» DIY Techno-hacks

Camera Phone
I was at my mates house last year and we were taking pictures with our camera phones, mostly just larking about taking random pictures but my mate didn't have a camera phone so was missing out on the fun, until he got an idea and went into the kitchen made a bit of noise and then came back out with this:



A Camera - Phone, as you can see it is sellotaped together so do I get extra points?

Edit: Woohoo, front page!
(Thu 20th Aug 2009, 14:24, More)

» DIY Techno-hacks

Camera tazer
At the pub one night there was a deal on guinness where if you brought 4 pints you got a disposable camera so my mate decided to take all the pictures then took the camera apart and hooked up a tazer with the battery and the flash.
Que 5 pissed blokes daring each other to touch the button to get a shock, all fine and well until they got my other mate involved who was very drunk and got convinced to stick his tongue on to it.
So he did and got a shock, we all thought it was funny until his mouth started to bleed, it turns out that the shock heated up his tongue bar and made it swell. So we decided that that was the end to that game.
(Thu 20th Aug 2009, 14:31, More)

» Banks

One bank
has pretty much ruined my (credit for) life.

This bank who we shall call Barclays (for that's it's name) decided to ruin me financally for at least the last 6 years and possibly longer.
It all started when I was about 10, I got my first account with barclays, all fine and well until I started work at 16, I was getting £150 a week wages and I wanted to get a motorbike so I needed a loan.
I was accepted and I got my bike, as this point I had a standard account, no overdraft and simple where you put money in and took money out. They gave me £3000.
Then my new bike had a problem and needed to go into the garage to be fixed and they gave me a hire bike until it was sorted. This bike was too big for me (I'm 5' 3" and 8 stone) and I was ran off a country lane but a cunt in a white van.
I needed £500 to get my bike back and pay for the repairs to the hire bike. So I went to the bank and asked for an extra £1000 on the loan.
Now this was a different branch to my normal one and the "helpful" young guy told me that I should get this fancy account where if you have more than £400 in your account then it went into a savings "pot" and if you dipped below £50 then it would be topped up again,
I said no, I didn't want a change I was happy with the way things was, so what did he do? He changed it anyway with out telling me.

So the new loan of £4000 went in to my account where the original £3000 would be paid off straight away and then I would cover the £1000.

Simple? Nope! With this "pot" system, the £4000 went straight into the savings part and didn't pay off the loan. I didn't know anything about this, thinking that I had made myself clear that I didn't want my account changed.

I went on holiday not thinking anything of the fact that I seemed to have more money as these "pots" were topping up my account with the money that should have paid off the loan. I didn't know what was going on as the bank had also decided not to send me any more letters since I had moved, even though I had gone in to my branch the day I moved with my tenancy contract and told them and got them to sign a piece of paper to tell them that I had informed them of my move.

So a few months have passed and I've not gotten any letters, I went to a cash point to get some money, the atm eats my card. I go to the branch and was told that I owe them £7000 from both the loans and that they were going to charge me nearly double that to pay it back! They said that they had sent letters to be about it and I asked what address did they have and gave me the old one, I said that I had moved out of there 4 months ago and she said that they didn't know that and I should have informed them at the time of my move! I said that I had and promptly produced the signed letter stating that I had gone in to the branch to change the address. She didn't say much then. So I now owed them £13,000! with monthly repayments of £500, that was more than my wages for the month and I had to pay £250 on rent not including bills so I told them that I couldn't pay that much and they had to reduce it.

I was told that they wouldn't even though they know I only got £150 a week wages so that I would not be able to pay it.

The bank assistant asked me "so you are saying that you are going to default on your payments?"

I said "yes, as you can clearly see I do not have the funds to pay it"

ba "you can't do that!"
me "just you bloody watch me!"

and I did, I stopped paying it and apart from sending a letter saying that the matter will be sent to a bayliff's I've not heard anything since. That was 2003.

This was after I explained what the "helpful cunt" had done when I went to get my extension and suddenly this guy didn't work at the branch anymore and they gave me a number to call for a credit advisor who "would help me sort this all out and you would be able to pay an easier amount" Well this number always rang out and when I did finally get through, the woman was never in, or available amnd noone else would help me as they weren't assigned to the case. That branch was 4 towns away from where I lived so I couldn't go there and when I did go to my own branch I was told that they were not dealing with it and wouldn't help me saying it was my fault for not noticing earlier, even though they were sending letters to my old address!!!!


I have not been able to get a bank account since and I've had to work for agencys for 6 years because they could pay into my fella's account.
I am now a student and I had to get an investment account with ns and i as they are the only bank that don't check credit. I needed to get an account as the student loans people wouldn't write me a cheque, or put it into my dad's account, but that's another story.

Bottom line is, I know that in 2003 I owed around £13,000. God knows how much it is now. I really don't know what to do and I'm afraid that I'll be taken to court if I show my face now.

I'm nearly 26 now and I've not been able to get a normal bank account or get on the tenancy agreement for my flat (thankfully my fella and our housemates credit is good otherwise I'd be homeless)

I would like to get this sorted out so we can start thinking about getting a morgage and I would like to move on with my life.

Any suggestions? I know the CAB can help but I don't have any of the paperwork to back this up.

Length? 6 years and counting but it feels like eternity
(Sat 18th Jul 2009, 15:43, More)

» School Projects

Dirt Poster
For my foundation degree in natural science we had to dig up some soil samples in our Forensic Geology class. We had to go outside the class with some bags, a trowel and a camera. I was with two great guys and we had a right laugh larking about with the pictures which we had to take of the location of the sample and also putting it in the bags. Imagine a load of model posing styles with sandwich bag full of dirt and product placement of my mates watch, phone, drink etc etc.

We did finally get all the samples we needed and went back to the lab to note it all down (and having to convince my mate that the phrase "stinks like shit" was not an official term for the smell of the sample) we left them to dry for a week and come back in and sieve them and note what we found, any changes etc etc.

This information then had to be put in chart and note form with the pictures on to an A0 piece of paper, which is mahoosive and costs around £7 to do. Ok so the end result we did have to copy and paste our information over but waiting half an hour for it to print was not fun.

However, the day of the judging everyone sticks their posters up and the teacher takes a look. We all had a look at each others and noticed that a lot of them had spelling mistakes including someone had spelt their name wrong. You think that by the time they hit 18, people would know how to spell their own name. A lot of people lost marks because they didn't use spell check.

Anyway long story short (and it is as I could have gone in to all the soil testing that we did, very boring but lovely and messy, much to most of the girls disgust) My group got 21 out of 25 for it which was the highest in the class and the only reason we didn't get higher was because we didn't use the same font throughout? (WTF is that all about?) The tutor did try to fob me off with the whole "font" thing but I said to him "go on admit it, you don't have anything bad to say about our poster because there is nothing wrong with it, hence why you are picking on the fonts." To which he replied, "yes you are right,"

haha, score!

We didn't win the class vote simply because most of the people didn't like me as I like to be able to listen to the tutor so I would take great delight in telling them to shut up as I was allowed to do so as I was student rep for the year. lol
(Wed 19th Aug 2009, 15:21, More)

» Tramps

Tom the Tramp

When I was 17 a mate and I used to work at Domino’s pizza ( I got to drive the dodgy Honda Cup 90’s before they got rid of them) in my home town Welwyn Garden City (Hertfordshire) which is quite a middle class town.
My mate and I used to walk through the shopping centre to the shop and one day this guy appeared at the bottom of the slopes of the centre asking for money, we ignored him a few times but every day he was there with his sign and sleeping bag.
He looked in a sorry state and us being inquisitive 17 year olds looking to skive out of a bit of work, we decided/dared each other to talk to him (having never seen a homeless guy before). Turned out his name was Tom and he had just been kicked out of his house by his missus, it was her house so he had no way of getting a share of it, then he lost his job so he ended up on the streets.
We felt really sorry for him so instead of giving him money, we used to take him a pizza everyday and a cuppa, and have a chat with him.
We must have looked really odd, sitting with this homeless guy in our uniforms esp as WGC doesn’t really do tramps. He used to tell us what he did for a living and we felt really sorry for him. He used to disappear every night but be back in the morning. A few months later he got himself a dog and then started selling the big issue and a room at the local YMCA. My mate and I were chuffed that he was starting to turn his life around. He used to thank us a lot for helping him out when he needed it most.
Sadly a few months after that, he was back to his begging cup. He didn’t really talk much after that. Shame.
I’ve not lived there for 5 years but I’ve been told that there hasn’t been anymore tramps there. They all go to Stevenage instead to pick on the emo kids.
(Fri 3rd Jul 2009, 14:03, More)