Ah, the post-Christmas lethargy. Nothing much to do except drink fuckloads of booze, watch darts (fuck you Taylor for not losing close matches three times now, I really hope Mardle takes you to pwntown) and sleep. And eat turkey leftovers. But, yeah, stuff. What I thought I'd do (was going to make a longish politics post yesterday but declined to do so as I was too pissed) was go through my playlist and pick out 100 tracks that kind of define my life and that I think you ought to listen to. It isn't a best of, most listened to, or anything like that. It's just some tracks that I like, that I think you'd like, many of which you may not have heard before. They're in "iTunes listened to" order fwiw:

1) Gorillaz - Dare
2) The Automatic - Monster
3) Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
4) 80's Matchbox B-Line Disaster - I Could Be An Angle
5) Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear The Reaper
6) Dub Pistols - Cyclone
7) Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
8) The Roots - The Seed (2.0)
9) Arctic Monkeys - Mardy Bum
10) Muse - Knights of Cydonia
11) Ice Cube - You Can Do It
12) Primal Scream - Swastika Eyes
13) MJ HIbbett - Hey Hey 16K
14) Kings of Leon - King of the Rodeo
15) 50 Cent - Hate It or Love It
16) Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows
17) Xzibit - Hey Now
18) Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
19) The Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl
20) Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
21) Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
22) Europe - The Final Countdown
23) Slayer - Angel of Death
24) Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round
25) The Clash - London Calling
26) The Flaming Lips - Race for the Prize
27) Sugar Hill Gang - Rappers Delight
28) British Sea Power - Carrion
29) Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love
30) JJ72 - October Swimmer
31) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cabron
32) Transplants - Diamonds and Guns
33) OK Go - Get Over It
34) Art Brut - Emliy Kane
35) David Bowie - Velvet Goldmine
36) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Babe, I'm On Fire
37) Wah! Heat - Seven Minutes to Midnight
38) Weezer - Island in the Sun
39) Basement Jaxx - Red Alert
40) Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
41) Dilated Peoples - Worst Comes to Worst
42) Kanye West - Gold Digger
43) New Radicals - You Get What You Give
44) The Specials - Ghost Town
45) Outkast - Ms Jackson
46) The Pogues - Fairytale of New York
47) A - Nothing
48) Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around the Block
49) Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up
50) Deltron 3030 - 3030
51) Caesars - Jerk It Out
52) DJ Tiesto - Airwave (Dutch Force Remix)
53) Grandaddy - The Nature Anthem
54) Harry J All-Stars - The Liquidator
55) Iggy Pop - The Passenger
56) Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
57) Rammstein - Sonne
58) Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup
59) Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
60) Modest Mouse - Float On
61) Stiltskin - Inside
62) Deftones - Change
63) Doves - There Goes The Fear
64) Feeder - Insomnia
65) Idlewild - These Wooden Ideas
66) Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
67) Stardust - Music Sounds Better With You
68) Terrorvision - Perserverance
69) At The Drive-In - Invalid Litter Dept
70) Underworld - King of Snake
71) Average White Band - Pick Up The Pieces
72) Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)
73) Mansun - Legacy
74) Semisonic - Secret Smile
75) Supergrass - Moving
76) Skunk Anansie - Hedonism
77) The Strokes - You Only Live Once
78) Elbow - Powder Blue
79) The Jam - Going Underground
80) The Thrills - Big Sur
81) The Bucketheads - The Bomb
82) Moby - Porcelain
83) Garbage - Push It
84) System of a Down - Chop Suey!
85) The Prodigy - No Good (Start The Dance)
86) Roots Manuva - Dreamy Days
87) The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?
88) The Undertones - Teenage Kicks
89) Lemon Jelly - Come
90) Pavement - Carrot Rope
91) Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection
92) Ash - Burn Baby Burn
93) Adam F - Circles
94) Coldplay - Shiver
95) Cranberries - Promises
96) Starsailor - Good Souls
97) Goldie - Inner City Life
98) Ian Brown - F.E.A.R.
99) Bob Dylan - Hurricane
100) Push - Strange World

Play a few of them.

Hope everyone has a good time over the holiday period and into the new year. Has been an interesting year on my end, hopefully it'll be a bit better next year though.

Couple of things - it's really disappointing that most pubs now seem to charge to get in on Christmas Eve. NYE has been standard (and extortionate) for a while, but I'm not paying £10 (c. $19) just to get through the door (and I don't even like the place, it's not my local but it's where people are going) tonight. Silly money, I can buy a crate for that.

Was also going to vote in Dobio's year end awards, but couldn't be arsed.

So unless you've lived under a rock for the past couple of months, last night saw possibly the biggest fight since, well, the last Mayweather fight, as Floyd took on Ricky Hatton at welterweight in a huge undefeated vs undefeated pissing match. More on the fights later, but firstly I'm just glad that they managed to get the fight on. Boxing's more or less been rendered a joke over the past few years for four main reasons:

1 - it's rigged. I can't think of another sport that is so massively influenced by the referees or judges. The fact that PBF-DLH last May was a split decision was a joke (anyone watching it ought to have had PBF up by four rounds at least), could mention dozens more (I'd also like some of the drugs that the guy who had de Leon up ten rounds was taking) but you'd easily get the picture.

2 - too many bullshit titles. It was getting a joke twenty years ago when the IBF and WBO came into the picture, but now there's so many sanctioning organisations that pretty much anyone can win a world title nowadays.

3 - internal politics. It's increasingly rare that rival promoters can get on the fights that people want to see, in fact this year has been a shocker in that we've had two superfights (both of Mayweather's) on.

4 - it's dull. Now that MMA is beginning to grow in popularity, you can increasingly see that boxing is a one-dimensional sport where you rarely see fireworks.

As for the actual fights:

Paul Smith - Francis Cheka: so-so domestic fight at middleweight, dunno what the scorecard read as it was just decided by the referee, but I had it closer than he did in all likelihood.

Dean Francis - Michael Gbenga: boring as fuck. Gbenga, despite being touted as a knockout artist, never threatened, and Francis basically just sat back and fought one-handed for the majority of the fight. Deserved the unanimous decision, but if he thinks he's anywhere near Clinton Woods' class he must be deluded.

Amir Khan - Graham Earl: A demonstration of how to take someone to pwntown. With this result Khan can claim to be the best in the UK easily and among the European elite. A fight for the Lonsdale belt can't be too far around the corner. Also lol @ Earl's comments post-fight saying it shouldn't have been stopped - the referee's not going to stop a fight after 72 seconds for no reason. When he's teeing off with four or five consecutive headshots after you've already been floored, it's probably time to quit.

Chris Edwards - Jamie McDonnel: Pretty good fight for the vacant British super flyweight title, with Edwards putting in the better workrate and winning a split decision, despite McDonnel showing the better skills, albeit infrequently and in patches. A knockout was never likely on the cards, but well worth viewing and it was more important for Edwards to win this one, Jamie still has plenty of time on his side to rebuild.

Gary Woolcombe - Marcus Portman: OK matchup at light middleweight for the British title, ended via a cut at the end of the eighth. Woolcombe looked better overall, but nothing special.

Jason Booth - Matthew Edmonds: Booth dominated for the most part, using his experience well against a younger guy who looked to be stepping up a bit in class and had a lot to learn.

Ali Nuumbembe - Craig Watson: Watson took the Commonwealth welterweight title mainly due to a massive cut to Ali, the fight was somewhat in the balance but Watson appeared to be getting the better of it later on.

Edner Cherry - Wes Ferguson: Pointless lightweight rematch which saw Cherry score the KO in the sixth after Ferguson started to come back into the fight following a quick Cherry start.

Daniel Ponce de Leon - Eduardo Escobedo: Very good world title bout at super bantamweight, cards were a joke (imo the fight was a draw, perhaps Escobedo taking it, instead it's unanimous the other way with one judge scoring Leon ten rounds up) though. Leon's boxing looked terrible and there was no evidence of his supposed knockout power. Escobedo can feel hard done by here.

Jeff Lacy - Peter Manfredo Jr: Dull super middleweight fight between two fighters coming off pwnings at the hands of Joe Calzaghe, Lacy ending up on top comfortably in a points decision but looking a shadow of his former self, and nowhere near getting back in the world title picture. Where Manfredo goes I don't know, probably back into reality tv.

Ricky Hatton - Floyd Mayweather Jr: What had the potential to be a great fight was spoiled by an overzealous referee, interfering every five seconds whenever Hatton was close to getting inside, not allowing him to establish any momentum whatsoever, and later deducting a point for no good reason. I doubt it made a difference (although if you're going to ping Hatton for a rabbit punch, you've also got to ping Mayweather for continually turning away) as besides that one good shot in the first, Hatton didn't land anything of note, whereas Mayweather's speed and surprising ability inside allowed him to take things comfortably, especially after Hatton had to chase after the point deduction, resulting in a near knockdown in the eighth (were it not for falling straight into Floyd that is) in a marginal 10-8 round, and an inevitable KO in the tenth.

So, yeah, when's the next UFC card?

Hmm. Not really surprising, I've declined on posting about this up to now because the typical course of action in this type of situation is that they have a discussion in the mod forum on what's going to happen with what's happened, and given the few days since it happened (which must have been some time on Wednesday, I didn't even notice until some time after I'd been demodded and I tried to delete some spam thread in C&C and the links were missing), a remodding clearly isn't going to happen (especially now, seeing how that'd clearly be interpreted as breaking "what happens on tour stays on tour").

The amusing thing is that nobody's noticed. I've just checked the last three days worth of posts in general, and assuming that the current mod team hasn't been instructed to kill all discussion on sight (which would be truly pathetic), there's not been a single topic. Not one. I think I've received one PM and one news post comment (since deleted as it was off-topic, sorry Gagsy) on the matter, but apart from that, nothing.

I would like to have thought that the admins of this site would at least have had the decency to send me as much a PM to say "Sorry Jon, you've fucked up, we're going to have to demod you over this". But I've not even received that. I have heard precisely nothing from any of the administrators or moderators of this site since Wednesday. Which, to be perfectly honest, is really surprising, as everyone I've met from the site are among the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. Clearly someone in the admin magic circle has to have made the decision, and it literally takes a minute to relay that on to me privately, but that was obviously too much of a hassle. Especially as I don't really know what precisely drove them over the line - whether it was the junking up of the BBS with random rick topics, the calling out of whoever outside of the mod forum, or whether it was me telling Joe to go and die in a fire for being a massive killjoy.

So what now? Well, I've barely modded over the last year or so. So if I was offered the moderator position back in the future, I'd likely decline as I really don't have the time for it at the moment. The number of moderators that we have right now is excessive as it is, so I see no reason to return. Most of the people who were getting at me in the topic I made in the mod forum that I noticed before being cut off were people I hadn't actually met, and I wouldn't want to go back to having to work with them in the future. I wouldn't be missing anything either, the mod forum's basically a smaller version of general except that all the non-cool kids are barred. And tiger porn that Rucklo requested [edit for clarification - gay tiger porn].

As for the actual site, the BBS is pretty much a hole now. The signal to noise ratio is terrible. Even the social boards on GameFAQs are better than that. If I want to just discuss things, there are thousands of better places to do it. I don't really see any reason to post on the BBS again - next year I may make a topic to continue the best game ever thread for a fourth year, but aside from that there's nothing to add. I'll likely keep visiting Newgrounds in general, might make a few reviews and vote on a few things, but that's about it. May keep the blog up to date with thoughts on things for people that actually want to read what I have to say. Anyone I wanted to keep in communication with from the mod forums I already have on facebook, myspace or can just PM them.

The best thing is that the $900 or so that I had stashed away for a trip over to the next mod meat clearly isn't needed now as I'm obviously not welcome, so I can spend that on whisky. I'm in a really bad transitional period in life right now, and having the extra cash to deal with it is appreciated.

In closing, it's been nice meeting Tom, Wade, James, Bob, Jose, Luis, Stamper, Tim, Sarah, Adam, Steve, Shawn, Paul, Dan, Jerry, Evan, Lin, Jonas, Pox, Aaron, Matt, Jason, avie, and anyone else who I may have randomly met. For the rest of you, go and watch some Rick Astley video or something.

RIP jonthomson the mod, 2004-2007.

[edit - I have read SeizureDog's topic]

Yes. It's basically Ocarina of Time with a remote and added sucky bits (Ocarina of Time, of course, being more or less a port of A Link to the Past, but in 3D). It could easily have been the best game ever if they'd been a bit more original (as they tried to do with Majora's Mask), but it's more or less the same game that I played back on the N64 (well, strictly speaking, on the Gamecube on the collectors' disc). Let's run through why it sucks:

- Storyline is exactly the same. Evil's coming to take over the world. We need to find three things (here we've got bits of fused shadow, cf. pendants, random gems), get new pointy sword, oh dear, we can't go to the final castle so we've got to go to several more different places to unlock it, then we go and kill Ganon. Oh wow.

- Temples are unoriginal. Foresty thing early on? Check. Firey thing after that? Check. Really annoying retarded water dungeon? Check. Icy place with sliding block puzzles? Check. Rehashing old bosses? Check.

- New items are next to useless. I can think of maybe two places where I used the spinner after the dungeon I found it in, both of which were mandatory. I can think of one place that I used the ball and chain, again it was mandatory (although even that shouldn't count as it's in the Zant fight in the exact same dungeon again). After opening up the seventh dungeon the dominion rod was useless. Getting the horse call after we've opened up enough warp points to make the horse superfluous is stupid (I think I used the horse post-Master Sword once, in the final boss fight). Hawkeye is pointless, would only ever be useful in the hidden village if there were more things to kill. I never collected bomblings once.

- Wolf form, and particularly collecting tears of light, sucks.

- Rupees are next to worthless. I could have gone the whole game without collecting the large wallet (and only got that to get the magic armor, which I never used).

- Game is too easy. The only difficulties were working out how to kill things, once that was obvious, things were cake. The hidden skills make every single potentially tough enemy a breeze. I had four fairies on standby for the Ganon fight and never got near to using one.

- Z-targeting is frequently glitchy. The level 7 boss fight took about ten minutes longer than it should have, purely because in the second stage of the fight, the camera kept fucking up, causing me to target the peahat I'd just grappled away from, sending me right back into some fire or something. The dual darknuts in Hyrule Castle are a pain, not because they're difficult (which they're not, back slice/helm splitter pwns easily), but because I continually locked onto the wrong one, causing possible massive damage.

Having said that, it's still worth playing (mainly because the majority of boss fights are awesome, if a piece of piss, that was seriously the worst Ganon fight ever) mainly because OoT pwns.

lol gamefaqs, final match of their character battle is Link v Cloud v Solid Snake v L-Block. Only one thing needs to be done. Vote L-Block tomorrow while playing this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEkuv4J cchk

http://www.digg.com/security/Major_Onl ine_Poker_Room_Caught_Cheating_2

Digg it, this is the biggest thing to happen to online poker in years and people need to know. More diggs is always good. If by any chance you play on Absolute (or Ultimate Bet, which Absolute owns), pull your money out ASAP.

Wins until epic seventh title: 0

Ortiz > Lackey
Manny > Rodriguez
Everyone in the eighth > whoever the Angels had on the mound
BB's with bases loaded > Sabathia

Up around $250. Distinctly horribly disgustingly meh.

Thought it'd be interesting to post what I've got in my bookmarks folder. I'll obviously omit multiple links to the same site (e.g. I have links to various mod hacks on multiple sites, several topics here, etc.) and just go with what I've got.

Newgrounds - taken as read

GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com) - possibly one of the most useful sites on the internets, as many people know. Obviously I visit there a lot for mod purposes, but the forums are usually moderately interesting if you look in the right places. Sure, there's a great deal of idiots there, but it's the same with any forum and there's gold if you can hunt it out.

Slashdot (www.slashdot.org) - just have the RSS feed, I don't tend to check there unless I see something of immediate interest, time is limited, especially given that I have three rather time intensive online things to do, so I can't spend forever there reading shit.

Fark (www.fark.com) - RSS feed again, see above. Time, not enough of it. Same reason why I haven't read Usenet for ages, more or less since 2003 when I left Warwick and was using Pine and a decent news server for a large amount of time.

Hattrick (www.hattrick.org) - online football management game. Pretty low maintenance, you could easily get by playing it on less than an hour a week. Been playing it since 2005, finally starting to get somewhere after being stuck in a bastard division for several seasons. Would have been Project Rockstar (www.projectrockstar.com) here but they failed to develop the game well enough, had far too many game resets and it's full of bloody kids.

Two Plus Two Forums (www.twoplustwo.com) - if you play poker in the slightest, this is a must visit. It's probably the best strategy discussion site on the internet, and the forums are a massive mix of crazy surreal humour which is laden with huge amounts of in jokes and MS Paint hilarity, and has many sub forums on lots of useful topics. Many of the best single threads I've read have been from here, even if it's not the first place I visit.

Facebook (www.facebook.com) - I've been at uni in the past few years, shoot me

A World Of Poker (www.aworldofpoker.com) - another poker forum. Not brilliant, but it's fairly UK-centric, they sponsored our society at Sheffield for a bit and I get numerous perks from them, so it's all gravy.

UK Net Guide (www.uknetguide.co.uk) - the link I have just goes directly to the TV guide.

Battrick (www.battrick.org) - a cricket offshoot of Battrick which is younger and evolving quicker. Probably a bit more fun as well, makes many a Friday more interesting.

YTMND (www.ytmnd.com) - I have a specific link to one that relieves poker tilt brilliantly, I don't have the plug-in on Firefox that allows viewing for most of them. Incidentally I'd download the complete soundtrack but not only are no bastards seeding the torrent, µTorrent has been massively unresponsive of recent.

Cold Storage (www.coldstorage.org.uk) - the guy that did the soundtrack to WipeOut, possibly the best video game soundtrack ever behind Mega Man 2, and he has it available to download.

Full Tilt Poker (www.fulltiltpoker.com) - my primary site, link is there because it goes directly to the sit and go leaderboard which I'm usually doing OK on.

Red Hot Pawn (www.redhotpawn.com) - turn-based chess, has a decent enough interface and userbase.

Conquer Club (www.conquerclub.com) - basically Risk online. Has some absolute fucktards on there, but it's mostly OK if you can avoid n00bs who continually miss turns and the more exotic game settings.

Super Page 58 (www.btinternet.com/~moononastick/sp58 /Index.html) - Digitiser archive. Completely irrelevant to non-UK users of a certain age, but those that remember its brilliance will love this site.

That's about it. LOL RANDOM IMAGE