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A taste of Fennel.

2012-11-09T21:37:02Z

Hi there, long time no see!

I want to tell you about me being a massive jammy shit! Haha.

For months now I’ve been dying to visit a restaurant called Fennel. It’s in a town called Inverurie which is about an hours drive from where I live, so excuses to make the trip just for food where a bit thin on the ground.

I follow Fennel on their Facebook page, constantly drooling over the photos they post up, and a few weeks ago they announced that they were introducing a new winter menu and would be giving a select few of their followers an opportunity to taste the dishes before anyone else. What you had to do was nominate yourself or another in a status then all the nominees were put into a vote. The top 6 gaining a place on the tasting.

With the help of friends, family, acquaintances and a lovely food group call TOL (Thinking out Loud) on Facebook I got 66 votes, coming in 4th, and gained a place on the night. *Happy face*

That’s how on Oct 31st between 3pm and 5pm I was in a restaurant that was open only to the tasters, trying some of the nicest food I’ve ever eaten. Myself and 6 others (they gave away a “Wildcard” place the day before the event) arrived, were introduced and given glasses of wine while the kitchen staff prepared the dishes. Conversation got going and everyone was pretty excited about the whole thing.

In the centre of the room a long table had been set up,. We lined up on either side and 2 of each dish were brought out, starters first then mains, then we all basically dove right in and sampled the delights.

For descriptions of the meal please hover the mouse over the photo!

The starters:

Beautiful deep flavour that stayed on the tongue, followed by the fruity sweetness of the chutney. The Olá Otcakes gave a lovely savoury flavour and texture.

This was lovely. I'm not one for cold fish dishes but I did enjoy this. The flavour wasn't overpowering, a nice zing from the Wasabi Mayo and I enjoyed the crunch from the crispy skin.

This was a triumph! Light as a feather, lovely warmth with a cheesy punch. The sweetness of the chilli jam comes in after the cheese then the heat from the chilli. Beautiful!

This was a lovely dish, the different textures with the Scallops... smooth pumkin purée, buttery crunchy Pistachio and the salty, paper-thin Parma ham. YUM!

Unfortunately I accidentally deleted my photo of the last starter which was a Smoked Haddock Chowder with Mussel and Prawn Garnish. It was light smoky, creamy and my first ever taste of Mussels. Like a fishy hug in a bowl!

The Mains:

Good solid punch of blue cheese without being too strong. Creamy texture with a tiny bite in the rice. The crunch from the Celeriac chips was nice after the soft risotto.

Crispy skin and succulent fish, the smoky salty pancetta gave a great zing of flavour and that sauce was lovely! Red wine (but creamy) and went surprisingly well with the fish.

Goodness gracious, great balls of Monkfish! Huge pieces of breaded Monkfish, firm and meaty with a wonderful crunch. Lovely light pea purée (mushy peas!) Haha.

While I enjoyed this dish; lovely poached Chicken, Haggis and a nice sauce. The general consensus was that this dish lacked something. A bit of colour or a strong flavour on the side. I suggested roasted Beetroot...? I do like my Haggis with a spicy kick and felt that was a bit mild for me. But still a well cooked, very comforting dish.

STEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAK! I bloody love steak and this was one of the best I've ever had. Thick fillet steak, med rare, lovely charred taste with a slight kick from the butter. Those chips were crunchy/crispy on the outside and light and fluffy inside. GORGEOUS!

The 2nd of the Vegetarian dishes and I was pleasantly surprised. I've always said the best kind of Vegetarian food is when you don't even realise there's no meat. My first time with Puy lentils, lovely hearty food. Perfect for a cold night.

Set your faces to stunned! This was SUBLIME. Beautifully cooked Venison, soft and tender and full of flavour. Skirlie (made from oatmeal fried with fat, onions, and seasoning) mixed with mashed potatoes was filling and substantial but the real shock was the sauce. Chocolate and Balsamic vinegar... I was sceptical but, my god, it was lovely. You got the deep, rich, slightly sweet hit of dark Chocolate with the sour of the vinegar creeping in on the edges of your tongue. Wonderful with the rich Venison. This really was an experience I thoroughly enjoyed.

And last but not least!
The Puddings!

Unfortunately I dislike Cherries, But I still tried it regardless. The cheesecake itself was quite nice, the centre filled with cherry, tamed by the smooth creamy cheesecake and a nice crunch from the biscuit. Cherry coulis and reduced syrup on the side. Very cherryish!

Warm, soft fruits nestled under a crunchy duvet of crumble topping! Delicious! Never tried the custard as I'm not a cinnamon fan but I was told it was lovely.

These were great! The milk chocolate brulee was thick and rich and had a silky texture that just made me happy! The warm white choc was smooth and gooey with the cold sweet berries giving a little zing as you bit into them and the brownie! Some complained this was a bit heavy but I found it lovely, just the right size to end a meal and with a cup of coffee I'd be in blissful heaven and ready for a nice kip!

And that brings us to the end of the adventure. I had a lovely time tasting these dishes… I tried many things for the first time (Puy lentils, Celeriac, Mussels, I’d had Venison but only as a burger, Seabass) and they were a joy. The staff were friendly and obviously had a real passion for what they were doing. It was an excellent evening and one of the best things I’ve done this year (if not ever).

I turn 30 at the end of the month, hoping to get back and get me some more of that Soufflé and Venison! Fingers crossed (any donations greatly appreciated!). Once again, thanks to all my friends etc who voted. xxx

Most of all, thanks to Fennel. It was a very generous and wonderful thing to do for your fans and I loved every second. Hope to see you again very soon.

Olá oatcakes and chilli jam can be found here: http://www.olaoils.co.uk/

It’s not Piracy, it’s greed – what’s killing the film/tv industry

2012-08-27T20:37:02Z

Film and TV Piracy will end when the Film and TV companies stop being dickwards.

I quite like telly and film, I suspect most people do. I can pretty much get my hands on the vast majority of big name and medium name telly, especially if it’s been air’d in the last few months. It’s not hard, it doesn’t require secret sub internets and IRC chatrooms. It rarely takes more than at most half a dozen clicks.

But you know what? I don’t want to pirate content if the conditions are right. Many a time I would grab a digital copy and then purchase it. In the UK, you can stream pretty much anything that has been aired by a major broadcaster over the last month (and a lot of the time; a lot more). This is fantastic if you’ve got a connection, but I like to sometimes watch a telly show on the train where there is no connection. Heck, you can pay a minimal subscription and gain access to hundreds and thousands of telly and films.

Today I wanted to buy a season of Law’n’Order SVU. I wanted Season 9. On DVD it’s around £14. That sounds alright, 19 episodes, less than a quid an episode. It came out in 2008, over 4 years ago now. But I don’t want a physical copy in this case, I want a digital one, so I can watch it on my phone on the way into and back from work. It would take at most a day to download a pirated copy. The pirated copy would even be better for me, as I don’t want the crap that goes with a telly series. So how much does it go for in iTunes? £30. That’s almost 50% difference, and you’d expect the DVD copy to be more expensive; they’ve got to print out leaflets and cases, stamp out the disks, plastic box, mail it to someone and a lot more. But no, the digital copy cost so much more. Don’t get me wrong, there are still expenses, data centres aren’t run on fresh air and dreams… but its a lot less. On the DVD version, I’ll have to spend a good few hours ‘ripping’ it into a digital format too, so I can watch it how I want, which is perfectly legal.

So what’s easier for me to do? Just download a copy. It’s not about the money, for me, it’s about the convenience. Digital copies of books are about even on pricing, which is fair enough. With books, they’re about even price, which at least is understandable in a slight way.

And then they have releases along the lines of the film Avatar. Avatar came out in 2009, towards the end.It then came out on DVD in April of 2010, which although is far, it’s not ridiculously far. It then wasn’t until a year later for the ‘extended release’, so fans of the film would naturally want to go for that too. With that, they had a 3D version, but it only worked with Panasonic tellies. That is a completely backwards state of affairs when they would limit a movie to a certain brand of hardware. THEN, then two years later, in 2012, the 3D bluray version comes out. So for people who are really into the film would have to wait 3 years and buy 3 copies of the film, just to see it in the way it was intended.

The prices in iTunes are not set by Apple, but if the film and television companies would cut down the prices of digital copies to be in line with DVD; which lowers as newer seasons are created as well as time, then I think a lot more people would be happy to pay for their content. Instead, they just get pirated and they lose out completely. Or for those who don’t have the ability to pirate the media, they would more than likely purchase a lot more content.

One step further; The thing with ‘Apps’, such as for mobile phones, is that they’re so cheap that people odn’t think. They call it a “Micro Transition”, and if the media companies would follow suite, I think people would purchase them a lot more. It’s easier to find 10 people to spend £1 than it is for 1 person to spend £10.

From Britpop to Hipsters

2012-08-14T19:07:00Z

A while back the QTOW overlords at B3ta HQ decided to reopen the “I’m getting old” question. In fairness the last one was eight whole years ago, and since then a whole new bunch of people in their late teens have joined and want to vent how they feel run down at 18. Also in fairness when you are 18 you feel suddenly more mature than ever before in your limited experience and want to complain about how everyone else is less so. Even more so in fairness (fairnesseser?) shut up, I don’t feel that old and David Cameron dosen’t even want to prevent me from claiming housing benefit. Damn kids! when I was your age Pluto was a planet [shakes fist arthriticly].

Alas poor Pluto, I will always remember you as more than a Kupier belt object.

Ranting aside, most of the posts were either well written, witty or smirkworthy*. Plus the content was mainly related to the massive leap forward in the capabilities of computers and the internet in general. The amount of progress and the related information cannot help but give the feeling that we are living in one of the most historically significant times. A paradime shift if you will**. I can see where you are coming from given that I have experienced computers go from zero to facebook in a brief period of time. But what I will chip in with is my two pence on social change. Like those old sixties pamflets that predicted ‘portable telephones’ , ‘home computation machines’ and ‘electronic watches’. Well they got some things right, but what we are really reading them for is the society they predict using them. Sure they were able to conceive of chatrooms, but the thought of a pipe smoking, sweater wearing dad looking over a gingham wearing housewife’s shoulder while she uses it to discuss curtain cleaning techniques seems hilarious. In the same way we can be in hindsight pretty spot on about how technology will develop, we are as a society pretty bad about guessing how society itself will change. Sci-fi usually can tell us more about the time it was written than the time it was supposed to represent.

By the year 2000 every home in the empire will a have at least one dirigible

It will be easy enough to explain to our grandchildren about the rise of the internet, mainly as we can just get them to google ‘rise of the internet’ and they will find it easy to see the change in technology. What I think will be harder to explain will be britpop. The children who were my age when I was being asked “Blur or Oasis” will have never known a world where you don’t have access to all the recorded media from the best part of the last century. YouTube and bit torrent didn’t come out until I was into university, for a teenager in a provincial backwater the main way you got exposed to new music was the radio or music television channels. It was the same for every generation before that going back to the 1950′s. That’s why we associate periods in the last part of the twentieth century with styles and genres. If you wanted to part of the gang, the ‘in’ crowd , you were into prog rock, punk, new-wave or whatever you had a choice between while you were still young enough to give a shit. There was not much choice between what kind of style you had access to, unless you were living in a city with a thriving music scene.

I was probably one of the last people to experience this. If there is one way I can describe how the internet has changed us is the development from a centralised generational sense of style and music to a meta style or the idea of style. Hipsters exist in a world where media is easy to come by, and are only human in our desire to both stand out and be a part of something at the same time. Where the discovery of art and fashion first is a goal in itself, along with the combination of musical genres that would of been impossible without a warehouse-sized record shop prior to the internet, is how you define your sense of style. So yeah teenagers of today I think that you will find it easy to explain to the teenagers of tomorrow the dial up modem, but good luck trying to explain the concept of an era.

*Since the death of Shakespeare no one is taking the responsibility to add words to the English language seriously. I intend to fix this.

** If you are reading this at work feel free to scratch this off your buzzword bingo card.

G4S – Money-Security Vans who Park where they want.

2012-07-14T12:05:43Z

Being a security van money collector must be a scary job. They’re handling stupidly large amounts of money, its probably rarely in the millions, but as most shop owners would handle a week’s takings at £10k or soo, without the need for SAS trained supermen, I’d guess there is a bigger figure for these people.

On my Batmizah, I added up the money and cheques that I got, and it added up to about £3k. This was a lot of money to a 13 year old me, and in fact, is a lot of money to a 28 year old me. I can’t ever imagine having that much actual cash on me again. I remember thinking at the time “I’m going to need at least spiderman and superman to help me take this to the bank” as there was no G4S Security Man around at the time. I was genuinely scared that The Cowper Crew from Cowper Gardens was going to mug me on the way into the bank and give me serious beats for my trouble. They would probably buy cigarettes and alcohol too (and the real kind of alcohol, not shandy-bass with it’s “0.5%”, stuff, but that horrible tasting beer that needs to be topped up with lemonade; which is at least half of 5%) with the money too.

So, to be a G4S security man, handling what most people consider a few year’s wages, it must be scary. What’s worst, is the vans make it abundantly clear that they don’t carry any kind of keys that could let them into the money, and the money will be tarnished with some kind of bio gloop with a unique DNA profile, that can’t be washed off in the shower; which would only anger someone who’d attempt a mugging even more so… it’s one thing someone mugging your boss’s money, it’s quite another to get serious beats out of it at the same time.

Oh yeah’, the point of this article. One thing that has always confused me, is that they seem to be able to literally park wherever they want. I’ve seen them parked up in bus lanes, in the middle of the road, even up on the pavement. I’m not sure about the legality of it, but they seem to be able to park wherever they want. I’ve even seem them parked in the bus-stop outside Kings Cross, to the point where only one bus can use the stop at a time. This meant that the bus had to stop in the middle of traffic and people had to walk through traffic in order to get on. And what were the two security men doing at the time in the van? Eating a burger from Burger King. While they’re causing chaos on the streets, one of them is standing in queue at the burger king, with a suitcase full of money, pondering if it’s worth getting two burgers or a meal. I always spend at least 15 minutes when I’m getting a burger because I can’t decide, but presuming they’re not as indecisive as I am, they probably still spent quite some time.

Seems a bit wrong when you get articles like this in the papers things like

This is why Flash isn’t on iOS

2012-07-07T20:35:33Z

10 out 10 times when my high end macbook pro is running like your average library computer terminal, I go into Activity Monitor and find that Shockwave Flash is hogging up the majority of my resources, hitting high percentages of CPU and a huge chunk of my ram.

This is why it is redundant and old technology that has no place in today’s world.

You are the weakest link…

2012-07-07T00:02:02Z

I’m currently writing this from a prone position, as I have come down with that most annoying of ailments. I feel light-headed whenever I stand up. This has the obvious drawback of being unable to work. Being a chemist our labs tend to discourage the use of seating, due to the odds of getting a lapful of sulphuric acid. Other labs may have seats given that there are different risks, such as mutant superbacteria can infect you regardless (biology) or that the doomsday laser is always pointed at the moon (physics). So in this enfeebled state, I find that now would be a good time to speak about weakness. The current b3ta newsletter has helped this, with a link to differently-abled users posting their credit cards on twitter. Currently some banks will let you use a custom image for your debit/credit cards. While it is quite clearly awesome to have picture of the ‘Shut up and take my money‘ meme as a means of payment, and it is perfectly understandable to want to brag bout this. But for the love of god cover up the information when sharing it with the internet.

Back to the weakest link. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link as the saying goes. And as always, the problem exists between chair and keyboard. Here the security of thousands of peoples bank accounts has been nullified because of their own short-sightedness. In other news this has most likely nullified the terms of the anti-fraud insurance they may or may not have had. In the wake of the 2005 hurricane Katrina disaster the red cross handed out debit cards to those made homeless. This didn’t make the headlines because of charity, a smiling woman holding her card aloft had her picture taken on-line. Within hours the card had been used to make internet purchases all over the world.

"oh man this one time we charged like so many pizzas to this charity's account set up to save flood victims. Fucking classic man!"

Older persons reading this, put down your shaking canes and stop your incessant whining about the kids. I know that in your day, you didn’t have twitter-face and myGoogles to act the fool on. But act the fool you did, even without the benefit of the internet. That’s not the point of what I’m writing, I’m not complaining about technology, I’m complaining about the people who use technology. To take an old timely example, the naval ENIGMA code. The ENIGMA machine was such a complicated method of encoding data, that cracking the code led to the development of the modern computer. Going that one step further the German navy both made the code more complicated and easy to crack. Modifying the ENIGMA machine to add an extra layer of complexity to the encryption, and the use of one time pad cryptography should of made the code next to unbreakable. You know what makes a code easier to break? Knowing what is in the unencrypted message. So if a weather station broadcasts a weather report every day at the same time starting with the word ‘wetter’ (weather in German), you are proving enough information to take a good run of decyphering your code.

Crappy British weather 1 fascism 0

Human error is to security breaches is what Top Gear is to Dave. In no particular order here are some examples of this particular phenomenon.

"Because BBC2 thinks its too good for re-runs"

Kevin Mitnick, the most infamous computer hacker to date got into the Pacific bell phone networks systems by accessing their confidential technical manuals. Manuals obtained from a dumpster round the back of the offices. He would then call up people related to what he wanted to access to and ask them to confirm the data in the manual. Made possible by the fact that the company contact listings were in the same dumpster.While we are on the subject of phones, lets quickly fit in the phone hacking scandal. How did those tabloid hacks get into peoples private voicemail accounts? Is journalism school basicly the 1995 film Hackers but with more emphasis on celebrity cellulite?

Pictured for the second time here on Coll3tive: Journalism school

Actually it was working on a correct assumption that like the majority of phone users, they would not bother to change the default settings on their voicemail accounts. The default setting that includes the same password for that particular model phone. Sure you scoff that these examples both involve phones. Phones being the communication tool for old people. You being young and hip enough to know that people only use the word ‘hip’ unironically in anti-drug PSAs. Okay young whipper snapper go ahead and tweet that, including the derisory snort hash-tag (#Phchaw). Then I can hack into your email, beacuse you also alluded the fact that you hate the mailbox size at generic on-line email service. You also mentioned enough to fill in the security questions in your blog (Hakiu’s-about-my-first-pet-and-musings-on-my-first-school.com). Its easy.

In a roundabout way this is why we should feel wary about government databases. Not in a 1984 totalitarian sense, albeit this should also be avoided, but of the sense of large IT projects. The government already has huge amounts of data on us, because we asked them to. If you are going to have a modern state, with accountable taxation, social security programmes, passports, criminal records and land registration you kind of expect them to keep records. As part of this social contract we expect this information to be treated with the utmost care. So why not link these systems together? We should be able to do this with existing technology, it would save on huge volumes of red tape and therefore taxpayer money. Geeks must be privately working out better systems in their head all the time, every time they come up against bureaucracy. Here we run up against the hackers first law. Godwins law, the rule that as a internet flamewar grows in length the probability that a comparison of one party to nazis and or hitler approaches one. Likewise the first law of hacking is that as a an organisation grows in size, the probability that you will have a user with a internet browser screen that is two thirds toolbars and uses ‘password1234′ for every login approaches one.

Help me find my calculator, I need to add up this excel data

To cite a real world example the pornsite YouPorn was hacked in February of this year. This resulted in a leaked list of hundreds of thousands of logins. Like many websites YouPorn’s member login requires an email and a password. Going through the huge list of customer data something scary popped up, that if you were computer illiterate enough to use the same information for other websites you could gain access to peoples online banking/shopping/Adventure time fan fiction etc. So how does this then apply for the email addresses that were from .gov domains? If I may be as so crass as to put forward stereotypes I would class the kind of people would use their work email to sign up for porn in one of two camps. People who are unprofessional in the extreme and refuse to give a shit about security policy or people too clueless to get email at home. Stupid and lazy in other words, the weakest link in the security chain and the reason we cant have nice things.

People who jump out of planes.

2012-07-05T19:38:34Z

I was going to post this brain-fart in a facebook post, but it started to sound a bit too much like one of those inspirational photos that people post which is the online equivalent to posting lyrics to your favorite song and saying “OMG THIS IS SOOO ME”. So I padded it out into a post.

There are two types of people in this world, I reckon. Well, there are loads of types, but you could whittle them down into two. This is just about as doing the extraordonary as it is about the mondain… For normal poeple, like those who are about to go bungee jumping, or jump out a plane, or try to fill all-but-3 of their nandos card – only to spend all the points in one sitting.

Type one: The Reassurer

There are those who just before these events they say to themselves

“Ok, I haven’t eaten all day. I have a 1/4, 1/2 and a whole chicken saved up. The fact that I have this 3 is testament to how awesome I am anyway. That is an absolute minimum of two deaths that happened for me to do this awesome act of culinary challenge (and more than likely 3 if you take into account practicalities of how Nandos are run). There has never been an outbreak of salmonella, at least not reported in the papers and in my local Nandos. I’ve remembered to adjust the the shelf on my fridge to accommodate any left-overs (No, shut up with that defeatist attitude, you WILL do this). I have an email set up to my mother, lawyer and message board mods in case the worst happens to me. But the worst won’t happen, because I have had the full formal training, its very rare that someone dies doing this, and in all those times the situation is completely different to mine… I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna mother fucking do this…. I’m going fill out all 3 slots in one sitting”.

Then they go for it, and have a good time. Or they die. I think most dare-devils are like this, they do all the precautions and confirm that its a perfectly reasonable thing to do… that everything will be fine no matter what.

Type 2: The Fuckits

Then there are those with nothing left to lose; not even shame they are the ones who say….

“Ok, I have 1/4, 1/2 and a whole chicken saved up. The only reason I have them, is because I was too ashamed to get a free meal infront of my company (or if I’m alone, infront of a pretty waitress). But no more, I have run out of shame, I don’t care who sees me get the meal without paying – Pretty girl or Company-I’m-With (or both) be damned. There is an absolute minimum of two pointless deaths that happened for me to do this disgusting act of gluttony (and more than likely 3 if you take into account practicalities of how Nandos are run). My belt has been elasticated since the turn of the century. My idea of a good night is when I go to the nicer chinese delivery with a higher minimum order (oh, and by ‘go to’, I mean ‘get delivered’). If I’m wearing good clothes I take them off and eat in my pants, this is so I don’t get stains on them thus can get another day’s wear out of them. I shower every morning except sundays where it doesn’t matter because it’s not like I’ll see anyone anyway. My hair looks like a cross between Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction and the front-man from Prodigy. It doesn’t even matter anymore… I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna mother fucking do this…. I’m going fill out all 3 slots in one sitting”.

These people have given up, they say before jumping of a plane “Who really cares if I die?”. It’s not the best way to be, but stuff still happens. When you give up caring about girls dating you, you start being funny and whitty and charming around them ‘cus you don’t care what happens. When you are about to jump out of that plane and don’t care if you’re going to die, which is very unlikely anyway, you have an awesome time hurling towards the ground and landing gently.

And these final people, they’re the kind of people, who turn around and say “Ok… ok…. if I’m doing this. I’m doing this properly. I’ll have the medium-hot“. I should point out, I normally get the mango ‘not hot’ one.

Nando's in Penang airport

The Sunday Science #13: A fun day out

2012-06-11T19:31:17Z

Bugger. I missed the transit of Venus, the last chance to see this in our lifetime. Not for want of trying mind you, I travelled all the way from up t’north to my family home in the home counties, and stayed up all night. Just so I could join my dad (a keen amateur astronomer) in watching the planet Venus’s last trip across the surface of the sun at daybreak. Sadly I hadn’t counted on the fickle British weather, the last transit of Venus in 2004 occurred on a clear day and I was able to see the whole thing. Cloud cover obscured the sun for the entire time that the transit would of been visible in this country.

The great British sky: My perfidious enemy

Not only depriving myself and my dad of this historic sight but you and the dozen(s?) of other Sunday Science readers of me writing about the solar system. The following Saturday in order to cheer ourselves up we went to London and by chanced stumbled on something wonderful. Just off Lincon’s Inn Fields lies the Royal Collage of Surgeons home to the free to the public Hunterian Museum. This celebrates the work and collection of pioneering surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. Who spent his life collecting medical oddities and preserving thousands of anatomical samples. Even now after hundreds of years, Jars and vials and display models of human organs still sit perfectly preserved for us to wonder at. Like spending an afternoon inside a copy of Grey’s Anatomy, Walking through rooms full of medical samples gives you a true sense of how beautiful and complex life can be. And of the work undertaken by those pioneering anatomists who made modern medicine possible. I strongly recommend you check it out at least once, it wont cost you a penny and is open from 10am to 5pm Tuesday to Saturday.

Science. As a great man once said "It works, Bitches!"

Worth rapping about – or not.

2012-05-26T08:50:31Z

I’m a fan of rap music, I like clever metaphors and intelligent lyrics. I find though, and I guess this is true of all music genres, that there is a lot of rap that simply isn’t worth rapping about. Rap has a very rich history, it was used as a form of expression to express dreams and aspirations, or it was to effectively put across a message.

I can’t quite imagine who the first person to rap was. Weather it’s true or not, I have a mental image of two beefing groups of people, perhaps the Capulates and Montagues, who are meeting each other on the mean streets of Italy or wherever Romeo and Juliet was set. As they’re holding some very sharp looking swords ready to kill the other team, when during a heated argument, one yells “DO YOU BIT YOUR THUMB AT ME?”. Fast forward a few hundred years later and you’ve got the bloods and the crypts, D12 and whoever Eminem is hating on, Israelis and Palestinians; and those who like Sonic over Mario. Where instead of facing a murder charge, they decided to express their feelings into music and words.

Like with everything popular, you get people with a lot of money who don’t quite get the idea; or perhaps its me who doesn’t get it; who bastardises it into a profitable scheme. It’s amazing how much of it is self-deprecating. There are so many millionaires out there who can rap a song about how they have fast cars, heavy gold chains and all the female canines. Then in the next song, they’ll rap how they are “eating lunch off a styrophome trays” and how they suffer from extreme anxiety issues. The truth is, and this isn’t all the time, just most if it, it’s whinny boasting attention seeking that is beakering (Beaker from The Muppets: Mememmeeme).

But then, there are a few rappers out there who leave you thinking about what they’re saying. They have a message that is worth saying; weather it’s introvert or extrovert, it’s something that leaves you with a message that sticks, or it tales a story that is as entertaining as you can get in a 3 minute song.

Here I’m going to point out with some songs that demonstrate the diversity of subject styles that rap has. I’m limiting myself to one song per artist, but the ones on the first list all have a lot of stuff worth checking out. I’m, hopefully, not going to list anything that is designed as a parody, however, with the list of stuff I don’t like, I might have been trolled.

Some stuff I quite like

Dull Bull – America: Dan Bull writes about the lack of nationalised healthcare in the States, and dispels the myths portrayed by the inhuman people who oppose such a system.

Lowkey – Hand on your gun: Lowkey is all about the Arabic conflicts, in this case, he outs a handful of companies for extremely unethical practices.

Scroobius Pip vs Dan Le Sac – Tommy C S’Pip raps over Dan Le Sac’s track about the comedian Tommy Cooper, and how his life is the true definition of buety

Some stuff I really don’t like.

Nicki Minaj – Stupid Hoe: It’s pretty much all boasting with really insipid uninspired lyrics and using repetitive beats throughout in order to make her uninteligable rap rhyme.

Pitbull – Hotel Room Service It’s a catchy tune, I’ll give him that, but this seems to be about making as many women as possible phone their best friend the following day with a conversation that goes “…. I’ve been so stupid. Why do I do this to myself? I thought he liked me.” While making a career on the basis of knowing some famous people.

Pretty much anything by Professor Green: A-level project that got barely a pass in ‘Music’ but got an A* in Media Studies. Hooked up with someone who can sing for their one alright song (between his rap sections). It’s the only album I’ve ever bought wanting to get a refund from iTunes purely on the basis that the sale accounts for his ranks in the charts (don’t care if I never paid back on it).

And just to prove I’m not being a ponce who only likes obscure stuff, some more stuff I like

Dappy: Rockstar – Dappy, raps’ loveable idiot, raps about how he is a rockstar. The inclusion of a Brain May solo might have won it over for me.

Eminem – Loose Yourself I like pretty much everything he’s done, except the latest album. He’s better with crippling psychosis and chronic addiction to prescription pills.

Will Smith Everybody loves Big Willy from West Phili’, I’m gutted that he let Pitbull have a go at making a Men In Black soundtrack. Proper feel good music who wrote every verse without a curse.

Dear dad – 5 Years.

2012-05-24T21:09:17Z

I don’t know if they have the internet where you are, I guess there is a catch 22 where if you have, you’ll be up to date on whats been happening in the world for the last 5 years, and if they don’t, then you’ll never read this. Makes this a bit silly really, if you look at it like that, but then if you look at it in another way, then this should hopefully be quite interesting.

Politics

Obama - a black president !

Well, where to start. There is a black fella in the white house, he replaced Bush. He’s alright, don’t really know much about him but I think people like him mostly. Can’t be worst than the last lot. He’s actually going for another term ! At the moment, the conservatives are in. Gordon Brown took over from Tony Blair, and I didn’t see a difference, and then David Camron took over afterwards. I’ll be honest, I don’t notice a difference. Lots of people do, but I don’t. It’s the olympics this year, Mum was right, they reckon it’s gonna be £13b now. Donno if it’ll be worth it or not, I didn’t bother with tickets, you know that’s not really my thing. I might have a bet down the bookies to keep me interested, same as before, a few quid on England and a few quid on some obscure country.

Cyprus is the same as before, hasn’t joined up or anything, Greece have gone bust and some people think they’ll drop out and go back to the drachma, so maybe that’ll give Turkey a chance to join. Maybe they should just buy their half or something. We had this thing called an “International Credit Crunch”, where most of the western world went into recession, I’m afraid I don’t know much about it but it wasn’t like back in your day with Thatcher. There have been a load of protesting, especially since the Cons got back in, and it looks like their ideas are pretty bad for the people, but the changes haven’t happened yet.

The Nationalists, like what you told me about when you were working the markets, seem to be coming back. They’re called the English Defence League and they sound just as thick as back in your day, don’t worry though, it’s the muslims turn, they’re leaving us jews out of it. To be honest, they sound pathetic compared to your day’s lot.

Technology

iPad and iPhone - like those star trek things.

You were right about the iPhone, I still think that one you saw was crap, but we’re coming up to the 6h one now (I had the 3rd, 4th & 5th ones, and have an eye on the 6th one.. it sounds like a lot, but really it’s about 1 every 11 months). It’s moved on leaps and bounds. I’m learning at the moment to make stuff for it, I might make a free version of your betting system to see if that takes hold. Get this right, I press a button and hold it down for a few seconds, and I can tell it to do stuff ! Seriously, I’m not joking ! Just now I said “Tell me when 10 minutes is up” and it put up a little count down for my pasta. I can say to it “Siri…” it’s called siri “… show me what I’ve got to do this week”, and it’ll show me all this week’s appointments! The camera on it is wicked, it’s 8 megapixels, I KNOW ! And it’s crystal clear too. The zoom is shit, it’s the same deal as before with “Optical zoom” and “Digital zoom”.

hey also bought out this thing called the “iPad”, you remember on star trek, those things that they had which were basically screens with all the ship’s computer systems, well this is a bit like that. They call it “Cloud Computing”, where you just keep everything on the internet. Hard drives and space seem to have lost all meaning these days, mobile phones can have little chips (like that Nokia you bought me) that can hold 32gb, and next year they reckon it’ll go up to 128gb at that same size.

I sold that Nintendo Wii thing, never finished that Zelda game and I never really used that balance board thing for more than a few months. It was a bit shit. The new round of consoles are being announced or coming out this year, yeah’, I know, they lasted ages this time. I got a “Playstation Vita” which is exactly like the Playstation 3 (yeah’, sorry, ended up getting one of those), only it fits in my pocket. I’d say the graphics are even better.

The internet is pretty fast now, you press a button and it’s here. I still download all my films and stuff, there are a few legal ways of doing it now too, but it’s so much quicker. My connection at home is 20MB/s, but there are places where you can get GB/s.

business

Facebook stock price.

Do you remember that Facebook thing? Well, that kicked off big time, there are over 900 million people on it, and that is NOT a typo. They just released shares for it at $100b. Alan Sugar got his knighthood, they call him Sir Alan on The Apprentice now, but instead of getting a job, they now get a 50/50 business with him, where he’ll plonk in £250k. Most people on it still come off unemployable, it’s a good fun.

Entertainment

House MD

Noel is still doing Deal Or No Deal, but it’s getting more wanky all the time, I stopped watching it a few years ago. I saw some show about that show that showed that the banker is a real person, he’s not acting or got schizophrenia.

I’m afraid I got bored with House after you left. He got over the addiction thing, hooked up with Cutty and was generally happy – BORING. Although there was a good episode when he was in the head hospital.

There was a writer’s strike where a load of shows got messed up, they had to split Heroes’s half way through the season, it finished well but I wanted more. Pretty much all our shows got put on hold for about a year, it was a Hollywood thing. There are a few good new shows, I’m still watching Hollyoaks (sorry), but nothing worth mentioning.

Oh, that Harry Potter is finished with now, they got more adult towards the end. They were pretty good, you’d have liked them.

I’ve gotta dash, the family are all doing fine, and then ones who aren’t are probably with you now, they’ve probably filled you in on the more personal stuff. Me and Ma’ are doing good, she’s lost a lot of weight, looks really good. I stopped doing the freelance thing and got a proper job making some really good high end website, some of our stuff hits millions of people each month. Don’t get mad, I got a tattoo, it says “Hakuna Matata”.

Loveyaloads

- Monster

P.S – We dug out the whole garden looking for your secret stash but couldn’t find it. Could you please let us know where you hid the used unordered banknotes.