How useful are Amazon reviews?

Just like you dear reader I like to think of myself as a pretty thorough type of guy. So when I buy something on Amazon that I don't really have much knowledge about I tend to check the reviews to make sure I'm not buying, well, a bag of shite. So here I was looking at a small media player to plug into my TV and noticed one five start review entitled 'great' which read 'the product is what i wanted it fits well it looks even great its a very good product highly recomend'. Sounds good I suppose and I'm happy to excuse the poor English. But on closer investigation I noticed that the reviewer had actually posted a total of 63 five start reviews, all for different products, and all called 'great' and with the same glowing appraisal. Actually one of them was called 'woeeeeeeeeeee' and had slightly different wording. So I did the decent thing and reported the reviews to Amazon on the basis that there was a trend there which implied they weren't necessarily helpful for anyone really. So maybe in future I'll treat Amazon reviews that same way I treat Trip Advisor ones - ignore the five star and one star reviews and just believe the ones in the middle.

Is Expedia Britain's worst company?

I really don't know to be sure, but in my book they're certainly up there with the rest of the rogues and I'll give them top marks for trying their darnest to hack me off.
It's a bit tedious to tell you the whole story here but briefly: Expedia took £764 out of my account so that they could tell me the flight I wanted to book wasn't suitable for me after all. They didn't refund my money when I asked them. They didn't refund my money when I asked them for a second time. They did make the refund the third time I asked. To be honest I swore at them the third time and maybe that let them know I was getting annoyed.
Anyway it was a horrible painful process which involved being kept on hold for 17 minutes, being given the wrong email address for their complaints department, and yes, being down £764 for over a week just to find out if they were selling the flight I wanted. And no they're not prepared to pay any compensation for the 'theft' of my money or explain why not.
When I was young I would lie in bed at night dreaming of being a pilot or racing car driver. I wonder if the future owners of Expedia would lie awake at night thinking, "When I grow up I want to be a bastard".

Are you listening anonymous?

I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed I have 17 comments on one of my posts, and a little disappointed that they were all from anonymous. I don't know why they're all attached to that blog either. In truth I have no knowledge or interest in the technicalities of spamming. I did notice that the blog contained the phrase 'Google search'. So if google search is a trigger I should get some spam here as well. Go anonymous, do your stuff or I'll google search you. You think I'm afraid of a little google search? Why I've been google search (ing) since you were no more than a fly on your mother's gin bottle.
I have no idea what that analogy means.

Britain's worst cinema experience

What a mistake a visit to the Glasgow iMAX turned out to be. Against all odds I was strangely looking forward to seeing a James Cameron movie (Avatar obviously) but my whole evening was spoiled by my worst ever cinema experience. Actually my wife once threw up during a screening of Eternal Sunshine but the cinema staff were very helpful - even after I traumatised two teenage girls when I 'looked' in to the ladies toilet. But the iMAX in Glasgow was rubbish. We arrived later than planned due to heavy football traffic so we were in the second row. We were far too close to the screen, my wife had to leave after an hour. I stayed to the end but gave myself a headache. The temperature was sub-tropical - no really, I was sweating in a cinema. How ridiculous is that? The leg room isn't good - you would feel real guilt squeezing past everyone if you needed the loo. And at the end of the film they made everyone leave by the doors at the back. So you had to climb up the stairs, go out the door and climb down the stairs again to get back to ground level. Meanwhile, members of staff guarded what looked like the natural exits - the ground level doors. One of the staff explained to me that 'people don't listen' when I tried to use the door I was standing next to. Fucking Nazis, I remember thinking.
After all that they have the audacity to charge me £3 to park my car in an ice rink that they call a car park.
I genuinely hope I never go back there again.

Congratulations Mr Obama

I'm not that old yet but I can't think of an American president in my lifetime who deserves a Nobel Peace Prize more. In truth he hasn't really done that much yet but his intentions are good. I'm sure that over time many people across the world will feel the benefit of his approach. However, it looks like Gary McKinnon, self-confessed computer hacker, won't be one of them. Gary's appeal against extradition to the US on charges of breaking into the Pentagon’s military networks has been refused. So it looks as if this Asperger’s sufferer will be whisked across the Atlantic for some American justice. Gosh, if the American's find out he was born in Scotland he'll really be for it! Maybe if he lived in Scotland now, he would have been shown some compassion by the Scottish government. He's clearly not as high a profile fugitive as Roman Polanski, but he is a more vulnerable human being who deserves our support. Goodness knows what will happen to him once he's incercerated in the American penal system - if he even manages to get there.
Somehow I know that when Mr Obama collects his prize, which I'm not disputing he deserves, I'll not be able to feel truly pleased about it. I'll be thinking about Gary McKinnon.

History doesn't remember celebrities

I was born within three months of Michael Jackson and have enjoyed (most of) his music. But I never felt ‘linked’ to him in any way and to be honest his death didn’t strike me as the biggest surprise of the week. In fact, if anything, there’s a certain inevitability about Michael Jackson dying ‘young’ at age 50 – I guess that many of us in his position would have reverted to medication at a much earlier age to cope with the pressure his particular breed of celebrity status brought.
But Michael’s death isn’t the point; it’s the media coverage that’s got me. The Daily Record managed to devote 20 pages to Jacko on the Saturday following his death and goodness knows how but they somehow contrived to include his picture on the sports pages as well. In sharp contrast, the death of a young woman in Iran at the hands of a sniper’s bullet achieved much less media coverage. For me, and I’m sure for many others, this was the most significant piece of news that week. I’m certain that in 500 years from now the name of Neda Agha Soltani will be connected with a greater impact on the future of our planet than Michael Jackson.
I don’t have any problem with Michael Jackson or most (genuine) celebrities. It’s the media that hacks me off. Some of them, not all of them, just drag out the same old hackneyed lies for a whole year. Some of them, not all of them, are pricks.

Isn't it strange how you forget things

We were just chatting at work the other day and the subject or world records came up. It reminded me that when I was in my early teens I resolved to become a Guinness world record holder - inspired no doubt by the boundless energy of Roy Castle. Although I also think that if I grew old and never achieved fame I would have my world record to look back on. So far though I haven't achieved any fame but that's another matter. Anyway, I realised there was no point in challenging athletic records or unusual skills. I had to collect something unique. I chose wishbones from chickens, and quite possibly there were some turkey ones in there as well. I kept them in an old teapot at the bottom of my wardrobe. It had been our family teapot for many years, silver in colour and kind of octagonal in shape as I remember. I must have saved for a few years I guess. When I was sixteen or thereabouts I gave up collecting and the idea of writing to Ross and Norris seemed less appealing. However, to this day I still believe I had the world's largest collection of wishbones - unless someone can prove me wrong. So I am an unofficial world record holder. And, to be honest, it does provide me with a quirky little anecdote when work chat randomly turns to world records, say, every decade or so.
I had 36 incidentally.