TaylorMade

This year during my holiday to France I was fortunate to visit Parc Asterix, or as we English speaking people like to call it, Asterix Park.

As a child I used to love reading Asterix books and used to pester my local librarian for any book which I’d never read, often reading the usual stock over and over. So when a few years back I discovered there was a theme park based on Asterix, it quickly became one of my wishes to visit.

After spending two days in Disneyland Paris, my second visit in the last four years, Parc Asterix was not only a refreshing change but an exciting one! The park is of course based on the adventures of the little Gaul with themed shows and rides, focusing more on log flumes and big rollercoasters.

On what was an extremely hot day, it was a real thrill to finally meet Asterix and Obelix and have my photo taken with them in the Gaul village. Despite the large queues we managed quite a few rides our favourites being the Périférix, a medium sized rollercoaster and ideal for all the family (and a big scaredy cat like me), the La galère which was your typical viking boat type ride only boarded by very enthusiastic tourists and last but not least L’oxygenarium where you climb on board a large round dinghy and go down a great big water slide.

Maybe it was the novelty factor or the collection of Asterix goodies I got (t-shirts, mug, towel, figures, pens, pencils…) but I enjoyed Parc Asterix so much more than Disney. It’s got more of a French feel to it (obviously!) but that makes it all the more special, Disney is big and commericalised and on some levels very false whereas Asterix seems more authentic and focused on fun.

Having owned an iPod since last year, originally a nano and more recently an iPod touch, I’ve always been frustrated at not being able to download stuff from the US store. However, today I came across a solution which I thought I’d share so non-US people can enjoy all the freebies to be had.

Step 1 - Find a redemption code. Not always easy but this link currently offers one:- allhiphop.com/promo/bmm/. Enter your details and when the code arrives in your email, go to step 2.

Step 2 - Enter the US store. Launch iTunes and, if necessary, sign out and select the US store from the bottom of the page. When the US store loads you will see an option in the top right menu “Redeem”. Click this and go to step 3.

Step 3 - Redeem. Here’s where you enter the code after which you’ll be prompted to sign in. Choose to create an account and go to step 4.

Step 4 - Create your account. Agree to the T&Cs first then you will be presented with a screen where you enter your personal details. At the bottom you will see payment options, the option should be selected, don’t change this.
Now enter your name and email address, ideally a different one to your UK account, but for postal address it’s time to Google. Search for a well known US location or store, such as Walmart and enter the details. Once done submit and confirm.

That’s it! Now you’re ready to start downloading and grabbing those freebies. A good place to keep up to date with what’s free is www.itsfreedownloads.com

I also recommend you go to the iTunes store, select TV shows and look at the bottom of the page where there’s a hoarde of free on iTunes stuff.

Don’t forget to sign out if you want to return to your UK store and purchase stuff.

I hate spammers. No, that’s an understatement, I loathe spammers, they are the biggest time wasters on the planet.

Recently I’ve been bombarded with a deluge of what I can only describe as the biggest load of bollox. Even in the shitty world of spam, this stuff is the pits. What is the purpose of it, what am I expected to do, can anyone translate this crap?

Here’s an example of my most recent example of literacy genius which starts (links omitted):

House the any sale combivent and spread roxicet inimitable performanc cocaine ristram.

What?? Let’s attempt to break this down. “House the…” what House? Is he talking about the famous Gregory House played by the excellent Hugh Lawrie? No he can’t be, I remember 4th year English now, it’s a verb, he wants me to house something, ok next… “any sale combivent and spread roxicet“. Ok that beat me so I had to Google and apparently combivent is a trade name for some kinda inhaler for asthma suffers, so shouldn’t that have been a capital C? Tsk Tsk. Roxicet? Well it seems to be some sort of pain killer, similiar to aspirin.

Ok so far we’ve got this guy wants me to house the “any sale” inhaler and then spread some painkiller.

Next part “inimitable performanc cocaine ristram“. Inimitable means impossible to imitate, I’ll give him the typo and assume he means performance, we all know what cocaine is but ristram?? Back to Google again and result number one turns up an ancestry entry for some family name. Anything else I can find turns out to be similiar entries on message boards etc. So what the hell does ristram mean? The whole meaning of this sentence hangs on it I’ve got a guy here busting for me to house a sale for inhalers while I spread some painkillers which not for one moment could be mistaken for a theatrical cocaine….?

This is sentence one out of nine, I think I’m in for a long night here…