If you ever experience sound problems, please ensure that the “hardware acceleration” on the sound tab of DXDIAG is set to full. If you experience disconnections after changing your login name on ANY GAME, please try chaning it back to what it was previously. You’ll find it works wonders.

The latter example cost me a keyboard.

Remember I was taking about playing darts and the nifty little spreadsheet I knocked up to record my scores? Thanks to the wonderment of Google Docs, you can see this document online…

linkypoo

Fascinating stuff, I’m sure you won’t agree.

EDIT: Seems you need to sign into Google to see it, even though I ticked the “no sign-in required” box. Sassen fassen rassen.

EDIT THE 2ND. Well, I’ve outgrown Google Docs already, filling the spreadsheet to its limit. Therefore, I bring you the “Open Office” version…

http://www.scribcam.co.uk/Darts.ods

Well, Saturday night was the 2009 Eurovision song contest. As per the last 6 EVSC’s I’ve been at work, or otherwise engaged, therefore, have missed out on the “festivities” for want of a better phrase. I prsonally like to think of it as personal torment for all of the good music I’ve listened to over the last 12 months.

Thanks to the wonderment of modern technology, I have the whole program on disk, ready for me to play and endure, therefore, 2 days late, I give you my own personal review….

So, all I have to do now is hit play…. I have a habit of going off on a tangent, so I’ll try and keep as close to the subject as I can. Fat chance of that happening, but meh….

01. Lithuania

Well, Lithuania’s entry was garbage. Seemed to be the same note over and over again. Considering they did the “utterly brilliant” track called “Wolves Of The Sea” from last years’ contest, this has been a total disappointment.

02. Israel

Vast over-use of the words “there must be another way”. That’s the name of the song, unsurprisingly.

03. France…

Patricia Kaas sings something in French. She sounds and looks as if she’s spent a little too long in the cemetary. This song really isn’t going to get going. By the way, I have no idea who she is. The song ended with a poor dance move. Didn’t like this one at all.

04. Sweden

Sweden’s usually a good song. Operatic vocals meets upbeat backing track. This one’s not bad. Unfortunately, the microphone doesn’t seem to be able to handle the vocal. I liked it though. Not as much as I liked Carola’s “Invincible” from several years ago.

05. Croatia

Unfortunately, I don’t have several hours to type out the name of it, or the artist. A slow, dreary thing that sort of just… stopped.

06. Portugal

“Flor-De-Lis / Todas As Ruas Do Amor”. Guess who just remembered he can pause so he can get the titles correct? Ahaha. Graham “Not Wogan” Norton describes this as a “happy song”…. Riiight. *presses play*

I like this. Accordian-tastic. Bit of flute. Heard worse.

07. Iceland

“Yohanna / Is it true?”. I can’t decide whether I like this one or not. Ah, a key change. Yes, I do like this. Well, I did until the end, it just sort of fizzled out at the end.

08. Greece

“Sakis Kouvas / This is our Night”. God, this almost belongs in a 1980s bargain bin. Another predictable, yet nicely executed key change. Definitely got better as the song went on.

09. Armenia

“Inga & Anush / Jan Jan”. 1 point for the silly song name. 1 point for the catchy tune. -2 points for the key change that could be spotted from space, which appeared to be stuck in there just to make the song that little bit longer.

10. Russia

“Anastasia Prikhodko / Mamo”. The host country’s song. This will probably be awful. The LED screens around the set show her in a prerecorded sequence. Very reminiscent (video-wise) of “Nothing Compares 2 U” except she seems to get older as the song goes on. Of course, the afore mentioned song was written about drugs (according to a taxi driver I spoke to once), while “Mamo” appears to be a song about a well established arcade emulat…. oh, wait, that’s Mame, isn’t it?

11. Azerbj… Azurgib…. over there… *points east*

“Aysel & Arash / Always”. A team of writers appears underneath the title of the track, and it’s a mile long. This had better be good, otherwise quite a few people have wasted their time….

I must admit, that this song starts off with a woman with very bendy legs. I’m sure, if you pause it at just the right second, you get a good glimpse of vag. All of a sudden, I don’t want to press play. I’ll write the timestamp down and examine it later. Ahem.

Ok, so the woman singing sounds a little like Shakira. the guy looks like he’s painted his hair on, and… oh no, he’s fallen into the “Let’s pretend to play a weird looking instrument, even though the instrument tune is clearly coming from a backing track”. Here comes the key change… trust me, it’s coming…. oh, fuck, it didn’t.

12. Bosnia & Herzegovina

“Regina / Bistra Voda”. Oddly, I have usually liked B+H’s songs over the previous years. This one’s not bad. Catchy tune. Didn’t like it as muchas their earlier effords. I’d give it a C+

A “commercial break”, which is prompty fast-fordwarded. We, here in Blighty, don’t have commercial breaks, so therefore we are shown a film of policemen singing, or something. Don’t know, fast-forwarded it.

13. Moldova

“Nelly Ciobanu / Hora Din Moldova”. I really am not expecting a lot from this one, going by the title. Oh god, she looks like Rene’s wife off “Allo, Allo”.

OK, scrap the previous remark. This one’s my favourite so far. Upbeat, catchy, liked it a lot. May consider rewinding it and playing it again.

14. Malta

“Chiara / What if we”. Hmm, starts off with the classic 1990s pan-pipe sample. Not a good start. It’s only getting worse. I put my laptop down for a few seconds while this song was on. That was by far the worst so far.

15. Estonia

“Urban Symphony / Randajad”. Instant thoughts when this song started… “Sounds like Cyndi Lauper’s version of “I Drove all Night’ “. The singer is clutching a violin. I hope she doesn’t fall into the same trap as #11 did…. oh. She did. The rest of the track consists of her wailing down the microphone. Not much of a song, then, is it?

16. Denmark

“Brinck / Believe Again”.

OK, what the hell is this? A song written by Ronan Keating, and the singer pretending to be Ronan Keating? Why not get Ronan Keating to sing the song and represent Ireland? I don’t get it… Apart from the obvious RK rip-off, sounds a bit like New Order

17. Germany

“Alex Swings Oscar Sings / Miss Kiss Kiss Bang”. Flashback to 1990. Almost total rip-off of Madonna’s “Hanky Panky”. For once in my life, I actually agreed with Graham “Still Not Wogan” Norton with this comment “Well, that’s the low point over”.

18. Turkey

“Hadise / Dum Tek Tek”. Nah, don’t like it. I wonder how many countries are in this bollocks? (Aw, getting tired and grumpy, are we? – Ed) Fuck you.

19. Albania

“Kejsi Tola / Carry Me In your Dreams”… You know, these are all starting to sound the same. Another pointless key change just to pad out an otherwise very weak song.

20. Norway

“Alexander Rybak / Fairytale”. Christ almighty, what have I said about the singers playing an instrument? This guy flings a violin about randomly, not once but twice. Oh, wait, three times. His head looks like a cube.

21. Ukraine

“Svetlana Loboda / Be My Valentine (Anti-Crisis Girl)” Well, with a title like that, you’d expect this to be amazing. And, with only three songs to go after this one, I’ve perked up a little. And, once again, the singer plays an instrument, this time the drums. It’s not as bad as the previous incarnations, however.

22. Romania

“Elena / The Balkan Girls”. Oooooh, the Romanians have found an interesting loophole in the rules. The singer shown with the microphone isn’t actually singing the song. There’s a woman to the far right of the stage singing.

23. United Kingdom

“Jade Ewen / It’s My Time”. Words cannot express how much I detest this, but it’s just given me the best laughof the “show” so far. Some guy plaing the violin… she walks down the stairs and right into his arm.

24. Finland

“Waldo’s People / Lose Control”. Well, I think I’m totally Eurovisioned out. I think “our entry” has disappointed me to the point of submission.

25. Spain

“Soryaya Arnelas / La Noche Es Para mi”…..

Aparrently, at that point, I fell asleep, because I woke up near the end of the results. Well, what can I say? We have comfy furniture. I didn’t even bother seeing the end of the results, as I have since found out that Norway won. Remember Cube-head? Yes, him. Sigh.

This has been a terrible post, but am I fuck going to waste 3 hours of typing. Roll on Eurovision 2010!

Well, for those of you who hve been follwing the blog recently, you will be aware that one of the more thrlling stories recntly has been the orderment of a new dartbord. My faithful old one, which, admittedly hadn’t been used since 2001ish, was finally replaced.

After an absolute shocker of a day on Monday, I returned home, full of the joys of death, expecting for it not to arrive. The day had gone so wrongbefore then, that I wouldn’t bet on smethng like that not happening. OK, that sentence is barely english, but that’s the best you’re going to get.

Apologies if there are any missing letters in this post. I have just invested in a new wireless keyboard, which actually doesn’t seem to be very good at being wireless.

So, anyway. The morning. I was home, and decided to watch the grand prix I’d recorded from Sunday. I’d done a great job at keeping away from finding the result, meaning that I was able towatch a pre-recorded race and not know who’ won. That doesn’t happen very often.

I tidied a bit, and ate 2 packets of Asda’s Onion bhajis. They’re nice, but I seem to have got into the habit of overcooking them, meaning that I spend more time picking the black bits off than I do actually eating them. During the tidying, a large white van reversed up the long, sweeping gravel driveway leading towards Mercuryvapour Towers.

The delivery guy disappeared into the back of the van, and emerged clutching a large, square box, wrapped in plastic.

Excitedly, I rushed to the door…

“Is this… mercy vapour towers?”
I reply. “It’s pronounced MERCURY VAPOUR. You know, as in the type of lightbulb?”
He looked at me quizically, before handing me the package, and shoving one of those delivery recorder things in my face

“Sign this”.

Reluctantly, I signed. Tsk. Some fuckers will stop at nothing for an autograph.

So, there I had it. My first dartboard in 16 years. Lovely. I unwrapped the package, and was presented with… er, a dartboard. And some darts, which I’d also ordered seeing as my previous ones had gone walkabout.

I could hardly contain my excitement, as I stood it up on the sofa, and began throwing the afore-mentioned sharp objects at it. Obviously, the back of the sofa is not the exact professional height for a dartboard, so I guess you can’t be surprised to learn that the first dart to leave my hand missed the board entirely, and ended up sticking out of the sofa. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I was also considering using the excuse “Well, that’s because the last time I played Darts was in the Queens. With Coatesy. When he missed my epic final “Round The Clock” shot. Which still haunts me to this day”.

Er, anyway. Within the hour, the board was set up in my prime location, the off-shot.

Unfortunately, I’d misjudged just how small the wash house door is, so the board is a little lower (by about an inch or so) than the tournament standard of 5′ 8″ from bull to floor, and considering the majority of my shots are more than a foot from their intended target, I doubt this is going to cause a problem.

You may also notice that in the picture, the board is “upside down”. This isn’t an error. It just seemed to sit better on its holder that way.

The bull was christened on 11th May 2009, at 11:40AM…

Thrilling stuff.

Some other stuff happened in the day, such as the delivery of a telly, but by mid-afternoon, all I wanted to do was sleep. Throwing 24-gram bits of metal at a circular contraption made from painted sisal fibre, complete with steel inserts, manufactured in Kenya, marketed by a company based in Bridgend, becomes tiring after a while.

Now, you might be wondering why I’ve been sat in front of the telly, typing this into the website, when I should be in the off-shot playing the game I so dearly love… the answer is that I’ve actually managed to break one of the darts already! How good is that? I think that’s a new record for breaking stuff immediately, unless you count the time I bought “Mrs Jones” by Counting Crows, from Ebay, and accidentally rolled over the CD with my chair about 4 hours after receiving it…

Back to the damaged dart, it appears I sheared one of the threads on the “stem” of the dart, (the bit holding the flight) meaning that when you throw it, it now simply flops about, usually falling to the floor when the dart hits the board. Gutted.

Therefore, I’d just like to have an official whinge….

“Winmau, why did you include only one set of stems and flights in your darts? You clearly know just how flimsy these parts are, and that your product (or in my case, two products, darts and board) is useless without them. I remember buying a set of darts from you about 10 years ago, and was happy to find at least two sets of stems and about six sets of flights?”

I might officially complain. I probably won’t. I’ve ordered 10 sets of stems and 10 sets of flights from ebay, and they should be coming this morning, meaning that you won’t have to put up with my whinging.

IN OTHER NEWS, I… er… am struggling to think of anything else that’s happened over the last few days. I did go for another works night out on Wednesday. Somehow, for the past 11 years of being able to legally drink, I’d totally missed “The Clarry” as a place to drink. I can’t believe this was possible. Especially as we were shortly in the prescense of an Internet celebrity. Yes, Divvy Sharon walked past our group and asked where the toilets were.

After one in there, we headed about 2 doors away, to the Jacksons Arms, which has an awesome jukebox. Wednesday was the very first ever time I’d played “The Way it Is” by Bruce Hornsby And the Range on a jukebox. It felt odd watching people going about their business playing darts, etc. whilst listening to songs I wanted to hear.

I returned home, and hammered the dartboard for a bit longer, despite my handicapped dart causing all sorts of problems. Now, all of this talk of darts reminded me that back in 1998, I’d created a spreadsheet that would allow me to calculate a game of “501″, so I could play by myself (oo-er). It was a simple affair, which was created in order to give me a little bit of raw data to learn spreadsheets a little more.

I was amazed to find that I still had it, and that I’d been using Open Office (back then, it was called Star Office) since 1998. I was even happier to find it still actually worked. I’d have expected a 10-year-old file in an obscure format to be unreadable these days. Thankfully not! Since its creation on 11th November 1998, I’ve amassed a total of 60,523 points on it.

What’s surprised me more is just how quickly my brain works the figures out. I could go into the whole reason why I have to do the sums manually at the moment (no room for the laptop being the main reason) but I’d only be boring you with statistics in an otherwise utterly thrilling blog post.

Completely changing the subject, I’m still feeling a litle nauseous, as I have just had to clean the fridge out. Now, this is something that, as a male, I shouldn’t have to do, as it is a woman’s job (baiting for comments… done) , but when there’s a funky smell coming from the fridge, and there’s more out-of-date stuff in there than fresh stuff, it is time to investigate the cause of the exceedingly nasty niff.

After removing the (once green, now yellow-orange) apples from the fridge, and the smell still being present, it was time to investigate a little more. The bag of shortbread pastry mix, with a best before date of Jan 2007 was also ruled out of the equation as it was stil sealed. Suddenly, I looked under where the bag was laid…

BINGO! It turns out that some dairy product, possibly tinned milk, probably “fresh” milk (it was hard to tell), had leaked into one of the salad tray things, and was producing a pungent aroma that the world’s best cheese factories would have been proud of.

I was surprised at its consistency. It was the same colour and texture of scrambled egg. I removed the salad tray, and with the smell becoming stronger and my eyes beginning to sting, decided it was best to dispose of this in an open environment. I took the salad tray into the back garden and threw a bucket of water. I swear, I’m sure I saw the mucky mixture attempting to reform itself on the grass. I’m expecting a knock on the back door any second now, and a little voice asking me to put it back in the fridge, as it was too warm outside.

Next in the series, Jamie attempts to find out where the smell near the toilet is coming from… or maybe not.

Just in case something goes wrong, I’m just posting to state that I’m going to be working on the site for the next couple of hours. I’ve noticed that it’s running a little sluggish in places, so the site’s databases are probably in need of a spring clean, especially the stats table. I’d forgotten to clear it for a couple of months, so it was stupidly big in size. I dropped all of February’s information from it, and it seems to be running a little better. I could probably do with losing the March info too. That should speed it up even more.

I suppose there could be worse ways of spending a Saturday Morning.