Digg is an excellent website to find an interesting distraction. For those not in the know, the principle is:

• Person finds an interesting site and submits it to Digg
• Digg users vote it up if they agree its good
• The best stuff makes the front page

Essentially, the front page is a selection of the best links on the internet at that given moment. Works pretty well normally. It sometimes gets filled with many similar stories but overall it’s good.

The best bit though is the comments. The users of digg are really opinionated. Some are idiots who say the same thing over and over (for a demonstration college humor have shown what it would look like in real life), others contribute witty and insightful remarks.

I’m reminded of this by an article I read today. The linked story itself was pretty average but the comments are wonderful. I’d strongly suggest reading them.

Tip: sort the comments by most diggs so you can read the best first.

I’m currently on hold with Virgin Mobile as give them one last chance to offer me a contract worth my money. All I want is internet on my mobile. Nothing to fancy.

The best I can find from the rest of the mobile companies is the Nokia 6500 Slide with 3. £25 per month with 500 mins and unlimited texts then £5 for unlimited browsing. An extra fiver on top of what I currently pay and a phone I’m not too fussed on, seems OK but not amazing.

I’ve tried playing hardball with the other networks but they aren’t budging. They seem happy to concede when they can’t beat a deal. No longer will they fight for custom, especially for a 12 month contract.

Now there is a blackberry for £35 on a 18 month contract that is appealing. Sadly I can’t trust myself not to lose the phone!

I’ve just spoken to Virgin mobile and they don’t do any data tariffs. I find that odd in the current age but there you go.

As an aside, I suspect that a startup company could make a killing by producing a really good comparison site for mobiles. The current offerings are pretty poor.

Anyway, onwards with my search…

Been having some fun with Caroline’s Jailbroken iPod Touch. iAno has to be the best app out there. So simple and so fun! Also nice not to have to pay for the standard applications (that should be free anyway).

Here is a video of my playing piano…

Due to a lack of food in the fridge last night it was decided to go out for dinner. Living on the High Street in Stockton does have the odd perk and eating out is one of them. There are about 10 restaurants and take-aways within a 10 minute walk of our house.

We initially aimed for Papa Razzo, an excellent up market restaurant that, depending on the size of your party, offers half price food on an evening. I’ve enjoyed some tremendous food there in the past for pennies. However, since there was only 3 of us, and you needed 4 to dine for half price, we moved on to Al Forno, an Italian restaurant.

I’ve been there in the past on a couple of occasions and the food has been average but very cheap for a nice looking place. However, they seem to have taken away many of the discounted prices. We were there in time for happy hour though and were very hungry so we decided to stop. That’s where things took a turn for the worst.

On arrival we were asked to sit at the bar because the single waitress was rushed off her feet. After 10 minutes in the doorway we were seated at a very poor table (which we later moved from).

The happy hour menu was £7.95 for started plus any pizza/pasta or £9.95 for starter and any chicken meal. Now here is the odd bit. There was a little note under the pasta stating that chips would be extra at happy hour. That sounded fine to me since I never order chips with pasta (and I would expect to pay if I did).

So 15 minutes later we had our orders taken. Two of us went for pizza and pasta and one went for the chicken.

We then had a 20 minute wait for starters (which felt like an eternity when hungry). Starters were potato skins and I have no complaints, they were standard and good.

15 minutes after the starter the mains arrived. Pizza and pasta were fine but the chicken was odd. It was basically a flattened breast in a weak brown sauce*. It quickly became apparent that there was nothing else coming. The note regarding the chips applied to the chicken. We asked the waiter to clarify and that was in fact the case and he could do nothing about it because it was “company policy”.

I found this ridiculous. Chips must have a cost to the company of 20p per portion (if that), when someone is paying £10 for a meal cutting that cost is just silly. It will irritate the customer for a maximum potential profit of about £1. It’s such bad business.

Anyway we soon realised that the meals were poor anyway and halfway through them we couldn’t stand any more. We left the money on the table and left.

It has to be without doubt, the biggest waste of £8 (and I’ve bought some real crap in the past) that I can recall.

I would suggest anyone considering a meal at Al Forno reconsider immediately and try Papa Razzo instead. Failing that McDonalds and Weatherspoons offer food that is significantly better, cheaper and will be served in less than 1.5 hours.

While skimming through my RSS feeds this morning, one post in particular grabbed my attention. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington announced that he was suing Facebook for $25million in damages for using his image.

The post looked like any other TechCrunch post and his argument seems quite reasonable, if clearly flawed.

My immediate reaction was to have a look at the comments. The first one read:

I hate April Fools’ day on the internet.

As intended I felt a fool. I still don’t quite understand why it was posted on March 31st but that’s little excuse for me. I should have guessed at several points. Most obviously the last line:

He then threw his steaming hot triple soy latte espresso at me, which caused extensive second degree burns over the top half of my body. Later on, he also unfriended me.