The Last Airbender

Walking home today with Jen after seeing The Last Airbender at the cinema this afternoon, I realised two things; my girlfriend is hilarious when she’s a little bit angry and annoyed and M.Night Shyamalan’s career as a filmmaker is absolutely, positively and definitely over.

My knowledge of Shyamalan is based on three movies; The Sixth Sense, The Village and The Happening and let’s be honest, the only thing that makes the first two movies in this list bearable is the casting of Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense and the twist at the end of The Village. I’d point out that Zooey Deschanel’s presence in The Happening is a plus point, and don’t get me wrong I think Zooey Deschanel is brilliant, but not even she can save that movie. So going into the cinema this afternoon it’s safe to say I was relatively unaware of how much this movie would suck balls. Sorry, there’s not really any other way to say it.

When myself and Jen go to the cinema it’s for one of two reasons, to go and see a film we’ve both been looking forward to or to go and see a movie just because we can. It’s not very often we go to see a film knowing that what we’re about to pay for is going to be a waste of money. The ‘legend’ of The Last Airbender’s suckiness (I don’t care if it’s not a word) started when Andrew posted on his Tumblr blog how awful it was. Shortly afterwards we looked it up on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie rating aggregator site, to figure out whether Andrew’s opinion was unanimously recognised. Needless to say it was. Rotten Tomatoes currently has the movie standing at a 7% ‘rotten’ rating from the top critics the site recognises.

Rotten tomatoes is an odd website, sometimes it’s the most informational site and provides excellent reviews and others it’s just totally wrong. This isn’t really something to be surprised at, a review by nature is subjective and what one person thinks is good, another might think is terrible and the proof for us was in movies such as Wild Target and Robin Hood. In our opinion Rotten Tomatoes got these two movies completely wrong, Wild Target got 11% and we thought it was a sweet, funny and well acted comedy with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. Robin Hood got 43% and needless to say for anyone who follows Jen on Twitter, we found it the most boring and horrid film we’ve been to see this year. Yet. The point of this long-winded explanation is just to point out that Rotten Tomatoes isn’t to be relied upon to decide the films you go to see at the movies, not usually anyway. This time, a movie with reviews such as;

“After the first five seconds, it seems as if you have been watching it for around two-and-a-half hours, and that this time has passed in four-and-a-half days.” – Guardian UK (Peter Bradshaw)

“The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there.” – New York Times (A.O. Scott)

…The Last Airbender was not to be missed. If someone tells you a movie is horrible, you kind of have to see it anyway to see for yourself. I suspect that the majority of the small profit this movie has made is down to this. More on the budget later, it’ll blow your mind! (It won’t, it just sounds a bit dramatic don’t you think?)

Anyway, let’s make our way back to the original point of this blog post shall we? The Last Airbender is a live-action adaptation of what I’m told was a popular children’s cartoon in the early 2000’s. Avatar: The Last Airbender was a three season show airing on Nickelodeon starting in 2005 and the basic premise is this, people are able to ‘bend’ the four fundamental elements of the world. Herein lies the first problem I have with this movie; a person who is able to manipulate one of these elements is titled…you guessed it….a bender. Now I consider myself to be a relatively mature person, although I’ll admit sometimes I can laugh at the most childish of things, but I could not get past what seemed to me to be a massive cock-up in scriptwriting. I gather from Jencyclopedia (the name given to the wonderful knowledge my dearest Jen possesses) that the term ‘bender’ only has negative connotations relating to homosexual men  in the UK and Western Europe and that in the US and the rest of the world, the term has never been used in this way. I understand why it’s been left in the script, it’s too integral to the storyline to replace the word and anyway it’s not offending anyone, but if it makes me spit out my drink in the movie theatre then I’m sure other people are going to have the same reaction. I’m not suggesting that this is in anyway a review of the movie, it’s just something I wanted to point out before I started. Take it, if you will, as a sign of things to come.

Bending is a rare skill. Air benders are extinct (just ignore the title of the movie for a second), earth benders have been prohibited from using their skill by the fire benders and the water benders seem to all reside in the north pole for some reason. Legend states that only one person can master all the elements, only one person can be a universal ‘bender’ (see, it’s still funny!) and only one person can unite the ever unrestful nations of the world, The Avatar. Aang (The Avatar) is the last airbender, he’s been hidden in some kind of air bubble under ice for a hundred years after running away from his airbending ‘crew’ for being told his status of ‘Avatar’ would prevent him from having a family. I’m not certain how old Aang is supposed to be in this movie but my guess is around 13 and I know for one that at that age, I was not worried about the potential of starting a family. So, despite that particular plot-hole we cut to Jasper (I don’t know the guy’s name, he’s just referred to as Jasper because that’s who he plays in Twilight) and his sister (who is absolutely the worst actor in the whole movie) who happens to be a water bender who are hunting on an ice lake. They come across a light in the ice, crack it open and are somehow not aware that cracking ice is a dangerous move when all around you is ice. The bubble in which Aang was trapped is released and the Avatar is rediscovered after 100 years.

Now, you have the basic story. It’s truthful to say at this point that you can probably guess the rest of the storyline just from reading the above. The fire benders are the bad guys, for some reason (one that’s not explained in the slightest), they want to wipe out everyone and everything on the planet except them. Meh, since when did democracy work anyway? The fire benders armed with their black, steam powered boats, their fire cannons and their drill-hats pursue the Avatar along with Dev Patel’s character who wants to capture him to regain confidence from his father, some kind of ruler of the fire benders. As it turns out, The Avatar who is supposed to be able to control all elements can only control air because he ran away before he was taught to control the rest. Is there another plot-hole here? If the Avatar can be taught the other elements why can’t everyone else?

You get the idea, I’m not going to describe the whole movie to you. It would be pointless, boring for you to read and should you actually want to go and see this movie, might contain spoilers of some sort. I am however going to say a bit about the quality of the movie in terms of script, visual effects, score and acting. In my opinion pretty much all of the categories should score a fail. The script contains potentially the worst dialogue I’ve ever heard in a movie. Jen hit the nail directly on the head when she pointed out that any Mary-Kate and Ashley movie from the 90s and 00s had better dialogue than The Last Airbender. It’s laughable, it really is. I know this movie is a kid’s movie, I know it’s not meant to be sophisticated or have a huge vocabulary but it really was like watching a CBBC show that just happened to be on for nearly two hours. The acting is unbelievably wooden but I’m not going to say that all the people cast in this movie are bad at their job, I just think the script is so bad they can’t act to their full potential. Dev Patel is overrated in my opinion, yeah he was funny in Skins and he was alright in Slumdog but nowhere near as good as the ‘Oscar crowd’ suggest. In this movie he’s terrible, he shouts because he’s told to act angry but instead he looks like he hasn’t been to the toilet in four days and is dying to let one loose.

We figured that if anything was to save this movie from being ridiculously bad, it was going to be the visual effects. We were wrong, very wrong. The 3D conversion is so bad I’m almost convinced that the studios went ‘…we need to make more money from this, guys! Make it blurry so we can charge people to wear glasses and say it’s in 3d’. It really is that bad. The 3D is virtually non-existent except in the scenes where the water-bending is taking place and even that isn’t anywhere near as impressive as it could have been. The 3D trailers for Despicable Me and Megamind before the movie showed what can actually be achieved with 3D and The Last Airbender didn’t hit anywhere near the mark it should have. Granted that this isn’t animated but Streetdance 3D (which we went to see on a boring afternoon) isn’t and the 3D in that is 10 times more impressive. Another problem I have with the graphical display is considering the budget of $150m this movie had, I should have been able to see every detail of the magical kingdoms but instead it seems as if Shyamalan told his cameramen to zoom in to the actors as close as possible throughout the entire movie so that he didn’t have to pay the visual FX guys too much to fill in the background with loads of CG. The penultimate scene shows Aang finally mastering water bending and creating a huge wall of water from the sea which should have been amazing to watch. The score was brilliant at this moment, but the scene was so dark you could hardly distinguish the sea from the sky. Again it seems like the director told the animators to darken things down so they wouldn’t have to spend too much time on the detail of the waves, sea and sky. Obviously I have no idea if this is true.

I could go on, I could carry on and say more bad things about this movie but it can pretty much be summed up with this, it was boring. After twenty minutes I started to wish the movie was over but it dragged on and on. It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t entertaining, it even got past the point of being laughable at the end because it was just, plain boring.

One thing has been bugging me whilst I’ve been writing this ‘review’. I don’t like movie critics, I generally don’t like how they have a pompous attitude of ‘I don’t like it, so you won’t either’ or how they seem to be regarded by the press and movie industry as Gods of some variety. Mark Kermode, who I detest with a passion, is a brilliant example of this. Am I being hypocritical by writing a review and telling you how bad this movie is? I don’t think I am, for one reason; you should go and see this film for yourself. Like I discussed earlier, one of my favourite films from the past year has been one that got low reviews from critics so who am I to say this movie is terrible? I’m no-one, just a humble movie-goer who wanted to discuss his opinions with anyone who feels like reading them.

To address a point of an internet friend of mine, some people may love this movie because they grew up with the cartoon and seeing a favourite character of yours come to life in live action may be magical or brilliant for you to watch. As I’ve admitted I’d never heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender for this movie so I can’t be a judge of that.

I said earlier that I’d mention something regarding the budget of this movie which would ‘blow your minds’ and I think it’s a fitting way to end this rambling review of mine. The budget for this movie was $150m, the budget for Inception was $160m. Inception, the best film of the entire year (if not my favourite movie ever) in my opinion was made on a budget of only $10m more than The Last Airbender and the contrast in quality is amazing, and that’s a ridiculous understatement. In future, I suggest this to any movie studios who want to throw some money at a film-maker. Give it to Chris Nolan, he’ll make you a film worth watching.

Hard Candy

If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen some of my tweets relating to a movie I have rented called Hard Candy. Starring Ellen Page and Patrick Wilson, I loved this movie so much I felt I had to write about it. You can sum this blog post up in just a few words,

“YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE!”

Seriously, I’m not just typing this, I want everyone and anyone who reads this post to go out and buy, rent, steal or use some other means to get your hands on a copy of this movie. 

I really want to write a lot about how this movie made me feel, but just in case you do go out and buy it, I’ll try and avoid spoilers. 

 

The basic premise of the movie is that Hayley (Ellen Page) meets up with a guy she has been chatting with on the internet called Jeff (Patrick Wilson). At first, you get the impression that they are both consensual in their meeting and with their ‘attraction’ towards each other. Let me say at this point that Hayley is 14 years old, whilst Jeff is much older. Now considering the plot revolves around issues of pedophilia, I found myself at some points of the movie, being annoyed with myself at how I felt about the characters. A review I read said that I would be ‘pissed-off with myself” for feeling the way I do during the movie and I can honestly say I do. 
Jeff gets the tables turned on him in the movie, with Hayley getting her ‘own-back’ as it was. If your male and watching this film, be prepared for about 40 minutes worth of grimacing and squinting at the screen as it contains the most gruesome ‘castration’ torture scene ever.

 This movie is so subtle and yet so powerful, it’s left me thinking about it an hour after I’ve finished watching it. I’m not the best at writing movie reviews, so I’ll leave the final remark to the Director of the movie;

Roughly 50% of our audience love this film, around 25% come out of the theatre wondering what they thought and the other 25% hate us for making it.

You MUST watch this movie. You MUST!

 

Andrew.

Of Dæmons, Hedge Trimmers and Jailbreaking

How are you all? Enjoy the nice weather last week? Exams going okay? Sound off in the comments.

These past few weeks have been pretty hectic for me, not to mention stressful. It’s exam time at uni, and I’ve found that I actually needed to do some revision for these (unlike GCSE and most A-Levels), so much of my time over the past month has been spent doing just that. With twitter and Dr Pepper to keep me company, I’ve managed to get through it and only have one exam left next week before the Summer, which is ridiculously long (though I’m not complaining). 

I actually made a start on my reading list these past couple of weeks. I bought and read the first part of His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman, read that in a couple of days and am now onto the second part. I seem to have been in a cave in regards to this series as everyone else seems to have read it many years ago. I understand why though because they’re brilliantly written. (I reckon my Dæmon would settle as a cat).

Once again, last week the Booth family had a medical emergency of fantastic proportions. I came home from uni last Thursday to find that my sister was in hospital with half of her right index finger hanging off. To put a long story short, hedge trimmers + fingers = lots of blood. Luckily, things weren’t as bad as they seemed and after a quick operation to re-attach the cut finger it’s healing fine. She had some kind of small metal rod put into her finger to help the break in the bone heal, which is being removed in a months time – after which full functionality should return.

Jailbreaking. If you follow any kind of technology blog you’ll know what it is. If not, I provide this link for your delectation. As some of you may know, I bought an iPhone a while back and I’ve been playing with the idea of jailbreaking it for some time now. The main thing putting me off was that if something went wrong, Apple wouldn’t help me fix it and that would be a lot of money down the drain. But, after watching the latest episode of GeekBrief I took the plunge. The process was relatively painless but afterwards I wonder why I did it in the first place. The only good/useful app I found is one called Twinkle (a Twitter client), but I’ve always liked using Hahlo (a web-app) in the past. So, last night, I un-jailbroke my iPhone through a restore. A very pointless process all round.

It’s 00:20 so I really should be in  bed by now, so goodnight!

Andrew.

Of Kids TV, Chinese Takeaway and that fantastic thing called Twitter

Its Sunday 13th April 2008, about 6 months since my last blog post. 

Dear God, when looking at it like that time seems to have floooooown by. I’ve been meaning to update for quite a few week now but the idea seems to have past as soon as I thought of it.

This week seems to have been quite chaotic for me and for many people I know, don’t know why but people seem to be rushing around, stressed, tense and up to their eyeballs in work. The totally crap weather doesn’t seem to be helping either. Hearing today about the tragic death of Mark Speight got me thinking about the ‘good old days’ of children’s television in the early 90s. I used to watch CBBC every day after school (a choice which seemed odd to many of my friends as the majority of them liked to watch CITV, I thought I was cool because of this :-)) Either way, both channels provided great programs and something which gets me annoyed nowadays, great presenters in between shows. If you switch on CBBC or ITV after school days now, you’ll see that CITV has practically disappeared and CBBC doesn’t use live segway presenters like it used to do. I suppose its all down to the huge number of kids channels on sky etc which we didn’t really have access to when I was younger.

Digressing only slightly, I’ve decided to start following some new TV shows. I’d recorded Chuck (Virgin 1 – Mondays 10pm) earlier this week and with Dr Who, Britain’s Got Talent and Pushing Daisies on TV last night, I was set for the night. I ordered a Chinese (food, not a person of said nationality), and enjoyed the night. It was chicken in chili and black bean sauce with egg fried rice, if anyone is interested.

Twitter. Wow. Social networking is all the rage these days. I’ve dabbled in it and have had a look at what most sites have to offer. The only one I ever settled with was MySpace a few years ago, but I’ve lost interest in that now and don’t use it whatsoever.

Recently I discovered Twitter. I could try and explain it to you but if you don’t know the service already, I’d probably explain it very poorly. So, I’ll let this video do the talking. If you decide you want to sign up, and I ask that you at least try it before dismissing it, you can follow me here.

Bye for now,

Andrew.

Mark Speight, R.I.P

Of first impressions, barcode scanners and The Gregmeister

Right now, it’s 11pm, I’m home for the weekend and enjoying my bed, so I thought I’d give a quick update as I’ve been a bit busy this last week to bother updating.

Uni Life is much more different than I expected. I thought with me being a total antisocialite, that I would crawl up in my room and sway to the sound of everyone else having fun.
Granted, I’m still not one for going out at night and attending all the Freshers events, but I have found that it is easier to talk to people than I thought. I’ve met a few people from withing my course who I hope will become better friends as time goes on.

Registration was also relatively painless. I only queued for about half an hour, and got a shiny new student card (with a really bad photo on!). To get into the library on campus and other services at the uni, you have to scan the barcode that is printed on the card. So I thought, now I have one, Ill check out the library, check my emails etc whilst I was there.
I spent about five minutes rotating my card in every way possible on this damn barcode scanner so the doors would open, before a woman came out and told me (with a grin on her face) that my card isnt actually active yet. Never mind, eh. She let me in regardless which was nice of her.

There are some rather random teachers/lecturers at the business school. The ones which I’ve met all seem crazy (in a good way). The Gregmeister, as she will now be called, makes terrible jokes and Benson (my Accounting lecturer) tells his students where to get the cheapest booze in town.

I miss Taylor!

Claire pointed out today that freedom at uni is a weird thing. After being at Wath with forbidden corridors, one way systems and Taylor on the gates; being able to walk around in and out of random buildings with a coffee in one hand seems surreal (once again in a good way). I was in the Biological sciences building the other day for a talk and i saw a stuffed badger on display, next to a vole, several whale bones and a pickled mouse.

Thats it for today. Once again, I realise this post should really be in my @Uni blog, but I think I may combine the two for the time being.

Nighty night.

Andrew
(missing you all)

Of Second Life, boring days and Paris Hilton

I have been amazingly bored today, one of those days where the boredom overcomes any willingness to actually do something. So, today all I’ve done is sat on the settee with my computer watching TV and movies.

After finishing my cheese and bacon omlette (I’m trying new food ideas for uni), and the second movie of the day, The Island, I switched over to Sky News to see what was happening in the world.
Well, apart from Alastair Darling and the twitching of his ridiculously black eyebrows – mostly nothing. It did mention a new feature they have in which they broadcast certain interviews via a computer chat room thingy, called Second Life.

I’ve heard of Second Life before this, but never tried it, so I downloaded a copy, created an account and…… well, that was about it really. Call me a complete dunce, but I had no idea what to do apart from walk around this empty space with nobody else there. So, after wasting time doing that, I uninstalled it.

Paris Hilton. Yes, you know her. Whether you love her or hate her – something everyone has in common is that you most certainly will have an opinion of her. What I admire about the woman is how she has gone through life having absolutely no discernable talent whatsoever, and still managing to be one of the richest. But, my overwhelming opinion of her being a complete slitch (slut/bitch, like it?) supercedes that.

Why mention her? Well, I read this quote today from Dave Grohl (who I now absolutely respect as being a ‘good guy’), which is so blunt, yet true, it made me laugh;

“She’s a total, raging, disgusting, rich, lazy party slut. I pray that my daughter will not turn out like her.
“Paris is f**king lame, she’s more offensive to me than anything.”

Thats it for now.

Anyone watch Skins? Is it any good, I might watch it tonight.

Andrew

Quote from here.

Of Pre-planned brain damage, multiple baths and slippers

I never could get the hang of Mondays.

I’ve just finished watching a film, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It’s fantastically amazing. Basically, it involves wiping someones mind of a past relationship with a new technology, and because the protagonists mind is being erased throughout the film, there is no clear time line to the film, and whilst that does leave you confused at some points – it’s fantastic, if you haven’t seen it – buy it! One of the best films I’ve ever seen, it’s so surreal. It poses the question, if such a technology did exist, how can we be sure that the brain wont find another way of keeping your memory?

I want blue hair.

If you could have something erased, would you? What would it be?

I had a bath this morning, almost as soon as I got up. Five minutes ago, I was in the process of running another one – have I lost my mind?

Or at least a blue wig.

I found some slippers that I own earlier today. I like slippers but I get the feeling it’s an old man thing.

Like the logo thingy? –> I can’t use Photoshop so I just spent about a minute putting it together in OpenOffice Draw. The image isn’t mine, but it is royalty free.

This made me laugh.

Andrew

Of Lord of The Rings, stale smelling fridges and HSBC customer service

The Lord of The Rings – I really want to like it, but for some reason am unable to. I’ve turned to reading the book before watching the films because quite frankly, they bore me.

Smeagol = Gollum, didn’t know that.

I went to visit my uni house for the first time on Friday. I know they say that you get all types of people at university but the accommodation office at Hull needed some kind of award for cultural diversity. When I got there, there was the most emo-ish girl you’ve ever seen with the tightest black skinny jeans I’ve ever seen (she had amazingly cool hair though, think Hayley Williams but fire-engine red). Next in line, was the biggest (weight, height and width) chav ever! A chav at university!!! Damn, and here’s me thinking I was rid of them.

Anyway, when I got the keys to my accommodation, I was the only one there. Checked out the sitting area and the kitchen (the fridges absolutely stunk and my mum started washing it instinctively), went up to my room (surprisingly huge compared to some of the rooms I’d visited on open days).
I moved most of my stuff in, then realised that I had come way too early and didn’t really want to spend a week living on my own in a house considering freshers week didn’t actually start till the 24th. So, whilst I did move most of my stuff in to my room, I’m now back home. I’m off (for good this time) on Friday again, and hopefully my ‘housemates’ will have arrived.

[After typing that, I realise this post should be on my @Uni Blog, nevermind.]

I recently applied for a HSBC student account, and while all went well, I got a call from HSBC the other day (note: they phoned me), and after answering the phone the polite yet obviously ‘English challenged’ woman said,
“How may I help you?” Deary me, the future does not look good for my student banking life with HSBC.

A couple of other random things and thoughts;

• Is it wrong that I should be addicted to this song?
• How should I decorate my room at uni?
• The iPod touch is a waste of money and utterly ridiculous.

That’s it for now.

Good night

{WOW, thats a big spider!!!}

Andrew

[The Final Cut]

[As always, if you scroll down you’ll find some music to enjoy while you read]

I know I’ve been very fuzzy in my writing style and explanations. I’m sorry.

But first,

Nu Metal and KoRn fans, there is a new KoRn album coming out at some point in the near future.
It has been leaked, but I know you would never resort to downloading an illegal copy, right?

If you’re interested, there are preview songs on their official MySpace.
[Evolution is awesome.]

Also, check out the Simpsons Movie Soundtrack.
The SpiderPig song is great.
There’s also a more hardcore, orchestral version of the main theme song.

And now the final installment.

[read the legal blurb in the first blog (2 down) before preceding]

There is a very simple way to block your info [on MySpace] from unwanted viewer – set your account to private. That way only your ‘friends’ will be able to see it.

Or you could lie and fill your account with false details, but that’s a bit drastic.

But what about outside of MySpace?

If you’re signed up to lots of web sites, there’s going to be more details about you scattered across the Internet.

A simple google search can turn up a lot. For example, search for me – oatzy – a lot of what you find will be about or relating to me.

But for other people it’s not so easy. Again, the more you already know about a person, the more you can find about them.
If you only knew my name – Chris Oates – you’d get plenty of results, but non in the first five pages (at least) are about me.

You’d get:
Chris Oates, National Director of Tax Risk Management at Ernst & Young
“The Haunted Welly” by Chris Oates
ABCD: Chronic Poetry, Christopher Oates
OldRacingCars.com
Dr Chris Oates of Australia
Chris Oates is one of six physicists… [I like that one]
etc, etc.

But knowing I came from Wath (which you could get from my MySpace)

The first result is me!
There’s also PurpleOranges.com on the first page, which I was affiliated with.

But more importantly, the first result is a profile.
I haven’t been very helpful by putting my age as 102. But if you click on links to friends, you will find their age is between 17 and 18. Which should lead you to believe that I too am in this age range – I am.
You also note from the blogs I’m connected with, which university I will be going to.

And of course, the other thing you get from that profile is my screen name (also on MySpace)

And as I said above, searching that name will get you a lot of sites connected with me and a lot of extra details on me (possibly including e-mail addresses).

The other thing is, if a person has a wishlist (for Amazon, for example), it may be possible to reap an address from that (you may have to buy something for them).
The other advantage of the wishlist is, you don’t have to know their address to send them a birthday present.

Next, how do you get hold of someone’s mobile number?

I know of no easy ways or trick. Your best bet is, as always, ask around.
I’d also suggest reading blogs and checking profiles (specifically MySpace, Facebook etc).
Some people are careless with their number (yes even I did once).
It’s really just a matter of perusing.

And while on the subject of mobile phones.
I’m not entirely sure (I saw it in Jekyll) but I think there is a way of tracking someone by their mobile. You would of course need the persons mobile number or would need to connect to them or intercept a call, but once you’ve found them you’re in.

It might be worth looking it up on google, but I’m not going to bother.

[anyone scared yet]

And of course there are phones themselves.
New technologies, bluetooth, wi-fi etc open up new doors to stealing info from phone – steal a persons phone book and you’re laughing.

But that would be illegal, so we’ll stay away.

So how do you avoid being track?

The Simple answer – Be careful about what you put on the Internet.

I’ll just give a quick mention of this – anonymous browsing, proxies etc will keep your identity hidden while you browse, but that’s a bit of an extreme measure.

The first thing you could try is creating a fake identity for certain sites

Fake Name Generator is an amazing site.
Pick a gender, country and nationality and the site will give you a name, address, DoB, email, phone number, mother’s maiden name and a fake credit card [will not work in the real world!].

All you could ever need to sign up to a site.

The other thing is the disposable email address, good for staving off unwanted spam and probably lots of other uses.

If you need to get into a site that wants you to register, Bug Me Not might be able to help.
It lets you get into a site without having to sign up, so you don’t have to leave any personal details behind.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of.

Play safe, and don’t give away more than you need to.

[anyone paranoid yet?]

Anyhow, here’s your music.

Anyone else in the mood for a bit of jazz/big band.

Here’s some Michael Bublé.

You gotta love him. Love Moondance, you’ve got to listen to the Spideman Theme cover and all in all, just enjoy.

Sleep well, don’t have nightmares,

Matthew A. Johnson.

[I identity thefted your ass, mwahahahaha!]

Forward message to Sally – Happy 17th Birthday, hope the Next sales didn’t spoil it for you.

[I’m watching you from the bushes]

Hi, my name’s Chris O. and I’m a blogging whore.

But that’s a whole other story.

[Today, I’m treating you to some Santana & Friends. Scroll down]

But first – How to Give a Back Massage

Sources tell me, if word gets out you can give a damn good back massage, women (or men if you prefer) will be falling all over you.

Score.

For for those who were wondering, HSM 2 will be shown of the 17th of August on the Disney Channel (the day after Results day) at about 9pm.

So stick a blank DVD in the recorder, get some snacks and let Disney Channel cheer you up
[don’t worry, you could always try again next year]

Back to the stalking.
[read the disclaimer in the previous post before proceeding]

The thing is, everything yesterday was ultimately trivial.
More an interesting game to play. A way to estimate a friends birth date [when you may have forgotten it] to know when to send a present.

[hint – have it send from an Internet site at around mid star-sign region. If you’re out by More than a week, try blaming it on the website. Of course, you could just ask.]

But anyhow. This is where the interesting stuff comes in.

I know your first name, but what’s your surname?

Well first, I don’t remember exactly, but it’s worth looking at the persons blog [if they have one].
There is quite a bit about the person in the side bar. There may be some worth while stuff in there.
[I can’t check now, because I’ve got as promise to live up to]

But secondly.

This isn’t a tried and tested technique, at this stage it’s more theoretical
(based on assumptions and experience).

It’s suggested you put your real name into MySpace so that your friends can find you.
From that, you can search for your friend by real name.
But, if you search for the persons username or screen name, do you get the persons full, real name listed next to their result? You do get a lot of other info, but I think most of that can be found on the profile page. You can always use this extra info to identify the result as the person you’re looking for.

And again, if all else fails, ask them or one of their friends or someone who’s likely to know their name (someone who’s in the same class as them).
Subtlety is the key of course, you make wish to think up a story/excuse for why you want it.

Now, I have looked into this and to track down a person’s ‘vitals’, you need two things:
A name (first and last), and
A region (within which they live), the more accurate the better.

So how can you work out where a person lives from MySpace?

Again, check the blog first.
But also, read the blog. If the person talks about their live a lot, there are likely to be clues – where they work, where they go to school, they may make plans with their friends giving locations etc.

The other thing is, on the persons profile age, there is often given education history and work history ie. I study/ied at… I work(ed) at…
This can give you a general region.

For example, my page will tell you that I studied at Wath Comprehensive School.
Look it up on google map and you’ll get a location.
It is fair to assume that a student at that school will live within a certain distance from it.
In this case, I’d go as far as to call the region Rotherham, and that may be enough to track the person down.

Also, take note of the dates. If they’re within the same year as the year they left the school, it’s safe to assume they will be in the same house.

Outside of this, take note of their age, they may have gone of to uni.

Now here’s the clever part. A lot of Schools will have a digital version of their prospectus on their website. Go specifically to the sixth form prospectus.
The is usually a list in the back of previous student, where they went and what they’re studying.
Provided they left the year before the prospectus was printed, they should be in there – score!

A persons current university (along with their name) can be very useful for info digging, because the more you know about a person, the more info you likely to find on them.

[note] – these technique are primarily for people in the UK.
There are lots of recourse for doing essentially the same thing in the US.
You can find some resources here.

So what can you do with a name and address/region?

Well, if they’re listed [in the phone book] finding them is simple as going to, for example, 118118.com. Person search-name-address, you’ll get a list of people matching that criteria with a phone number next to their name. It’s just a matter of deciding which (if any) of them is the person you’re looking for [address info is also given].

If they’re not listed, it’s a little harder [and more expensive].

This is where a more accurate address is needed – a post code is ideal, or a street name.

There are several sites [search UK people search], where you put in a name and address, and they search electoral rolls to give results like name, address, phone number, date of birth [and death if applicable].

So great. But there is a catch, you have to pay to get your hands on the results.
If you’re determined you’ll pay the price [I wouldn’t].

I’d also suggest looking into the freedom of information act.
It may be possible to go to your local council type place and ask to see public records on a person. But that’s something you’d have to investigate.

Next time – extras, misc and how to avoid being tracked/stalked.

So that’s that, and here’s this:

Carlos Santana, guitar hero with an Latin vibe [this guy’s been going since ’66].
Aside from his solo music, he’s also perform with a lot of other famous acts [see Supernatural and Shaman albums].

You may think you haven’t hear any of his stuff, but you’d be surprised what you recognise.
Take the first in the play list, for example.

My favourite – ‘Why Don’t You And I’.
There are two versions. The album version features Chad Kroeger of Nickelback.
But due to legal complication, he couldn’t appear on the single version. So he suggested Alex Band of The Calling. They’re both essentially the same. It’s just a matter of who voice you prefer.

Anyway, here you go.

Give me your heart, Make it real, Or else forget about it,

Oatzy.

[still here]