So there has been some good exchange on a post I made years ago (read: 2005) if you want to check it out, have a look here.

Who would have thought a beach could be too sandy? Well, according to Thomas Cook in the UK some holidaymakers are just never satisfied.

Here are the top nine most bizarre and genuine customer complaints received by the firm in recent years:

1 On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food at all.

2 The beach was too sandy.

3 I bought a snorkel and swimming mask for my six-year-old son, but he was too upset to use them as the fish frightened him.

4 Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women.

5 I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.

6 It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ’siesta’ time – this should be banned.

7 We bought ‘Ray-Ban’ sunglasses for five euros (£3.50) from a street trader, only to find out they were fake.

8 None of the hotel staff was English, and the tea didn’t taste the same as at home.

9 I would like to complain about the price of alcohol in the resort. It was too cheap and I woke with a hangover every day.

So I’ve got two previous articles about facebook and I feel it is time, whilst I wait for a program I am testing to crash again, to talk about facebook briefly again.

Since the last time I wrote, facebook have added ‘applications’. These are like the crap you get on myspace but designed to fit in and work nicely. The main problem now is that the home screen on facebook, which normally provides an RSS style new feed of what is happening with your ‘friends’ is littered with every application people are adding. Then removing as they realise it is rubbish. Then adding another similar but not entirely identical application. Then removing that. And adding another one. I think you get my drift.

The cleanliness of facebook is evaporating. The effect is also apparent on the profile pages, it is harder to work out what is the stuff you want to see and the stuff you don’t – there is no way to elect that certain applications should never see the light of day. It is turning into a burn-your-eyes-out-of-your-facebook.

The other exceptionally annoying thing is when other people add applications to their profile it sees fit to send a request to all their friends asking if they want it. The other day I logged in and I had 5 requests to install the fortune cookie application. Fortune cookie? Why the hell would I want that? The only application I’ve added myself is the video application. All other applications can burn in hell.

I have now watched several times the new Transformers trailer and I have to confess, I’m now super excited. It is cool how you get to see various of the transformers in both guises and transforming. Optimus Prime also seems to look less gash than normal, so much so, that I took a screen grab!

This is a very cool demonstration of dealing with large amounts of image oriented data.

Watch it up to about 7.56 (an advert is the rest).

… I’ll give you an update on Mario Strikers.

The online is as retarded as the DS online. A separate friends code for each game+console combination which bloody sucks. It is so backwards in terms of online and I wonder who thought about it, certainly not a seasoned online gamer. Perhaps if they were Microsoft you could perceive this as a “we will show you how bad free net play can be, and then sell you the rocking premium version which you pay for”. But this is Nintendo and they have messed it up. A lot.

On the other hand, the actual game rocks. Dave came over last night and we must have played the game solidly for a good 3 hours or so. We played against each other, went online and played on the same team, tried the challenges (which are bloody hard) and generally came to the conclusion that it is an easy game to pick up but hard to master. I am looking forward to playing a lot more of this game. (a number of cheeky online bouts when I get back from a fly in the evening). We managed to work out how to bully the other players (a strategy that is rewarded with power ups), secondary charged shots and managed to kick some arse online. It was all really good fun. Just about enough fun for me to endure the terrible online stuff.

As for kiting, last night (before the gaming), I ambled up the hill after work and it was hanging on weather. Was static flying (no board) getting some nice jumps and practising my 360 and 720 rotations. When I left, my arms where knackered – I think I’ll use a strop this evening.

 
(Thank you to Paul for this)

In a slight panic and hung over state, I looked out the window, consulted the weather maps and noted there was no wind. No wind. This pushed me into a state I’d not really encountered for quite a while – a weekend at home. I phoned some friends to see what they were up to and one asked if I had played Mario Strikers yet as it was online and had some good reviews. I hadn’t so I took the chance to get out the flat and purchase the game.

I’m not going to give a full review of the game itself, for that you can read some here if you fancy. I will say that is is bloody mayhem, great fun, and does to football games what Mario Golf does for golf games and Mario Kart does for racing games.

What I am going to do is bitch and moan about how colossally retarded Nintendo’s online gaming strategy is. The idea of online gaming is to allow people to play together. Most people enjoy playing with their friends that is a given but also that is not always possible so playing against randoms is useful. Based upon this, we have two strategies that need to be refined, playing against randoms is easy and with Mario Strikers has got that nailed. You play against people ranked about the same as you and that is great. I’m not sure if you can add people you play as friends but I suspect not based upon previous games.

When it comes to friends you’d expect it to work right? I’ve already started building my friends list on my console. I can share messages with them, send them pictures. So friends in games should be easy right? Put the game in, go online and blam, you play against them. Wrong. You have to enter their bloody friends code. Again. If this is any indication to go by, it looks like I’ll end up being able to enter my friends codes for every single online game. It is as if Nintendo don’t want me to play against my friends. I just don’t know what they are thinking, if they provided the games they did with an Xbox Live! type service, with easy friends management and easy communication, they’d end up ruling the online market (or something close to it). They need to add voice communication and make is easy to hook up with people you have played before. I am gutted at the online play of this game and can’t believe out of the several reviews I’ve read, it doesn’t mention this at all.

I hope Nintendo get their shit together because this just isn’t on.

A mini review.

The trucks on my board (the bit that attaches the deck to the wheels) had started to go rusty and the task of maintaining them would have taken hours and lots of pain. Probably resulting in my purchasing of new parts or even new trucks. Fortunately for me, MBS made the decision for me by releasing a brand new style of truck – the vector truck. A cross between skate trucks (like those found on a skateboard) and channel trucks (pinned trucks with suspension), these aim to provide a light weight truck but with the carve characteristics of a channel truck.

Do they work? Yes. I change my channel trucks on my comp6 for a set of vector trucks. The trucks cause a number of changes in board characteristics:

- The board is higher.
- The board is now shorter over all. A MBS comp6 with channel trucks has a wheel base about 2-3 inches longer.
- For some reason the board seem stiffer, I can only put this down to less flex in the trucks. This has given the board more pop and it feels mint when loading up before a jump.
- The board does feel lighter.

When riding, they feel like nice and solid skate trucks. Carving is mostly the same, as is when you come to sliding the board. The main thing I noticed when riding was moving from heelside to toeside and back, the trucks sat there and made the transition easy. All in all, I’m impressed and looking forward to using the board more, especially on the beach. For those who who like channel trucks you are going to like these, skate truck riders might not because they feel closer to channel trucks than skates.

The only down sides I can see so far against channel trucks is the lack of bolts to adjust board pre-camber and the requirement for a different bearings. On channel trucks you can pre-load each spring in the truck so that it has a toe or heel bias so when you are stood on the board with power, it’ll sit level. This is just something I’ll have to get used to. The axle which the wheels and bearings sit on is thinner than the channel trucks, which means you will need to get a new set of vector truck specific bearings.

The other nice thing you can do with the truck is take the axle off, swing it round and the board should be slung lower allowing for more speed and stability. Certainly something I’ll go play with one day.

Worth getting? So far, damn right.