people I want to hear from. Twitter wins.

R.I.P. Twitter (July 13, 2006 – October 9, 2007)

Jaiku is joining Google. While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful.

Well, maybe Twitter isn’t dead quite yet…

In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now.

I’m glad I already own JamieClark@Jaiku now.

It’s proving less than successful, as I’m receiving absolutely no tweets whatsoever during Noon and 1PM. Phone notifications are switched on, I checked (twice).

I expect it’s got something to do with the fact that (on a clock) my Stop time arrives before my Start time, and Twitter can’t understand that I want it to sleep from 1PM to Noon the next day.

Anyway, I’ve sent a message to the Twitter guys, so hopefully I can find a workaround – otherwise I may have to say Goodbye to SMS updates. And that would definitely take some of the shine from the service.

I’ve just been reading Robert Scoble’s brief post refering to Louis Gray and this practice of bloggers linking to themselves.

It’s not what Scoble himself says that bothers me, but more some of the comments that have appeared with the post.

David Morris writes,

If you need to refer to a previous blog post then you just need to state things like the name of it and when you posted it. Then people can go through the blog’s archive if they actually want to check the source.

Whilst I agree it’s definitely a bad idea to link to one of your own posts when you’re trying to us it as a source to back up your argument, there’s nothing wrong with linking to a previous post when you’re merely referencing it (eg. About a month ago I talked about…).

Surely it’s poorer idea to expect your readers to search for the post themselves?

For example, I wrote a post called, ‘Apple iPhone? Yes, yes, yes!’ last January. Go find it. Alternatively, you can click here. I know what I’d find easier.