Anti-Spam Screensaver

via Gordon, the BBC is reporting on an anti-spam screensaver made by Lycos, of all people. By upping the bandwidth costs for spammer’s websites, it’s possible that it will make spamming into an expensive proposition. And of course the main thing with spam was that it was cost-effective advertising…

You know, Watson, it might just work.

Train Chaos

Hardly a shocker really (it seems to happen every year) but as always, the UK Rail Christmas timetable still hasn’t been finalised. The various Train Operating Companies (TOCs) can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery for their own “services”, let alone organise anything between them.

Of course, there’s an air of profiteering about it, too. As the story says,

Although open tickets are available beyond Christmas Eve, more affordable rail deals require passengers to specify which train they intend to take – impossible without an agreed timetable.

Anthony Smith, national director of the Rail Passengers’ Council, said: “It’s very, very disappointing. When you’ve got a rail industry which is based on airline-style advance purchases for long-distance travel, this kind of delay undermines the whole system.”

Obviously the last bit is purest bollocks, the rail industry isn’t based on advance bookings, it’s based on fleecing the punters for as much as possible – which is why I’m never surprised that they haven’t agreed the timetables. This means that rather than the ultra-cheap advance tickets, passengers have to get a higher-priced ticket instead. For example (from the story) on First Great Western, an Apex return ticket between London and Bristol ought to cost £20. But without a firm reservation, travellers can only buy a £43.20 Saver.

Since privatisation, the TOCs primary concern has always been the bottom line, the profit margins, and as such getting every punter to spend extra cash is going to have a beneficial effect on that bottom line, and that’s what matters to these money-grabbing cockmunching weasel bastards.

Stunned

So now supposedly Tasers should be classed as lethal weapons according to a study? Now of course yes, in some cases 50,000 volts is going to be lethal – and according to the report in the story, Tasers have killed 70 people in the US. However, what the report (well, as quoted, anyway) doesn’t say is what the sample size was.

If it’s been used 1,000 times and 70 people have died, that’s a 7% mortality rate, and as such it’s quite dangerous. If it’s been used 1,000,000 times and 70 people have died then it’s more of a “shit happens” 0.00007% mortality rate. Just saying “70 people have died” is lazy statistics, and not particularly useful.
As Amnesty International’s UK director is quoted as saying,

“Tasers have been used in the US against pregnant women, unruly schoolchildren and mentally ill people.

In some cases, simply walking away from a police officer has led to people getting a 50,000 volt electric shock.

Is this a glimpse into the future of UK policing?”

Again, yes, maybe it’s in the future of UK policing. But it isn’t a certainty. The sample comes from the US, where the Taser’s been in use far longer than in the UK, and it’s obvious that in the cases listed in the quote, it’s been mis-used.

So yes, regulatory controls are needed on Tasers, as they are with batons, CS spray, and the rest. CS Spray can be seen as lethal too, IF the person sprayed has an allergy to capsicum, for instance. Tasers can be life-threatening if used on someone with a heart-condition or pacemaker, but they’re still a better non-lethal alternative to being shot.

To me, a lot of this article is hype, and should be seen as such.

Non-entity

I must admit, I haven’t worked at all hard at not mentioning “I’m a non-entity, call my agent!” so far during its fourth series. I haven’t watched any of it, and if I’m completely honest I didn’t even know who half the celebrities publicity seeking whores were when the names were revealed.

However, I do find it amusing that they’ve now lost two of the “stars” already. After four series, you’d think that they’d know what they’re letting themselves in for – but obviously not.

Travelling

Sitting here again on a Virgin train from Reading back to Manchester (at least this time the bloody toilets are working!) it’s just occurred to me that I’ll only be doing this journey once more before I move. Five months of this journey three weeks out of four, and it’s finally coming to an end.

In a lot of ways it’s the end of an era – I’ve been in Manchester for nearly six years, and it’s coming to an end. In a month’s time I’ll be moving down to Reading/Bracknell, and then a new phase will start. There’s a lot of changes due to be happening over the next year, although a large percentage of them will be happening in the next two or three months. New job, new house, new living arrangements, new lifestyle. It’s not about New Year’s resolutions, or any of that shit, but at the same time the start of 2005 will bring about a lot of new stuff anyway.

It’s time for change, and more importantly the changes feel like the right thing, at the right time. But it’s still weird to look back on how I was when I came to Manchester, and the changes that I’ve been through since then. Would I now recognise the person who came up here? In many ways yes, but in many others, no, I wouldn’t. The person I was then has grown up a fair bit, and altered a fair bit too – I know myself far more now than I did then, and know more about what I want and don’t want from life. Of course, I still don’t really know what I want to be when I grow up, but I’m working on it.

There’s still a whole lot of things that will be happening over the next few months. I’m going to be working on a lot more creative things – the photography, the writing, the websites – as well as hopefully getting back into some form of academic work, which is something I do feel I’ve missed out on a bit. I’m going to be taking some big jumps, seeing if I can interest a photographic agent in some of the images I’ve taken, and I aim to be getting involved with some of the local photography clubs etc. once I’ve moved. If I can make money from it I’ll be happy, but if I can’t and it stays as a personal hobby/love then that’s fine too.

Some things will stay the same too – or at least with a minimum of change. D4D™ will change too – I still intend to redesign, and move from Blogger to WordPress at the same time (assuming I can get all the old posts out of Blogger) so there’s likely to be new sections as well as removing old sections I don’t use any more.

Yes, there’s going to be a lot of changes. But d4d™ will be there all the way through to chronicle them.

Toymaster

For various reasons that as yet I can’t be chuffed to go into here, I’ve today had to be looking for a couple of toy-shop websites. The one for Toys’R’Us is OK, but the one for Toymaster is utter fucking shite. On a slow dial-up line (and dear lord 56K is a pain in the bum after getting used to broadband) it takes forever to download, and also insists on loading Macromedia’s Flash7 plug-in, which will take another eternity. If you don’t load the plug-in, the site still loads, but you can’t find anything on the store finder (you have to do it all via the nice swishy Flash map) and it’s a sack of shit.

There’s also no way of contacting Toymaster’s web people in order to tell them it’s a sack of shit. But that’s something I’ll be working on come Monday…

Away

Another quiet weekend beckons for d4d™, as I’ll be away from home again. Mainly I’ll be down in Berkshire, but as it’s also Mother’s 60th Birthday we’ll be over there for the day on Sunday. Photos may follow. Then again, they may not…

We wish you a Merry Fester

Mind you, I must admit that I like the idea of the world’s biggest “christmas tree” whose lights are being switched on today. If you’re going to do it, do it in style. 35m high, and nearly 2000 lights.

It certainly puts those manky piece-of-shit external house decorations to shame.

Fester All The Way

All the classics – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, White Christmas, Gone With The Wind, Mary Poppins, The Wizard Of Oz, The Sound Of Music.

Diamond Geezer has all the times. 30 days to go – and in one months time it’ll all be over. Now that is what I call a Christmas Countdown.

Ad Blocking

I know it’s taken me a long time to figure this out, but I’ve just started using FireFox’s Adblock plug-in, and bloody hell, it’s good. Simply right-click on the advert and go down to the “Adblock Image” option. Get rid of everything past the domain name and voila, no more adverts on that website.

In most cases it even gets rid of the “spare” white space, so it’s not just the Ad it removes, but everything to do with it. Brilliant.

Despairing

One of the IT managers here has just been asking one of the developers how to Find/Replace in MS Word®. I despair.

300,000

Bloody hell, and buggery cuntflaps. I missed the day of going over the 300,000th page impression. The 200,000th only happened in July, so I reckon d4d™ must be doing pretty well. There were a couple of big spike-days in October for some reason, but it’s just generally been getting busier and busier.

Thanks to all readers – gawd only knows why you all keep coming back, but it’s great that you do! *Grin*

Spammage

OK, two questions.
1. What the fuck is Phentermine?
2. Why do I keep on getting shitloads of spam comments about it?

Transplants

The UK Transplant Service is celebrating it’s 100th anniversary over the next year, and as part of that it wants to add another million people to the NHS Organ Donor Register by the 5th October 2005.

It’s a good cause – but remember, don’t just add yourself to the register, make sure your next-of-kin and family know what you want to do too.

Squalor

Words fail me. Seven years isn’t anywhere near enough.

Surge

via Gordon (who got it himself from somewhere else), some photos of the japanese G-CANS project, which is the storm-surge defence project for Tokyo. From the photos, all I can say is that they must be expecting one hell of a storm!

The G-Cans Project is a massive project, begun 12 years ago, to build infrastructure for preventing overflow of the major rivers and waterways spidering the city (A serious problem for Tokyo during rainy-season and typhoon season). The underground waterway is the largest in the world and sports five 32m diameter, 65m deep concrete containment silos which are connected by 64 kilometers of tunnel sitting 50 meters beneath the surface.

The whole system is powered by 14000 horsepower turbines which can pump 200 tons of water a second into the large outlying Edogawa river.

© Boing Boing.

Countdown

In one month’s time I’ll finally have finished working in my current job. Not that I’m counting the days, or paying attention to it or anything. Honest.

VCR

I find it quite interesting that Dixons has decided to stop stocking video recorders in favour of the more modern technology such as DVD players and recorders. As Diamond Geezer says, while it may be an old technology, it’s not one that no-one uses any more.

I’ve got a lot of videos (and TiVo can archive stuff to videotape, although I guess it could do it to a recordable DVD just as easily) although to be honest I don’t really watch most of them any more. But plenty of people _do_ watch stuff on video (my parents, for example, and their video must be just about due to break) and don’t want to re-buy everything on DVD.

Organisation

Regular readers will have noted that to some degree I’ve recently given up ranting about our piss-poor train service, and in particular that bunch of profiteering arselice known as Virgin Trains. I admit, because of the regular use I’ve made of the *cough* service, I’ve become either jaded or browbeaten into submission a bit. Delayed by an hour? Ah, that’s about normal. Train loaded to the gills with people? Yup, that’s about standard too. Self-centred bumfaces with the social awareness of an animal-rights person eating at Macdonalds – who also, by lucky coincidence appears to have a deafess problem, requiring their mobile phone to be on “ULTRA-FUCKING-LOUD” and to shout any conversation so the entire train can hear it? Yup, that’s not even 5 points in the “I-Spy book of fucktards”. In the quiet coach? Even more common.

But today’s effort still manages to rankle. Monday morning, a train from Reading to Manchester via Birmingham. Five carriages, so obviously there’s going to be no-one on it. And what’ve they managed to do? Get the entire train with no working toilets. Not one. The fucking thing’s ended up 30 minutes delayed because they’ve had to stop at stations for toilet breaks. You just couldn’t make it up – no-one would believe it if you made it into a comedy script.

The new(ish) Voyager trains are a huge leap forward from the older 125s, I can’t deny it. They’ve even taken into account things like growing use of laptops etc., and each pair of seats has a power socket so laptops and mobiles can be used/recharged. But they still haven’t quite mastered the intricacies of a working shitter.

Foo-go

In a similar vein to the post about Innocent drinks, there’s a new sandwich company now called Foo-Go which has an interesting attitude. All their packaging is biodegradable, and should have completely dissolved within 14 weeks of going into a landfill. They seem to get the ingredients for the sandwiches from good and reputable companies too, which is always a good thing. But it’s the “green”ness of their packaging I find interesting, and it makes me wonder why more isn’t done by other companies to do the same. Sandwiches are a large part of the income for supermarkets and food halls – you only need to look on the shelves of an M&S food court to prove it – yet the huge majority of the packaging is still either entirely plastic (and thus a bugger in landfills etc.) or in a small number of examples, a card box with a plastic window. The Foo-Go boxes are card, and also come scored with fold lines to compress the empty box flat. The “plastic” see-through window is made from corn starch, and thus degrades easily.

It’s an interesting development, and I for one would like to see more companies following their lead. No matter how much the government whittles on about how recycling is important and everyone should do it, there are still a lot of local councils (Manchester among them) who do close to fuck-all in this regard. However, if the packaging itself can be made to be recyclable or biodegradeable in the way that Foo-Go do, then it seems it would be a better answer.

Innocent Drinks

I have to say, I love the drinks made by Innocent. But I also love the stuff on their labels, which may sound slightly bizarre unless you already know of Innocent. This one seemed to be a perfect case in point, particularly apt considering I was heading for Reading at the time…

We like reading. That’s why we write stuff on our bottles and we bang on about all of the fresh and pure fruit in our drinks all of the time, because we want you to read good things and drink good things and to have healthy eyes so you can read more. As we’re quite into all of this reading stuff, we thought it would be a good idea to have a library, but we didn’t have enough money to build one. So we’ve put one on our website – it contains a few of our favourite books, and you can borrow them if you want. As long as you’re quiet.

How cool is that? Every variety of drink has something different written on it, and they’re all well worth reading. The fact that the drinks actually are healthy is a beneficial side-point, but it’s the attitude of their stuff that I really like.

Charity Work

It’s taken some time before I put up some shots from the work I’ve been doing recently for a local charity – but somehow today seemed like the right time, particularly following on from the gripe about Children In Need.

I’m only putting up three photos so far, and I’ll see how I feel about putting up any more. I still need to find out how the client feels about some of the shots, and there are some edits and crops that need to be worked on more. Also, I’ll be out next week doing some more, I think – it’s been odd, I’ve already done a fair amount of work with this assignment, yet I don’t actually feel it’s enough yet.

Anyway, I’ll be interested to know any thoughts/responses to these three…

©Lyle 2004.

Children in Need

Oh dear sweet Jesus Christ on a warped pine zimmer-frame, it’s that time of year again. Not content with the various “grand” *cough* switch-ons of Christmas lights, it’s also Children In Need night on the BBC. It’s not that I’m uncharitable (OK, so that’s part of it) but mainly I just find I really don’t like being set-upon by a bunch of people dressed up in stupid outfits “for charity”.

I don’t have a particular problem with giving money to charities, or doing work where they’re involved – as is obvious from some of the stuff I’ve been doing recently. I just don’t like being pushed into donating, to be guilt-tripped into doing it “because everyone else is”. Frankly, fuck a whole heap of that. I prefer to choose the charity I donate to – not have it forced upon me.

I feel the same when it comes to things like Comic Relief and so on too. (And, in a slightly different way, the Festering Season™ and Valentine’s Day too) I’m not a fan of doing anything just because everyone else is, and with the additional peer pressure and guilt-trips in it. But today the pubs will be filled with roaming collectors (and more than a few who say they’re collecting, but aren’t really) as will the train station.

Still, it gives me an excuse to ignore people, so it’s not all bad I suppose…

Snowfall

Yes, the UK had it’s first snowfall of winter yesterday. Thankfully around here it didn’t settle at all, although it did apparently hit -3°C last night, and the roads have certainly been dodgy and icy.

Personally, I find the sensation of sliding downhill in a bus to be fairly interesting, albeit with an undertone of “Oh, Shit!”

First Aid

I’ve studiously avoided mentioning the Band Aid 20 single until I heard it for myself (or, in this case, saw the video premiere on BBC1) but now the gloves are off.

Fuck me dead, what a pile of wank. The line-up of performers is – in theory at least – not too bad, although it’s definitely not a patch on the original line-up. But it sounds so wanky. The original had some power and passion in it, this one is totally mild, middle-of-the-road, and to be blunt, fucking dross. Other people have commented on it at far greater length, but I must admit that I’m looking forward most to seeing what Mike TD has to say about it…

Snow

It’s fucking snowing. Oh joy.

Licensing

Apparently the UK’s TV license is to rise in price by £5.50 per year. In a way I don’t mind – as was pointed out a while back, the BBC website is funded by the license fee too, and I use that a lot every day. But at the same time it does annoy me in that there’s still so much shite on BBC that we all pay for, and that we’re not supposed to have a choice in.

Traumatic Childhood

According to an (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) report, nursery rhymes expose children to more violent incidents than an evening watching TV.

I was more pleased to see the photo of Humpty Dumpty (Suffered serious injuries in a great fall) from Playschool as part of the article.

Fanmail Part 2.

In the email just now…

recently read your blog whilst researching for a performance project at uni. Your comments made me laugh and i was wondering if i could borrow them and adapt them to our performance…?

Please email me back and let me know

I’m not going to say anything about being at Uni and still not using capitalisation…

Beauty

On an utterly different subject, why is it that the massive majority of people going to beauty college (or whatever it’s now called, but they’re the ones doing courses in make-up, hair-dressing, etc.) are quite spectacularly unattractive?

And are they the ones who graduate on to working on make-up counters in department stores?

Frustration 2

Following on from yesterday’s post regarding upgrades etc., I’ve also just upgraded my Opera browser to the latest version. My earlier version of Opera was registered, and the new version hasn’t even upgraded or imported the details, bookmarks, etc. – instead I’ve had to reinput all my setting and preferences which is, to be blunt, an utter pain in the arse.

Maybe I’ve missed the “upgrade” version instead of the clean install, but either way, it’s a pain.

UPDATED : Oh, and also it looks like my version of Opera is lacking a “Stop” button. The previous one had a reload/stop button, which was handy. No idea why it’s changed on this version…

Wankbiscuits

Back on October 19th I sent off a nice big SAE to get my photos back from whence they’d been submitted. Because it was the first time I’d ever submitted photos to other people for consideration, I also asked for some feedback (if they felt able to give it) on the submission, so that I could change/alter what I did next time.

Bear in mind that this is all part of the “encouraging photographers in the North-West” malarkey, and also part of a North-West photography collective that “aims to make life easier for photographers and photography in the region and beyond, by providing information, opportunities, events, training and professional development.“.

Today I finally received my prints back, after nearly a month. The covering letter reads

I enclose your pictures. [We] cannot comment on any submission. Sincerely.

Wow, that’s done a fucking grand job of encouraging me, particularly the way the information has improved my professional development.

Thanks a bundle.

Frustrations

In the last couple of days, I’ve upgraded/changed a couple of things. Obviously the TV has changed, but what I’d forgotten was that I’d need to reprogram the TiVo remote control to do Samsung commands instead of Sony so it can continue to alter the volume/channel, and turn the TV off using just the one remote instead of two. However, the issued Samsung control codes don’t work. So I’ll have to use the two remotes instead of just the one.

I’ve also just upgraded my Firefox install now that the full 1.0 release is available. After the install it killed all the extensions I’d previously loaded – and there’s a couple that no longer seem to exist. The Session Saver has disappeared again, as has “Double-Click to close a tab“.

I know that neither of these events is the end of the world, nor are they even close. I do find it interesting though just how much use I made of these little tweaks. The TiVo control in particular is frustrating – when something is useable in that way it becomes second nature, and when the feature is no longer available, it jars every time. The “double-click to close” is another one that I hadn’t realised how much I used it ’til it’s no longer there.

UPDATED : Yay, thanks to Gordon I now have the “double-click to close” function back. Now, about sorting out Tivo….

Blame Culture

Chaos at work this morning. The official website was down, saying simply “Service Unavailable”. The CMS was fucked down, and so obviously a whole range of people were going orbital. Chief Execs, Department Heads, General Public, so forth, so fifth. Phone ringing off the hook with people wanting to know what was wrong, what was being done to fix it, and why it hadn’t been fixed already. The answers, in order, would be “Because the whizzy CMS we paid shedloads for has crashed”, “it’ll be fixed when the one person in the organisation who has access to that particular server comes in”, and “because nobody else has access to the systems”. I’ve not been quite so blunt (yet) but it’s coming close.

The situation is farcical. If that one person is off sick, we’re shafted. If Stinky® is off sick, no-one else has permissioin to make new webpages live. (if we know he’s going to be away there can be a permission change on my user so I can make pages live) After Christmas, once I’ve left, there’s only Stinky® who’ll have permission to do that – fuck only knows what they’ll do when he goes off on holiday, let alone should he go off ill for, say, a week or a fortnight.

Timetable

I know I’ve commented before on the shitness of one of the bus services I use every day. However, it’s worth doing so again on this occasion, out of pure comedy value. Until this week, the service was timetabled, and also a “Gold Service” where (in theory) there was supposed be at least one bus every ten minutes. This never really worked as a system, and I eventually figured out that it averaged to one bus every ten minutes. What this meant was that you could wait half an hour, and then three would come at once. Yes, the cliché was true.

Now, however, timetables have disappeared. Instead when you get on the bus there’s a poster with a little bit of PR Blurb on it.

Welcome to the 409 service. So regular you don’t even need to refer to a timetable!

What this actually means is “We’re so incompetent we couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone an efficient bus service. So instead of trying to improve it – which we know won’t work – we’ve decided to do away with the timetable and now you just get a bus when it arrives. That’ll make life much easier for you, won’t it?“

TiVo

Yes, in regard to the comment about TiVo, it did have plenty of space for while the TV was out of action.

It has a 40Gb drive, which holds about 20-30hours of medium-quality recording (my default setting) and there was space for all the things I was actually at all bothered about recording. And a few other things too. It’s still sometimes amazing the crap that it decides I might want to watch – but at least it’s learned most of the things I really despise.

I did find it interesting though, how little I missed having a TV at all. The real frustrations were that I couldn’t see stuff that TiVo had recorded, nor could I watch DVDs. But with regard to watching live TV, I wasn’t bothered at all.

Monday

You can just tell it’s a Monday sometimes. Today’s one of those days. Stinky® is back, and living up to his name – I wish I had a gas-mask.

The weather here is cold, grey, and damp – about as motivational as waking up and putting your feet in cold sick. The journey to work took 90 minutes this morning due to roadworks. Still, could be worse, I could be on the M25.

Anyway, it’s looking like another one of those days, so we’ll see what I find to waffle on about later.

Descriptive

Sometimes I love looking through TiVo’s Programme Guide descriptions – they can amuse me. For example today’s Britain vs. Australia rugby match is described as “Sporting Non-Event”. What they actually mean is that it’s not at the same level as, for example, the FA Cup or whatever – but “non-event” is still a bit unfair, I feel.

Gone Silent

You know, it’s just occurred to me today that this is the last weekend I’m going to be spending at home in Manchester on my own. (We’ll discount the housemate for now) As such, it’s actually been quite nice to spend most of my time this weekend doing very little. Some domestic stuff, shopping, sorting out the house and so on, as well as catching up on a little bit of the stuff that was stored on TiVo while the TV was out of action.

But it’s been a nice relaxing weekend, and much needed. As for the rest of it, well, we’ll see.

Visual

Due to certain technological failings (Yes, the TV broke) I found myself today having a look in the Godforsaken wastelands known as Comet and Currys for replacement items. And one thing struck me more than anything else – considering the price of the bloody things, isn’t the picture quality on plasma screen and LCD screen TVs utterly utterly shit?

So I’ve ended up with an “old” CRT screen. Much nicer. Now I just need a replacement spine, having killed the current one while lugging the Sony Trinitron beast out of the way…

UPDATED : For those who are interested, it’s a 28″ Widescreen with Virtual Dolby by Samsung. And so far, it’s proved to be a very nice bit of kit.

Prints

The first batch of photo prints for the charity came back yesterday, and it was an interesting experience. Having to look at them with a critical eye, seeing what I think of them, and how they’ll look from the client’s point of view. There are a couple that could do with being edited a bit more and reprinted, but in general yeah, I’m pleased with how they’ve turned out.

I’m going to do a bit of work tonight, putting them together in a way that looks good, and get them delivered over the weekend. See what they think of them.

In general I’ve actually been pleased with the photos so far. It was odd receiving the prints though – in some way, it made the entire thing feel “real” somehow. It’s hard to describe, but I think it was probably something to do with the reality, with knowing that these prints were going to go off to the client, that this was the first piece of photography for which I’m actually being paid.

I’m sure I’ll waffle on a bit more about this over the weekend, and yes, I’ll be putting up bits and bobs, maybe some details in the next few days, seeing what other people think too.

Applications

Yay, Stinky® isn’t in today, which means the atmosphere is already a lot less polluted. Instead it’s given me the opportunity to edit the CV a bit, and send off yet more application emails. Fun fun fun, thanks to Jobserve.

Interested

I spoke to an agency yesterday about a job I’m actually interested in. Based in Reading, paying a decent amount (not the ideal amount, but certainly doable) and offering the kind of work I want. The agent sounded optimistic about it too, which can be an optimistic sign, and is going to put me forward for it.

The company has a tiny web-presence at the moment, little more than a holding page, so today I put together a little four-page demo site in an hour or so, just to demonstrate some of what I could do, and also to show that I’m interested in making a bit more effort in order to get the job.

No idea what the feedback will be – or even if there will be any – but I figure I can’t really do much more than that pre-interview. And now I’ve told the agent it’s there, so I’ll just have to see how it all goes…

Prospect Tower (again)

Well, it’s taken me a couple of days to get round to it, but some of the photos from the trip to Prospect Tower are now online. I ended up getting about 70 shots, so there’s only a selection on d4d™ for now, but it should convey some feelings about the place.

Enjoy.

Upgraded

Bloody Hell. Not content with either being close to, or having just gone over, the 300,000th page impression (guess who hasn’t done a proper log report in a while?) I realised that d4d™’s webspace was becoming awfully tight. Somehow I’ve managed to accrue 48Mb of data for the site, although I think a lot of that is down to the photos and so on.

Anyway, as a result of that I got in touch with 34sp, the hosting service I use for d4d™ and upped the webspace from 50Mb to 75Mb. A princely £10 for the year, and that should give me some time/space(pardon the pun) to sort out everything else.

And yes, must do that log analysis tonight, see how d4d’s doing.

Theoretical

Following on from last month’s Theory Test fuckup, today was the day for the re-arranged test. At least this time I got a postal confirmation through, along with the address, and some directions. Which basically say “the test centre is by Oldham Mumps train station, just off Oldham Way”.

Which, in essence, is correct. Assuming you have the ability to jump over 12 foot walls, and don’t mind trespassing across rail tracks.

When I finally found the centre (the street and industrial estate it’s on still don’t show up on either Streetmap or Multimap, but that’s just being picky I suppose – the fact they’re also not in the Manchester A-Z is another example of pickiness) it’s not off Oldham Way either, it’s off Hamilton Street, which is off Lees Road, which is off Oldham Way. So in short, the instructions for finding the place are shit.

Anyway, I’ve spoken to Pearson Vue, who run the test centres, and there’s going to be a deeply snotty letter getting sent off to them – according to the people in the centre itself, this is a common occurrence, but Pearson Vue don’t do anything about it.

Oh, and after all the hassle, I passed it no worries. *Grin*

Not Good

So far, today’s not going all that well. I really can’t get myself going, and motivation is a major issue. Well, the lack of it is, anyway.

More will be written at some point today,I’m sure, but for now, it’s – well – going to be slow going, I think.

Time Flies

I was thinking yesterday, in two months time everything will have changed. In that time, I’m hoping to have moved, sorted a new job, (and started it) got through the Festering Season™, and be getting started on a few other things too.

I’m in the process now of sending out CVs and going for jobs – that really is the priority out of everything. Then it’s going to be looking at places in Berkshire. Scary, but true.

Train Travel – Derailment

Unless you were living in a hole in the desert this weekend, you wouldn’t have been able to miss the stories about the train that derailed in Berkshire having hit a car stopped at an unmanned level crossing.

As regular readers will know, I do a lot of travelling by train (for my sins) so I thought I’d have a bit of a waffle about this one. There’s already been a fair amount of media hysteria regarding this derailment – sorry, but I refuse to call it a “disaster” as they do. Yes, seven people died, and that’s always sad, perhaps even a tragedy, but it’s not a disaster. If even 50% of the people on the train had been killed, that might have made it a disaster, but seven out of several hundred just – well, it just isn’t a disaster. Sorry, but there we go.

The other piece of hysteria was about train safety. Now again, this one’s really a non-starter. Any train travelling at a decent speed is going to derail when it hits something solid and immovable like a car. It’s simple physics – bloody big heavy train going at decent speed has a lot of inertia, momentum, and energy, and when it all comes to a sudden halt, that energy has to go somewhere. I suppose you could make trains safer by making them go slower, but God knows, they’ve enough problems as it is. And how the hell do you stop someone who’s determined to do something like this?

To me – and admittedly, I know keff all except what’s come through the media – this looks like someone attempting to commit suicide by train. Some pundits have raised the great bogeyman of Terrorism, but I don’t think so – it wasn’t on a busy line, nor has it had a huge knock-on effect on train services except to a small section of the country. If it were a terrorist event, they’d have plunged a car onto one of the main London lines, or maybe around Birmingham New Street somewhere – it would be big, and have a huge knock-on disruptive effect, which doesn’t apply in this case at all. So to me it looks like a suicide, and again that’s incredibly sad. All but one of the other recent train incidents have involved something to do with maintenance, with something that is corporately culpable – but how can you prevent one determined person from killing themselves like this?

Simply put, you can’t. Short of removing every single level-crossing from the train network, and I don’t even want to consider how much that would cost, let alone the disruption to services while each crossing is removed, and a tunnel under the tracks dug so that cars can travel under the tracks. It would easily be in the billions, if not tens of. Personally I don’t like the half-barrier crossings, but even if the barriers on this particularl crossing had been full-length, thay wouldn’t have prevented an incident where a car was stopped between them.

As it is, the train safety mechanisms appear to have worked, as did the plans of the emergency services. The passengers escaped through windows, exactly as per the instructions given on every train. From the sound of it, all the passengers were seated, and that will have had an effect on the casualty figures too – I dread to imagine what it would have been like if it had been a train like the ones I regularly travel on, where the carriages are rigid with standing passengers as well.

We seem to need scapegoats in events like this, people to blame for their corporate negligence, or for the safety records. In this case, I honestly can’t see that there really is any blame to be apportioned, with the exception of the car’s driver. And if it was a “suicide by train”, then that particular person is already beyond the reach of recriminations.

Landmark Trust – Prospect Tower

To sum it up in one word – Wow. Pictures are going to follow, but for now, just a quick bit about the place.

I’d found out about the Landmark Trust earlier this year, and sent off for their “Handbook”, a brochure of all the properties they’ve renovated and now rent out for weekends or week-long breaks. Every property is quirky and unique, with a lot of towers and ex-follys in their portfolio, all of which have been restored and made habitable, while retaining as many of the quirks, features, and design as possible. The properties aren’t cheap, but they’re also not a run-of-the-mill standard hotel room – really I suppose it’s a case of the old adage, “You pays yer money and takes yer choice”.

Prospect Tower was a perfect case in point. Situated on the Belmont Estate in Kent, between Faversham and Ashford, it’s a small two-storey tower that used to be a folly. It was also used as a cricket changing-room, and there’s an old cricket-pitch in the field outside. A lot of the pictures inside the tower reflect the cricket heritage of the place, but it’s not a relevant factor to the atmosphere of the place.

In fact, the Tower was wonderful, and the quality of it all was absolutely superb. I’m completely impressed with the entire thing, and know it’s only the first of our many visits to Landmark Trust properties – we’re already looking through the Brochure again to work out where else we want to book in 2005.

Growing Up

Tomorrow is birthday stuff, and I’ll be away for the weekend.

Folded in your fleshy purse
i am floating once again
while the muted sounds are pumping rhythm
all the walls close in on me
pressure’s building wave on wave
till the water breaks – and outside i go, oh

one dot, that’s on or off, defines what is and what is not, one dot
two dot, a pair of eyes, a voice, a touch, complete surprise, two dot
growing up, growing up,
looking for a place to live
growing up, growing up,
looking for a place to live
growing up, growing up,
looking for a place to live

my ghost likes to travel so far in the unknown
my ghost likes to travel so deep into your space

three dot, a trinity, a way to map the universe
three dot
four dot, is what will make a square, a bed to build on, it’s all there, four dot

©Peter Gabriel 2002/3 “Up” album

See you all on Tuesday when I get back.

Barred from Blogging

(partly inspired by Graybo’s post about the same thing)

So, Queen of the Sky has been sacked by her employer, the illustrious Delta Airlines following the photos she posted of her – in uniform – posing on a Delta plane. According to Delta, “there were “very clear rules” attached to the unauthorised use of Delta branding, including uniforms” which, of course, is what this comes under. I don’t know if there was also an issue about her showing her “wings” in one photo, or a part of her bra in another – and lets bear in mind here that the US still has enough of a puritan nature to get offended by the sight of a breast on TV – but whatever else caused the corporate fit-flinging, she did these photos while in the uniform of her employer.

I must admit, I don’t have a problem with this, per se. She broke the constraints of her contract with Delta, and that almost certainly comes under “misconduct” if nothing else. Yes, there are also issues regarding personal time, privacy in regard to the fact that most of what she wrote about didn’t involve work, blah blah blah – but I think that also this is a case of reaping what’s been sown. If those photos hadn’t been posted up, Queen of the Sky would still be writing her blog – in fact, she is doing so anyway – but she’d still be employed by Delta. It was the “in uniform” photos that destroyed it, and made her uniquely identifiable.

It was pointed out to me that some Google searches for my employer bring up d4d™ at the top of the list – although it’s not when just the employer’s name is typed in, there needs to be something else as well (normally an obscenity *grin*) in order to bring up d4d™. In the context of this, I’m not sure how I feel – I possibly should be slightly worried, but I’m not. I know I’ll be more careful in future, but at the same time I haven’t broken any of the terms of my contract by writing – and at no point has the employer’s name been used, although it can be found by a combination of words on occasion.

However, if someone were to try sacking me for writing about my employers, I suspect I’d probably accept it, with a kind of “mea culpa” response.

Godlike

One department of this illustrious bunch of smegheads has just forked out a respectable amount of money on a piece of training software dealing with the Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to go on the intranet.

It’s a piece of shite, and doesn’t actually fulfil most of the standards required of it by the IT department, such as not working in the default web browser (although in fairness they’re so archaic that the default browser is Netscape 4.7, which is now about four or five years old) and was supposed to write information to an Access database on who has successfully completed the form. Now, that’s a no-no, even on the Intranet, so they were trying to find a way to move the Access database to SQL Server.

“Well why not just rewrite the page so it sends an email saying ‘xyz has completed the training successfully and answered all the questions?‘ quoth I. “That way the person in charge of this farce piece of crap can keep records, rather than suddenly asking us in six months time what is in the database they have no access to.“

“Oooh, nice idea,” quoth they, “can you do that?”

It’s taken half an hour to rewrite, upload to the intranet, and test. All working fine. Now I just need to make out it’s taken several more hours than it has…

She’s Back!

And as birthday presents go (oh, and thanks, Karen & Pete for the surprise arrival from Amazon – it’s perfect and I’ll read it when I get back!) seeing the return of Sarah comes pretty high on the list.

She’s been off to Greece for the last six months or so (well, it feels like it, anyway) and it’s good to see her back in the UK. Now, about that blogmeet?

Protection

And on a similar note to the post below, I have to say, it’s a very odd feeling to go through a set of images, watermarking them with a copyright notice and the like.

Maybe I should find a wee program that’ll watermark images automagically – any ideas or suggestions?

Daddy G – DJ Kicks

If you’re into reggae, dub, or Massive Attack, then there’s a new album out that’s simply a must – DJ Kicks, mixed by Daddy G from Massive Attack. It’s absolutely stunning, moving between sensational old reggae such as “Armagideon Time” and Melaaz’s “Non Non Non” and then going all the way through to Aretha Franklin, Tricky and Massive Attack, and remixes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Les Negresses Vert.

It’s got a lot of stuff that is identifiably associated with the “Massive Attack Sound”, but there’s other odds and sods in there too, and all told it’s just a superb laid-back album I’d recommend just about anyone to get so long as they have even a vague interest in this breed of music.

Even better, it comes with NO copy protection, simply an exhortation to respect the music. Which is what I usually try to do, rip it for personal use on PC and laptop, and that’s it.

Perfection.

Frothing

Grrrr. Bloody Sodding Oldham. Fucking vile christmas twinkly lights going up all over the town centre. Bastard frunthuffing Nativity scene in the shopping centre. Incredibly bloody naff and rancid Santa’s effing poxy grotto along with animafuckingtronic stuffed ugly animals. *seethe* Two of the frigging bastard things. Keffing twadgeknacking faux fir garlands with more chuntgropping bows and twinkly shitbagging lights.

Bah fucking humbug

Tweetly twatly carols on one sound system in a shop. I leave, muttering. It’s the second of November, and the Christmas stuff is well on the way to being sorted. Now I’m just waiting for the first sighting of a manky neon house decoration…

Fan-Mail

Wow, not often I get fan-mail, particularly from a New York Escort. I actually thought this was spam at first, then read it properly…

Hi,

I recently came across your blog D4D, and I think its fabulous! The Bank of Mum and Dad makes you wonder why their parents didn’t teach them finances while they were younger.

My blog has a bunch of regular visitors and I think that some of them would enjoy your blog. In fact, I’m hosting a Carnival to showcase other blogs on my site. If you would like to participate you can read about it here.

If you like my blog, what would you think about doing a link exchange? If you’d like to, here is my link A New York Escorts Confessions. Please let me know what you think.



xoxo,
Alexa

Erlection Day

And so, at last, America finally goes to the polls today. I must admit to being quite glad that Labour have pulled their plans for a February election here – I think that it’s actually <gritted teeth>a smart decision in order to avoid a little bit of voter apathy</gritted teeth> as I know I can’t be the only one who’s already sick to death of hearing about bloody elections.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see what the final result is of the US election – I’d love to see Bush go out, but Kerry worries me just as much. Of course, if it all hinges on Florida again then the world will raise a cynical eyebrow at the entire process…

Daylight Hours

And yes, the clocks have gone back, although for now it’s nice to wake up in daylight again, but going home in darkness is going to be a sod.

The BBC has a rather good feature on SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and it’s always worth pointing out The NHS Direct page on SAD too.

Early Edition

For those who don’t know, Manchester has a local paper called the Evening News. It comes out late(ish) in the afternoon, hence the “Evening” part of the title.

Today, they’ve launched the “morning edition” – yet it’s still called the Evening News. So – is it last night’s news, or today’s evening news?

Festerous

While Terreus writes about Samhain and what used to be the traditional end of Summer, I can’t help but notice that 1st November now appears to be the retail market’s official Start Of The Festering Season™.

Upon entering the local shopping centre this morning, not only are all the twinkly lights and “festive” greenery decorations hung every-bloody-where, but there’s a fucking nativity scene in the main atrium. Yes, a nativity scene. In November.

Words fail. Although “For”, “Fuck’s” and “Sake” may have been promoted to the front of the queue.

Stunned

Regular readers should probably be sitting down for this one. On Friday, my train actually got me to Reading 90 minutes earlier than expected. Yes, it’s true. But perhaps I should explain.

Working on the principle that my normal train is invariably delayed, we’d decided to go with the assumption that the same would be true this time. So I’d said I would be there for about 9pm. However, the occurrence of half-term meant that I got into the city centre a whole lot quicker than expected, and belted up to Piccadilly hoping to get the earlier 15.55 train. Fuckety cunt, I got there at 15.55, and no idea which platform it was going from, so I look at the departures board. Bonus – Manchester to Reading train, platform five, should depart at 15.55 – running ten minutes late. Excellent. Nip in, get a couple of drinks for the journey, and plonk myself on the train. 30 seconds later, beepy beepy beepy go the doors, and then off we go. Stonking.

Even more amazinlgly, it actually ran smoothly. It took precisely the amount of time it should have done. The train was ten minutes late leaving Manchester, and got into Reading ten minutes after it was supposed to. So yes, exactly the right number of minutes, just not quite “on time”.

It wasn’t crowded (well, not ’til Birmingham, but even then it wasn’t rigidly busy)and the journey was smooth. It’s been a fair while since I’ve been able to say that. I think this definitely classes as “exception that proves the rule“.