On occasion, I just wonder whether my brain works slightly differently to “most peoples”. Today has contained one of those occasions.

If you were running a car-hire company, would you put an ice-scraper in each car during the winter months?

I know I would – having today had to go and buy a new one. (I’ve got one in the normal car, of course – but not in the hire one. Fuckers)

I’m sure that the excuse for not doing so would be “because of the cost” when people take the scrapers for themselves afterwards. Me, I’d put some branding/advertising on them, and job done – I don’t know how much return business you’d get, but every winter those people would be seeing the name of the hire company, and be reminded of it.

Enterprise Car Hire, that’s yet another bloody trick you’re missing.

(via FailBlog) This has to be one of the best (and darkest) uses of Christmas Lights yet seen…

Bambi in Lights

The work of a fantastically sick mind.

I Love it.

via bsag, I think this slimline plug is an absolutely fantastic idea.

UK 3-pin plugs are pretty sturdy, but if you’re carrying a couple of power cords around – or phone chargers, laptop power bricks etc. – then you quickly become aware of how bulky they are too.

The design of the slimline plug is aimed at getting round that, and seems to work really well. Even better are the adapters that allow three or four slimline plugs to be used in a space similar to that of a normal three-pin plug.

Despite wanting to get back into writing, once again I won’t be taking part  in NaNoWriMo (Or National Novel Writing Month, to give it the full title)

Both Andy and Gordon have written their thoughts about it, which pretty much resonate with my own.  I think that while it can be good, I don’t actually want to write somerhing where, as the NaNoWriMo site puts it

The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

The idea is that you just write, you don’t (in theory at least) spend loads of time thinking about story arcs, characters, events and the like. It’s the equivalent of writing a brain-dump, a stream of consciousness.   And that, I think, is my problem with it. I don’t like reading that kind of book – why the blinking sun-stunned chuff would I want to write one?

As it is, with D4D™ I’ve written some 800,000+ words (which is pretty sodding gobsmacking in itself) which is the equivalent of roughly eight novels. Obviously I know it’s not eight novels, but it does work as a comparison figure.

I’d like to go back to writing something ‘proper’ – it’s been an aim for a while, and will continue to be so – whether it’s a screenplay or something more novel-like. But I want to do it properly, not just as a “Write 50,000 words in a month” project. I’ve got some ideas that need developing – and there’ll be more about that in a different post sometime soon – but I honestly don’t think NaNoWriMo is for me.

Of course, if we come back at the start of November 2010 and I still haven’t got any of those ideas out into ‘proper’ writing, I might have a bit of a rethink on that.

Today there’s a lot of coverage about a suggestion to reduce the workforce of the NHS by 10% – and the resultant kerfuffle between Government, the NHS, and management consultants.

Currently the Government is saying that they have rejected this advice by McKinsey and Company, (Never heard of ‘em? Me either.) which included closing 137,000 clinical and admin posts in order  to save £20bn by 2014.

I’m pretty sure I could show how to save the NHS that much money by 2014, without losing a single clinical staff member.

Mind you, it would involve getting rid of shitloads of middle-managers, consultants, and fuckstick accountants. And of course that’s a plan that would never achieve approval – because it’s got to go through all those levels of shitbag middle-managers, consultants and fuckstick accountants before it can happen. And those self-serving fuckers are never going to do themselves out of a job. (Which is the same reason the “paperless office” will never happen)

I’m not suggesting getting rid of all the managers, as I think most people would agree that there need to be some of the buggers around, if only in order to make sure that the clinical professionals don’t drown in paperwork and procedures in the meantime. (Although of course if you get rid of enough of the middle-managers, you probably get to eliminate a whole host of the bullshit paperwork at the same time – sorry, it’s “streamlining” now isn’t it, not “getting rid of the shit”)

Still, wield a big enough axe, drop it from high enough, I’m pretty sure it’d still work…

Happy, happy day.

Channel 4 have announced that the 2010 series (the 11th) of Big Brother is to be the last one on Channel Four. Viewing figures have been dropping in recent years, from the 2002 peak of 8million people down to the current series with an average of 2 million people watching.

Personally I don’t give a damn about Big Brother and/or its spin-off shows, but at least with luck it’ll be off mainstream TV after this time next year.

I’m quite certain that some other dumb-arse channel will scoop up Big Brother past 2010 – but hopefully it’ll be some little-watched satellite channel that thinks it’ll get the viewers.

And in the meantime, maybe – just maybe – it’ll be the start of a move away from these pox-ridden “reality” shows that seem to pollute so much TV at the moment.