Thunderbozz

I am my mother, who told me not to eat too many Digestives "because they'll give you diabetes". I am my father, who took me to Watling Street when I was knee-high and started my love affair with Dartford FC. I am my brother, who tried (in vein) to teach me to ride a bike. I am the bullies who put me off school, and the teachers who kept swapping my cutlery over (just because I eat left-handed). I am all the people who laugh at my jokes, and who always make me smile with comebacks of their own. I am my friends who gave me the best nicknames, and the best memories. I am who I am because of everyone.

It was three years ago this weekend that I started student life. Now of course, I've joined the working world, but I'm not too old to remember "what it was like". With this is mind, and before I'm morally obliged to turn against students (lazy, money-grabbing layabouts, etc. etc...), I thought I'd pass on a few pearls of wisdom. Talk to everyone University is all about socialising (oh, and learning), so start as you mean to go on. Freshers Week is the perfect opportunity to talk to as many people as you can (and not look weird), because everyone is in the same boat. I'm quite very shy around people I don't know, but you have to bite the bullet and speak. Most importantly, though, be yourself – because no-one likes a fake, and three years is a long time to keep lying. You'll probably never speak to the vast majority of people you'll meet, but some of them could turn out to be your very bestest friends. Be a Facebook whore As a general ...

For my entire childhood, all of our family holidays were taken in England (with the exception of one weekend at Disneyland, Paris). As a result, one of the most closely-followed traditions of the trip away involved tuning in to all the local radio stations we could pick up on the long drive down to the South coast, across to the Westcountry, or up to East Anglia. One thing you notice by doing this is how remarkably similar some stations sound. Often, you'd hear the same jingles, slogans – even DJs – from stations in close geographical proximity. Of course, this was because they were owned and operated by the same people, but this was far less noticeable in the days before digital radio and the internet made it easy to spot identical logos and designs on stations from outside your region. The radio industry has recently gone through a period of massive consolidation. Where once there were a dozen major players, now there are just a handful of super-groups that control the maj...

In my last blog posting, I defended the BBC and the Licence Fee. I said that paying for programmes I never watch was a necessary sacrifice in order to protect the Beeb as a whole. Having been subjected to over an hour of BBC One's daytime schedule – I had no choice in the matter, sat in the waiting room at the dentists, less than 5 feet away from a massive flat screen TV – I am seriously reconsidering. I had to watch a programme called Open House , which was billed as a programme about how sellers are dealing with the slow-down in the housing market. This was a lie, because we actually followed one extremely well-to-do old dear who was having a little bit of trouble shifting her £625,000 marina-side, 5-bedroom house. Sorry to spoil it for you, but it was because the house was crammed full of old lady furniture and knick-knacks. This was followed by a programme called Car Booty , where someone rummages through their house, collecting together enough pieces of old tat to se...

So, Noel Edmonds has declared he hasn't renewed his TV Licence. I'm not entirely sure what his reasons are – he claims that it's in protest against the rather heavy-handed way that the BBC pursue evaders and enforce the law – but it's a very strange move. It coincides with a review into the licence fee collection process, but I think Edmonds is stirring up controversy rather than adding his two-pennies' worth to the debate. I'm a great believer in the licence fee, because I think the BBC is worth protecting. Britain is pretty unique in having a "state broadcaster" that is funded through the government, by the taxpayers, but remains independent (by and large). The standard of it's output on television, radio and the web, not to mention the cultural impact it has on the nation, is second to none. Protecting freedom of speech means sometimes we have to listen to things we don't want to hear; protecting the BBC means paying for services we...

I've been meaning to post this for quite a while, but never got round to it. It's a sign displayed in one of the backrooms of the Co-operative supermarket in Crookes, put up by the Union. And this is what some wag with a pen (sadly, I can't claim any credit for it) has done to it...

I'm back in Dartford for a few days, and it's been pretty good 'holiday' so far. On Friday night, my dad and his mates had a joint 50th birthday party over at Princes Park, then on Saturday night it was time for a traditional night out in town with the lads. I needed a drink or two having witnessed one of the worst refereeing performances known to man earlier that day. Dartford's home game against Wealdstone (my first of the season) must have been an absolutely fantastic spectacle for the neutral, but it was pretty hellish for the Darts' fans. We suffered a sending-off after about five minutes, and for the rest of the game it was really ten-against-twelve. I've never seen more wrong decisions made in the course of one game. Goal-kicks instead of corners, fouls given the wrong way, bookings for diving (after blatant illegal challenges), two decent penalties turned down, bad offside flags from the linesmen... in the heat, and in a breathtakingly fast-pa...

I have a confession to make. I don't give a monkey's about the Olympic games. To be honest, I find it incredibly boring. Despite having half-a-dozen events to watch at any time of the day, none of them caught my attention. With only a couple of exceptions, namely the sprinting finals and the swimming (ie: proper races), somehow the Olympics made even exciting-sounding sports pretty turgid. Take shooting for example. now you might think that shooting would have an element of excitement to it. Top athletes, armed with guns... the mix of sporting excellence and danger must be a winning combination, right? Wrong . It's one of the dullest things I've ever seen. Six men, politely taking it in turns to fire a single pellet at a static target. Y-a-w-n. Which is why I'm proposing a few new events. These probably won't make it in time for London 2012. Or probably ever. Olympic Shooting... Extreme! This essentially replaces the rather placid shooting range with...

Dartford's first three games of the new season didn't go particularly well: the 4-0 defeat on the opening weekend was swiftly followed by two games on the wrong side of a 2-0 scoreline. Only Tooting & Mitcham's 7-0 drubbing at the hands of Ashford Town kept us off the bottom of the league on Saturday night. Today's result – beating Harlow 2-1 – has put an end to our losing streak, and fired us up to sixteenth. An infinitely more comfortable place to be sitting. ▫ Sheffield's iconic Tinsley Towers were blown up in the early hours of Sunday morning, although not entirely successfully as the stubborn North tower did its best to remain standing. Not being a local lad, I can't claim any fond memories of them, but they sure were impressive. It strikes me as odd that such iconic buildings can be demolished so unceremoniously in one part of the country, whilst down in Ebbsfleet they're spending millions on building new ones. ▫ It's difficult to "...

The reason I stopped banking with the NatWest is because I was fed up of queuing. There was never a "good time" to go to the branch in Dartford to avoid the queue, because whether there were four customers or forty, they never had enough staff to serve them. So I took my business elsewhere; I switched to a (rival) internet bank. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a "rival" Post Office. Nor is there any way of weighing and sending parcels via broadband. Which is why there was a twenty-five minute queue at the Post Office down the road from me yesterday: people were literally queuing outside the door (and it's quite a long shop). If they're constantly so busy, why is the government shutting half of them down? The main reason is, of course, money. There may well be a lot of custom, but if they're only spending a pound on stamps each, there's not much money going in the till. To generate revenue, postmasters are forced to sell things like...

After some faffing about with new hard drives and broken CDs, I finally got Ubuntu working on my laptop this week. I wanted to find out two things. One: could I replace my existing set-up (Windows, Office, Photoshop, etc.) with an entirely free equivalent, without compromising functionality? Two: would it be simple enough for my mum and dad to use it? The answer to both questions turns out to be "yes", but with quite important caveats. Installation was an absolute breeze: in less than an hour, I'd swapped over the hard drives, installed the new operating system, copied my old files across and was ripping CDs. The interface is close enough to Windows that the learning-curve is virtually non-existent, and any noticeable differences were often very positive changes. Finding files and changing settings is a far simpler process – not that many things need to be changed, thanks to the simple but comprehensive installer program. I very rarely use Office documents like s...

It's not the Soccer Saturday début we would have liked, but no-one ever said that life in the Premier Division would be easy. Dartford lost 3-0 yesterday and had a man sent-off, so it wasn't a good day all round. That said, our season-winning campaign didn't get off to a terrific start last year... and we're only three points off the top! ▫ I was slightly taken aback on Friday when I was randomly insulted by a postman. He rang the intercom, and, totally out of the blue, told me that I had a small package. Fortunately, I remembered in the nick of time that he was just delivering a parcel. ▫ That parcel was a brand-new hard drive for my laptop, which I'm planning on converting to running Ubuntu rather than Windows. Not because I don't like XP (because I think it's great) but because I'm interested to see just how practical running Linux can be. I'm hopeful that the answer will be "quite", especially as an increasing number of things c...

Dartford kick off their first season in the Ryman Premier Division today, away at Hendon (Brent Cross, London). As I've mentioned previously, the step up to the Premier league means that the bookmakers now cast a keen eye over our games. The best offer on Dartford – 10/1 to win the league outright – coming away from the game victorious is about 3/2. That's probably a fair assessment, since this will be our first competitive game at this level. The Hendon forum has thrown up this handy guide to Dartford – both the club and the town. It's funny because it's (mostly) true... OO ARE YA? It’s a shocking revelation, but Dartford was a relatively civilised town with middle-class enclaves until fairly recently. Bastions of middle-class non-conformity Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are both from Dartford and Herr Thatchler herself once stood as a parliamentary candidate in the constituency. Speaking of The Beloved Leader, Herr Thatchler’s financial empowerment of the u...

Twitter : I think it's a great way to connect. I have it talking to Facebook, my blog and desktop. The search function is simply fascinating. 140 characters means you have to be succinct. Like when writing 6-word stories , or 25-word music reviews , or creating cool-looking QR-Codes ! But there's a price to pay – or, rather, there isn't. Being free means the more popular Twitter becomes, the less they can afford to run it.

There's bit a few ripples of controversy this week over some aspects of the spectacular Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. It turns out that the fireworks sequence we watched on TV was computer-generated, and that the pretty girl singing was actually miming . I have to admit to being quite surprised by the reaction. I thought that, even to the untrained eye, it seemed quite obvious that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke wasn't actually singing. There were two tell-tale signs: the audio quality was far too good to be "live" in the stadium, and her lips weren't moving in time to the words. Similarly, the "fireworks" sequence would have been impossible to film – helicopter pilots tend to avoid flying over rocket and missile launches. Both were very good fakes, but they were always going to be rumbled. ▫ Another news story that caught my eye this week: the tale of how a giant inflatable artwork broke loose from its moorings at a museum in Switzerland. It we...

Oh come on, I think we can trust the neutrality and journalistic integrity of the (Russian government-funded) news channel Russia Today , can't we? Eh? Eh? Oh.

Apologies if you haven't seen it, but the basic plot to Team America: World Police is thus: Kim Jong-Il organises a meeting of all the world's leaders under the banner of peace and unity. While they sit there distracted, he plans to unleash an unstoppable wave of terrorist attacks across the globe and take over the world. As I type, there are two hugely significant events taking place. Various heads of state are attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games (Sri Lanka have just walked in)... and what looks like the opening stages of war are playing out in Georgia. There are reports of "ethnic cleansing", planes being shot out of the sky, and tanks rolling into South Ossetia. The world has spent the last few weeks and days fretting over China. Today, their attention has been abruptly turned towards the 'other' Eastern superpower, Russia. Team America ends with the heroes saving the day with seconds to spare. Hopefully, there's still p...

We all went ten-pin bowling last night for the first time in a long time. My performance could accurately be described as woeful, only managing to rack up 84 points. Not that winning is important of course... it's the taking par... yada yada. The Olympic Games have begun, albeit through the back door. The football competition kicked off yesterday, with some hilarious/embarrassing women's football on show. The sport's reputation was restored today with the start of the men's competition, although the standard is still a long way from being on a par with the European Championship or World Cup. Similarly poor were two games played this evening: the Women's Community Shield at Macclesfield Town, and the "Legends" game between England and Germany at Sheffield United. I half-watched about 45 minutes of each, but there was little change in the standard. Roll on Saturday.

Fun things I've been doing in the last few days: chasing up our faceless-corporation landlords in the (as yet unsuccessful) pursuit of an electricity meter reading; trying to placate the electricity company; chasing up our faceless-corporation landlords in the (as yet unsuccessful) pursuit of someone to come and fix the window in my room; trying to sleep in a room with no curtains... ▫ I had a go on a Nintendo Wii for the first time last weekend, and it was brilliant. Because I've been stuck indoors for much of the last few weeks, I've been playing a few computer games, but I get bored of them very quickly: PC games especially require far too much thinking for my liking. Whereas shooting things in House of the Dead 3 ... that could keep me entertained for hours. ▫ Dartford FC's pre-season has been going well, with some good results and – more importantly – some great reviews for our new signings. It all kicks off a week on Saturday, when we'll be starting our...

I deliberately woke up early this morning. Partly because, well, "seize the day" and all that... and partly because the fire alarm gets tested every Tuesday morning just after eight, so there's no chance of a lie-in. It's very loud. Which means that, writing this at twenty-past-ten, I've had quite a long day. From my early-morning visit to the Co-op, mid-morning visit to the charity shop, refreshing Thunderbozz over lunch, and spending the afternoon updating my CV, it's also been quite productive. The highlight has to have been walking past The Banker's Draft pub at 9am, only to find a queue of at least half-a-dozen old men, desperate to get in and start drinking the day away. To be honest, they all looked like thoroughly decent fellows, although I wouldn't fancy bumping into any of them after [counts...] thirteen hours of solid quaffing. The low-point was probably trying to find more than one bullet point of things I had done while workin...