Hello, you! Quite a lot of people started following my Tumblr recently, but I’m afraid I’ve got a confession to make: I don’t actually use it all that often.

I’d like to, but working in the office full-time as a writer means I usually don’t have the patience to start tapping away at home. Having said that, I still manage to keep myself busy with a variety of side-projects - one of which I’m about to brazenly plug without a hint of shame.

Regular Features is a comedy podcast I record with three other men, all of whom are a hell of a lot funnier than me. If you like anything I’ve written on here, then I’d love it if you could take the time to check it out, and maybe even write a mini review. In the meantime, you can find me on Twitter at @Jam_Sponge.

You can click on the big purple chunk above to find out more.

Cheers for taking the time to read this, and I hope that you enjoy it!

After being repeatedly asked what it was that actually transpired at last night’s Gaming Media Awards, I figured it would be easiest to simply whack it up here.

Grainger Games - a retail company mainly based in the North of England – decided they fancied the idea of getting closer to the country’s gaming media, and plumped up the cash to become this year’s main sponsors for the annual awards. Previously little more than a small indie chain, their recent successes have seen the brand pumped full of cash by a variety of investors: An attempt no doubt to fatten the goose for a potential sale to prospective buyers like the US company Gamestop.

Bringing their unique flavour of Toon-army charm to London for the night, the first impressions weren’t exactly perfect. Greeted by a bright orange Hummer filled with dwarves and barely-clothed equally orange promo girls, Grainger’s iconic lack of taste wasn’t initially much of a surprise.

Sitting down at a dinner table scattered with Grainger-branded condoms, eyebrows began to rise to more substantial levels: The gender ratio in the games industry isn’t exactly a well-kept secret, so at first this gesture was merely confusing. Should we all be scrambling across the tables for a chance to stick it in one of the barely-legal promo girls, or bumming each other to bits with the aid of condiments hidden beneath this pointless spatter of contraceptives?

When the awards kicked off, things started to get ugly. Heckling the comedian seemed like fair game, but it quickly became evident it wasn’t stopping there: Shouting loudly over the top of each and every award and speech, the lack of respect escalated from irritating to infuriating. Some kindly described the behaviour as heckling, but I’m pretty sure what you’re saying has be either amusing or decipherable for that distinction to be technically valid.

Expertly alternating between shouting whilst sitting down and shouting whilst standing up, at one of the particularly coked-up chaps even decided to jump up on stage and start thrusting his pelvis towards the audience. I think it might have been the award for Rock Paper Shotgun. I’m a big fan too, but still.

It’s hard to pinpoint any one moment of the evening that really hit the bell at the top of the twat-o-meter, but the sentiments throughout the industry were clearly homogeneous: Who the fuck are these clowns, and what are they doing at our party. It was the equivalent of the bride’s father thinking it’ll be alright to punch the groom in the face because he’d paid for the booze and catering.

Hardly the end of the world – but for a company that clearly needs to pitch itself to the big boys as a respectable future investment, it was nothing short of a PR disaster. Having said that, I felt ill and left the party at about 10. FUCK knows what they got up to after that.

Otherwise though, it was a bloody brilliant night and loads of lovely people won some shiny bits of plastic. Excellent work, GMA peeps.

EDIT: I’ve since been informed that after I left, some of the G-crew were caught doing coke in the toilet by security, whilst others were seen to be physically intimidating some of the gaming media’s most prominent figures. Lordy.

Also - I wish to make it clear that I have no negative sentiments towards Newcastle or the north: I lived up there for most of my life.

The worst thing about buying an iPhone, was that I already knew what I was getting myself into. After years of bravely trying to save the MP3 player from its unavoidable demise, I was well aware of just how forceful Apple’s push for dominance could often seem to be. iTunes doesn’t want to help you organise your music collection – it wants you to convert the entire thing into it’s own special format. Apple’s insistence on using it’s own formats and technologies aren’t anything new though, and these days they aren’t even the main problem.

In a climate in which it isn’t safe for companies to simply expect people to keep buying their wares on a yearly basis, the question most technology businesses are wrestling with at the moment is how to lock people into some form of long-term subscription. Services like LoveFilm and Spotify live or die on their ability to provide an invaluable service – something that you simply wouldn’t want to have to say goodbye to. Despite the love the brand might receive from dimwitted fans, Apple’s tactics are entirely different: It’s not about providing value for those who are loyal, it’s about substantially raising the cost for those who wish to leave.

The real stroke of genius, is that this cost is invisible: You won’t spot Apple’s subscription fee in your monthly bank statement, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Hugely expanding on their devious past of weighing you down with Apple-specific cables and file formats, the creation of Apps was a stroke of genius.

When deciding to switch from an iPhone 3GS to a Samsung Galaxy S2, it quickly became clear that I wasn’t simply swapping out one device for another – I was saying goodbye to a library of purchases I’d spent years building up.This wasn’t money being paid directly to Apple, but the outcome is exactly the same: I’ve spent the past two years putting cash into a piggy bank that’s physically impossible to now smash open.

Whilst most companies try to pretend they’re investing in their customers: Apple has simply demanded that we spend our time with their devices slowly investing in them - creating a substantial sense of long-term attachment that we’ve paid to build with money out of our own pocket. This perception of genuine loss was almost enough to make me change my mind about switching, but that was simply another reminder that I was standing on a seriously slippery surface: Next time you find yourself assessing the situation, you’ll only have more to lose. You need to get out, now.

You might not have signed an official agreement to use Apple products exclusively for the rest of your life, but it’s clearly an implication scrawled between the lines from the moment you buy your first device. Over the past few years, we’ve seen this apparently creativity-driven company use their influence to take direct control of mobile tariff prices, maintaining an artificially high cost whilst competitors with better products undercut substantially. Their reaction to this has generally been simple: Heavy-handed legal measures have crushed the attempts of some genuinely gifted competition - purely on the basis of having apparently copied the Apple-invented concept of ‘minimalist design’

This isn’t the behaviour of an innovative company: It’s the flailings of a grumpy dragon that’s lost interest in everything that doesn’t involve sitting on treasure. Don’t let the terrifically sad story of the fantastic Steve Jobs stand in the way of an increasingly evident truth: The iPhone 4S isn’t an innovative piece of ground-breaking technology, it’s just another trap.

Rosie Millard’s 10 fail-safe tips to help your child settle in at university is very good, but I thought it might be easier to read if it was a little more concise. With this in mind, I’ve boiled the 10 points down to their nitty-gritty core:

1. Pack a trunk

Suitcases are for peons. It’s vital that you fill this quaint container with a wide variety of priceless curios to dot around your new living quarters to reassure those around you that you aren’t a povvo-pauper.

2. Avoid obvious clichés

Your pathetic attempts at pre-university personality use officially useless. Embrace your future self by white-washing all previous thoughts and sensibilities before arrival.

3. Don’t wear your heart on your walls

Expressing genuine passion is often divisive. It’s important that you make friends with everyone you meet, so opinions should be avoided unless entirely necessary.

4. Gap-year conversation starters

If you were a cunt before you came to university, then this is the perfect time to start talking about it.

5. Food

Don’t worry about bringing a ton of crockery and cooking implements - there will definitely be enough room for it all in your tiny box-room kitchen. A cafetière is obviously essential too, and will clearly come in use once you can only afford a jar of Kenco.

6. Bed moments

It’ll probably end up covered in spunk and ash, but fuck it - why not buy some Egyptian cotton sheets? While you’re at it, let’s whack a luxury pair of curtains up and fill the room with designer cushions?

7. Practicalities

You might need a corkscrew.

8. Games

Because you’ve spent all of your money on designer bedsheets and expensive cutlery, you won’t actually have enough money to do anything while you’re at university. A pack of cards is pretty cheap, though - and if things really go badly money-wise you can always try and improve things by becoming a professional gambler!

9. Music

Bring louder instruments like the electric guitar to university, and people might end up thinking you’re a twat. Solution? Learn a selection of Paul Simon songs, and insist of quietly serenading your neighbours with your newly-bought ukulele.

10. Finally, things to avoid

Avoid covering your flat with large pictures of ex lovers, or bringing an exercise bike with you when you move to University. Not only is this highly impracticable - it also might make you look a bit mental.

Every now and then, a loofah comes along that just blows you away entirely - forcing you to entirely re-evaluate your preconceptions about what a loofah should be. Unfortunately, this loofah merely plays to the advantages of its own spongey framework without ever making the effort to raise itself above the competition. By all accounts it’s a standard loofah, and this sadly means you’ll be dealing with all of the negative sides that fans have come to expect. Low water retention and a course texture conspire to create a cleaning tool that never escapes its own lukewarm destiny.

4/10

Late to the party, but had to be done.

A lot of people struggle to identifying the difference between a hot topic, and a controversial one. Don’t panic - I’ve got this one covered.

This is a controversial topic. Bear in mind though, it might not always be racist. Perhaps it’s questioning the importance of the elderly, or describing charity workers as ‘a bunch of twats’? Keep your eyes open for variation.

This is a hot topic. It will almost always be dressed provocatively, and tends to have really lovely hair. The easiest way to identify a hot topic is to look it up and down several times, before asking yourself one simple question: How many times would I like to have sex with that topic, in an ideal world, with a limitless supply of time, energy, and additional apparatus.

If you’re still not sure: Try to avoid leaving the house.