Lovey dovey floppy crap.

I've been single for far too long. My last relationship ended a considerable amount of time ago. So recently, inspired by a friend of mine. I joined a dating site.

I have had literally no success from it. Roughly 10-15 women have viewed my profile, I've messaged a few to which I received no replies. I have 4 who want to meet me but obviously you can't find out who until you pay up which I'm not doing.

There are so many types of people on there which is good. The variety is endless, and as someone who likes to read the profiles rather than simply going off a picture, I have to say it's so irritating when someone simply puts 'ask me' or '...' or 'Yeah I'm not filling this in'

Why do some idiots simply write 'ask me'? Why? Why should I? I went to the effort of writing a wee bit, (obviously) to give people an idea of what I like/dislike and the sort of person I am. Maybe that's why I've had no success. Equally, I don't want to sit there having a conversation for it to die on it's arse three messages in because we've got nothing to talk about.

Put the effort in!

Also, headlines. I don't know whether it's just women, but they write such utter crap. Here's some examples and what I'd like to message them saying:

"Live life" - Oh please continue. You words of wisdom inspire me. You said something that every living person is doing right now subconsciously. In fact they don't get much choice. Stupid phrase.

"Is everyone on here crazy?" - Yes, this is actually a dating site for nutters. I'm sure it's not you just picking up the wrong people. It's all our fault with our crazy antics.

"Darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream" - What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I take it this is a stupid song lyric as I've seen it 3 times so far?

"." - Bring me a hose I'm so hot for this girl I need cooling down. Why? WHY PUT JUST A DOT? THAT IS NOTHING. ARE YOU NOTHING? NO.

"Princess" Oh get out of here with your stupid fantasies of your tall, dark-haired, handsome knight in shining armour coming in on a white stallion breaking the door down to save you. What is this, a fucking fairy-tale?

"What am I doing here?!" I don't know, fuck off.

"Idek" What the fuck is 'Idek' a knock-off IKEA? 

There's a few there, and some are worse than that.



You know what I've realised, I've been single for so long I can't imagine being with someone and having to put with the fancy crap that goes with it.

On that happy note,

Cheerio,

Stevie.

So... Formula E?

I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO WRITE ABOUT THESE RACES. I AM SORRY.

HOWEVER I AM NOT GOING TO SAY I WILL TRY TO WRITE ABOUT THE FUTURE STUFF.

Also the Chinese GP. I also may have forgotten to write about that. I am sorry about that too. I'm sure you'll cope.

Cheerio,

Stevie.

Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix - 17th to 19th April 2015

KIMI FINALLY HAD A GOOD RESULT. 2nd place! Good job Iceman!

Now we've got that cleared up. Onto everything else.

The main thing I took from the Bahrain Grand Prix was that the Ferrari's are nothing but annoying for Mercedes. Sure, they come out with fighting talk like, "We want the competition" and, "It's nice to have the challenge" Yeah yeah, I've heard it all before.

Really, all Mercedes want is to turn up, lockout the front row, claim the 1-2 and come home again. Then repeat. All through testing they worked on reliability, almost overconfident that they inherently had the pace over the field. It was almost smug, when they announced they'd basically used one engine throughout entire testing. The team were on a high, they won the constructors and drivers championships last year. I think everyone was under the impression we were in for another year of Mercedes blitzing the field.

We went to Australia and that was all but confirmed. Mercedes looked clear of the field. It was going well. 

Then we got to Malaysia where Ferrari shocked the entirety of the F1 paddock and viewers by snatching victory from the silver arrows. ON PACE. 

Ferrari didn't really challenge Mercedes in China, which was easily latter's territory. They had the grunt on the straight without sacrificing anything through the corners. Maybe Ferrari's challenge was just a one-off.

Now here we are, at Bahrain and all through practice and qualifying it's looked much closer than previously has. And what a race we had. 12 months ago we had a personal 1 and 1 duel between the Mercedes for the win. And it was brilliant, proper wheel-to-wheel, going at it hammer and tongue. Whilst still lapping considerably faster than the competition.

This year though, we had a bit more strategy, but that's not to say we were lacking in battles. Rosberg was on it this race. He was so aggressive yet fair against the Ferrari's. But once again he just didn't quite have the pace to challenge his championship leading team-mate.

But this is the thing, Ferrari are just a headache for Mercedes. Take the first stint. In most cases, the leading driver gets choice on when to pit and racing etiquette suggest the car in front stops first, thus, not allowing the undercut, but because Vettel was closer to Rosberg, when the Ferrari pitted, Mercedes had to pit Rosberg first in order to cover him. However that meant they both had the undercut on race-leader Hamilton. So Hamilton had 5 second lead over second place, after the first round of stops, he came out the pit-lane to see Vettel and Rosberg duelling it out in a flurry of dust and sparks.

The contradictary strategy worked well for Raikkonen and if the race was one lap longer, he could've won it taking advantage of Mercedes' braking issues.

If it's going to be like this for the rest of the season, then I look forward to it.

Cheerio,

Stevie.

Microsoft, what happened?

Microsoft. The computer giants. Responsible for some of the most brilliant operating systems ever. Responsible for some of the finest computers the world has ever seen. Responsible for the XBOX 360, the second greatest console (PS2 takes the win. No contest). Responsible then, you would be inclined to believe, for the Xbox One, the greatest console going forward into a new era of gaming.

I originally was all about the Sony consoles, with the aforementioned PlayStation 2. This great console left me under the impression that PS3 would be exceptional. So I went and bought a PlayStation 3. And it was alright, I'm not going to degrade the system. It was a decent machine, like it's predecessor it was extremely easy to use. Sure, it had a curved top which meant you couldn't put anything on it. But overall it was a pretty good successor to the second generation console.

However. It all changed when a friend bought his Xbox 360 over and Forza Motorsport 3 and quite frankly, I was blown away. The graphics were similar but FM3 was so much better than anything Gran Turismo had ever put out. And the console itself? The features. You could have party chats (not something you could do on PlayStation) you could have music on in the background. You could do so much more than the PS3 could manage.

This meant within a week I had myself a 360. and FM3 obviously. It was great fun, and over the years I've treasured my 360. It's getting old now and is showing signs of it's old age. The disc tray is knackered and it's recently got into the irritating habit of simply shutting down unexpectedly for no good reason. But I still use it a lot of the time. Since then I've never looked back, I've never regretted getting rid of my PS3 and I didn't mind paying for online features.

With this in mind, when the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were announced, it was an obvious choice. However, with all the not so great publicity that came with the Xbox One leading up to it's launch plus it's pretty extortionate price-tag, I refused to buy either until the prices came down and there were some decent titles for them.

But back in October, I took a punt. I went for the Xbox One. Project CARS was near to release, Grand Theft Auto 5 was due to release on the newer consoles so for me, the time was right to invest my hard-earned cash in a new console.

6 months on, and the verdict? I wish I hadn't bothered.

I wish I'd bought myself a PlayStation 4. Project CARS still isn't out, it's rumoured to be out for mid-may... we'll see. Even if it was released, there is one fundamental problem.

The Xbox One, is the most useless piece of crap I've ever bought. I invested over £300 for a console that I rarely use. I still use my 360 more than the One. Firstly, there are still no decent games on the One. It's all arcadey crap that I can't be arsed with. Every game I have bought for the One so far, is a game I already owned on the 360.

Comparing the Xbox 360 to the Xbox One is a bit like comparing your local chippy to the finest restaurant in the land.

The Xbox One is undoubtedly the most complicated console ever to be produced. The graphics are amazing, no question, but everything else is just a pain in the arse. The snapping thing is cool, but it's slow, and constantly pops up with a 'You are not signed in' thing, which is quite obviously a lie when I am. Achievements are so slow to unlock, as in, you can be waiting a day before it decides you've got it.

Trying to get into a party with friends is easy, but then trying to get in their game? Aha, now that's a different story. It's just a faff. It's a pain in the arse and so unbelievably irritating.

It's like Microsoft took the concept of the 360, had a really good look at it, and wondered how they could make it far mare difficult and ridiculous in every way.

For example, to listen to music off a USB whilst playing on the 360 goes like this:

1. Plug USB into Xbox 360.
2. Press the Xbox guide, go right once, scroll down 'Select Music'
3. Click 'Portable Device'
4. Play All

Done. 

From there you can skip, shuffle, pause, play, and change volume to an infinite level with a scroll bar so the music isn't too loud or too quiet, you can set it just so. You can also modify the playlist so you can re-arrange songs, take out the ones you don't like. On a side note, you can even rip CD's onto the 360 hard-drive, so you don't have to use a USB and you can save the playlists. Not something you can do on the One.

To listen to music off a USB whilst playing on the One goes like this.

1. Plug USB into Xbox One.
2. Wait for device to be acknowledged, hold the Xbox guide button to go to device.
3. Click 'Portable Media'
4. Do you want Music or photos and videos?
5. Do you want to play all? 
6. This will then snap the 'Portable Media' to the side of the screen, thus reducing your gameplay size.

Also, if you 'un-snap', the music stops. You can't modify the playlist, you can't scroll down to pick another song without going full-screen. Volume? Ah well there isn't volume. What you have to is the following.

1. Press the guide, hold the lines button, go to 'Settings'
2. Find 'Display/Audio' (I think, I'm currently listening through my 360)
3. Go to 'Mixer'

Then what you have, is like a 7 notch scale, where you move the volume balance according to whether you want the main app (game) to be louder or quieter than the snapped app (Portable Media) However the settings screen replaces the main app, you can't actually tell at the time whether the snapped app is louder than the main app or not because it's just silence on the main app. So you have to press the guide again, go back the game, see how the balance is, if it's not right, press the guide again, go to settings, go through the whole rigmarole again.

Ultimately, it'll be too loud or too quiet. You'll never get it right, not like something you could do within seconds on the 360.

Had enough ranting about this stupid console.

Buy a PlayStation 4 folks. Or a PC. Just not a Microsoft one, they can't do simple things.

Cheerio,

Stevie

Question time.

I recently set up an Ask account (http://ask.fm/SQStevie), more as a thing to ask people questions, rather than to answer them, however, once I realised you can answer random questions I found it rather amusing.

However, as fun as it was, I got stopped in my tracks when I was asked, 'Would you want to date yourself, if you were somebody else?' This got me thinking. I suddenly felt very reflective and conscious about my own attitudes and behaviour.

The answer? Absolutely not. I'm a terrible person.

I'm incredibly selfish and have a thing where if somebody is talking, and I'm not interested in what they're talking about, I simply switch off and don't listen to what they're saying. I also can't be doing with pathetic conversations. You know the ones, the really fucking boring ones. Some colleagues of mine are very good at having awful conversations, such as:

"What are you having for dinner tonight?"
"Oh I don't know, might have some mince and potatoes maybe"
"Sounds alright"
"You?"
"Dunno, probably have a look in the freezer 'n see what we've got. Probably chips 'n something"
"We had chips last night so we won't be having them again tonight"

EXACTLY. What a fucking boring conversation. And that's just one, imagine it EVERY DAY. Have these people got nothing better to talk about?! I can't be doing with conversations like that. Hence why I tend to cut them short immediately,

"What are you having for dinner tonight?"
"Dunno."

End. I never ask what they're having, I simply don't care. I didn't care yesterday, I don't care today so I won't care tomorrow. It's like when they tell me what they did last night.

"I had the kids over last night, and we..." 

I've already lost interest in the conversation at this point. It's such an unimaginative conversations. What's worse is when they show you damn photos of their family. Excuse me? Why are you showing me your photos? You can reproduce, congratulations. You took photos? Great, I'm sure you and your family will enjoy looking back at them. I don't give two hoots. GET THEM OUT MY FACE.

Moving on, why else wouldn't I date myself?
Quite simply, I'm fucking boring. I mean, in basic terms, I go to work, come home, play video games. And repeat.

That's fine by me but that's not particularly attractive trait, is it? I'm also very set in my ways, and dislike being told what to do/what I should do. If somebody tells me I should go out and do stuff, that only makes me more determined to continue as I am.

Then take a look at my life? Well, I have a job I enjoy, which is good. But I'm on minimum wage, so it's not like I can afford many great things. I don't drive, and have no intention of learning to. I live with my family still and have no drive whatsoever to do anything new or imaginative. Spontaneity is not my strong point.

Let's not have any more questions like that, eh?