So, you may have noticed a little downtime here at tossr; no updates for, ooh, about 4 months and some proper off-the-map downtime too, due to my previous host slapping up a big “this domain has been suspended” notice rather than, I dunno, actually letting me know that my account was due for renewal. I subscribe to British science fiction mag SFX and they start telling you your sub is due for renewal months in advance, so why can’t a webhost at least have the courtesy to inform you that it’s time to cough up more money before pulling the plug on your site? I’m not going to name names as I was fairly happy with them otherwise and it may just have been a one-off; however as a form of protest I’ve taken my business elsewhere.

What’s with this post then? Well, I’m determined to get back to blogging (mainly so that I can stuff the site full of ads and rake in that sweet Adsense cash) but, as always, the hardest bit is getting started; inertia can be pretty difficult to overcome. It doesn’t help that on more than one occasion I’ve made announcements along the lines of “Yay, tossr is back! And this time I’m going to keep posting!” only for it to come stumbling to a halt after a post or two. How is this time going to be different? Well, I can’t guarantee it will be; I’ve just landed some potentially-lucrative web design work so that has to take priority but I’ll certainly do my darnedest to keep this place running.

As always, the question of what to write about rears its ugly head; tossr was initially intended to be a tech-related blog (hence the name, with its suggestion of a dismissive attitude towards the hype surround the whole Web2.0 scene) but it somehow got sidetracked into interminable anecdotes about coffee and tipping. Having said that, I like writing anecdotes about coffee and tipping; you may consider them dull, self-absorbed ramblings but I prefer to think of them as witty snapshots of modern British living. Maybe, if I can keep it up, I can get a job as a Guardian columnist, churning out 600-word missives so that the likes of me can skim over them every Saturday over a coffee and ciabatta.

That reminds me, did I tell you the latest on my coffee addiction? But no, that can wait until another day; I don’t want to go giving away all my best anecdotes just yet, as you never know when a passing editor is ready to pounce, chequebook at the ready, with the promise of my own weekly column headed with a vaguely-flattering photo of myself looking happy, sleepy or grumpy (or indeed, some other dwarf-related emotion). I’ll save that one for another time then; when I’m a bit stuck for material, perhaps.

So, um, coffee stories tomorrow, then?

Frankly, readers, I’m baffled. Allow me to sure my bafflement through the medium of the YouTube clip; here, for your delectation, is a specially-shot trailer for series 1 of Graham Linehan’s sitcom The IT Crowd:

What’s that? You can’t see the video? Well, exactly It seems that the video has been taken down “due to a copyright claim by Fremantlemedia Group Limited”. I’m not exactly sure I understand their reasoning; the video isn’t on the DVD, was filmed purely to promote the series (ie. it isn’t a compilation of clips or anything like that) and was aired only in the weeks preceding the first show’s broadcast. In other words, it’s a nice little sketch-ette that Fremantle (sorry, I mean “Fremantlemedia” — hooray for compound proper nouns, eh?) seemingly don’t want anyone to see because it might, um, promote their programme or something. Heaven forbid that in the run-up to the second series someone might, I dunno, post a promotional video to a blog or something!

Still, it’s a good job the BBC take a more enlightened stance towards YouTube:

Mr Highfield said the BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members - although it would reserve the right for example to swap poor quality clips with the real thing, or to have content removed that infringed other people’s copyright, like sport, or that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC’s brand.

“We don’t want to be overzealous, a lot of the material on YouTube is good promotional content for us,” he said.

And here to prove it is a clip from Friday Night With Jonathan Ross showcasing the talents of character comedian Marc Wootton:

Ah. Um. Okay.

This isn’t the BBC’s fault, though; this was removed “due to a copyright claim by Hotsauce TV”, Hotsauce (Christ, there’s another one; although to be fair, a quick Google search shows that it’s usually written “Hot Sauce” so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time) being Jonathan Ross’s own production company. I’m not disputing their right to have the clip pulled; however it makes the BBC’s much-publicised statement seem a little hollow when you realise that “other people’s copyright” doesn’t just include sports events but also a lot of programmes which you may think of as being by the BBC but which are in fact by outside production companies who are perfectly happy to have content taken down.

At first I thought this was because the accompanying description (”You’ll believe a career can sink”) was perhaps a little inflammatory (although true to an extent); had Jonathan himself requested it be removed as a favour to his management company, Off the Kerb (who at one time represented Wootton although his name is now strangely absent from the website)? However, it seems that mine isn’t the only FNWJR clip to be pulled. That makes me feel a little better about it, but also annoys me as a license payer to think that the money the BBC are shovelling in Ross’s direction is being partly siphoned off in the direction of some kind of online enforcer, scouring the web for the merest hint of a copyright infraction and gruffly demanding that the clip be removed while pointedly remarking about what a lovely website this is and wouldn’t it be a shame if anything were to happen to it? Of course, the reality is probably that it’s some underpaid temp or the work experience kid or whatever, but the thought of Ross turning up in his bubble car and cracking his knuckles at some unfortunate sysadmin tickles me for some reason.

But anyway, given the BBC’s online do-goodery in the field of NuMedia2.0 it seems a touch ironic that they’re also indirectly funding the antithesis of the “everything’s open, everything’s free” web that they’re working towards. Well, okay, that’s a bit of an over-simplification, but you get my drift.

So in conclusion? Erm, nothing really; I was just a bit cross that I’d had my videos taken down, that’s all.

So, Farewell
Then Sam Tyler.

I mean,
“You were, actually.”

(with apologies to E.J. Thribb, 73)

And that’s the end of that. I really, really enjoyed Life on Mars; I may be a bed-wetting Liberal on the surface but deep down I yearn for the politically-unsound days of 1973 when men were men, birds were birds and a slap on the arse was a form of banter, not harrassment. Gene Hunt: women want to be with him, men want to punch him. And then “be” him.

Jumping on the internet straight afterwards to post all sorts of OMFGWTFBBQ messages, I discovered a craftily-timed BBC press release which revealed that the much-discussed spin-off series Ashes to Ashes would also involve a time-travelling theme; this time, it’s a high-flying female psychological profiler who is caught in an accident which casts her back to 1981 to lock horns with Gene and co. This means that Gene Hunt is, in effect, Jack Regan crossed with the Doctor, only it’s the companions that travel in time and space, not him. I for one cannot wait for the 1967-set The Laughing Gnome, in which a high-flying black Police offer winds up in an accident which sends him back to Hunt’s hippie days, complete with heavy-handed references to smoking dope and, I dunno, kaftans or something.

But back to Life on Mars; was that the best way to end it? In my mind it was, simply because it explained enough (ie. 1973 was all in Sam’s head) without giving away too much — did he really wake up in 2006 or was that just another part of his coma? Satisfying but inviting speculation; nice.

Or at least, that’s what I thought until I thought until I read this blog post which features an interview with Matthew Graham, co-creator and lead writer of the programme in which he comprehensively spells out exactly what the end was about. Great. Thanks Matthew. There’s nothing like explaining a seemingly-ambiguous final episode to show that you have total faith in your writing. If only Donald Bellisario had been on hand to tell us just what the fuck was going on in that last episode of Quantum Leap, it would have saved us, oooh, minutes of playground speculation. Perhaps the only thing stopping Patrick McGoohan from writing an essay on the meaning of the final Prisoner episode was the fact that he was as baffled as the rest of us; if it wasn’t for that I’m sure he would’ve shared his thoughts with us, maybe in the form of a series of diagrams written on the back of a sheet of acid tabs.

Next time, Matthew, please please please resist the temptation to explain all the whys and wherefores of Ashes to Ashes; a little enigma goes a long way. Thanks.

I think I’m slowly becoming obsessed with… I don’t know, what’s the word? “Eau de toilette” sounds too poncy, “EDT” sounds like something that requires a discreet visitor the doctor, “fragrance” sounds like I’m talking about air fresheners, “frag” just sounds like I’ve been playing too much Quake, and “perfume” is just… no, no way. It’s the wrong word — no question about it. For the moment I’ll go with “fragrance”, as that’s the lesser of the evils.

Start again.

I think I’m slowly becoming obsessed with fragrances. From about the age of 15 onwards I was happy with one bottle of aftershave at a time, starting with Daniel Hechter Caractère, then moving on to Joop! Nightflight and Hugo Boss Hugo. However it was strictly used for when I was going out drinking; for day-to-day use I, like every other teenage boy in Britain, relied on a can of Lynx (I don’t remember the name of the one I had; the symbol on the front was orange and blue, if that helps narrow it down any).

And that was pretty much it as far as fragrances went; it wasn’t until mid-2003 that I started wearing something every day. To begin with I just splashed on some Body Shop No Debate that I’d once received as a present, but then I moved on to picking up cheap bottles of their Arber and Kistna scents off eBay (actually, “scents” isn’t a bad word to use either; I’ll alternate between that and “fragrances” I think). Those two are wonderful, in my opinion; I’m not much of an expert when it comes to basenote-this and topnote-that so my descriptions are likely to be pretty basic, but Arber brings to mind the word “warm” while Kistna is “fresh”.

(Incidentally, when I say “cheap bottles” I mean cheap; about £5 for a 100ml bottles which is a third of what you’d pay in a store, never mind being at least five or six times cheaper than designer brand fragrances)

Those were fine, but the supplies soon started drying up. Whether it’s because I happened to be looking at the right times (usually just after Christmas, when everyone was flogging their unwanted gift boxes) or because people began to realise that they were really nice scents is immaterial; I was resigned to paying £15 a bottle like everyone else.

And then something happened, which is pretty much the root of my current situation: my girlfriend bought me some scents. Namely, Paco Rabanne XS pour Homme and Carolina Herrera Chic for Men.

Now, XS pour Homme is a nice enough fragrance; it’s fresh, clean and reminds me vaguely of soap. But Chic for Men is in a different league; it’s another warm scent but there’s something about it that’s just… I can’t describe it. All I can say is that if I’m wearing it I’ll catch myself sniffing it off the back of my hand.

And so it began. I wouldn’t say I’ve become massively obsessed with buying fragrances, but I’ve certainly found myself spending a little bit too much of my free time researching the purchase of them; for example, I’ve compiled a spreadsheet listing the ones I’m most interested in and their prices at various websites. Already I’ve added to my arsenal the likes of Burberry Touch for Men (which I feel is best described by the words “violet” and “elusive”), Givenchy Very Irrésistible for Men (”chocolate” and “hazelnut”) and Davidoff Echo, the latter being a fragrance I tried and liked, but I’m already not as keen on it as I was; the fact that it puts me in mind of an orange-scented car air freshener is probably something to do with it.

Despite the fact that I’ve got better things to be spending my money on (a longer-overdue PC upgrade, for a start) I’m still looking at the next scent to buy; at present I’ve got my eye on Givency Xeryus Rouge and Estée Lauder Beyond Paradise for Men — which I’m not even sure if I like, but I’ve somehow managed to convince myself that if I buy a bottle and wear it every day I’ll slowly grow to love it. This probably isn’t the best attitude to take; if it takes a while to grow on me, how long is it going to take to grow on my friends and colleagues? Still, I’ve pushed logic and reason to one side in my fragrant quest.

Am I as obsessed as some? Definitely not; I don’t, for example, count the number of times I wear a particular scent. However the fact that I’m spending money that could be going on a new computer is something that would’ve been unthinkable twelve months ago. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before I start noting down my fragrance habits…

I was born in 1978, which means I was 4 when Sir Clive Sinclair’s technological marvel, the ZX Spectrum, was brought into the world. This is the computer I grew up with; I was about 5 or 6 when I first played on one and was instantly hooked. I pestered my parents until they bought me one (a Spectrum+, in fact, with the improved but slightly soulless keyboard) and then spent the next five or so years playing on it until we got an Amiga 500.

The Spectrum is the thing that gave me an interest in computers, and for that I’m thankful. I have happy memories of eagerly pouncing on the newest issue of CRASH as it dropped through the letterbox, tearing open the polythene bagging and settling down to read about the latest games and admire Oli Frey’s magnificent (but confusingly homo-erotic) artwork; of borrowing the latest games from a mail-order library and compiling piratical C90 mixtapes, the currency of the 80s playground; of trying to write (but failing to complete) my own games, first in BASIC and then using programs such as GAC, all the while dreaming of the untold riches that would await me once they were published — and publication was always assured, of course.

I wasn’t the only person to embrace the Spectrum, of course; most of my friends had them (I could literally count the combined number of Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro owners I knew on one hand), as did the majority of the UK’s computer owners — the Spectrum being the best-selling home computer of the 1980s [citation needed]. It did well abroad, too, with Spain in particular being a large market for it.

However, what I find fascinating is its popularity in Eastern Europe. Spectrums were smuggled in and reverse engineered, leading to a proliferation of clones (thanks to the lax laws relating to copyright and intellectual property). Ultimately, these clones were married to the BetaDisc floppy disk interface, something of an also-ran in its native UK behind the likes of the +D and the Opus Discovery but an also-ran that found itself reverse engineered and widely cloned in the Eastern Bloc, again leading to widespread availability (and, so it seems, near ubiquity). It’s probably fair to say that given the sheer weight of numbers it was by far the most successful Spectrum disk interface out of all of them…

But I digress. I love the idea of a plucky British computer apparently conquering the Eastern European computer market, striding forth hand-in-hand with a disk interface that was a virtual unknown in its native country. Of course, original games would have been hard to come by in Eastern Europe; they just weren’t sold to that market, leading enterprising enthusiasts to import the games and remove the tape protection to facilitate easy copying. The prevalence of BetaDisc’s TR-DOS format meant that this became the de-facto standard for these pirated games, and as with most pirate game scenes, cracktros and trainers soon followed.

Recently I’ve discovered the delights of recracking games; namely, downloading cracked TR-DOS versions of games and patching them to load data from tape. The reason is simple; virtual tape loading is a far more commonplace feature in Spectrum emulators and modern storage interfaces (such as divIDE) than TR-DOS support, so recracking brings the disk versions to a wider audience (whether it be to admire and enjoy the cracktro, take advantage of the trainer or marvel at an enhanced version of a game with different music or levels or whatever). While this isn’t the reason I’ve seemingly abandoned tossr since October (moving house had at least a little to do with it), it’s certainly played its part in recent weeks. However I do aim to change that; while I may never re-attain the regular five-nights-a-week posting rhythm I once had I will strive towards at least one or two entries each week. Something I’m planning on doing is running a series of tutorials on producing recracks; there are literally thousands of TR-DOS versions of games waiting to get the recrack treatment (approximately 4,300 at last count) and while a proportion of these don’t need to be done (eg. I personally don’t see the point in recracking straight tape-to-disk conversions which haven’t been altered or added to in any way), there’s still a lot of them need doing.

So, hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have rustled up a beginner’s guide to recracking. In the meantime, you can investigate the wonderful world of Eastern Europe cracks (no, not the porny kind) over at Virtual TR-DOS and check out Tom-Cat’s page of recracked games if you want to see the end result.

After somehow managing to post something useful earlier in the week, I’ve decided to prove that metaphorical lightning can indeed strike twice in the same place by making another useful post. This time, it’s about the eBay Auction Enhancer user script for the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. This nifty little bit of JavaScript adds a countdown timer to eBay auction pages (as well as an in-place bid placer, although I tend not to use that so much).

Why am I posting about it? Well, it seems that when our clocks went back to GMT (marking the end of British Summer Time) the countdown timer stopped working, replacing the hour of the countdown timer with ?? which renders the script a little bit less useful than before. Thankfully, the fix is simple: open up the script and replace the following line:

zones: {UTC: "", AEST: "+10", AEDT: "+11", CEST: "+2", CEDT: "+2", CET: "+1", EST: "-5",
EDT: "-4", Paris: "+1", IST: "+5:30", BST: "+1", WET: "", "H\\.Esp": "+1"},


with this:

zones: {GMT: "", UTC: "", AEST: "+10", AEDT: "+11", CEST: "+2", CEDT: "+2", CET: "+1", EST: "-5",
EDT: "-4", Paris: "+1", IST: "+5:30", BST: "+1", WET: "", "H\\.Esp": "+1"},


To open the script, right-click the Greasemonkey icon in the Firefox status bar and select Manage User Script… Then, in the window that opens, click eBay Auction Enhancer and click the Edit button. Then make the amendment as above and you’re all set.

Two useful posts in one week? I’m starting to feel a little faint. Better pass the smelling salts, just in case.

Want to know what’s shaking the walls here at tossr towers? No? Well I’ll tell you anyway; at the moment I’m rocking a triple-whammy of free mixtapes.

The first is The Root Down Live! Pt. 1 mixed by Heavy Stylus, a 69-minute blend of funk/soul/hip-hop/etc. representing the sound of local (to me) club night Root Down.

Secondly, we have Siliconbeat’s The Breaks Are Here which is 69 minutes of breakbeat fury.

Finally, there’s Mash Up Ting mixed by Firestar, which throws together a bunch of dancehall-inspired tracks from assorted genres over the course of 57, encompassing breaks, garage (including a nice selection of 4×4 speed garage — it’s like 1998 never went away!) and drum & bass.

Pithy one-line comment to round off the blog post? Not this time!

What? Something worthwhile at tossr? I can scarcely believe it myself, but it’s true!

As someone who’s fallen for Netvibes in a big way (not least because, ahem, it’s the only online RSS feed reader I’ve found that isn’t blocked by the web filtering software at work), I’m finding myself increasingly ignoring Bloglines in favour of the young French upstart.

Now, as you may or may not be aware, the recently-released Firefox 2.0 has a nice feature which will offer to add an RSS feed as a Live Bookmark in Firefox, add it to the web-based aggregator of your choice or add it to your favourite computer-based reader. Unfortunately, the existing choice of online aggregators is limited, and doesn’t contain Netvibes.

So, here’s how to fix it: click this link here and you’ll be asked whether or not you want to add Netvibes as a feed reader. Click “Yes” and, as you might expect, you’ll now be able to add feeds to Netvibes from within Firefox.

Want to test it out? Step this way! Want to know more about adding feed readers to Firefox? Have a peek over here. Fancy bulking up your browser a little? Help is at hand!

Those damn naturists, they think they’re so smart! If you want to give them what they’ve had coming for a long, long time, you should head over to Threadless and take advantage of their two-day sale where they’ve slashed their prices from $15 a shirt just $10 (or, to put it another way — buy two, get one free) — apart from the fancy-pants Select shirts, which are down $5 to $20 each (with the exception of the current lot of shirts in the Think Faest promotion, which stay at $25). UK denizens such as myself can look forward to paying $44 all-in for three shirts, which is about £23.50 (although the shirts themselves cost £16, which is under the £18 limit set by HM Customs and therefore no tax is payable on them. Screw you, VATman!).

Full disclosure: I get $3 in Threadless store credit for every shirt bought via the link above. Buy, buy, buy and keep me clothed this winter!

Well, it had to happen I suppose. I’ve strayed from the path of righteousness. Yes, that’s right, I’ve cheated on that which is closest to my heart.

Namely, Costa Coffee.

A couple of months ago I was dragged into a local Caffe Nero and — you know what? — it’s not half bad. Ever since Costa dropped their spicy meatball panini I’ve been oscillating between the only other panini that I fancied: chicken arrabiata and plain ol’ ham and cheese. However, now that I’ve discovered Caffe Nero and their mozarella and meatball special… well, there’s no going back now.

Or is there? I was visiting family last month, and in their local Costa (the only fancy-pants coffee chain in town) they did have spicy meatball. Back for the Winter? Or regional variation? I’m not sure, but I’ll have to visit my local one again to check. Or at least, I would if I hadn’t been reeled in by Nero’s loyalty scheme: buy nine coffees and your tenth is free. Note that the nine coffees don’t have to be bought at once, although to be honest I don’t need much encouragement to drink prodigious amounts of the stuff…

So, what conclusion can we draw from this? Basically, I think we’ve learned that I can talk a lot of shite about inconsequential bollocks. Hooray for me!