Internetters. I am in a bit of a conundrum. See, I’m thinking of giving up Facebook. What’s that? That’s not big? I should shut up? Just sit down. You’re getting spittle on the screen.

Facebook really annoys me. What is it? Basically, it’s just a big meeting place where people are meant to socialise. I guess you could say it’s a network where people are social. A social network. But it’s not, is it? On Friday and Saturday nights, it’s just you and the other folk who have stayed in, either optionally, or more likely, because we have nowhere else to go. It feels like a waiting room, with all the outdated magazines being the wall posts people have written to each other, that you’ve read at least six times already, as they’re deemed ‘top news’. Personal jokes that you couldn’t possibly understand, meeting times for the next days. The sort of thing that has no relevance to you, but are there on the main page.

Later, the outgoing, popular people arrive back from whatever function they’ve been to and make sure everyone knows about it. There’s photo albums with 200+ photos in, which, naturally, you analyse each one to see how much fun was going on, who did what and which people were there. You know more about it, than the actual attendees. You then compare the guest’s social standing to your own, and conclude whether it was just that you weren’t invited. ‘ Thanks Gran. You invited Aunt Carol but not me.’
Another irritating thing is that people, more specifically of the female gender, are actually putting what’s on their mind in the ‘What’s on your mind?’ box. That’s not what it’s for! Just put something that’ll make the reader smile: an amusing incident that has happened to you today; a link; your take on the current affairs; the fact that your dog pissed on the new sofa etc. I, and the majority of your Facebook friends, do not give one solitary shit about the fact that your current boyfriend is ‘being a wankaaaaaa :@’. This is usually followed by about 10 females agreeing and slagging off the whole male population. If I wanted this, I’d watch Loose Women.

And while I’m at it, song lyrics. You didn’t compose those lyrics. Some Record executive in a suit did and then passed them onto JLS to croon. You’ve simply listened to radio 1 and typed down the first chorus you heard. That’s fine, but credit the composer.
For a start, I think it’s going the same way as Bebo, in our age group. Actually, it’s becoming more popular, but my peers seem to be disowning it and seem to be living their lives. More likely, it has always been this quiet, but during the exam period, it received a massive boom, due to procrastinating posers faux panicking about their upcoming Maths paper. Scared you’re going to do badly? Then get off Facebook, and revise, you arsehole.
For all its flaws, it does offer free communication and has made arranging and advertising events a lot easier. It has completely revolutionised the way we socialise, probably for the better. I’m not going to blame social networks for the fact that I’m painfully shy, as I would be just the same without them. Also, in the years to come, we will have all these photos and videos on here to reminisce over; a luxury that our previous generation would have loved to have had.

I think I’ve convinced myself that if I quit I’ll spend time doing real and worthwhile stuff, like building a real farm or starting my own Mafia gang, rather than just do it virtually. I probably won’t, but it’s the thought of it.

Saturday 31st July - 19.07am
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has seen the brilliant Peep Show episode where Jeremy takes Mark on his stag night on the Shropshire Union Canal. They end up killing a dog and eating it. It’s tremendous. Well, I used to watch that episode and chuckle at the boredom they were enduring and felt safe that I would never have to go through their misery. However, I am now sitting on a barge, trundling along said canal at the eye watering speed of 6kph. The irony of the situation is making me cry.

As I was writing that paragraph, we crashed into the side.
We have only been on the barge for about 4 hours now, but I was driven to such a frenzy by the sheer narrowness of it that I had to do the washing up to calm me down. Normally I would never get cross with anything slim - for example my iPod, the Laptop and myself - however, this is different. Everywhere on the boat is so narrow that if two people are heading in opposite directions, one of the passers has to lean onto a seat, or temporarily go into the bathroom, to allow the other to get through. I can sense it’s going to get to the stage where we are going to raise our hand in thanks as they do on the roads, and continue our journey along the boat. I suppose I’m going to have to get used to it.

Initially I wanted it to be really awful, so I could complain a lot. However, when we got there, I found I could stand up in the barge without hitting my head, and that the other people at the port were just like us, rather than the sex offenders and reluctantly married old couples who I had expected. The only annoying thing was the fact that I had forgotten my capo for my guitar. It was, however, pointed out that this was my fault, so I duly kept my complaints to myself.

It was definitely a mistake to take our disabled dog with us, as she despises moving objects, ducks and the middle class, and lets out a pained yelp as we pass any of them. She has not been allowed off the lead yet, and it doesn’t look likely that she ever will. I’m sure she would have had a better time at the kennels. Oh well, I’m sure she’ll eventually wear herself out. Or damage her other hip.

I shouldn’t be ultra critical though. It was very pleasant sitting on the end, in the brief period of sunlight, playing my guitar, albeit in the wrong key. Also, running along the top never gets boring. I’m sure the pub meal we will have, if we ever reach a pub, will be pleasant. I do seem to be whining a lot, though. ‘You’ve got to be taking the piss!’ is a common one: when the boat jolted and I pissed on my sock; when I realised that the plugs seemed to be from 20th century Czechoslovakia; and when it was revealed that there was to be no internet connection and only four TV channels (five if you count Channel 5).

Overall, it has been a very pleasant birthday though. Mum made a delightful chocolate cake and I received a camera. It certainly hasn’t been my worst birthday. From what I can remember, that was about 5 or 6 years ago, when Mum lied to me and said that I had come to age where I was too old to celebrate my birthday. I should’ve realised she was fibbing, we always commemorate hers. We went on a walk that day and got lost. It rained and I didn’t have a coat. She did apologise though, which means that she’s no longer on my list of people I would shoot should I ever go completely barmy - which I can’t rule out if the following six days are terrible.

Wednesday 4th August - 16.36
The long delay between entries is due to the fact that the electricity supplier of the boat is of poor quality, and not the fact that I’ve just forgotten. Currently, we’ve run out of water and don’t look set to get any until 6pm, which means no drinks or toilets. I can cope with that, though. It hasn’t rained or been cold, and I haven’t felt any sort of sea sickness. I’ve also nearly completed Professor Layton on my DS, which is time well spent. Other things I have undertaken to pass my stretch on HMS Holiday are reading 1984 and listening to the Arcade Fire album which I managed to find. I'm still trying to decide if it's as good as ‘Neon Bible’.

I am starting to get a little jaded, as I suspect everyone is. As I speak, two of my sisters are sat at the table, having a conversation about whose ‘daughter’ is the worst. One of them is currently in court for stabbing someone and I find myself quite gripped, which shows the standard for entertainment on the boat. And surprising as it sounds, there are few amenities on the banks of the Shropshire Union Canal, so we have spent the majority of the duration on the tiny floor of the boat. The television gets very little signal, so we are forced to *gulp* bond.

Anyway, it hasn’t been the nightmare that I dreaded it was going to be. Hopefully the electricity charger will allow me the chance to put in another entry, but if not, I leave you with one of my scenarios which I've been imagining. What if one wanted to commit suicide on the barge, with dignity? You couldn’t stick your head in the oven - it's too small. You couldn’t hang yourself, as the roof is too low. I doubt you could drown yourself. I very much doubt that I’ll find out.

Thursday 5th August - 14.57
This joke isn’t funny any more. This is no longer a holiday, but an endurance test. We moored near a sewage treatment works last night, so the barge is teeming with flies, which can’t be killed with spray due to our extremely cramped and ill ventilated living conditions. HMS Hellhole has an unpleasant smell, which no one can quite put their finger on, but are willing to accept as it’s part of the ‘barge experience’. And surprising as it may sound, the prospect of home seems welcoming; away from stewed tea, narrow beds, cramped showers, zingzillas and those tiny black winged bastards. One of them, hopefully an enthusiastic, young fly, had the audacity to land on my hand as I was typing. Never has killing a defenceless animal felt so therapeutic.

Well, that was all I could manage. Three entries is enough, surely? Anyway, as I’m running my delicate fingers over the keyboard to type you this, I have my land legs back, and with that, my internet connection. I have a feeling that that will be my last experience on a barge as my Mother had a breakdown on the last day, which involved her yelling profanities off the top of the boat. Nevertheless, it was a valuable experience. It was even enjoyable in places, despite the impression my third entry gives you. In hindsight though, a week was probably too long.

Here's the situation. You are on a Desert Island. Not the 'Desert Island Disc' island or even the Lord of The Flies island, but one somewhere near Iceland. Conditions are unpleasant: it rains often; it's bitterly cold; the locals are still living in the 17th century; and their language sounds like a bad Radiohead B-side.

So to keep you company, I give you two choices. Either a Blu-ray DVD player, with a television and a servant who will run to the nearest Blockbusters and get whichever DVD you want.

Seems tempting.

Or an iPod , your CD collection and all the new releases sent to you weekly. Also, some headphones that aren't those ones that come with the iPod that look like Barbie's shower head.

What you thinking then? Film or music? Both have their merits, but for me it has to be music.

Don't get me wrong. Films are alright. Some have the power to make me laugh, some have the power to make me cry, but most of them have the power to make me fidget and get bored. I know I'm a cretin for saying this, but most films go on too long, and eventually I just want to listen to some music.

Here's some reasons why music is better than films.

1. How many people after watching Forrest Gump wanted to recreate the ' Run Forrest Run!' scene? Nobody, exactly. But how many people listen to 'Sticky Fingers' and want to recreate 'Brown Sugar' on guitar and swagger around pretending they're Mick Jagger? I rest my case.

2. Most films have some good scenes in, but nobody skips straight to them. That would be silly and not worth the effort. You have to watch the whole film to eventually get to the scene in question. However, you can skip past 'Don't Stop' to get to 'This is the one' on 'Stone roses. So, music is a better quick fix than films.

3. You can walk round the house doing whatever shitty thing you have to do and hum/whistle/ faux sing anything. Walk round the house reciting the script to Shawshank Redemption and it doesn't have the same effect.

4. The CD is the most beautiful thing ever invented. Name one good DVD cover and I'll give you 10 brilliant album covers. ('Is this it', 'Raw Power', 'Abbey Road', 'Whatever people say I am...')
Then you've got the sleeve notes, which have occupied many bus journeys home. Then the actual content - no film has ever matched the sheer delight of listening to a classic album. No film has ever left me with that fuzzy feeling within me or had me dwelling on it for days afterwards. I have never watched the same film again straight after watching it for the first time, but I've listened to one album at least 3 times in one day.

Maybe I just haven't watched enough amazing and life changing films and you're more than welcome to suggest some for me. But I won't take them with me on the island with me. Unless I had an iPad which had both movies and music on, but we'll save that for another day.

Let's get some perspective.

I find, when things are getting a little stressful, that a little perspective goes a long way.

Let's start with the physics. Look at your hand. 99.99999...% of that hand is not there. Despite that, there's an enormous amount of energy in you. If you released all the energy in 1000 people (with the whole e=mc^2 thing), you would have enough energy to power the world for a year. The whole world. A whole year. You'd also be charged for mass murder, but that's not the point.

For every single person on earth, there exists over a hundred web pages. And there's a lot of people on earth. Every single one of them has different opinions and a different viewpoint. If you randomly picked ten of those people, between 2 and 3 of them would probably not have access to drinking water. And those opinions? We haven't a clue what they actually are, and we don't know what 'being conscious' means either. In fact, what we don't know seems to outweigh what we do know.

The person you love? They're mostly made of water. So are you. And both of you two squishy water-sacks are perched on a rock which is flying through space at about 30km every second, and spinning at over 1000 miles per hour if you're at the equator. Oh, and the rock's made of pretty much nothing, just like your hand.

What is this nothing-rock flying around? The sun. A ball of gas, a million miles across, which is hotter than the squishy water-sack that gave birth to you. Oh, by the way, there's something wrong with it and we haven't a clue what it is. Have I mentioned it's also made of pretty much nothing, too?

So each of us is one of billions of these squishy water-sacks on a massive ghost-rock flying at millions of miles an hour around a massive ball of hot, and we still manage to take ourselves seriously?

What strange creatures we are.

Today I am releasing a bit of software I have been working on. It's job is very simple, whenever you paste anything it checks if it is a link, and if so it shortens it using my favourite URL shortener, TO./. I found myself always shortening links, so made this to save me some time. Hopefully it can do the same for you. It has a couple of pretty wierd nuances and I have many changes planned for it, so if you're willing to give it a go, download it here. Instructions included. I will be making it much more user-friendly very soon, so keep checking back for the latest version.

So I just got back from a long weekend away. Aside from the actual holiday itself, which was rather uneventful, to say the least, it was very exciting. Let me explain.

In the iPhone adverts, they like to show all the practical uses for the apps, and the examples are always cool city types called 'John Appleseed' calling someone to meet for coffee, Twittering about his coffee, adding his coffee dates to his calendar or finding the café on Google Maps. This is all very clever because it shows off all the cool things you can do on a iPhone, while quietly associating Apple’s products with the lifestyle of cool, city people - making even people like me, who live in a county which doesn’t even have a city in it, buy in to this lifestyle that they are in no way associated with but want to be part of, as it allows them to create a flimsy facade of self-worth.

I've only ever used Google Maps to look at my house from above, and once to see how far it was from Lands End to John O’ Groats, never any of the trendy city things that Apple promised would happen to me when I bought it.

So when I went on holiday you can finally see, after that monstrous digression (I do apologize), why I was excited when I went away. I was in an unknown town, and I could use Google Maps to find the local coffee shops!

I tried it. There were none. The 'town' was called Nettlecombe: it had a population of 70, and the only building that wasn’t someone’s house or the church was a pub called the Marquis of Lorne. I went there, but they didn’t sell Coffee, only beer. And no one was called 'John Appleseed', just Ted, Robert and Enid. Really.

Now, as I have never searched Google Maps before, only navigated it manually, I have never entered a specific location. And without doing that, I wasn't to know that StreetView had been added, as that is the only way of getting the StreetView button to appear. So when I searched for 'Nettlecombe', I was amazed. The little yellow man appeared, so I tapped it, hardly daring to believe, but lo and behold there was the hamlet I was staying in, indexed by a US technology giant and immortalised forever. The fact that they had been down this tiny country lane, and every other country lane in Britain for that matter, blew my mind. Now I had the luxury of having it blown again by the fact I could walk around the world on a device smaller than my hand.

I’m beginning to sound like some insufferable middle-aged uncle type with all my talk of ‘the wonders of technology these days’, but I am serious. That’s a lot of power Google and Apple are putting in our hands and it all has to come from somewhere. There’s sci-fi novels where in the future the earth is run by big companies called InudstrialCorporateSoft, with smoke billowing out of the chimneys of their factories while crows call ominously from the rooftops and a thick, grey fog floats in, but what’s really happening is a company with a silly name, a logo in primary colours and a joke app for translating from animal to human is fooling everyone with its jolly front, it’s ‘don’t be evil’ (no capitals obligatory on pain of death) slogan and offices full of lava lamps, bean bags, sushi bars and generally the happiest coders in Silicon Valley, into thinking that it just wants to ‘organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’, when really it wants to enslave our souls.

I know I’m not the first person to raise concerns over the worrying power of Google - in fact I’m probably the last - but it needs to be said as many times as possible. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but there seems to be such a thing as a vast array of entirely free software for every aspect of one’s life with no expense other than having to see a one-line advert about how you should buy the thing you just searched for. The price has to be paid somewhere, and it’s paid in the form of having your personal details harvested for profit.

Last week, to the outrage of the blogosphere, Facebook announced their new OpenGraph API, which allows apps to collect your information. Previously, if you were marked as ‘Single’ on Facebook, it might send you adverts for dating sites. Now, it goes a lot further.

Say you visit the BBC website, find an article about how endangered the pandas are, and post a link to Facebook so everyone can see the problem. OpenGraph will now record this, and start sending you adverts about adopting a panda. If you posted a link, chances are you care about them, and so this all becomes scarily powerful. Also, you might now be suggested to get a baby panda on your FarmVille or Mafia Wars or whatever else it is you waste your life on.

What I’m trying to say is information comes at a price. And that price is privacy. Now personally, I’m not fussed. These companies are welcome to my data; I’ve got nothing secret or exciting going on in my life, I’m just a normal guy. If Google and Facebook and the rest really care about knowing what I’m like, then they’re welcome to. I’ll block the Ads they send at me, and continue to use their services until I die of being sucked into a vortex of corporate servitude.

It’s too late to be anarchistic; we gave up fighting years ago. Just enjoy the convenience and lifestyle that these products bring, and try not to think too hard about it.

Works for me.

I had the wonderful experience a few weeks back of being shouted at by a young man from his Nissan Micra.

"Wonderful?" you enquire, in the slightly-longer-than-comfortable silence after that statement.

"Yes!" I reply, content that my thinly disguised bait has been bitten.

Picture the scene: a few of my friends and I are strolling quite contentedly along the side of the road in a suburb on the outskirts of town. The birds are swaying, the trees are singing. We come to the main road, press the pedestrian button at the traffic light and wait for the little green man to bleep at us.

Just as it begins to do so, we hear a dull thump from over the crest in the road, then another, and another. Slowly, the whining treble overlay of today's repetitive pop fades in over the top, and a small, crimson Nissan climbs over the hill, panting from the exertion. Inside are two shaven-headed men in their late teens to early twenties, shirtless and heavily tatooed. The air pumps itself full of drum machine.

They stop at the traffic lights as they turn red, and we cross in front of them, at this point only slightly scared for our lives. Their small, beady eyes follow us as we make our way, as inconspicously as it is possible to do so in a group of seven or eight, over the pathway of zebra stripes. No one utters a sound.

Suddenly, and completely without warning, the man in the passenger seat leans out of the wide open window, and screams a single, joyous exlamation, beer waving in the hot air:

"Swiss Family Robinson!"

Grinning, he ducks back into the car and, in a squeal of tyres, the car speeds away.

Wonderful.

Was that an insult? Was it a compliment? Was it the result of many hours of careful consideration, or was it completely on impulse? What does it even mean?

I have no idea, and somehow that makes the event that much more memorable and that much more enjoyable. Any world in which people spontaneously do things like that is a world which I am proud to inhabit. So thank you, whoever you were, for an intriguing experience.

Until a while ago, I considered socks a frivolous thing to spend your hard earnt money on. After all, why should I spend money on a few measly socks when I could use some of the same money to buy, say, a good book or a new game? I realised the error of my ways when I was finally left with only five socks, two of which were too small.

You have to ask yourself, why do we buy things in the first place? In fact, why do we do anything? In the end, the only reason we ever do anything is to try to improve our overall happiness. Maybe it doesn't always work, but in the end the overall motive for any action is happiness.

We pay the rent because we know it makes us happier to have a place to live than to have lots of money. We go to work because we know it makes us happier, in the end, to have money than to not bother with the job.

Okay, so why didn't I like buying socks?

A concentrated source of happiness

It's all to do with getting the most happiness out of the least effort. In our culture, money is pretty much the same thing as effort, and so we try to get the most happiness for the smallest price tag.

Which would you rather, a great book for ten pounds or a great book for five? A boring book for five or a great book for five? You always root for the thing that you percieve to have the best money to happy ratio.

My realisation of this fact happened to come as a searched in vain for a second clean sock at the bottom of every drawer and, with a sinking heart, realised that I would have to resort to the sorry looking, slightly greying thing in the corner, looking like it was ready for retirement. Because you see, i didn't realise how much happier it makes me to have socks that don't smell than to have socks that do.

I think until now i had managed to avoid finishing a post with a cliché, but: you don't know what you got until it's gone.

Admittedly, Mark Ronson was born into a wealthy family with musical background, but how has he managed to become such an inspiring musician, seemingly just by adding trumpets? Mark Ronson has worked with so many big names in the music industry. Robbie Williams, Lily Allen and Kasabian, just to name a few, are chart topping artists, and yet they agree to work with this Brasstard (see what I did there? 'Cause he uses lots of trumpets...).

Now, I may have given the wrong impression - I love what Mark Ronson does, but I’m just a little jealous of his success. I want to work with Kaiser Chiefs and Kings of Leon like he does. I want to appear on musical comedy panel shows like Nevermind the Buzzcocks. I want to have Mick Jones (guitarist for Foreigner) as a stepfather.

Well, maybe not that last one…

This blog is mostly so I can be the first to upload a blog in the ‘Music’ section of the blog, so I’ll fill up some space by telling you a few facts about Mark Ronson.

Did you know he is best friends with Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon? No wonder he was inspired to have a job in the music industry. Did you know that Ronson has dated Rashida Jones, Daughter of Quincy Jones; drummer for The Like, Tennesse Thomas; and English model Daisy Lowe...?

Not bad.

Did you know he's got a Grammy for being Producer of the Year in 2008, and also was credited for the 2 Grammy's Amy Winehouse won in the same year. He also has a BRIT award for best male solo artist.

I'd say he's achieved a lot, and all this information has led up to my final point...

I Hate Twitter.

To anyone who knows me, it will come as no surprise that I am about to moan about the teaching of subjects like English. I really hate English lessons.

What annoys me, though, is that I also really love writing, and I used to really love English lessons. This seems wrong.

It is.

Teaching really shouldn't make people hate something that they used to love, it should fill them with awe and fascination at what they have yet to discover, and make them itch to know more. Okay, so maybe I'm being a little optimistic, but I really do believe in it, or something similar.

The root cause, from where I'm standing, is the target based, exam driven model taken on by our modern education system. Now I can see the problems faced by the examiners and by the teachers, and I'm not saying I have an answer, but something's got to change somewhere.

Going back to the title of this post, it's very difficult to mark and compare in a creative art without some element of bias. Pretty much all impressions of art, writing and music are purely opinions, and opinions are hugeley subjective; they're dependant on context, culture and personal taste.

The options for the examiners? There are two main ones:

• a 'vote', taking the average mark awarded by a crowd of different markers, mostly eliminating personal bias
• a set of artificial guidelines that entrants are forced to adhere to
  in order to recieve marks, thus eliminating much of the creative part
  of a creative subject

Obviously, the second is the one the exam boards have settled on.

It's understandable. Exam papers are expensive to mark, and take time to moderate and check thoroughly. Just imagine how long it would take to get your grades back if the papers had to be marked by upwards of five to ten people! At the same time, without guidelines as to what you are supposed to write about and the style you should use, the papers are even harder to mark well. But even so, it's not good enough.

Current GCSE English courses seem to consist of the attitude that you pretty much know how to write well before you even start, and you spend the majority of the course learning how to write in the exact way that the examiner is looking for.

In fact, this problem permeates even into subjects that should supposedly be immune from this sort of thing, such as the sciences. Targets for improvement have driven teachers to teach to the exam rather than the science: you are told what the examiner wants to hear rather than the full, generally accepted, scientific explanation. Thankfully it would be virtually impossible for this to happen in Maths, but that seems to be an exception, sadly.

However you try to approach it, there is a fundamental problem in trying to distinguish from good and bad in a subject where, almost by definition, there is no right answer and no wrong answer.

As I said, I'm not saying I have an answer. What I am saying is that we need to look more closely at how these subjects are taught and examined - this is intended as a proposition for debate, not a rant.