Blog All About Me

I don't normally have self indulgent moments, but this blog post is all about me and without trying to induce collective sympathy, this blog serves as a bit of info about me and some of the things I've been through in my 35 years on this Earth.

I was born in 1980 in Guildford, the county city of Surrey and the third of a total of four children my parents had. I was 15 days late, but it meant I was born on the very day Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back was released, a fact, which as a Star Wars fan, I find very cool! Unfortunately, though my entrance into this world wasn't without it's problems, the birth went well, but due to unforeseen issues with the medication my mum was on, resulting in a lack of Folic Acid, I was born with various birth defects, which affected my childhood and meant several doctor and hospital visits throughout.

I'll point out that none of the defects are obvious now as, the only was that was obvious was remedied with three eye operations. Said issue was that I couldn't open my left eye, and finally after the third operation, performed at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London my Mr Collin, I could open and use my left eye. But unfortunately due to the length of time my eye was closed, the sight in my left eye is significantly worse than my right eye.

Other defects included Spina Bifida, which was a problem with my spine and weak hip muscles, which meant I wasn't able to work for a long time after what is normal and issues with weaker muscles around my mouth and jaw, causing issues with speech development. These issues resulted in visits to physio therapy and speech therapy sessions as a child, which thanks to the help I got and sheer determination, meant that I was finally able to walk and talk properly and unaided, and also meant I could do everything a normal able bodied person was able to do. My parents also showed determination, in the resistance from certain doctors who basically suggested that my lack of walking was because I was lazy, suggesting my mum should put me on the pavement with bare legs and crawling on the pavement would encourage me to get up and walk. If anyone reading my blog knows anything about Spina Bifida, they'd know that in most cases, people who suffer from it are wheelchair bound and no amount of physio therapy would help, but that's because they unfortunately suffer from a more sever version of it than I do. Anyone who wants to read up on it, can do so here: http://www.shinecharity.org.uk/spinabifida

In total, I had three eye operations to correct my left eye, when I was three, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed (I was eating chicken & chips the following day), I had an operation to fix my umbilical hernia (I had an outtie belly button) when I was six and when I was 12, I had two teeth removed. The other inpatient visit to a hospital I had was when I had meningitis when I was seven, which not only scared the hell out of me, but my parents and family as well.

Thanks to various issues, including learning difficulties, my parents struggled to get me into a main stream school. They obviously wanted to get me into the same school my sister and older brother were going to. They struggled to do so, but thanks to their determination, they managed it, but it also meant that teaching assistants who were good with special needs children were bought it to help out and did a very good job. Thanks to their help that I had throughout primary school, I was much more prepared for senior school when I went up in 1991. When I got up to senior school, I decided to stand on my own two feet and didn't ever seek out any help, despite still being on a special educational needs statement. And I was allowed an extra 25% time on my GCSE exams, which I didn't take on most of my exams, but did on one or two. I did my GCSE's in 1996, but because I didn't get enough high enough grades to get into the sixth form, I retook 5 GCSE's in 1997, when I did get enough high enough grades, but had already decided to go to college instead. Despite my issues, I've got 11 GCSE's including an A in IT, B in Maths, 4 C's and 5 D's, which I thought was quite good. And I have a National Diploma in Computer Studies.

Since leaving school, I've had three jobs, various positions at Sainsbury's, Security Officer for Carlisle Security (and subsequently Advance Security/Cordant Security thanks to them winning the Tesco contract I was working on at the time) and most recently I am a Personal Shopper at Ocado. All jobs, which while may not be the best jobs in the world, are all jobs that I couldn't do if it wasn't for the fact I've overcome issues I've had as a child.

On a more personal level, I've lived in Surrey until 1982, then lived in Essex until 2006, which is when I finally moved out of my parents house, aged 26, moving to Derbyshire, then thanks to getting in to debt (partly thanks to not being able to say no to my ex), I moved back to Essex in 2011 and then moved to Warwickshire in May this year, moving in with my current girlfriend after finally clearing my debts.

I might not conform to what a lot of people consider to be normal, I have long hair and a large beard (something which my ex hated). I listen to heavy metal music, and some lighter rock music, as you can probably tell from my previous blog post about the bands I've seen and want to see. I have always wanted to be my own person and haven't always been allowed to. It's not that I'm rebelling, I'm way past that, but if you can't be your own person and be happy in your own skin (and hair) then you'll never really be happy. If people don't accept you the way you want to be, then they might not be worth having in your life. Other interests in my life include Formula 1 and motor racing, Sci-Fi including but certainly not limited to Star Trek, Star Wars and Doctor Who. I used to go live action roleplaying (LARPing) which I really should look into getting back into. I have got into trains recently, and not just moaning about them. I've always liked cars, especially American Muscle Cars, although I do love classic and more modern British luxury cars and hot hatches.

Confidence has never been a thing of mine, especially when it comes to members of the opposite sex, I was a bit like Raj from The Big Bang Theory, although my confidence did start growing when I started regularly going out in 2002/2003 which was thanks, in no small part by my mate Jess, who reached out and invited me out to the pub and it all went from there. I've got a lot more female friends now and a lot more male friends for that matter.

I suppose the moral of the story is that if you work hard enough and show enough determination, you can get over almost anything and you can achieve anything. You can never let anyone else define who you are, you won't be you if you let others dictate who you are. I'd also like to give a very big thank you to my family for always supporting me through all the not so good times and for friends who have come along and helped support me and accepting me for who I am and been there for me.

Gigs, Concerts & Other Such Things

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the various concerts, gigs and festivals that I've been to. It's fair to say I've been to a fair few in my 35 years and have enjoyed every last one of them. In saying that there are still bands I'd love to go to see and haven't yet, and it's fair to say that I'm not getting any younger. While I'm not overly old, I'm not in my youth any more either. So at this mid point in my life, I thought I'd make a list of bands/acts I've seen and bands/acts I would like to see. Lets see if I'm not too old to remember all those who I've seen.

1996 - Madstock @ Finsbury Park, London - main band: Madness, supporting acts included Squeeze and Mike Flowers Pops (yeah, I know what you're thinking)

1998 - V98 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Green Day, Robbie Williams, Texas, The Verve, Lightning Seeds, Iggy Pop, Stereophonics.

1999 - V99 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Manic Street Preachers, James Brown, Kula Shaker, Stereophonics, Supergrass, The Levellers.

2000 - V2000 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - went home early on Saturday night as I had a panic attack. Can't remember what bands I saw and which ones I didn't.

2001 - V2001 @ Hylands Park, Chelmsford - acts included Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Muse, The Charlatons, Foo Fighters, David Grey, Coldplay, Placebo.

2003 - Reading (Only on the Sunday) - acts included Metallica, System of a Down, Sum 41, Primal Scream, Good Charlotte, All American Rejects, Biffy Clyro

2003 - Metallica @ Earls Court, London, supporting act Godsmack

2005 - System of a Down @ Brixton Academy, supporting act Eighties Matchbox B Line Disaster

2005 - Download Festival @ Donnington Park - acts included System of a Down, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Slayer, Nightwish, Killswitch Engage, Papa Roach, Velvet Revolver, Anthrax, Bowling for Soup, Chimara, Megadeth, Apocolyptica, Lamb of God

2006 - Download Festival @ Donnington Park - acts included Metallica, Tool, Deftones, Coheed and Cambria, Soil, Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, Trivium, Lordi, Guns N Roses (or should I say a whiney Axl Rose + a few mates) Lacona Coil, Cradle of Filth, Bullet for my Valentine, Eighteen Visions, Bring Me The Horizon.

2009 - Metallica @ Sheffield Arena, supporting acts included: Machine Head & The Sword

2010 - Disturbed @ Capital FM Arena, Nottingham, supported by Papa Roach, Buck Cherry & Halestorm.

2010 - Bullet for my Valentine @ National Indoor Arena, Birmingham, supported by Atreyu & Bring Me The Horizon. (Free ticket, went with a now former friend as his ex had bought him and herself tickets, but they split up before the gig, so he gave me her ticket as she decided not to go)

Other than that, I've seen local gigs by local bands in Romford, Essex and the surrounding area.

I'd love to go see the following bands, but haven't got around to it yet:

Forever Never

InMe

Iron Maiden

Rammstein

Motorhead

Genesis

Pantera (I know this one can't happen :( )

Queen (Another one that won't happen)

AC/DC

Aerosmith

Soundgarden

Audioslave

Fear Factory

The Offspring

Prodigy

Tenacious D

The Who

Weird Al Yankovic

So hopefully soon.....

Cosplayers: Don't Judge Them!

We all have our favourite characters from our favourite TV shows and cartoons, don't we? I know I do. While some of us watch the TV shows or cartoons and sit there imagining, daydreaming if you like, that they are their favourite characters, other people go out and actually dress up as their favourite characters, or even go as far as creating their own non-canon character to dress up as. That's what Cosplayers do, nine times out of ten, these people go to conventions such as Comicon and London Film and Comic Con (LFCC) and meet up with other like minded individuals and there's usually a high proportion of them at these conventions.

Before you go and start judging these people, thinking they're weird, saying they're not normal, etc, just take a minute to think about what you like to enjoy that they might think is weird or not normal. Also take the time to think that the people they are emulating or looking to for inspiration are also dressing up in similar costumes, you never stop to think they're weird, do you? The only major difference between Cosplayers and the actors or actresses they are emulating is that the actors or actresses are getting paid to dress up like that, Cosplayers spend their hard earned cash to purchase costumes, make up, etc that go together to make up the outfit and the look.

It would also be worth noting that a lot of Cosplayers make their own costumes, which are often bespoke to them. Imagine the time and effort it takes to make a bespoke outfit, buying materials and then meticulously cutting each piece to size and either sowing or attaching it to the other pieces. I know one such person, who makes costumes for his wife and himself and it's very talented at what he does. Wait, what's that? A man who's good at sowing? Yes and he's very good at it, he also designs the costumes they wear prior to methodically building and sowing the them to the correct size, making sure they are spot on perfect before they attend conventions and other events they go to. You wouldn't want your wife going out looking like a tramp now, would you?

Cosplayers are no more weird than people who modify their cars, collect china or antiques or model cars or toys, like these other "types" of people, they just like to indulge themselves in what they are interested in. You wouldn't walk past someone walking down the road with an expensive antique and call them a weirdo, would you? Even if you did think their antique was worthless, you wouldn't. Maybe it's because Cosplayers are more obvious and more noticeable, but a lot of them are extremely talented and highly intelligent and imaginative people, just like live action role-players (LARPers) or rein-actors.

Just people someone likes different things to you and doesn't fit in with what is generally considered the 'social norms', it doesn't mean that they are weird, it doesn't mean they are deviant or perverted in any way. Most of them are normal everyday people, who, when they're not in costume, you'd walk past them in the street and not look twice at them. They don't mean any harm to anyone and don't wish any harm to come to others, even those who voice negative comments about them, they just want to go out and have a good time in their own way.

Cosplaying is no different than a football fan going to a football match or out with his/her friends wearing their team's football jersey. Wearing a football jersey or full kit is a kind of Cosplay in itself as you're emulating your favourite player(s), yet it's socially acceptable to do that, so why isn't someone dressed as a Star Wars or Star Trek character, for example, emulating Obi Wan Kenobi or a Klingon?

So please just stop and think before opening your cake hole and casting a potentially highly judgemental and possibly extremely insulting comment on a Cosplayer or Cosplay as a whole.

Thank you for reading.

The Girlfriend's Laptop

Right then, so, I was given the task of speeding up the girlfriend's laptop, which just happens to be a Lenovo G535 with a 1Tb hard drive and preloaded with Windows 8. It had got to the point it was so sluggish it was barely usable.

First port of call was to do a full on system recovery. That failed miserably when I restarted it after the recovery and it didn't boot up at all.

Second port of call was to do a complete re-installation of Windows onto the computer from a disc. And as I needed a Windows 7 disc for my laptop, she had always prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8 and disc from eBay were just as much without a new product key as they were with, I decided to go for that option. Upon receiving the disc through the post, I thought I'd give it a go that night. Big mistake, once it had collected all the preliminary information, it took over an hour to expand just 15% of the installation files. I eventually gave up until tonight. Remember, I had completely formatted the hard drive, I'd even gone to the lengths of wiping the recovery partition and consolidating all the hard drive's partitions.

The third and final port of call. Suspecting that it was possibly a fault with the hard drive, I decided to swap out the laptop's original hard drive with a 250Gb laptop hard drive I had laying around from a previous laptop of mine. (I know what you're thinking, swapping a 1Tb hard drive for one quarter of the size is madness, but remember, at this point, it was just a theory). After performing the transplant, I set to installing Windows 7 again, low and behold, Windows installed without so much of a hiccup, and in much under an hour. In fact, I'm sat here now, typing this blog from the laptop and there is no lag or sluggishness to be seen.

Which kind of proves my theory of a faulty hard drive, or does it? Well while the laptop seems to be working fine at the moment, I'm going to keep booting it up and using it for the next week, before returning it to my girlfriend to make sure of no lag or sluggishness. Not only that, but the laptop's original hard drive, is sat on the side looking all sorry for itself, so tomorrow, I'll put it into my old laptop and see if the laptop's original OS will install on it without any issues, it's Windows XP (most people's favourite version of Windows) what could possibly go wrong? Well, if the hard drive is fried, then it just won't install, or if it does, it'll take a lifetime to install.

Should be fun, watch this space.

The All New Ford Mondeo

The New Mondeo is finally upon us, having been on sale in the US for a while now, it's finally on sale in Europe after some lengthy disputes about moving production from one factory to another.

Today, I went down to my local Ford dealership, who just happened to have a top of the range Mondeo Titanium Diesel estate for me to have a go on. Following on from the Focus's and Fiesta's lead, the new Mondeo has slick lines and that distinctive Ford grille. On the inside it looked very impressive too. Featuring an 8 inch touch screen with Ford's SYNC 2 system, Sat Nav, Bluetooth phone connectivity, voice activation, DAB radio and 2 USB sockets, one of which will charge a large tablet, such as an iPad.

The touch screen shows info about what road you're on, whether your phone is connected, information about the radio station or what music you're listening too and information about the air conditioning (which on the Titanium is dual zone climate controlled air con) by default, but I have been informed this can be changed. A nice touch, although not entirely necessary, you can change the picture on the back ground in a similar way you can on a touch screen phone.

In front of the drivers seat sits a good sized steering wheel with buttons for various commands adorning it, a lot of things can be controlled by these buttons or by voice activation, the model I test drove had cruise control, climate control and a plethora of external sensors to help keep you on the straight and narrow. The dash board was all digital as well, including the speedo and rev counter, and displays all the information the driver needs including next instructions if you have the sat nav on.

A feature I've not seen on Ford's before is the electronic hand brake system. Rather than having a lever next to or behind the gear stick, it has a button you can press to toggle the hand brake on or off, push down to turn it off, pull it up to turn it back on again, it feels a bit like the electric window switches, which is no bad thing.

The car comes in various trim levels including: Style, Zetec, Titanium and Titanium Hybrid. Five door hatchback and estate body styles and the following engine options: 1.5 litre EcoBoost (160PS) and 2.0 litre EcoBoost (240PS) Petrol or 1.6 litre Duratorq Econetic (115PS), 2.0 litre Duratorq (150PS or 180PS) TDCi engines. Or a 2.0 litre Ti-VCT (177PS) on the Hybrid. Of course there is the choice of having a manual or automatic gearboxes, some automatics have F1 style flappy paddles on the steering wheel.

The feel of the drive and the driving position are both good and once you get behind the wheel, it feels as comfortable to drive as many smaller cars and the handling around bends is good. The damping out of various bumps along the route was excellent and was better than the Focus I also test drove, although the Focus's handling and damping was still superb. Although I have to say, I test drove the Mondeo first and the Focus seemed quite ordinary in comparison, driving it on the exact same route straight afterwards. That's not to say that the Focus is a bad car, because it's still a very good motor, and an improvement on the previous model.

In my opinion, Ford rivals such as Vauxhall, Renault, Peugeot, etc. are up for a fight with the Mondeo, it's been a long wait for it coming, but is it worth the wait? I think it is, it looks nicer and more refined than a lot of its rivals and owners of previous models of Mondeo are definitely in for a treat if they replace theirs with this new model.

Page 3 Girls + The Sun Newspaper = No More

As rubbish as the paper is, The Sun is Britain's favourite newspaper for some bizarre reason. Every day for the last 40 odd years, the newspaper has featured a topless woman on the third page. They've now decided that they don't want to do that any more, bowing to pressure from various groups who don't like seeing a pair of boobs in their daily newspaper, lord forbid if they ever "read" The Daily Sport.

Some people have said that Page 3 is demeaning and has no place in newspapers in the 21st Century, even though, Page 3 Girls became somewhat of a British institution. As an adult, I did wonder how papers got away with printing pictures mostly naked women in them, given that if the woman in question removed the last one or two garments, the picture would have to be printed in a pornographic magazine, only for the eyes of those over the age of 18. But I just gave it up as a bad fight as it is something that has always happened in my lifetime and The Sun without the standard picture of a topless woman in it just wouldn't feel right.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to be that the vast majority of people who object to the publishing of nearly naked women in newspapers are women who feel some how violated that Page 3 is just another way to objectify women. So Page 3, along with full blown pornographic magazines and websites are wrong as they depict naked and nearly naked women in various poses to wet the sexual appetite of men who like looking at the pictures. I would like to call you people hypocrites and point out that there are a lot of people with double standards. While pictures like these might 'objectify' women, there are plenty of magazines and publications that 'objectify' men too. There are countless pornographic magazines with men in similar poses to the women in pornographic magazines featuring women, there are also a lot of calendars that are sold every year with scantily clad men in them, just as there are of calendars featuring scantily clad women. So women are just as guilty as men, when it comes to objectifying the opposite sex, so please don't feed that crap to me. You don't see me complaining that pictures of scantily clad men are demeaning, do you? Does anyone remember the Page 7 Fella or the Page 8 Mate?

Another thing I would like to point out is that a lot of people, men and women alike, go into the modelling industry willingly, because it's what they want to do for a living and it's just as a legitimate choice as becoming a shop assistant, PA, lawyer, police officer, journalist or any other job you may care to mention. It's perfectly acceptable for someone to want to get paid for flaunting what they've got to people who want to look, people are always being told, "if you've got it, flaunt it", well why not get paid for it then? So before you turn around and say, "she's someone's daughter, don't you know", if she's chosen to do that for a living, let her, is it hurting you if she willingly poses for pictures, wearing nothing but a pair of knickers? No, it isn't, is the short answer, no one's asking you to do it and no one is forcing her to do it either. Who are you to judge someone's career choice? Just because her career choice entails her taking her clothes off for a living.

I would like to point out, that I don't actually buy newspapers from any source, as these days, the news articles are generally available online the previous day and most news sites don't request that you pay them a fee to read them and because of that I think newspapers are a massive waste of paper and remnants of past pre-internet news telling, but it keeps someone in a job, so crack on.

Creme Eggs, What is Everyone's Problem!?!

Cadbury's Creme Eggs have always been a popular Easter confection in the UK. For the few people who don't know what they are, they consist of an egg shaped milk chocolate shell, filled with yellow and white coloured fondant.

Prior to Cadbury's being purchased by Kraft Foods, now called Mondelez (which itself was rather controversial to British traditionalists), it was generally accepted that the chocolate used in Creme Eggs was made to the exact same recipe as Cadbury's trade mark milk chocolate, Dairy Milk. But this year there was uproar when it was announced that Cadbury's wasn't making Creme Eggs with Dairy Milk any more, but a different cheaper milk chocolate recipe instead. A month or two after Cadbury's announced they'd stop making their chocolate coins at Christmas, to many people, this was just another nail in the coffin and shouts of "Boycott Cadbury's!!!" or "Boycott the Creme Egg!!!" were heard.

I mean really! You're going to stop eating Creme Eggs or Cadbury's chocolate all together because, as a company, they've decided to make their operation less expensive? Put yourself in their position, if you run a company, you'd want it to be as profitable as possible, wouldn't you? So it stands to reason that if they've been making a particular product at a particular price and they've found a way to make it for less money, why wouldn't they change it to the cheaper way of making it?

Many people might be able to notice the difference in taste between the old Dairy Milk recipe and the new non-Dairy Milk recipe, maybe their taste buds are more finely tuned than those who don't notice. But in grand scheme of things, as the Creme Egg has never been advertised as the Dairy Milk Creme Egg, technically, Cadbury's can use literally any recipe of milk chocolate to make them and it's not going to taste THAT much different.

Some people need to get over themselves, buy them or not, that's your decision, but if complaining because a company has changed the recipe of one of your favourite chocolates isn't overly important in the grand scheme of things.

Welcome to my New Blog

Welcome to my new blog. As many people know I frequently moan about Abellio Greater Anglia and Vodafone, this new blog is much more general and about everything else.

Anything that I feel strongly enough about will get blogged about here. It could be idiot drivers, the weather, stupid decisions, anything that makes me facepalm, TV, literally anything! So please read on and enjoy my blog.

Follow me on Twitter - @RealDC80 and read my other blogs about Abellio Greater Anglia here: http://dcabellioga.blogspot.co.uk/ and Vodafone here: http://dcvodafone.blogspot.co.uk/

Thanks for reading!

Regards,

Dan.