Thunderbozz

I watched this week's Apprentice at half-past-three on Wednesday morning, having been staring at a computer screen for about a day. As a result, my memory of precisely what happened are slightly cloudy. The Guardian 's excellent " live blog " has handily filled in the gaps. Our six would-be apprentices were given the task of selling wealthy punters the chance to spend some time with some fantastic supercars. Apparently, this is a rapidly growing new business venture, although quite why struck me as a tad confusing. Surely the whole point of those things is to drive them – fast ? Unless you own your own racetrack, there's not much opportunity to do that on the UK's roads... It soon became clear, though, that the target audience was disgustingly rich grade-A posers. Depending on your point of view, poor/useless Lucinda was unfairly/fairly treated by her team-mates this week. Having said she wouldn't feel comfortable selling on her own (because she...

As a subscriber to last.fm , I get to have a sneak-peek at the music website's brand-new version, currently in development. It's got a raft of new features and a radical new look to boot. Personally, I think it looks pretty cool (although a little bit bland), but some of the other members have been levelling the following insult at the new clean, white pages: "it looks too much like Facebook" . Ironically, Facebook won't look much like Facebook soon, because it's also getting a makeover. Until you could add applications, one of the beauties of Facebook was that it was nice and simple: but now people are adding hundreds of stupid quizzes ( What Cheese Are You? ) and pointless features ( Picture Of A Cat Of The Day! ), the old style doesn't really work anymore. The changes are being bought in gradually – we've already lost control over many of the sections on our profiles, like the ability to collapse the (often pointless) Mini Feed – but inevitab...

Image © Chris Sardelis With some time to kill (quite a few hours, as it turned out) online yesterday, I resorted to surfing You Tube. Sheffield's very own Arts Tower features in the first (excellent) film... the rest are just animals doing funny things. Enjoy, if you've got the time... Six minutes: Sixteen seconds: Five seconds:

This week has been full of distractions. Which is not helpful, because I've been trying to write my last ever English Literature essays ever. Ever. Xbox arrives. Still playing on Xbox. Champions League final. Quite a bit of Xbox still. Night out at Plug. One of my more productive days. Once I've woken up. Eurovision Song Contest. Love Shady Lady . I have now managed to finish one essay, but the other still needs some work. I have until midday tomorrow... hopefully it won't take that long, as I only need to find some sources to back up my points... if only the bloomin' books weren't so new, there might be some proper criticism of them...

Quite why the producers of The Apprentice felt the need to show the teams' embarrassingly-poor efforts at television commercials over and over again is beyond me. As a result, I spent much of my time watching this week's episode with my hands over my eyes. They were awful. In fairness, I thought Raef's team's effort was half-decent. It was quite obvious at an early stage that Sir Alan wouldn't like it, but it was nevertheless quite a good try. I had assumed the ad-execs watching would have taken a bit of a shine to it, so the first shock of the evening came when it was revealed that they had lost. The second shock (I'm glossing over some of the terrible clothes selections by the victorious boys in Harvey Nics... and Lucinda's stunning glittery number) was when Raef (who looks like something out of a Harvey Nics catalogue) got the boot. Based on the fact that "odious little twit " (to misquote Adrian Chiles) Michael was there, you can only a...

My essays were going quite well. I was progressing through them at quite a decent rate. At one stage, it looked like I might even have finished the first one by now. And then the Xbox 360 arrived.

This week's Apprentice in quotations: Michael on geography: "Central London is near North London" Helene on £900 dresses: "God I bet that's expensive... but it wasn't" Sara in a cake shop: "Do you know what? I've been on a cake course!" Lucinda: "Cakes are approx. £600-a-pop" Claire: "Is that expensive?" Lucinda: "I don't know..." Michael trying to describe the dresses: "Imagine the dresses the women were wearing in Beauty And The Beast " A section just for Lee: Motivational speech: "Come on Team Alpha! COME ON!" On pipping the other team: "We fuckin' did 'em!" At the exhibition: "Ah, Hello ladies!" "I'm buzzin'... I'm off to sell some more knickers" "That wedding dress is two-and-a-half grand... and I need to nail her" Nick, stating the bleeding obvious: "We're not in Knightsbridge, we're in Bir...

Inspired by xkcd and GraphJam , I thought I'd try to put together some graphs of my own. I know! – sad, isn't it? Anyway, these are some of my favourite songs (according to last.fm and those I can remember). The truth is that I had to stop where I did because, despite all my attempts to come across as a cool indie-ish kid, it turns out all my favourite songs are cheesy pop guff.

It's my last week of university lectures and seminars, although I don't really think the fact has sunk-in yet. It's quite a strange feeling: From an academic point of view, I've been looking forward to the end of the year for weeks. But on the other hand, when I think about the social side of uni life – meeting people after lectures, the banter in seminars, the gossip, being out-and-about during the day, even the shared experience of a particularly tricky essay – I'll be really sad to say goodbye to all that. I'm quite shy, despite what some people might think, and it takes me quite a while to open up to people. (I don't have any trouble talking to people in seminars or on my course, but it does take me a while to build up enough trust in someone to start having a laugh and a joke with them). Whenever I've been dropped in new situations like big school, sixth form, and uni, it's always taken the best part of a year to really settle in. It's ...

Congratulations to Manchester United for winning yet another Premier League title. You can't say that it wasn't deserved - they have a fantastic team, a fantastic squad, a fantastic manager... and a fantastic chance of winning the Champions League this year, too. It's been a terrific season in the Premier League as a whole – and the first year I've actually been able to watch a decent number of live games thanks to Setanta. Well done to West Ham for holding on to tenth place... we've been there so long we could probably claim squatter's rights. Congratulations should also go to Gareth Southgate, Roy Keane and (our house's new favourite manager) Roy Hodgson. The man has such a distinctive voice: why is it so hard to do an impression of him? Grudgingly, I also offer a congratulatory nod towards Gravesend Ebbsfleet for winning the FA Trophy at Wembley this weekend. As an extra special treat, some clown wants to build a ruddy-great horse next to their g...

This week's Apprentice was explosive. Sir Alan was rightly appalled by the lies, the deception, the back-stabbing, the name-calling, the silly mistakes and the sheer ineptitude of this week's losing team – two of whom got fired. Both Technicolour Lucinda and Doe-Eyed Sara have come under a lot of fire in recent weeks for not pulling their weight or contributing to the team. Full credit to team-leader Lee for giving them the opportunity to show what they could do. OK, so they might not have had much responsibility, but they did the task they were set pretty well. The candidates are like that little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When they are good, they're usually pretty good, but when things go bad they are horrid. Claire was uncontrollable, wrecking Alex's negotiations. But Alex was part of the group which made mistakes over the clock (although he can't be held responsible for much, in fairness). Team-leader and former B*...

For the first time in a long time, Britain enjoyed a really beautiful day of sunshine today. It has been absolutely fantastic: warm enough to sit outside, a lovely cooling breeze and clear, blue skies. We even had a seminar outside, people were eating lunch in the park (I believe that it's called al fresco ) and we even had a mini-barbecue at the house. With the forecast predicting much of the same for tomorrow, many Brits have already declared it Summer, and will no doubt be moaning about our climate when the showers come back in a few days time... ● What do you call a midget on the Underground? A metronome.

Whenever I've played Trivial Pursuit in the past, I've not done very well. This is because I've only ever played it with my parents and their friends, who collectively form quite a formidable quiz team, and also because the version of "Triv" we've got at home is older than I am. No wonder I'm at a little bit of a disadvantage when it comes to answering some of its most modern questions! Luckily, the South Sea pub down the road has a new version, which means that the questions are about more recent things (and slightly easier overall). When we all went and had a game on Thursday night, I did considerably better than usual. ● I had a dream in the week where I was a candidate on The Apprentice . My task, as far as I can remember, was to renovate a massive room in an old house. Think of a long dining room in a country manor, and you're along the right lines. The trouble was that my team were useless. The women (all the horrible women off the real Ap...

According to early indications, there was a big turnout for the local elections in England, Wales and for the London Mayor/Assembly. The sunny weather probably helped to boost numbers, but the large number of surprising results suggests that genuine politics was a major factor. Labour has taken an absolute battering, the Liberal Democrats have held their ground well, and the Conservatives have made some very significant gains – in councillors and councils controlled. As well as local issues, Labour's biggest crime has been its farcical handling of the 10p tax rate cut. This policy has had such a catastrophic effect on the party because its hit their core supporters the hardest. It's all very well seeking to gain ground in the South East, but holding on to the industrial North must surely be a priority? Sheffield has just announced its results, and they, too were surprising. Everyone expected the Liberal Democrats to take control of the council: they only needed a couple ...

This week's Apprentice was the most cringe-worthy to date. Not just because of Kevin's woeful attempt to pitch his team's idea, either. From what we have seen of them over the last six weeks, every single one of the remaining candidates (without exception, albeit to varying degree) has proved themselves to be quite dislikeable. It was clear from the very beginning that tensions among the candidates were high. From the argument in the car between Technicolour Lucinda, Kit-Cat Clock Helene and B*witched star Jennifer to the massive spat that broke out in the house following Doe-eyed Sara's return... it's fair to guess that there won't be too many Valentines cards being sent between them next year. Kudos to Spiffing Raef for defending Sara (apparently the only one to do so, although we always remember the influence that editing can have), despite her very limited contribution, and shame on the rest of them. It's quite staggering to think that any of ...