I got this a while ago while surfing YouTube. Although comical in hindsight, it was rather annoying at the time.

A quick web cache flush managed to make that pirate walk the plank.

It’s a situation which I encountered at least once every week. Being highly irritating with the same effects of watching someone yawn, it often causes me some discomfort. Let me elaborate, close you eyes for a minute…

Change of plan, open your eyes, otherwise you don’t be able to read this — Imagine a person having and ordinary conversation with you, it’s intriguing and you lean forward to express your interest, you start to nod your head with points you agree on while making a subtle yet sharp “mm” just to let your neighbor know you’re actually awake. Now the atmosphere is established.

All of a sudden, the speaker’s audibility diminishes as a lump of phlegm or some un-swallowed saliva gets lodged at the back of his/her throat (sorry guys, this speaker’s gender is a tad murky). You think at any moment they’re going to stop and clear their throat, but no! Like a train heading for a concentration camp, he/she does not stop speaking. Soon enough beads of sweat start to form on the end of your nose, as well as a replicated lump of phlem/saliva forms at the back of your mouth.

You start to take matters into your own hands. You start to at first slowly clear your throat by swallowing, but when you find that fails, you start to cough subtly, before breaking out in a raging coughing fit.

And that is the situation explained. In fact, I just experienced it recently while watching this video, and felt it must be documented in this secret diary of mine (which it is in it’s own right, as no one else reads these few pages). So speakers, clear your throat when your voice starts to disintegrate, and in-turn, maintain audience concentration.

Merry Christmas to all you internet people sitting at your computers.

Here’s a Christmas treat, and it’s not just a blog post. It’s a blog post with one amazing fact which will make your hairs in your ear go all funny’.

Cue the fact: Did you know, in Pokemon, TM and HM stand for ‘Technical Machine’ and ‘Hidden Machine’. I know - I know how you feel at this moment.

So I recently went to the dentist, that went fine, till near the end when my stomach started to churn. I needed to go poos and quick! (For your information, it was the liquid type - actually it wasn’t, inbetween solid and liquid, I would say.)

Fortunately, my super-toilet-resistance skills prevailed and I was able to keep the untimely wave of waste in. And so, I left the dentist in an epic hunt for a toilet.

Moments later, I find a toilet, awkwardly positioned, but a throne nonetheless (in my eyes at that moment in time). Took a quick inspection, only to find someone left their log in the bowl, previous to my session. Man was it perfect. Perfect shaped, and also had a commendable length. The colour, however, was slightly off, suggesting it had been left to brew in the water for some time.

Didn’t think much about it later that day. There was no toilet paper in the toilet! Which means either the person ate the toilet paper after wiping their butt-hole, or, they didn’t wipe their bum-bum altogether. Gruesome, I know.

Lately I’ve been getting heaps of good deals (selling-wise) on Trade Me – a New Zealand edition of eBay. But the problem is, I feel guilty for selling things as such astronomical prices, when I know that they aren’t even valued anything near that.

Photo credit: antonhart

For example, I sold a broken graphics card for $72 a few years ago after seeing a similar broken item selling for $30. It was far beyond my expectations. More recently, I sold this power adapter for $50, again far above $30, what it truly should have been valued at… when new.

Every time I send these packages off, I get this gut feeling that they’re going to figure they got ripped off and give me an after-trade negative feedback. But is it my fault? Probably not, they have the choice. Likewise, petrol stations sell things with a tremendously higher mark-up than super markets do, yet they seem to still thrive with customers.

There’s a price for convenience, or is that just the price you pay for being lazy?

I must under-go rebranding as too many people mis-pronounce my website’s stupid name. It’s ‘be-three-en’ dammit, not ‘Brethren’ - which has been what most my clients have been calling it.

Stay tuned for some fantastically fantastic rebranding sherbet within the next few weeks.

Here’s an update:

Man this is hard - Firstly, I have a stupid as name which takes away credibility from me rather than adding some personal spunk and professionalism. Benjamin/Ben Tan? Pathetic. Moreover, it sounds way too asian which will most definitely work against me.

Therefore I have chosen to create a name for my little ’studio’. This name shall disclude any stupid words such as “studio”, “creative”, “industries”, “designs”, “design” etc. ’cause they’re a bit cliche no-a-days. It has to be perfect - not too long, but also not too short; not too hard to pronounce and not to hard to spell.

A bad example is 31three.com - the owner of the site, Jesse, admits this is not the easiest of web addresses to convey over the phone to a client.