17 years ago back when I was 11 years old I was in my first year of secondary school (High School). It was at this point in my life tat I first tarted to realise that I wa different to other boys.

See I wasn’t interested in the girls, i liked the boys. It took me a while to understand what this meant, by it was then I realised that I was gay.

For the next 5 years I really struggled with who I was. It wasn’t until I went to college at 17 that I met another gay guy. He was so open and confident about who he was, whilst I was so far back in the closet I was practically in narnia.

Over the next 8 years I had experiences and relationships that I always ended because I was always afraid of what I was doing and how my parents and family would react if they ever found out.

Eventually during a drunken night out with my twin brother around the age o 25, I finally came outo my first family member. He was fine with it, and this gave me hope for the future.

Then last year I came out to my other brother, who has been fantastic with it all. I actually think he is generally proud to have a gay brother, and has really supported me over the past few months.

Then back in November I met “the boy”. We were set up on a date by a mutual friend, and got on quite well. We carried on dating and on Xmas eve last year officially became boyfriends.

Since then I have been paranoid about fucking things over due to the closeted situation I am in with my parents. This started to make things difficult, and I started to consider making the final move of telling mum & dad that their youngest son is a bender.

This has stayed on my mind for the past week, keeping me awake at night, making me stressed out and driving me crazy. Until tonight that was anyway…

I hadn’t planned anything as such, but had been thinking about it a lot at work. I got home, and sat down at the table for a meal with my parents. I was still thinking aboutthibgs, so was very quiet during the meal. Mum picked up on this and asked what was wrong.

Then, without evening thinking about it, I just said “I need to tell you both something… I’m gay!” – at that point mum jumped out of her seat and hugged me telling me it was ok.

Dad was quiet, but eentually said that he was still my son, as long as I was happy then that is ok.

I was shocked, not only that I finally told them, bit that it went so much better than I had expected it to go.

Mum and I had a chat about things, and I told her about “the boy”. She told me as long as I was happy and safe, then she was happy too. There was a bit more hugging and a few tears, but all in all a positive reaction.

To be honest, I am actually a little dissapointed by it all. To think I have worried about this moment for the past 17 years of my life and for it to all end up going so well is crazy. I was kind hoping for some fireworks, a few songs, maybe even a parade outaide the house… But no, nothing!

In fact, 20minutes after ad my dad was back to asking me how to doing things on the computer like he does every night.

Maybe this all some weird dream I will wake up from in the morning. If it is, it was a bloody good one!

It’s been a while since I last posted a blog entry… I know I am rubbish!
anyway, I thought I would make use of my time over over this crimbo limbo period and post my annual music chart of my favorite albums this year.

so, without further ado, here you go…

10: Cheryl Cole – Those 3 Words.
Anyone that knows me will already know that I am a MASSIVE Girls Aloud Fan. Over the years they have been together, I have grown to love Cheryl as my favourite member of the girl group, so I was super excited to hear that she was working on a solo album.

Last year we got a small glimpse into what was to come of Cheryl Cole in her solo career after she featured on the Will.i.am track “Heartbreaker”, an artist it was later revealed would be working heavily with her to both produce and feature on the material for her début album. Conveniently in-time to coincide with her X Factor judge duties, “Fight for this love” – the first single from the album was released and immediately caught my attention.

The song was certainly catchy, and I liked it straight away. Her live performance of the song on X Factor blew me away. Yes the vocals are not world class, but the performance was amazing. This excited me for the album.

When I finally got my hands on the album, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Will.I.Am features heavily through the album and stamps his mark all over it. Cheryl puts in an average performance with the lyrics, but overall its got some catchy tunes on it.

I think its fair to say that each of Girls Aloud are OK singers, but are not really the most vocally talented out there. Yes they work very well as a group, and can sing live when needed, but as solo artists I was always a little worried about what might come from them, but Cheryl hasn’t done too bad with this album at all to be fair.

Standout Tracks: Fight For This love, Rain on Me, Parachute, 3 Words

9: Muse – The Resistance
Muse are one of my favourite bands. I was lucky enough to see the rock trio perform at the v2008 festival last year and was eagerly anticipating a new album from them after the incredible “Blackholes and Revelations”. My prayers to the music gods were answered and back in September, “The Resistance” was released.

At first, I really wasn’t impressed. The album is very Muse, but at the same time sounds a bit different from their previous albums. A few of the songs (United States of Eurasia in particular) have a very Queen like sound to them. Anyway, I have listened more and more to the album over the past few months and have started to appreciate the genius behind the it. its still not as good as I would of hoped it to be, but a good album nevertheless.

Standout Tracks: Uprising, Resistance, United States of Eurasia.

8: Glee Cast – Volume 1
For those of you that haven’t heard of Glee, please listen up… Glee has possibly been my most favourite TV show this year. This teen drama follows a bunch of high school kids who sign up to join the Glee (music) club. Think High School Musical mixed with American Pie. Anyway, during each episode, the cast usually sing about 2/3 songs as part of the story. These songs range from Broadway classics, to mash ups of recent chart music.

This album is a collection of all the songs sung during the show in the first 10 or so episodes. A must have for any fan of the TV show.

Standout Tracks: Don’t Stop Believing, Take A Bow, Rehab, Mercy, It’s My Life/Confessions Part II.

7: Leona Lewis – Echo
oh Leona, Leona, Leona… since winning the x factor back in 2006, you have gone on to become one of the biggest stars of reality TV. I her first album “Spirit”, but it was a little bland for me to ever fall in love with it, however Leona’s second album “Echo” seems to of stepped up the game a bit.

Instead of the endless ballads of the first album, this new album seems to be a bit more lively with a few more upbeat tracks thrown in to mix things up a bit. Collaborations from OneRepublic and Justin Timberlake also feature on the album, which work really well, as does the cover of the classic Oasis song “Stop Crying Your Heart Out”. The result is a well balanced album showcasing the talent of Leona’s incredible voice and vocal range. It’s just a shame she doesn’t have a personalty to go with it.

Standout Tracks: Outta My Head, Lost Then Found, Naked, My Hands

6: Lady Gaga – The Fame Monster
Love her or hate her, you can deny the success that Lady Gaga has achieved over the past year. music website Last.fm placed Lady Gaga’s debut album “The Fame” at the top of their 2009 charts, and she has pretty much stormed to the top of the worldwide music charts too.

I brought “The Fame” back in the spring, and its my guilty pleasure album of the year. yes its not the most lyrically impressive album ever written, but catchy it is. The songs are a mix of electronica, pop, dance and hip-hop even a bit of rock. Then, last month, as if “The Fame” wasn’t already successful enough, she only went and released a special edition the album with 8 brand spanking new tracks under the name of “The Fame Monster”.

This women can not seem to do anything wrong at the moment, and I look forward to seeing what she has to offer in 2010. Move over Madonna, Music has a new Queen of Pop!

Standout Tracks: Poker Face, I Like It Rough, Telephone, Alejandro, Monster

5: The Saturdays – Workshaker
Being a gay, I am a sucker for girl groups, and The Saturdays are no exception. I first encountered the The Saturdays back in 2008 when they were a new unheard of band supporting Girls Aloud on the UK Tour. When they performed their warm up set I actually really enjoyed them and jumped on the bandwagon early. Their first album “Chasing Lights” was my 3rd best album of 2008, so I was very much looking forward to the follow up album “Workshaker”.

After hearing “Forever is over” – the first single taken from this, the second album from The Saturdays I wasn’t overly blown away, But I had a listen to the full album anyway, and its actually just as good, if not better than the first album. Its pure Cheesy pop with a capital C, and that’s exactly what I love about it.

Standout Tracks: Ego, One Shot, Open Up, Lose Control

4: Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown
I have always liked Green Day, and was a huge fan of the last studio album – American Idiot, so was eagerly anticipating something new from the band.
Because of this, I didn’t even hesitate the buy this new album on the day it was released.

“21st Century Breakdown” is very actually very similar to “American Idiot”, which is good in someways, but a little disappointing in others. It all just sounds a bit too familiar. I would of preferred to hear something a little different that differentiated the album from “American Idiot”, but that isn’t to say I don’t enjoy it. In fact, the album is my top rock/punk album of the year.

Standout Tracks: East Jesus Nowhere, Viva La Gloria (Little Girl), The Static Age, 21 Guns.

3: Kelly Clarkson – All I ever wanted
Back in 2005, Kelly Clarkson released the brilliant album “Breakaway”. Although it wasn’t anything ground breaking, it was just full of catchy and well written pop. This put Kelly Clarkson at the top of my favourite female solo artists. Then, in 2007 Kelly Clarkson released the album “My December” which if truth be told I was quite disappointed from with.

However, 2009 saw the return of Kelly Clarkson with the single “My Life Would Suck Without You”, which I loved. She later went on to release the album “All I Ever Wanted”, which I think saw Kelly Clarkson return to her best.

Standout Tracks: Cry, Don’t Let Me Stop You, Long Shot

2: Alexandra Burke – Overcome
This time last year, Alexandra Burke was one of the 3 finalists of x-factor 2008 along with JLS and Eggnog. To be honest, I wanted JLS to win, but Alexandra took the top spot, won the recording contract and subsequently went on make an album. 10 months later, and Alexandra released her first official single “Bad Boys” from her upcoming debut album. At first I wasn’t impressed. I could tell it would grow on me, but wasn’t really up there will Leona Lewis’s first release.

Anyway, soon after the release of “Bad Boys” Alexandra realised her debut album “Overcome”. I thought I would give it a go, and OH MY GOD, I LOVE IT!
The album is a mixture of ballads, cheesy pop, R&B, Dance and everything else in-between. Some might criticise her for not having a particular style, but that what I liked about the album – its a true showcase of what she is capable of. With joint efforts from Ne-Yo and production by RedOne, you can tell that this album has had some serious input and money spent on it.

Standout Tracks: Silence, Broken Heels, Dump and You Broke my Heart.

1: Little Boots – Hands
I first heard about Little Boots after downloading the free iTunes Single of the Week track “Stuck on repeat” earlier in the year. I find this a great way to discover new music, and fill up your music collection with a few tracks you wouldn’t usually buy. Anyway, I fell in love with the track, so made a mental note to kept an eye out for anything else from Little Boots.

Over the summer I then heard the track “Remedy” on the radio and became obsessed with it, pretty much making it the track of my summer. This was my deciding factor into buying the album which turned out to be the right thing to do, as it went on to become my favourite album of the year.

Standout Tracks: Remedy, Earthquake and Mathematics.

Ever since the AppStore was released for the iPhone/iTouch I have been on what seems a constant mission to find the best Twitter app.

I started off with Twitterrific, which I found a bit poor to be honest. I soon moved on to Twittelator, and was surprised how much better it was. Twittelator stayed o.n my iTouch for a while before I liked it enough to buy an upgrade to Twittelator Pro.

The pro version offered a few new features including one that allowed you to view a longer history on your timeline. Something I found important after catching up with all my amsrician followers first thing in the morning.

Twittelator Pro stayed my top Twitter client on my iTouch until the day I got an iPhone. I installed Twittelator Pro on my iPhone and continued to use it, however it started to annoy me.

Over the month it has been updated many times, each occurance adding more and more features, making it not only more powerful, but sadley more complicated and unstable.

One bug that seems to always occur in Twittelator pro I the failure of media uploads. Photo/video uploads to twitpic, twitvid, YouTube seem to fail 9/10. Something that eventually made me give up on the app.

Te next app I tried was TweetDeck. TweetDeck is simple gorgeous to look at and has a really simple and intuative interface. Unfortunatly it does have much in the way of features.

One feature it does have which I liked the idea of is custom groups, in which you can organise and group followers into to seperate them. For example you coul have a “News” category or “Celebrities”. As great as this feature sounds, it was sadly let down by the fact some peoples tweets never seemed to show up. Tweets would simple not be shown in the app. This caused me to move on yet again.

So now I am using SimplyTweet, which seems pretty stable and does most of the things I want. It also has groups, bu is a little flakey at times. Features could be improved, but so far it’s one o the best apps I have used.

*Update: 13/10/2009*
So a few people have told me to try Tweetie, and more specifically Tweetie2. Truth is, I tried Tweetie a long time ago and didn’t like it so much that it only stayed installed on my iPhone for about 10minutes. Last night I thought I would give Tweetie2 a go, and am still not impressed.

Yes things have been improved, and it’s not a bad Twitter app, but it’s not a great Twitter app. There a few things that stand out as annoying. Firstly, even if you only have one Twitter account it makes you select one before your timeline is loaded.

Next when the timeline is loaded, lovely little blue lights under the icons for Timeline/Replies/Messages show up to show new entries but there is no indicate as to how many there are to read. The little red dot with the number in is pretty standard these days for a iPhone twitter app, so its weird no having it.

A few other things available in other apps that are sadly missing from Twittie2 include things such as Push Notifications and Groups which is a shame. So overall, it’s a pretty average app that I would say is worth the download cost.

So any suggestions as to other twitter apps fo the iPhone I should to try?

if you own an iPod Touch or iPhone and you do not have Rolando, then you are seriously missing out on quite possibly the greatest game available on the app store.

Rolando is a classic platform based game that has been clearly developed with the iPhone’s unique combination of touch interface and motion sensitivity taken into consideration.

The object of the Rolando game is quite simple. You basically have a bunch of little round characters called Rolando’s which you must lead through various obstacles in order to safely get them into the home found at the end of each level. The game is controlled by simply tilting the device to roll the Rolando’s along, and occasionally interacting with them by flicking them over obstacles, or moving special objects on the screen. The game is colourful, great to look at and beautifully designed. Music and sound effects add to the experience of the game making it a that little bit more fun. As well as saving Rolando’s, you can optionally collect crystals and race through the levels before the time runs out in order to collect extra points. As we all know, points mean prizes, and the prizes on offer are a whole bunch of bonus levels that are available through the main menu.

The only thing I would criticize about this game is the time limits allocated for each level. They are impossible to beat, and although a level can still be completed even though you have run out of time, you can never seem to score full points on any of the levels!

I completed all 32 levels of Rolando over the course of a few weeks, and didn’t even hesitate to purchase the follow up game “Rolando 2: Quest for the Golden Orchid” from the app store.

Rolando 2 is basically the same game, but with a few new twists including a more 3D environment, new characters, new baddies and some new features such as weapons and even vehicles. Rolando 2 feels very familiar to Rolando 1, and offers new challenges and obstacles to overcome, Again, the time limits for each level seem impossible to beat, but maybe I am just too slow.

I am already 26 levels into Rolando 2, and am hoping to see Rolando 3 appear on the app store soon.

in summary, this is the best game I have yet to see on the iPhone, and game which everyone should own.

*****
five out of five stars

On Monday morning I was doing my usual routine of checking my twitter feed for the first time since the night before whilst tucking into my bowl of breakfast and enjoying my first cup of coffee of the day! I was almost upto date with reading all the latest tweets from my followers when a particular one caught my eye, and almost made me choke on my cheerios!

The tweet was, I think from @ehu, who had posted a comment about the Spotify app for iPhone finally being made available for download on the iTunes app store. Almost instantly, I quit my twitter app, and logged straight into the app store, where due to my constant daily checking for the app using the search feature, the Spotify app sure enough came up in the results begging to be downloaded.

Since its announcement a few months ago, the Spotify app has probably one of the most eagerly anticipated apps for the iPhone to date. For those of you unfamiliar with the service, Spotify is a free and legal desktop based internet service that provides almost instant streaming of a huge library of music with particularly no buffering delay.

At the moment, Spotify is only legally available in most European countries, and yesterday Spotify actually resorted back to an invite only policy here in the UK for new customers due to the increased popularity of the service over the past few days.

The catalogue of music available is similar to that of iTunes, but listening to the music is free thanks to radio style adverts that are played inbetween every couple of tracks played. These adverts can be removed by signing up to a premium service that currently costs £9.99 a month or £119.88 a year!

On Monday, mobile versions of the service were launched for free download on both Android and iPhone devices. The catch with the mobile versions is that you have to be signed up to a premium account in order to use it!

I have been using the standard free account on the desktop service on my PC at home since it was launched opening in the UK back in February, but decided to treat myself to a months subscription to Spotify premium just to try out the iPhone app myself.

I have been using it most of this week, and am so far very impressed.

These are a few of the things I particularly like about the app…

• The design and interface of the app is clean, clear and easy to use. It has a very similar feel to the iPod app interface which I like as it keeps things simple and intuitive.

• The improvement in sound quality between the free account (160kb/s) and the premium account (320kb/s) is noticeably better, providing a music richer, clearer and cleaner sound.

• Streaming over wifi is instant, and even when using a 3G connection, buffering seems almost instant! Using a EDGE connection was a little annoying due to the buffering and cutting out of music, and the GPRS was hardly worth using at all.

• Playlists can be created and edited on the iPhone itself, and any playlists created through the desktop client are automatically shown in the iPhone app ready to be played.

• My favourite feature in the app is how playlists can be made “Offline”, meaning that instead of relying on an internet connection such as WiFi or 3G to stream your music over, playlists can be downloaded to the iPhone using a WiFi connection, and then played for up to a month without connecting back to the service using an internet connection. This is a great feature, and although seems a little slow during the syncing process, does provide you with the ability to listen to your spotify playlists wherever you are no matter if you have a network signal or not.

As great as the Spotify app is, there is, as you would expect a few drawbacks…

• Obviously the big drawback to iPhone app is the lack of background app support meaning you can only listen to music using spotify when the spotify app is open. Whenever you want to read a SMS, check your calendar, or use another app you have to close spotify and therefore cut off the music you are listening too. A nice feature Spotify have included to ease this pain is that the music instantly resumes from where it left off the moment the app is reopened!

• I assume this isn’t an issue with the Android app seeing as though Android supports running apps in the background. I personally think this is one of the major let downs to the iPhone, and I hope Apple realise this soon and provide some sort of answer to it, otherwise I can see Android taking over as the more popular mobile platform for both consumers and developers.

• As I previously mentioned, Wi-Fi syncing of offline playlists does seem very slow, but I assume half of that problem is probably down to the heavy traffic you must be experiencing on the spotify servers since the app became available.

• The shuffle option is great, but would be nice if you could shuffle across all your playlists instead of just within the once selected.

• The desktop client I use on my PC has Last.fm integration meaning all the music I listen to is automatically “scrobbled” to my Last.fm profile. The Spotify iPhone app doesn’t presently support this feature which although isn’t an issue as such; it is however a tad annoying. If it was a issue of bandwidth or data connections, then what would be nice is that a list of all played tracks are somehow cached and only submitted when connected to a suitable internet connection such as wifi or 3G where they can then be submitted as scrobbles to Last.fm.

• Also the option to support Last.fm’s Love/Ban feature would be nice just so you can mark songs as favourites in some way. Even if spotify developed their own implementation of this it would be a useful feature as I mostly use spotify to legally try new music before I buy it, so the option to rate songs, or even tag them would be a great addition to a future update.

• Another feature available in the desktop client that missing from the iPhone app is spotify URL support. On the desktop client, you can share you playlists or even individual songs by sending someone a special spotify URL, but at the moment there doesn’t appear to be any way to read or generate these URL in the iPhone app.

Whether or not the app fully justifies continuing to pay £10 a month for the subscription, I have not quite decided yet, but all in all, I am quite enjoying using the app, and think that its a great start for version 1 (actually named version 0.3.19).

It should be interesting to see how the app develops over time, and I am excited to see what new features future updates might bring.

my rating for this app: 7/10

So, it would appear that I have somewhat neglected this blog a tad. I haven’t updated it in nearly 7 months which I guess I pretty lazy of me.

To be honest, I believe that blogging is kinda dead. A few years ago it was all the rage, but sinc Twitter has become so popular people are limiting what they got to say on the web to 140 characters instead of writing mammoth posts.

I for one am a huge fan of the whole Twitter phenomenon and it has pretty much taken priority as my #1 online activity. Blogging and facebook all seem a little too much like hard work. Tweeting I quick and easy and now I have got myself an iPhone is a lot easy to keep up with on the go!

But there is also this wordpress iPhone app which I have only just got round to installing on my iPhone. Who knows, now that I have got it all set up I might just blog a little more often. No promises, but I will try.

I’m also considering a bit of an overhaul on this website anyway to tidy thing up, freshen things up and make room for a few more ideas I have been meaning to implement over the past few months!

Anyway, that’s all for now. Apologies once again for the lack of updates on here, and apologies for any bad spelling – this iPhone maybe all kinds of awesome but lacks a spell check to deal with my terrible English and dyslexia (BTW, who decided to make that word so difficult to spell!). Until the next time…

Over the past year, Twitter has seen one hell of a growth spurt. I first signed up to twitter about 2 years ago under the account @closetcase, but after 197 updates and only 22 followers I decided to give up.

Then, after closing my previous blog back in last April, I decided to give Twitter a second chance, and haven’t looked back since.

Since then I have witnessed how twitters status as the next big thing in social networks has sharply climbed to new heights. Thanks to people like Barack Obama (who used twitter for his presidential campaign), and Stephan Fry (who has almost become somewhat of an ambassador for the website) more and more people are signing up to use the service, including many high profile celebrities.

Over the past few weeks however, this seems to of exploded in the UK with thanks to the BBC. Now, I know the BBC have used twitter themselves for a while now, but TV and Radio presenters have now started flocking to the service, and after talking about it on their various shows have drawn in many thousands of their audience to the service as well.

This may all seem well and good, but the problem is, can twitter continue to survive with this kind of growth?

Currently, Twitter doesn’t actually make any money. They simply survive on generous amounts of funding from venture capitalists who see the people potential in Twitter. But, just how could they make money from a service that basically tells people what you are doing?

Well, the first obvious route to go down would be advertising. Facebook implemented advertising and has done pretty well with it, but twitter has such a clean, almost sterile feel to it that advertising would somewhat dirty it up and most probably wreak the site.

So what other alternatives are there? Well, one I would quite happily get behind and support would be to implement a Pro Account option.

Popular sites like flickr and last.fm offer such accounts, and a small percentage of users don’t seem to mind signing up. I personally have both a pro account on flickr, and a subscription account on last.fm, and for the extra benefits you receive in return, don’t mind paying out at all!

so what benefits could twitter offer a pro user? well, for starters here are a few of my suggestions.

Guaranteed failwhale free experience:
its not happened so much recently, but in the past twitter was always suffering from down time, and thus the appearance of the infamous fail-whale. Pro users could be put on a priority server guaranteed to be active during high demand periods, allowing them to continue tweeting and not letting down any of their followers.

Increased/unlimited Api calls:
some people may not know this, but if you access twitter through some client or service that take use of the API, then you are actually limited to a maximum  of 100 requests per 60 sixty minute time period. This is fine for most people, but a high user during a high demand period may require more. A pro user could have a much higher allowance than a standard user.

Higher priority in searches, or the public timeline:
Pro users could be given a higher ranking in search results just as Google gives higher priority to the people who pay for higher search results. Also, pro users tweets could be more prominent in the services public timeline. Both options would give pro users a greater potential audience.

Mobile support:
I am not too sure on the status for the rest of the world, but here in the UK twitter deactivated the option to allow SMS notifications to be sent to your phone from twitter. This was all down to issues with costs and mobile networks, so SMS notification in the UK were stopped. A Pro user could have these back, and even if it was just limited to replies and direct messages I am sure it would be a welcome return.

Increased user profile:
A pro user could also have an increased user profile given them the ability to state a bit more about themselves. One thing I personally would like like to see implemented would be the ability to save previous avatar images, so you can easily switch back and forth between old and new ones as and when you choose.

Anyway, they are a few of my ideas, and I am sure other people could think of some more. Personally I think that implementing a pro account option to twitter would be the best way that the website could monetise there service, and finally start being in some money.

By guestimating that twitter must have in the region of 15 million users, and assuming that only 1% of them sign up to a pro account costing something like $25 a year, then we are looking at $3.75m a year. That’s only if 1% of users signed up. 5% would bring in nearly $19m a year. not bad for website that’s making nothing at the moment really!

I know I would sign up – would you?

Does any one else out there watch Battlestar Galatica? I know a lot of sci-fi fans do, but just wondering about the number of hetrosexually challenged watchers out there?

I loved the first 3 seasons of the show, and season 4 started off poor but gradually got better, but since the 4th series continued a few weeks back I must admit to really starting to lose interest!

The revelation of the final cylon was quite a shock, but not so much in a ‘that changes everything’ kind of way, and things are just a bit meh!

The cylons are nothing more than just humans now, there is no real goal for the human race, and no more mystery!

The once object of my desire Lee Adama (Jamie Bamber) has become a bit of a bore since getting into politics but thankfully, the hotness that is Karl Agathon (Tahmoh Penikett) is still looking as fine as ever and just about keeping me interested in the show!

Anyone else join me with my opinions on BSG?

I just watched the first episode of season 7 of 24 and thought I would post a quickly… this post contains spoilers, so be warned!

24 is one of my favourite programs on TV, probably in joint 2nd place with Lost after Prison Break.

Anyway, as disappointed as I was to see Jack Bauer running around without his famous manbag, I was rather surprised by the hotness that made an appearance in this new series!

First up we have good old Tony Almeida is back. Yes, Tony being the guy who we all believed died in series 5 has somehow risen from the grave, and is now the bad guy!

now, whilst Tony was 6ft under, he must of either found a sweet stylist, or the boy must of decided for a make over to celebrate his big bad comeback, because not only is Almeida back, but damn he is looking hot!

The new short hair, the designer stubble, and all those black clothes have given him a new edge, a edge that nearly made me slip off my chair!

Plus, what with Michelle Dessler being all dead and that (come on, surely she couldn’t of survived the car bomb!) he is also single! *YAY* “Come and get me Tony, I am open all seasons!”

Now, as if Tony wasn’t enough to give me some happy dreams tonight, it looks as if the new occupants of the White House have decided to recruit some new fresh faces to keep the West Wing looking fabulous since the Palmer brothers vacated! Yes, by the looks of it, Madame President Allison Taylor been shopping down Hotness Avenue, and picked herself up a stonking good Personal Detail for her Husband.

SS Agent Brian Gedge, as played by the gorgeous Warren Kole, had me dripping like a fucked fridge! Why she hired him for her husband is a mystery, but one can only assume she is either a raving dyke, or the sly old dog has an ulterior motive to have her wicked way with him behind her husbands back!

A quick look through Warren Kole’s listed appearances on his IMDB page suggests his only in the first episode of this season, but we can but hope this is mealy a mistake!

Anyway, that’s all I wanted to get off my chest for tonight! tiss getting late a little late for a school night, so best hit the sack!

Its become something of a tradition of mine the past few years to blog about my New Years Resolutions, and although my old blog is no longer around, I thought i would continue that tradition with EvilGayTwin… so here they are, my New Years Resolutions for 2009!

1. Get back in shape!

Last year I decided I wanted to try and get into shape for my twin brothers wedding. I wouldn’t say that I am obese, but I do carry a bit of spare tire around my waist! So with a sensible diet, and some exercise I ended up losing a stone in weight which I was really proud of, and although I personally didn’t think that it showed much, a lot of people commented how good I looked, which really boosted my confidence!

Anyway, since the wedding, I have slipped back into bad habits! Although I have been mostly still following the the diet I was on pre-wedding, I started including more and more treats after the wedding, and combined with a total loss of interest in going to the gym these past few months, I have nearly put back on the stone in weight that I had lost! *BAD ME*

so, now that the festive season I out of the way for another 12 months, I thought I would try and get myself back to the state I was in a few months ago.

It doesn’t exactly help that I got over a kilogram of Green & Black’s Chocolate (my personal heroin) for xmas this year, but I have decided to try and ration myself to only a few squares a day!

I am also going to try and get back into my old regular exercise routine of gym 3 times a week, and swimming once, maybe twice a week!

2. Be more drink aware

I have never been more of a drinker really. Living out in the arse end of the deepest, darkest corners of Essex, I usually have to drive a lot when going out, so tend to spend much of my social life sober! Although this could be generally considered as a good thing, it does have its draw backs… the most prominent one being that I am a totally light weight when it does come to drinking alcohol. Literally, 3 drinks and I get to that silly stage, 4 drinks and I start stumbling, 5 drinks and I am anyone’s! In recent months, my intolerance for alcohol has started to become more of a problem for me.

At my twin brothers wedding I was frequently described as being “rather merry” and “lively on the dancefloor” after a few glasses of table wine! At a friends birthday in October, I got in a bit of a state in the club we was in! At my work xmas meal/party, I regretted taking advantage of the free bar, and even during last nights celebrations I didn’t come out too well after the pre-midnight drinking games!

I am half tempted to go t-total and cut out drinking alcohol altogether, but sometimes a drink is needed to losen up a bit and enjoy yourself, so instead I am just going to really cut down and try to stick to my limits!

3. Out with the old, and in with the new!

Like any gay man, I like to look good, and can be very concious about what I wear. However, over the years my styles in fashion choices have varied, and whlist I have continued to add to my clothing collection, I never seem to throw anything away. This has left me with loads of clothes that  rarely see the light of day, let alone ever get worn!

So I have decided that every time I buy a new item of clothing, it will be to replace a older item I never wear any more, and that older item will have to be thrown out!

4. Save more money!

I am quite good managing my money as it is, but what with the falling house prices here in the UK, I am hoping that this year will finally be the year I can move out of my parents house and finally buy a property of my own!

I already have a reasonable amount set aside for a deposit on a house, but my plan is to try and move out during the later half of the year, so between now and then I am going to try saving as much of the spare pennies I can resist from spending in order to build up as much as a deposit as I can!

So there they are, I am only making 4 resolutions this year in a hope that I wont be putting too much pressure on myself to try and stick to them all! I will try posting updates on any progress I make at achieving them!