Words With Pirates

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and Words With Pirates, a Scrabble clone for the iPhone where - well, see the picture - is dead for another year.

Here's hoping Hasbro (or whoever it is that owns Scrabble) brings out a Pirate version of the actual board game - much more fun when you only have the letters Y, A, R, G, and H!

Are You Bored? Got an Android Phone?

Download the first Alpha release (v0.0.0.1) of the Giveashitometer - a fun little app using voice synthesis (maybe) to check if you give a shit about something boring that someone is telling you.

Head to http://tinyurl.com/2ulgnxr on your phone to get your free copy, and post your comments below :)

The Things Boredom Makes Us Do...

It's Christmas Eve. There's traditionally not a lot to do on Christmas Eve. It's a sort of test run for the act of not doing much on Christmas Day, and then even less still on Boxing Day.

I had an email at 10am this morning. My shares in France Telecom (they used to own Orange) had paid about £6 in dividends. Great, I thought - until I found it costs £11 to actually withdraw my £6. The only other option was to re-invest my money into more shares. France Telecom shares are about £10 each, so I couldn't buy another of those - so I'd have to find something else to buy.

After a quick look through Yahoo!'s Finance section, I decided to just buy whatever jumped out at me. Half an hour later, I'd bought some shares. I'm now a proud owner of a very, very, VERY small portion (one share each) of:

• 888.com - Seeing as I'm gambling on shares, I might as well buy some casino.
• Antisoma - No idea what they do.
• Laura Ashley Holdings - Posh house stuff retailer.
• Booker - If it weren't for these guys, I wouldn't have 10 million bog rolls in my closet.
• Debenhams - Nadine works for them, so I own her soul between the hours of 9am and 5pm now.
• Dixons - Not DSGi, just the Dixons.co.uk bit.
• Expansys - Online tech retailer.
• Game Group - My sister works for them, so this purchase was purely to be able to say that I am, in some way, her boss.
• Hiwave Technologies - No idea who they are.
• HMV Group - They own HMV. They also own Waterstones.
• ITV - If I'm a shareholder, I figure I can petition them to trash "The X Factor".
• JJB - Supplying sports gear to the UK's chav population.
• Moneysupermarket.com - for comparing insurance 100% meerkat free.
• Moss Bros - They give shareholders 20% off purchases apparently.
• Oxford Biomedica - They probably do evil tests on small children or something by the sounds of it.
• Park Group - Purveyors of food hampers and Love2Shop vouchers (available at a discount to investors apparently).
• STV - Scottish version of ITV.
• Yell Group - They publish the Yellow Pages and yell.com.
• Vyke Communications - I actually bought 3 shares in these guys, because they were ultra-cheap and I had a few pence left over.

Seeing as I already own shares in Lloyds Banking Group, and they see fit to post me a 300-page annual report each year, I get the feeling I'm going to be posted a small forest as a result.

Ah well - this time next year Rodney, we'll be millionaires.