Friday, 14 August 2009

The best things in life are free...sometimes!

Recently, I have tried to make the most of my break but relaxing a bit. This mostly consists of sitting indoors and looking out of the window at the rain. This is free, but it's no fun!

A few weeks ago, me, my boyfriend, his brother and mother went to play Pitch and Putt and managed to get the whole way round without paying a penny. There was basically a turnstyle with a notice on it saying to leave your money in a box. Well, I am an outstandingly honest citizen, so I would have been stupid enough to leave my money there, only for no one to collect it. The others decided that none of us should pay, and this turned out to be the correct decision, as we played all 18 holes without paying a penny (and there were no drinks machines, so we couldn't even be tempted to put a euro in there!).

On the other hand, holidays are not free unless you win them (and the only thing I ever won was an X-Box code that wouldn't work in the UK!). Holidays are the best thing in life at the moment, I mean they must be, because as me and my boyfriend have noticed, everyone is going on one (except us it seems!).

The alternative to going abroad on holiday is erm...staying indoors and watching the rain, so it looks like I'm going to have to learn to enjoy that!

The one thing that is [mostly] free is my laptop. I have already paid the money for it, and this one actually has a decent battery meaning it costs about half the electricity that my last one did. So I'm finding a lot to keep myself occupied in that way...playing games, Tweeting, blogging, looking for jobs/phone companies, reading the news etc. So at the moment my laptop is one of the best things I own!

Anyone else suggest anything that is free and fun? NB: If anyone says "go for a walk", I will kindly remind you that I am living at the top of a hill and it pours with rain like there's no tomorrow here!

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posted by Lucy at 0 Comments

Sunday, 9 August 2009

Technology: Taking the fun out of a lot of stuff!

Is it me, or is everything that can be enjoyed on the Internet being spoiled? This includes gaming on consoles such as the X-Box 360.

I will place a long pause here, to allow you to ponder that question..........................................

Just watching my boyfriend play Call Of Duty *insert number and title here*, and there's all this talk of "modded controllers", which are basically X-Box controllers that have been modified to fire more shots at opponents. While some of you may be thinking how amazing that is, I am of the opinion that it is cheating, and what part of cheating is fun? Why would you spend so much money on a game, console and controller, and then cheat?

The other modern concept that is being spoilt, is social networking (within which I include Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogging etc). Twitter has been completely turned on it's head after "Spam-bots" took over. Thankfully, there has been an operation to rid the micro-blogging site of some of these pests, but many still remain. Numbers of followers used to be exciting to keep up with, now it's annoying to know that half of those followers might be only doing so to send Spam, or viruses, or dodgy pictures.

Having said that, some exciting moments have been brought to me by Twitter, including the following:







YES! That is the real David Lloyd, replying to lil' ol' me!

Also, what's this with Facebook allowing people to create themselves a middle name, or two...or three? I think Christianity may have something to say about self naming, (and yes I do know that "Christianity" is not the bloke off Eastenders!).

So for all that modern concepts and technology can bring, don't forget, they're not perfect, and I can't see them ever being so. It's not even possible to get a mobile phone to work for over about a year, so how is there any chance of defeating X-Box cheaters and Twitter spammers, to name but a few annoyances.

Views, please? :)

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posted by Lucy at 2 Comments