The return

Well, I’m back. *Raspberry noises* at Helen, for implying that I’d get withdrawal symptoms, and dial in from the mobile. (The fact that I was completely out of mobile coverage is utterly irrelevant – honest *Grin*) It was a fantastic time, loads of mountains and stuff, and there’ll be more pages about it when I get round to it. (Probably write more tonight after Turin Brakes)

Hiatus

Well, it’s now Saturday, and I’m off to the wilds of Scotland ’til next Friday. So there won’t be any updates – no internet, no mobile phones, no nothing. Just lochside, mountains, woods, hills, and bloody huge log fires.

Upon my return there’ll probably be some new stuff added in, as lappy will be going with me (spot the true IT addict) and knowing insomnia, I’ll have plenty of time to write. All the same, it’s a break, and a much needed one.

If you fancy it, have a ferret round the site – but otherwise, don’t expect any more updates ’til late on 28/02 when I come back. Oh, and then I’m out seeing Turin Brakes in concert anyway. Might be best to leave it ’til 1/03 then. *Grin*

Pop sensations

Having seen the way TaTu‘s single “all the things she said” is now the UK No 1 for the third consecutive week, it does make me wonder how many record producers and “Svengali” types are busy kicking themselves at not having thought of marketing the same type of girl group.

Will it mean a glut of pseudo-dyke duos in the next year? Will we see “PopDykes, the rivals”? Who knows – obviously TaTu have managed to be the front runners in this little marketing glitch – but I think it’ll be quite fun to watch the rest of the herd dashing to play catch up.

Hallucinations? Or just kids TV

I was trying to persuade myself this afternoon that I really hadn’t clicked on the TV and seen a purple and green badger. Having checked the programme’s website, I can honestly say that I wasn’t hallucinating.

All rumours about the drugs influence of people who write children’s TV are blatantly true. How can anyone doubt it now?

Exercises in Scale

Very silly, but quite clever too – a set of photos of parking spaces “filled” by toy cars. Pity about the hands etc holding the cars, but still fun.

Maybe it has potential to be like a Mirror Project 2.

The test of a true blogger

Over at Troubled Diva, Mike was answering some questions about “Are you a proper blogger?

These are my answers…

• You ditch the standard template you grabbed off the shelf when you first started blogging, in favour of a design of your own making. Guilty Well, not strictly true, as I never used the standard templates, and worked from the d4d “design” right from the start.
• You start caring about what happens in The Bloggies. Innocent Supposedly I should care – but I just can’t bring myself to do so.
• You get listed on Daypop or Blogdex. Innocent What’s even sadder is I didn’t even know of them.
• You discover that you’re in the Google Top Ten for something completely unlikely and unintended, which generates loads of hits. Guilty As I’ve commented on more times than enough.
• People start leaving you sneery, snarky, anonymous comments. Innocent Nothing yet. Mind you, I’d just delete them anyway, so what’s the point?
• You purchase your own domain name. Guilty Although in fairness it was before I even considered blogging. I came up with the name and liked it before I had any idea what would go on the site.
• You migrate from Blogger to Movable Type. Guilty well, semi-guilty – I’m considering it bigtime after the Haloscan farce.
• You start a “meme”. Innocent What’s one of them then?
• You stop participating in “memes” (ahem) and online personality quizzes (as well as re-posting chain e-mail “funnies”), because you’re above all that now. Innocent As this proves, I still do them if it’s a subject I find interesting/thought-provoking. But no, I’ve never been interested in doing every single one.
• You string loads of other weblog names together in the middle of a post, in one great long list of linky-love. Innocent Nope, not me. The biggest bunch of links is when I add people to the blogroll.
• You start dropping cute little in-jokes into the main body of your posts, which only a tiny handful of other webloggers will understand. Innocent Most of jokes are crap anyway, not worth the effort of being “in”.
• You attend a Blogmeet. Innocent – so far.
• You make a submission to the Mirror Project. Guilty
• You register your site with Blogdex, Daypop, Popdex, Technorati, Blogtree, Blogstreet, Blogwise, the Ageless Project, the Eatonweb Portal, GeoURL, Is My Blog Hot Or Not?, the UK Weblogs list…et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Innocent As explained above, I’m obviosuly still new to all this, as I haven’t linked to any of those. Yet. *Grin*
• You set up an RSS feed. Innocent Maybe one day. Maybe not.
• You start saying things like: actually, I’ve started to find the whole terminology surrounding so-called “blogging” so limiting these days, because you know, I don’t really feel that I fit the definition of a “blogger” any more, and couldn’t we all start to move away from these wholly arbitrary restrictions, because I suppose that if anything, I would consider myself more of a “personal publisher”, but even then I feel that… Innocent Nope – not going to happen. I did write some stuff about this over here on Naked Blog but no, I don’t give a damn what this type of thing is referred to as.

So, guilty on five counts out of the fifteen or so. I’m pretty sure that makes me a completely improper blogger. Good, isn’t it?

Browser Wars

As regular readers of this site will know, I tend to avoid using Internet Explorer as much as humanly possible. Out of preference, I use either Opera or Mozilla for everything web-based. There’s a variety of reasons, but the main one is because IE is well known to be a major load of shite for security.

So why is it that companies like Royal Bank of Scotland and Britannia insist that people can only use their services through IE or old versions of Netscape?

Tarot

Yes, on occasions I do have a play with my own deck of tarot cards, and have a look to see what’s going on. I’ve been using them for about 14 or 15 years now. Anyway, I thought I’d do a reading yesterday, and this is the results. I’ll add more to it while I’m away, a more definitive read and diagnosis from the layout.

BBC News

A lot of people have been busy commenting on the new look of the BBC News website. I hadn’t really bothered, because it’s like everything, the human race doesn’t like change, so I’m giving it some time to get used to first.

However, I have to say that first impressions aren’t all that good – I’m glad to see a wider layout, rather than using mere 600×480 resolution – but why do they use fixed resolution anyway? Surely it’s easier to use percentages, so it fills whatever size window you’re using?

As for the layout – it’s harder to read at the moment, because the eyes/brain are used to one thing, and this is different. I’ll see how I get on with it.

Violence

If there is a report later in the day of a man found with a hammer stuffed up his own rectum, claw end first, then you’ll know exactly where I live – because it’ll be my neighbour who has received such treatment.

Having finally got to sleep at 5am, I was woken at 7 by the sound of the fucking cunting selfish bastard considerate gentleman bashing on the walls with aforementioned hammer. It’s now 12, and he hasn’t flaming stopped yet. I’m praying he sticks a nail through an electrical cable.

Sarcasm is just one more service we offer

Should I worry at having a conversation with a friend about whether our brains run on Linux Sarcasm 8.0™ or Windows Sarcasm Professional Server™?

The general conclusion was that Windows Sarcasm would be prone to crashes at the most relevant times, having just spent three hours fine tuning the sarcasm requirements for the current situation, but that Linux Sarcasm didn’t support all the necessary input modes to deal with the cretinous habits of the real world.

A decision about which OS is to be used on d4d will be forthcoming in March.

Finger on the Pulse

Normally I’d have titled this “No Shit, Sherlock“, but I’m on version 8,653,082 of that now (roughly), so I went for variety instead.

Archbishops doubt the morality of bombing the shit out of Iraq – well, they’ve never been up to much on moral decisions before now, and I suppose they’re still not. All the same, it’s quite amusing to see the church following the people’s views rather than the political aspects. Maybe there’s hope for the hypocritical old bastards yet.

Seems reasonable to me

The Guardian today is reporting that Jeffrey Archer has been banned from doing “charity” work by prison officers. Considering his past history with charity work (a certain alleged syphoning off of funds) can you really blame them?

So that’s where’s it’s going

Further to this post a couple down about good old congestion charging, it looks like the BBC has been having the same kind of thought process, and now has a piece on what the money from it is being used for. They reckon the charge will raise £130 million per year. By my calculations, that’s what it would make just on the people who pre-paid it on Monday (100,000) – and doesn’t include any fines at all. So, £130 million per year is a decidely low-end estimate. The article makes for interesting reading. Let’s hope that it does plough the money back into proper transport schemes, rather than some pie-in-the-sky shite like we’ve seen too many times before.

Your chance for fame

Looking through the website for one of the local estate agents I discovered that I too could live in Coronation Street, Manchester – weird but true.

Hallelujah

Finally, after five days of being totally shonky, the comments system is back working, and *Gasp!* People can actually post to it now.

Looks like on of the next things on the shopping list is either moving d4d to a different hosting service that allows PHP for a migration to Moveable Type, or at least a comments system that works without needing reference to external companies, or upgrading the existing space on the current hosting so that it’ll handle PHP too.

Joy – just what I wanted to have to deal with.

Plenty of questions

Looking at the horrendous reports from South Korea about the blazing subway train and it’s victim count it did leave me wondering what the hell they were using on the seats. Supposedly this ultra-intense blaze was caused by a man with a cigarette lighter and a “carton of flammable liquid”. So what the hell was it that burned that intensely?

I’m sure that sooner or later it’ll turn out to have been “a terrorist attack” or some other load of shonky old shit, but I do wonder what kind of anti-fire stuff (yes, I know there’s a better word for it, I just can’t remember it right now) they had on the seats – or even if they had any at all. The smoke seen billowing out, and the flame intensity was very reminiscent of a couple of the fires we had in furniture stores etc in the UK before flame-retardant foam became the legal requirement.

Nice little earner

Looking at this story about the infamous London Congestion Charging that was introduced yesterday, I did some of the maths on it. 100,000 drivers paid the £5 fee. So that’s half a million pounds in London’s coffers for one day. 10,000 drivers failed to pay the charges, and will receive fine notices for £80. So that’s £800,000 in one day. £1.3 million income in one day. Not bad work, if you can get it. Extrapolating that, we get the princely sum of £6.5 million in the first working week. Over the year that comes in at £338 million.

Jesus H Christ on a warped pine floorboard

While floating through search requests etc. earlier, I came across Teens for Jesus. I’m pretty sure this isn’t in the same context as “Teens for Michael Jackson” or even “Teens for Gary Glitter”, but it’s still pretty weird.

For those with strong intestinal muscles, the Statement of Faith is good, so long as you don’t bust a gut laughing.

Search results

I have to admit, on looking through the referrer logs this morning, that I felt a certain frisson of bizarre pride for knowing that I come up second on google for cunting bugger as a phrase. Even funnier (from my own slightly silly perspective this morning) is being first for “Things to do to a friend” (the mind boggles why this was being searched for, but there we go). And who was the strange person who found my site while searching for Andrex adverts?

Surreal search request of the day (Non-Google for once) has to go to 8 second clicks on old cunts

Brits stuff

Not that anyone outside the UK will care about it, but the hype for the Brits awards has now kicked in. Thank christ it’s only on Thursday, so the hype won’t be around too long.

Anyway, the current rumour is that Miss Dynamite and George Michael will do a duet, probably an anti-war song. It might be an interesting combination, not that it’ll have any effect on weasel-boy President Blair.

Fingers crossed

Tonight, the local council considers the licence for the Glastonbury Festival. Let’s hope it gets the go-ahead, considering that a certain band has been named to play already.

As well as all the stuff from last year with the dirty great fence and so on, the organisers this year are talking about 50 CCTV camera on the site, and also the possibility of security guards. Not quite the same spirit as a few years ago, but if it goes ahead, then that’s the main thing, I think.

Some people never learn

Today, the Conservative Party has released the name of it’s representative for the elections of the new London Mayor. Amazingly, it’s Stephen Norris – again. He’s already lost it once, but is still determined to try again. In the meantime, he’s even been sacked from his position in the London Mayor’s department, no less.

Um – no, I don’t think so

Having seen the stories today post-anti-war-march from “senior labour ministers” telling us that we should trust Blair because he knows what he’s doing, my response wavers between “Bollocks” and “Complete Bollocks”.

Describing him as “a man of courage and integrity” is vaguely reminiscent of calling Bush “a clever man who knows what he’s doing”. To most of the populace, it looks more like the founder members of Fuckwits Anonymous.

Blimey – there’s a surprise

Wow. Looks like Google has bought up the company that produces Blogger. Impressive.

Google, and other things

A couple of weeks back, I put a piece on here about changing over the images directory to a new name, and getting rid of the old name. The reason for this was because there were a couple of pictures that seemed to be getting linked to via Google/s image search far more than seemed feasible. I won’t say which images were in question – because it’s all changed now anyway.

Basically, these images were coming up through an unrelated search request, but the sheer amount of times they were being referenced (four or five times a day, always through the google images search) struck me as odd, and having looked through the search myself, it turned out that it wasn’t even in the first ten pages of search. I still don’t know, or don’t want to know, all the implications of this – but it concerned me enough that I decided to change all the references to the directory of photos that get used here on d4d.

It’s resulted in a lot of errors and 404’s (Page Not Found) going through the logfiles in the last two weeks, but to my mind it’s been worthwhile. Yeah, I could have left it all, and just accepted the extra hits, but for me personally, it wasn’t something I was comfortable with. But the searches now seem to be winding down a bit, the hint has been taken.

And now I’ve also found the page for removing items from google so I’m hoping that the problem will be gone for once and for all within the next 24 hours, with the image not even cached in google’s store. My apologies to anyone else who was linking to images etc. here – the directory has changed, and will no longer be indexed by google at all.

Maybe it’s an over-reaction, maybe I should care less, notice less, or something, but it wasn’t something I could do and be comfortable with myself. I’ve made my choice now, had to alter some of the site just because of some potential tithead out there, which doesn’t make me at all happy, but I’m fairly sure the issue won’t come up again. And as results go, that’s one I can live with.

Comments System (again)

For anyone who’s wondering, yes, Haloscan is down again. According to their site, they’re doing server work which has “run into problems”, but all the same, it’s now been down 24hours and counting.

Anyone who feels the need to vent can still email here (remember to delete the bit that says so) if they want to vent ire/thoughts in my general direction.

Of course, you’ll be able to see when the comments system comes back, because under here, it’ll say “Comments”…

The Anti-War Protest

In many ways I’d like to have been on the march in London today – but at the same time, I honestly don’t feel it will do any good. Watching Blair’s speech in Glasgow (and isn’t it awfully convenient that he’s at the opposite end to the country while the march is going on? Nice timing…) did more to convince me that he’s determined to go with Bush and war, regardless of what the general public think about it.

Maybe it’s just a spectacular display of intent to commit political suicide – I don’t know, but I’d be very dubious that anyone would want to re-elect the grinning weasel-faced twat after this. Displaying such a huge amount of contempt for public opinion about this kind of thing should prove to anyone who was still in doubt (have they been comatose for the last five years?) that Blair is more obsessed with his own image, and of being buddy-buddy with the US than he is about the opinions of the people who voted for him.

So will the March and the protests have any effect? I certainly hope so, but I really don’t think they will. Regardless of the number of people involved in the protests, this is something where idiotboy has made his decision already, and won’t be diverted from the course of action that’s been chosen. The way this is being driven through, that no protests and no alternatives are being looked at instead of war, it makes me wonder whether Iraq now is going to be the British (and of course American) equivalent of Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of conscientious objectors, a war that goes on for years with no real resolution in sight, and hundreds, even thousands of unnecessary casualties.

Only the future will reveal what happens, but somehow I can’t help feeling that this “potential” war is really pretty much definite.

Collectors Corner

OK, it’s not a hobby I was aware of, but I suppose it makes sense. Beer Can collecting. (I’m assuming they’re empty, or still sealed, but who knows?) However, there’s always someone who’s prepared to take it to extremes.

Now that’s that I call quite random

Just a brief thought that sometimes I’m not sure which is funnier, the people who use Google or the way it sometimes works.

Looking through the search referrers today produced something which I absolutely love:

And lo, d4d is there within the top ten results. (And so is Anna) – how cool is that?

Go bart.

Cinema Queues

Why is it that if there’s a group of, say, 10 people all wanting to go to see the same thing at the cinema (i.e. a group, not just five lots of couples, or whatever) they ALL have to wait in the queue to buy the tickets?

Do they expect that if they pool the money (at £5 each on a weekend, a whole £50) then the person elected to buy the tickets will just do a runner to Brazil or somewhere and never be seen again? Is each person incapable of standing separate from the bunch, even for the five or ten minutes necessary to queue for the tickets? Or are they all just such fuckwits that noen of them can remember what they want to see unless they all bunch up together?

It wouldn’t annoy me so much if it was a rare thing – when I went to the cinema today there were three groups doing this. The queue looked fucking huge, yet disappeared quickly once the bunch of retard daytrips had gone through.

Valentine’s Greetings

On a complete tangent, if the Anti Valentines Cards at Not So Soft aren’t to your liking because they’re too nice and polite still, the flash greeting at this location really should suit you nicely. Definitely not for the faint of heart though.

Daredevil

Yes, Yes, I know that it’s “sad” to go see films on your own, and all that bobbins. What can I say? Much as he’s a total knob in a lot of films, still the idea of Ben Affleck in tight red leather was a thing that had to be seen – and when better than on Valentine’s Day?

Actually, if truth be told, I was just as interested in how they’d manage to deal with Elektra (unfortunately played by Jennifer Garner of Alias infamy) as I’ve thought she was a fascinating character, possibly even worthy of her own film, right back to the late 80’s. (I know, showing my age again) So all in all, it was going to be an interesting film, regardless.

And in honesty, it’s not that bad – well, it could’ve been a lot worse. Considering that the two main(ish) characters, played by Affleck and Garner are about as capable as the local park bench of showing emotions, it’s quite a fun film. Not one I’d see repeated times – I think once was enough – unlike some of the others in the genre, for example Spiderman, which is still fun the second or third time round.

There’s a couple of very noticeable bugs in the film too – the grand finale (about 20 mins of the film) is all done with Daredevil supposedly nursing a knackered left side, where his body has been pierced through with a short sword. (Sai, for the pedantic among us) Considering that he seems to be dying at this stage, it’s really quite impressive how agile and strong he suddenly becomes again. Maybe I missed a plot twist, and he’s actually twinned with Wolverine from X-Men (Speaking of which, the trailer for X2 preceded Daredevil, and looks like it’ll be much more fun…) or something, but it’s definitely a pretty large bug. There are a couple of others too, but I can’t be bothered to go into the ins and outs of it all.

If you can suspend disbelief, and just sit and enjoy a film (ideally without gobby Mancunian fuckwits in the row behind commenting on every “twist”, making it blatantly obvious to all in the audience that they’d have problems following the twists in a Mr Men book, let alone a film) then Daredevil’s worth a go. If you’re an impassioned fan of the Daredevil comic books, I’d probably save time (and a nasty case of mouth-froth) by simply avoiding it altogether.

For a different (and in my opinion, far funnier/more pious) review of this film, go here. (Thanks to “More than a way of life” for pointing to it initially)

By hook or by crook

Another title I just couldn’t resist, seeing that Abu Hamza’s son is in court for burglary. There’s so many different levels to all this, but I do wonder if the judge would have a sense of humour and expel the boy from the country by telling him to sling his hook.

Bloody sodding Valentines Day

Just to top off my mood, I’ve just received a lovely little spam text message from the considerate caring marketing droids fuckwit cunts at O2 telling me “Give Valentine's Day a twist. Treat yourself to romantic ringtones, logos and horoscopes. For details, reply to this message, or go to o2.co.uk“. What a load of old shite – what the hell is a romantic ringtone, anyway? Even Rolf Harris wouldn’t find the beepy stylophone style of mobile ringtone to be romantic.

Anyway, I’m about as uninterested in the entire thing as it’s possible to be. To me Feb 14th is very much a day for the unimaginative, the day where every couple seems to know what they “should” be doing, by getting cards, flowers and teddy bears, going out for meals, proposing, all that bobbins. But it’s just for the people who seem to fail to realise that this is all stuff they can do any time – and in fact should do anytime. There’s no such thing as a special day to show your partner you love them – in fact, to me the idea that my partner would need a special day to do that kind of thing, when they feel they should do it rather than wanting to do it, well, that’s not romantic, it’s just insulting. On a personal basis, I’d rather receive absolutely fuck all on February 14th, and instead just be surprised at some random time of year, when it was something that meant something, rather than just going with the crowd, following on with “well, it’s what everyone does”.

But I know my standards are too high, to want someone who actually has independent thoughts, rather than being a mob-follower.

Jammed up

Nice to see that the website for London Congestion Charging is jammed solid. The BBC caption writer appears to be having a field day with it.

And what a shock – The Useability Company has had a look at the website in question and it’s too complex, doesn’t even cater for those who are visually impaired, and is really just a sack of shit, although they’re too polite to say that in public. I don’t know wo did the work, but looking at the standard of it, I’m almost tempted to say it looks like an EDS job…

Apt initials

Am I the only one who smiles upon seeing people referring to Valentine’s Day as VD ?

Obi Wan Kycensus

So, there are 390,000 Jedi in the UK according to the 2001 Census. Frankly, who cares?

I’m sure that deciding to make Jedi an accepted religion had some wider point, some sociological theorem behind it, but I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to look into the whys and wherefores of it all.

Solomon Burke, Manchester Academy 2

Tonight, there’s no other way to put it, I was in the presence of true greatness. I’ll freely admit, until the start of this year, I hadn’t really heard of Solomon Burke at all – my first real sighting of him was on Jools Holland at New Year’s Eve. So it came as quite a surprise tonight to learn that he’s been coming to the UK for concerts since 1965. There was actually a couple he invited on stage who had a photo of him from his first tour, which they’d copied and given back to him – and regardless of everything else, it’s pretty impressive for a star to allow members of the general public on stage with him – not just once, but twice, the second occasion involving about 15 people as his “dancers”. How to describe the music? This is a man who’s either performed with, or written songs for, everyone in the Soul and Blues world. The band come on stage, and immediately it feels like a scene from the Blues Brothers – only without the car chases, fights and chickenwire. Drums, bass and lead guitar, a trio of sax/trumpet players, organ, and – um – a harp?!? Novel. The band went into a jam before Solomon Bruke himself appeared on stage, so there was about five minutes that simply set the mood – and what a mood it was. Once Burke himself came out, we were treated to what amounted to a history of soul and blues – Stand By Me, Fa fa fa fa fa (Sad Song), Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay, and Everybody Needs Somebody to name just a few. In addition, there were tracks from the latest album – the only way to describe it was as a party, or as an out-take from the Blues Brothers films. Even the band turned out to have some well known members in it (I’m stuffed on who, exactly, because the entire thing was just overwhelming in the end), and really the entire thing was just a huge line-up of “we’ve been there, done that, and can now give away the T-Shirts” – except it wasn’t smug, it felt more like a bunch of guys coming together for a good time. One of the touches that I found to be really impressive (whether it was planned or not, I have no way of knowing) was when Burke called out the singer from the warm-up “band” (duo is more descriptive). Lavinia, the singer – who deserves to become a star in her own right, from the songs and voice she showcased tonight – was asked to come back, and sing again – this time covering “Killing Me Softly”, which she did superbly, with Solomon Burke providing some counterpoint vocals on the chorus just for effect. It’s rare for me to see a concert that manages to provoke emotional responses – the only other performer who can do that (although for slightly different reasons) is Marc Almond. But the show tonight even brought tears to my eyes – not for any good reason, just a reaction to how incredibly good the entire performance was. The entire audience applauded after every track, and were totally involved in the performance too – it didn’t feel like a concert, more like a collection of friends. Faithless used to do a track about “This is my church” (UPDATE As Gordon so rightly pointed out, the track was “God is a DJ”), relating to nightclubs, and music in general. That was how tonight felt too – it’s not often I come out of a concert feeling like it’s been more of a celebration, but that was how it was. Music and concerts are as close to a religion as I have, and Solomon Burke tonight was definitely two hours in the best temple I know.

Hating Christina Aguillera

In a fit of bravery, Anna tries to list 10 reasons to hate Christina Aguillera. Personally, I find the best reason to simply be “Because she’s Christina Aguillera” – that seems to pretty much cover the waterfront on these things.

Memory loss in the over 30’s

Well, it’s obvious that I’m picking up the early symptoms of Alzheimers, as I’d completely forgotten I’m supposed to be seeing Solomon Burke in concert tonight. Luckily, I’ve remembered in plenty of time to get down there and enjoy the gig. Photos etc. will follow later tonight when I get in…

GeoURL

Yes, I jumped on the bandwagon with GeoURL, out of pure interest as to who was close geographically and so on. Of course, as Gert points out it would’ve been more informative if I’d put the right location in for myself first of all, rather than keffing it up royally and making it look like I lived somewhere in lower Amsterdam…

The Second Coming – ITV

Various thoughts are running through my head, having finally seen this drama in it’s entirety. I’m amazed there hasn’t been more hysteria in the media about it, considering the subject matter – it’s the Second Coming of Christ, and this time he’s a normal man from Manchester. Already I can hear the fundamentalists foaming at the mouth. Scripted by Russell T Davies (No stranger to controversy, having written other dramas such as “Bob and Rose” and “Queer as Folk” before this one) it’s definitely a thought provoking work – although the knee-jerk hysterics will completely bypass that side of it.

One thing it reinforced for me is quite how good an actor Christopher Eccleston really is. If he’s not the second coming of christ, he’s definitely way up there in the pantheon of acting deities. Both the acting and the scripting were superb, neatly avoiding problems like how the Son of God avoids omniscience – it’s not going to be a decent drama if he already knows how it all ends.

I’m not going to give too much of the story away, even now it’s been transmitted – there was so much to go into, so many ideas and concepts that were brought into it, and the finale for it was a very impressive way to avoid all the potential problems of showing a vision of Judgement Day. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting it to work out the way it did – Jane said that the ending was a let down, and in some ways I agree, there were a couple of things that didn’t feel completely right about it, but within the limitations of the format, it worked fine for me. Nice to see some decent drama finally coming out of British TV – there’s been a definite dearth of it in the last couple of years, and between this and some of the other dramas over the last couple of months, let’s hope it’s a corner turned, heading towards better productions again.

Internet Rarities

Now there’s something you don’t see every day – a Virtual Voodoo Doll. Just in time for Valentine’s Day too. What could be better?

Weird thoughts again

Yes, Five is having “slightly dodgy film week” from the look of it. Tonight was “Deep Blue Sea directed by Renny Harlin. And it struck me that Harlin is a man obsessed with a certain type/look of woman. He married Geena Davis, and then had Saffron Burrows star in Deep Blue Sea. See if you can spot the similarity…

Scary, isn’t it?

OK, Bloody 00’s Saxophone too

In connection to the post below, about the 80’s Saxophone fetish (and the sixties, according to Peter‘s comment on the subject) it looks like the entire thing must run on a twenty year cycle, give or take. I was listening to the media’s new sacrificial goat TaTu’s album, and one track is utterly obsessed with a sax solo…

Scary, but true.

Bloody 80’s Saxophone

OK, I confess, I was watching Lethal Weapon on Channel Five Five, and during it something occurred to me.

What the hell WAS it with films in the 80’s (Particularly American ones) and saxophone music on the soundtracks? Seems like every mainstream film from the mid to late 80s in particular had to have a sentimental “memories” scene or love scene with a saxophone soundtrack. Fortunately it seems to have faded out again in the 90’s, and I don’t think it’s been witnessed since (thank the Lord), but you can be pretty sure that if you’re watching a film with a sax on the soundtrack, it’s from the 80’s.

I’ve no idea of the reasons why it started, but I’m seriously bloody thankful that the trend has faded out again.

Cashless Society

There’s an interesting piece on CNN about France introducing a “smart” card to replace cash. It’s a decent idea in this case because it’s not storing any personal data, and like cash, if you lose the card and someone else picks it up, they can use it instead.

Site referrers

Sometimes the search requests I see on the logs the brought people to this site are too bizarre for words. Yesterday, the following ones brought people to this site. (I’ve included links so the google search page can be seen)

• Get me the names and email addresses of contractors in russia updated 2003 – Ranked #1
• Drawing fucking nuns – Ranked #17ish
• UK citys direction driver – Ranked #5 and I’ve no idea what it means either
• Decomposing fruit tate modern – Ranked #1. (which must piss off the artist who did it).

And yahoo lists me under

• Find the perfect medical profession – Ranked #2

The world is a very strange place sometimes.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Ah yes, my favourite telecoms provider, NTL are back at the trough again. They’ve just introduced a 1Gb per day bandwidth cap on their cable modems and broadband access (previously advertised as “unlimited access, always on” – guess they’ll have to rethink that one too) and some people such as www.dont-pay-ntl.co.uk explain why.

Of course, around where I live, (in an area sponsored by the useless bastards wonderful philanthropic company) they can’t even organise broadband with cable modems. Instead, what they did was lower the threshold on what broadband was, and tried to make out that dual-channel ISDN (128Kbps) was an always-on broadband connection. Thankfully, I went back to a BT phone line as soon as I got the chance, and went with ADSL for broadband instead.

Blogroll

Oh yes, and a quick piece of extra maintenance got done yesterday. The semi-regular (and roughly quarterly) editing of the blogroll over on the right. So (and about bloody time too, in at least one case) welcome to the roll, ScaryDuck, Chaos Angel, Kennamatic, More a way of life and (last but definitely not least) Neil Gaiman too.

More Birthday Bits

Along with Scaryduck and Gert, it looks like Kitchentable also had his birthday this week. On the same day as the other two as well. How bizarre is that?

Still, from the story of the birthday party it looks like the little sod had a good time of it.

Clash of the Titians

Sorry, couldn’t resist the title. Looks like it’ll be worth a trip down to the National Gallery in November to see the exhibition of Titian paintings all in one place, and situated in a facsimile of the Camerino gallery they were initially housed in as a collection..

Speaking with the Dead

I still really don’t believe that anyone would go for something like this, but there we go, as Barnum said, “There’s one born every minute“.

So, with that thought in mind, there’s not a lot else I can say about Afterlife Telegrams where, for a mere $5 per word your message can be memorised by a terminally ill person, and then sent into the ether once they peg it.

Proof of sending is not proof of delivery, as our own Royal Mail would say.

Conversations with Mother

Yes, following on from yesterday’s realisation that I’d keffed up the diary, I spoke to the illustrious parents again tonight.

My mum called me a fuckwit, which is true, and nothing particularly shocking coming from her. And they’re coming down the weekend after instead. Probably. She didn’t have her diary with her, so we’ll see, but it looks OK. Not bad, only being booked for two solid months before seeing them.

An intriguing way to exercise

Emily over at Dubberley has a new fitness regime to play with. It involves the Pelvicisor. Looking at the site, it just looks vile – do some women actually use this kind of thing? The mind boggles. Although I must admit I did like Emily’s thought that after a week she’d be able to fire ping-pong balls across the house…

Bobbins

Anna goes to see a play. Funniest thing I’ve read in quite a while.

Child Exploitation – the real story

So, Manchester United are heading a campaign to stamp out child exploitation. All very worthwhile – except that all the newspapers and programmes were full of images of the Man U team when they made a trip to Thailand – and were filmed at some school/refuge for exploited kids. And now they’re doing photoshoots with loads of kids.

Call me cynical, but aren’t they exploiting the children too? Building up the Man U brand by looking all cute and caring? And are they now an ethical team? Do they shun Nike footwear and boots (famously made in Thai sweatshops) in order to help stamp out child labour and sweatshops. Do they cobblers. It’s all for the nice public face of Man United – and they’ll hope you forget about the Nike stuff, and the protests about them using boots made of kangaroo leather.

Maintenance

My apologies to anyone who was looking at this site recently and found it was bringing up errors.

I decided to delete everything and start again, because the “photos” directory got renamed. I won’t go into all the whys and wherefores, but basically I was getting a lot of hits out of google’s Image Search which I wasn’t happy about, so I’ve now renamed the directory, and left a few additional bits in the robots file to mean Google shouldn’t index it any more.

I may explain more at another time, but for now I’m going to see if this cures the “problem” and go from there.

Normal service is now resumed, and all the images should be repointing to the proper place. If they don’t, please be so kind as to let me know. *Grin*

I’m a crap git

Last weekend, I got a call from the illustrious parents. We were trying to organise a weekend when all three of us were free so they could come up to see little old me. Having gone through diaries etc., we decided that the next one we were all available on was March 21st.

Excpet I’m not free that weekend at all – I’m seeing Avril Lavigne in concert, and have friends over here. So I’ve now got to call the parents and say “Ooops, I’m a shit git, how about the weekend after?” At the current rate, I’ll end up seeing them in May sometime.

Trust and Buried

Over the last five weeks, I’ve got more and more into the new BBC series Trust. Scripted by Simon Block, who I thought (I was wrong) also wrote Channel 4’s legal drama “North Square” (sadly not chosen for another series), it’s been basically a drama set in a lawyer’s office in London. Starring Robson Greene, and the BBC’s new favourite actress, Sarah Parish, it started off fairly mediocre, but has definitely been a stunner of a series. Legal dramas, or dramas set in legal offices, seemed to have hit their nadir back in the late 80’s and early 90s, but with both North Square and Trust there’s some hope for the genre yet. I hope it’ll get optioned for a second series.

Over the same run-time, Channel 4 has had “Buried“, a drama that again should be mediocre and cliched, starring Lennie James as a new man in prison, one who believes he’s innocent. But the series hasn’t descended into cliches – instead it’s been an absolute tour-de-force of scripting and acting. I don’t know how it will turn out, but I want to find out – and again, I’ll be hoping for a second series.

Both of them have been really exceptional character-driven dramas, well scripted, stunningly acted, and ultimately well worth watching. In fact, I’d probably get both of them on DVD if/when they’re released in that format.

It’s just a pity that these are the type of series that stands out, and becomes worthy of attention for that fact, rather than being simply the kind of drama we should expect from current scriptwriters.

Keffed links

Yes, for a while the perma-links were utterly keffed for no good reason. That problem now seems to be sorted having administered a swift virtual boot to Blogger’s gonads.

Haloscan’s still playing silly buggers and losing comments, but they’re working on it.

All in all, a semi-frustrating day of website problems I could do feck all about. Apologies (again) to those whose comments have disappeared into the great golloping chasm in reality.

Birthday mentions

Happy 1st Blog birthday to ScaryDuck and also to Gert.

Also, Happy Birthday to Gert proper, not just her Blog.

Michael Jackson “I feel betrayed” ‘shocker’

Since the documentary here on Wednesday about Michael Jackson, it seems the media has been full of it, how he has children sleeping over at his ranch, that there was nothing wrong with him dangling his child over a hotel balcony to show himt o fans, blah blah blah.

And now today, he’s released a statement saying he feels betrayed by the documentary makers. Poor baby. If he’s dumb enough to say stuff like that and then NOT expect it to go into the final cut, then he’s even madder than I’d previously realised.

But wait a minute – what’s actually made Jacko feel betrayed? Not the revelations that are causing all the controversy, oh no. Instead it’s (quoted from the BBC story) – “Jackson said his trust had been betrayed because the camera crew kept filming his children against his wishes

The statement said Bashir had promised Jackson the footage would be taken out of the final edit. “. So all the other stuff is OK, it’s just the footage of Jackson’s children that is in dispute.

The man’s madder than a roomful of hippos.

My body clock, it rejoiceth

All things considered, not much has been going on today. But at the same time it’s been a pretty good day.

My illustrious fuckwit wonderful employer got a call from the agency I’ve been dealing with yesterday. They were asking why their contractors (i.e. myself and one other person) were so pissed off at the work atmosphere, what with not being trusted, being patronised, and generally treated like we were six and slightly retarded.

By a strange coincidence, we were both told today that our skillsets weren’t what the company wanted, so would we kindly fuck off. Because our skills weren’t suitable, our boss wouldn’t have to pay the two week’s notice that he was required to pay as part of the contract, unless (big shock) our skill sets were unsuited to the required work.

However, the retarded knobber kind of screwed up his own case on that one, as he happily informed both of us that there would be more work coming up in April/May time, and at that point he would contact us privately rather than through the agency, and offer us work that way. So – we haven’t got the skills, but he’d happily re-employ us.

And of course it would be utterly infantile to then inform the agency of this conversation, so that they can charge him the two week’s notice, which will come back to us too. Needless to say, it would be infantile and petty – which is exactly why I did it. *Grin*

But for now I’m just thinking that I can turn off my alarm clocks, and not have to crawl/stagger across Manchester to be at work for 9am. And yes, I’m a happy bunny. I’ll talk to more agencies tomorrow too…

Amazing what you can do in the name of research

And yes, someone at The Guardian has obviously heard of the Internet Movie Database for researching about the woman shot by Phil Spector…

Is this really news?

Imagine my complete lack of shock at reading on the BBC that Yahoo!’s chatrooms still don’t follow the latest UK government guidelines on safety etc. (Think of the Children, and all that bobbins)

Snowfall

For the first time ever, we had thunder while the snow was falling. Most bizarre, but pretty cool…

And it’s off to work I go…

Valen-fucking-tine’s Day

Well, it’s February. That means we’re now in the run-up to my second most loathed season of the year – February 14th, Valentine’s Day. St Valentine, the patron saint of tedious unimaginative fuckwits, and romantic CD collections everywhere.

Just watch, the florists will put the prices up, the TV will be full of ads for “romantic” shonky slop on CD, and there’ll be a complete OD of ballads in the fucking charts for the next month. Sap-faced teenagers will be mooching about wondering what to buy for their latest and greatest love of all time. The Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan seasons of films are due to start any minute.

I’m going into hibernation. I’m sure I’ll get more pissed off with it the closer it gets. Watch this space for developments…

Wheather. (Yes, it’s a bad spell of Weather)

Ah, what a joy. Following on from the last couple of days of comments about shit weather etc., today has pretty much beaten all expectations.

It’s taken two hours to get home (normally a journey of 45-55 minutes) including waiting 40 minutes for a bus at all. The reason why the busses weren’t running? “Because the brakes can’t cope in snow/icy conditions” Pathetic, isn’t it? Not even an inch of snow (and it was more just like heavy hail than proper snow) and our transport system grinds to a bloody halt.

Of course, it was topped off by having to being the queue behind three mad crones all wittering on about who was to blame for it being snowy and crap. Not who was to blame for roads not being gritted, or for buying buses that can only work in decent weather (or the british equivalent of it – they work fine in rain, in other words), or for letting people know what the hell the problem is with the transport system so they can at least piss off and stay warm or whatever. Oh no, instead it was who was to blame for the weather.

I now need a visit to the dentist to replace the teeth I’ve ground to dust while making sure I didn’t scream and or verbally abuse the idiots.

Iraq

President Blair today said “we are entering the final phase of a 12-year history of the disarmament of Iraq“. It’s all a load of cobblers really – the easiest way to “disarm Iraq” would have been to not sell them the fucking weapons in the first place.

After all – that’s how they know what weaponry Iraq is supposed to have. The UK and US sold it to them. Isn’t it lucky that politicians can’t even spell “hypocrisy”, let alone understand what it is.

Silver text

I must admit, I’m not quite certain why there’s the interest in one person who uses text messages. Big deal, she’s 78. She uses text messages because “Text messaging is a wonderful way for me to keep in touch with my daughters and grand-daughters“. Surely that’s what it’s all about?

Or is it news now for someone to have an open mind now? The “Silver Surfer” phenomenon is alive and well, and will become less and less remarkable. (Let’s be honest, it’s pretty unremarkable now) Maybe it’s just me – both my parents are in their late 50’s, yet both use email, text messaging, Internet, phone banking – in fact, anything that makes their lives easier. (My father is slightly more techno-idiot, in that he used to think “E-Mail” was what Yorkshire people said when the post arrived. I kid ye not – in mitigating circumstances, I should just state that he is actually from Yorkshire) They book flights and hotels from various websites, use Hotmail (in this case, I can forgive them), and have even talked about setting up a home page for themselves. Are they in the minority for having this attitude, for being open-minded enough to accept new technologies and see the benefits of them? In honesty, I don’t know – they’re what I’m used to, so maybe that’s part of it, because I simply assume that there have to be more people like them, rather than their being in the minority.

I suppose only time will tell. Personally, I can’t wait for the people who go on Club 18-30 holidays at the moment to become the Saga holiday people of the future. Pensioners on piss-ups in Ibiza – now that’s what I call progress…

Sum41, and Mighty Mighty Bosstones – MEN Arena

Hmmm, this is unnatural – two gigs at the MEN Arena that haven’t sucked. I’m beginning to worry. Anyway, Sum41 – this is the second time I’ve seen them, and last time was in a smaller venue, whereas today was in that epitome of crap gigness, the MEN Arena. The warm-up act (OK, I missed American Hi-Fi, the first warm-up) was the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Last time I saw Sum41, they were supported by Reel Big Fish, and basically the Bosstones were like them, only not so good. Not helped by a really dodgy sound mix that needed a good kick to the techie. However, seeing the number of empty water bottles chucked at them, it did give me faith that there’s still an element of abuse at gigs – something that’s been sorely missing for a while now. *Grin* Sum41 however, hit the stage and were simply superb. Musically I really can’t fault them – it’s rare to see that level of co-ordination, skill and simple speed playing – let alone realising that they can all do each other’s jobs too – for the finale, the drummer sang, and the singer drummed – the only way to tell the change was by paying attention. I think they played pretty much every track they’ve recorded, much to the delight of the children adoring fans all around the arena. Yes, I felt old, but still, what the hell, it was fun, and bloody good. However, either my hearing is naturally more naff, or bands are getting quieter- my hearing was fine, and didn’t take the requisite couple of hours to recover. Sum41 are an awesome band live, seriously well put together. Some of the teenage rebellion ethos seems very cliched, and really they’re the kind of rockers you could pretty much take home to meet your mother, but they’re still one of the best bands live. Can’t wait for them to tour again…

Lizzie Dripping

Ok – a quick post, following a question from the friends I’ve got staying here – who IS the Lizzie Dripping who also posts on WafflyBollox.

Call me nosy…

ALL over Texas…

Well, that’s what the word coincidence is custom designed for.

Less than a week after posting about it being 16 years since Challenger went Pop, it looks like NASA yet again is sponsored by 7-Up, as it’s lost contact with Columbia as it was re-entering the atmosphere.

Or maybe they’re just unlucky once every 16 years, particularly with craft whose names start with a “C”…