Andyspex vs Seetickets

The Battle for Glastonbury has been fought.  For the first time I am going to Glastonbury.  I am not sure if I will like it, but I really wanted to give it a go and as H says it is something you have to do while you can.

Tickets went on sale at 9.00 and I couldn’t have been any later than 9.05, but I couldn’t get onto the site, I kept refreshing for about an hour as friends updated their facebook status to say that they had got them.  For another hour I tried refreshing with no luck, still not on the site.  Then I got a call from Dev, and a friend of a friend had been lucky enough to get 2 sales windows open, so we fed him our details and managed to get tickets that way.

After 3 hours I didn’t get anywhere close to getting tickets, I did get RSI from refreshing the page.  I am glad that I did though as they sold out in under 5 hours.  Not that I would have lasted 5 hours to get tickets.

I still hate seetickets.com.  Now I have 2 things to wish for, Sun and Radiohead. 

As someone put on Twitter “If I spent this sunday pressing refresh to get U2, someone is getting a pitchfork to the nads”  I second that.

Heroes and Villains

In the last few days a story have caught my eye and I think it shows the true spirit of Human nature to stick the middle finger up at those who have abused, taken them for granted and just made their life miserable.

The story in question is about Steven Slater, the Jet Blue air attendant or steward for those of us in the UK, who was shouted at by a passenger on landing .  When called a “motherf**ker” and told to “F**k off” he was upset, and presumably having a bad day.

Grabbing the tannoy he made the following announcement  “To the passenger who called me a m—f–er, f— you,” following it up with “I’ve been in the business 28 years. I’ve had it. That’s it.”

If that wasn’t a good enough way to go, what he did next was just inspired.  Grabbing a couple of cans of beer off of the cart he pulled the emergency chute cord setting off the big yellow slide, jumping out to his freedom.

Sadly for his brilliance he was arrested at his home for several crimes, one being Criminal Mischief.  I am sure that he will have the book thrown at him (see what I did there with my legal knowledge), but I have to salute you.

Why doesn’t my office have an escape chute?

Happy Birthday for Yesterday

Believe it or not, the Internet is now 40 years old.  The very first part of it was set up at UCLA for a collaboration between 4 universities.

It is hard to imagine a world without t’interweb as these days, pretty much everybody in developed (or even semi developed) society has a basic grasp of the internet.  They will at least know what it is.  I use it for pretty much everything.  I keep in contact with friends, I look for mucic, I watch TV, I read a newspaper, I would get my weekly shopping on there if you didn’t have to pay for delivery.

Over the last 40 years, what was first used as a tool for shifting nuclear data between researchers has grown into not just a business tool, but a whokle industry.  Hundreds of thousands of people are employed doing stuff with the internet.  Most of which I don’t understand.

So cheers to the internet and all of its brilliance, without you I wouldn’t have wasted weeks on Facebook.

Infoholic

I believe that I am what is now known as an infoholic.

I have far too many online profiles and feel the need for finding out information as often as I can.  I have a facebook account, myspace account (which I am going to delete) a Twitter account (where else can I keep in contact with MC Hammer, accounts on Shelfari, Flickr, WAYN (again going to delete) and 2 email accounts , as well as this wordpress one.

I do spend far too much time on the internet, I know that. However, is this type of online presence normal? Probably in computer geeks, but I don’t think that I should be in this catergory.

WordPress I like having, even though nobody reads it, it gives me a chance to rant away for a while.

Facebook keeps me up to date with all the inane stuff that my friends talk about, and keeps me occupied during the day.

Flickr I have just to occasionally put photos on. I may use it a bit more if I start taking more photos like I have been promising to do for years.

Shelfaris is a bit of a weird one, I like it because it helps me to know what I have read, but does it improve my life. Probably not.

Where Are You Now (WAYN) was quite good until I got thousands of pieces of spam a day, so am now deleting that one too.

Myspace I still use for music, but I really don’t need an account for that and I havn’t sent any comments to friends for a couple of years now.

Hmm, is online spring cleaning the way things are going, do I now collect memberships of websites like I collect CDs. I really think that I need to be out in the open a bit more, not stuck in the confines of the internet.