28 Days Later

I’d like to say that it was my position as chief content editor of d4d that got me in to the first screening of 28 Days Later in Manchester. But it wasn’t – it was the fact I’m a sad git on occasion, and wanted to see the damn film.

Well, the new film by Danny Boyle (Of Trainspotting and Shallow Grave fame, and The Beach infamy) and scripted by Alex Garland (also of The Beach fame) seemed like a good idea – something worth seeing. Even if the poxy cinema company stopped their “free seat, any show” deal a day early, so I had to pay for the priviledge of watching a film accompanied by the background death rattle of a terminally sick aircon system.

Anyway, the film. Worth it? I’m not really sure – it’s mainly shot on handheld Digital Video (DV) cameras, and I’m really not convinced about them. I’m going to need to see it again at a decent cinema to be sure, but everything just seemed to be slightly out of focus. I suppose that could be the effect the director was looking for, but I’m not keen on it – just makes it look messy, for the most part.

The shots of a deserted London are very creepy – it’s a very “otherworldly” feel to it at that point, and very disorienting to see Piccadilly with no-one in it, for example. I know it was mainly done by filming at 4 in the morning, before the commuters get in, but all the same, it’s an effective scenario. The same applies to the deserted motorways and so on – and it just combines to make the “burning Manchester” into the naff effect it should have sounded like, even in the script.

Overall, I’m just not sure about this one – the storyline’s pretty good; the acting’s good; the scripting’s OK, such as it is; but the whole seems somehow less than it’s parts, and I came out feeling somewhat dissatisfied with the entire thing.

Great Northern Square

Ah, the joys of being in Manchester on a grey Thursday. Although I had an excuse – going to see 28 Days Later, the new Danny Boyle film (a review wil be on here later)…

And yes, the Christmas decorations are already up, or going up.

 

Grey Skies

And just a pic I took because of the sky outside yesterday. Should have plonked it online yesterday, forgot til today…

Ashton

Other than that little lot, there’s a mini-rant here about a town near where I live. Which’ll probably get the populace up in arms, or me struck off by the tourist board, or something similar.

Beware, new comments system ahoy.

Right, I’m pissed off with Enetation, as it’s been down for near as dammit three days now. OK, whoopie do it’s being upgraded, but it shouldn’t take 3 days. So lets see if HaloScan works any better. It’s seemed to on the other sites I’ve seen it used on.

Hopefully at some point I’ll be able to re-access enetation, and move comments over to Haloscan, rather than losing them completely. Sorry to the people who have commented and can no longer see those posts.

Cocaine ruined my career

God, it’s been “high profile media sackings” day today, hasn’t it. First of all (technically yesterday, but it’s within the last 24 hours so I’m calling that a day, for sake of argument) old Angus gets sacked from his job of 12ish years, Have I Got News For You, then today alleged rapist (blah blah blah) John Leslie gets kicked off ITV. I can’t say it bothers me as much in Deayton’s case, as he’s admitted to it, and yawn, but it’s known he did what he’s been accused of.

But sacking Leslie well, that’s one I don’t quite understand. Other than being (I hope) not the only person in the UK to go “who?”, whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? From the article, it’s saying they’ve asked him what he intends to do about the allegation, (and that’s all it is) he hasn’t answered, and so he’s been sacked. Doesn’t seem fair, somehow. Ah well…

Unshocking “news” in that Enetation appears to be stuffed yet again…

Freeview launch sponsored by washing powder manufacturer

Quick quote from BBC News about the launch of Freeview :

“…but some households will have to upgrade existing ariels at their own cost.”

I think they mean aerials. Or can we change our Persils and Surfs at the same time?

Update – bah, they’ve changed it on the site. Still, I thought it was funny

I’d just like to wave a quiet hello to whoever was the person yesterday who got the 9,000th page view.

I know it’s hardly a bigtime thing to notice (and probably shows I’m still at the juvenile stage of paying attention to logfiles/log analysis (which always sounded more like something a proctologist would do)) but all the same, this blog thing has only been going for three months, and prior to that there’d been a grand total of 2000 views in the prior four months. So – 7000ish page views in three months is something I’m really quite chuffed about. I suppose I must be doing somerthing right – although quite what, I have no idea.

Still, it’s fun. And roll on the 10,000th, probably in Nov sometime at the present rate.

Considering that they deal with incontinence products, should Tena really say that they’re “number one in the world” on their TV adverts?

Alabama 3 – Power in the Blood

Yes, a new album from Alabama 3. I can’t deny it, I love their stuff anyway, and at risk of being a geek, I’ve got all the released albums, plus a couple of limited release ones from the concerts. So knowing that a new album was on the way, I was in the shops to get it on the day of release.

Was it worth it? In a word, yes. The progression through the albums is interesting – the basic roots stay the same, but there’s still a progression. Power in the Blood is the 3rd full album, and it’s bloody good. Sticking it through a decent stereo system always helps, the bass clomps away in a fashion familiar to the other albums, and although there’s a touch more of the synth and techie side, it’s still far more based around proper instruments – never a bad thing…

A couple of the tracks are actually ones that they’ve played several times at concerts already, and it’s (in general) a real pleasure to hear them again, only this time done in the studio. BulletProof is a bit of a letdown – purely personal taste, but there we go, I prefer the version from gigs (and on one of the limited release Cds) to the album one.

Listening to the album has made me look forward to seeing them in concert again (on the 19th, if memory serves), and for me, that’ll do. It’s a good album – as with all the others, it’ll take time to localise onto favourite tracks and the like – Alabama 3 (they’re not from Alabama, and there’s a lot more than three of them) aren’t a singles band, they’re in it for the long haul, the album is the thing, and that’s what I love. Now, can we just have a new album in less than 12 month’s time?

Now this is a cool desk. Basically, a desk with a PC built into it. Very geeky, but all the same, definitely high on the “I want” list…

And this morning the real comedy value comes from seeing who forgot to turn their clocks back. Thankfully, most of my stuff now does it automatically, which is nice. *grin*

*Update* And yes, it looks like Blogger did it automagically as well…

Reveal you have a micropenis and get off scot-free on all charges. To face a life of ridicule after having your story published in the paper, and on the internet, linked to by as many cruel and nasty people as possible.

I’m sure everyone knows already now, but Peter of NakedBlog fame/infamy is now sitting at http://nakedblog.blogspot.com/ on a temporary basis while his current ISP gets the DDOS kicking of it’s life, and he heads of to pastures new and ISPs unDDOS’d.

Dumbledore kicks the bucket and Blogger gets hacked. What a day…

Although in fairness (and in reference to Tom’s point re Blogger) I should point out that in a way we do get an export of blogger – it’s the archives.

In another logfile moment, I’m amazed to say I’m 2nd (out of 2,180,000) in google for why you need to sleep?. Not bad – I’m sure it’ll change in time…

I’d also like to know who LookSmart are, and why every single search I get from them is for bangedup.com. I get two or three searches per day for it, from that site, and it’s always for www.bangedup.com or some derivative of it. Weird.

Nice to see that Enetation’s living up to it’s reputation, and is down again.

Sooner or later I’m going to sort out that comments system thing…

I’m just waiting for this to be protested about by the Society for Prevention of Abuse to Mimes. ( SPAM )

They’re a silent majority, apparently.

Thanks to Iain pointing out this story (well, actually the pic of the paratrooper looking slightly overweight, gay and blue) I couldn’t help spotting the pic on the left below, and wondering why Peter Kay was in Russia.

Ah, the joys of spam. I’ve finally received my own copy of the infamous nigerian scam. And thought I’d put it on the site, just for the sheer hell of it. I can’t believe people actually fall for this crap. But they do, time and time again.

Obviously the greed mode runs in the same space that logic mode normally occupies, and thus overwrites all common sense…

OK, I know I said I wouldn’t blether on about earth tremors etc., but it looks like I’m now living in an earthquake zone.

Cool.

Ah, thank you insomnia. I thought I’d got you kicked, but no, a full return to form. Laying awake last night, all night, brain racing at Mach 1, while the body screamed for sleep.

And God, it’s hit me hard. I haven’t been sleeping well for years, although this year has been worse than most. I’ve been on pretty much the minimum necessary sleep for months – but at least I’ve been getting the minimum.

But last night, zero, and it’s left me dead on my feet. The brain resembles nothing so much as toast at the moment. Not ideal, as I’m working with databases all day – something that at this stage really needs a brain that’s at least capable of stringing words together (and ideally SQL commands too) without a major “Huh?” in the middle of them.

Of course, now it’s getting later and the awkward bastard is doing better, waking up and generally coming alive. I think the body will get the better of it tonight, and I’ll sleep, but jesus it’s been a crap day.

The thing is, when I’m this low from lack of sleep, it hits my depression as well, and leaves me just completely wrecked. I feel like a failure for not being able to sleep, for failing in such a basic human task as going to sleep. It hits me hard, I can’t deny it.

But for now, well, I’m exhausted, I’m not going to write any more today, in fact, I’d said earlier to myself that I wouldn’t write anything at all today – so chalk that one up as a human failing too.

Other than that, I haven’t really been all that talkative today, because I’ve had a pounding headache.

Maybe it’s me, and my brain doesn’t work on the “drag and drop, click’n’drool” methods that Access uses, but oh boy, I fucking hate Access with a passion. Yeah yeah, sure, it’s supposedly a powerful tool and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, it’s a keffing shed. I’d like to meet the person who developed it, and give them a swift kicking in a dark alley somewhere.

Actually, I’d like to mete out the same treatment to the numbnuts who created the Access shedbase I’m having to correct/update/fix at the moment.

So anyway, I’ve spent half the day trying to get the Access version of this shedbase (I like the word, so I’m going to keep on using it) with no joy at all. Hence the headache. I then moved onto the laptop, (which, distubingly, is more powerful and easier to use than the desktop PC provided by work) converted the entire database and tables over into MySQL, got it to do everything I wanted, and started on an ASP version of the database and it’s input forms etc., all in less than 90 minutes.

And that’s what seriously bugs me about Access (and many other bits of kit designed by the Beast of Redmond – while they’re supposed to be all cuddly and user-friendly, you can’t actually see what it’s doing. Try doing a simple command in Access and it decides it knows what you really want (no Spice Girls jokes, please). Do it in MySQL and it works perfectly first time.

And that’s the difference between a shit piece of software that gives me headaches, and a decent bit that leaves the headache alone.

Bollocks, I’m off to have an aspirin or two. Reyes Syndrome, here I come.

I despair. The BBC have this story about the fact that under 16s are now being advised not to take aspirin, because it may cause Reyes Syndrome.

OK, that sounds reasonable. If it can possibly cause Reyes Syndrome, then it’s a good piece of advice. I mean, loads of people must be becoming prone to it, surely?

Um – no. 1 to 2 cases per year. Not even 1 percent of 1 percent of the people who take it every year. Literally, a one in a million chance of picking it up. (Although, as Pratchett says, million to one chances come up 9 times out of ten) Not even that, actually. But no, it’s now being advised not to take it, on the grounds of 2 cases a year. Maybe it’s me, maybe I just don’t see the bigger picture or something.

At about 8.45 this morning, Manchester had a minor earthquake – nothing special, about 3 to 3.5 on the Richter scale, depending on who you believe/read. (The two aren’t always the same, after all) About four hours later, there were two very brief (less then 10 seconds apiece, probably closer to 5seconds each) aftershocks (Update : turns out they were extra quakes – but still, not that special), follow-on tremors, whatever you want to call them. Again, nothing special, maybe the same kind of level on the Richter, maybe a bit less.

So why has it been the major source of conversation today? Fair enough, I’m no doubt propagating it now, by writing about it at all – but it’s people’s reactions that have surprised me more than the events themselves. Maybe it’s just me, but I simply don’t see that type of thing as really all that much to write home about, let alone bang on about for the rest of the day.

Yeah, big deal, it’s kind of weird (well, for us in the UK anyway) to sit in a building and feel it move. I’m on the 8th floor of a tower, and feeling it sway afterwards was novel – nothing overly special, but novel. And after that we’ve had people belting on about how there should be someone wo should be in charge when we have an earthquake, (that’ll be a good job – one wobble per decade or so) that we should be warned when this sort of thing is going to happen, and various other things too retarded and cretinous to even bother storing in my own short-term memory.

Now, maybe it’s me that’s at fault, who should be all excited and so on about this – but I’m not. I don’t know why, it’s not like I’ve been involved in many myself, I just don’t see the point in wibbling on mindlessly about an event that wasn’t all that momentous anyway, and is in the past, stuff all anyone can do about it, and much the same for any similar event in the future. Therefore, what’s the point in giggling on about it?

I’ll shut up about it now too.

On a total tangent, has anyone else noticed that in the latest TV advert for the Tesco credit card (where they are on a trip to some stately home or other) the woman in the kiosk swipes the credit card the wrong way round?

(Conveniently keeping the card upright and right way up for the TV camera, but missing the swipe stripe totally)

Yes, I need to get out more. It’s true. I hang my head in shame for noticing such things – but hell, I thought it was funny.

xXx

I was going to see xXx (Or Triple X, whichever you prefer) on Thursday when it was doing previews, but decided that it wouldn’t be fair to anyone else (like me in another timezone, or Vicky) in the cinema – they might be used to crunching of popcorn etc., but the presence of a full-on snot factory might have proved distracting.

So it got left til today – finally, snot production has gone down a couple of gears, although the voice is still definite 0898 material. Sat in a nice big cinema with about 20 other people in a keffing huge screen – sounds good to me. Well, sounds good except for the bastard aircon/heating which rattled through the showing, but that’s a side point. If it’d been properly silent that would have been dead weird, so I should probably be thankful for some white-noise interference.

But anyway, the film. I have to admit, I enjoyed it. Then again, my brain was still wrapped up snug in bed, and didn’t have to do anything complex throughout the film. It strikes me as amusing that in the age of 12A certificates, we’re now treated to more gratuitous topless shots of Vin Diesel than we are of the female mebers of cast. not that I’m complaining, not one little bit, but I can see the Daily Mail ranting in a few years about “the constant homoerotic flow of film imagery that’s corrupting our children” or somesuch garbage.

Actually, for all it’s explosions, action, smart one-liners and so on, it’s very much comic-book stuff. The thing I personally find most offensive in it is Hollywood’s new anti-smoking ethos – from a media that glamourised smoking for many years, there’s now a holier than thou attitude and piety about the subject that reminds me of TV preachers caught cheating or embezzling. The underlying message of “guns, explosions and high speed cars are cool, but cigarettes kill you” leaves (pardon the pun) a bad taste in my mouth.

As expected from a film of this type, the storyline is really only there to try and string some setpieces together, but for all that it’s no more or less bollocksy than a Bond film, for example. The scripting between Cage and Gibbons (Diesel and Samuel L Jackson, reprising the same role he’s played in every film in the last decade) is snappy, smart, and occasionally quite fun. The czech accents waver between OK (Czech actors help (although having just checked, the main “czech” was born in New Zealand – go figure)) and utterly risible (American actors don’t), but that’s pretty much de rigeur from Hollywood. And the stuntwork, well, the stuntwork makes the film. Now if only we could get John Woo directing something like this instead of shit like Mission:Incomprehensible 2, we could have a fun film.

As a sheer no-brainer fun film to watch, I loved it. Very “james bond for 2002” in some ways, it tries to be more hip, more fun, louder, faster, you name it. Could the franchise last 20 films, 25 years, whatever? I very much doubt it. But I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts, along with the (already confirmed) sequel, imaginatively titled “xXx 2“. From there, just see how it goes.

On a cold day, when it’s pissing down with rain, and you’ve waited half an hour for a bus, with body temperature only just starting to come back into the realms of normality, there’s very little that’s nicer for the soul than toasted muffins with melting butter.

Unhealthy as hell, but man, what a pick-me-up.

The Queen of Morning Goods has spoken…

And, in a grand finale for the day, a quick flurry of links and things.

I’ve added another rant, following a weird day. There’s a couple of others in the pipeline today, but this one is the first for a while.

On a total tangent, the Guardian has a stunning interview with Donna Tartt today. I read Secret History, her first book, when it came out, and loved it. OK, I confess, it took me two attempts, because the first half moves with the speed of a turtle through molasses, but I went back to it, and loved it. Now I read it about once a year, and still enjoy it – it’s like meeting up with an old friend.
Now, ten years later, her second novel, The Little Friend is finally being published, hence the interview. And yes, it’s already fallen onto the wish list. *Grin* (That was a blatant plug, but fuck it, I can do it that way if I want)

Further to Green Fairy‘s post on this, I’ve been looking too at the 100 greatest Britons of all time and trying to knock it down to a list of ten. The problem is, I’m on 15 before I even get to the Ms. So instead, well, I’ve got three “top 10s”.

Even then, there’s plenty of others who deserve special mentions – in fact, I think the 100 is a much fairer list than the top 10, considering how many of the top 10 are from merely the last 50 years. Once you’re trying to narrow 100 down to 10 of the greatest, it’s very much a personal selection really, and thus makes it difficult for anyone to say definitively “Yes, I agree with that list.” Still, it’s good for discussion for the next six months or more…

And yes, in relation to a couple of comments, Enetation‘s comments system appears to be down. Again.

Their own site says “no sites or users should be affected by this” – guess a-fucking-gain. I’ve checked a couple of other sites that use enetation, and guess what, no comments there either. One of these days I’m going to put Perl/PHP on here (and pay the extra for it, of course – happiness) and just go with a comments system of my own.

You could use the word “cunts”, but that would be an entirely personal choice. Needless to say, my neighbours know exactly what I think of the comments system. Then again, they decided to share with me (at great volume) about her pregnancy too (mid argument, audible through the wall), so fairs fair, and in the land of the terraced house, info-sharing is king…

Update – ten minutes later
It’s a plot – a fucking plot, I tell you. As soon as I make that comment, Enetation comes back online and lo, I’ve got comments again. The power of the word “cunts” is beyond measure.

OK, so I’m probably a complete saddo, but I was looking through my referrers on the logfiles, and came across Zygo BM – I’m intrigued by who’s using it, and whether an online bookmarking system is any more use than simply using bookmarks on a browser?

Why is it that the more I hear about the reactions to the bombing in Bali the more I wonder whether America would do such a stunt in order to get more revulsion and anti-Al Qaida feeling in the world?

I’m too cynical, I know. But there’s just so much “get on board” type psychology coming out of the US about it, and “we told you so” – and I don’t quite believe it.

It’s probably going to be slow to download for a while, but definitely fun. Boeing’s new (flying) design for a stealth fighter. Definitely a fun toy to play with.

OK, even in times of health we seem to produce more than enough snot. But when we’re ill, when a cold or flu bug infects the system, the body runs riot, and the snot glands are at the forefront of the onslaught. I know the medical reasons, that it’s produced to block the routes of infection or somesuch garbage, but let’s face it, the cold virus is just a snot production line.

And what does it actually do? Other than being chemically/scientifically perverse, not a lot. It’s the only substance I can think of that goes from solid to liquid as it gets colder. Ever noticed that? The colder you are, the more the stuff flows. It’s bizarre.

As far as I can tell, it never turns to a gas, either. According to the theory of the paragraph above, if temperatures get cold enough, in theory snot should become gaseous. Only it doesn’t, it just stays the same. Fluid. Or in extreme cold, it goes back to being solid, and freezes the sinuses. (I haven’t experienced this, as I don’t do extreme cold if at all possible)

I’m only thinking all this because I’ve got a cold, and it’s horrid. It also effects some weird changes on human morality, which I can bear witness to, having sat on a bus full of people hawking, sniffing, squelching, sneezing, hacking and spitting snot. Mobile snot factories. Surely there’s got to be some grand use for this stuff – it’s an easily renewable source, after all…

“A new age in digital security and online identity verification” say the makers/floggers of this little device.

Pity we couldn’t have a new age of literacy, considering this quote “There has been some serious problems facing UK businesses, banks and the government and we wanted to do something about it,” he said. “There has been some”??? Fuck me dead, what a way to ruin the language.

“Static Password are Dead! (that’s from here on the quizid site) So are grammar, from the look of it.

Other than the problems I have with the spelling/grammar, I’m just not convinced by the entire concept. I worked in a place with a similar system to this about four or five years ago now, and the system was a nightmare. I can’t honestly see that it’ll be much better with this one.

I need to think about it a bit more, and then I’ll probably come up with better reasons why I’m not convinced of the security of this device.

Possibly the most annoying/addictive game of the day. My maximum is about 6000 so far. I’m sure I’ll go back and get better at it though…

Blah. I could say I feel much better this morning.

I’d be lying.

What a day. Woke up, coughed, threw up. Had a drink of water, coughed again, threw up again. Decided “Sod that”, went back to bed.

Yes, I’ve picked up this crap flu bug thing for sure, and I’ve spent as much of the day as possible doing naff all.

I’ve decided that daytime TV is garbage of the highest/lowest order, that Eyes Wide Shut is (in my opinion) shit, and that in conjunction with Clockwork Orange (as discussed in Naked Blog) and Full Metal Jacket, they’re pretty conclusive proof that Kubrick wasn’t the genius most people said he was. Sorry, but that’s my view and I’m sticking with it.

And what with that, catching up on Dalziel and Pascoe (I’d put a link there, but the BBC doesn’t see fit to do a website for it) from Monday, laughing at security problems with pretty much every VW car on Watchdog, writing letters in email, and other general aspects of that industry known as naffing about, I’ve done very little of consequence, and am now going to bed.

Goodnight. *cough*.

Truly excellent, if slightly elementary. Sherlock Holmes gets given an honorary fellowship from the Royal Society of Chemistry. Personally, I think it’s thoroughly fitting that a man (fictional or not) who dedicated his “life” to science in such a way should be honoured. I’d have liked to see two fellowships, one for Holmes, one for Conan Doyle himself, but I suppose that’s pushing it a bit.

And considering the bit I put here yesterday, it’s a pity we don’t have more like Holmes at the moment, who might be able to make sense without scapegoating.

What a complete load of old bollocks

I’ve just been watching the BBC News (in reality, not the website, for once), regarding the bomb in Bali. They’re saying it was made from C4 plastic explosive “which is a sign that it was made by Al Qaeda”. Absolute bollocks. C4’s been around for 20 odd years now, more of it’s been nicked from Army depots around the world than has actually been used. You can even buy it online. This lot are flogging it for £15 per Kg. That’s right – KG, not gramme, not pound, but a kilo of the stuff. For less than a DVD from HMV.

Doing a search on google for C4 comes up with just under 500 results – not all of them are relevant, but certainly enough are. Take the quotes off the search and you suddenly get 2500 results. It’s not hard to find the necessary information, it’s only slightly more difficult to find someone who’ll sell it. So what is it that limits it to only being Al Qaeda that could make a bomb from it?

Or (at risk of being heretical) are they just going to be the scapegoats for every bomb and incident that happens in the next few years?

Wow. This person is stunningly good at origami – but 2 hours for one member of samurai infantry made from folded paper? That’s more dedication/obsession than I possess. Still cool though.

In other news, I’m 8th in google for “Working hell” which is fun, and somewhere around 20th (can’t be arsed to count) for sexism dress code. As so many other people have observed about their own sites, it’s weird what drags people here.

*shrug*

Thankfully, I still don’t appear on Google for an expression that Peter thought would get me loads of grief.

Didn’t blog much (in fact, didn’t do much of anything) yesterday – I feel crap, and would like to welcome the common cold back into my life. Bastard.

It’s been going round the office for the last couple of weeks, and has finally chosen me for a home. Whoopee doo.

So I’m going to go in and try to pass it to someone else. Infantile, unproductive, but hey, that’s me.

Ah, the comedy of looking at estate agent’s websites. Flaming useless, most of ’em. My favourite this evening (so far) is :

Watching lunatics running the Chicago Marathon on TV, I’m left completely in awe of the idiots athletes running it. Seeing Paula Radcliffe take a full 90 seconds off the world record time is a simply stunning achievement, and more and more I think she’s a stunning athlete.

But all the same, it leaves me with one question. Running marathons – WHY?

An apology beforehand for the use of the naughty word in the image below. All I can say is that I didn’t photoshop it on there – someone else may have, but a friend sent it in email to me, and I laughed. So I thought it was only fair to share. As for anyone it offends, well, sorry, but that’s the joys of a personal site….

On a total tangent to everything else, I found this really interesting – a scheme in the US to “jam” camcorders in cinemas, so they can’t be used to pirate films.

Personally, I’d still rather see jammers for mobile phones in cinemas – One local one has installed them, and it’s great. Now if only we can silence popcorn, and stop people talking to their mates during a film, then the world will be a happier place.

In totally unrelated (and more than slightly bobble-hatted) news, I’m amazed to observe that this site had it’s 100,000th hit yesterday. Now, I know, I know, hits are no longer the thing to go by, now it’s all page views and visitors (which is fair enough) but the page views are only just hitting the 10,000 mark, so that’s not quite as impressive. But all the same, I’m quite bizarrely pleased with that number. And I’m exceptionally pleased I don’t have to pay for bandwidth, as that figure would just make me want to cry.

And yes, I know this week I haven’t been adding all that much to this, nor any other pages to the site – I’ve been swamped with other stuff, one way and another, and well, I’m just not that efficient. Things should be back to normal after the weekend. I think/hope.

I have a theory – I believe conspiracy theorists are taking over the world. This person (Link via Elayne) is a grand high conspiracy theorist – I believe he/she is at level 15 or above. Truly impressive.

And in desperate need of finding a door in the theory so they can get out more…

I’m sure more blogs will comment on this before long, but what the hell, I’m still going to. The BBC News site has a story about the new film of the Magic Roundabout.

Robbie Williams as the voice of Dougal?
Kylie as Florence?
CGI Animation rather than “proper” puppetry & stop motion?
It’s either going to be superb or abysmal. I suspect there’s no middle ground – a total love or loathe moment.

Although I do like the idea of Richard O’Brien as Zebedee and Joanna Lumley as Ermintrude. Jim Broadbent as Brian the Snail could be fun too. It seems a pity that Emma Thompson wasn’t picked to do one of the voices, as it was her father, Eric, who voiced the originals. Still, that’s showbiz.

Now – who’s going to do the voice of Dylan?…

Looking through the joys of logfiles, I just spotted this search request – squrrel with weird bass line. I’m first in Google for it. Unsurprisingly. (On a minor tangent, I only come in the top 30 when it’s spelled correctly)

What really gets me is the spelling mistake though – I hadn’t even realised I’d made a mistake like that, and it’s taken Google to point it out. Well, Google and someone else with piss-poor spelling/typing. How bizarre.

So much for common sense day, eh? Ah well, that’s not for another 3 weeks or so. And there’s only 10 weeks of 2002 left – I spotted it when I looked at my diary earlier. Where’s the year gone?

Welcome back little phone line. You’ve been sorely missed.

Yes, it has to be done. Via Graybo (and originally Meg) :

What can I say? Nov 5th is as good a day as any. And I’ll be 31 then too, so what the hell – time for some common sense.

On a complete tangent, and mainly because I laughed (that, and no-one else I read has mentioned it) – Pete Waterman reckons Kylie Minogue’s “I should be so lucky” is based on Pachelbel’s Canon?

That man seriously needs to get out more. Or shut his mouth more often. Or something.

Oh, and BT still haven’t fixed the phone lines.

It’ll now “definitely” be tomorrow. “Or maybe Thursday. I’m sure it’ll be done by the end of the week. Yeah, should be Wednesday. Unless they get something more important to do (I assume ‘something important’ could be things like a satellite dish getting birdshit on it in Outer Mongolia or something) it’ll be done tomorrow. Definitely. Well, probably…..”

Don’t you just love companies that give definitive answers?

Sorry about yesterday. Just one of those days. Anyway, today’s been slightly more fun, and having seen it on good old Channel 4 news, I’ve decided I absolutely have to go and see the new installation at Tate Modern. The new installation hasn’t been listed on their site yet, *The link is now here. Sorry, but the site didn’t work properly in Opera. As per.* but I saw it on the news, and it’s awesome – filling the Turbine building completely. I’ll bung a link on here as soon as I find one – but I want to go and see it, because I don’t think pics will ever conjure up the image properly. It’s one that has to be seen to be believed.

I don’t even know why it’s made me think “I have to see that” as much as it has, but it’s an absolute definite on the go-see front. But it has, so I’ll see it. Not straight away – probably end of Nov, or somewhere around there. Sounds like a plan to me.

Poo. Soft Cell tour postponed while Marc Almond recovers from some nasty hernia type thing. Get well soon, Marc. Guess I’d best store that ticket in a safe place.

God, I hate days like today.

I seem to have spent the entire of it so far chasing up people who either can’t be arsed, or are too disorganised to do what they say they will. And I’m sorry, dear readers, but that pisses me off.It’s what used to be known as a “pet peeve” or a “bugbear” – now it just “does my fucking head in”. I’m not sure if I’m simply naive, or that I just expect too much from people, but I expect that when someone says “I will….” in the context of doing something (I will call you back, I will let you know, that kind of thing) that they will do that. Is that too much to ask?

Obviously it is.

First of all, the BT saga. As you may or may not know (depends if you’ve been a regular reader) last Thursday one of the houses in the street behind me went up in flames, which coincidentally keffed my phone line (and those of the rest of the street) by melting the main overhead line. So the entire street has little to no phone service. (On a tangent, I have no idea why my ADSL line still works, although it does drop the connection if a pigeon farts nearby) The fault with the line was reported to BT by 9pm on Thursday. Not just by me, but by plenty of people.

On Friday, we were promised it would be fixed on Saturday. On Sunday I was promised I would be called back by the gimps in fault-fixing/reporting. Come today I call again (no phone service goes piss me off – sad, but true) and “It doesn’t appear to have been authorised for repair yet. I’m not sure why. I don’t think they’ve got enough cable. (This is in the middle of a city. It’s not like I’m miles from anywhere – we’re talking about a maximum of 50m of cable needed)Yes, I’ll call you back when I know more. I’ll call the engineers now, and let you know within 2 hours what’s going on”. Five hours later I call back – “Oh, we’re still not sure what’s happening. It won’t be fixed today, that’s definite. Maybe tomorrow. Definitely by the end of the week.” Stunning levels of service. The really grim bit is that, shit as they are, BT are the best telecoms company I’ve dealt with. NTL are mind-bogglingly crap and don’t even have their payments system sorted out yet. Telewest are supposedly OK, but don’t cover where I live. As for the rest, they’re just as bad, in my experience.

Thing is, it wasn’t just the one company that were a bag of shite today. I’m just starting a new contract, dropped on me at pretty short notice, and the agency I deal with still haven’t figured out what hourly rate they’re going to ask the client for. I’ve been chasing that all day too, with accompanying “I’ll call you back within the hour, just let me speak to them” promises from the agency. Needless to say, they still haven’t called.

I hate days like today. So I’m going to go off, cook something nice while upsetting the neighbours a bit by playing (fairly loudly, although not at eardrum bursting volume) Saturday’s Radio 1 Essential Mix by one of the modern music god Djs, John Digweed from Bedrock. No, not the Flintstone’s Bedrock. I’ll write more later.

Maybe.

Not really a busy day today, mainly domestic stuff, doing some thinking (most unnatural for a Sunday, but such is life), and adding some stuff to the about me page on this site.

And that’s about it – words, pics, and thinking. I’ll probably bung more on later in the week. But a quiet day, and not much to say. So I won’t say anything.

Happiness – my first pic goes into the mirror project. Not bad for a first attempt – I’m sure there’ll be more. In fact, I’ve got a couple of ideas already…

Other than that little lot, not much happening. I’m 31 in a months time *sob* Yes, November 5th, and I’m another year older. (And seeing Pink in concert, but that’s a different matter).

But because I’m supposed to be getting more sensible (I’ve just had to retype that three times – if I can’t even spell it, what chance have I got of being it?) I thought “I’ll list some stuff through Amazon for people to see”. So I have. If it goes the way of all other concepts like that, I’ll get absolutely keff all from it, or buy the stuff myself. But it might be useful to remind me on that score too. We’ll see.

Other than that, I’ve been reading Anna’s stories of her return to the mainland from her island. Good to see her back online.

Morcheeba – Manchester Apollo

Yes, another gig. People told me I need to get out more, so that’s what I’m doing. I also found out that digital cameras really don’t like gig conditions, and they tend to be all wobbly and not happy. Of course, maybe I should read the instructions, but that’s no fun.

It was the last night of the tour, so obviously Morcheeba were in party mood too – and it showed. Tons of energy, and they were visibly having a good time. Can I book my ticket for the next tour now, please?

And now of course, I’m awake. And have been since 7am. Joy. Happiness.

However, Fark has a lot of people who’ve been playing with Wil Wheaton images (I can’t be a proper techie, I had no idea who he was til I looked on his own site) Thankfully, the images are quite fun even without knowing he was on Star-Trek. (Oh shit, sorry, Star Trek : TNG for the picky ones) Don’t try the page if you’re on 56k modem though – it’ll take forever. (The page is about 3Mb, according to Opera)

I hate my body-clock. But I’m sure it hates me too.

All week I’ve not been to bed before 1am, and not got to sleep before about 3. So now, on Friday, I’m shattered, and want to go to bed now. Which I’m going to do. Pathetic, isn’t it?

To join in with Meg, Mo, Graybo and Vaughan’s plea…..

SEND IN THE NUNS!

And yes, each word has a different link/picture on it… (Thanks Google)

Truly bizarre, and almost quite sick. The LifeGem – a diamond formed from your loved one’s ashes. I hope it’s a joke site, I fear that it’s not…

I’ve been looking around at other blogs, (and also in reference to one of Vicky’s posts from a while back) and looking at how the pages are put together. Lots seem to use CSS tables now – and yes, while they’re very convenient, and fairly easy to do, I must admit that I’m obviously an old git, and still stick with tables for this site.

In many ways I suppose it’s odd to keep using them, but when I started with HTML, the only design/development tool around was Notepad, so I’m used to hand-coding things now – OK, I mainly use DreamWeaver now, I got dracked towards it kicking and screaming, but I do tend to use it for a lot of things, but still, when it comes to sorting out problems, out comes the trusty TextPad. But I still use tables. If I put borders round every table on here, it’d look like crazy paving, but for me they work. All the CSS tabled sites look similar, which isn’t something I’m particularly into. Let’s face it, good old d4d looks keff all like anything else, and that’s the way I like it. Even with the eyeball burning yellow.

So I think I’ll stay with the tables now (even though they’re a pig to sort out on occasion), and maybe play with CSS tables, see whether I can use them and not look like every other CSS-tabled site in Christendom.

Why did I start writing this? Oh yeah – because my project for the weekend (which hopefully won’t take too long) is to sort out all the 404 Page Errors I get in the log files where DreamWeaver’s keffed up the image references. It’s nothing overly important, because it all still seems to render nicely, but it’ll be nice to get rid of the errors all the same. So that’s the project for the weekend, when I’m not doing things like seeing Morcheeba gigs. Not that I’m looking forward to it, or anything. *grin*

And on a totally different note, SwishCottage has a beautifully written piece about life, as he remembers the anniversary of his family moving to South Africa 30 years ago yesterday. Well worth a read.

First of all, I promise not to do this too often – it’s WAY too tedious normally to write this kind of thing, and the tale will be massively abbreviated. So bear with me.

I had the weirdest dream last night. (Stick with it, I said. I can’t stand people who write about every dream, but thankfully I don’t remember mine all that often. The problem is I dream in something called “hyper-reality”, where in general I can’t tell the difference between real and dream when I try to remember them afterwards. ) I honestly have no idea about the origins of it, or even where most of it was going, but it ended with me in an office being told by a female voice “Come on, hurry up, there’s three blogs need to be writted today“. And that’s where my conscious mind caught up and went “Eh? What? WRITTED?“.

Now I have no idea if this was my subconscious having a laugh, or it’s portraying a speech mistake for a reason, or if my subconscious is just a wee bit dyslexic. But it’s stayed with me enough to write about it this morning. Go figure.

Other than the visitation listed below, it’s been a kind of weird evening. I got no closer to sorting out the HTML on here, although I really must do it fixed the problems (or it looks like I have – all comments on this gratefully received). The house across the back alley from me got burnt out – thankfully no-one was in it, but it appears that the excessive heat has done something weird to the phone lines – my phone line is dead, yet the ADSL connection’s still there. *Shrug* The general theory is that the fire was caused by little bastards with fireworks, but I don’t know – only saw it when it was already going.

Actually, I maybe need to get out more – that was the closest I’ve been to a house fire, and I’m actually quite amazed by the speed and ferocity of it – I could feel the heat of it through closed windows, which seemed quite impressive. Also, the extension type thing that most of the fire started in had a felt roof, and I was totally amazed by the speed and intensity of the flames through that too. I suppose I shouldn’t be, as it’s all flammable bitumen etc., but all the same, it did surprise me.

But thankfully no-one was hurt, none of the other properties were in danger, and all is well. And that’s it. Not much to say for an evening really, is it?

It had to happen, I suppose

In my online webstat today – I spotted that I’ve been visited by The Beast of Redmond.

In the meantime, I’ve just laughed myself silly at this story of a fairly important ooops by the BBCs Home Front programme. Watch the prog on Oct 10th to see what they did, and read The Grauniad (and any other paper, I’m sure) for any more news on the planning problems.

For anyone who got wet last night while waiting for a bus because there was no shelter, the BBC is reporting a shelter with no bus route. And also yet more weirdness with quantum cryptography. (Quantum cryptography in this case not meaning “well, we might have cracked the code or we might not – that depends on the result“). In a Green Fairy-esque moment, there’s also a story that teenage girls are most at risk of sexually transmitted diseases. In fairness, I’d have thought that the boys were pretty prone too – just because they don’t go to the doctors (18 boys were involved in the study, as opposed to 144 girls), doesn’t mean they’re not carrying. In fact, I did think that chlamydia in particular was carried by the boys, but that could just be me being wrong. It’s not unknown, after all.

And finally, in the surreal world, a symphony of mobile phone ringtones has been performed. And that’s the roundup for now – more later.

Ah, the joys of keffed comments systems. It’s up the spout again, and returning errors on me all over the place. Piece of Shite. Of course, as soon as I posted that, the comments system came back online. Maybe I should be snotty about it on a daily basis, just to keep it up and running

Also, yes, I’m going to be working on sorting out the alignment problems of the graphics on this page. It’s weird, IE has a problem (and it’s only on this page) so I’m kind of thinking it’s something Blogger itself has added into the page (process of elimination, if nothing else) and so does Nutscrape, but Opera sits there, shurgs, and renders it all fine. So I’ll go through the code for it tonight, probably.

Obviously, if I succeed then the results will be immediately visible. If not, well, they won’t. We’ll see. But that’s my job for tonight, anyway.

Howard Marks at The Lowry

I’ve been a fan of Howard Marks (AKA Mr Nice) for a fair few years now, and read his autobiography, “Mr Nice” several times, so it was always going to be on the list of appearances to see, so off we went to see it/him.

And well worth it too. On a minor tangent, The Quays Theatre is a really nice little venue, with fairly comfortable (if exceptionally orange) seating, and what looked like good views from all seats. The show itself was an odd combination of talk, reading, comedy, video bits, and even a couple of musical bits. (As in “woman with guitar performs song”, not “hits from oklahoma”) In different parts it was funny, informative, slightly political, but generally just bloody entertaining. Slightly messed up only by the woman with a laugh like a spatchcocked squirrel, but she managed to annoy pretty much the entire audience by the end, so there we go.

But well worth a night’s entertainment. The tour page lists the dates and venues. Catch him if you can. The police couldn’t, for years.

I will write about the Howards Marks gig/concert/live appearance I was at tonight, that I’ve just got home from. But later, when I’ve had some sleep.

Sorry

And on yet another total tangent, this story from Kodak is really interesting. Well, it interested me, anyway. Basically, it’s about the way photos get transmitted and displayed when using mobile phones etc. to do the picture taking/transmitting. Slightly techy, but interesting stuff.

Nice to see the US showing their inherent racism and paranoia again.

My favourite quote in the story is “The system would require ‘non-immigrant visitors’ from countries deemed to be of highest terrorism risk to register with the US Government and be photographed and fingerprinted. “. Now, considering my earlier post re thieving bloody postmen, it’s not going to be difficult to get (for example) a UK passport for someone, or even a US visa or similar, and lo, the golden gates of US Immigration swing wide open. That’s how I’d do it anyway.

And just where is the wisdom in telling people how the new system works?
<George W Bush>
“Those goddamn Eye-rak-ees won’t know how to read websites or news stories – thay’re all too busy buildin’ bio-weapons”
</George W Bush>

“Most problems occur when mail is delivered to the wrong house by mistake.“ – a huge amount of the rest goes due to dodgy fucking postmen nicking stuff.

I’ve lived in enough places (and oh boy, have I lived in enough) to know it’s a national problem – there’s a fair number of people who work in the Post Office who are thieving gits. I’ve lost passports (along with all relevant ID including Birth Certificates – it all turned up at Amsterdam Airport in the property of a Nigerian person), cards, paperwork of various varieties, bills, had cheques and postal orders go missing, and not once does Royal Mail accept responsibility.

If another company did a similar level of service without the thieving bastards, I’d go there in an instant.

I wish I were into mainstream things, like TV soap operas and football. Instead I end up finding myself watching things about house renovation projects on Channel 4, followed by documentaries on narcolepsy. Never before have I felt so pleased to have insomnia instead of the opposite.

Anyway, while waiting for the one on Channel 4 to start, I did a quick surf of the soaps, and found that they’re actually quite fun to watch if you turn the sound off, and then make up your own stories, to pretty much go with what they’re saying, and the shots etc. at the time.

Am I the only person who does this?

Sometimes, working environments just amaze me.

At the moment I’m working on a normal sized desk, but the actual free space on it is maybe (if I try really really hard) 2 square feet. I don’t know how people can permanently work in such an environment – but here there’s just so much shit and extra paperwork that they obviously can’t be arsed to sort out properly, and I know it would utterly do my head in to work in such a space for anything more than a few days.

Still, it’s only a few days, so I won’t complain too much. If I can be bothered, I might stick up a photo of it tomorrow (if I bring in the camera)

I also forgot to say, the inside of the mouse is disgusting!

Yuck. I’m as guilty of gunge in the keyboard as the next person (the first laptop was a prime victim of it, I have to say) but all the same, yuck. As for ATMs and the stuff on them, even more Yuck.

I feel quite ill now.

Another day, another dollar/pound/yen/whatever.

Well, yesterday ended up with a weird combination (enough so that the guy in HMV looked at me in a confused fashion) of the new Soft Cell album, and Blade2 on DVD. Not quite a standard combination of purchases, I assume.

The Soft Cell album is great – definitely a good purchase, and one that will be listened to again and again. Haven’t decided on favourite track or anything yet, but I’m sure I will.

As for Blade2, well, I definitely love the film. It’s odd in a way – very similar to Alien vs Aliens, asequel that keeps the main idea, but runs with it in an utterly different direction. It’s not really all that possible to compare the two films because of this – they’re both great, but for different reasons. I haven’t waded my way through the second disc yet, with deleted/alternative scenes etc., but I’ll report more as I do wade through it. (Probably tonight)

Other than that, not much news for the moment today. So I’ll naff off, and look like I’m doing something at work for once…