Gold Scam

Posted: Wed 19 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

Sometimes, adverts on daytime TV are worthy of comment and/or incredulity. Today’s example covered both in one thirty-second slot.

It was an advert for some kind of “Money for your gold” organisation – yes, they had a web address on-screen, but I’m not going to promote the scam any more than I have to.

Anyway, the basic premise was as follows :

  1. Contact us, we’ll send you a “Free” postal packet insured for up to £2,500
  2. Send us your gold
  3. We’ll send you a valuation on it
  4. If you accept it, we’ll send you the cash.
  5. If you don’t, we’ll send you back your gold. (Honest, guv)

Now that just screams “Scam” to me – there’s so many healthy options for “lost in the post” excuses, plus (even if it’s legit) a nice little side-earner if one were to (for example) pawn the gold,have cash for it – always more than the “valuation” – and it’s in your account ’til you have to pay it to either the customer or back to the pawn-shop.

I’m tempted to see if the company directors are Derek and Rodney Trotter…

Weight Balance

Posted: Tue 18 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Health, Own Business, Thoughts, Weight Loss, Work-related | Leave a comment »

This week, I haven’t lost any weight, for the first time in six weeks. Mind you, I haven’t gained any either, so it could’ve been worse.

I knew I hadn’t done well this week, what with one thing and another – but I was still thinking I’d have lost something.

I know that sometimes this’ll happen, but still, in some ways it feels like I’ve let myself down somewhat by not losing any. Stupid, I know.

In some ways though, I think it’s also a good thing, because it shows me that I am actually serious about wanting to keep on losing it, to get down to where I want to be.

The next few weeks are going to be slightly more of  a challenge, with the London contract, but we’re looking at ways to get that more sorted too, so I think that I’ll be OK with that, too.

We’ll see, anyway.

Inglourious

Posted: Mon 17 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Advertising, Stupidity | Leave a comment »

Personally, I’m really not bothered about seeing the new Tarantino film, “Inglourious Basterds“. (Don’t blame me for that spelling – it drives me crackers too) I’m not even convinced I’ll bother when it comes out on DVD.

What is very funny at the moment though is that various places seem to be having utter conniptions about advertising it because of the “naughty word”.

I’ve seen a few adverts on pre-watershed TV (i.e. before 9pm) that are just calling it “Inglourious”, with the “Basterds” covered in bullet-holes. (I’m not quite sure how bullet-holes etc. are acceptable pre-watershed, but the word Bastard isn’t)

On radio, they’ve been reduced to simply referring to it as “the new Tarantino film”.

The marketing department for the film itself must be having fits about the fact that half the time, advertising and media can’t even say the name of the film. It’s a really silly state of affairs.

Photographer, Not Terrorist

Posted: Sun 16 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Cynicism, Photography, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

As regular readers now, I do a fair amount of photography.  Over the last couple of years it’s become clearer that more and more photographers are getting stopped and searched in anti-terror searches and the like.

Amateur Photographer magazine is running a campaign about Photographer’s Rights, (Not that you’d know it from their fucking awful website) and there are a few sites now relating to this problem.

The latest one is “I’m a Photographer, Not  a Terrorist” – and while I’m not a great fan of the emotive title/subject, it’s doing a far better job than “Not a Crime”.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these campaigns work out – and hopefully get a bit of sanity back into life as well. We’ll see.

Intruder Alert

Posted: Sat 15 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

The other day, at about 5.30am, Hound started growling and barking. This is her ‘normal’ (in as much as anything Hound does ever being seen as normal) alarm behaviour, when something’s going on that she thinks we need to know about. It’s reserved for strange Bad Things happening.

In this case, all her attention was being paid to the front door, so I went and had a look.

It turned out to be daylight, coming through a tiny gap at the edge of the curtains that cover the front-door area  at night. Hound’s Alarm Bark was because of sunlight.

As soon as I moved the curtain, she looked at it in a bemused “Where’s the invader gone?” expression. And then went and laid down in her basket again, to go back to sleep.

Poxy fucking creature.

Most Burgled

Posted: Fri 14 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Creativity, Cynicism, News | Leave a comment »

The story today about the “most burgled postcodes” in the UK makes for some interesting reading – but also misses out on a couple of rather relevant bits of information.

Firstly, it’s been done by MoneySupermarket.com (I’m not adding a link to them, because they’ve had enough PR out of this already) based on people trying to get home insurance. There’s no corroboration of these figures with any police reports etc.

Secondly, it’s this (from the story)…

Some 0.42% of people from Arnold who asked for quotes via the website said they had been burgled in the past five years, while that rate was above 0.24% in the rest of the top 20.

So 0.42% of people in Arnold (Nottinghamshire) have been burgled in the past five years.  But that means that 99.58% of people in Arnold haven’t been burgled. Which (to me, anyway) is far more interesting, and actually helps to put all this shit in perspective a bit.

Thunderstorm

Posted: Fri 14 August, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Photography, Weather | Leave a comment »

This small video is absolutely fantastic – a thunderstorm in Toronto.

It’s taken by Sam Javanrouh from Daily Dose of Imagery, one of my favourite photographers. (There’s also an interview with Sam here, although that’s not related to the thunderstorm video)

All told, the video consists of 347 15-second shots, with two seconds between each shot. (I suspect he used his Pclix for it – he’s obviously better at programming it than I am with mine at the moment)

Well worth the effort, anyway.

Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.

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