7 Reasons

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  • 7 Reasons We Should All Have Our Own Personal CCTV

    7 Reasons We Should All Have Our Own Personal CCTV

    After yesterday’s big announcement I am sure you were expecting a post about that. Sadly though, I have not had the time to give such a piece the careful consideration it requires, but hopefully we’ll read 7 Reasons Andy Carroll Is Worth More Than Blackburn Rovers later in the week. For now we shall look at a subject that is close to many people’s hearts. Or at least it should be. CCTV. Each and every one of us should have our own personal CCTV. Here’s why:

    CCTV Man

    1.  Child Behavioural Device. My Mum always used to scare me by telling me she had eyes in the back of her head. Between the ages of four and six I don’t think I ever stood behind her. It was only when a wasp attacked her hair that I realised she was something of a con artist. The lie though (not to be mistaken with lilo) worked. I was never naughty behind my mother’s back. Just in case a couple of eyeballs popped out. Of course, now that today 7 Reasons has dispelled the ‘eyes in the back of my head’ myth, parents around the land will require a new threat level. And while a mirror maybe substantially cheaper, having CCTV cameras sticking out of various orifices would be much scarier.

    2.  Adult Behavioural Device. Any kind of assault on another human being will soon become a thing of the past. Firstly, everyone will know they won’t get away with it. Secondly, potential victims will be able to see an imminent attack coming. And all yours for £99 (exc VAT). Sometimes, my own genius scares me.

    3.  Capture Happiness. There are some moments in life we just want to relive over and over again. Maybe your engagement, your marriage, your divorce or England winning the Ashes*. Whichever it is, with CCTV you can record each of these moments using a multitude of angles and when you wish to remind yourself you can do just that. Now, the question you have for me is probably, ‘Why couldn’t I just use a camcorder?’ Well my answer goes something like this. You can’t spend your life walking around with a camcorder in your hand. It’ll get in the way, you won’t be permitted to watch the school nativity and when you are more than a little worse for wear in Las Vegas you’ll probably lose it before you find a minister. With CCTV being the norm, none of these problems will occur.

    4.  Image. They say pictures speak louder than words so let me point you in the direction of today’s 7 Reasons image. (That’s the one above). Not one of you can tell me that that guy, who we shall call Bobby, doesn’t look pretty cool. Sure, Bobby’s not wearing his usual sailors outfit, but I can tell you that Bobby feels confident. More confident than Bobby has ever felt before actually. And the world needs more confident Bobbies. Bobbies who will stand in the middle of a riot and happily capture the carnage around them. Not that there will be any carnage because of the CCTV. But at least the Bobbies will capture a lot of people standing around in the same place for a while. They can then upload it to YouTube and call it a flash-mob. Bound to be a hit.

    5.  Piracy. I think we can all agree that film piracy is a disgrace and a blight on the film industry. The quality is often so poor. With personal CCTV this will change. Given that everyone will have the opportunity to film a film, the pirates will have to use the latest personal CCTV equipment to offer the quality that people will pay for. And that’s brilliant because for your £3 you will no longer get a string of silhouettes going to the toilet, but a film of the quality that the original filmmakers intended. **

    6.  Forgetfulness. Where did I put the car keys? Where did I put the car? Whose nicked the car park? Am I drunk? The answers to so many questions can be found just by pressing that rewind button. Simple, but beautiful.

    7.  Social Media Integration. I am sure we all have friends who mention on facebook or twitter that they have just arrived at Selfridges or the Hurlingham Club or the Nou Camp. One day one of my friends checked into Sinagpore Airport at 7pm and three hours later he was watching some baseball in New York. Amazing. But obviously utter bollocks. None of my friend’s have ever checked in at KFC. And let’s be honest I am friend’s with some real pikies. Not in real life obviously, just on facebook. CCTV will identify these pathetic people for the fraudsters they really are by posting live video with every status update.

    From The Bahamas, JL.

    *Get in.

    **In no way do 7 Reasons condone film piracy. It is bad. Very bad. (Though it maybe joked about if you are desperate for a fifth reason).

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Chase The World’s Most Dangerous Motor Race In A Rentcar

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Chase The World’s Most Dangerous Motor Race In A Rentcar

    If you are one of our Argentinian or Chilean based readers, you may have seen bikes, quads, cars and trucks flying through your garden in the last week. This, we must point out, is not the doing of 7 Reasons. Instead we point you in the direction of the Dakar Rally which is currently winging its way through the deserts of South America. The Dakar Rally is widely acknowledge as both the toughest and most dangerous motor race in the world. You’d think, therefore, that chasing the race in a rentacar – while filming it – is a rather crazy thing to do. Well not if you are Simon Lee. Simon did exactly that this time last year and the result is the film Dream Racer – to be released later this year. Before you head off to the cinema though, let’s find out why Simon did it.
    Poster for the film Dream Racer

    1.  Because You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do. I’ve wanted to make a movie like this for so long that when I met Christophe and heard about his dream of finishing the Dakar Rally on his motorbike, I knew I HAD to do it. I couldn’t get a broadcaster to back it, so I couldn’t afford a camera crew, a sound man a producer or any of the usual things you would have on a shoot like this. Ultimately I just thought “sod it, it’s now or never”, clawed together just enough cash to get me there, left my wife in Australia with our 6 week old daughter, flew to Argentina and made a movie.

    2.  Because Nothing Beats Asking A Hertz Clerk For “A Rentacar To Do The Dakar Rally”. Ok, I wasn’t quite “doing” the Dakar Rally, but I was about to drive 10,000 km across some of the harshest terrain on earth. And I drove it in a 2 wheel drive roller skate with a 1.4 litre engine – a Fiat Sienna.

    3.  Because The Dakar Is The Greatest Mechanical Show On Earth. Despite having spent the best part of 18 months working on this film project, I’m not actually a big fan of motorsport. That said, there is something extraordinary about watching tons of steel hurtling down sand dunes the size of mountains. It’s particularly exciting when you’re playing “dodge the hurtling tons of steel” whilst filming.

    4.  Because Real Life Delivers Better Scripts Than You Could Ever Write. When I embarked on the project, I knew that it had potential as a great adventure documentary, but I could never have anticipated just what a roller coaster journey it would turn out to be. 3 weeks before the start of the race, it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, then out of the blue, Christophe empties his bank account and enters. Then he calls up the KTM factory in Austria to arrange payment for the bike he’d ordered, and they’d sold it to someone else! I mean, you wouldn’t write this stuff. Then to do the whole race without even a mechanic, get seriously injured, ride a perfect stage in the desert and still finish the race – this is the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters – just without the multi-million dollar budget.

    5.  Because There’s A Chilean Radio Station That Plays Non-stop Late Eighties/Early Nineties Hits. Driving interminable miles across the Atacama Desert afforded me ample opportunity to re-live my musical youth. I think I may even have sung out loud to the Soup Dragons “I’m Free”.

    6.  Because If It’s Easy It’s Probably Not Worth Doing. Making this movie has been one of the hardest things that I have done (and it’s not quite over yet). Everything – from chasing funds, to three draining weeks in South America, to trying to balance the project with being a half decent father and husband as well and keep money coming in to pay the bills – has been bloody hard. But boy did it feel good being there to film Christophe crossing the line, knowing everything we had been through to get there! As you’ll see in the movie, it was a pretty emotional moment…

    7.  Because Maverick Solo Movies Are Where It’s At. There’s something equally terrifying and exhilarating about going it alone on a project like this. At the end of the day it comes down to raw drive and creativity and the ever-present question of “just how badly do you want this?” I truly hope that this comes through in the film, because ultimately that’s what it’s about – the story of what happens when you stop listening to the excuses conjured up by your rational mind, and act instead on the niggling inner voice that’s urging you to step out and live your dreams.

    Dream Racer will be released mid-2011. To view the trailer and follow the progress of the Dream Racer project, join the Dream Racer Facebook group.

  • 7 Reasons foursquare And I Are Over

    7 Reasons foursquare And I Are Over

    If you have been a reader of 7 Reasons for a while now, you may remember that at the beginning of August, I (that’s me, Jon) decided to sign up to the new social media kid on the block that is foursquare. It didn’t start too well and as you may recall I predicted foursquare and I were going to have a tricky relationship. Now, I’m sure you’ve been wondering how on earth we are getting on. Well, seven weeks on, we catch up with myself and foursquare to find out.

    7 Reasons foursquare and I Are Over

    1.  Neglect. To be fair, there has been little contact or indeed effort from either party. I haven’t logged into my foursquare account once since I joined and foursquare hasn’t once bothered emailing me to ask why I have not logged into my account since I joined. Evidently we both have better things to do with our time. I certainly do. Playing with my hair etc.

    2.  Affair. We both had one. In fact, for the past seven weeks I have been having regular threesomes with twitter and facebook. They seem to like it and I feel strangely clean about the whole thing, so it’s win win. You may have a different point of view, but before you judge me and accuse me of being dirty, may I remind you that foursquare has three million users plugged into her. Potentially all at the same time.

    3.  Financial Resentment. It’s not that fact that I mind foursquare being worth $80 million – which on latest calculations is just quite a way over $79 million more than I am – it’s the fact that they flaunt it. ‘Woohoo!’ they shout. ‘Come and invest in me!’ There is just no need for it. I don’t go running up and down the street shouting, ‘Woohoo! Come and pay off my student loan!’ do I? No, I don’t. I’d get some very funny looks from some very funny looking cats.

    4.  Bullying. This one is on me. I put the foursquare app into my iPhone social media folder – yes, I have one of those because I am a hipster – and then I teased it. By this I don’t mean I played hide and seek with it – although I suppose I did in a way everytime I put my phone in my pocket – but I kept hovering my finger over it and then chose twitter or facebook instead. Did I feel bad? Not really. The foursquare icon never said, ‘Touch me baby’. Aesthetically speaking.*

    5.  Nagging. Not by me. But by foursquare. It forever wanted to know where I was. ‘What are you doing? Where are you doing it? Why are you doing it? How are you doing it? Oooh, I wouldn’t have done it like that’. Just shut up and go away. This is my life and I will do whatever I like, where I like it, for seven of my own reasons, in a manner I feel happy with. Unless my girlfriend or my mum tell me otherwise.

    6.  Sexual Incompatibility. I won’t go into this too much, but I was rubbish. To be honest, my heart wasn’t in it. And, if it was, I’d have been doing it very, very wrong indeed. I know that much.

    7.  Realisation. Mark Zuckerburg. You know the guy, he created that facebook thing. Last week his company opened up the world of ‘places’ for all facebook users. So now we can tell all of our ‘friends’ just where we are. As a result I now know when friend A is at work, when friend B is on the platform at a certain train station and when friend C is on the toilet. Quite frankly, this is all too much information. And it is exactly the kind of thing foursquare specializes in. As disappointing as this will sound, the truth is, I really don’t care where you are or what you’re doing – unless you owe me a lot of money. And to be honest, I only have time not to care once. Consequently I have decided not to care via the medium of facebook and thus shall be shutting my foursquare account down with immediate effect.

    *My finest oxymoron yet.

  • Russian Roulette Sunday: Nobody Likes A Smartarse

    Russian Roulette Sunday: Nobody Likes A Smartarse

    The Russian Roulette Sunday Logo

    The phrase, “nobody likes a smartarse” is wrong.  People do like smartarses: Look at the popularity of Stephen Fry.

    Stephen Fry pulling a face in front of a colourful picture
    Nobody likes this man?

    We, the team at 7 Reasons, have decided to debunk this abjectly wrong saying via the medium of Facebook.  If you like a smartarse – or are a smartarse who is liked – visit this new Facebook page and click the Like button.  That’ll show the vacuous, unimaginative dullards that mindlessly trot out this idiotic phrase, once and for all, that they are very very wrong.

    If we act together, we can perform a valuable public service by drawing attention to the stupidity of this phrase and, in turn, help to put a stop to its use.  That is all.

  • Guest(ish) Post: 7 Reasons We Should Be Kept Well Away From Photoshop

    Guest(ish) Post: 7 Reasons We Should Be Kept Well Away From Photoshop

    Today’s guest(ish) post comes to you courtesy of Marc Fearns, who can usually be found doing stuff here, and the amazing Ceci Masters of Swanning About fame; a blog so good that it’s in The Times’ list of the top 50 cricket blogs, along with the blog of another friend of 7 Reasons, Sarah Ansell, and forty-eight other blogs that we’re less interested in.

    This guest(ish) post is a little unusual.  It tells the tale of last Friday evening when, shamefully, Ceci and I were both at our homes, with our Photoshop software open.

    1.  Crouching Crouch Hidden Dragon. It started innocently enough.  Ceci – inspired by the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon – produced this picture for the Facebook group, Hollywoodgate: Onde futebol e película cruzam.  She also put it on Twitter.

    Crouching Crouch Hidden Dragon, a picture of Peter Crouch playing golf with a dragon behind him, courtesy of Ceci Masters.

    2.  Hiding Crouch Tiger-Dragon. And Twitter is where I saw it, while I was in the middle of photoshopping something else  (a cat in a submarine, I think).  Anyway, I was struck by the wordplay potential so within five minutes, this was winging its way to Ceci.

    Hiding Crouch Tiger Dragon: A picture of Peter Crouch covering his eyes to hide from a tiger-dragon

    3.  Crouch’s Tiger Hiddink’s Dragon. Then, about five minutes after the previous picture, Ceci put this one up.  There was only one way that this was going to go.

    Crouch's Tiger Hiddink's Dragon: a picture of Peter Crouch's tiger and Gus Hiddink's dragon. Obvious, really

    4.  Grouchy Tiger Smitten Crouch. We had become embroiled in a duel.  A frenzied maelstrom of a contest in which PCs were pistols and Crouch crouching crouchy tigery tiger tiger-dragons were our ammunition.  In short, we had lost the plot.  I made this one.  But girls are sensible, and you can always rely on them to stop the madness, can’t you?

    Grouchy Tiger Smitten Crouch: Peter Crouch looking fondly at a grumpy tiger.

    5.  Hiding Tiger Crouch With Drag On. No, it turns out that you can’t.  You can rely on them to take the madness and add big hair and sequins to it.

    Peter Crouch dressed as Lily Savage while Tiger Woods hides behind a wall

    6.  Crouch In Drag On Ridden Tiger. Now, Ceci’s previous picture was not only brilliant, it was also a bit frustrating, as I’d already got started on this one before I discovered that she’d used drag too.  But now that we’d started coming up with the same ideas we agreed that it was time to call a halt to things, and we established a truce.

    Peter Crouch dressed as a woman, riding a tiger

    7.  Crouch In Tiger With A Bag On. The truce lasted a full three minutes or so, until I thought of this.

    Peter Crouch inside a tiger with a Prada handbag on it

    That’s why Ceci and I should be kept well away from Photoshop but, like predatory beasts, we’ll be watching, waiting, ever-ready to pounce during the World Cup.  The moment that Crouch does anything that even remotely resembles the words tiger, dragon or hiding, one of us will strike.  Well, unless his solicitors get in touch which, on balance, seems entirely possible.

  • 7 Reasons To Be Self-Employed

    7 Reasons To Be Self-Employed

    Reasons To Be Self Employed

    1.  It’s 00:00 to 23:59, not 9:00 to 17:00. You can choose when you work. If you want to work at 3am on a Sunday morning then that is fine. You answer to no one but yourself. Unless you live with your partner and your computer is in your bedroom. They probably don’t want to hear you bashing one out in the middle of the night. An email I mean.

    2.  Social Media. To a normal boss in a normal company, the likes of twittering and facebooking are seen as distractions. To the self-employed though, they are vital tools of the trade. All self-employed people have a streak of the entrepreneur about them. They are always on the look out for ideas. Which is why conversation about ‘imaginary friends’ on twitter is classed as research.

    3.  Sport. A whole lot of sport happens during the day. Cricket, tennis, golf, baseball, The Olympics (all forms), various World Cups and World Championships. That is a heck of a lot of sport you are missing while working for some major conglomerate. Or the Co-Op. Not only do the self-employed watch all this sport, they all use it to their advantage. Watching Stuart Broad knock over Ricky Ponting’s poles doesn’t half motivate you. Okay, it motivates you to keep watching, but when the day’s play is over, then you are pumped to do some work. Or you will be after dinner. And the highlights. Actually, you’ll be ready at the end of the Test. But you will be ready. Just a shame the deadline has passed really.

    4.  Chores. They can be done at anytime you like. Cleaning the bathroom can be Monday at 10am. Food shopping can be Tuesday at 2pm. Having your haircut can be Wednesday at 11am. And if you are really lucky you’ll get the OAP rate.

    5.  The IT Department. Everyone in IT is a muppet. It’s official. They think you should know what SMPT means and how to locate the back-gate entrance for Microsoft Outlook. No one knows that stuff. I don’t even think there is a back-gate entrance for Microsoft Outlook. I think he was trying to make himself sound clever. The thing about working for yourself is that if something goes wrong you don’t have to phone someone up to ask them how to fix it. You can press reset and blow all the dust away from the back of the PC. And more times than not it works. Within minutes you are flying through the front door of Microsoft Outlook. In your face Sam in IT.

    6.  Tea-bags. You don’t have to share them and no one is going to steal them. They are yours. You can also have the brand and flavour you want. None of this value stuff, you can have proper tea from a proper tea plantation. Imported directly to you if you like. I get mine from Sainsburys.

    7.  Your Fee. It can be what you want it to be. If you want to charge £300 an hour, you can. You won’t get much work unless you are Pete Doherty’s solicitor, but that’s irrelevant. You can go around saying, ‘I charge £300 an hour’. Though when you end up working in the local pub you should probably stop. It makes you sound like a prat.

  • 7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Play FarmVille

    7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Play FarmVille

    If you use the social networking site Facebook, you’ll doubtless be familiar with FarmVille, the most successful Facebook game there is.  Here are seven reasons that you shouldn’t play it.

    A Road Sign with No Farmville on it

    1.  Imagination. When you’re playing FarmVille, you’re pretending that you’re a farmer.  Farming is not exciting.  It’s essentially portly, ruddy-faced people and mud, or portly, ruddy-faced people and blood, depending on which type of farming it is.  If you’re going to pretend to be something, pretend to be something interesting; a pirate, an astronaut, a mermaid, a flying horse, a rock star, an oculus, an aardvark, a many-headed warrior-beast, the Archbishop of Canterbury…anything, it’s all better than pretending you’re a farmer.

    2.  Spam.  Your friends want to log onto Facebook without being inundated with updates on the progress of your pretend farm.  Tell us about something that does exist instead.  How are your children?  How is your husband?  How is your pet?  Step away from the “farm” for a moment and check that they’re all still there and in good health, then tell us about it.  Perform a head-count if you need to.

    3.  Reality. Instead of pretending to grow vegetables on your computer, why don’t you actually grow some vegetables?  It’s not difficult.  All you need are some seeds and some mud.  Just weed and water them occasionally (this takes less time than tending your suppositious crops) and eventually you’ll be able to pull them up and eat them.  You can’t eat your computer can you?  No, no matter how much the rest of us wish you would.

    4.  It’s not sociable. My Facebook friends that play FarmVille assist each other on their imaginary farms that don’t exist.  I know this from my news feed.  Yet these people don’t come and help out in my garden, which is real.  I grow real things there (badly).  If you came to help me grow my real plants, I’d share them with you and ply you with beer.  This is how people really interact and bond.  When FarmVille tells the world, via Facebook, that “David helped Rachel harvest her plums”, you haven’t really interacted with each other – unless it’s a euphemism, in which case, well done David, I never knew you had it in you.

    A screen capture of a Farmville (Farm Ville) swastika (NAZI symbol) on a "farm"

    5.  Swastika. Okay, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t find it funny, but it obviously took a lot of time and effort to grow your swastika.  That’s time you could have spent being a real Nazi, goose-stepping about in a fetching uniform, annexing the Sudetenland and shouting things in German…or not, no, that’s a bad idea.  You could surely have done something better with that time though:  Read a book; go for a walk; climb a mountain – no – climb every mountain; ford every stream; follow every rainbow; till you find your dream.  Or perhaps do something unrelated to The Sound of Music, your choice.

    6.  Grow up. This may come as a blow to some of the 7 Reasons team, but it’s not socially acceptable to have an imaginary friend after the age of nine.  So why is it deemed acceptable to have an imaginary farm?  A farm is bigger than a friend – unless your friend is American – so surely it’s a bigger no-no?

    7.  AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! It’s come to this: I’m actually writing about real people growing imaginary plants and tending non-existent animals on their pretend farms which only exist in cyberspace, and you’re reading what I’ve written about actual people cultivating fabricated crops and make-believe livestock on fictitious farms which aren’t real.  What has become of us?  Death to FarmVille!  Stupid bloody fucking FarmVille.

  • 7 Reasons To Climb A Mountain

    7 Reasons To Climb A Mountain

    1.  Measure It. Nothing excites me more than when the end of year mountain height measurements are released. Is Everest still 8848 metres tall? Is Ben Nevis still the biggest in Britain? So many questions answered in one PDF. Obviously these figures aren’t just made up. Someone has to use a tape measure and a long stick.

    2.  Picnics. Nothing beats a picnic with a spectacular view. Of clouds. I know you can get this type of view atop a grassy hillock, but it is far more exciting trying to eat while simultaneously struggling to breathe.

    3.  Photo Opportunity. Let’s be honest, a facebook profile picture of you standing atop a mountain looks so much more impressive than a self portrait you have done of yourself at home. You know the one I mean. The one that took 30 attempts to get right and then ten minutes of cropping so your outstretched arm isn’t showing.

    4.  Getting Home To Babe. Because there ain’t no mountain. No mountain high enough. No valley low enough. To stop you from getting to baby. So you may as well go and climb one. Babe will be so much more impressed when you tell them that you took a shortcut across the top of Scaffold Pike* to get to the restaurant.

    5.  Eye Of The Tiger. Eye Of The Tiger, Rock. Climbing a mountain is one thing. Running up it is even better. Especially if you are making a movie about a boxer. Or indeed if you are just plain daft.

    6.  You’re Hot. No, not in the Sandra Bullock way. If you are hot in the Sandra Bullock way you can ignore all mountains and just come straight round to mine. You won’t even have to wipe your feet. I mean hot as in temperature hot. In other words you need to cool down. Common sense tells you that it’s much colder up a mountain.

    7.  No Pain, No Gain. There are a couple of ways to get blister repellent feet. One is to chop them off. The other is to build up calluses. You can do this by walking. Barefoot. Up mountains. Yes, it’ll hurt the first few hundred times you do it, but eventually your feet will have Zola Budd written all over them.

    *Yes, I know it’s Scafell Pike. Scaffold Pike is a clever play on words. What with scaffolding being something you climb. Clever, yes.