The Adventures of Hal by Derek Haines

The Adventures of Hal by Derek Haines

One thing I rarely do here on The Vandal is mention my books. Guilty as charged, so today I will right this wrong and introduce you to one of my favourite characters. Halbert Hoop, or better known as HAL. So without further ado here’s a taste of HAL! The Adventures of Hal Halbert Hoop, better known as Hal to his friends, was a lost member of the British peerage. His father, Baron Spencer Hoop, who’d unfortunately come to his demise a few months earlier when he fell from his polo pony and was struck in the right temple by the hoof of his own pony, and simultaneously by the mallet

A Drunken Meeting With a Dead Author

A Drunken Meeting With a Dead Author

Oh Douglas, why did you up and leave us? I had the occasion, albeit under the very heavy influence of a bottle or three of an extremely pleasant Shiraz, to stumble upon a rather tall gentleman with an odd outlook on life. Well, odd in the fact that he was rumoured to be dead, but we’ll come to that shortly. Although unsure at first, the presence of a towel slung casually over his left shoulder, a large open and half eaten packet of salted peanuts in his right hand and his asking if I had any beer gave me a clue. When I casually said, ‘Hey, you’re supposed to be

George Orwell And Winston Smith Would See Us As Fools

George Orwell And Winston Smith Would See Us As Fools

Why do we give away our privacy so freely, in exchange for cute puppy videos? As Internet users, we are quite naive and dumb. We love Facebook, but we get annoyed when we are confronted by ads. Well, welcome to the brave new world where nothing is for free, and your very private data is a readily tradable commodity. But don’t rush to blame others. Blame yourself for being so easily fooled. At the same time, forget about being monitored by ultra-secret national ‘big brother’ spying agencies. Your biggest danger comes from what you voluntarily use every day because you think it is free, and that you are at liberty to say, like

Why I Pay For Stuff – Because Free Usually Sucks

Why I Pay For Stuff – Because Free Usually Sucks

Free is great, but it almost always comes at a cost Everyone loves a bargain, but free is rarely a great buy. In the last year or so, I have noticed that my small selection of time filling games on my iPhone are now blasting me with ads every two to three minutes. Even worse, one of them blasts out ads with sound even when I set my phone to silent. Aside from my few games, many of the freebies I use are for my WordPress blogs. Again, however, a lot of these applications and plugins that I have used for years, are either becoming infested with advertising or have had key features