Web Designer Depot has a collection of 40 funny ads. As a cyclist myself the one above appealed to me the most, but they're all well worth a look...

Bugger. Was going to go to bed, but got embroiled in a discussion on Twitter with a Mac owner, which compelled me to write something here. I generally don't like generalisations (see what I did there?), but that said, Macs suck, and their owners are, without exception, self-righteous wankers.

I jest, of course. Well, 98% jesting. To be fair the discussion we had was relatively civil, but I found myself bemoaning the 140 character limit for making it hard to get my point across, or rather shoot down the erroneous points she made. I don't want to weigh up the benefits of each system directly, as my main point is that both have advantages and disadvantages. The problem is that whereas the average PC owner accepts that, Mac owners tend to seem somewhat blinkered. Or perhaps just more novices use Macs - that would be an interesting statistic to have actually - probably exists somewhere. If someone's only ever used one system they may be more predisposed to assume its superiority, and be less-informed about the capabilities of the alternatives.

Short version is I said that PCs are far easier to upgrade and have far more gaming options - not a universal argument, but two things which matter a lot to me, hence one of the reasons I prefer PCs. She came back with arguments like "well, you can upgrade the RAM", and "Macs have just as many games - they play better, with full screen graphics".

Upgrading RAM's all well and good, but you can completely disassemble PCs and replace any bit of them, or build them from scratch. Absolutely not a big selling point for a lot of people, but it's a categorical difference. And re gaming on the Mac, that's just a horrifically uninformed argument - while games of course exist for the Mac, including quite a few new ones, the PC has huge numbers more - always has, probably always will. That's just a fact - wander into any game shop and compare the shelves.

Again, non-gamers won't care (nor should they), but trying to make the "Macs are fine for gaming" argument to a gamer was going nowhere. And the "full screen graphics" comment just marked her down as completely out of her depth. Full screen graphics, you say? What will those Apple wizards think of next? She also seemed to miss my point about upgrading, saying that Macs came with free software upgrades - perhaps indicative that Mac users don't even think of upgrading hardware as an option, whereas for PC users it's an easy route to take.

I've derailed my point into ranting against this poor woman, which I didn't intend to do, but this is the problem with having a discussion one sentence at a time - pent up arguments I couldn't properly express. Plus I'm by nature a relatively polite person when in direct discussion, so didn't want to offend her. When rambling on like this though, I'm less concerned. I eventually resorted to pointing out that you can't have SLI on Macs (if you don't know what that is, trust me, you won't care - gaming thing), which whether she understood the term or not, seemed to make her realise that her definition of "serious gamer" was somewhat different to mine.

My original point - the cult of Mac. This woman was arguing for the Mac in areas where it just can't compete - and the discussion didn't even start as a comparison anyway, she brought it up! Macs are a lot of people's machines of choice, and no reason why not. I don't know enough about them to sing specific praises, but equally there are no utterly damning reasons not to use one. If I had to pull one out of the air, primarily it's cost - Macs are expensive, but then some would argue you get what you pay for. As an iPhone user I'd say that of the price premium on Apple products, 50% is justified in the components/construction, 50% is stomached because they're well-designed - they're not quite as good as their price-tag implies.

Still, hardly a deal-breaker either way. For most of my day to day work a Mac would almost certainly do just fine. However, I'm a Windows user partly through habit (I know all its ins and outs, and because I maintain my system properly nothing really irritates me about it), also because I play games a lot, also because I'm an upgrader. Those last two are things that Macs just don't do. They just don't. Yes games exist for the Mac, and yes you can upgrade the RAM, maybe even the hard disk, but the processors are soldered in, and if you wanted to build one from scratch you're shit out of luck.

Neither of those arguments would or should sway most people to or away from PCs or Macs - if they matter to you they're important, but they're not universally applicable. But this woman was clearly compelled to pitch Macs as being the best option, despite evident facts to the contrary.

No other product line seems to generate this kind of zealotry, and I genuinely can't work out why. Actually, one thought is that because Mac products cost more, people worry that they're being ripped off, so feel compelled to argue their merits that much more fervently in order to justify the cost. I really am a cynical bastard.

I'm deeply suspicious of pretty much any sort of unquestioning passionate belief, firmly believing that if you're unwilling to question/debate/discuss your belief, you must, deep down, be scared you'll be proved wrong. That sounds like it could be anti-religious, which I don't mean it to be - I'm at least semi-religious myself, but accept that it's belief, not knowledge. Anyone religious who'll gladly explain their beliefs, why they have them, acknowledge contradictions, etc., entirely fair enough - just sit there saying "well, it's my belief, I don't have to justify it", and I'll be fairly sure you're just kidding yourself. Or a moron. Or both.

I digress. I'm especially skeptical of belief when it comes to things technological, which I'm relatively well-informed about. Not least because with techie things there are certain absolutes you can point at - this does something better than that, this picture is better than that picture, this processes faster than that, etc. Usability is obviously more subjective.

I'm boring myself with this now, and so no doubt you as well - congratulations on making it through this disjointed ramble. If you're a Mac user and have a genuine case to make as to why an experienced Windows user who plays games and upgrades his PC on a semi-regular basis should switch to a Mac, by all means email me. In life I'm open to pretty much all arguments with any sort of validity, but telling an upgrading gamer that "the Mac has some games" and "you can upgrade the RAM" really won't cut it, trust me. If you're a Mac user who can't think of any arguments - that's fine, honestly! It doesn't mean Macs are worse than PCs, just that, horror of horrors, perhaps people have different desires and requirements.

Maybe what got me worked up wasn't even the specific Mac/PC debate, but that it's a good example of someone trying to make an argument they clearly don't know much about, rather than realising that fact and staying quiet. As the great saying goes (approximately): "it's better to say nothing and be thought stupid, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Things along those lines will be a recurring theme of my writings here.

This ties in rather nicely to my previous post.

Perseid shower tonight. I can claim no great knowledge of astronomy beyond a passing interest - ie. the names of the planets and knowing the plough when I see it. That said, I've always loved looking at the night sky, even though it's hard to find anywhere truly free of light pollution. I was in Flagstaff last year, and the same day I saw the Grand Canyon, I also saw the clearest night sky I've ever seen, with the Milky Way clearly visible - a fantastic combination of seeing the best the land and sky have to offer in the same day.

Since coming back from there, looking up at the sky back home has generally been a truly disappointing experience for me - knowing the fantastic view that's up there, but being denied a good look at it because of the light pollution. Hardly one of life's great hardships, but it bothers me. Anyway, given the Perseid shower tonight I thought I'd take a wander out onto the park and see what I could see.

The result surprised me - still not a brilliant view, but it was far better than I expected. I took the time to lie down and stare skywards for about 20 minutes, letting my eyes get used to the darkness. A few times I'd catch a flash in my peripheral vision, but it was hard to be sure if it was a meteor or just my eyes playing tricks. Eventually though I caught a clear streak, right where I was looking. Satisfying that my time paid off.

Regardless of that though, it reminded me how much I love staring at the sky. Daytime just doesn't cut it, although when there are scattered clouds I do enjoy the way it makes it easy to perceive the curvature of the earth and atmosphere, stretching way over the horizon. But at night, the view goes straight up - stars might not give a sense of specific scale, but they immediately make me very aware of being on a planet which is floating around in the void.

Given my film-viewing history my mind immediately goes to films like Star Trek: First Contact, and Contact (never drew the title parallel before) - two films which open with fantastic zooms through space. I love being made very aware of our place in the universe - a tiny planet in an infinite cosmos, with no clue of everything that's out there. If you haven't recently taken the time to stare up at the night sky I recommend it.

This is turning into a properly neglected site. While I had no great aspirations to blogging on a daily basis, leaving it this long is all manner of rubbish, so partly apologies, and partly well done for hanging in there. Although that's also made me lose just a tiny bit of respect for you.

This is barely topical, but I keep a file of things that may inspire me to write (and then, of course, don't actually write about them). This article caught my attention. Don't bother reading the whole thing - basically a UK music prize was given out last week, and a band went on a mini-rant about how it's never awarded to the fans' choice, but is normally someone fairly obscure.

Oh boo fucking hoo. Where did the idea ever come from that the majority opinion must be right? That's especially true of anything even remotely creative, like music, movies, and art. Just because something's popular doesn't make it good, and there are a lot of critics who are exceptionally well-educated in areas like this who know whether something's worth listening to or not. By all means disagree with them, but to imply that something should win an award just because it's more popular is ridiculous.

As I wrote a few weeks back, people are idiots. This covers a wide range of sins, and on occasion I'll gladly throw myself into that pile, especially when it comes to films. I saw Transformers 2 and enjoyed it, in an utterly mindless, don't think about it on any level sort of way. At the same time I'd never argue to anyone that it was a good movie. It was what I wanted to see at that point in time, which makes me mentally deficient.

However, it made an enormous amount of cash at the box office, critics tore it to shreds, and the internet lit up with claims comparing box office take to quality, and accusing critics of being out of touch with movie-goers' tastes. I can't be arsed to look up the precise quote, but Roger Ebert said something like critics shouldn't reflect popular opinion - it's their job to direct people towards good movies and away from bad ones.

I don't know if this semi-mob-mentality stems from mass insecurity at being thought of as stupid, or feeling threatened by having their taste questioned, or else just the belief that because we use democracy to vote, the public view must always be heard, but it's wrong.

That's not to say that critics are always right, of course, or that the majority is always wrong - the truth, as ever, lies somewhere in the middle. But why people insist on this blind delusion that any large group must somehow be closer to a "correct" opinion than an individual makes no sense to me. We should all accept that relatively often we'll know bugger all about a topic, regardless of our enjoyment or participation in it, and accept that those better-informed might just know more than we do. Or at least know enough that we should listen to them.

For the few of you checking in on this, it's still technically an active site, I've just partly got out of the habit of writing, and partly have been busy. Regardless I thought I'd stick something here just to keep you all dangling on my hook. And by hook, I mean hook. Filthy-minded perverts.

I'm just going to ramble on a bit here, as I've not written anything for a couple of weeks, and I've had an eventful day. Not sure if any of it will prove interesting, but thus far hardly anyone's reading it anyway, so if you've made it here, congratulations.

Had a wedding to go to today, of a friend of mine I don't see all that often, because she lives a while away, so was nice to catch up with her and other people in her loop that I rarely see. I normally only see them once a year when she has a birthday barbecue, which I feel bad about, because ideally I'd be able to drag them up to my neck of the woods, but I just don't really get the opportunity, and while we all get on well we're not really close enough to warrant a mass journey for no particular reason, as opposed to a wedding. Plus pretty much everyone in this group is married with children, adding an extra complication to organising random gatherings.

Anyway, good to chat to them all, but I do get weirded out by the contrast between them and my friends back home, which is all the weirder because of the similarities, if that makes sense. Broadly speaking, they're a group of friends who have known each other since school, with a few additions and subtractions, both partners and other friends, which is exactly the same as my friends where I live. However, us up north have a mix of marriages, long and short-term relationships, and singletons, with only one recently-born child, whereas down south they're pretty much all married with multiple kids.

It's a very odd difference - partly because we're all similar ages, but mostly because it's so consistent. I could understand if, say, half of each group was married with kids and the other half weren't, but having such a clear split makes me wonder what's going on. Obviously not any grand plan, but whether it's a lifestyle thing, or whether because one couple got married and pregnant quite early (by my standards, anyway - 21/22ish), the seed was sown in the others, and things kicked off. Hmm.

Personally I'm happy being in the childless section, partly because, well, I just am, but also being single myself it's frankly less worrisome rather than being constantly surrounded by happy couples. Actually, a couple of guys in this group are single too, and chatting today we became fairly certain there were no single women at this wedding whatsoever, beyond the waitresses who all looked 12 anyway. Probably 20ish, but still weird. So while the day itself was fantastic (even got a ride in a hot air balloon, which was an unexpected bonus), mildly disappointing that there were no available women to be rejected by. Ah well.

Although on the plus side, when driving home, just as I got back to the bottom of town where most of the pubs/clubs are, a fight broke out and a load of policemen immediately dove in, bundling one guy to the ground right in front of my car - luckily far enough in front I could brake in time, rather than just driving over them.

Three thoughts occurred - the first was on my usual "people are fuckwits" theme, namely this moron thinking it was a good idea to start a fight with so many coppers nearby, and then to try taking them on as well. Alcohol or no alcohol, you don't do that unless you're a fucking retard.

The second was the coincidences in daily life. I'd had an hour-long drive and this fight fell literally feet in front of my car, causing the police to hold up traffic for a bit with me having a front-row view. If I'd left the wedding just a few seconds earlier or later, or driven a tiny bit slower or faster, I'd have either gone by just before it started, and I'd never have seen it, or else I'd have been stuck several cars back not seeing what the holdup was, or else I'd have arrived after everything and not known anything had happened. Makes you wonder about all the events and opportunities in life that we come so close to without ever knowing it. Or of course all those moments we're lucky enough to have experienced which we very nearly didn't.

And the third thought was how young all the policemen and women looked. Crap, I'm so old.

Perhaps appropriately/inappropriately, given David Carradine's just died, but these posters amused me. Via Gawker

Relatively minor issue, but I've not written here for a week, which is kind of going against the point of having a blog! Even more stupid as various thoughts have occurred to me, I've just not put them into words. I think in part it's because I feel if I've not got huge amounts to write (like the Angels & Demons thing) then it's not worth it, which is faintly ridiculous. Was just reading this article on the BBC site - the voting stuff generally is a bit dull, but the point I'm referring to is people complaining that some parties aren't visible because the ballot papers are folded.

Really? Is this what we've come to as a society, that folded paper presents that much of a challenge to our basic functions? Just unfold the fucking paper! There's actually another layer of idiocy here, as people would only know that parties are hidden from view if they actually unfolded the paper and realised that there are various options on the ballot paper. If they don't see them, how do they know they're there to complain that they're hidden?

This implies either people complaining on behalf of other idiots ("I know I saw what had happened because I'm a genius, but what about morons in the world who can't unfold paper?"), or else people who are expecting to see a certain political party, can't, but rather than taking the effort to glance at the ballot paper for a millisecond to work out that perhaps there's a flap of paper they've not moved, just immediately complain. And I know full well that once someone pointed out there was a fold they hadn't bothered moving, rather than say "ah yes, I see - what an idiot I am", they'd be committed to the bluster, so would have to switch their complaint to "well that's just impossible to work out" rather than having the balls to admit that they've been a bit stupid.

We all have moments of stupidity, some more than others, but having the courage to just say "I've been stupid" and move on, I hate it when people try and evade responsibility in every way possible. Morons.

Watched Angels & Demons tonight for the second time, and found myself intrigued by how much is real and how much is fake, having got into a debate with someone who was arguing it was almost all fiction, including some of the locations. Where they got that information from I have no idea, as a moderate amount is demonstrably factual - the locations, for a start!

The Illuminati - while a group called the Illuminati existed for a while, formed in 1776 (after the alleged events of La Purga from the film, which I'll come to), it was basically just a group of philosophers, scientists and the like, with no anti-church sentiment. Any information beyond that dives into conspiracy theory with no evidence either way, so anyone stating with certainty that the Illuminati definitely exist and are trying to control the world/overthrow the church/anything else is basing it on next to nothing. Pretty much the only thing used in the film that's verifiable is the name - dates and activities are at best conjecture, and most likely just made up. And why not - this is fiction, after all. Fiction.

La Purga, as I mentioned before. In the film this is stated as being in the 17th century (I think) when the Catholic church branded 4 Illuminti with a cross and executed them. There doesn't seem to be any evidence for this whatsoever - not least, as stated above, the Illuminati didn't exist at this point. Yes, yes, you can start throwing arguments around like "maybe they existed secretly", but then you're getting into pure conjecture, and that's not what this is about. If you want to start making use of the word "maybe" then why are you after distinctions between fact and fiction? The facts are facts, the fiction may be something that really happened in secret, but it's not based on actual evidence, hence...fiction. So anyway, the Catholic church didn't take on the Illuminati, BUT that's not to say that over its history it hasn't had the occasional period of taking on scientists generally - the Inquisition tortured and killed a few, and people like Gallileo and Copernicus had great problems with their scientific work coming up against the teachings of the church. So plenty of conflict, but this specific incident didn't happen. Fiction.

The Great Castration, as I believe it's referred to in the movie, is the removal of visible genitals from statues by Pope Pius, and their replacement by figleaves. While the specifics may be up for debate, there's definitely a history of paintings and statues having their genitals covered up by figleaves, and occasionally being restored to their original appearance later. So while Pope Pius might not have actually hacked off a load of penii (there's a word I don't often use), the odds of him or someone going around doctoring statues to a greater or lesser extent carries a degree of weight. Fact (loosely)..

Galileo's "Dialogue" - it's a real document that was banned by the Vatican for about 200 years. While Robert Langdon might need to see the original for any clues to the path, I can't see any reason why he'd have problems finding a copy as research for his book, as it's now freely avaiable in a variety of forms. Fact.

I think that's most points - I would say raise any questions in the comments section, but I still haven't got one. All in due course. Hopefully this has proved relatively elightening, and the next time you get into a debate with anyone who's trying to argue Angels and Demons is based on real events, you can let them know the difference between the fact and the fiction. Personally I enjoyed the movie and can't see why anyone would be offended by it, as it doesn't invent or change anything particularly dear to anyone. Even the official Vatican newspaper didn't take offense - dismissing it as "harmless entertainment" and complimenting the recreations of areas off-limits to filming as "magnificent."

The one exception might be any particularly religious surviving relatives of Bernini, who's portrayed as a secret Illuminati, conspiring against the church, when in reality he was most likely just a gifted sculptor. Then again he died in 1680, so perhaps they should let it go.