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From here on in I am going to assume you have read the article, if not please click here and read it first in the interest of fairness.

OK some points to clear before I go on;

• I am male
• I play Magic, I do not play in Pro-Tournaments and I would say I play less than 5-10 hours per month on average. It’s a fun hobby but I don’t have a lot of time these days.
• I know 6 close-ish friends and probably 20+ distant friends who can play Magic, no 2 of them are anything like the same in terms of potential suitor material, appearance, attitude, wealth or scent
• I am in an long term relationship so its not like i’m some bitter single nerd ranting about couples online
• I have a degree in Psychology and Sociology which is largely irrelevant other than I believe it gives me a little more sway to comment on a story like this
• I did know who Jon Finkel was before reading this article, I was aware he was a Champion Magic player and have seen an interview with him one time
• The article is posted on Gizmodo by Alyssa Bereznak but I did not believe she was the original author. However, a small amount of research suggests she is, for the sake of writing accurately I will use a non specific Author.
• Another Gizmodo editor actually posted a reply to her article in Aus. please see that here
  
• I am in no way under the impression all girls are like the Author of the first article, what I do think is that her attitude is average if not extremely common in both sexes.
• I am 100% aware that this could all just be baiting, it doesn’t change the fact people (men and women) actually act like this every single day.

My main grievance with this article is not that she “dislikes” Magic or Magic Players, my problem is that in a 770 word article she never once gives an actual reason why it should affect his suitability as a boyfriend/friend/mate. This (for want of other evidence) leads me to believe she thinks playing a game like Magic is somehow inherently wrong. If she had a personal reason or belief she would have stated it, but she does not, it is simply implied that Magic is somehow automatically wrong like being a convicted rapist or being directly descended form Hitler or not being able to complete Portal [you see I mean this as a joke, she actually meant her article].

There is another point too, I genuinely do not believe the author hates Magic players.In fact through the article I never get any vibe of “hate” and I know that’s not what this article is about. What I do think she dislikes is the idea of being seen with someone who she believes is socially below her somehow and worse still she believes people who play games like Magic are in that group, again for no particular reason.

I am going to pull a few quotes out of the article to back this up, these are not out of context, I have pointed you to the article and assumed you have read it in full.

So when I saw an IM from a guy named Jon that said, “You should go out with me :)” I was relieved. He seemed normal.

This immediately betrays her attitude, he seemed normal, implication is that he is abnormal, not normal and unacceptable [as a mate/man/whatever]. Why? What thing has he done to be abnormal? I’m sure she will tell us later in the article!

We started talking about normal stuff—family, work, college.

Ah normal stuff. Family, work, college, we all like these things, small talk safe. In general I agree, no problem with a bit of small talk, find out how big a family it is and where they’re from, what did you study, sounds interesting etc. But I guess you’re choosing where we draw the line at normal right Ms Author? Because now small talk moves on to hobbies [that's normal too FYI] and you don’t like where it goes.

And then he casually mentioned that he played Magic: The Gathering when he was younger.

“Actually,” he paused. “I’m the world champion.”

I laughed. Oh that’s a funny joke! I thought. This guy is funny! But the earnest look on his face told me he wasn’t kidding.

At initial glance this doesn’t seem to bad a statement but I believe it backs up the Authors attitude about the inherit negative social value of simply enjoying a game like Magic. Is it really so absurd to be the best in the World at something, however inane? The Guinness World Record system is literally an entire organisation of people dedicated to find these things, the best at jumping, the best at eating pizza etc.

If someone told me that they were World Champion at something [safe activity not murder or molestation] on a date I would think that was really cool. Being the best in the world at any game takes intelligence, dedication and skill, this is as true for Football as it is for Magic and it’s almost always a fantastic achievement. To prove i’m not just an opinioneted dick-head [I am btw] here is a quote from Elly Harets counter argument.

That’s why I find it so appalling that you laughed when he said he was the world champion of Magic: The Gathering. Why would you do that? Any other person would have been genuinely curious, and I would have been nothing less than excited to learn more about a game I’ve heard so much about, yet know so little of. It’s not easy to be good at something, let alone be the world champion at it.

Basically same thing I was saying. I wonder if he were a world champion Baseball player or World Champion Hairdresser her opinion would change?

The Author goes on to talk about what she knows about Magic and Jon from a few Google searches.

I gulped my beer and thought about Magic, that strategic collectible card game involving wizards and spells and other detailed geekery. A long-forgotten fad, like pogs or something.

Wow thanks for your thoughts about Magic, cheers for that. According to professional gaming journalist here Magic is a long forgotten fad. I struggled to find exact stats on Wizards of the Coast annual turnover since Hasbro acquisition but I’m willing to bet its a few million+ and definitely more than Gizmodo.

The Author goes on to state one of the most biased comments of the article.

Jon had bought us tickets for a one-man show based on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s life story. It was not a particularly romantic evening.

What, he took you to a show involving a serial killer? How out of order of him! Guess there are so few plays about multiple murder, oh well obviously except for Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, numerous plays about Jack the Ripper and about 10,000 movies ranging from utter shite to genre defining brilliance. This comment is nothing more than a biased, pointless dig to spin the story out for longer and get more ammo against Finkel. In my pop-culture knowledge Slasher movies are almost the defining date movie for younger people why not a more complex play for elders? Guess all that black mana just made him dangerous.

Despite his creepy, nerdy ways she gave him another chance, a second date. Maybe I misjudged the Author?

Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles?

What? How is being good at a hobby the same as being responsible for children for around twenty years of your life? Just how? That shows how much you think of children I guess. They’re just a hobby you’re good or bad at. I also question why you feel that knowing someone’s hobby gives you critical information about their personality. Vin Diesel and I both play Dungeons and Dragons, does that make us the same? I’m pretty sure Vin and I are very different. Knowing you are divorced or have kids doesn’t tell me anything about you but it does tell me about your situation and unlike a hobby you cannot simply stop playing a being a parent or a disgruntled divorcee.

Lets pull out one of the chunkiest quotes from the article.

At dinner I got straight down to it. Did he still play? “Yes.” Strike one. How often? “I’m preparing for a tournament this weekend.” Strike two. Who did he hang out with? “I’ve met all my best friends through Magic.” Strike three. I smiled and nodded and listened. Eventually I even felt a little bit bad that I didn’t know shit about the game. Here was a guy who had dedicated a good chunk of his life to mastering Magic, on a date with a girl who can barely play Solitaire,

Let’s take a look at her first point, “Did he still play. Yes. Strike One”

What? He gets a strike for enjoying a hobby for a decent amount of time instead of flitting between what’s vogue? How terrible of him to have conviction. Notice the reinforcement of her prejudice with no justification at all. Strike one but no reasoning, just, strike one. As I said before, I have no problem with people disliking Magic, fuck knows I dislike it myself sometimes, but if it was the game she disliked why not explain why and how this reflects on Finkel, if at all.

Also what’s with the quote about Solitaire? I see they have the vague relation of cards but beyond that even the most unclued Magic person can see they are different? Well baseball and beating someone to death both use a pole made of wood but they are not the same.

Her second point “How often?”

Finkel’s preparing to play this weekend, how fantastic! Oh not for the Author she assumes this is somehow a second strike because he won’t be free to attend whatever the fuck it is she does or more likely does not do, although frankly it’s never made clear why this is actually a strike either. More general disapproval.

Finally “Strike Three! He met his best friends through Magic”

If anything this is the one point I could agree may seem like a downside, it shows that Finkel maybe has a limited social circle. Bit of a deep conclusion for such a simply question but heuritistcs are there for a reason and I can forgive a heat of the moment opinion. Why a more complex opinion didn’t form itself later after research I cannot validate but nevermind. Note that Finkel has relocated between countries twice in his lifetime (I found this after 30 seconds reading of his Wiki page). That makes it a bit hard to make friends/keep friends.

There’s more but i’ll start drawing this to a close with this quote.

I later found out that Jon infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers. Mothers, warn your daughters!

The language of this sentence is the nail in the coffin of any kind of innocence. Language like infiltrated 9is she clever enough to make a play on words here? Maybe but I doubt it) and warn are the kinds of things you say about a criminal, not someone who simply has different hobbies to you. If this were a race argument (not that I’m suggesting geeks are historically as oppressed as any specific race), that language would be criminal itself. It would be viewed as horrific.

Her article ends by trying to drag us all down to her level with comments like;

But there’s a larger point here: that judging people on shallow stuff is human nature; one person’s Magic is another person’s fingernail biting, or sports obsession, or verbal tic.

You’re right we do all have things we hate about people, I can’t stand people chewing too loudly or playing recycle counterspell decks in Magic but do I write a personal attack against every person who violates these terms and put it online to rubbish their entire social group? No, I do what we all should do, get on with it and moan a bit when no-ones around because I understand that your Magic metaphor goes both ways, one woman’s ”coming in drunk and trolling dating sites then bitching about it online is another man’s Magic.

The Author seems to draw her argument(?) together by saying this.

So what did I learn? Google the shit out of your next online date. Like, hardcore.

This is terrible advice for so many reasons. Primarily you are assuming that Google is finding the person you are going on a date with. I encourage any potential ladies to Google my name before emailing me for  a date because I’m the only Craig Parker and this is definitely me.

Secondly how can you be sure that the information you find is accurate? I would like to state for the record, that;

American journalist Alyssa Bereznak is really a man!

Does it make it true? No. Does it make it searchable in Google? Yes, yes it does. Within a week I will likely be first page for that question. Just so you know I have no real evidence regarding the gender of the aforementioned author A. Bereznak but suspect they are in fact a troll (the internet kind not the fantasy kind, she doesn’t like them).

In conclusion: The article is nothing more than proof some people have a terrible attitude towards other peoples hobbies regardless of how little they know about them yet expect unfounded sympathy and generosity when dealing with themselves. Kindly do us all a favour and go troll bars so I can laugh at you when your woefully inadequate ability to understand how much you should drink fails to stop you getting too drunk to stand or remember whether or not its cool to play Magic this month.

To the original author: Please explain to me why playing games like Magic makes us unworthy of your time.

To Elly Hart: Thank you for public stating that not all women feel this way while remaining honest. It does make some of us feel better.

To Jon Finkel: Seriously dude, what did you do to upset her? Was it play an Astral Slide deck?

To Magic players & Geeks: Please make sure you announce how much of a “loser” you are to potential dates, if they think its so bad you have a kind of fun they don’t probably don’t need them.

I actually thought about changing this article title to “Why aren’t Geeks good enough?” but I think that may incite some shit comments. Anyways, tomorrow I am going to play in a low level Magic tournament and ensure I’m as creepy and infiltrate-y as possible, peace out.

This round was interesting with 21 goals in just the 8 games.  There were calls for goal line technology, calls for Capello’s head and calls to the Nigerian Prime Minister to let his team go out and play with the other boys and girls.

OK, England.  They are out and here’s a list of things I need to say about it…

1. They are over paid yes but that is not the reason they didn’t win the World Cup.  It has nothing to do with money and the money they earn is mostly the clubs fault.  Also, Imagine if every time you make a little mistake in your job it’s splashed over the back pages being called all sorts of things.  You wouldn’t like it and you’d want to be compensated accordingly.

2. The Second World War was 2/3 generations ago (6/7 in some areas of the country :))  Let it go, you can’t compare the defending in a 4-4-2 formation without a holding midfielder against Ozil and Podolski to defending your country in a War.

3. The disallowed goal DID make a difference.  Yes they scored 4 but at 2-2 we can sit back, and 2-1 we had to go forward.  To show this, watch Barry on the third goal.  He took the ball forward from our free kick when at 2-2 he would have held back to break up play.

4. We qualified with Heskey so don’t complain when he plays.

5. (TBA – I had something and forgot but I’ll add it when I remember)

Anyway, here are the “Awards of the week”

Best Goal

Frank Lampard – England
Carlos Tevez – Argentina (The good one, not the offside one)

Lot’s of good goals and finally a few from outside the box.  The Tevez one was a little ‘purer’ than the rest so I’ll give it to him.

Best Team

Ghana

There were no shock results as the ‘expected’ team went though on most occasions.  This means that the winner of USA v Ghana would get this award.  Ghana, being the last African nation left have deserved a quarter-final place.

Best Player

Carlos Tevez – Argentina

No real stand out player this week but Tevez scored twice (even if one was dodgy) and looked more like the player we’ve seen in England recently.

Least Valuable Player (AKA The Muppet Award)

Sepp Blatter – Fifa

Frank Lampard’s disallowed goal could be explained by the assistant ref looking down the offside line.  So where was he looking when Carlos Tevez received the ball 3-4 feet offside? The replay being shown on the big screen within 10 seconds after it happened shows that video technology, as much as I don’t want it, is possible.  Fifa have now said they will look into it further.  To add balance, I will say that I mentioned Karma a few times in my World Cup posts and a goal bouncing in off the cross bar against Germany NOT being given when it clearly went in added karmic balance to that particular situation.

Best Moment

Goals Goals Goals

This is better.  When a win is needed, teams have to attack, an average of around 3 goals a game compared to 1 a game from the first round of matches.  Goals from outside the area, free kicks and penalties.  This is better.

Serious predictions this time…

Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Spain

Brazil Spain final. (Argentina 3rd.)

Spain to win.

See you after the final.

@jestatharogue

Related posts:

• World Cup Update
• World Cup Update 2
• World Cup Update 3

The group stage is over and only 6 European teams are still in, here are the “Awards of the week”

Best Goal

Keisuke Honda and Yasuhito Endo – Japan

The goalkeeping wasn’t the best but it’s nice to see some free kicks going in.  Both were good in their own.

Best Team

South Africa

Beating France alone should get this but they did it well against a French team that was trying to win. There won’t have been bigger celebrations in Dublin over a French sporting defeat outside the 6 Nations.

Best Player

Robert Vittek – Serbia

Scored twice to knock out Italy, played really well in what was the best game of the tournament so far.

Least Valuable Player (AKA The Muppet Award)

M Rodriguez – Mexico (Referee)

Although Estrada for Chile should have had 4 yellows, his second official yellow came when Torres tripped over his legs as they were running off the ball.  Unintentional and not worthy of a booking at any point.  He then allowed the teams to play out the result for the last 5 minutes which we were told would not be tolerated.  Boring.

Best Moment

Italy and France

Italy cheated in the second round of the 2006 World Cup against Australia, barely qualified for the World CUP 2010 out an easy group then went on to fail pathetically, good.  They’re boring to watch and roll around far too much.  France on the other hand were poor with the infighting and players going home.  They took Ireland’s chance a blew it, like having the Playboy Mansion for a weekend and spending it in front of the TV.

I’m going for it on my predictions, let’s see how these go…

Korea
Ghana
England
Mexico
Holland
Brazil
Japan
Portugal

I’ll be back on the full time whistle on Tuesday to see how these pretty bold predictions went.

@jestatharogue

Related posts:

• World Cup Update 2
• World Cup Update
• World Cup Update 4

Second round down, Cameroon and North Korea are out already but will they get a consolation of one of my “Awards of the week”? (Spoiler: They don’t)

Best Goal

David Villa – Spain

Special mentions to Landon Donovan and Luis Fabiano (The good one not the handball one)  but this one topped it.  Nice solo effort, quick feet coming in from the left and stretching to lift the ball into the far corner.  Best goal so far I think.

Best Team

Serbia

Tough one, New Zealand played a very average opponents, as did Argentina, Mexico, Algeria, Portugal and Spain to rule them out of team of the week.  But with Germany playing VERY well when they came up against Serbia who limited their chances despite the Podolski penalty miss.

Best Player

Gonzalo Higuain – Argentina

Straight forward, World Cup Hat-tricks are hard to come by and no matter how they go in they all count.

Least Valuable Player (AKA The Muppet Award)

Wayne Rooney – England

“His second touch is a tackle” has never been more pertinant than the game against Algeria.  No control, no shot, too slow, didn’t chase back, nothing, couldn’t be bothered.  Kaka, Villa etc woke up after one game hopefully Rooney will wake up after two.

Best Moment

Kaka – Brazil

Loving the Karma again.  OK, it was 12 years ago since Rivaldo was “hit in the face” with the ball against Turkey.  So I took great delight in Abdelkader Keita for Ivory Coast just dropping holding his face when he was… erm… whats lighter than a push? He was ‘brushed’ in the chest by Kaka.

That’s my 5 awards for another week.  From now until Friday you have the choice of which game to watch as the groups are decided.  I’ll be watching Mexico, Greece, Slovenia, Ghana, Slovakia, Cameroon, Portugal and Chile vs their respective opponents.

Qualifying Predictions are..
Uruguay – Mexico
Argentina – South Korea
England – USA
Germany – Serbia
Holland – Denmark
Paraguay – Italy
Brazil – Portugal
Spain – Chile

I’ll be back on the full time whistle on Friday with more news and to see how the predictions went.

@jestatharogue

Related posts:

• World Cup Update 4
• World Cup Update
• World Cup Update 3

So after the first game round robin portion of the tournament, here are my “Awards of the week”

Best Goal

Siphiwe Tshabalala – South Africa

Quick and well finished, scoring in the opening game for the host nation.  What the goal meant for the nation and the tournament added to the fact it was a really good finish.

Best Team

South Korea

6 to pick from including North Korea’s brave showing against Brazil, New Zealand’s first ever point and the “SpainKillers”Switzerland.  But South Korea play with a reckless flare that few teams dare attempt.  They beat Greece 2-0 and did it with style.

Best Player

Tae-Se Jong – North Korea

Cried during the national anthem, maybe because of pride or perhaps his family are held in some camp and a win against Brazil is the only way to see them again.  Either way, he taunted the Brazil defence that consisted of mostly top Champions League players.  Very quick with a powerful shot, Jong was my pick for the week.

Least Valuable Player (AKA The Muppet Award)

Nicolas Lodeiro – Uruguay

With so many goalkeeping mistakes I was sure to pick an outfield player.  This guy came on, did very little except get sent off 17 minutes later.  He made no impression on the game but made quite an impression on Sagna’s ankle.

Best Moment

Thierry Henry – France

Isn’t Karma a bitch? After cheating his way in to the World Cup after a double deliberate handball against the Republic of Ireland, ‘Terry Henry’ had the audacity to *SCREAM* for a penalty for handball final minutes of the game against Uruguay.  He didn’t get it and I think we’re all glad.  Was it a handball? Who cares, no penalty and I will go ahead and assume it was the right decision from the referee.

That’s my 5 awards for the week, I’ll be back on the 22nd to run through the second round of results and look ahead to the group deciders.

@jestatharogue

Related posts:

• World Cup Update 2
• World Cup Update 3
• World Cup Update 4

I am 25, that means I have only voted once before in a proper election, I come from a mining town in the Midlands and I have worked, at least part time, since I was about 13. Tax Records will state that I started significantly later. I’m not ashamed to say I have an anti-Tory bias.

I come from a mining town, my dad was a miner, and I was born in the early 80′s that means my childhood was heavily influenced by the fallout of the miners strikes. On top of this the Tories are hardly the most “in line” with my belief system, I am libertarian (although that Wiki article is shit) and even though this Political stance embraces many ideals it does not stand for the unbalanced “save our rich people” campaign the Tories are basically pushing.

This being said I have approached this election as unbias as possible, I listened to what Cameron had to say just as much as the other parties and I would not deny them my vote just because past policies have been pretty crap.

Anyway, the truth is that this election is really important, the World Wide economic crisis has really shook things up and there are a lot of game changing decisions to be made over things like tax, immigration, virtual law, privacy and national defence that drastically effect me and my peers, we really need to get this one right. So far we have had months of campaigning and one interesting TV debate (with two to go) so here are my thoughts so far…

Labour

Oh Labour, how times have changed. Labour were my first ever vote, as much as people go on about him I actually liked Blair and I thought he did a pretty decent job of running the country. Over the last 4 years however Labour have proved to be no-ones saviour. They have had a tough term, getting hit by the banking crisis and the war fallout has not been easy and I don’t hold any of these decisions against them but they have made a lot of other mistakes. Labour’s primary goal seems to be trying to please everyone who makes a noise in every possible way. The problem with this strategy is twofold;

1) Only twats make noise, this is common sense knowledge that most people are aware of. The noisy minority vs. the silent majority. Labour have done an excellent job of bending over and taking it up the ass for lots of little noisy minorities  and screwing over people who just try and get on with it. Sorry this is not going to fly. I cannot emphasise the following point enough therefore I will write it on a new line in bold. This is what equality means;

NO-ONE AUTOMATICALLY DESERVES SPECIAL TREATMENT; INCLUDING MINORITIES.

2) It creates more problems exponentially, as more people notice that being “a minority” i.e. a certain religion, a single mum, a married to a goat person etc. etc. then more people become part of and create these minorities to gain the advantages. This is human nature for weak people and is both the Governments fault (for allowing this to take place) and for participants fault (for taking advantage).

I could and maybe will, write a whole blog post on equality and social responsibility and what it means to a young libertarian like me but that’s enough for now.

For me this underpins many of the current problems with our systems and society, it is made 100x worse by a frankly insane media presence that overdoes both sides of the problem. Because of this Labour will not get my vote.

What About Brown?

I don’t mind Gordon Brown, he has been the countries biggest scapegoat for 2 years running and that sucks, however he doesn;t do himself any favours. In the TV debate he came across as bland at best. He seemed relatively unaware that he has been in power for the last few years and could/should have implemented most of his policies a year ago.

Conservative

I honestly did give them a chance. I am afraid it didn’t work out.

After I became disillusioned with Labour I turned to our blue blooded friends to see what they had to offer, after all these elections are a two horse race right? right?

I have watched numerous interviews with Cameron and his shadow cabinet, I even took time to read some of the Tory manifesto and their stance on the things that really matter to me. Every time I did this it came across with one strong, underlying message.

“Labour suck balls”

Everything the Conservatives do is about shaming Labour for different things, approximately 70% of which they are wholly irresponsible for. I cannot honestly vote any Government into power who think that the best Election campaign to run is “haha Gordon is Fat and Stupid, we’re really cool!” Maybe this works for the Sun. Maybe it helps their rich Tory mates filter the ideas down to the workforce I don’t really care, it’s unacceptable.

If I were to ignore this then they would hardly win me over with their manifesto, some ideas in there are good, some are just what we need, most are to help rich people and this is one time when the papers really are not blowing it out of proportion. OK maybe a little bit but it’s still true.

The Conservatives will not be getting my vote either.

What About Cameron?

Unfortunately Cameron has repeatedly thwarted any hope of me voting Conservative, why? Well quite honestly he is a twat.

He is a liar. He rides around in a private jet while telling me he understands what it is like to struggle to pay a mortgage or choose a school for children, and yes, he’s a rich boy with rich boy mates and these are exactly the kinds of people who just instigated global financial meltdown.

David Cameron flights –

In the TV debate Cameron came across as a childish, creeping rich kid and I know it was more than me who noticed that everyone one of his answers began with bullshit. I’m sorry I just cannot like David Cameron, maybe it’s me being unfair, maybe he is just a twat. Guess we’ll find out in May.

Lib Dem

Like a gray running  the lead in the Grand National suddenly everyone is looking at the horse no-one backed.

Last time I went to vote I seriously considered Lib Dem, I didn’t choose them because I was scared. Scared by the media into thinking this country only has two choices, scared by my parents into thinking Labour is the only choice and scared of what would happen if the Tories got in.

After a lot of reading, some hard decisions and the first TV debate they are looking pretty bloody likely to secure my vote this time around.

I want to make this clear right away, I am not considering the Lib Dems because the other two parties are shit, smell funny, are not racist enough etc, to vote in this way is completely stupid and I would not approve of it in any circumstance, I am (likely to) vote Lib Dem because they are doing two things I welcome in politics;

1) Admitting they do not have magical answers. Numerous members of their party have now mentioned how they would like to see joint brainstorming solution sessions between the major parties to arrange solutions for things like pensions and the military. I welcome the fact these guys are standing up and offering this choice instead of saying the opposite of what someone else has said.

2) Standing Up Against Large Companies. Maybe I am overly paranoid but it seems like a lot of big banks and companies got away with a lot in the financial crisis and the truth of the matter is their “tax avoidance” costs this country more than benefit fraud and all those other problems the Tories were crying about put together. Employees who work hard, customers and normal people make these companies successful it is time they paid it back instead of asking for an extra 10 hours a week without pay.

The Lib Dems also seem to have a policy that overlaps with mine on a lot of issues, most notably for this blog, Clegg announced he would reverse the shambles that is the Digital Economy Bill should they get power in May.

What About Clegg?

Clegg seems OK. I don’t by any means think he is the perfect man come in our hour of need to lead the country into a new phase of being, I do however think he is serious about trying to change a lot of the problems that we have at the minute, this at least is something to hope for.

In the TV debate Clegg did shine. I had a lot of stock in the Lib Dems before it but afterwards I felt much, much more confident in my choice. Less slimy than Cameron, more impressive than Brown, Clegg struck a good balance between serious facts, good policies and pleasant personality.

What About Dre?

Fuck that I forgot about Dre :(

Conclusion

We still have a long way to go and maybe something will happen to change my mind but at this moment in time I’m voting Lib Dem. Everything here is my opinion, there s a huge amount I haven’t said because it would be simply impossible to get everything across in one post but trust me when I say I have thought a lot about this and everyone out there voting next month should be doing a lot of thinking too.

Please if nothing else, don’t just listen to Rupert Murdock and his rather sprawling media empire.

Related posts:

• Cast Your Votes!

If you weren’t impressed by that you should probably stop reading now.

Augmented reality (AR from here on in) is an up and coming field that everyone here at Guardian Force is  a big fan of, this latest endeavour by Microsoft is not only technologically impressive but also so promising for the future development of the field.

Firstly the improved operation of the overall mapping functionality is fantastic, no more glitchy jumping, no more load times when I scroll, seamless, quick and attractive.

Secondly the new perspective (sim city as he called it) is also amazing, the Google Maps part 3D view is good but this is a serious improvement, now we can see things in size comparison and even gauge how far apart they are etc. I really liked just this mode with AR features and he made the passing reference to blog post being linked to locations etc, I am sure tweets will follow.

Then we get down to the really cool stuff, the link between 3D and street view is amazing and their improved more dynamic version of street view is also impressive.

Everything from this point in is just fantastic, the live video is great (think of all the camera it could stream from, concerts etc!) and all the interlink information and meta data has seemingly unlimited potential development, think of all the gaming developments alone this could bring.

Lastly, if anyone thinks there is going to be a privacy problem from this your a twat and please fuck off back to facebook and your abacus.

for everyone else, what do you think impressive or am I over-egging it?  What was your favourite feature?

Just a quick post to say we have given the site a bit of a makeover, kept having problems with the newer version of WordPress and my theme, I suspect it was something to do with a combination of plugins and the theme however we will never know.

Anyway hope you like the new look, it’s a bit slicker and more purple, which will at least make Nilhuanwen and Jesta happy.

If you notice any problems just let us know but hope you still like the look of the blog and still enjoy reading!

-Diablos

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Just a quick note, we recently did a theme update on the site which caused our cute little RSS icon on the top of the page to break! Unfortunately I didn’t notice this until 50 of you had tried to click it so super sorry to everyone who tried to subscribe in that time, hopefully you found it over to our subscribe page but if not you can try again now and it’s all A-OK!

Dropped the ball on this one no excuse but we are all (mostly) human right?

To cheer you up here is a funny video of someone dropping the ball significantly worse than me.