H2OFFS

Vibration hydration.

You've never heard of it, because the marketing department of H2Om water has just made it up. Welcome to the painful world of pseudo-science, or "bollocks" if you prefer.

You see, H2Om is not normal spring water. (Actually, that's exactly what it is. But let's not let facts get in the way at this early stage.) It has "vibration energy" in it. Yes, in it. Have they vibrated the water, I hear you ask. Well, obviously not. Shaking water to get it to vibrate would be far too, erm, logical. No, at H2Om they have better ways.

First of all, they ensure that the bottle labels have the correct vibrational energy. Yes, that's right - the labels. With writing on them and stuff. Special writing, in lots of different languages. And in the correct colour. So it can "vibrate" somehow. And do something. Perhaps.

Then, you have to "think while you drink it". Because most of us completely switch our brains off when drinking water, you know. It's a little known fact that if you drink normal water for more than a minute non-stop, you will pass out because you forget to breathe.

Finally, once they've bottled the water, they play music to it. Sound waves vibrate, you see. Not enough to pass through the plastic bottle and have any effect whatsoever on the contents, of course, but it's the thought that counts. Or rather the lack of thought but the ability to produce marketing blurb based on it. They use "ancient healing scales" to do this. Better that then sticking them near a piano whilst someone practices their grade 3 on it.

Their website says:

we know some people, and politicians, may be skeptical, however we believe that if water is effected by these types of vibrations, then as a bonus, let's provide the water with the purest form of vibration possible

"...And politicians". Because they're not people, and we specifically need to point them out! The swine! And forgive me if I'm wrong, but surely the purest form of vibration is, well, to just vibrate the effing water!

Finally, we come to the names of the waters. Yes, despite every bottle containing exactly the same water as the next bottle, they name each bottle depending on the way they've pretended to vibrate it. So you get such exciting things as Gratitude, Joy, Prosperity, Peace and Love. Yes, "Love water" - who'd not want to drink that?

Sounds suspiciously like a load of wank to me.

Medal-ing with history

Can journalists no longer add up? Could they ever, I hear you ask.

The thought arises after reading this article on Sky News today (click the link while you can - News International want to start charging you for accessing their news online, in what is known as "Operation Send Everyone To The BBC News Website Instead").

The gist of it is that a bloke called Roger Day turned up to the remembrance day ceremony in Bedworth with 17 medals that "military experts" claim it would be impossible to have earned.

Not so, insists Mr Day - who, we are helpfully informed, is 61 years old - they were all earned fair and square.

The most recent medal is from the first Gulf War, at which point he would have been about 40 years old, so no problems there. But the earliest medal was from World War II. Now, even I can perform the sum 2009 minus 61, and discover that Mr Day was born three years after the second world war ended! In fact, he wouldn't have been able to enter military service until 1966.

It's okay though, because Mr Day has the backing of the local vicar. "There are pictures of him in the Armed Forces in his home," he says. Well, that proves it then - he clearly was serving in the army three years before he was born.

After all, you can't fake a photograph...

Computer games in "letting you do stuff you can't normally" shock

I should see about getting some funding for a study. It seems that you can do one on any old crap and someone will pay you for it.

Recently, two Swiss human rights organisations (Trial and Pro Juventute, if you're interested - and yes, they're both charities) have commissioned a study in which they played a load of war games on various consoles. Sounds like piss-easy work to me, but what was truly groundbreaking was their conclusion after this difficult research:

"Certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual."

Games let you do stuff that you can't in real life - because it's illegal? Really?! Well bugger me, I had no idea. I was labouring under the impression that not only was it possible to go into outer space and rescue Princess Leia from an asthmatic bloke in a black mask, it was also possible to do so by becoming entirely made of Lego.

Apparently, that's "not possible in real life". I'm truly shocked - and heaven knows how my poor friend Sackboy will take it. He's probably about to find out he's not real either.

Seriously, isn't this the point of computer games? I mean, let's take a look at the child-friendly things you can do in the Grand Theft Auto series:

• hire a prostitute, take her somewhere secluded in your car, engage in a sex act, then blow her brains out with a shotgun and get your money back
• steal a fully-laden school bus and drive it full pelt into the front of a police station
• climb to the top of a high building and take pot shots at passers-by with a sniper rifle
• steal a bike by kneecapping its owner as he rides past you, then use it to chase an ambulance whilst seeing how many paramedics you can shoot without dismounting
• buy a nice outfit from one of the upmarket boutiques

Now, we're all well aware that none of the above (well, most of it) is far from legal. But in a computer game, that fair enough. It's escapism - and as far as GTA is concerned, there's a cartoon-y feel to it that somehow removes most of the horror of what you're being asked to do. Think of it as an interactive movie and it makes more sense. I mean, there was some damn gruesome stuff in "Seven", but that still got released.

However, our friends in Switzerland think that games should only allow you to do stuff that you can do in real life. So, get ready for their first fully-approved releases, coming to XBox360, PS3 and Amstrad CPC664 this Christmas:

• SimDusting
• Pro Evolution Tax Return
• Call Of Nature
• Tom Clancy's Doorbell Needs Cell AA
  
• Extreme Bed Maker

It's almost as if they think we can't tell what's real and what's a game any more. And I know that PacMan would agree with me.

It starts at the top, but comes out of the bottom

Many people complain that they have been crapped on by their boss. But they put up with this because their boss is also the person who pays them. Which is fair enough.

How should you respond when you're shat upon by your boss when you're a charity volunteer? That is something I didn't think I'd ever need to contemplate. Surely volunteers are utterly vital to the work of all charities, and when you have a regular group of excellent, hard-working and reliable volunteers, shouldn't you go out of your way to keep them on-board and happy - especially if you're a health charity and some of those volunteers are doctors and nurses?

Soundly pissing them all off via your self-righteous blog is probably not a good idea.

Today, it's a post that confuses "GP" - a doctor trained as a General Practitioner - with "GP practice" - the place where they work, all of the staff within it and all of the services it provides.

If I were to tell you that every GP will get £10.50 for each swine flu jab they give, you would be rightly outraged. If, as is correct, I were to tell you that each GP practice was to be given £10.50 funding for each swine flu vaccination it provides (and the each vaccination consists of two jabs), and that this amount covered all of the administration costs, follow-ups in case of side effects, and actually buying the vaccine in the first place, you'd probably think it was a bit of a bargain.

By taking the completely incorrect first interpretation of this story, quite literally making some other stuff up, and then posting it in his usual "this is gospel" style in his blog, our favourite charity boss has today marked himself out as a Daily Mail-style bullshit peddler of the highest order. He's also massively annoyed his lead volunteer health professional - the person responsible for planning all of the medical training that the charities' team of children's educational holiday volunteers receive. Nice work!

But those volunteers - and especially those at the Edinburgh holiday this year - would expect nothing less. Mr Boss himself volunteered on the Edinburgh holiday, and whist he was there he provided a daily blog so that people could find out what being a volunteer entailed.

So far, so good - it sounds like an excellent plan. Well, here are some snippets from those blog posts:

"We have some excellent volunteer healthcare professionals who will help them keep safe as they enjoy the holiday."

"The fact that asthma nurses are on hand also encourages children otherwise reluctant to try something new."

"The fact we have so many volunteer healthcare professionals here gives real peace of mind."

What's wrong with that, I hear you ask? Well, what about all of the volunteers who aren't health professionals? Don't they deserve a mention? After all, they outnumber the health professional volunteers by a ratio of just over 4:1. It's also worth pointing out that only a small minority of the health professional volunteers are asthma nurses - most are nurses or hospital doctors, although there are some asthma nurses, the odd paramedic and a GP.

But, as shown today, there's no need to let a little thing like facts get in the way of a good soundbite.

Sometimes, I genuinely wonder why we bother.

The Sky is limited

Pop quiz: you need to solve a problem with your Sky TV service. Do you:

a) Call the helpline telephone number that appeared along with the error message on your Sky box

or

b) Google the fault, and solve it yourself with the aid of the first three results it finds?

I, being in a really silly mood, decided to try option "a" - and that's why I'm blogging today.

To all companies that provide "helplines": if no-one on the other end of the phone has even the slightest ability to "help" me, you're on the verge of being reported for false advertising.

Why was I calling Sky in the first place? It's all John Barrowman's fault.

The dates for series three of Torchwood have been announced. The entire series is being stripped across a week of BBC1's schedule - and it's the second week of our Italy holiday next month. The Sky+ planner only lets you programme recordings up to seven days in advance. Seven days before the series starts, we'll also be in Italy. Bugger.

No problem, all I need to do is set my set-top box up to use the "remote recording" application that I have on my mobile phone. Previously this was done by logging into Sky's website, but now it needs to be done using the Sky Active service on my set-top box.

And here was the problem; the set-top box was refusing to connect to Sky Active through the phone line. I was getting the wonderfully-ambiguous "error 106", and given an 0844-number to call for help.

If I'd just dialled "123" and listened to the speaking clock for half an hour, I'd have received just as much assistance.

After giving my details and explaining my problem, the Sky person said that an error 106 means the problem is with the connection between my Sky box and the phone line. Did I have a message waiting on 1571? No. Oh.

Well, maybe I have outgoing number witholding turned on. No, I don't - when I call my mobile, my number comes through. I ask the Sky person if their system shows them the number that I've called them from. "Yes, sir," they reply, and read my phone number out from their display. Well, it's not bloody blocked then, is it?

"Ah, well, some telephone service providers only stop your number being sent to 08- and 09-numbers."

YOU are on the other end of an 08-number, you bloody prat, and you have my number. So let's stop suggesting stuff that you can already see isn't my problem and try something else, eh?

In the end, the best they could suggest was disconnecting all of my other telephone equipment and ADSL filters, connecting my Sky box directly to the phone line and trying that. Well, sod that for a game of soldiers - if I have to essentially rewire my house in order to access Sky Active, then I'll just not bother.

One quick Google search later, and I have a plan of action of my own:

1. Do a random product search using QVC Active on the Sky box, and see if that works. If it does, then there's nothing wrong with the set-top box or phone line.
2. Access the Sky box installer menu, and tell the box to dial using the prefix 1615 - this is Tiscali's "bypass all settings" prefix, and Tiscali are my phone line provider.
3. Try it again.

Guess what? After following those three steps, it all worked perfectly. In case you're wondering, to access the Sky installer menu, press Services, 4, 0, 1, Select on your Sky remote.

The moral of this story is that Google is more helpful than any so-called helpline. But heaven help you if you're not technically minded.

When the analogue TV signal is switched off, the fun will truly begin...

It's not rocket science

There used to be a big deal made about "stupidly easy quizzes". There was at least one children's TV show that gave away huge prizes for being able to answer questions like, "who wrote Beethoven's 5th symphony" or, "what is the name of the suspension bridge in Clifton".

One of the funnier moments came when a teenage girl was asked, "what is the main ingredient in tomato ketchup?". She hesitated for a moment and then said, "pass". At the end, the host was laughing at her inability to give the correct answer of "tomatoes".

The main ingredient by weight in tomato ketchup is sugar.

In a dull moment during GCSE biology (and my God, there were a lot of those), I came up with what I thought was the ultimate version of this: why not treat these questions as if they were being used in Mastermind. It needed a new name; something which starts out seeming clever but gets less and less amusing each time you use it. I settled on Wastermind, and if you pronounce it correctly you see that it fulfils both of my requirements.

I only ever came up with the questions for one specialist subject, so I present them for you now:

Specialist subject - questions which all have "fish" as the answer:

1. What kind of creature is a trout?
2. One of the most popular British takeaways is what and chips?
3. What would you keep in an aquarium?
4. What does footballer Steve Guppy's surname make him sound like?
5. What English word is spelled F-I-S-H?
6. What is the odd one out?
   Norwich
   Liverpool
   Fish
   Smethwick
7. Jesus is said to have fed a large number of people with just two items of food. One was loaves of bread. What was the other?
8. What type of creature can be gold, star or cat?
9. A popular TV weather presenter was Michael who?
10. What do anglers expect to catch?
11. What prefix completes these words?
    -erman
    -ery
    -ing boat
12. What suffix should be added to sel- to give a word meaning the opposite of selfless?

And so on.

Well, (and that was one heck of a preamble) it seems that Farcebook is getting in on the act too. Recently, something not dissimilar to the following appeared in my news feed:

Twatty McMoron has taken the "What's your birthday month?" test, and the result is "April".

How many questions did they have to answer to find that out?

'Kin hell...

Physics and talent

Boyle's Law states the following:

For a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases).

Susan Boyle's Law is slightly different:

For a fixed amount of talent kept at a fixed exposure, pressure and success are inversely proportional (while one increases, the other decreases).

The "celebrity" culture that prevails in the UK's media has been subject to my ire before on this blog. This time, the mechanics are slightly different, but the end result is the same: someone that no-one had ever heard of just a few weeks ago has gone into a very public meltdown.

If you don't know who Susan Boyle is, don't expect me to explain it to you. Even people living under rocks have heard of her. 20 million YouTube viewers can't be wrong. Well, no - clearly any number of YouTube viewers can be completely wrong 100% of the time. Scrap that comparison.

Susan Boyle's fame is based on one thing and one thing only: the fact that we're all meant to be surprised that an unattractive person can be talented. Now, this is a frankly ridiculous concept. I mean, Rodin was an ugly fucker but he couldn't half sculpt.

More to the point, pick an attractive pop star. Can they sing? On the whole - no, they can't. Without studio trickery, Girls Aloud sound like they've entered Stars In Their Eyes with the line, "tonight, Matthew, we're going to be five cats struggling to escape from a sack in a canal". Kate Nash may well be easy on the eye, but putting on a mockney accent and talking over a piano track (whilst sounding like you're holding a punnet of strawberries in your cheeks) does not pleasant music make. The talented one in the Spice Girls was the one that looked most like a boy, and the talented one in Savage Garden was the one that looked most like a girl.

I could go on, but I only have a finite amount of pop-related insults and you never know when I might need to use some in the future.

Susan Boyle's performance of "I Dreamed A Dream" was good, but nothing more - not really. Amanda Holden's reaction (especially the face she pulls when Susan starts singing) just makes me want to beat her with a brick. "Oh my gosh, this frumpy spinster can hold a tune!" Piss off, botox features.

When Susan Boyle returned on the semi-final, her performance of "Memory" was poor. Based on that performance alone (which is how the show should work), she didn't deserve to reach the final. In the final, she performed "I Dreamed A Dream" again. Is that the only tune she can sing well? The only reason she was runner-up was because of the storm generated by her first TV appearance.

But even in the semi-final, some of her mannerisms seemed false. They were not really Susan Boyle, they were "Susan Boyle, celebrity", and they were hard to watch. The whole "Piers-y baby" air-humping thing that she did was downright disturbing. No-one likes to watch their gran being sexually suggestive on live television, but that was what this felt like.

Maybe Susan has now "made it". After all, she's in the Priory - and that's where all celebrities go, isn't it? Maybe now normality can be restored. Maybe the media will forget about her. Unlike Jade, I don't see there being a series of reality TV shows made about her future exploits. Then again, the schedule on LivingTV has been rather bare since Ms Goody departed.

Susan Boyle's lesson is an important one for us all. I was cheering for her as the perfect representation of "normal people", who take their chance to shine and seize it with both hands. The trick is to keep your feet on the ground, and perhaps Susan's sheltered upbringing (if what I've read in the papers is true) might be one of the reasons why she's not coped particularly well with the media attention.

It is possible to go from "nobody" to "world star" without losing the plot. Leona Lewis, for example. Beware the price of fame: the higher you rise, the further you have to fall.

And the quicker the rise and fall happens, the harder your recovery will be.