Musical Madness (or Insania, if you prefer)

Christ, it never rains but pours. First of all, Peter bloody Andre is back at Number One with the truly awful “Mysterious Girl”, and then comes news that Paul McCartney is to release a sequel to his rancid Frog Chorus film from a few years back. I think I’m just going to give up now.

The McCartney sequel, Tropic Island Hum, “stars” a Liverpudlian squirrel – called Wirral. I despair. Got any spare razor blades?

Blimey

Wow, Blogrolling has been sold – to Tucows. It’ll be interesting to see what works out.

It’s amazing, the things you can find in Asda

There’s something slightly distasteful about the story of the couple who got married in Asda. Fair enough, it’s where they met, and all that gubbins – but somehow it just makes me think “Yick!”

Supposedly the Asda in York is the first supermarket to be approved for holding full wedding ceremonies, rather than just blessings, but I seriously hope that not many others (if any at all) do the same thing. In a world where consumerism has already become rife, the idea of being married in a supermarket is – well, apt I suppose. But still deeply distasteful, to me at least.

Bestseller

Yesterday, I got a copy of Market Forces, the new book by Richard Morgan. It’s been released early (it was supposed to be released on 4th March), and the edition I have is a first-edition hardback. So – and this kind of intrigues me, to be honest – how come the cover can say “his bestselling new novel” ? Obviously it’s not yet a bestseller, because it’s been published for a whole three days – and that doesn’t take into account the additional fact that still most people don’t know anything about Morgan’s novels. Are the publishers prescient?

Self Improvement

You know, sometimes it’s possible to go up in the world without even trying. I’ve just started doing an OU foundation course to set me up for the degree course from autumn this year, but that involves some effort.

However, you can set yourself up as a Reverend with virtually no effort whatsoever. The Universal Life Church allows you to become an ordained minister of the church – online. No expense, no twelve years in the seminary, no effort. You can now refer to me as Reverend Lyle. *Grin*

Independence

Recently, I’ve been working for a client, developing a load of client management stuff in PHP. To-do lists, client history and tracking, contact management, payment gubbins, the whole nine yards. And all written by me – no copyright issues, even with Open Source modules. I can honestly say that – at risk of trumpet blowing – I’m seriously bloody pleased with myself, considering I didn’t really know anything but the basics of PHP this time last year.

In fact, the only potentially dark cloud on this particular horizon was the need to do email notifications of the various happenings within the system. I’ve never written a PHP mail script (and hadn’t written a mail script in that level of detail before at all) so I went with the “easy” option of using formmail.php – yes, a module written by someone else. Shocking.

What was more shocking was that the module was an utter sack of shit. It caused me more problems than enough – and particularly when trying to customise it to my requirements. An absolute nightmare. So instead today I’ve spent some time writing a basic mail script that does what I needed it to – MIME types, priority flags, cc:s and bcc:s, and that doesn’t fuck up. I’m sure that it could be written better, or more securely, but at the end of the day it works, and it’s secure enough for my current purposes.

I’m too independent for my own good, I suppose. I don’t like using other people’s code where I can possibly avoid doing so. Yes, the learning curve can be cliff-like in its steepness on occasion, but seeing the working end result is still hugely satisfying. I’m seriously pleased with the entire load of code – and you can bet I’ll be writing more as time goes on.

Child Care

I completely forgot to blether about this yesterday – I think shock set in – but I find it amazing that up to two-thirds of child car-seats are fitted incorrectly.

Every year more than 100,000 children are involved in crashes where it is crucial how well the seat is fitted.

Most receive little more than a jolt, but 10,000 are hurt, with 670 seriously injured and 30 killed, the AA said.

Too many parents make mistakes or take shortcuts to keep children happy, the AA Motoring Trust said.

So that’s 10% of children who get hurt when involved in crashes, and 1% seriously injured. Because parents make mistakes, or don’t do it properly because their little darling isn’t comfortable. Keff that, the little sod will get used to it, and trust me, it’s less comfortable to spend three months wrapped in plaster.

I’d say more, but I can feel that vein on the side of my head pulsing, so I’m going to take some deep breaths instead.

Memetastic

You knew I’d go for it in the end, didn’t you? Heh. So – the first twenty tracks out of my MP3 collection go like this :-

1. Martina Topley-Bird : Lullaby
2. Voice of the Beehive – Just a City
3. Tom Jones – Jezebel
4. Unkle – What Are You To Me?
5. Tom Waits – Coney Island Baby
6. Good Charlotte – Story of My Old Man
7. Chickasaw Mudd Puppies – Prison
8. Elbow – Snooks
9. Alabama 3 – Let The Caged Bird Sing
10. Massive Attack – Blue Lines
11. Beloved – Paradise Found
12. Ministry – Breathe
13. Machines of Loving Grace – Lilith/Eve
14. Erasure – Sometimes
15. Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
16. Soft Cell – Le Grand Guignol
17. Alabama 3 – Hotel California
18. Reverend Horton Heat – Beer
19. Loudon Wainwright III – It’s Love and I Hate It
20. Nina Simone – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Talking to Murderers

I restrained myself from commenting at the time about the police interviewing as many serial killers as possible in order to build up a ‘profile’. I can kind of see the reasons behind it – but there are several flaws there too. The biggest one that I can see is that – when it comes to apprehending killers, anyway – the common factor with all of the ones that would be interviewed is that they’ve been caught. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? But if they’ve been caught then in general they’re likely to have made a mistake or done something that got them caught, or raised suspicion.

It’s like the old theory that prisons were a good place to learn abotu crime – in fact they’re a good place to learn how to get caught.

Anyway, it’s also no surprise to me that Ian Brady has already refused to help or be interviewed, and I suspect that others will follow suit. Even without taking everything else into consideration, what on earth makes the police think that any decent serial killer is going to want to help them, for chuff’s sake?

MP3 Playlist

No, I’m not going to do that meme (yet) – but following on from yesterday’s post, the combination of tracks on my little 128Mb MP3 player today is quite varied :

• Scissor Sisters album
• Diamanda Galas “Sporting Life” album
• Reel Big Fish “Favourite Noise” album

and just to fill some space

• Alabama3 and Orbital – Ska’d for life
• OPM – Heaven is a Halfpipe
• Peter Gabriel – Growing Up

Having it on random makes life fairly interesting…

So much, So little.

There’s loads of things I could probably blither on about today (and in fact may do so later) including the film of Christ’s temptation opening to controversy in the US (regular readers can imagine my surprise on that one), the NHS cheapskates only being prepared to fund one round of IVF treatment, the first UK citizenship ceremony, and Blunkett attempting to put on a swastika armband in an effort to look less like a fascist totalitarian in the name of anti-terror. All rate as fair game, and I’m sure at least two will get more of a rant later.

In addition there’s Halifux being sleazy buggers (again) and the exceptionally dodgy “it wasn’t us, we didn’t do it” story from the parents of Shafilea Ahmed (to the resounding accompaniment of a chorus of “Aye, right. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on” from the audience.

So much to blither about, so little inclination to do so.

Pounding

A while back, I commented about wearing headphones at work, and having music while working on repetitive, dull crappy tasks council websites. Today I’m definitely needing music, as the combination of a) workmen replacing the security barriers outside the office, b) fucking morons talking (loudly) about keff all [bear in mind I can hear them – over the headphones – from the other side of the office], c) dull repetitive stuff (roll on the Content Management System), and d) semi-tropical office temperatures has induced a headache of epic proportions. Again.

It’s a choice between music and homicide. Even with music, homicide is still an option. I wonder if I can beat someone’s face in while keeping with the rhythm?

Note to Self : Diamanda Galas’ “Sporting Life” album is probably not the best thing to listen to in order to maintain sanity. It is, however, funky as hell.

Shagged

Sorry about the lack of comments currently, but it looks like Haloscan’s database has disappeared up its own output port again. Poxy system. And yes, I know, I know, MT is the way to go. Give me a spare month and I might get round to it.

It’s back now – no explanation. I really need that spare month…

Fascist Weasel

So, George Bush wants to change the US Constitution in order to make gay marriage illegal, does he? Frankly, what difference is there between a religious extremist killing others because they don’t hold the same faith, and some fundamentalist Texan telling people how they should live their lives – and trying to effectively make part of their lifestyle illegal?

In a related story, Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said

Because the city and county of San Francisco’s actions [in allowing gay marriage] are directly contrary to state law and present an imminent risk to civil order

Yes, that’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of films like Terminator, Commando, and Predator – all proponents of civil order.

Where does it end? If gay marriage is made constitutionally illegal, then the gates are open for any other forms of discrimination to come in.

Corporate Incompetence

Before Christmas, regular readers may recall that I was sorting out a small office unit for my company. The business park I was going to be using was the Cariocca Enterprise Park in Manchester, who were offering the units at a very decent price. Well, I now know why they were so cheap.

Since I paid out my deposit and so on, and did all the paperwork, I’ve had nothing but hassle and incompetence from them. Despite multiple phone calls, they never even managed to provide me with a set of keys for the unit I was renting – in other words, I’ve still never set foot in the unit I’d paid for. Apparently this was my fault, for not chasing them up – we’ll try to ignore the weekly calls (which then became twice a week) that I made after the first fortnight. I’m now involved in a fight with the Manchester City Council Business Rates Unit, because they insist that I was in the office unit, and that any claim to the contrary is obviously me trying to get out of paying rates, rather than that the business centre are conning inefficient complacent cocksuckers.

In the end, I cancelled the agreement, and wanted a refund. God, I’m so naïve. Because apparently it was all my fault that I hadn’t gone in and kicked the everloving shit out of the receptionist ’til she gave me the keys collected the keys (which allegedly had been in reception all the time, and supposedly I was told this on repeated occasions – again, I must be hallucinating, and of course I’d leave keys there rather than picking them up for a unit I was renting) I was still liable for the rent payments, which instead were taken out of the deposit I’d paid.

I finally got the cheque yesterday – made out to my own name, rather than the company name – and for about a third of what it should’ve been. No compliments slip, no breakdown of what I’ve been ripped off charged for, no anything. Useless bastards. I’ve called them up today, asking for a breakdown of the charges (no problem – so why the blazing frak wasn’t it done anyway) and a letter confirming that the agreement is now terminated.

Oooh, we don’t normally do that.
Well, frankly I hope that this isn’t a normal situation, and as such I’d like it done and sent to me, because the hassle I’m now going through is entirely due to Cariocca.
Well, I’ll see what I can do.

The words “organise” “pissup” and “brewery” keep on coming into my head for some reason…

Arseing Twat

Today I shall mainly be writing PHP pages for the bits I’d forgotten on a couple of sites. Mainly for error-checking, and ensuring that essential data is actually present, rather than simply expected. Yes, I’d fallen into the classic trap of thinking that making it bloody obvious on the data entry screens would be enough to get people to enter the data. I was wrong – Oh, so wrong. *sigh*

By ‘eck

I’d slacked off on the log-file analysis a bit recently, but did do a report last night. It’s only got about a third of yesterday’s hits, but the current total since May ’02 when d4d™ started now stands at just over 145,000 page views, and a princely 1.7million hits. Not bad going for a little old personal site/blog. *grin*

Of course, the blog is the main part of the site, and it’s birthday isn’t until August 9th, so really d4d™ is only 18months old, rather than approaching two years. Honest.

Cuentral Trains – Part Two

(Part the First is below) The return journey was even worse. As I’ve ranted about before, train companies do maintenance on weekends, and replace the normal train service. With Buses. Other than apoplexy, the other main result of this is that everything takes a shedload longer to do – and that’s assuming that there’s anything resembling competence/intelligence/common sense going into the planning of this. Instead, Heath Robinson would be proud.

The train runs fine from Nottingham to Sheffield. Again, it’s fucking rigid (another two-carriage job) aided and abetted by screaming hellspawn, snoring scallies, and a press of bodies that I’d previously thought outmoded since the Black Hole of Calcutta. The train gets into Sheffield, and everyone has to get off to “utilise road travel in order to facilitate the continuance of your onward journey” (thanks to the station announcer for that little gem)

There are no signs to say where the coaches are leaving from – it turns out to be outside the station, in a fenced-off bit of carpark. Two coaches appear – no signs to say where each is going. It’s only when people have got on them that they say “this one’s for Liverpool. If you’re going to Manchester you need the other coach”. Thanks very fucking much, you peanut-chomping retard offspring of the liaison between a rabid goat and a lust-crazed colobus. Thankfully, the driver of the other bus has managed to perform the same fuckup, so there are some spaces.

Now, if you were wedged like sardines travelling in a coach, wouldn’t you put your rigid, wheeled mini-suitcase in the luggage space under the coach? You know, those big cavernous spaces where suitcases are supposed to go? No, of course you bloody woudn’t, you halfwit daughter of a goatherd, you’d put the bloody thing on your lap. For two hours. And woe betide the poor cretin (yes, that’s Me) who has to sit next to you, with the wheels leaving what feel like permanent imprints in the gap between knee-cap and knee joint. Ah, the joys of that journey.

We eventually arrived in Manchester – again, an hour later than expected. I can honestly say that Snake Pass (or, for purists, the A57 ) is “interesting” at night, in an overloaded coach. The rest of the journey was fairly insignificant, as I was concentrating more on making sure my 6’4″ frame was still going to be mobile by the time I escaped got off the coach of Calcutta, ideally with both kneecaps intact, and no murder charge in my future.

Cuentral Trains – Part One

Ah, the joys of a weekend on the trains. Travel between Manchester and Nottingham on a train actually isn’t rocket science – there’s no need to change trains, it’s a direct service, and runs semi-regularly (approximately hourly, if for some strange reason you care about these things) but it does have one major problem. The service is run by Central Trains. Oh dear, what a calamity.

Friday’s journey to Nottingham should have been utterly uneventful – in fact, I’d go so far as to describe it as “a piece of piss”. Get on train. Sit down. Wait two hours. Get out at Nottingham. The problems start when you remember that a) you’re travelling on a Friday, and b) it’s 5.30pm. OK.

One of the idiosyncracies of Manchester travel is that there are two stations that the train stops at – Oxford Road, and Piccadilly. If you get on at Piccadilly, the service is ram-packed, and impossible to even get a seat. If you’re smart, you get on at Oxford Road, and you’re in with a head-start by the time the train gets to Piccadilly, and hordes want to get on/off. It’s well worth doing. And for once, I remembered to do it. Thank Christ.

The complete twadges who plan train availablilty for Cuentral Trains had decided that because it was a Friday rush-hour train, obviously no-one would want to travel. Two fucking carriages. Yes, Two. Even the normal train has three, or even four. But no, Friday, 17.30, Two carriages. So of course that’s going to be rigid. Getting on at Oxford Road was OKish – still plenty of keffwits with eight suitcases, as well as the people who see that the carriage is filled to the gills, but still stay sat down ’til the train pulls into Piccadilly. Already I’m beginning to wish we had less legislation on stun-guns. Luckily, though, I’ve at least got a seat.

By the time the train finally leaves Piccadilly, you could maybe get two more people on. Assuming they knew each other pretty well already. If they didn’t, they soon would. The train gets to Stockport, disgorges a few, rams a few more in. And waits… And waits… And waits…

Thirty minutes later, we’re told that one of the two power units on the train is now officially knackered, and that the people in one carriage are going to be travelling in the dark. Guess which carriage, folks? Yup, my one. Half an hour late, the train staggers out of the station, dangerously overcrowded, and totally underpowered. Sheffield involved another twenty minute wait while they tried to wind up the clockwork sort out the power unit (and failed) so we eventually collapsed into Nottingham over an hour late (on a two hour journey). At which point the guard apologised for the lateness that’d been caused by a) a fucked power-unit, and b) too many people on the train. So now it’s our fault. If people hadn’t been so pissed off, I think there’d have been a lynching on Nottingham Station.

One of those days

Another day, another email to a shithead debt recovery agency that couldn’t find it’s arse with both hands and a flashlight.

To whom it may concern,

I have just come off the phone following the most incredibly obstructive and unhelpful call in the history of mankind.

This morning I received a completely incomprehensible statement from Britannia, accompanied by a cover letter from Mary Carney at your office. When I called for an explanation of this statement, I was told Mary Carney doesn’t even answer calls “because she’s a manager”, and all she apparently does is sign letters.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the name of the person who took my call – I hope his name is listed on my customer record somewhere. The call operative took my details (including a very badly worded request for my details – yes, I can confirm my address, but that doesn’t mean I have to) at which point the shutters came down completely.

The statement from Britannia is littered with “returned goods” and items that I have never even ordered, let alone received. Your call operative refused to be of any help at all, and apparantly was incapable of even listing what I supposedly owe Britannia money for. I was told I should take the matter up with Britannia. When I explained that I’d already spoken to Britannia, and they had insisted it was no longer their problem, it should be dealt with via Robinson Way, he simply repeated that I should take it up with Britannia.

Finally, he also said that I should take it up in writing with Robinson Way, but refused to give me a contact name within Robinson Way. The only reason I asked for a contact name (and I will directly quote myself) was “because Mary Carney apparently does eff all except sign letters“. This is a precise quote – no swearing was involved at any time. However, this is apparently an offensive comment, at which point your call operative stated he was ending the call.

I am utterly furious with the way Robinson Way has handled this matter. I am trying to find out what I supposedly owe money for from Britannia, and have requested this information on several occasions. The only item that has been forthcoming has been this statement from Britannia, which I suspect might be understandable if I were Polish, or perhaps an employee of Britannia. As I am neither, it’s incomprehensible.

My request is simple – I want to know what I am supposed to have received that I owe money for. As soon as I find that out, I will happily pay whatever debt there is against those items. However, as I have had nothing from Britannia since before the 1st August 2003, and the statement lists multiple items since then, the entire account is in dispute, and currently remains so.

I would appreciate some contact from Robinson Way to let me know what is happening with this account. It is obviously an utter nightmare somewhere along the line, and the sooner I am shot of the problem, the happier I will be.

I am contactable all day on 077xx xxxxxx, or by reply to this email address.

Yours Sincerely

Lyle

On Track

Tomorrow I’ll write more about wanky Central Trains, and their utterly crap service. If I do it today, I’ll just end up swearing more than even an 18 certificate would allow, so I’m going to decompress for 12-24 hours first. I doubt it’ll be that much of an effective plan, but we’ll see…

Public Art

I have to say, I love the idea of a field of fluorescent tubes that lights up as darkness falls, merely by being in the vicinity of electricity pylons. On display until 29th February, near Junction 18 of the M5, the installation has been designed by Richard Box, the artist-in-residence for the University of Bristol. Utterly superb, I love this type of public art.

Didn’t Miss Much

Well, according to the MEN’s review, the Gary Jules gig on Thursday was a) pretty wank, and b) fucking deserted. I’m surprised, following the Christmas success, but not all that surprised. Mad World’s very different to the rest of the music he does, and I suspect we won’t hear very much more from Mr Jules.

So I’m not too disheartened about not going to the gig – and besides, I’ve got some excellent ones still upcoming this year. Reel Big Fish, Zero 7, Pink, Chris Rea, Peter Gabriel, and probably several others. It’s going to be another good gig year, regardless of the way it’s started.

A Decision

So many things this week have been left up in the air, so for once I’ve made a decision. It’s partly on a “why not?” kind of theme, but also I’ve been looking at lots of pics lately, have just found two places I can get cheaper flights from, and well keff it, I need some kind of plan for a break to look forward to.

Timing is still unplanned, but I’m going to go to Toronto during the spring/summer. Sounds like a plan to me.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

I’m pleased to say that it looks like finally the terrorists prisoners from Guantanamo Bay are beginning to get released, with five UK citizens being released in the next week or so. Of course, they’re now going to face investigation by British anti-terror detectives too, but at least they’re more likely to be questioned legally, rather than interrogated and “persuaded” to tell the “truth” that the US authorities wanted.

However, it strikes me that if, as I suspect, these people are actually keff-all to do with terrorism etc., the US has done a top job of creating a bunch of people who really do have a stupendous reason to now hate the US with a passion, and who would happily see it crash and burn.

Eyes

I’m not sure if this is something that only I experience, or if it’s common. I’ve just been rubbing my eye, and it felt like it cramped – does that make any sense? Very sore, and quite unpleasant – it always eases off again pretty quickly, but it’s still definitely on the queasier side of “yick!”

CBA

Yes, I was supposed to be seeing Gary Jules tonight at the Academy 3. I did well – got most of the way there, and just decided I couldn’t be bothered. Just not in the mood.

I don’t know why the mood isn’t there – but it’s not. Instead I just want to curl up and sleep, or something. I do feel kind of crap for not going, but sometimes I just know I wouldn’t enjoy it, no matter how good it might have been. It doesn’t stop the crap feeling though. Wasted money, the idea that the ticket would have better gone to someone who actually went to the gig, that kind of thing. Ah the hell with it, it’s over and done with now, and in some ways I’m glad I didn’t go, but in others I just feel like a wanker. All part of the fun and games, obviously.

Abysmal

In a similar vein to Jann’s post on the same subject, yesterday here could be described as many things. However, “Shit” seems to be the word of preference – and also an entirely justified one. It was one of those where staying in bed would’ve been the wisest option, but you actually know that if you’d done that, the roof would’ve caved in.

Part of it was due to suffering a coding anti-Midas, where everything I even laid eyes on turned immediately to crap. Stuff that should take twenty minutes to write took four hours.

Going home didn’t improve anything. I received a letter from my local council saying I owed an extra £100 in council tax – quite impressive when I’d actually paid it off entirely when I moved to the new house – and had seven days to pay it, or go to court. No prior warnings, no “you’re late with a payment”, no knack all. My stuff from the OU has also arrived, except I can’t get to it because my neighbour (who received the parcel while I was out) has disappeared off the face of the earth.

As the evening wound on, it just went further downhill. The OnDigital ITV Digital Freeview box was playing silly keffers, as it’s wont to do on occasion, and so viewing anything via TiVo was like trying to follow a conversation with someone who’s photocopying their face as they talk, and only giving you the pictures. And then I got a phone call from a pregnant friend who was having a potential miscarriage, and didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know the results on that one, but at least we ended up with her going to get checked up in hospital.

All in all, an utterly f’king pants day. I just hope today goes better.

</slight self pity>

UPDATED : She was OK – it wasn’t a miscarriage, but under definite orders to do keff all for a while. Thank Christ.

Proliferation

When I looked back the other day at the archives, I realised that I really don’t add as much stuff to d4d™ as I used to a year ago. I’m sure the reasons for this are legion, but I wasn’t really aware that I’d cut down on the contributions. Still, other than when I’m away and not really able to get an internet connection, d4d™ gets updated pretty much every day.

It’s odd in some ways – I’ve seen so many sites end up with hiatus periods, points where it all gets too much, and a break is needed. I’ve never really felt like that with d4d – maybe I will one day, but for now it’s still going to keep ambling along in the normal shambolic fashion. Yes, there are things I want to do with it – a redesign, make the CSS easier to use, that kind of thing. But I still don’t feel the need for a break per se.

We’ll see, anyway. Maybe come the time I’ve been writing it for two years, I’ll want to take space, I don’t know. But for the moment d4d™’s going to keep on going.

Travelling Light

I would love to say that I was surprised to see that a man managed to travel through to Italy using his wife’s passport instead of his own. Every time I’ve travelled, the passport photo has received no more than a cursory glance (both pre- and post-September 11th) and I’d often wondered what would happen if I were to replace my photo with that of someone else. From the look of it, the answer to that would be “absolutely knack all”. Imagine my surprise…

Jewellery

For some reason my brain’s fixed on this at the moment, but I can’t find what I’m looking for. A few years ago, I saw a beautiful cross, done in silver or pewter, and wanted one. I’d forgotten it ’til now, and so I can’t remember who’d designed it or anything. It was on a leather necklace (described as a leather thong, although that seems to have changed definition), and the pieces of the cross had what appeared to be thorns on them. It was a fantastic thing, and if memory serves it was in Paradiso Bodyworks in London’s Compton Street.

In the meantime, any ideas on who did the design? Or where I could find one?

Anniversary

I was just looking back at the archives for this time last year, to see what I was up to – memory like a sieve, and all that jazz. So – did you know that it’s a year tomorrow since the London congestion charge came in? Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

February 14

So, another of the milestones (or should that be millstones?) for the year has now passed us by. The joys of the day with the second highest suicide rate in this country, and in many others. Unsurprising as it may seem to the regular reader, I really dislike – perhaps even despise – the marketing bollocks that goes on around the event. Flower prices treble, supposedly because of demand, but I suspect that demand is the one on behalf of the stockholders etc., who want more profits, and thus the ability to gouge as much as possible out of the average lovestruck punter. Clinton Cards, Hallmark, WH Smith, and a thousand others suddenly drape themselves in red hearts, and provide a range of cards in which the unimaginative can persuade their devotion’s target of their love/lust/illicit liaisons. Restaurants gear up for special romantic evenings, full of “meals for two” while those who prefer to remain single can stay at home with their meals for one/two.

To my mind, there shouldn’t have to be one day per year where people feel the need to express their love/affection. It’s something that should be able to happen at any time, at random. In many ways, St Valentine’s Day is an easy out, a way to express emotions without feeling vulnerable, or really any risk of rejection. The retailers make it easy to organise anything you want to do, and in theory it doesn’t tae a lot of heavy thinking. But that’s the way it is.

Knowing my views on the entire thing, I would probably now be more naffed off is someone were to buy me a Valentines card, but that’s slightly by the by.

But – and this is a big but (rather like the pole-dancers described below) if I were with someone, I’d still do something for the day. In some ways my principles go out of the window when it’s at the cost of someone I care about. Yeah, I don’t want anything, but if my partner still sees it as something important then I’ll do something for it – because it’s important to them, and Valentine’s is about making the people you care about happy.

So there we go – I’m a hypocrite on that one too…

Lapdances

Oh what jolly japes. The bunch of friends I was with last night decided it would be fun to go to a lapdancing club. In Redcar. Wow, how sexy. I’ve seen bowls of cornflakes with more sex appeal. (Quite honestly, this morng a bowl of cornflakes would go down very well indeed. Which is more than I can probably say for the munters dancers on dsplay last night) Pure, pure nasty.

So – two questions. One :- Is all this supposed to be sexy, or is it normally only attended by bunches of lads and/or single men with no imagination and less taste? Two :- I bet that pole smells really realy bad…

UPDATED : Further to Peter’s comment, I should explain. It actually is both lapdancing and poledancing – in the main area, the munters dancers gyrate around the pole, but if you are a mug want to, you can pay out some extra (I think it was £10) you go to a back-room, where they do a lapdance. And no, I didn’t have one – I don’t know what the ethos is in these places, but I’d have turned one down even if the people I was with had paid for it. (I think the expression “keep the money, you obviously need it” may not be the best one to use, but it’d be hard to avoid) It would probably have got me kicked out of the place (hmm, status symbol, kicked out of “Dr Hammer’s House of Dancers”) but it would’ve been worth it. Ah well.

Headphones

Note to self (soon to be forgotten) : leave the headphones in the bloody bag pocket next time. One day I’ll get more organised – and part of this will involve the common sense move of leaving headphones in my bag. Otherwise I get what happened last night/today, that the ones I was using will have mysteriously moved (I’m reckoning it was probably when I tidied up on Wednesday) to somewhere “safe” (for which read “un-fucking-traceable”) and the other pairs have all disappeared too. Not that they were that good, but it’s just very bloody annoying.

Well, I’ve got another pair. My journey to Middlesbrough will now have music, thanks to the joys of laptops, MP3 files, and – yes – headphones. These ones have a nice little plastic case too, so it shouldn’t be rocket science to keep them in their rightful place. However, knowing me, expect a similar post next Friday…

Ouch

Maybe it’s just because I’m tired and my eyes feel like they’ve got grit in them, but this story has made me wince. Lots.

Presentations

Two down, one to go. DiamondGeezer’s post today shows that he’s having a similar set of problems. Thanks, DG, it’s made me chuckle.

Bias by any other name

In work today, an email has been circulated by the head honcho. There’s a form being distributed asking for each employee of the council to record their personal details (address, ethnicity, blah, blah, blah) as allegedly the HR department (AKA “that bunch of useless twadges”) doesn’t have them recorded.

One part of the missive from upon-high is this

Collecting this information is important for other reasons. For example, the government have set targets for local authorities to achieve on the percentage of ethnic minority staff employed by local authorities compared with the local population. At the moment, we do not have all this information on our workforce and if we are to meet government targets, we need a system in place to collect and monitor it.

Now, to my mind that’s just Inverted Racism. The government issues targets, which should be adhered to. So what happens when – as I suspect – the council discovers it’s ‘below target’ for some ethnicities? Do we see a situation where a less-qualified person gets the job so that the “ethnic diversity” boxes can be ticked?

I thought/hoped we’d got past all this shit when we entered the 21st century. Obviously I was wrong. To my mind, people should be employed on their attributes, their skills, their job history – not because of their gender, ethnicity, religious preference, sexuality, or any of the other politically correct stereotypes. Is that too much to ask for? I feel the same about the forms that circulate with every job application now, requesting that you detail ethnic background etc. Frankly, what relevance is it to my application whether I come from Africa, Asia, America, Australia, or Europe? What does it show? Surely it’s better to simply take people on because of their application, not in order to fill in a little tick-box to show how ethnically diverse the company is.

UPDATED : As she says in the comments, Gert has added her own piece here in response to this post. Thought-provoking, definitely.

Gary Jules – Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets

In a fit of bandwagon-jumping on a par with the media’s new-found love of Jordan following I’m a non-entity, I’ll be seeing Gary Jules in concert next Thursday. Anyway, it occurred to me that I really should know more of his recordings than just “Mad World”, so I got a copy of the album “Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets”.

And I have to say, it’s actually not bad. His voice is very reminiscent of Cat Stevens Yusuf Islam throughout – for me that’s no bad thing, but other people may disagree. Not a bad album – but also nothing else on the album is even vaguely reminiscent of Mad World, which seems slightly strange.

FirebirdFox (again)

I take it all back – FireFox is now running at a decent speed again. I’ll blame the spunk-twadges of Dell instead of those at Mozilla.

Additions

The observant among you will notice another addition to the sidebar over there >> . Mozilla’s FirebirdFox version 0.8 has now been released, and I’m using it. It’s still one of the better browsers on the market for the geeky among us. However, it does seem to have slowed down a bit since Firebird 0.6. Still, maybe that’s just me being picky.

And it’s better than what I’ve spent my morning doing. The first of three presentations about which Content Management System the council really really wants. The first one used MS Word® to enter the content, and doesn’t appear to be overly keen on anything other than IE as a browser – their main sales/developer geek went white when I mentioned Opera…

Even better, we’ve got Stellent at some point this week. I’ve got my sharpened shitty stick primed and ready for action. Imagine my joy.

SAD revisited

As Peter asked, so shall I tell. Yes, the SAD has eased off a fair amount recently. The days are getting longer – although they’re still horrifically grey and unpleasant at the moment. But still, the increase in daylight is perceptible, and it’s helping. Over the weekend I didn’t need to put the lights on ’til gone 5pm, and now the sun is rising between 7.30 and 8am, which is beginning to make mornings a tad easier too. No bad thing at all.

Of course, it’s still not completely gone – that’ll happen in around March or so. But for now it’s getting better, the depression is easing off, and that’ll do me.

As always, there are good days and bad days – but there’s more of the former, and less of the latter. I still want to batter the twadge who told me it was easier to deal with SAD if I stayed busy – but fortunately for the aforementioned twadge, I can’t remember who told me. When I do, though…

Bizarre

I love a good bizarre story, and the one today about the American Airlines pilot who wanted Christians and non-Christians to talk about their religions is definitely one out of the cracker barrel. Or, more accurately the “completely crackers” barrel. But all the same, it’s a good sign that the “religious” keffwits aren’t only sitting in passenger’s seats.

Don’t make me laugh

A report has been issued saying that the UK needs high-speed rail links. Supposedly, we should have a network for trains capable of up to 200mph. My favourite quote is :

A report from the commission warns that existing intercity routes will run out of capacity by 2015, forcing rail companies to price passengers off trains and onto already overcrowded roads.

Honey, that’s not going to wait ’til 2015 to happen, the buggers have been doing it for years.

And quite honestly, I think there’s rather more chance that we can all be commuting via the new medium of flying pig than by high-speed rail. My experiences this weekend yet again show that we can hardly manage a service that runs at 60mph, let alone something three times that speed. In fact, mastering teleportation has more probablilty than a high-speed rail link.

Sick joke

Two sharks were swimming off the sea in Newquay.

“I’m bored of surf’n’turf, let’s go to Morecambe for a chinese.

*Gets coat, and exits stage left*

Feh

Do you ever have one of those days where your motivation is actually well into the negative figures? Where you don’t want to do much, and normally there’s a shedload of stuff waiting in the wings, needing to happen, and/or be done?

Yes, today is one of those days. I’m on a train down to Reading this afternoon/evening, and there’s a load of things I could/should be doing during the journey. However, I think that at least some of it is going to go on hold while I read “Be My Enemy“, (aka “Fuck this for a game of soldiers“, according to the first page) the new novel by Christopher Brookmyre.

Ah well, we’ll see. Also, the site may not be updated as much this weekend, depending on how online I can be bothered to go…

Angels in America

While I’m on the subject of Channel 4, and things that should be worth recording, they’re showing “Angels in America” over the weekend. I’ve no idea if it will be as good as it promises to be, but it’s certainly got a noteworthy pedigree. Originally written by Tony Kushner as a stage play, and adapted by him for television. Directed by Mike Nichols (who has previously done films including Primary Colo(u)rs and The Graudate (among many others)).

The cast is pretty stellar too – Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Simon Callow (who I’d just typed as Simon Cowell – damn my brain) and even Maurice Sendak (not a star per se, but hell, he wrote “Where the Wild Things Are” – that makes him stellar in my book *Grin*)

The basic premise of it doesn’t sound overly cheery – primarily, it’s based around people with AIDS in New York, but the plotlines give it some chance to be interesting. Based partly on the story of the lawyer Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS in ’86, all the time denying even his homosexuality, it also deals with sexuality, politics, and death. Newsweek described it as

“Daring and Dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least the absconding of God.”

As I said, I’ve no idea if it will be as good as it promises to be, but I think it’ll be worth taping at least. Oh, and it’s bloody huge – 7 hours in all – so set it on long play. And if TiVo fucks me about on this, it’ll get reprogrammed with a very large hammer…

Channel of Preference

Looking at what TiVo’s recording for me over the next two weeks, I discovered that at the moment everything I watch/record is on either Channel 4 or Five. Nothing from BBC or ITV at all.

Now – remind me why I pay for a TV licence?

UPDATED : OK, Pat came up with a reason I can’t fight – the BBC website. And I should point out (again) that it’s just a personal perspective. I agree, there are loads of good things about the BBC – it’s just that recently I haven’t used any of ’em (other than the website). Everything I’ve been watching has been on C4 and C5, simple as that.

Fritters

Over the last week or so, I’ve started using a different anti-spam filter on my email at home. It’s one of the newer Bayesian filters, going by the imaginative name of SpamBayes – and so far, I’ve been fairly impressed. The learning curve has been pretty high, with it learning from scratch what I regard as spam, but after a week it’s been working well, with less and less false positives – in fact, I’d say there’ve been no false positives in the last couple of days.

However, the BBC is now reporting on a method to bypass the Bayesian filters. It’ll be interesting to see how SpamBayes handles this kind of thing.

History Repeats Itself

I’ve tried to avoid mentioning much about I’m a non-entity, get me a publicist, but today’s news of people complaining because John Lydon said ‘fucking cunts’ struck me as quite amusing – and rather high on the deja vu scale.

Of course, it’s what the TV executives were hoping for when they put Lydon into the show – after all, he’s the same person who said “fuck” back in December ’76 to yet another outcry. The execs were wanting him to swear – it’s free publicity, and hardly unexpected – and they’ve been waiting over a week for him to do it. They must’ve been shitting themselves in case he didn’t do it at all.

I also find it quite amusing that in the 12 hours after the transmission, 91 people had complained – 18 to Ofcom, the rest to the channel itself. Out of an estimated 10.2 million viewers, 91 people complained. That’s roughly 0.001% of the viewers. (Very roughly – I’m sure someone will correct me and be more accurate), 10 complaints for every million viewers. Fark, that’s what I call high outrage.

Shit Shower

It has to be said, it couldn’t have happened in a more appropriate place. a town-centre “superloo” exploded, blowing the roof off, and lifting areas of the surrounding pavement. Thankfully, it happened in Hanley which needs all the publicity it can get.

Smoking

So, the latest ‘repulsive’ anti-smoking ads have been one of the most successful campaigns ever, have they? There’s one fact missing from this – and I honestly don’t know if it was a question that was even asked – and that is this :

Out of the 68,000 who visited the website, and 10,000 who called the helpline (0800 169 1900) , how many had been motivated to do it because of the advert itself? And how many just wanted advice on stopping smoking, rather than were “persuaded” to do so by the advert?

Yes, it’s good that so many people want to stop – but I’d rather know how many were actually influenced by the advert to do so.

Teasers

Has anyone else seen the set of teaser adverts on Channel 4 at the moment? There’s two so far, to my knowledge – one where various C4 presenters and cast members from C4 dramas are asked when they lost their virginity, and one where they’re asked what makes them happy. There’s no tagline at the end of it, and no idea what it’s promoting.

So – any ideas?

UPDATED : Many thanks for the responses. I should point out, I actually like them, think they’re quite interesting and novel – and strangely reminiscent of the BBC’s “Perfect Day” promo from a few years back. I was really hoping it’s not a promotion for some wank “celebs tell all” show, and the majority of responses indicate that they really are just channel promos. Happy day. *Grin*

Love Film

Recently, dvd at Fuddland was talking about Love Film (which used to be “DVDs on Tap” but has recently rebranded) so I had a look. Basically, it’s a DVD rental place, but everything works online and through the post. Depending on the level of subscription (£10, £15 gets two DVDs, or £20 per month) you can get one, two or three DVDs at a time. There are no late charges, and they include a postage-paid envelope to return the disc in.

Once subscribed, you select a range of the DVDs you’d like to see, and then they send them out when they’re available. Currently there’s also a two-week free trial happening, which has been interesting, and has enabled me to see what they’re like. So far, I’m very impressed with the service, so we’ll see how it keeps on working. Oh, and the other good thing is that there’s no minimum contract term – if you want to bail out and stop using the service, it’s a simple process that says “cancel subscription”, no hassle. I like that too…

Back to normality

Well, as close to “normality” as d4d™ ever really gets, anyway. I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d changed the templates and so on while I was at work, and I also hadn’t realised that I hadn’t backed it all up back to home in a while. Big Oooops. Still, I’ll remember for a while again now. And at least I do keep back-ups, just not always up-to-date ones – well, I do, it’s just they’re at two different locations, which can sometimes be problematic.

Anyway, the problems have been rectified now (and in fairness it turned out mainly to be errors with how d4d™ renders BlogRolling more than anything else) and everything’s backed up and been sent back home too (I love .zip files. ) Now, what else can I screw up?

Manic

My God, that was busy. The trains were completely un-natural, and ran on-time. Most bizarre. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I could blether about from today, and from various news stories etc., but I’ll leave it ’til tomorrow.

Spring Fair

Don’t expect much in the way of updates today (hey, it’s the weekend, you weren’t expecting many anyway) as I’m putting myself at the mercy of Virgin Trains to go and visit the International Spring Fair down at the Birmingham NEC. With luck it’ll be productive – so long as the Virgin service isn’t well and truly fucked, as per usual. (oh, the irony, an utterly screwed service being run by Virgin)