D4D

An example of the unreasonable man who makes all the progress

Archive for the month “July, 2010”

30 Jul 2010

Repeatedly Released

Sometimes you look at a story and think “Oh, there’s got to be a lot more than that behind it”.

In this case, the story was about Arran Coghlan, the Cheshire ‘businessman’ who’s now been cleared of murder on three separate occasions. That’s going some. But really, the guy’s either incredibly unlucky to be caught up in these types of situations, or he’s involved in some way or another.

The three cases were :

  • Cleared in 1996 of shooting Chris Little dead at the wheel of his Mercedes in Marple, Stockport.
  • Stood trial for the murder of drug dealer David Barnshaw, who was kidnapped and forced to drink petrol before being burned alive in the back of a car in Stockport in 2001
  • (The most recent) accused of shooting dead Stephen Akinyemi in a fight at his £2m home in Alderley Edge in February

Additionally, on New Year’s Day 2008, Coghlan was stabbed in the head, face and back in a frenzied attack in Cobdens Bar in Stockport.

There’s also the ‘small’ matter of an assault charge in an unrelated matter, for which he will be back at Liverpool Crown Court for a mention hearing in September.

You look at that story and you just have to assume that his businesses can’t be completely legitimate. That’s a lot of trouble for one businessman to be in, isn’t it?

Posted by lyle in Cynicism, News, Thoughts | Leave a Comment
29 Jul 2010
2 Comments

Facebook Users

I love all the garbage being spouted about the ‘leak’ of 100million Facebook users publically-available details.

Radio One’s headline on this was “Facebook users details are available online” – which elicited a “Well, duh!” response from me. They’ve always been available online – at Facebook. All of the information held in this file was already available at Facebook – it’s just it would’ve taken a bit more effort to get it all.

Every one of the people listed in the file hadn’t set their privacy settings properly. That’s more of an indictment about either

  1. how complex Facebook made their privacy settings
  2. how stupid / lazy people are when it comes to those settings
  3. how people really don’t think about their privacy and security at all

And that’s it.

If you can’t be bothered to check your privacy settings, you deserve to have your details published. After all, if one person can do it, so can others.

Posted by lyle in 1BEM, Charm School, People, Technology, Thoughts
29 Jul 2010
3 Comments

Learning to Read

One of my recent discoveries has been Tropicana‘s “Orange and Lime” juice. It’s really pleasant (if far more expensive than my normal “4 for £2″ stuff) so while it’s been on offer at [Local Supermarket] I got a couple in. Three for a fiver, rather than near-as-dammit £2 for one. (£2? For orange juice? They’re having a fucking laugh)

Except it turns out I can’t sodding read. Because one of the three cartons I purchased wasn’t Orange and Lime, but was instead Orange and Watermelon. Which is – well, not rank, but not that nice.

Most annoying. And quite a shock this morning when I finished an Orange and Lime, and topped it up with a new carton. Yep, the Orange and Watermelon one.

Orange Lime and Watermelon is – how shall I put this? – interesting. And not in an overly good way.

Posted by lyle in Domestic, Stupidity
28 Jul 2010
2 Comments

Speed Cameras

It’s currently looking like one of the victims of this new political Age of Austerity (AKA The”Can we cut it? Yes, we can!” years) will be the funding for speed-cameras. Sorry, ‘safety cameras’.

So far Oxfordshire is one of the first to say they’ll be turning the fixed cameras off, which will save them some £600,000 a year.

I have to say that I really don’t have an issue with this – I think that getting rid of the cameras will (in most cases) actually make the roads a bit safer. Yes, there are rat-runs where people are stupid and drive too fast – but in my experience, speed cameras cause far more dangerous driving than they prevent.

One prime example of this is the A11/A14 around Cambridge (and I think I’ve written about this before) – the intersection where they join has a speed camera just after it. I’ve seen far too many near-accidents at that point, where people have been feeding in just fine from the A11 at 70mph(ish) and then have to slap the brakes on because the people in front of them have dropped from 70mph to 50mph to get past the camera.  Yes, it’s down to human stupidity to drop to 50mph – 70mph is fine for going past that particular camera – but it’s still a much more dangerous junction because of the speed camera.

You see the same thing all over the place – people suddenly slowing from an already-legal speed, just to “make sure” they don’t get done by the camera.

So yeah, I think that getting rid of the cameras might just be an improvement to road safety in general, rather than a detriment to it.

Posted by lyle in 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, People, Politics, Thoughts
27 Jul 2010

Photography Bits

Of late I’ve been trying to get out a bit more with the camera, and fortunately there’ve been a couple of occasions recently where I’ve been able to do so.

The first of these was a couple of weeks ago, a Sunday in Norwich doing some photos for a local event, which went really well. (And that reminds me, I really must sort out those photos this week and send them in)

The second was over the weekend, a couple of hours in one of the local well-regarded plant centres, taking photos in their show garden. There’s the potential for some of the photos to go into their yearly brochure, but we’ll see how that goes.

Tonight is meeting up with the people I did the NCFE Photography course with – hard to believe it’s a year now since that finished – so it’s been a bit of a photoggy week all round.

Posted by lyle in Domestic, NCFE Course, Photography | Leave a Comment
26 Jul 2010

Ferrari and F1

Over the weekend at the German Grand Prix Ferrari were deeply unsubtle about their team orders, and forced one driver to give way to the other, allowing Fernando Alonso to win the grand prix. For this, they’ve been fined $100,000 (approx £65,000) but haven’t lost points or anything.

The fine is pretty much insignificant to Ferrari, and this just sends out the message that it’s OK to run to team orders, you’ll just fork out a bit of cash. (In Formula 1 terms, £65,000 is probably a new engine or something)

If the race stewards had really wanted to send a message that running to team orders (and making it public knowledge) then they would have docked Ferrari all the points they gained from both Alonso and Massa, as well as all the manufacturer’s championship points from the race. That would’ve been a significant loss.

Personally I don’t have that great an issue with team orders. Sometimes they make sense – for example, if there were a standing order that if your team-mate is coming through, you’re not quite so aggressive at trying to block them, so you don’t wipe out both cars and stuff the team’s race completely. But the clear-cut engineering of who they want to win, that is (to me) not on. If you know there will be team orders like that, it puts F1 at the same level of competitiveness as professional wrestling.

Posted by lyle in Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts | Leave a Comment
25 Jul 2010
1 Comment

Inception

Tonight we went off to see the new Chris Nolan film, Inception.  It’s had good reviews, and I’m generally a fan of Nolan’s stuff anyway, although some reviews had said it was really complex and hard to follow. Mind you, that’s not normally something I worry about. (it’s generally A Good Thing)

As it was, I really enjoyed the film. Personally I didn’t find it hard to follow at all – although there were a couple of irritating plot holes/errors that nagged – and it didn’t feel like 2½ hours of film at all. Again, that’s definitely A Good Thing – I could name a few that felt like every damn second of their runtime, and were the worse for it. (Lord of the Rings 2/3, Matrix 2/3, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, I’m looking at you – and a fair few others- here)

One of the things I liked about Inception was the insistence that you just go with the concept of being able to share dreams, and how the entire thing worked. I get irritated by films/books that explain everything and how it works – these things are about suspension of disbelief, of (in my opinion) just going with the story. Getting into the ins and outs of technology just makes you go “That’s not right”, and jars the experience more than it builds it.

All told, I thought Inception was pretty damn good. Maybe not “Best film of the year”, and probably not one I’d want/need to see again, but still good.

Posted by lyle in Domestic, Reviews(ish)

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