Portraiture
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Photography Leave a comment »I think that the photo accompanying this article is absolutely fantastic.
It sums up everything about the article in one image – you know what the person does straight away, and in my opinion it’s just brilliant.
Portrait of a bridge painter
Image (C) Guardian Newspapers 2009 and Murdo Macleod
How not to do it
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Toyota IE | Tags: ian corbett, toyota ie Leave a comment »This post has been deleted, on the request of Ian Corbett, Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland, and his legal advisers.
For more explanation, see here.
Mis-Spelling
Posted: Fri 24 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Stupidity, Thoughts 2 Comments »Yesterday, I got three spam emails attempting to go phishing for my log-in details.
Now, as I’ve said before many times, I feel that anyone who responds through these phishing emails deserves everything they get for being a bell-end and clicking on links in random emails. (Particularly when they then go to some very odd URLs that have nothing to do with the bank in question – in this case www.mybank.alliance-leicesterXXX.com)
And if anyone responded to any of these particular three emails, then they’re even more deserving of getting ripped off. In fact I’d then go so far as to simply term it as an idiot tax.
Because the subject line for all of these email addresses was :
Secure Message from Alliance & Liecester
And if you don’t spot that in the email, and still click on the links, you damn well deserve to lose your information/money.
Back to Where It Began
Posted: Thu 23 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »I see that the ITV series “The Bill” is getting a lot of publicity about how it’s going from being a shitey soap-type programme down to a one-hour/episode-per-week drama series. It’s even going out post-watershed.
But what no-one seems to be commenting on is the fact that this isn’t a new thing for The Bill – in fact, that’s right where it started.
So this rethink and reschedule is really more an acknowledgement that all the fucking about with it over the last few years didn’t work, so it’s going to go back to its roots a bit, and see where it goes from there.
Personally, I hope it works out – when it first came out, The Bill was a decent police series. Maybe it’ll go back to being one again, although only time will tell on that score.
Electric vs. Diesel
Posted: Thu 23 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »I have to say that attempting to justify electrifying the main train line between London and South Wales as “cutting the running cost and environmental impact of train services” really is utter, utter bollocks.
Now OK, I’m not an engineer, nor am I a train person in particular, so I don’t know the exact correlation of energy usage/efficiency between a diesel train and an electric one. And maybe the electric trains themselves are more energy-efficient than the diesel-powered ones. Fine.
But when you look at the bigger picture, that’s one fuck of a lot of electricity being chucked down the trainline. And that electricity has to be generated somewhere – which is still generating CO2 (unless it’s a nuclear power station, of course) and thus still having an effect.
So far as I can see, when you look at the entire thing, at least a diesel-powered train is using the energy it creates purely to power the train on demand. The electric line is (to my knowledge) powered constantly, rather than just “on demand”, which simply has to be more of a drain/waste, unless I’m completely mistaken.
This is the future. It’s greener, it’s cleaner, it’s faster, it’s more reliable. It’s making the railways fit for the 21st Century and encouraging more passengers to use the railways”
Aye, right. A £1billion project that’s not greener or cleaner. And I’d be more encouraged to use the railways if the services were a) on-time, b) organised and c) not utterly fucking extortionate.
Self Perception
Posted: Wed 22 July, 2009 Filed under: Health, Introspective, Thoughts, Weight Loss 1 Comment »One of the big issues for me when it comes to my weight is my own perception of it – or the lack thereof, I’m not sure which.
Firstly, there’s the simple fact that I’m pretty big anyway, although I’m not going to use (and never have used) the excuse of being “big-boned” for being the weight I am. However, one can’t escape the simple fact that (as I’ve said before) I’m still 6’3″(ish) tall, and have a chest measurement that’s at least 50″ on it’s own. And that’s a chest measurement, not a belly one – so we’re talking structure, not flab. All told, my body can take a fair bit of weight without looking like I’m fat.
Second, my mum (in particular) is by no means slim – that’s not meant nastily, simply a statement of fact – which has done something to my perceptions of size, in that “normal” in my head most definitely isn’t Size Ten, or whatever.
The third thing is that on the rare occasions I see a TV programme like “Biggest Loser” or whatever, I try to compare my own weight with that of the competitors. And that’s a problem – because I simply don’t have the rolls of fat that appear on them, even when those people are spposedly lighter than the just-over-300pounds that I am currently. (And yes, I know that I’m probably taller than they are too, etc. etc.)
I know I’m overweight, I know I need to lose some – and I’m working on it, of which more later in the week – but somewhere along the line I need to believe it as well as know it, if that makes any sense…
Overheating
Posted: Tue 21 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, News, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »I didn’t comment at the time when the story first broke, but I’m really pleased to see today that the police officer whose dogs died in a car outside the headquarters for Nottinghamshire Police is to be charged with causing unnecessary suffering to the animals.
Obviously no-one outside the situation knows the full story of what happened – yet. Regardless, it’s hard to imagine any dog owner – let alone the owner/trainer of two police dogs – just leaving their dog(s) in a car on a hot day. Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can let it happen.
I don’t care whether you’re in a meeting, or get called into something “important”, if it’s that hot and you know you’ve left dogs out in the car, you say so and then get out to make sure they’re OK. It’s that simple. Of course, ideally you’ve not got dogs in the car on a day like that anyway, but sometimes it does happen.
But whatever happens, if your job is based around animals, you simply don’t let those animals die (or suffer) needlessly.