The northlondonhippy

Author Archive

It’s not like I actu­ally have that much to keep me dis­tracted from this blog, so I don’t have any sort of valid excuse for my recent low lev­els of participation.

I wish I could say, “oh you know, since I won the lot­tery, blog­ging is a low pri­or­ity” or “ I’ve only just come out of a 3 week, drug induced coma”, but I have no such excuses.

I do have rea­sons, though. Some­times, I just get a bit bored with my own life…so if I’m bored, imag­ine how yawn-worthy it would be for my beloved hippyfans?

Also, this is my most unfavourite time of the year as the hol­i­days approach and my lev­els of depres­sion rise. This is all down to my fucked up fam­ily or rather my rela­tion­ship with them.

I won’t bore you with a re-hash of just how fucked up my fam­ily is…there’s no point. Most fam­i­lies seem to be fucked up, mine is noth­ing spe­cial. I think if you look “fam­ily” up in the dic­tio­nary, the def­i­n­i­tion should read “a group of genet­i­cally related indi­vid­u­als who are fucked up.”

Maybe you’re fam­ily is dif­fer­ent. Per­haps you’re fam­ily is the Wal­tons. Well, good­night John­boy and fuck you too!

I miss my dad. I miss him a lot. He’s still on my mind daily, even though he’s been dead for over a year. Even weirder! I was dri­ving home from work yes­ter­day morn­ing and who do you think I saw in the car behind me, in my rear view mir­ror? Only some­one who was the spit­ting image of my father. I don’t mean he looked a bit like my dad, he looked exactly like my dad!

I’m not read­ing any­thing into this, it was no vis­i­ta­tion from beyond the grave or even my mind play­ing tricks on me. It was just some ran­dom guy who looked just like him. Well, I thought it was odd.

Maybe I’m not tak­ing enough drugs. Maybe none of us are! I’ve got three days off, start­ing in around 2 hours and I believe drugs will be a part of my relax­ation regime.

I’m plan­ning on pop­ping some P.E.P. pills when I get home this morn­ing, but that’s more out of neces­sity than any­thing else. I need to stay awake today, as I’m wait­ing for my duff Air­port Express to be picked up by Apple’s car­ri­ers. I think I men­tioned it died last week and Apple were sur­pris­ingly quick at despatch­ing the replace­ment. If I don’t return the old one within a set time-frame, I will get charged a boat-load of money on my Visa card. There’s always a hoop-of-fire to jump through in this life, no mat­ter what you do!

On Weds, the fes­tiv­i­ties will be extended to include a visit from the gas man, to pro­vide the annual ser­vice to my boiler and fix a cou­ple of duff radi­a­tors. But it doesn’t end there, oh no fuck­ers, because on Thurs­day, I’m going through a thick enve­lope filled with receipts to get ready to do my taxes!

When this hippy has fun, he does not mess around! Yipppeee!

Ok, so life sucks occa­sion­ally, that’s hardly a news­flash, espe­cially to a ded­i­cated gloom mer­chant like myself. Some weeks, it’s one long non-stop rock’n’roll sex’n’drugs party, other weeks, life sucks ass. This is one of the ass-sucking weeks. Pucker up, fuckers!

Once my taxes are out of the way, life could become fun again. There’s a project I’m work­ing on, which I make vague ref­er­ences to occa­sion­ally that has moved about a quar­ter step in the right direc­tion this week. Trust me, things don’t hap­pen quickly in the media and being per­sis­tent and patient may serve me well yet!

I’m not going to say much more than that, because I’m still prac­ti­cally no where with it, but I remain guard­edly opti­mistic. It’s some­thing for TV, a poten­tial series and I’m going to start work­ing on the pilot in about a week or so. The good news is there are some high pow­ered TV execs poised to read what I write! Amaz­ing, ain’t it?

But you, my beloved hip­py­fans, are not amazed. You know that I am one of the great undis­cov­ered tal­ents of the 21st cen­tury. At least that’s what my mum says!

Send me those pos­i­tive vibes, kids. I fuckin’ need ‘em!

Until next time, I remain your ever faith­ful, ever funny, ever stoned, northlondonhippy!

Yeah, yeah, sorry I haven’t been post­ing much. Like you haven’t heard that from this lazy hippy before!

Truth is, I’m still not feel­ing myself, fol­low­ing my ill­ness last week­end. Sit­ting here now, at the ungodly hour of 4:40am, I still feel pretty shitty. I’ve got chills, I’m sweat­ing slightly and I feel really tired. I’ve felt this way all week. I’m won­der­ing if some­thing might be really wrong with me.

I hope not, I can’t afford to get sick. If this hippy doesn’t work, this hippy doesn’t get paid! Wel­come to the new econ­omy, fuckers!

I get paid per shift, so if I don’t come to work, I don’t see so much as a thin dime. Luck­ily, I get paid in pounds and pence here, as dimes don’t get you very far in north London!

I wish I felt bet­ter, it’s a bit dull feel­ing ill for over a week, espe­cially when the weather is get­ting colder and the work-schedule is get­ting heavier!

No drug fes­ti­vals or any real fun lately either. Ho hum. My life doesn’t suck though, it barely has the energy to blow at the moment, let alone get any suc­tion going!

Ok, I’m down, I’m feel­ing sorry for myself. So what? Is every­one else’s life that much better?

You tell me, you’re part of “every­one else”. Is your life better?

We all live small, quiet, unim­por­tant lives; the prob­lem is some of us aspire to more. Most of us fail and I count myself amongst those fail­ures. Ho hum.

I’m too old to be think­ing that I can still turn my life into some­thing that mat­ters. I delude myself in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways, every day that some day things will be better.

News­flash, you hippy cunt: If it hasn’t hap­pened by now, it ain’t never gonna happen!

Who says?

Every­one, apparently.

Except me, because my delu­sions may be all I’ve got. And I haven’t given up. At least not yet, though I reserve the right to quit at a time and place of my own choosing.

So there you have it, life +1, hippy, zero – but the game ain’t over yet.

Actu­ally, I think we might be into extra time, but who’s count­ing. I don’t even own a stopwatch.

Can I mix any more metaphors into this con­fus­ing jum­ble of thoughts and ideas?

Prob­a­bly, but I’m bored now and think it’s time to wrap this up.

Catch ya next time, fuckers!

Ah-ha.

Like the myth­i­cal bird, the phoenix, I have arisen from the ashes of the last week of my life, reborn with the knowl­edge that, the one and only, northlondonhippy….

Oh fuck it, this intro looked a lot bet­ter in my head than it does on my com­puter screen.

The truth is, I haven’t posted any­thing in a while. Blame a recent bout with the flu and a lack of focus on all things hippy for my lack of par­tic­i­pa­tion. I even missed a cou­ple of nights at work, which means this hippy don’t get paid! That’s how fuck­ing sick I was.

I’m at work tonight, it should be my last shift of three, instead it is an orphan night; a guest appear­ance and to be hon­est I’m not really up for being here.

I’m feel­ing more than a bit drained. I’ve got a slight headache and every time I go out­side for a cig­a­rette, I return shiv­er­ing. Oh poor hippy, boo-fucking-hoo!

I don’t really have much more to report, life’s been in a hold­ing pat­tern since I was laid low by this lurgy.

Oh, I can share some tech-geek news, my Air­Port Express thing-a-ma-jig died on Mon­day night. Right in the mid­dle of surf­ing, it just went. It’s dead, it’s ceased to be, it’s an ex-AirPort Express, blah blah blah.

As much of an Apple-mad con­sumer as I am, they are dread­ful to deal with when some­thing goes wrong. I spent forty min­utes on the phone with cus­tomer sup­port, try­ing to sort it out. I had two options, and I have cho­sen what I hope is the eas­i­est of the two. I’m going to visit the big Regent Street Apple Store in cen­tral Lon­don, where I am promised they will trade me a brand new Air­Por­t­Ex­press for my dead one. We’ll see!

I hope it works, as it would mean I have a new one in my hot lit­tle hands comes Thurs­day morn­ing, which is my first chance to get into town. Cross your stubby lit­tle fin­gers for me!

Like I said, I ain’t got nothin’ tonight. But I’m alive and on the mend. What more could you ask for?

I’m alive and well…..

…well, I’m alive, anyway.

And I’m sorry for not post­ing any­thing for a cou­ple of days. I’m work­ing too much, too hard and too bad on me. It’s been busy at work, but that’s what hap­pens when a major Euro­pean coun­try is on fire every night.

I’m refer­ring to France, where they’ve had 12 con­sec­u­tive nights of unrest with no end in sight.

Here’s the thing: I’m not sur­prised by any of this. Actu­ally, what sur­prises me is that is doesn’t hap­pen more often, everywhere.

Every coun­try has an under­class; every soci­ety has deprived poor peo­ple who feel alien­ated by soci­ety. I’m not sug­gest­ing they should all rise up and burn every­thing, but I do won­der why they don’t go after us “haves” a bit more often.

There’s more of them than there are of us. By “us” of course, I mean peo­ple with an income and a stake in soci­ety. You can’t be that poor if you’re read­ing the hippy! After all, you can access the net.

I’m not poor, but I’m not rich either, not by a long shot. Sure, I can afford to buy a video iPod, I can throw stuff into my shop­ping bas­ket at the super­mar­ket and not worry about the price, but I don’t have a man­sion, or a sports car or a yacht. I should though, would you like to buy them for me? Please?

As the gulf between rich and poor widens, the poor are going to wise up. We’re out num­bered and as events in Paris show, the police are inef­fec­tive in quelling the crowds. Maybe it’s time to coat your car with asbestos or move to the country!

Peo­ple tell me that France is quite racist when it comes to their immi­grant pop­u­la­tion. I don’t like sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tions, but there could be some truth in this one. Britain is fairly racist too, and that I’ve seen with my own eyes.

Let’s face facts; we’re all guilty of the sort of casual racism that keeps our dif­fer­ences at the fore. We all notice colour, race and even reli­gion and prob­a­bly always will, even if we try to pre­tend not to.

That is, until my hippy-utopia comes, when the inhab­i­tants of planet earth become homogenised into one coffee-coloured race. None of us will be alive to see this hap­pen, but mark my words, it will come. We don’t have a chance of sur­viv­ing as a race, unless we become uni­fied glob­ally in every con­ceiv­able way.

Gosh, this was just going to be a short entry to let all my loyal, beloved hip­py­fans know I’m still here and look, I got all pseudo-intellectual on your ass. I won’t make a habit of it. We’ll be back on course with hand­guns, hook­ers and hard drugs in no time!

It may have taken me 9 months, but my all-new dig­i­tal lifestyle is now com­plete! My brand new, shiny, black, 60gb iPod (with video play­back) arrived on Thurs­day! It is the final piece of my dig­i­tal jig­saw and now that it is in place, my life is dig­i­tally perfect!

The new, 5th gen­er­a­tion iPod is pure tech­no­log­i­cal per­fec­tion! I am more impressed with it than I expected to be, and I expected to be impressed! The video play­back is fault­less with a clear, bright, detailed pic­ture. Even Mrs. H was blown away by how good the mov­ing pic­tures looked!

It also plays music! That’s an under­state­ment, it plays every song I own, nearly 2,000, flaw­lessly. It is by far, the coolest hand-held gad­get avail­able on the planet. I’m very happy!

Happy is a rel­a­tive con­cept, nat­u­rally and in this con­text relates to only to my all-new dig­i­tal lifestyle. I’m at work right now, groov­ing on some hap­pen­ing hippy tunes! And I’m writ­ing this, and I’m still doing my job to an incred­i­bly high stan­dard. Yes, I am just that god­damn good…

…Except where it comes to blog­ging, because I’ve been so incred­i­bly lazy this week. I know this is my first entry in days. I suck, well some­times anyway.

There’s never enough time in the day to do every­thing I want to do, espe­cially with all the ran­dom vio­lence, mean­ing­less sex and high lev­els of drug con­sump­tion involved with being the northlon­don­hippy. It’s com­pli­cated being me…

…but then it’s prob­a­bly com­pli­cated being you too. Its com­pli­cated being any­one, everyone!

Tonight begins my run of six shifts in a row. It’s the longest con­sec­u­tive run I’ve done in ages. Wooo-hooo! At end of it, I only have three nights off to look for­ward to, which ain’t much.

I’m aim­ing to have the delayed, yet much antic­i­pated northlon­don­hippy drug fes­ti­val, which touch-wood, should start on Thurs­day evening and con­tinue until Sun­day morn­ing, or when I fall into a drug-induced coma, which ever comes first!

Naw, I’m just joshin’ ya, no comas for me, I’m not that lucky! Besides, I’m not mess­ing with any­thing that hard of heavy. No Class A’s, just Class C actu­ally and some legal goodies.

Speak­ing of legal good­ies, I’ve now tried the three vari­a­tions of P.E.P. Pills, the Love, Twisted and Stoned ver­sions. I dig them all, but I think the Stoned just about have the edge. They were speedy, but mon­ged me out a lit­tle. More field test­ing is no doubt required!

I’m also plan­ning on finally try­ing Dionysos, which are cap­sules filled with ground up seeds con­tain­ing LSA. I’m hop­ing they will be fun. A cer­tain help­ful hip­py­fan of mine, who emailed to point out a tech­ni­cal prob­lem with my blog, is cer­tainly look­ing for­ward to my review. Soon, my friend, soon!

I’m look­ing for­ward to my drug fes­ti­val, but then I bet you are too! There’s no rea­son why you can’t play the home ver­sion. Just get some drugs, a few nights off and away you go! But if you end up in a drug-induced coma, don’t blame your uncle hippy!

I’m going to party like it’s 1999! How? I’ve invited Prince over to per­form at my northlon­don lair and I’ve asked him to join me in my time machine. How did you think I would do it? In my head?

Ok, yeah, well, ummmm, it will be in my head actu­ally. I have more fun in my head than most peo­ple have in some of London’s finest night­clubs. And the women are eas­ier in my head than any stink­ing club!

It’s a dirty job, but some­one has to do it. Thank god, it’s me. If I believed in god, I would send him a thank-you note right now, but I don’t, so I won’t.

Of course, if I were god, I wouldn’t expect anyone’s thanks.

I’m not god and at the rate I’m going, I never will be. ‘Tis a pity, because I’d be a great god. I’d be your favourite god. I’d be the god other god’s aspire to be.

Ok, enough of the god non­sense. Even if I do look like Jesus right now (I really do, long hair, beard, walkin’ on water, etc), I’m not going to ever be god. It’s your loss, fuckers!

Speak­ing of “your loss”, it looks like the Tory’s are still try­ing to fuck them­selves up. My Tory hero, David Cameron has com­mit­ted the car­di­nal sin of speak­ing about drugs with com­mon sense and now every­one is try­ing to stitch him up.

Specif­i­cally, Mr. Cameron said that MDMA should not be clas­si­fied in the same league as smack and crack. He’s right and any self-respecting drug-user worth his salt would agree. Cameron’s point is sim­ple, if peo­ple know that the gov’t is mis­rep­re­sent­ing the truth about some drugs, they will reject what they say about all drugs.

Look, the kids, man, they know that “E” is no where near as nasty as heroin. You know it too, though it may pain you to admit it.

Cameron is a sen­si­ble guy when it comes to the one issue I care about. The prob­lem for him is this: drug users aren’t known for vot­ing. And the peo­ple that do vote, won’t care if he’s hon­est about drugs.

This is the thing, Cameron’s ene­mies have fig­ured out that drugs are his weak spot. He speaks sense, sense scares people.

If Cameron doesn’t get to become the leader of the con­ser­v­a­tives, they don’t have a hope in hell of ever get­ting into power. Then again, if Cameron isn’t made leader, they don’t deserve to be in power. Fuck­ing losers!

Any­way, I think I’ve more than made up for my lack of par­tic­i­pa­tion this week, with this infor­ma­tive and enter­tain­ing update on the wild, wacky and won­der­ful world of the northlon­don­hippy! It’s so damn good, I got a semi-hard-on just re-reading it!

Bet you do too, unless you’re a chick, in which case, you’re dripping!

Hippy, why do you have to get all icky, all the time?

I’m hav­ing a shitty night. Not that you’d care.

It’s one of those nights where absolutely noth­ing is going right. If I was the kind of hippy who got stressed out when things turn to shit, I’d be in real trou­ble. Thank­fully, I’m the kind of hippy who’s always cool and I haven’t even bro­ken a sweat.

I get paid the same whether things hap­pen smoothly, badly or not at all. I like get­ting paid as it beats the alter­na­tive. In an ideal world, I would be inde­pen­dently wealthy. This, my fine friends is not an ideal world.

If it was, I’d be your god. I should be your god. I’d be a good god. I’d be the best damn god in the known (and unknown) universe.

All things con­sid­ered I’d rather be on drugs. With a lit­tle luck, soon I will be.

I’ve got one more night, then three nights off, then six more to do. It’s too much, but we’re back to the money issue again. A hippy needs to eat and score dope. And don’t for­get about toys!

Where’s my fuck­ing iPod? It should be in my hot lit­tle hands right now but its not. It’s still some­where between Ams­ter­dam and my north Lon­don lair. This is not good enough! I could have used it this week­end, espe­cially the video playback!

This hippy needs con­stant stim­u­la­tion and enter­tain­ment, oth­er­wise I’m left with noth­ing but my thoughts for amuse­ment. I already think too much, I don’t need extra time trapped in my own cere­bral hell!

Fuckin’ hell, I’m a big whinge-bag tonight! Or rather, this morn­ing, as it’s nearly 6am, Lon­don time. On the plus side, I’m out the door in about 75 min­utes. Yipppeee to that motherfuckers!

I actu­ally shouldn’t be com­plain­ing. I should never com­plain. My life is good. I have my health, dosh in the bank and the undy­ing love and respect of the entire pop­u­la­tion through this blog.

That’s a lie. I blog in near obscu­rity. You loyal hip­py­fans don’t know how good you’ve got it, with me as your per­sonal web-jester. Sure, you’ve caught how amaz­ingly ter­rific I am, but what about those unen­light­ened souls who aren’t down with this hippy? You can help!

This week, it’s “intro­duce some­one cool to the northlon­don­hippy” week. That’s right, this week, each of you has a spe­cial task: you need to con­vert one of your mates into a hippyfan!

It’s not as dif­fi­cult as it sounds, since I’m addic­tive like crack, only bet­ter for you. Remem­ber, “I’m blog­ging my life away, every night and every day, just for you!” I may not be “shroom­tas­tic” any more, but I’m still pretty god­damn good.

I make you laugh, make you think and make you wish you were a hippy too! Don’t I?

I’m the hippy you all adore, because I’m a proper media whore!

So come on fuck­ers, let’s dou­ble my hip­py­fan base! You know it makes sense! I’m count­ing on each and every one of you!

Ok, I’m not god tonight. I should be though.

Instead, I’m trav­el­ling through time and frankly, I don’t rec­om­mend it.

I’m work­ing right now and the clocks have gone back. There were two “one o’clocks” tonight and I got to expe­ri­ence them both. Who says any­thing is love­lier the sec­ond time around? It’s not.

This is not my idea of fun time travel. It means I’m work­ing an extra, unpaid hour tonight. You nor­mal, non-nocturnal types are all get­ting an extra hour of sack time. Fuckers!

What’s worse is its dead quiet. That means time is prac­ti­cally stand­ing still. Or going back­ward and this time it ain’t my imagination.

I’m on a seri­ously heavy sched­ule for the next cou­ple of weeks. I’m work­ing 9 out of the next 12 nights. Yipppeee for the pay­check at the end of it, though I’m hop­ing I survive.

Of course I’ll sur­vive, this hippy is hardcore!

I haven’t been up to too much else this week, I haven’t had that much time off. I did score a lit­tle some­thing a few days ago, which cer­tainly has taken the edge off slightly, but other than that, my life is pretty fuck­ing dull.

My brand new, 60gb black iPod (with video capa­bil­i­ties) is some­where between my north Lon­don lair and Ams­ter­dam. It started its jour­ney in Shang­hai early last week and really should be in my hot lit­tle hands already, but its not. Shame, as I really could have used it tonight as a diversion.

What’s worse is I’ve been awake since 9:30am on Sat­ur­day, which means by the time I arrive home, with the clocks turned back, I will have been awake for more than 24 hours.

Go on, you can envy me a lit­tle for my glam­orous media lifestyle! Even when I’m grumpy!

Blessed are the hip­pies, for the hip­pies shall inherit the earth.

Though if you read your news­pa­pers today, you might have seen that THIS par­tic­u­lar hippy has actu­ally already inher­ited the entire planet.
Maybe you missed it, but god died and he left it all to me. I’m your new lord and master.

Wor­ship at my feet as you recite the northlon­don­hippy prayer:

“Oh northlon­don­hippy
with your big cock…
and big­ger ego…
Grant us the strength to score good drugs…
And the abil­ity to find mean­ing­less sex­ual encoun­ters…
With really hot peo­ple.
Amen.”

Dig it, fuck­ers! There’s a new boss in town! Screw the ten com­mand­ments! As far as I’m con­cerned, don’t steal and don’t kill, the rest is wide open!

I can kill, if I want to and maybe I will. Death to all the stu­pid peo­ple! Nat­u­rally, that excludes you, since you’re clever enough to read this blog!

Let’s face it; you were down with the hippy before I took over from god, so you’re safe from my wrath! But you newly con­verted hip­py­fans, well, that’s a dif­fer­ent story! If you don’t start mak­ing with the weed and free oral sex and quick, I will fuck­ing smite you!

All of my ene­mies will be smited! Once I look up what “smite” means on dictionary.com, I’m really gonna do it! Look out evil-doers wher­ever you are!

I’ve got a lot on my agenda already. For starters, I’m going to sort out the weather. No more hur­ri­canes, typhoons or cyclones. I’ve banned them all.

Also, I’ve had enough of the quakes and tsunamis, they’re banned too!

And while I’m at it, war is banned. Except for George W (for waste of a human exis­tence) Bush, who I’m mak­ing the only mem­ber of the US Mil­i­tary. He can have a side-arm and a hat, and then I’m ship­ping him off to Fal­lu­jah to fight Iraqis on his own. It’s the right thing to do.

Nat­u­rally, all drugs will be legal and for some peo­ple, com­pul­sory. Noth­ing will cause can­cer because I’m can­celling can­cer. Even cig­a­rettes will be good for you and chock full of vitamins.

I’ll make sure there’s plenty of food and clean water for every liv­ing thing. You won’t need med­i­cines any more, because we’ll all be blessed with per­fect phys­i­cal and men­tal health. Even me, espe­cially on the men­tal health side!

And every Fri­day night, I’ll have my own global tv show: The northlon­don­hippy smile hour! You’ll all have to watch, because it will be on every god­damn channel!

Oh fuck­ers, I know it’s all just a dream, but with your help, this dream can come true. Sim­ply put as much cash as you can afford (US dol­lars, GB pounds or Euros only please, no cheques!) into an enve­lope and send it to:

the northlon­don­hippy
north Lon­don, UK
planet earth

I’m sure the postal ser­vice can find me. I’m the only northlon­don­hippy in the book!

Hal­lelu­jah hippy!

Holy mother of cunt­ing fuck! Hippy, where have you been?

Nowhere, really, except north Lon­don, where I belong. I’ve just been lazy, again.

I’ve not got loads to say, it’s been a pretty tax­ing week for me. No par­tic­u­lar rea­son, except that life is often a strug­gle for every­one. How’s that for a cop out?

I’m back to work tonight, which I sup­pose makes me less lazy in gen­eral. It’s been an active night so far and I’ve still got a few hours to go. I can’t wait to get home and sleep, actu­ally. I’m old and get­ting older and being a crea­ture of the night is tak­ing its toll on me.

I have one inter­est­ing thing to share with you all: I tried the P.E.P. Twisted pills on Saturday!

I liked them more than the “Love” ver­sion of P.E.P. pills, though they are both sim­i­lar. The Twisted vari­ety made me feel a bit more mon­ged, kind of like a low-dose shroom trip. It was all very man­age­able and pleas­ant and I would def­i­nitely do them again. Colours were a lit­tle brighter, sounds a bit crisper and my thoughts were slightly skewed as well. Not bad for a fiver!

Actu­ally, I did 3 of them, which is still a bar­gain at £7.50. I’d really liked to try the Stoned vari­ety next, but they are prov­ing harder to score. Mainly because they keep sell­ing out, but I will find them eventually.

My brand new, black 60gb ipod has been shipped and I’m wait­ing to receive it. I think it comes from the fac­tory some­where in the far east, so fuck knows when I’ll actu­ally have it in my sweaty lit­tle hands. I can’t wait till it comes!

Any­way, this is a brief hippy blast as I’m still lack­ing in any­thing inter­est­ing to say. Don’t worry, nor­mal hippy ser­vice will resume soon.

Hello fuck­ers! Did ya miss me?

Of course you did, for a day with­out this hippy is like a day with­out sunshine!

Well, grab your shades because here I am; ready to rock your moth­er­fuck­ing world!

Dig it, fuckers!

I’ve been a naughty hippy; I haven’t posted any­thing here in days. Blame my manic approach to any­thing new. Specif­i­cally, I’ve been wrapped up in try­ing to prep video for my brand new iPod!

Ok, I don’t actu­ally have the iPod yet, but I will soon. I ordered it from the online Apple store on Wednes­day. I’m guess­ing it should be in my hot, sweaty lit­tle hands within a fort­night! I can’t wait!

I tried to score one from the Apple store on Regent Street, but they hadn’t received their first ship­ment yet. I popped in there, ready to spend, but they told me they didn’t expect them to arrive for at least another 10 days. I fig­ured, screw it, I’ll have one deliv­ered. And if you order it online, you can get it engraved. I’m hav­ing my “real life” email address etched in the back, for secu­rity rather than vanity’s sake.

I went for the 60 giga­byte ver­sion, in black. They are pure sex and I’ll be the coolest kid on the block once it arrives. (Eds: Aren’t you the coolest on the block already, anyway?)

I’ve already got my entire music col­lec­tion ripped into iTunes – nearly 8gb of music. Plus, I’ve man­aged to encode a few fea­ture films and con­certs to play­back on the new, video enabled iPod.

I’m assum­ing if I can get iTunes to play them; they will work on the iPod, but I won’t know for sure until I try. I know video is a bonus fea­ture, but I would like it to work.

I’m becom­ing a semi-expert in dig­i­tal video encod­ing and I’ve done loads of research and exper­i­men­ta­tion already. Basi­cally, it’s not as easy as it could and should be.

First of all, you need Quick­time 7 Pro, which I have and updated as it can transcode and export any­thing QT can play into the iPod for­mat. It takes for­ever, though, around 12–15 hours for a fea­ture length video. I had a cou­ple of films I down­loaded on my hard drive and I’ve con­verted them already.

I’ve also noticed that mate­r­ial already for­mat­ted for the iPod is pop­ping up on cer­tain under­ground down­load sites. I’m sure that fig­ure will increase as more peo­ple start using the new iPods.

I’ve also man­aged to rip and re-encode one DVD. It wasn’t easy and I’ve tried two dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions to rip it; one worked, one didn’t. The one that didn’t work is called Hand­brake, which looks like a good pro­gram, but I couldn’t get the files to play. It rips and encodes at the same time and I’m guess­ing I didn’t do some­thing right.

The pro­gram that worked is called “Mac the rip­per” and decodes the DVD stream into a Video_TS folder. From there, I used ffm­peg to re-encode it to some­thing that looks good played back on my com­puter, then used QT7 to make it iPod friendly. All of this took like 20 hours, which is a lot of time to invest and a nor­mal user wouldn’t bother!

I’m not a nor­mal user though, am I? I’m a hippy, with time on my hands!

Besides, you don’t need to sit in front of the com­puter while all this is hap­pen­ing. You can just start it run­ning and walk away.

But as I’ve said, the real test is whether or not these items play on the iPod. Only time will tell! Please Mis­ter Apple Man, send me my new iPod double-fucking-quick!

I’m at work tonight, mak­ing a guest appear­ance. Then I’m back next week, begin­ning a run of 12 nights out of 17. It’s going to be heavy duty, but don’t worry. I can take it, I’m fuck­ing hardcore!

Any­way, I’d love to sit here and spout my patented brand of dri­vel all night, but I’ve got tobacco to smoke and hours to go before I can blast off!

Catch ya next time, fuckers!