Still not enough to make me live there

Apparently, Los Angeles now has it’s own Top level Domain (TLD) as of today. It’s the first city to have it’s own TLD – so you can register a site at www.la. I wonder how many film studios etc. will end up as (for example) www.miramax.la ?

Personally, I already like the idea of domain names like tortil.la, cocaco.la and pepsico.la. But hey, what would I know?

Hey, buddy, can you spare a fiver

Pardon the pun, but it looks like the Congestion Charging scheme in London is in a jam of it’s own – the scheme has been so successful in stopping cars from going into Central London that it’s now looking like it’ll be £65million in the hole by the end of the year.

Impressive.

Dinner Party Inspectors

Did anybody else see Channel 4’s The Dinner Party Inspectors this week? I must admit, I thought it was hilarious.

Two fairly upper-class grand dames watching – and bitching about – other people’s dinner parties. In the first one, the party itself was fairly innocuous, just some grotty manners and intra-diner sniping. But it was still fun to watch. Not necessarily as instantly watchable as the now-infamous “Wife Swap”, but still in a similar vein of fish-out-of-water scenarios.

The final line of this first programme though made sure I’ll watch it again. “Next time, dear, separate your female guests more – one at one end of the table, the other the week after.“

Explanation

Well, according to Easyspace, d4d was having problems yesterday and today “because of problems while they upgraded the server that holds d4d (and others)“. I don’t find it reassuring that they obviously dont have things like back-up servers and so on.

Time to start looking (again) at moving hosting services, I think.

Mission:Unreachable

Amazingly, President Blair is one of the few world leaders without their own email address. Considering all the gubbins about e-government and so on, isn’t it nice to know that he’s in the same technological league as Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe.

Because of course, that’s the kind of company he wants to be seen to be keeping.

Union Joke

According to the BBC, there’s a move to redesign the Union Jack. In theory, I think the idea of adding black to the flag “to reflect the multiracial nature of Britain” isn’t a bad idea – but of course I can already see that other “minorities” would then want to be represented as well. Which is, of course, a recipe for disaster.

UPDATED : Following on from the comments on this one, I think that if a flag were to represent our “national identity” (as in how we’re seen by other nations) then perhaps a background of the US Stars and Stripes with a white flag in front of it, covered in puke to display our image in the Balearic islands, and anywhere else the England football supporters have been. Have I forgotten anything relevant?

Status Quo

Ah – within twelve hours of working for the local authority, I’m already in meetings all day. I love government, don’t you?