Baileys is booring!!!

When facing the latest Cyberchase challenge, The Fuzz, Der Forkmeister was torn as to what brand he should choose. Baileys seemed a good choice as it is world famous and as a spirit could potentially generate many interesting/embarrassing stories on the internet. Nothing further from reality. Baileys is booooring!!! Here's why:

1) Baileys doesn't have its own website. Anyone interested in 'premium' booze needs to make their way to http://www.diageo.com/en-row/ourbrands/ourglobalbrands/baileys/ and by the time it gets there chances are that they will already have lost interest (ok, I did say MAYBE).

2) BBC news feeds used in Der Forkmeister's account only attracted murder and rape stories, which wouldn't qualify as interesting/embarrasing, and don't refer to 'premium' or 'spirits'.

3) Using Alexa Traffic doesn't offer a fair image of Baileys' traffic agains competitors. A neck to neck race of Baileys against Cointreau seems to be as unbalanced as Hamilton facing Ralph Schumacher. Why? Again, Baileys doesn't have its own website, so Alexa takes www.diageo.com as the anaysed website, which obviously has a much larger traffic than www.cointreau.com

In conclusion, Netvibes can be a powerful tool to have a daily quick browse at our topics of interest, but when used to research information in depth, it loses much of its power and attractiveness. Then again, if I was working for diageo Netvibes would have helped me learn my lesson: Baileys needs a website of its own.

The Stones - Honky Tonk Woman

A Bigger Bang

The Rolling Stones are back.

In an attempt to close their seemingly neverending mega-tour A Bigger Bang, the Rolling Stones have just set feet in the Old Continent to rock with their fans again. For the last time? It may well be!

For those that ignore their origins, The Rolling Stones came into being in 1962 when former schoolmates Mick Jagger and Keith Richards met Brian Jones, who named the band after the title of the Muddy Waters song "Rollin' Stone". The original line-up included Mick Jagger (vocals), Brian Jones (guitar, harmonica, vocals), Keith Richards (guitar, vocals), Ian "Stu" Stewart (piano), Dick Taylor (bass) and various drummers such as Mick Avory (later of The Kinks) and Tony Chapman.

United by their shared interest in rhythm and blues music, the group rehearsed extensively, initially playing in public at the Marquee Club in London. The band rapidly gained a reputation for their frantic, highly energetic covers of the rhythm and blues songs of their idols. The performances were pivotal in introducing a generation of white British youth to rhythm and blues music, and helped to fuel the "British Invasion" of America. More importantly perhaps, while The Beatles were still suited, clean-cut boys with mop-top haircuts, The Stones cultivated the opposite image: decidedly unkempt, and posing for publicity photographs like a gang of surly yobs. This made many girls go crazy for their bad boy image, and soon made them a teen idol group.

On June 30, 1965, the Stones released the album "Out of Our Heads". The US version included the song "Satisfaction". Keith Richards apparently wrote the memorable introductory riff in his sleep. He had been recording riffs on a tape recorder and fell asleep; when he woke up, he almost erased the tape, but decided to listen to it again. He said it was, "two minutes of Satisfaction and forty seconds of me snoring".

Tragedy struck the Stones in 1969. Soon after forcing guitarist Brian Jones to leave the band, being replaced by the young, jazz-influenced guitarist Mick Taylor, he was found dead in the swimming pool of his Cotchford Farm home in Kent, following several episodes of alcohol and drug abuse. The period that followed was arguably one of the most prolific and successful for the band. If you wanted to sum up the Stones' best work in a nutshell, you can't go wrong with the period which began with 1968's Beggars Banquet, ran through Let It Bleed -the band's last UK number 1 single-, and then ended up with Exile in 1972. That period is arguably when the Stones were at the peak of their game.Which is interesting when you consider Mick Taylor was the guitarist on most, if not all of those records.

In the 70s, feeling that live performing was evolving, the Stones decided to move on. Rather than performing in small and medium-size venues to audiences of screaming girls, they were booked into huge baseball and football stadiums with crowd sizes to match. They blazed a trail for a multitude of stadium tours by the super-bands of the 1970s, which continues to this day.

The 1970s saw the Stones playing at the top of their game. Unencumbered by Jones and armed to the teeth with the astonishingly fluent blues playing of twenty-one-year-old Mick Taylor, the rhythm section could put its foot down. No other band was so lascive, syncopated, scholarly and original all at the same time. They were making, as the reactionary critic Albert Goldman was forced to admit, "mighty jungle music". Their producer, Jimmy Miller, called them 'the greatest white rhythm section I've ever seen' and you can hear this on their live recording Get Yer Ya Yas Out (1970), which has often been considered the greatest live rock and roll record ever.

Following their successful 'Bridges to Babylon tour', Q magazine named The Rolling Stones as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die". On May 10, 2005, The Stones announced plans for another world tour starting August 21 at Fenway Park in Boston. The A Bigger Bang Tour was expected to include dates throughout the United States and Canada before going to South America, Asia and Europe. Launching the tour at the Juilliard School in New York, Mick Jagger -now 63- told reporters that it would not necessarily be their last.

February 18, 2006, was a historic day for The Rolling Stones: They performed to the biggest audience of their career, a free concert on Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro Brazil, where city authorities estimated attendance at 1,500,000. While the Guinness World Book of Records states the largest free concert ever was given in the same spot in 1994 by Rod Stewart, to 3.5 million people, that figure includes everyone who was on Copacabana Beach for fireworks and New Year Eve's celebrations, not just for that concert, so The Rolling Stones could hold the title of largest rock concert of all time.

After all these achievements, the huge demand to see the mythical band is absolutely justified. A Bigger Bang could well be the last chance to see The Rolling Stones perform live, and their fans know it. Tickets for most of their European concerts are already sold out, although honestly priced tickets can still be found. After all, The Rolling Stones may well be one of the 5 best live bands of all time. Certainly something to do before one dies.

Au Revoir Voice Changer...

In the last couple of weeks, Der Forkmeister got really attached to his Voice Changer. Hence his initial reluctance to taking part in the next Ebay challenge to sell the item. Besides, selling a surprising item on Ebay is fairly straightforward. But selling at a profit... forget it!

Given the difficulty of the challenge, a strategy was soon devised to breach the rules of fair play. These were based on an alliance with Eyedent by which he would bid for the voice changer to inflate the final price. Did it work? Disappointment was in the air up until the last 5 minutes of the auction, since Eyedent was still the highest bidder. What would an eye dent do with a voice changer? Claim allowances?? But then, when hope was almost lost, a new bidder hit the marketplace and offered £5.50 for the item, just 1 minute before the end of the auction (auction num. 160098273530). This was obviously the last bid, and the buyer will soon enjoy 10 new voices with which to sing La Macarena.

Der Forkmeister was quite pleased after having successfully sold the Voice Changer. He did not make a profit -£5.50 was still far below the £10.50 he had originally paid for the item-, but his losses had substantially diminished. But, huh! Soon after the sale, he received an invoice from MrEbay detailing all the charges for the sale. These included 15p gallery fee, 15p insertion fee, 75p bold listing fee, 29p final value fee, and everything times 2 for having mistakenly listed the item in 2 categories! All these events led to a shameful outcome: Der Forkmeister should go back to his origins as a fork bender. There's no glory in Ebay.

Bargain!

Ebay is just one of those things that has inadvertently entered our lives, to the point that many people just couldn't live without it. Addictive? You bet!

Ebay is much more than a virtual auction site. It is a monument to human limitations, a celebration of dumbness. How else could we explain users bidding for items such as 'a vampire killing kit', 'the internet' or 'the meaning of life'?! (and why did 'the meaning of life' only reach $3.26??)

This just comes to prove that Ebayers should be cautious when purchasing items. Since sellers are hiding behind their virtual identities -and despite reliability measurements like transactional feedback- buyers hardly know the nature and state they are bidding for until it has reached them. In these cases, disappointment is usually directly proportional with the money paid for the item.

Fewer are cases in which ebay transactions turn against the seller's interest. A good example is that of a US mum tracking down a thief who burgled her home after the ill-gotten gains were offered for sale on eBay: "I was shocked and almost in tears," Todd told the Washington Post. "I was like, 'That's mine! That's mine!' I was just floored. When I found it, I clicked on 'see seller's other items,' and when I scrolled through, lo and behold, there was my [laptop]." The suspected burglar was subsequently charged with 12 counts of burglary realating to breaks-ins at various homes in the DC area. He is in jail on remand awaiting trial.

My personal experience with Ebay has been a fairy tale as compared to the cases described above. After quickly browsing the items on offer, I finally identified what I needed the most: a voice changer. 'Useless', you may say. 'Bargain!', would be my answer. What's a new identity without a new voice to go with it? The auction was within 1 hour of its end, and the item had just reached £4.50. I guessed that £12 as a maximum bid would do the trick, and within 55 minutes the item was mine. Eureka!

The arrival of the package a few days later brought disappointment and amusement in equal terms: the item was wrapped in Christmas paper, and notoriously torn apart in the transportation process (see picture above). Nevertheless, the item itself was in good state, and the seller will probably get positive feedback from me. It's all a game, after all. Or maybe it isn't?

ON ONLINE IDENTITIY...

Why Der Forkmeister? The choice of an avatar often reveals socio-psychological characteristics of its creator, which in turn determines the relationships they will establish with other characters in virtual spaces.

What kinds of avatars do individuals create for themselves? Some are pictures or icons borrowed from internet archives, scanned from hardcopy, or taken from other digital sources. Users might edit or combine these pictures according to their particular tastes. Some artistic internauts create props from scratch, although this is a fairly rare - and envious - skill. The technical and artistic ability one demonstrates through personal avs is an important source of self-esteem and social status.

One way to categorize avs would be to use well-known personality types as a guideline - for example, McWilliams (1994) system for psychoanalytic diagnosis. Although these types described by McWilliams are for clinical diagnosis, when translated to a non-pathological dimension, they also are very useful in categorizing "normal" personalities. The theme, characteristics, or interpersonal impact of an avatar may be closely associated with one of these specific types:

• narcissistic - themes of power, status, perfection, grandiosity; draws for admiration and praise; feelings of being "special" and "privileged"


• schizoid - themes of interpersonal detachment and indifference, perhaps combined with evidence of abstract or intellectual thinking; little evidence of warmth and tenderness; the "loner"


• themesparanoid - distrust, isolation, hypervigilance, blaming or finding fault with others; cold, humorless, argumentative characteristics


• depressive - gloom, darkness, loss, low self-esteeem


• manic - energtic, grandiose, impulsive


• masochistic - self-destructive, themes revolving around the "bad self" or "woe is me"


• obsessive/compulsive - seriouis, formal; themes of control and perfection; shows evidence of a concern about details and rules


• psychopathic - antisocial, violates rules; little evidence of shame or guilt; takes advantage of others; possible superficial friendliness or charm


• histrionic - attention-seeking and seductive in flavor, dramatic, emotional, vain; themes involving dependency


• schizotypal - themes of being aloof, indifferent; evidence of magical thinking or superstitious beliefs; peculiar characteristics

According to this description, then, I happen to have a dominating and narcissistic personality, with an unresolved need to feel loved and respected, and a preoccupying tendency to look down on others. Also remarkable is my schizoid condition, which conceals a depressive and almost suicidal side, revealed by my obsessive use of dark colours. Not to forget my masochistic outbreaks, revealed by my utterly unusual admiration for forks.

Oh my god, I've been framed! I love psychologists, they're so much fun...

Information gathered from http://www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psyav.html

WILKOMMEN

Welcome to my blog,

This is a blog like any other. Spork! is a completely unpretentious, no-frills blog. It’s a celebration of the (non)senses, a virtual platform for the nothing-in-particular, and hopefully even for the something-to-it.

So that’s that.

Enjoy…