Reblogged from PandoDaily:

Seemingly every week, you come across news stories and press releases from restaurants, bars, dating sites, domain registration, and other services announcing that they have begun accepting Bitcoins. It reminds me of the early days of e-commerce, when companies would trumpet that they had a website, and mid-90s TV news anchors would stumble over the URLs, usually butchering the www part of addresses: “double-u-dub-ya-dot...”

Read more… 695 more words

Anywho, back to this evening. So I was in the middle of a race on Blur (awesome game) when Raj (our landlord) knocks at the door, sadly I couldn’t finish the race as I threw down the controller. So Raj walks in & sits down as he gets his rent book out so I say I’ll go & call Steph from her room (today will be the first time I’ve seen her in over a month). Raj takes our rent & asks about when we will be able to pay the next lot for next year….here is the fun bit. Steph pipes up & says “Oh I won’t be here next year but these guys don’t know yet”….I’m standing right here.

So Raj looks at her in shock and then looks at me, I look at Steph; stunned. We say nothing to each other until Raj leaves. On his way out he says quietly to me “Jesus Christ”, in a non-spoken agreement that what she just did is absolutely ridiculous, disrespectful, and pathetic.

When Raj leaves Steph tries to make a quick & quiet exit by not talking to me and heading straight upstairs as she always does due to the fact that she can’t handle any form of confrontation even though in most situations she is the root cause of the whole thing. So I shout her & she replies with the self-defensive yes that she does when she thinks an argument is about to break-out in an effort to strike first.

I ask her to come downstairs to explain herself, I’m still stunned at the point and have opted to stay this way so I don’t rip her fucking head off, we have let so much go in the past what with bailing her out three fucking semesters in a row when she has spent all of her student loan on god know’s what and never offered to pay it back…this is the biggest reason for us resenting her in the first place but we have tried to cover up this and we have kinda accepted that due to the fact that she is so fucking selfish we won’t be seeing any of it back.

Shortfall of money left by Steph (conservative) First One

Estimated average living costs of £30.00 a week

Mid-November 2011 to first week of January 2012

Calculated pay back: £210.00

third week of March to second week of April 2012

Calculated pay back: £120.00

second week of June to third week of July 2012

Calculated pay back: £180.

Shortfall of money left by Steph (conservative) Year Two

I should note that Steph did pay £90.00 back. Bryony and Steph agreed that she should pay back £50.00 for food, she also owed money to Bryony as she got £30.00 to live off over new year so I’ll subtract this from my calculations.

Mid-November 2012 to first week of January 2013

Calculated pay back: £120.00 (£90 factored in)

I should also mention that Bryony took Steph to her stepmother’s house for christmas. Her stepmum bought her a boatload of christmas presents, as did Bryony; this is how it is repaid.

Anywho, back to the delightful story. We walk into the living room and I ask what was all that about & she informs me that she is going to move back into Halls with ‘friends’. So I ask why & she says it just isn’t working out (I am not showing I am angry with her btw) and I bring up the fact that she should have probably told her this earlier & she said “I just feels awkward”.

YES IT DOES FEEL FUCKING AWKWARD!!!!! YOU HAVE MADE IT AWKWARD!!!! You seem to create scenarios in your own head in which we are ignoring you or doing something to you and you then reinforce this with your own paranoia and come to the conclusion that it is our fault. If you would just start talking to people about problems you have with them instead of just hiding away then you wouldn’t end up in this sort of situation.

So after everything we have done for you which includes putting ourselves in financial hardship because you are too irresponsible to handle your own money (Over £6,000 a year + Scholarship + Bursary) and then not pay Bryony back, then yell at us because you broke up with your boyfriend; feel bad about it and then get moody and storm up to your bedroom when we ask why you haven’t done your washing up…then you pull this fucking stunt.

Turns out breaking up with Josh was a good thing in the end because I actually like Rob, but anywho.

Yes I am realising this blog post has gone from a story to me talking directly to Steph.

Urgh, I’m done. You are the most selfish person I have ever met & I’m done with you. Goodbye.

Note: To my friends who read this, please don’t go after Steph. This is between housemates so no hacking or any shit like that, regardless of how enjoyable it might be.

Bryony made me this awesome cake for my birthday!

March eh? Well I just turned 21, shock horror! March is always a weird month and not just because the weather goes full retard between winter and spring. A the start of the month I always have this huge optimism for the spring, then it is my birthday which always reminds me of friends who aren’t here anymore, I can’t help that it is just what happens. Then it is swiftly followed by the disappoint that happens after 2 or 3 days of nice mildly warm weather followed by a plunge back into the cold & rain.

I had drinks on friday at Loft Bar and The Alma Inn. Davey‘s band was playing at the loft and I thought I might as well have drinks there before going to The Alma with everyone. It was going good and the awkwardness had seemed to go away but then (my interpretation) Steph shot a stupid face at Rachel and that returned pretty quickly. This pissed me off so for the rest of the evening Rachael, Michelle, and Davey didn’t bother coming over to use at The Alma. Drinks were with Bryony, Steph, Matt, and Rob.

Me & Bryony on my birthday.

At this point I was slightly down about Becky or Chris not being able to make it but then Rachel and Davey said they wouldn’t make it on saturday, naturally this means Michelle wouldn’t either. I actually put an effort in to my 21st birthday trying to plan a proper day out with everyone. I also invited Louise but she had tonsillitis. Chris couldn’t make it because my birthday is on Mother’s Day & it sounds like they are mending some fences so I’m not annoyed about that. Becky can’t make it because her mother isn’t well at the moment so nobody (naturally, not Zach right?) can babysit Amelia.

Archer wished me a happy birthday

Despite all of this I woke up in a good mood on saturday and this carried on all day. It was a totally awesome day with everyone & Bryony got me some really awesome presents! <3 Even though Laser Quest was fully booked, we played Crazy Golf at the Trafford Centre (I sound like a child, lol) & it was good fun.

Two cakes for one birthday?! My mother made me a Minecraft Creeper cake!

After our fun day out me & Bryony went back to my mother’s for the evening. My Dad was there & we had a birthday meal. My sister Michelle came over on Sunday & said hi, she gave me a huge bar of chocolate from Hotel Chocolat, an expensive passport cover, and even the money for a new passport.

Everyone is chipping in to send me and Bryony to Venice in the summer for my big 21st birthday present & its going to be awesome.

I gotta say my 21st has been the most awesome yet & I totally love Bryony even more, if that is even possible.

WordPress | CameraMemories

Flickr: Bryony Harwood’s Photostream

Arranged in order of price (low to high)

1: Sony Handycam CX190 Full HD Camcorder – £166.63

My mother is getting me this. Why do I want one? I want to start making proper YouTube videos instead of compilation videos from random clips I shoot on my iPhone, I’m considering starting vlogging (I hate this stupid-ass word, it means video blogging).

2: Elgato Game Capture HD – £149.95

Ever heard of Ventrilo Harassment by VideoCompiler? Well I want to take inspiration (and some audio clips) from this and start recording Xbox LIVE Harasment. Let the fun begin!

http://bit.ly/11BcqSx

3: WiFi Pineapple Travel Bundle – £73.12 ($114.99 USD)

I want to return to the ‘good old days’ of making mischief with a little harmless hacking here and there.

http://bit.ly/VLV0fW

4: WiFi Pineapple Mark IV – £63.51 ($99.99 USD)

As above but slightly cheaper. It is always a good idea to have a backup anyway.

http://bit.ly/XaH4vz

5: Java For Dummies, 5th Edition £21.99

Squidwolf Minecraft can be taken to the next level if I learn how to do some serious Java programming.

http://amzn.to/14MzXP3

Well it’s been both an awesome and pretty crappy start to 2013, yet most of this isn’t about me.

New Year was probably the most awesome New Year I’ve had in ages, I spent it with Bryony and Steph at FabCafe Manchester. Others were supposed to be there but didn’t turn up in the end, also the entry fee was £8; awesome eh? First off we all went to TOPS which is the best all-you-can-eat buffet you will ever go to. It’s £15.99 per person but the food is definitely worth it, it actually has taste and doesn’t feel like it is all from Iceland unlike other buffets in Manchester. My mum was with us and she is a chef, also highly recommends the place.

New Year’s Group Photo.

As for uni work, at the time of writing I’m glad to say I got 100% last semester, achievement unlocked!

Shortly after New Year, some absolute cunt thought it would be fun to smash his car through my mum’s front gate straight into her car. It’s now been written off and the money from the insurance won’t cover fuck all. It’s been eight weeks now and City South Manchester Housing Trust (long-ass name) still haven’t repaired her gate.

The aftermath of a chav driving a car.

We went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in January and it did not disappoint. Naturally it doesn’t score higher than the LOTR trilogy but then again, what does? The graphics are crazy and Gollum looks more real than ever, the only downside to the film I would say that it did feel like there was a lot of ‘padding’ in parts. 5 minute here & there that could have been made shorter. I am guessing this is a symptom of them trying to cut one book into three, 3-hour films. As for the 48 frames-per-second, I did notice the film ran a lot smoother but not that great and because we are so used to seeing things at 24fps, it can seem a little disorientating at times.

At the beginning of February me & Bryony celebrated our one year anniversary. Being with her has made me the happiest I have ever been and I truly feel honoured to be with her. Love You! We spent the weekend at the Trafford Centre floating around the place & we went to this nice noodle bar in the Orient. Food was good & overall a fantastic weekend. For St. Valentine’s Day (yes I put the saint at the start because it IS a saint’s day) we went to TOPS again in Manchester & spent the evening laughing at the ridiculous people that have all had the same idea as us. Girls looking ridiculous walking around in high heels and guys that just seem out of place with the people they are with (I’m not as judgemental as I seem, honest!).

Our 1 Year Anniversary!!! <3

Shortly after, the month was slightly soured by a letter from EON saying they want £400 for this quarter, ffffuck you!!!!

Stuff at Squidwolf Syndicate is pretty mental at the moment, there is a shift of our entire business model toward entertainment and video games and in particular, Squidwolf Minecraft. Most of the Dev Team at Project: Hazel has been pulled off of minor projects to pool resources towards making the server ready for full launch on the next expansion.

Housemates? Good and bad. I’ve got to know Matt a lot more over these part few weeks and become more distant with Steph. I know the reasons why & I’ll probably write about it here at some point.

Fly Safe! *tips hat*

Now my big goal for this year is to reach 100 subscribers and the only way I’m going to do that is to start making fun and enjoyable videos that appeal to everyone and not just people I know personally.

Look out YouTube! Here I come1

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

My first ever Instagram picture

Sadly, this year Instagram was made an offer too good to refuse and now Facebook is shitting its total disregard for its users all over it and ruining what so many people had come to love.

Part of me believes that this article is true but even if it isn’t, I have made up my mind and joining the exodus of disappointed users. Although there is nothing stopping an alternative service pulling the same shit on it’s users as Instagram (technically Facebook, the guys at Instagram awesome) did.

So how do I join the Exodus?

So are you like me and not a fan of Instagram potentially selling all of your photos to third-parties and advertisers? Well just follow these steps and not only will you be free of Instagram and on to an alternative service but you will also have all of your content saved. For an alternative service I recommend Path, I’ve been using it and it looks awesome although it doesn’t have the same community features as Instagram once did. It does however have an awesome feature to import all of  your content from Instagram straight into your new Path account. I didn’t use this option as I wanted to start fresh and I have already saved all of my photos from Instagram using Instaport.

On 16 January 2013, Instagram’s new terms of service goes live and they are free to do whatever the hell they please with your content. Granted that all of these cloud-based services can do this right now but once it is engraved in their ToS, they are home free.

Before following my guide to leaving Instagram I recommend you review the changes to Instagram for yourself and not just take my word for it that it’s bad. This is my opinion and your opinion may differ from mine once you have seen the beans for yourself. Read This first! They have even revised the language used in the changes somewhat to make it seem less sinister.

1. Backup all of your content from Instagram

In april of this year, a cool kid named Jason Parker created a service called Instaport. A web app that allows you to download all of your instagram data into a nice tidy .zip file. He is even planning on adding new services which allow you to simple port all of your stuff (as the web app name suggests) onto another service such as Facebook (the irony) or Flickr. To get the whole thing up & running you will first have to authorise the service to access the API for your account on instagram but that isn’t hard.

Please note that there is a boatload of people using this service to do exactly what you want to do so expect some waiting around for the operation to complete.

Simply click here to be taken to InstaPort and follow the instructions I’ve written below.

Click the “Sign in with Instagram” button to begin.

Next you will either be taken straight to the authorisation screen (shown below) if you are already logged in with Instagram (works the same way as Twitter Connect) or you will be asked to do so. Just type in your username and password and the screen below will be displayed.

Grant Instaport access to your account

At the moment the only export service available is to download all of your content in a .zip file. This is a compression format that when opened will display a folder containing all of your content. No technical expertise is needed to work with .zip files.

Click Export or review the advanced settings

Before clicking the “Start Export” button, it’s worth taking a look at the advanced settings. These allow you to tweak your export to just how you want it. For example you might not want all of your photos. 

The advanced settings are very powerful.

As you can see it is possible to fine-tune your exports to only select a group of photos. This would be useful if you didn’t want to leave Instagram and just have the ability to periodically download your Instagram content. There is an option to download photos from other users which you have “liked”. These are photos which you have marked with the heart icon on other users’ profiles, the option is marked unstable for now and I didn’t use it for this reason. I will try again at some other time to use this option. Finally, you have the option to download photos with a hashtag that you define.

Instagram export is running

After clicking export you will see this screen. As I said before it can take a long time for this to complete as there are a lot of users currently exporting their Instagram account. Patience my friend, patience!

Instaport has finished saving your content

After Instaport has worked its magic, you will see this. Simply click the download your photos link and a .zip file will show up in the downloads folder on your computer.

It is worth noting that there currently isn’t a limit on how many times you can run an export. Below you will see a screen capture showing two buttons on the site. One is to download the export I just carried out and the other is to start a completely new export. I even went back to the site an hour later and the export button was still there suggesting that Instaport saves the last export you did so you can download it again if you need to.

Instaport is more awesome than I suspected.

Delete your Instagram account

After successfully liberating your photos from Instagram, it is time to finally delete your account. You might want to say a few words before clicking the delete link (or just compose an angry email to Facebook).

First, head on over to Instagram.com and click the Your Account link in the bottom left corner.

The Your Account button is in the same row that has a link to the blog of bad news.

From here you will be taken to the Edit Profile screen. All you have to do now is click the “I’d like to delete My Account” link the bottom right.

Delete It!!!! Go on!!! You know you want to.

From here you will see the Account Removal Request page. They have a drop down menu below a textbox pleading with you not to go. Select the reason why you want to leave Instagram then you will see a field asking for your password. Enter your password then click the big red button, click it!!!! Push the red button!

Push the red button!

The final confirmation…

Yes!

I’m sure you are!

So that’s it, your guide to leaving Instagram. You are probably looking for another service to fill the void, I recommend Path.

Hi Internet. Uni is going good, despite a few problems, my student house is pretty awesome as well regardless of a few ‘politics’, overall it’s been a good first semester.
I just finished editing my first film of my second year (on my own), it is a far cry from what the original idea was but it is an okay looking trailer. And I have just had some dosh paid into my account (money problems again) which means chicken stir fry for tea. Now I just have to submit it all and that is first semester done & dusted.

i’ll be feeling really sad this weekend because over christmas will be the longest me and Bryony have been apart since we got together. We will be probably texting the whole time to the annoyance of everyone around us, though! I will miss her very much but i’m looking forward to seeing her in Hebden Bridge after christmas and me, her, Steph (MintCake), Matt…possibly, and Eva…also possibly will be going to Manchester for New Year’s Eve.