Tuesday, June 27, 2006

TOTP - Top Ten MySpace Quirks

Its been a mere 16 days since our last show and all hell hath broken loose, sorry for nothing sooner but the team at Top of the Pods towers has been really busy. Rob picked up a few things about the social networking tool MySpace in todays show, join them by going to Rob and Jon's profiles and adding yourself as their friends:-


Happy now?

23 comments:

bryan-in-greece said...

Happy indeed!!

Good to hear those dulcet tones again lads!!

Note to "anonymous": Stick this in your pipe and smoke it hehehe

Anonymous said...

Geez, where is it written that Rob and Jon have a contractual obligation to put out a podcast every day??!! As much as we'd all love to have a daily TOTP, let's be grateful we get this wonderful entertaining, informative, silly, and FREE show whenever we do.

Hooray!

bryan-in-greece said...

aha, the urchin returns.... How's the earlobe?

bryan-in-greece said...

OK, a few profiling ideas... :-)

Publius/Anonymous is obviously an educated person (his use of such phrases as "as best", "marginally funny" and "reserve judgement" doesn't point to his being a redneck) who is probably in the eastern or mid- US (given the time of most of his postings, and phrases such as "logrolling", "dammit" and "butt kissing") and who has some British links or origins (the British English spelling of "practise" as a verb, not the US spelling of "practice", "the lads" to replace his occasional "the guys", use of "mates", the American adjectival use of "lame").

He claims to dislike things British and European, yet comes back to TOTP and the board repeatedly (let's face it, who in the UK thinks Americans are funny??), and uses "Ciao" to say "goodbye". He is not, unlike many Americans, unacquainted with the existence of foreign languages but, that said, he is not aware of how foreign languages differ in structure from English, judging from his blind dependency on translation software, which translates on a word-for-word basis (as clear from the German and Greek phrases in previous postings, both of which were comprehensible to me but very uninformed translations). This suggests a desire to speak a foreign language and at the same time an inability to learn one.

References to "thrashings" and "bedtime" would suggest an unsettled childhood, possibly including parental violence and falls onto the head at an early age.

So, I would say that we are dealing with a mature student or young educated professional with a strangely-shaped head in the eastern/mid US, possibly an expat from the UK or an anglophone Canadian, perhaps a sociology or classics student ("publius" reference) who has heard something about foreign languages (contact with writings by Nietzsche/Freud/Sartre/Pro Caelio?), but who is also a failed linguist. Furthermore, he appears to be someone who has no-one to socialise with of an evening (always online in the evenings, EST time).

Over to you, publius-cum-anonymous.... How did I do?

bryan-in-greece said...

Let me add to the above profile - putative repeated beatings as a child would appear to have affected publius' hearing and/or eyesight, too...

Anonymous said...

HOORAY!!! Wonderful to have you both back!

For the record, I do know of two people in Whittlesey that own Macs and DO know how to use them.

Grant - Three From Leith said...

The 'thrashings' and 'bedtime', sadly, were down to me posing as 'anonymouse for a giggle, Bryan.

Still, it's good to know that (a) our pet is still hanging around (despite not liking any of us and claiming the show's pants) and (b) he's going to listen to the show too.

I think there's a slight hint of schizophrenia in his / her behaviour...

Just listening to the show now.

bryan-in-greece said...

ROFL again, Grant - nice one!!! Just goes to show that even a wannabe psychological profiler can be taken for a burton :-) BTW, how's the leg doing?

Grant - Three From Leith said...

The leg and arm are finally showing signs of healing - hooray !! I was a bit worried when I saw the muck on the dressings but the wounds themselves were looking nice and clean. Plus I had to drop my trousers in front of a lovely young nurse (to get access to my damaged leg, of course) ;-)

Rob & Jon - quickly get in there and patent the WonderPants. Imagine the ad - a row of builders with them on looking all suggestive, with the strapline "Awright, girls ?"

Who needs Eva Herzegovina when you have Bob The Builder showing his vertical smile ?

mark - tartanstories.com said...

Great show, good to hear them back to their best; just the two of them riffing.

And my MySpace page is http://myspace.com/tartanmedia
Go on. Add me.

Top Of The Pods said...

Thanks - good or bad edge? Rude edge? Family friendly edge? What are everyones thoughts? I'm dead dead curious...

mark - tartanstories.com said...

(except for calling Mark a MySpace whore, though the term is fitting)
<== whoah there zichyboy, the term is fitting?! Just because I happen to be hugely popular on MySpace? Tread carefully; if you've any doubts as to the litigious propensities of Scottish podcasters then speak to R&J

Mmmm hmmmm

bryan-in-greece said...

shurely shome mishtake - didn't Jon and Rob say "hoar", as in in "hoar frost", a clear reference to the cold weather prevalent in Scotland?

;-)

bryan-in-greece said...

I loved the show - a racier tone, lads, and the piss-taking of some of those chavettes on myspace was hilarious....!

digitaldion (Dion Forster) said...

Yeah! Another show!

Top of the Pops is still my fave podcast! I wish we could pay you guys enough for you to quit your day jobs and do this full time! Wouldn't that be great!

Keep up the great work guys!

Now, help-a-brother-dot-com! I am trying to get as many hits on my page to put all those lovely little red dots over the Clustrmap!

Please pop by when you get a chance!

http://www.spirituality.org.za/blogger.html

Thanks!

bryan-in-greece said...

Rob's description of anonymous-cum-publius as a "nasty piece of work" just about fits.... It must be weird to feel it necessary to spend your time jumping round forums, spending your squalid little life trying to piss people off, people whom you have never met, whom you will never meet and who will most surely never wish to meet you. If you don't like the show (which is your privilege), be constructive in your criticism or go somewhere else. The only reason you can reasonably be doing this sort of waste-of-space posting is because you have a xenophobic inferiority complex and you think others will be impressed or cowed. I, for one, just think you are sad. "Us decent folk" (whoever THEY are!!) must be real proud to count you among their number. Not. It is a pity to see someone who can write eloquent English use that skill to spurt out inane claptrap such as yours. What a waste.

bryan-in-greece said...

Publius, of course you are entitled to your opinion, and of course you are entitled to express it. I do not know you, and nor would I necessarily wish to, and your motives are unclear, and will quite probably remain so. I have no wish to "wound" you, as you say - besides, the idea of "wounding" others by electronic messaging seems a tad puerile! As for bringing "[these snobs]... to account" and "undeserved adulation", who is to say what a snob is and what is undeserved? People judge people on a variety of criteria, both positively and negatively, they have always done so and will always continue to do so. Such is the nature of humankind, Publius. If you were not amused, there is one solution. Do not listen in. You apparently fail to realise that you have a choice. If you were to try to take on eveything in this world with which you disagree (be it the broadcast media or not), your life would be both incredibly busy and deeply miserable/stressful...! Furthermore, you would be pissing into the wind, to use that unsavoury phrase. Just how many podcasts/television programmes/radio broadcasts that you have listened to or seen do you react to in a similar way to this, by attacking those who enjoy the sort of humour which either goes over your head or fails to amuse you? "Mr Angry of Peckham" springs to mind... To quote the age-old truism, you cannot please all of the people all of the time.

If you take my posts in reply to yours as deeply offensive, then that is your interpretation, and again one which you are entitled to, but also one which I will not apologise for, as it is simply a reaction to your attacks on people on this forum. As I said before, constructive criticism will be treated by most people in the manner in which it is intended, whereas what can only be construed as personal attacks by yourself on others on this forum is inevitably going to produce a negative reaction to your postings. I suspect you are more than well aware of that. I also suspect that this is why your postings are made. I know very well what my options are, and those options include the right to reply or ignore. "Pissing off" is not an option, if only because it doesn't really make any sense in the context of a discussion.

Incidentally, the spelling of the name of the country where I live is "Greece".

bryan-in-greece said...

If publius had started out on a more serious vein, perhaps his ideas would be taken more seriously now. Unfortunately, he resorted to personal attacks, and therefore the ideas he moots are being ignored, which works against him. A variation on the "Cry wolf" theme...

bryan-in-greece said...

Force-feed us the truth, eh? Pathetic. Since it is clearly pointless trying to discuss anything with this person, I am leaving this "discussion" here. I imagine other people on this forum will be getting very bored of all of this. I most certainly am.

And, just for the record, "moot" is a noun, an adjectival noun and a transitive verb.

bryan-in-greece said...

I spoke to an old friend today who turned out to be the first Greek I have mentioned podcasting to who actually knows what it is. Tellingly, though, Nikos lives in the UK...! Many young people here haven't heard of the word "iPod" (or of the player itself), either. And, naturally enough, "podcast" is not a word easily translatable into Greek...

bryan-in-greece said...

Used to get trolls on irc back in the mid-90s, bazza... Aaah, those were the days...! Flaming agogo... :-)

bryan-in-greece said...

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bye-bye publius!!!! Have a nice life - some hope, one imagines!!!! Nice one, Rob and Jon :-)

Top Of The Pods said...

Thats a waste of an hour of my life clearing out the comments board. We've switched on comment moderation so we get less time producing shows and more time approving comments.

Cheers troll