Inauguration
Posted: Tue 20 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thoughts 2 Comments »So, today is the day when Barack Obama is inaugurated as President of the USA.
I just wonder how long it’ll be before there’s an undeniable assassination attempt now. By that I mean one that’s not just a redneck in a pickup heading towards Washington DC, but shots fired, Secret Service running around etc.
Because I’m an über-cynic, I suspect that it won’t be long…
Redirecting
Posted: Mon 19 January, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign, Thoughts, Web Development Leave a comment »Over the weekend, following on from a comment on here from Chris, I finally got round to making a change to the index page of D4D™ that I really should have made months (if not years) ago. And in honesty, I really thought I had done it years ago. I certainly planned to.
Anyway, the index page now redirects back to here. Which is how it should be, and what it should’ve been doing ages ago.
There are still plans for a redesign of D4D™, which would also involve moving servers to a new home. (That’s also related to another plan for some rationalisation of the number of hosting services I currently use) At that point, this section of D4D™ may change to being the index page of the entire site – so you’d only need www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk , instead of remembering that extra /random – but setting things up in this way now will theoretically make things easier on that score anyway.
Come that time, I’ll be redirecting back the other way, so that anything at /random goes back to the index page. And all will be well.
We’ll see though. It’s a way off yet because like the builder who never completes his own extension, I’ve got enough work on right now that redeveloping/redesigning D4D™ keeps on getting put back.
Maybe I should set a target date, and then just work on thrashing it through. Or maybe I’ll simply let D4D™ keep on shambling along in its current guise for a while yet.
Time will tell.
Live Performances
Posted: Fri 16 January, 2009 Filed under: Memory, Music, Thoughts 7 Comments »When I go to see a concert – or even watching music programmes on TV etc. – one of the silly things that always impresses me is that the singers remember all the words.
For me, writing something down is the best way yet to forget it. It’s somewhere solid (even if that is only somewhere like here) and it’s somewhere I can find it again. So if I write it down, it’s effectively gone from my head.
That’s why (for me) it’s better to keep ideas in my head, rather than writing them down as an aide memoire – because it won’t aid me, I’ll just forget the entire thing.
So I find myself repeatedly in awe of the people who still know their lyrics, who can still produce them repeatedly at any given performance with seemingly no notes, reminders, hints or clues. To me that’s just awesome, regardless.
So what do you find yourself in awe of?
Icy Windows
Posted: Thu 15 January, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts 1 Comment »Now that all the ice and crap has finally thawed again, I’m reminded of something I meant to write a week ago. The subject is simple – iced up car windows.
Over the week or so of consistently cold weather, I found it quite gobsmacking just how many people were out on the roads driving with only a tiny patch of scraped windscreen to see through, while leaving the rest to melt of its own accord. Partly because it’s illegal (if memory serves, you’re supposed to make sure all the windows are scraped/clear before you set off – The Highway Code certainly says so) and partly because it’s – well – incredibly fucking stupid.
Additionally, it doesn’t really take up that much time/effort. For me, the entire process involved simply opening the car, starting it up so that the heater was working and warming things from the inside, and going round with a scraper. By the time I’d done all four side windows, the heated windscreen and rear-windscreen had done their job, and the entire thing was ready to go in about five minutes. (at most)
Now yes, I know that I live out in The Sticks™, so leaving the engine running while scraping the windows isn’t likely to result in an incident like this one. Being outside and scraping the car also means I don’t leave it unattended and then come back to find it’s been nicked. (and let’s be honest, that should just be filed under “Idiot Tax”)
But my point is that it doesn’t take much effort to go round scraping the car’s windows. And personally I’d rather make that effort than either get pulled over by the police for dangerous driving (which I think is the correct charge for driving with non-clear windows) or be involved in an accident where the insurance then refuses to pay out because it could be seen as my fault for not seeing [whatever was collided with] because my windows were still iced over.
Masterchef – Deja Vu
Posted: Tue 13 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Memory, Thoughts 1 Comment »In similar vein to this post from last year, it’s worth pointing out that Masterchef is back on BBC2 again.
And still the contestants drive me potty with all the guff about “[Tristan] is aiming to change jobs, and go from being a stockbroker to living his dream by cooking”. No-one says “Well why don’t you fucking try it out properly first?” or “Wouldn’t it be an idea to cook for more than yourself?“. One bell-end last week claimed that he wanted to open “something like the Manoir, a restaurant with rooms” – I think he went out at the end of the first round, for doing something a) dull or b) raw. After a while they all blend into one, I’m afraid.
The judges don’t do much for me either. Both John Torode and Greg Wallace come across as pompous prats – although some of that could be the scripting too – but if I hear them saying “They’re doing a meal they’ve never cooked before. In a semi-final! Shocking!” I’ll just spit.
Yet I still watch the damn thing – even though a good 40% of it drives me crackers. (On this point, Sky+ is a godsend – it’s great being able to fast-forward through the repetition, ‘discussion’ of who stays in etc., and all the intermediate Pop Idol/X-Factor guff of contestants calling home to say they got through etc.) I find the ideas people have are interesting, the pro-kitchens can be interesting – and/or make me think “I would never go there to eat” – and the execution of the ideas and recipes is something I do enjoy watching. I’ve always been in awe of the people who can go to a kitchen cupboard and just pick five or six items and put them together, knowing that they’ll work out as a good meal. My mum could do that easily, Herself can do so too, and so can other friends but to me it’s just an awesome talent that I simply don’t possess.
I can cook – but I need a recipe, or some kind of inspiration to work from. Sometimes when watching Masterchef I can come up with what I’d do with the selection of ingredients on offer, but for me it’s more a memory thing, something I’ve seen in another magazine or recipe book. But I know I don’t have the knowledge – more accurately, the inbuilt/memorised knowledge – of the necessary methods in order to get to that final result.
New MP3 Player
Posted: Sat 10 January, 2009 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the Festering Season break, and as part of an impetus to get me back to the gym, I invested in a new MP3 player – the Sony Walkman S638F, with 16Gb of storage. Equally, my last MP3 player (purchased before I even started D4D™!) has now disappeared – although I’m sure we’ll now find it this weekend – so there was another valid reason to buy a new one.
Yes, sure, I could’ve bought an iPod instead, but considering I only paid £85 for it, I couldn’t have got a similar spec (or even a better spec) one for the same price. Plus well, I’m not a massive fan of Apple’s stuff anyway, and I’d rather have something different. The Walkman had a damn good review in the Register, and fitted in with other requirements as well, so it was pretty much the obvious choice.
And I have to say, I’m really pleased with it. The sound quality is spectacular – having been tested on some of my favourite tunes, I’m tempted to say it’s actually the best music player I’ve had since the old Panasonic ‘cobra top’ ghetto-blaster (which still lives on nearly fifteen years after purchase, and is an evil beast of a thing that used to be able to drown out the next-door pub’s disco-night)
As per my last post on MP3 players and storage (back in 2005) I really don’t see myself filling up that 16Gb unless I also download some videos from the BBC iPlayer site to watch on it while at the gym. I might fill it- you never know- but at the moment I’m using 7.5Gb of the available space, and that’s got enough variety to keep me going all week.
We’ll see.
But in the meantime, if someone’s looking for a new MP3 player, the Walkman ‘S’ range comes heavily recommended.
Writing Splits
Posted: Thu 8 January, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, The '09 Writing Project, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »At the moment, I’m splitting my writing stuff between three sites and two additional projects – which is a bit of a strain, as you can imagine. Thankfully, all of them have very different styles/themes/subjects, which helps, but it can still all be a bit of a clash.
The three main sites are :
- Here (obviously)
- The company business site, which is more about business and development stuff
- The photography site, which is more around photography and a semi-photoblog
I don’t mind too much – well, I set myself the tasks, so I shouldn’t do – but on occasion it gets to be a bit of a head-fuck. D4D™ is obviously the one with the most updates, and the other two probably only get updated weekly. OK, sometimes fortnightly, or even monthly. But in the context of what they are, that’s (in my opinion) fairly reasonable. Neither site is high-traffic – hell, not even close – but they fulfil a need and serve a purpose.
But as time goes on this year, I don’t know that they’ll all survive. When you take into account the plan to have at least one significant dollop of “proper” writing (or two or three smaller bits than can equate to one significant dollop) done by the end of the year, well, we’ll just have to see what lives or dies on the writing front, won’t we?
Police “Hacking”
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »There’s an interesting story in The Times today about police forces in the UK and “remote searches” of a suspect’s PC.
It doesn’t need a court warrant, just for a senior officer to say he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime  which is defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. So, no chance of any abuse of the system there, then. *cough*
This development isn’t new – it’s been in place since an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in 1994 which made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state.
However, I wonder what happens if the suspect being “remote searched” has a firewall and/or secure wireless network (or no wireless network at all) which prevents that remote search. Can they then also be charged with refusing/blocking a ‘legitimate’ search, in the same way you can if you refuse to be stop-and-searched?
Weighty Issues – Further Thoughts
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Introspective, Thoughts 9 Comments »Following on from my post about weight etc. at the end of last year (OK, less than a week ago) and the comments that came, I thought I’d add some more thoughts about it now we’re into 2009.
During my time off, I looked at Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR, not BMI), which is basically sufficient only for the functioning of the vital organs, but gives a rough idea of what calories the body burns just to keep going. And mine works out (on an admittedly rough working out, rather than the full-precision test) as being about 2,000 to 2,500 calories, depending on the equation used.
I don’t yet know what that means for me – if it’s anywhere even vaguely close to right, I assume it means that I should be taking on at least that amount of calories per day just to break even. I also assume that if my intake is less than that (and I’m pretty sure it’s significantly less than 2,500 per day) then my body thinks it’s starving, and thus stores everything as fat instead of using it or burning it up. That’s no surprise, it’s been put forward as an idea a couple of times over the years already.
The thing is though, that if I do attempt to eat more in accordance with things like BMR figures, and recommendations from gyms etc. I just put weight on. I know, it’s because the body still thinks it’s starving and is processing into fat for storage rather than actually using the damn calories, but it’s one of the most demoralising things around – I want to get fitter, not fatter. And no-one gives any idea of how long it’ll take for my body to get used to the idea of not being starved, and use the calories instead of store them. If it’s only a couple of weeks then fine – if it’s a couple of months or more, not so fine.
Later in the year, come spring-time, I might just get out on my bike again. That appeals a lot more than going running – although running does have a certain strange appeal, just not at my current weight – but well, we’ll see. I do want to get more use out of the bike (although there’s no fucking way I’m ever going to be cycling the 25 miles to/from the current job!) so we’ll see.
In the meantime, I’m working on going to the gym on a more regular basis. It’s currently not helped by the fact I’m still coughing up lumps of lung (or the contents thereof – I’m not doing analysis to find out which) which leaves me feeling like shit, but even getting back to the basic routine of gym attendance is probably a good thing in the long term, I guess.
Demoralising Success
Posted: Sun 4 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Watching Starter for Ten tonight, I was surprised by how young James McAvoy looked, for it only being made two (sorry, three) years ago, so I looked up some information on him.
And it’s incredibly depressing, seeing that someone who’s done as many programmes and films as he has is still only twenty-bloody-nine.
Yes, born in ’79. Eight years after me. It’s making me feel very old, I have to say.
New Doctor
Posted: Sat 3 January, 2009 Filed under: Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »It still hasn’t been revealed as I write this, but when it comes to the new Dr Who, I’d love to see a woman Doctor.
Just imagine the fun you could have with it – “Oooh, breasts, periods, weird” etc.
Chargeable
Posted: Tue 30 December, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »How come people who call 999 for stupid reasons like these don’t get charged with wasting police time?
One would hope that having the threat of actually being charged and getting a criminal record for excessive fuckwittery might actually be some kind of incentive to these bell-ends to think before dialling.
Over recent times, I have actually called the police (or emergency services) three times
- One was for an accident that we’d just driven past, and that was obviously extremely recent. For that, I used 999
- One was to check whether I needed to report an accident involving a deer – I know some car accidents involving animals need reporting, I didn’t know whether deer were one of those. (They’re not). For that, I used the non-emergency number.
- The final one was to report the overnight theft of a neighbour’s stone horse-head wall statue things. Neighbour was away, we’d seen/heard nothing ’til the morning. Guess which number I used? Yep – non-emergency again.
I simply can’t imagine calling 999 because a pizza company has put the wrong toppings on my pizza, or to ask about shop opening times. I assume that some people are so self-centred that anything they need to do is “an emergency” so they use an emergency number. Bell-ends, the lot of ’em.
Green Fuels, New Problems
Posted: Mon 29 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Green, Thoughts 1 Comment »This story on BBC News raises an interesting issue – as more cars get converted to dual fuel, and use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas), crashes and vehicle fires are starting to carry significantly more risk.
After all, LPG is carried in cylinders under pressure, which make it very similar to the acetylene cylinders which always make the Fire Service pap themselves (and for good reason) due to the possibility of explosion if they get too hot in a fire. If you’ve ever put an aerosol can on a fire, think of the effects of that and multiply it by a thousand. Explosion, fireball, etc. etc. In short, Ka-boom.
The same is true (and even possibly exacerbated) with LPG canisters – after all, petrol escaping from pressure and turning back into gas is going to cause one heck of a bang.
So I suspect we’re going to see more road closures for relatively minor accidents and/or vehicle fires where LPG-powered vehicles are involved.
Think I’ll stick with diesel, myself…
Chilling a Beach
Posted: Wed 24 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »And just when you thought things couldn’t get any sillier – along comes this.
A plan to cool down the sand on the beach at a luxury hotel in Dubai.
“We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace.
“This is the kind of luxury that top people want.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world…
Next Up Against The Wall
Posted: Tue 23 December, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Own Business, Thoughts 4 Comments »It’s interesting to see today that supposedly Whittards of Chelsea is apparently also close to going into administration. Following on as it does from yesterday’s news where Woolworths announced the full schedule for the closing of all their shops (come Jan 8th, they’ll all be closed) it’s interesting to see which other chains are apparently due up against the wall.
Personally, I’m not really surprised by Woolworth’s demise – I’m more surprised that they’ve hung on as long as they have, to be honest. They’ve tried for a long time the “stock a bit of everything” approach, and in face of competition from other stores (and particularly online stores for CDs, DVDs and games) well, it just really wasn’t a surprise.
For myself, I wouldn’t be surprised to see WHSmiths go the same route as Woolworths during 2009 – again, they’ve got a huge amount of competition from the online stores for the great majority of their business. In fact, the only thing that you can get in WHSmiths that you can’t get online (for the most part) is magazines – and maybe greetings cards. Even most of the newspapers now carry an online version, which takes away yet more “core business”, although I guess there’ll be people who want to read papers “properly” for a while yet.
I wonder which other retailers will go to the wall in the current economic climate?
Midas Touch
Posted: Mon 22 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »Is it just me who finds this story more than a little bit worrying?
The Bank of England did not understand the severity of economic problems before the current financial crisis, its deputy governor says.
Sir John Gieve told the BBC that the Bank knew “crazy borrowing” was taking place and the price of houses and other assets was rising unsustainably.
But the Bank thought this problem was less serious than it turned out to be, he said in an interview for Panorama.
Well if the Bank of England didn’t understand the problem, what fucking hope did anyone else have?
Or is it more a case that some people did understand the problem – it’s just that they weren’t the people who really should have known/understood? After all, which sane person would think “I know, I’ll invest in lending money to people who have little-to-no chance of actually paying it back”? (After all, that seems to be the basic premise of ‘sub-prime’ mortgages)
And which sane person would base their plans on “OK, so house prices have risen [x]% this year, but they’ve done that for 10 years on the trot, so we’ll keep on expecting them to go up, (and borrow extensively on that ‘profit’) rather than get to an unsustainable level and then crash”. Oh yeah, lots of people did that second one, didn’t they? My mistake.
All in all, a totally fucking ridiculous situation.
Zuca
Posted: Sat 20 December, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Check this out – sheer, absolute fucking genius.
Text/Drive
Posted: Fri 19 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m pleased to see that the woman who killed another driver while driving and sending text messages has been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.
During the journey, travelling at 70mph+ on the M40, this woman had received and/or sent 20 text messages. She said she thought that it was perfectly possible to send text messages while driving “in certain conditions”.
Hopefully this conviction will have taken away that thought. But somehow I doubt it.
Open Letter
Posted: Thu 18 December, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »To the gobby Australian at the Tracy Chapman concert on Monday night:
Look, in all honesty I just don’t care about how you feel so hard done by for having to work a late shift on your birthday, and an early the morning after. I particularly don’t care upon your fourth repetition of the same information. Equally, I don’t give a damn about whether you think that an accountant would be someone good to marry, “because they’ve got a boring job”. (Note, I don’t understand the logic of it either, but I’m working on not thinking about the idiot antipodean bint’s inanity)
As for your abysmal punctuation skills, I’m hard pressed as to be more gobsmacked at the fact you were quite happy for the entire back row of the Hammersmith Apollo to know you were that easy, or the fact that you can’t spell/punctuate, and thus don’t know whether you’ve upset your one-night paramour. The fact that he “thanked you for last night” by text message, along with a desire for a re-match post-Festering-Season was enough for me, regardless of your response of “No thank you”, when you meant “No, thank you!”. No-one cared that you were a) an idiot, and b) a slapper, but you still felt the need to broadcast both pieces of information at great volume.
We all noticed how hard-done by you are to not be able to return to Australia four times a year, the way your (obviously much more highly-paid) sister can, and yet not one person managed to summon up any sympathy. Hell, even the friends you were shouting at talking to didn’t care enough to do anything except let you carry on making yourself look like a shallow twat.
However, I suspect that I wasn’t the only one who found the irony amusing of your tale of your neighbour having been taken ill and the ward nurse telling you she couldn’t give information about a patient’s medical status as you a) weren’t family and b) it was unethical to divulge medical details – only to then tell everyone in earshot about how he’d had some kind of liver failure, and was on 15-minute observations, along with a large amount more information I can’t be arsed to recall right now. I assume you got the information through your work as a nurse – I think it was at Barts, but you mentioned so many hospitals where friends worked, I lost the ability to care or recall which was which – but to then be busy broadcasting it again in a public venue, well, it almost made me wish your supervisors were there too.
As it happened, some people were trying to hear the support act – not your Australian foghorn. No-one else cared about your life – much as you didn’t appear to care about anything resembling privacy, consideration, or any concept of “unsuitable conversations for a public space”.
In short, shut up and fuck off. No-one cares.
Poster Placement
Posted: Wed 17 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »A poster advertising a film called “Righteous Kill”, with the tagline “There’s nothing wrong with a little shooting as long as the right people get shot.”
And where does it get placed?
Yep – the platform of Stockwell tube station, where Jean Charles de Menezes got shot.
Genius.
Improbable
Posted: Fri 12 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »According to this story I’ve just spotted, thieves stole jewellery worth “thousands” of pounds. From Argos.
Now, I find that rather improbable, to say the least. OK, it’s the run-up to the Festering Season etc., but still, thousands of pounds-worth of jewellery? In Argos?
If they got away with that much, they must’ve had a fucking big truck to carry all the tat.
Getting Darker
Posted: Fri 12 December, 2008 Filed under: Depression, Domestic, Thoughts 1 Comment »Within the next two weeks, we’ll get past not only the Festering Season, but also the Winter Solstice. And that means that the days will then start getting longer again – which is always a good thing.
In fairness, the Solstice always means more to me than the Festering Season anyway. (I know, that’s no shock to anyone here)
Interestingly though, so far this year I don’t appear to have been overly prone to the Seasonal Depressions, which again is A Good Thing®. I’m normally very susceptible to the old Seasonal Depressions – again, as regular readers well know – but for whatever reason, this year they don’t appear to have kicked in all that much.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still prone to very bad days (and sometimes weeks) but I’m nowhere near the prolonged State Of Glum that was the usual. This last week has, for me, been a particularly hard one – but that’s more down to my dislike of people than down to the weather/light/colour of sky.
I don’t know if I’ll fall foul of the Seasonals this year now (for this post could almost be seen as tempting fate) but we’ll see.
Regardless, I’ll be happier come the 23rd to know that the nights will be getting shorter again, and then come Jan 2nd when all this Festering Shit will be properly over with for another year. Once all that’s done, things should improve anyway.
Bizarre
Posted: Tue 9 December, 2008 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »I defy you to read this story without shaking your head and thinking “What the fuck was he doing/thinking?”
One of the more truly bizarre stories of the year – and not helped by the fact that his actions resulted in the deaths of two people…
Not Fitting In
Posted: Sat 6 December, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts 5 Comments »Over the last week, I’ve had to make two confessions in conversations – both music-related.
And I might as well go public with them properly, so here goes…
- I never got into The Smiths.
- I can’t stand Pink Floyd
I don’t know why I never got into The Smiths – maybe it’s missing out on the entire student experience. But there we go.
As for Pink Floyd, their music has just simply never clicked with me. Even listening on Radio 1 this week to “Dark Side of the Moon”, it really just does nothing for me.
Sad but true.
More Memory
Posted: Wed 3 December, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »The other day, I noticed that Amazon had a 4Gb Compact Flash card for the price of £15.
I’ve been using 2Gb cards for a while, and that’s fine – but sometimes it’s nice to have the extra storage, and at that kind of price I just thought “Ah hell, might as well”.
Of course, for twice the price, I could’ve got a 16Gb card, but I don’t really need that much storage.
In fact, the 4Gb will do me fine, particularly with the two 2Gb cards I’ve also got now.
All the same, I do find it amazing the way the prices for digital storage just keeps on dropping.
Ethical Gifts
Posted: Tue 2 December, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Customer Services, Festering Season, Thoughts 1 Comment »
In general, if I am going to be buying people gifts come the Festering Season, I’d rather get them something they actually want. Yes, it means it’s not such a surprise, but personally I don’t see the point of buying something that the recipient will find to be utterly useless.
For that, wishlists are bloody great – they keep the surprise, but at least you can list a number of things that you actually want, rather than “Oh, just buy me anything. You know me, you’ll find something“.
Anyway, for those times where people don’t have a wishlist, and do stick to the “Buy me any old thing” ethos, I now tend to buy an ethical gift (Water supply, chickens, etc. to some remote third-world area) rather than buying something useless. And so I thought I’d bung up a quick list of places with ideas I think are great…
- World Vision‘s “Must Have Gifts” for projects around the world.
- Sponsor A Tree do a number of Trees for Individuals in packs of 5,10, 20 or 30 trees
- Slightly more expensive is WaterAid’s shop where you can buy water supplies etc. for projects around the world
- In the UK, Garden Organic have the ability to Adopt a Vegetable, where £20 pays for the seed handling, propagation and storage in the Heritage Seed Library. There’s a list of the veg varieties available here.
- Still in the UK, you can also support the Cats Protection League or sponsor a dog through Dogs Trust (something Herself does already)
I’m sure there are plenty of others, but these are the ones I tend to support/use. If you know of any other good ones, add them to the comments!
Nicely balanced
Posted: Mon 1 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 4 Comments »On a deeply cynical note, I see that the latest eviction from the X Factor means that they go into the semi-final next week with one contestant from each group.
Wow, how convenient is that?
Who could need yet more proof that the entire thing is rigged from the start?
[Edit] As per comments from Mike below, turns out I was completely wrong on this one.
Although I still think it’s rigged from the start. But then, I’m a cynic.
Potential Fraud
Posted: Wed 26 November, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »While we were in Cambridge over the weekend, we went out for a meal at La Tasca.
When it came time to pay, I handed over my Switch (Sorry, Maestro) card for the transaction. Having keyed in my PIN, the waitress waited by our table for a couple of minutes, then wandered off with the card still in the machine. She came back a couple of minutes later with another card machine, showed me the “transaction cancelled” slip, and asked me to put the transaction through again on the other card reader.
Needless to say, alarm bells went “Rinnnnggggg!” in my brain.
We went through the transaction again, and all went well. And then we left the restaurant.
At which point, I called the bank and cancelled the card completely. I explained why, that I felt it was a dodgy transaction, and while I had no problem with the transaction for the meal bill going through, I didn’t want anything else going through on that card. The lady from the bank agreed that it sounded dodgy, cancelled the card immediately, ordered a new one, and said they’d raise a flag against La Tasca in Cambridge, just in case there were other issues in the future for their other customers. (Whether they will or not, I’ve no idea)
I’m sure that it was just me being extra-paranoid, but at the same time I’d rather be slightly inconvenienced by a few days without a Switch card than by being complacent, thinking I’m just being paranoid and then having to deal with discovering that money had been taken from my bank account by fraudulent transactions.
Demographics and Commercial Radio
Posted: Thu 20 November, 2008 Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »Interesting piece in the Guardian today about Commercial Radio, and why they should stop whining about Chris Moyles.
I listen to Radio 1 when I’m driving – if I’m not listening to the radio, I’ve got a CD going instead – because I find Radio 2 to be ineffably dull, I’m not into Radio 3, and when driving I find Radio 4 just doesn’t do it for me. So Radio 1 it is. There are certain presenters on there that make me turn it off (as the article says) but for the 45 minutes on the way to and from work, Radio 1 is my station of choice.
As for commercial radio, I just can’t stand it – and again, for exactly the reasons listed in the article. The (station-defined) limited playlists mean there’s no variety, and the constant repetition of banal ads is just awful. In fact, while driving I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything worse than having to listen to commercial radio…
Quote of the Week
Posted: Wed 19 November, 2008 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts 3 Comments »Today’s “Quote of the Week” – which may become a title tag on D4D™…
I suffer from CDO. It’s like OCD, but the letters are all in the correct order, as they should be.
Wall of Sound
Posted: Wed 12 November, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Health, Thoughts 6 Comments »For whatever reason, my ears produce excessive wax. (And if that grosses you out, you’d best stop reading now)
On occasion, it gets so severe that it blocks my ear completely. Last time it happened, back in Bracknell, the practice nurse suggested using a product called Otex, which I’ve used on occasion since.
A good while back – I thought it was the start of this year, but it could’ve been longer when I think about it – my right ear got blocked up, and despite my best efforts, it wouldn’t clear out. I wasn’t worried, because I knew it was just wax, and normally it clears itself out in the end. So I’d use the Otex on occasion, but it wasn’t really an issue. (And yes, I’m aware that this post a) contains WAY too much information and b) shows just how slack I am on certain things)
However, last week I was using the Otex on the other ear, and the gunge caused by it sealed up that ear too. Which left me, well, not deaf – but most definitely significantly impaired on the hearing front. I’d estimate it at about a 60-75% hearing loss, all told. Apparently, this is a known issue with Otex – because it dissolves the wax, you end up with this kind of primordial sticky semi-liquid sludge, and that just seals the ear canal completely, and it’s then really hard to get out.
So the hearing loss was just what I needed, knowing that I was going to have a two-day training course at the start of the following week.
Over the weekend, I tried to get in to one of the local NHS Walk-in centres but failed to get seen. (although this is another ranty post for over the weekend, I think) So on Monday I got an appointment with the practice nurse at my normal doctor’s surgery. (It was actually Herself who made the appointment – I was trying to call, but failing, so she called – and it turned out that I got through just after her, so actually had two appointments to get this all sorted)
Anyway, last night after work I went in, and the nurse cleared out both my ears by syringing them. It’s not quite as vile as it sounds – it’s some kind of mechanism for pumping warm water into the ear, and letting it flow out again – and while it’s not a pleasant experience, it’s still less unpleasant than the sensations while using the Otex, where you can hear the bubbles, fizzing, and cracking of the Otex attacking whatever’s in your ear.
But now the world is very very loud. My brain had quite obviously got used to handling the deficiency in my right ear and was doing quite nicely at it, thanks very much. But now that the blockage has gone, all the sound is coming in again, and my brain hasn’t yet reduced the levels – so everything is much louder than it was.
It’s odd, you don’t realise how much you’re missing in a situation like that – because it’s been a gradual process over *cough* months, it’s just not really been something I was aware of losing. The sudden renewal of all noise levels has come as quite a shock – closing my car door when I was leaving the surgery felt like it had blown out my eardrums.
Sometimes that hearing deficiency has helped – this morning the noise of the central heating pump woke me up, for example.
I’m not proud of this post – it goes a long way towards illustrating what a complete slack-arse I truly am when it comes to taking care of my own ailments, for one thing – but it’s still a noteworthy event. If nothing else, I’ll probably refer back to it on occasion, as and when my hearing starts going duff again. (And from now on I’ll be doing what the practice nurse recommended, too – rather than waiting ’til the buildup starts, I’ll be working on controlling it a bit before that)
I know I’m bad at these things – I can’t get past the “it’s not all that relevant” thing, and I particularly have an issue with wasting even a GP or practice nurse’s time with something that is a) my fault in the first place and b) impressively trivial. But once I know I have to go and get it sorted – in this case, because I can’t hear a sodding thing – then I do at least go and get it sorted.
ID Cards
Posted: Sat 8 November, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »As per Reynolds post on the subject, I find myself incredulous that Jackie Smith alleges that people come up to her, “eagerly wanting to sign up for ID cards as soon as possible“.
My statement of intent with regard to ID cards is the same as that of Reynolds…
I refuse to carry any national ID card that is based around a national database and would rather go to prison than submit to this attack on my privacy and security. They will have to get my biometric data* by force and I will shred any ID card of this type that I am sent.
*Which is still hideously flawed and throws up too many false positives and negatives.
To be fully informed please visit No 2 ID.ID Cards are a huge white elephant. I can’t think of a single terrorist-driven event where ID Cards would have been at all useful – well, except for (supposedly) easily identifying the victims of said event and/or the perpetrators after the fact.
Would ID Cards have stopped the london bombings on 7th July 2006? No.
Or the idiots who tried to blow up Glasgow Airport? No.
Or the idiots who tried that car-bomb in London? No.
Or the events of 9/11 ? No.
Or the IRA’s truck-bomb in Manchester? No.So go on, tell me, just what fucking use are ID cards in their purported ‘anti-terrorism’ roles?
Five Year Plan : 40% Done
Posted: Wed 5 November, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »
- Photography
Take more photosPut the good ones in the portfolio site- Work on a couple of projects/themes
Started the work on a couple of projects, and seeing how they go- Possibly do a redesign of the portfolio site to fit in more with ‘brand ‘image’
Couldn’t be chuffed with this one in the end, although I’m still thinking about it- Submit portfolio site and photos to various interested parties
- Possibly make more use of Flickr, although that one’s a bit of a “don’t know”
And really haven’t done this either, as I’ve been using the portfolio site instead- Pull more attention to the portfolio site
Again, working on it- Business
Redesign/redevelop business website with a CMS etc.Look at sorting out a proper business bank accountKeep generating new work
As always, an ongoing process – but working fairly well so far, allbeit not having generated as much as I should have doneContinue with current work and clients
Again, an ongoing processGet new contract – the one with the current place will definitely expire in ’08, due to tax/IR35 reasons
I haven’t had any long-term contracts, but plenty of shorter-term ones, and now the new permanent role…Work on developing new sites and business ideas- Minimise outgoings, increase incoming money
Nice idea, but not all that successful due to rising costs (particularly of petrol)- Writing
Realistically? Get one solid idea written and done, if only for the head-space
Admittedly, ‘only’ a short screenplay for a film of about 10-15 minutes, but still, completed and done, except for small ongoing edits- Optimistically? Get two solid ideas written and done.
Working on the second one (and a third, to be honest), but not completed- House stuff
- House alterations
Bathroom- Kitchen extension/upgrade
Postponed for foreseeable future- Extra Item :
Cavity Wall Insulation- Extra Item : Loft Insulation
Postponed ’til ’09, due to a nightmare of work involved- Garden alterations/work
Veg patch- Front garden/driveway
Semi-complete- Main lawn etc.
Semi-complete- Borders, beds, blah blah
End Of Another Hype Phase
Posted: Tue 4 November, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 4 Comments »At long last, the American Presidential election is going on today. And thank Christ for that – because I’m certainly getting deeply bored of all the coverage of it in the UK Media.
Now yes, I know, it’s important in the context of being US President, and all the guff around the “special relationship” between the US and the UK. (Why we don’t go the whole hog and just call it “being seen as the 51st state”, I don’t know) And I think that some of the coverage has been important to remind us all just how stupid some Americans can be – I’m thinking particularly of all the crap about “Obama must be a turr’rist, because his name sounds like Osama”, and seeing the way people think he’s Muslim (or even an Arab, forgetting the entire thing in their own country’s laws banning non-Americans from running for President – which is why (thank fuck) we’ll never see President Schwarzenegger)
But at the same time, I’m just so bored of the entire thing. I don’t honestly care whether Obama or McCain is leading the polls, or who said what at the latest debate in West Buttfuck, Idaho. Just. Don’t. Care.
So I’ll be glad when it’s all over.
Or at least, “over” as in “won’t hear about this again for another three years”…
Brand/RossGate
Posted: Mon 3 November, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »I’m going to come into this one a bit late, now that the hype around Russell Brand,Jonathon Ross, and those phone calls has faded a wee bit.
First of all, I didn’t hear the calls when they went out. Secondly, I’m not a great fan of either Brand or Ross, as I tend to think they’re both pretty much complete cocks at the best of times.
However, I don’t think that Brand deserved to lose his job (resign, quit, whatever – he still lost his job) for being a cock. I don’t think that Ross deserved a three-month suspension for being a cock. I do think that the producers of Brand’s show should have been fired – something which I don’t know whether it’s happened or not – as the calls were pre-recorded, and should’ve been checked pre-broadcast. And I think that the R2 controller should’ve fired the producers, not quit herself.
My personal opinion is just that the entire thing was Daily Mail-fuelled spite and hysteria (not for the first time) considering that at time of broadcast, a grand total of two people complained, and the complaints only exploded in number once the Daily Bigot had gone up in arms about it. (As usual, the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker sums it up far better than I ever could)
Yes, Brand and Ross are utter cocks. But they’re paid to be utter cocks. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for debate – if I had control of a radio station, I wouldn’t employ them, but as I don’t, I’m left with the option to just not bother listening to them, or watching them. Which is in fact pretty much what I do. And that, so far as I can see it, is how things should be – we can all make the choice of who to listen to – and if we want to complain about something they’ve said, then fine – but at least complain about something that you’ve heard, not what some hate-mongering bigoted black-shirt rag tells you to complain about, or be offended by.
Parking Policies
Posted: Thu 30 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I swear, I’m never going to understand some people.
In the new job, there’s a large staff car park – which is fine, there’s a lot of staff. There’s no space reservations, or team/department delineations on who parks where – it’s just “find a space and use it”. However, most mornings I’ll see people either:
- ‘Having’ to park in ‘their’ space (and/or getting annoyed because some inconsiderate soul has parked in ‘their’ space)
or- Driving round the car-park (sometimes twice) in order to find the “best” parking spot – despite driving past any number of empty spaces in order to find one closest to the office.
Me, I just use the first space I see. It’s simple. I’m capable of remembering where my car is in the car park, and going back to it when I leave the office.
So I just don’t really understand these little obsessions with having one’s own parking space, or with trying to find the absolute closest available space to minimise walking (one assumes) when you’ve already driven past umpteen empty spaces.
Just bizarre, in my (oh so) humble opinion.
SkyTV, Carbon Neutral?
Posted: Wed 29 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, General, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Travelling behind a Sky TV van (sorry, their proper name is BSkyB, but who remembers that?) I noticed that they’re now saying that Sky is “Carbon Neutral”, according to the Carbon Neutral Trust.
And that’s just left me incredulous. Thankfully, I’m not the only one – as can be seen here, among other places. From that story, the following :
Sky’s carbon footprint has been calculated by measuring the CO2 equivalent emissions from its premises, company owned vehicles, business travel and waste to landfill. It claims to have lowered its site-related operational emissions by 47 per cent in the last 18 months and has also negotiated discounts for staff wanting to buy low emission hybrid cars
© Tech Digest 2008
So it’s not actually taking into account all the Sky boxes that are left on Standby overnight, let alone the Sky+ boxes etc. – and until it does, I for one would dispute the true “Carbon Neutral” status of Sky.
Stuart Rose
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Thoughts 1 Comment »I know I’ve written about Stuart Rose before, but he’s one of my business heroes, so sod it, I’ll write again.
Don’t know who he is? He’s the Chief Executive (and Chairman) of Marks and Spencer, and has been since about 2004. Any time I’ve seen him interviewed on TV, he’s always come across really well, and most definitely not your standard Chief Exec. He’s someone who believes in the company he works for, and to me that’s fantastic.
This time, he’s in a feature by the Guardian about their clothes, taking the Guardian’s columnist round the shop and showing her clothes, following her comments that M&S didn’t have clothes for women in their 20s.
Now first of all, when did you ever hear about a shop’s Chief Exec acting as a sales assistant to take someone round the store? And particularly one who actually knows his own stock lines and themes? Let alone actually wears clothes from the store?
He insists that he doesn’t expect even loyal customers to dress entirely in M&S, but to select key pieces to team with other clothes and accessories. The suit he is wearing is from M&S – he opens his jacket to prove it – but his shoes are not.
© Guardian newspapers 2008
To me, that’s what a Chief Exec should do. I just think it’s a pity that it’s something Stuart Rose stands out for doing, rather than it being the standard.
Servicing
Posted: Thu 23 October, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts 1 Comment »Once again, my poor old car’s in the garage. Not for anything major, I hasten to add – just that it’s now on it’s 90,000 mile service.
Thankfully, I don’t mind about the mileage – as I’ve said before, the car’s going to be driven into the ground, I don’t expect to get anything more for it when the time comes than trade-in value, so I’m not fussed that it’s coming up for going round the clock.
The courtesy car that the garage has given me this time is a little 1.25 Fiesta, which comes under the heading of “comedy car” in my opinion. Although in fairness, they’re a lot roomier than they used to be – I can actually fit in this one (although I’m sure it still looks funny from the outside) without needing to go into bizarre contortions in order to get behind the wheel.
The only thing that annoyed me in fact was that the garage supplied it with (according to the gauge on the dash) enough fuel to go thirty miles. Needless to say, adding fuel was a priority as the journey to work runs to about 28 miles…
Camera Defaults
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Photography, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »One of the things that has surprised me on my photography course is the number of the people on it who haven’t really played with their cameras at all.
For instance, the great majority still even have the default (and highly irritating) beeps, clicks and whistles that accompany every keypress or option change. During the course, as the tutor describes certain options, you can hear them beeping through the menus, trying to find the things he’s talking about.
Now I have to say that as well as being bloody annoying, I do find that this is quite inconsiderate – both to the tutor, and to the other people in the class. For me, those sodding beeps are really distracting – and I’m sure I’m not the only one on the course who finds them so. But while they’re going through the menus, they’re also not really listening to what the tutor is saying next, which means he’s either got to repeat it, or they’ve missed it completely.
I think sooner or later I’m going to go and silence the cameras in question – but we’ll see.
I suppose that I just find it strange that people seem to be happy to buy a new device/gadget/whatever, and not fiddle with it and try all the options. And yes, I know, I’m a techie geek, and thus fiddling with new things is always going to happen with me, but all the same – wouldn’t you want to try out most of the options on a new camera as soon as you got it? And/or figure out what these arcane settings like Av, Tv, ISO etc. actually do?
Night Flights
Posted: Tue 21 October, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Cynicism, Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »I must admit, I hadn’t realised that USAF Lakenheath had stopped doing night-flights, considering the way they were flying over the house at half-ten last night.
But apparently they had, and will now be re-starting ‘night flights’ in order to train flight crews with night-vision equipment.
I suppose Winter is a good time for that training, as they can be flying from 6pm through to about 6 or 7am, however I know Hound won’t like it. She’s not keen on the overflights at the best of times, although she’s much better with the F15s from Lakenheath/Mildenhall than she ever was with the Jumbos and airliners from Heathrow when we were in Bracknell. (I don’t know why, although I assume it’s to do with the pitch of the noise – the whine from the airliners used to drive her crackers, whereas the more bass rumble and roar from the fighters seems to be less annoying to her)
Still, all part of the joys of living out in the arse-end of nowhere.
Glasses Old and New
Posted: Sun 19 October, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »Yesterday, I went and spent £300 on two pairs of new glasses – that’s £300 for the pair, not each. Yes, I did go to Specsavers.
I don’t mind too much when it comes to spending money on glasses – they’re an essential part of my life, and I wouldn’t be able to do much without them. I still think that when it gets to the point where I simply wouldn’t be able to go out safely without glasses, the NHS should contribute more than £12.40 to the price (their complex lens discount voucher – and that’s not even 10% of the price of the frames…) but there we go.
Today, I managed to bend the frame of my main pair of glasses. I picked up a bag of compost, and whacked myself in the face with it. Not my finest hour, I admit. They’re OK, and pretty much unbent now, but at the moment I’m wearing one of my backup pairs – not great, but a whole lot better than the alternative.
So I’ll be happy when the new pairs are ready – possibly this coming weekend, possibly the one after. I can get by for now, but it’ll still be good to be back to normal…
Projects
Posted: Thu 16 October, 2008 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »One thing that’s been interesting so far in this NCFE Photography course I’m doing is that it sets weekly photographic projects or assignments that need to be completed. If nothing else, it means I’m getting out more with the camera – and that’s really what I needed.
The assignments aren’t hugely complicated (so far) but they at least make you think a bit more about photos, what will work, what won’t, and what will fulfil the requirement.
This week it’s been around taking a series of shots of the same subject, but at different shutter speeds and apertures. Now, I know how that all works, and what the results will be, but it’s still something that’s of interest – and even meant that this morning I had the tripod out, as one of the shots is a full one second exposure, which is impossible to take hand-held without insane levels of blurring.
Having seen the cameras of the other people on the course, there’s only myself and one other with a full DSLR, so most of the conversation on Tuesday was around how to get the other people’s digital compacts to do the same things – and I must admit that I was quite surprised by the percentage of the people there who just shoot on auto all the time. I suppose I shouldn’t be, but well, I was. Hey Ho.
Still, it’s going OK so far, and like I said – at least it’s getting me out more with the camera. And that’s definitely a good thing.
Quote of the week
Posted: Wed 15 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »(as usual, from SlashDot)
It’s like a nuclear weapon – the most important fact is that you have one, so actually using one is silly (because then you no longer have one, and you’ve pissed someone off very badly)
Made me smile, anyway.
High Finance Revisited
Posted: Fri 10 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Just a quick extra thought regarding the National Debt of the United States, which went over the $10trillion mark the other day.
According to the CIA World Book, the US’s current population is 303,824,640.
That means that the National Debt amounts to $35,000 per person in the US.
Sheesh.
High Finance
Posted: Thu 9 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The more that the ‘credit crunch’ continues, the more I realise just how much I don’t understand about finance, and the way it supposedly works. (Although “works” is a pretty loose term for it, in this context)
For example, I simply don’t understand how a country can continue to operate when it has a National Debt of over 10 trillion dollars. I can’t see any world where that makes sense. But maybe it’s just me being simple.
And I don’t understand how local councils can complain on the one hand about their ever-shrinking budgets, and how they’re going to have to make cutbacks to services every year, yet they can also afford to invest millions in an Icelandic bank. (For example, our local council has £12 million there, yet keeps on bitching that it hasn’t got any money, and that services have to be reduced)
I must be simple. I just don’t get how this can be seen as a working system…
All Caps
Posted: Mon 6 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Thoughts 1 Comment »Why is it that, even after more than 25 years of (even vaguely) generally affordable computers/computing, there are still people who think it’s acceptable to send emails written all in capitals? And particularly to do so in a business context.
I suppose that these people have just spent the last quarter-century living in a hole in the desert (or in Antarctica) with no clue about email etiquette, manners etc.
(Oh, and for anyone who thinks it’ll be funny or clever to leave a comment written in all caps, believe me, it’s neither.)
One Month To Go
Posted: Sun 5 October, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Resolutions, Thoughts Leave a comment »In one month’s time, my birthday will be here again, and this year (, Matthew,) I’m going to be 37. That means I need to write out the next progress document for that Five Year Plan, and how things are going.
Looking back over that category, and the plans for the last year (and I admit, I haven’t checked over that list on enough occasions) I look to have actually done OK.
I’ll have the full progress document ready for 5th November though.
Motivating a Change?
Posted: Tue 30 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Now, call me cynical, but I suspect that this story about the death of a Barclays executive will result in the government bringing in more laws regarding street drinking, ‘binge drinking’, anti-social behaviour and the like.
After all, it doesn’t matter so much when it’s “just” normal
votersmembers of the public, but when the COO of a sector of an organisation like Barclays dies as a result, one suspects that there are likely to be some lobbying and higher-level conversations than you’d normally see…
Shortcuts
Posted: Tue 30 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »When Firefox 3 came out, one of the things they trumpeted about was the ‘intelligent address bar’. In short, when you typed in a web address, it also checked through your history and bookmarks in order to save time typing – if you’d been there before (in the duration of the history) then the site name would come up.
Until recently, I found this quite annoying – if I wanted a site called (for example) the admin section of one of my sites, and started typing the first two characters of admin, I didn’t want to know that I could also go to D4D’s Add a post page, or Norfolk council’s Adult education page.
But I’m slowly coming round to the function, and seeing where it can be useful – well, so long as you set up the bookmarks correctly in the first place. For example, if I want to look at the news from one of our local papers, I don’t need to remember that it’s at the (fucking stupid) http://new.edp24.co.uk URL, I type in EDP and lo, Firefox has got it there, ready and waiting.
It’s not perfect – but I’m starting to see the use of it. Now if the bookmarks have been titled properly/usefully, I can type in a shortcode that actually works. (And of course I have to remember that, for example, my internet banking is done at RBS, not just by typing in banking, or internet banking – well, until I edit the bookmark, anyway)
The Joy of Driving
Posted: Fri 26 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts 1 Comment »And, in a related(ish) post to this morning’s one, the BBC has a story about 10 ways to rediscover the joy of motoring.
It makes for interesting reading, and I can see that most of the points are quite smart and relevant. Then again, “Limit your commute to quarter of an hour” is pretty unfeasible for me at any time in the foreseeable future…
Pharmcist vs. GP
Posted: Thu 25 September, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »Another survey, another news story filed under “No shit, sherlock”.
Today’s gem is that apparently staff in a pharmacy don’t give advice as good as a GP, and gave ‘unsatisfactory’ advice in one-third of the cases. (Which might sound impressive, but let’s not forget that’s only in a sample of 101 pharmacies)
But it’s hardly surprising, is it? At the end of the day, the people selling the drugs in a pharmacy are shop-assistants. That’s it. They’re not health professionals – in fairness, they’re not even health amateurs – and anyone with any common sense wouldn’t treat them as if they were. Asking a
pharmacist/(Edited, as I was wrong to say pharmacists) pharmacy assistant for medical advice (one scenario in this test involved a customer saying they’d had diarrhoea for two weeks since being abroad) is the equivalent of asking a member of staff in Tescos what the best diet is.As always, if you ask advice from amateurs you should expect to be misinformed. Simple as.
Photography Course – Week One
Posted: Wed 24 September, 2008 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »So, the photography course was actually OK last night. Happily, the first ten weeks will be based around the technical side of things, so that’s me satisfied – and the course covers things like focus, depth of field, apertures and the like.
Following on from that, we’ll be doing more about photography, and then digital manipulation (or non-manipulation) of the images, and that’s cool too.
Of course, it would have helped if Norfolk Adult Education had actually sent out the workbooks that were meant to be being used for the entire course, but the course tutor will be chasing that up today, so hopefully by next week’s session, we’ll all have the books.
The other bit of weirdness is that the course was advertised online as being for only four people. However, there are actually ten people doing it. Admittedly, I’d thought that four was going to make for quite a small and intense class, but I didn’t have a problem with that.
All told, it looks like it should be interesting though. I’ll know more once the workbook comes through, of course, but yes, for the moment it looks promising.
And Another Thing
Posted: Wed 24 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Why is it that whenever I hear about “the war in Afghanistan”, I’m immediately reminded of the film “Wag The Dog“.
It’s most distracting.
Photography Course
Posted: Tue 23 September, 2008 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »Tonight’s the first night of the photography course I signed up for a while back. Quite honestly, I’ve no idea what to expect – I know what I’m kind of hoping for, but whether that’s what will actually happen or not, I don’t know.
What I’m hoping for is to get a better grounding in the basic terminology and techniques of photography – things like Depth of Field, Apertures, and the like. I use these techniques when I’m taking photos, and I suppose I’ve got a rudimentary understanding of apertures and f numbers – but I don’t understand how f-numbers work or why they are always f4.2 or whatever, rather than just f4 .
I’m also hoping to have to do at least one project or portfolio, to build up my motivation again on that score. I know that I haven’t taken anywhere near “enough” photos this year, it’s just somehow ended up being at the bottom of my list, supplanted by work, business, writing, D4D™ and many others.
So that’s what I’m hoping for. What the course will actually be like, I don’t yet know. I’ll start finding out at about 7.30 tonight. And I’ll write more about it once I know more.
Overtaking
Posted: Tue 23 September, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Why is it that whenever you’re overtaken on a motorway or dual-carriageway, it’s never by a sports car, or anything that looks like it should be overtaking everything? Instead it’s always the Minis, or Ford Mondeos.
Just, why?
The Children – Finale
Posted: Fri 19 September, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts, Writing 1 Comment »Following on from my post at the start of the week about ITV’s “The Children”, last night we finally watched the last part.
ITV (and by extension, Lucy Gannon) that’s three hours of my life I want back, you bastards.
Talk about taking a decent idea, and then ruining it. I assume the script looked decent – otherwise Kevin Whately, Geraldine Somerville et al wouldn’t have taken it on in the first place. I could be wrong – they could have just been desperate for the work. Hard to believe, but somewhat possible.
I’m still not sure who the killer was in the end – I think it was the girl’s step-mother, but I’m not certain.
At least they didn’t do the clichéd “It was someone who hasn’t been referred to all the way through the programme, but only comes in during the last ten minutes” – but the “multiple people could have done it” option wasn’t all that much better, really.
I’d still like to see the original script, to see where things went wrong. I’d like to know what could/should have been done with it, rather than what was done with it, if that makes any sense.
Optimal Timing
Posted: Thu 18 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Note : If you’re wanting to make up a massive competition-thumping bank merger, the best time to do it is during a credit/finance “crisis”.
That way, when you announce the news the government will sidestep the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, and just wave you through to do it, despite the fact that now one third of all the UK mortgages are owned/held by just one company.
No, that won’t be a stranglehold on the market. Honest.
Credit Crunch
Posted: Thu 18 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »In all the guff that’s been written over the last month or so, there’s something that hasn’t been mentioned – and that I simply don’t understand. (Well, there’s actually two – but they’re linked)
One : Which financial genius came up with the concept that investing shitloads of bank money in sub-prime mortgages (in itself a euphemism for ‘High-risk loans where we’re not sure we’ll get the money back’) was a good idea?
Two : What has happened to said financial genius? Have they been sacked? Or promoted?
The Children
Posted: Mon 15 September, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts, Writing 4 Comments »Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been watching a three-part drama on ITV called “The Children“. (the last part is on tonight)
What we’re both finding really odd in it is that there isn’t one likeable – or even slightly positive – character in the entire thing. And in short, we don’t actually care which one of the adults could have done the deed. It’s not that it’s badly written, (it’s been written by Lucy Gannon, who isn’t usually shit – at least initially) or even badly acted (although I’m still of the opinion that Kevin Whately is more wooden than the average tree) – although in both cases, nor is it well acted or written.
It’s just that you don’t have any sympathy with any of the characters – adults or children. And as such, the entire thing just isn’t great. We’ll watch the end, because after having watched the first two hours of it, we do kind of want to know how it all works out – but I don’t think either of us will actually care either way.
I think the sad thing is that it does have some interesting ideas – the entire piece is basically about the effects and stresses of divorce and new relationships on the children involved, particularly with them having to deal with new step-siblings, step-parents, and even new babies from the new relationships. It could have been something impressive, but for some reason it just isn’t – and currently I don’t know if it’s the writing, the acting, or the direction that has let things down.
I’d love to read the original script, and be able to see more of where things went wrong. Maybe it’ll be released some time soon.
Fitness Thoughts
Posted: Sat 13 September, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts 2 Comments »As things stand, at the moment I’m not fit. I’d like to be fitter, although it’s never been within my goals to be a marathon runner, or anything even similar.
I’m not going to base my weight around some specious target figure from Weightwatchers, or even from BMI charts – when all’s said and done, I’m still 6’3 or so, and have a 50″ chest, with shoulders like a brick shithouse, so I’m simply never going to be 13 stone (83kg, give or take) without multiple amputations. Mind you, without weighing myself, I currently suspect I’m about 22 stone (140kg) which certainly gives me a fair amount of lee-way on what I can lose.
Initially, I’m going to be just using the gym, in order to take off some of the weight before I do anything else. But once that’s done, I hope to be getting back on my bike, and making some use of that too. Mind you, that might not be ’til the new year, or even spring, considering how manky the weather has been of late.
There’s a long way to go yet, but at least I’m getting started on it.
Oncoming Darkness
Posted: Fri 12 September, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts 2 Comments »Can’t you tell that Autumn’s coming in?
When I get up to get ready for work, the sky is just lightening. In fact, it doesn’t get light really until I’m almost at the office.
In the evenings, the nights are drawing in disturbingly fast. A month ago I was closing up the chicken coop at 9pm or later, now it’s 8-8.15, by which time it’s already dark, rather than just dusky. And that time is going to become earlier and earlier.In the mornings, when I let the hens out, the grass is covered in a heavy dew – I’ve taken to wearing my boots instead of trainers now to go up, as the trainers were soaked by the time I’d walked up and down the garden. (And this morning the wisteria got me, dripping down the back of my neck as I went under it.)
Yes, Autumn’s definitely on the way.
Newsworthy?
Posted: Wed 10 September, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m not quite sure why this story of a woman who failed her driving test because she drove through a puddle and splashed a pedestrian is deemed so newsworthy – unless most people don’t know that splashing someone by driving through a puddle can be deemed a criminal act under “Driving without due care and attention”.
I’ve always known about this one though.
Mind you, having been through a fair number of driving tests myself, I know that if the examiner deems a problem severe enough, that’s it, you’ve failed the test. I failed twice for stalling the car at a road junction. Despite the driver in this case saying “And if I’d swerved to avoid the puddle I might have caused an accident.”, I’m sure the examiner would say “If you had to swerve to avoid the puddle, you didn’t see it in time.”. And if the alternative is to cause an accident, then the examiner would have been more likely to mark it as a minor mistake.
As always, the context is key here. Personally, I suspect that the rest of the road was clear when this driver went through the puddle – thus meaning she could have gone round it. Because she didn’t, she wasn’t paying attention and wasn’t properly assessing the risks of the road in front. Ergo, a fail. And if she was going so fast as to splash the water seriously, she should’ve slowed down to minimise that splash. As always, if a situation can be avoided safely, it should be – regardless of whether it’s a cyclist, oncoming traffic, or puddles in the road. That’s just standard defensive driving.
I’m not convinced, personally, of the feasibility of stopping and giving the pedestrian your details – I can understand it if the person has been completely soaked, but it’s one of those things where there are differing degrees of getting soaked.
Do I think it right that this person failed her test? Yes. Do I think it was a harsh reason to fail? Possibly.
Pot, Kettle, and Black
Posted: Tue 9 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Personally, I think it’s utterly ridiculous that JK Rowling has managed to block the publication by Steven Vander Ark of an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia, based upon the website he created.
Rowling has even admitted in the past that she’s even used the original site created by the book’s author in order to keep track of her characters. When the information was free, that was fine – but now that he wants to make some money out of it, ooh, that’s not fair.
And let’s be honest, it’s not like Harry Potter is anywhere near an original character anyway – and nor are the books overly original. It’s just that they’ve been very profitable, and have allowed Rowling to make enough money to sue over stupid cases like this.
In my mind, there’s a market for reference books to complex multi-novel series, for example. I’m sure there are “Lord of the Rings Companions” (Although I can’t be arsed to look for them) alongside “Tolkien Companions”, and many others.
Of course, Shell Cottage wrote about this in a far better way than I can (and I remember reading that piece back when it was first written) so it’s best to go there for a far more cogent explanation of the entire farce…
The Start of the Gym
Posted: Mon 8 September, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »So yes, over the weekend I went back to the gym, and went through the workout plan I’m likely to be doing.
I think the best I can say is that right now, I’m definitely out of shape. I’ll be working it off over the next few months, and that’s going to take some work.
But I’m quite looking forward to it.
I haven’t actually weighed myself, or done any of that guff – and to be honest, I don’t really plan to do so. I might do it, but I’m not going to base anything on that information, so *shrug*. I don’t know – we’ll see.
What I do know is that I need to lose the weight, and I should see the effects of that pretty quickly. That’s the plan, anyway.
Grey
Posted: Fri 5 September, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Bleh, what a day. In fact, what a week.
I don’t think we’ve had one day this week where it hasn’t rained. Yesterday was (so far) the worst, but today’s coming a pretty close second.
All told, it’s just leaving me a bit – well, bleh. It’s a good word.
More Money Than Sense
Posted: Thu 4 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »This story, to me, illustrates what can happen when you’ve got more money than you know what to do with.
A Russian millionaire buys a £5m house in Sandbanks, Dorset. However, he doesn’t like the house itself, just the land it’s on. So he plans to pull down this house he’s spent £5 million on, and then build another one (allbeit with a new extra bedroom, with its own sun terrace) for another £2.5m.
Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the point of buying a house, only to knock it down and replace it.
But then, I don’t have £7.5 million to chuck down the drain, either.
Knowing the Junctions
Posted: Thu 4 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts 2 Comments »Whenever I’m driving, and listen to the traffic reports, they usually cause me a problem.
You see, I just don’t know the junction numbers for the roads I’m using, so I just don’t know whether the reported issues will affect me or not. I’m OK with direction (i.e. north/south-bound etc.) but if I hear a report telling me that junctions 25-28 of the A[xx] are jammed, I’ve no flaming clue where that is.
I know last year this very nearly caused me a problem – coming home from a concert in London, the signs were all reporting “Road closed after Junction 9 – diversions in place”. I had (and if I’m honest, still have) no idea whether I turned off at Junction 8,9, 11 or 52 – so the signs were effectively useless for me.
Is this just me? Have I not been driving enough yet to know the junctions off by heart? Or would it not be easier to see “After the Cambridge A11 turnoff” instead of, for example “After Junction 9” ?
Gym Start
Posted: Wed 3 September, 2008 Filed under: Health, Resolutions, Thoughts 1 Comment »About the time this gets published, I’ll be at the gym for the induction guff and first session.
I’m actually looking forward to it – I know that over the last year I’ve put on weight again, so I do want to start working it off again. The gym itself is brand new, and only opened on Sept 1, so it’ll be interesting to see how it’s all come together. (we saw it before it opened, while everything was still getting ready and put together)
Obviously I’m not looking forward to the actual bit where they do the weighing and measuring of my current self, but even that will at least give me some motivation towards losing it again.
I shall post all/any/none of the depressing figures on here later or tomorrow, depending on how I feel about them…
50D
Posted: Mon 1 September, 2008 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »Oh Canon, you evil evil bastards.
Since I bought the EOS20D, I’ve been really good and not even been tempted by the 30D and 40D. The upgrades they offered weren’t enough to make me think about it at all, really.
But now, they’ve launched the 50D, with double the pixels of the 20D, along with a new faster processor, bigger/better LCD screen with Live View, and a bundle of other features.
And oh Lord, am I tempted. Particularly when it can also count as a business expense…
Scripting
Posted: Thu 28 August, 2008 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Resolutions, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »A couple of weeks ago, Dragon wrote about a challenge to get a short film written, filmed and edited in 30 days – which sounded interesting.
So I submitted a brief idea to him – one that wasn’t written, and actually wasn’t anywhere except in my head. Even the brief was only written down for the first time in the first email to him. Admittedly, the initial plan was to have a completed script that just needed something doing to it – which would certainly have been possible in that thirty day limit.
As it is, the script has been being written by me at any spare moment, and is now just about complete. I’m sure that we’re not going to make the submission deadline of the 15th Sept – and I know that a fair dollop of the responsibility for that falls on my shoulders, as even with the writing deadline (and perhaps even because of it) my mind blocked up solidly for the best part of a week on how the entire thing should progress.
It’s been an interesting challenge already though – and we’ve already decided that the short film will be made from it as well, it’s just that it won’t get in to this year’s submissions. It’ll be getting submitted for next year though, you can be sure. (Well, so long as it actually works as a story, anyway)
It’s also the first time I’ve actually written a screenplay/script – so that’s been a learning curve in and of itself. But it’s certainly got the old creative juices flowing – there’s already the thoughts and plans for at least three other pieces to be done once this one is finally completed and out the door. (Well, out of the email box, to be pedantic)
Once again, the biggest bit of the challenge has been to get myself motivated to do the writing – and on that score, Dragon’s challenge has been a complete winner.
Just have to see how long it continues now, I guess…
Canine Excuses and Licences
Posted: Tue 26 August, 2008 Filed under: Animals, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »There’s a story on the BBC news site today about an inquest into the death of a toddler who was killed by a Rottweiler. I don’t want to use terms like “attacked”, because it seems that dog grabbed the child because it saw the child as a new toy.
The dog had apparently been kept in a yard, and hadn’t been walked or exercised once in more than five months. Now, I can’t envisage keeping a dog un-exercised for five days, let alone five months- even a small lap-dog, let alone a lopping great Rottweiler.
The coroner called for “stricter controls” on the breeding and sale of dangerous dogs – but to me, this isn’t about a dangerous dog, it’s about a bored dog. The coroner should be recommending stricter controls on the owners of dogs – dangerous or not – rather than on the breeders. (And yes, in this case the dog was bought “in a pub” from an unregistered breeder. Personally, though, I don’t believe that every dog in a similar situation is a dangerous dog – a lot of it depends on how that dog is then trained and brought up, rather than its initial situation)
And you know what would make that control of dog owners easier? Simple, the return of the dog licence. I’d be happy to see it administered by a non-governmental organisation, such as Dogs Trust or RSPCA – and you can’t/don’t get a licence until you’ve been visited by a registered inspector from [administrating authority] who fills out the licence there and then. And you can’t buy a dog without showing your licence, your approval to be a dog owner.
Yes, you would still end up with deals done ‘in a pub’ – but you could also have the offence of having a dog without a licence, and make it a very expensive proposition. For example, a £1,000 default fine per unlicensed dog with higher penalties if that dog is also mis-treated. Even, perhaps, a fine that is 50% discounted if you get a licence within 14 or 28 days of being discovered – which still leaves a significant amount to be paid.
Even when you’ve got the licence, you’d be liable to be checked on at random, in order that the inspectors could check your dog was still being well looked after, exercised etc.
To me that just all makes sense. So why isn’t it happening? Have I missed something that makes this harder to do?
Faked Tickets
Posted: Thu 21 August, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »The BBC today has a piece about how to avoid being stung/scammed when it comes to buying concert tickets, following on from the hassles with non-existent tickets from SOS Masters Ltd over the last couple of weekends.
Really though, the entire thing could be summed up with “Only buy tickets from known sources” – even if that means using fuckwit scumbags like Ticketmaster who’ll charge an extra £5 or so per ticket for posting them to you. (not even in separate envelopes) But at least you get the tickets from them (99% of the time – I’ve had one fuckup with them which never got resolved, but that is a rarity) And yes, my opinion is still that it’s better to be ripped off for £5 per ticket than for the full £150 (or whatever) price of a ticket to Reading or Leeds festival, for example. And at least Ticketmaster et al only sell you the tickets they’ve got.
All the same, stories like this won’t stop people from trying to get tickets to sold-out events through resellers or what amounts to online ticket touts, and some people getting ripped off as a result.
Mind you, if times are hard next spring/summer, I can suddenly see a business opportunity – or at least a way to make some cash…
Gym Visit
Posted: Wed 20 August, 2008 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Among other things, this evening I’m having a quick visit at a new gym that’s opening up near us.
Currently I’ve no idea what it’ll be like, and I’m slightly concerned that the manager has said “There’s about ten different pricing plans”, but we’ll just have to see.
I know I need to get back into going to a gym, so it’ll be interesting to see what this one’s got to offer. Otherwise, we’ll be going back to using the local council-funded one who couldn’t find their own arses with both hands and a flashlight when we went there late last year. (And we’ve never darkened the doors since that piss-poor experience)
Intent
Posted: Tue 19 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I still really don’t understand how someone can be found guilty of posessing documents that promote terrorism. It’s almost as dodgy (in my opinion) as being found guilty of “planning a terrorist attack”. (i.e. it was talked about/thought about, but nothing actually happened)
In this case, the person was “found to have a book on how to make napalm” in his posession. I can think of two or three books just off the top of my head that explain how to make napalm – or at least the basic concepts.
To me, this is the same as saying “Well, you’ve got lots of murder-mystery books, so you must be planning to kill someone”. Hell, I’ve got at least two books that go through the intimate details of shooting heroin. So that must mean I’m planning to take it myself, right?
Dumbed down
Posted: Mon 18 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »Out of interest, in gymnastics when did the asymmetric bars become called the “uneven bars” ? (After all, technically they’re very even – there aren’t any lateral flaws in either bar, are there?)
Was it decided that too many people wouldn’t know what asymmetric meant?
And if that’s the case, why aren’t the parallel bars now known as the “even bars” ?
Delayed [Update]
Posted: Fri 15 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts 2 Comments »Following on from yesterday’s post and my further comments about it in the same post, I had a look at the distances involved etc. today.
[Mr X] drove for no less than five and a half miles on the wrong side of the A14. At 6am. Now that takes some dedication – or at least dedicated stupidity.
In my opinion, it’s actually pretty hard (and particularly on the section of road in question) to get on to the wrong side of the dual carriageway. Even the roundabout turnoff to get on the off sliproad (in order to get on to the wrong carriageway) would involve an extremely sharp angle off the roundabout – unless you go down the proper ‘on ramp’ sliproad, then decide to do a bloody great U-turn to get on and go the wrong way. Either way, it’s (again) a pretty dedicated manoeuvre.
Looking at the site of the accident this morning, it’s also interesting (in an academic way) to see that there was only one set of skid-marks on the road – and that they were leading up to the crash site by the truck that was going the correct way up the road.
I’m no expert on these things – and make no claim to be – but all the same, the entire incident smacks to me of some pretty major dedication to the cause of driving on the wrong side of the road.
Mind you,in mitigation there’s also this twunt from yesterday’s news who did the same kind of thing having decided he wasn’t going to pay a toll at the Severn Road Bridge. At that point, words fail me.
Slashdot and Backups
Posted: Wed 13 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Sometimes Slashdot makes me laugh. More to the point, the commenters make me laugh.
In this case, the discussion about security of online data (and what happens when a company that has all your data only accessible online – think Google Docs, for instance) started off talking about backups, and rapidly went this way…
- Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy
- Redundancy, redundancy, off-site redundancy
There, fixed that for you. Backups aren’t worth a damn if the building is blown up.
- Redundancy, redundancy, off-planet redundancy
There, fixed that for you. Backups aren’t worth a damn if the planet gets blown up by space aliens.Intelligent post, more intelligent/relevant post, silly post.
Love it.
Basic Rules
Posted: Mon 11 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Own Business, Thoughts 1 Comment »This morning, Motley Fool emailed me about a new story on their site, “How to stop falling into arrears [on your mortgage]”.
It’s not a bad article, but to me point one on anything about “How to not fall behind on your mortgage payments” should be just
1. Make your mortgage payment on time. Pretty much all the others can wait a bit, or a payment plan can be organised if you’re in schtuck. But for Christ’s sake, keep the roof over your head.
(Note : Rule 1a would be just “Make sure you pay everyone on time”)In business, the rule should be
1. Always, always, always make sure you pay HMCE (both tax and VAT now come under this title). Everyone else comes second to HMCE.
To me, if you keep those rules in place then the rest is (in comparison) easy going.
Beijing
Posted: Fri 8 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »
As you may have noticed, today is the start of the Beijing Olympics.
Do I care? No, not a bit of it.
Will I be watching it? No, most likely not. I might catch a couple of bits if they’re on, but the odds are, no.And as for the opening ceremony, I can’t think of anything on TV (yes, even East-bloody-Enders) where I would rather watch the ceremony. Nothing at all.
Still, seventeen days and it’ll all be over – fine with me.
OD
Posted: Fri 8 August, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts 1 Comment »Last night, I overdosed Hound on a sedative tablet. There was good reason for it, but that doesn’t stop me feeling more than slightly guilty about the entire episode.
We’d already had one big thunderstorm, and Hound had suffered a bit of a panic meltdown, but was coming back OK. Then about 9pm we had more thunder, and she just lost it all over again – running up and down the garden, not knowing what to do with herself.
It’s at these times that she does stupid things, get aggressive and protective, and just gets herself in trouble – particularly after two events on the same day – so I got out the bottle of ACP sedatives we got a while back for dealing with fireworks. I don’t like giving her sedatives, it’s not something that I feel is the right way to deal with the situation, but sometimes it’s still the best way to do it. Anyway, the bottle says “Give one tablet, 90 minutes before expected fireworks time”. She wasn’t that bad, so I opted to give her a half tab instead.
Only, um, it turns out that Herself usually gives her a quarter of a tablet. So I’d given her double the normal dose of sedative, and she’d already had her normal homeopathic pills which also help calm her down (although not in extreme cases like thunder and fireworks)
Long story short, fifteen minutes later she was curled up and asleep, even with thunder and lightning overhead. But the sedatives really take her out, and by the time we were going to bed, she couldn’t even walk straight. When it came to trying to walk her over to her cage, so we could do all the “locking up” stuff for the night (the normal routine) she got into the hallway and just collapsed, flopped out and wouldn’t move. All very “Oh, it’s just too much effort”. I’ve never seen her do that before, and to be honest it worried me – I had visions of having done her some serious harm by giving her too much of the ACP sedative.
We got her back into her basket, and did all the normal stuff, then went to bed. Again, this is something that we’ve never been able to do before – she always runs round and gets stupid, which is why she normally just goes into the cage ’til we’re done. This time, just spark out in her bed.
And basically, Hound stayed there all night. I don’t think the poor cow even moved. She certainly didn’t move when I got up this morning, even while I was eating toast in the same room. Again, needless to say this caused more concern – normally toast will motivate her to do most things.
She did get up to run out when I went up to let out the chickens though, so I’m a lot more relieved. After visions and thoughts of “Can she actually move? Have I somehow paralysed her? Or when she’s been tottering about last night, has she damaged something?” it was good to see her walking/running again.
Mind you, she’s still not completely over it (or wasn’t when I left the house) so she hasn’t had any of her normal homeopathic stuff today yet.
I’m glad she’s OK, and seems to have slept through the rest of the night (and another thunderstorm) OK, but all the same, you can be sure that in future I’ll remember that she only needs a quarter tablet. And yes, I do feel guilty about it, even though it was an honest mistake. Thank Christ I didn’t give her a full tablet, like the recommendation!
Finish this Sentence
Posted: Wed 6 August, 2008 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts 1 Comment »(via Gordon)
Utterly pointless, but equally quite fun.
- My uncle once: married my aunt
- Never in my life: will I stop learning things.
- When I was five: I was already a little smart-arse, having already been reading for two years.
- High school was: something that I’d prefer to forget. Particularly the last two years.
- I will never forget: the things that made me what I am
- Once I met: John Thaw, while I was working in a pub, and he was filming Kavanagh QC
- There’s this girl I know: and she knows I know her
- Once, at a bar: I stuck to the floor-tiles, and could lean at a 45° angle before I unstuck
- By noon, I’m usually: ready to go home
- Last night: slept really badly. As usual
- If only I had: more motivation
- Next time I go to church: it’ll be my funeral, with any luck. At that point I won’t care.
- What worries me most: is that I’ll be wrong about everything, and only find out too late
- When I turn my head left I see: a woodburner, and the TV
- When I turn my head right I see: Herself, on the sofa, with her foot up, due to those dislocated toes
- You know I’m lying when: my eyes cross, and I fart the Blue Danube
- What I miss most about the Eighties is: very, very little
- If I were a character in Shakespeare I’d be: the storm in the Tempest
- By this time next year: I’d hope to have completed some more of my business ideas
- A better name for me would be: That Git
- I have a hard time understanding: people in general, and the attraction of soap-operas on TV
- If I ever go back to school, I’ll: only be there to demolish the place. I’d pay good money for that job.
- You know I like you if: I stay in touch once I’ve moved house
- If I ever won an award, the first person I would thank would be: the miracle worker who made it happen
- Take my advice, never: piss on an electric fence
- My ideal breakfast is: a full breakfast at Garnish House in Cork, Ireland.
- A song I love but do not have is: Allison Janney as CJ Cregg miming “The Jackal” on the West Wing
- If you visit my hometown, I suggest you: leave, quickly, by the first available means of transport
- Why won’t people: learn how to handle umbrellas
- If you spend a night at my house: make sure you don’t step on the dog in the middle of the night.
- I’d stop my wedding for: Wedding? Me? Ha!
- The world could do without: Eastenders
- I’d rather lick the belly of a cockroach than: go on TV with Gillian McKeith
- My favourite blonde(s) is/are: Hmmm, that’s tough. Can I get back to you on that?
- Paper clips are more useful than: Post-Its
- If I do anything well it’s: screwing things up spectacularly
- I can’t help but: I know someone who might be able to
- I usually cry: when I least expect it
- My advice to my child/nephew/niece: Do as I say, not as I do
- And by the way: I still have dreams. Lots of them. I just don’t publicise them.
If you want a go, feel free. I’m not going to nominate anyone to do it – just have a go. You can even download the blank sentences here, if you want. I don’t mind.
Smothered
Posted: Thu 31 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »There’s a single out at the moment by (I think) Jordan Sparks. It starts off with the lyrics
If I die before I wake,
It’s ’cause you took my breath awayNow surely that’s actually murder? If she’s sleeping, and someone’s taken her breath away?
Or am I missing something?
Neat Date
Posted: Wed 30 July, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts 3 Comments »It might be just me that has only just realised this, so if that’s the case, be gentle with me, OK?
But I do think it neat that the Olympics this year will start on the 8th August.
Why? Because it makes the start date
08/08/08Even neater, that works for both UK and US date formats (day/month or month/day)
It’s just neat, that’s all.
Tour de France
Posted: Mon 28 July, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »So, another year, and another Tour de France has completed, with Carlos Sastre as the winner for the first time – the third consecutive Spaniard to win.
I’m not an avid cyclist by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve been a fan of the Tour de France for many, many years. I don’t even really know why – it’s just something where I find the sheer achievement of each and every rider in the competition to be absolutely fantastic.
Seeing the stages (and particularly the climbs) that the riders do, knowing that they’re riding on average 166kilometres (about 103 miles) per day for 21 days, and seeing the way they still can sprint to a finish at the end of that immense day’s mileage, that’s just truly impressive.
So I don’t quite know why I’m such a fan, but every year, I’ll be watching the Tour de France, regardless. And will consistently be in awe of these guys who complete – or even compete in – such a fantastically exhausting event.
F/O
Posted: Mon 21 July, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts 6 Comments »Over the last few weeks, while driving on the A127 I’ve kept seeing a sign with this mysterious message…
Gallows Corner F/O closed [date]The date’s irrelevant, but that “F/O” has had me befuddled each time. What the fuck is an F/O ?
I found out today (they’d finally put in the full text on one warning sign) so I know what it is.
But can you work it out? I’d be interested to know whether it’s just me being a twat, or whether it really relied on local knowledge…
[Updated : OK, it looks like it was just me being a twat, as the first two commenters both got it right. F/O somehow equates to ‘Flyover’.]
Delayed Construction
Posted: Fri 18 July, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »Today, the BBC is making some kind of big story out of the fact that the new visitor centre at the top of Mount Snowdon is going to be delayed until next year. The reason? There’s been a lot of bad weather while they’re building the thing.
The authority said progress on the scheme had been “remarkable” considering the conditions, including snow, heavy rain and winds regularly gusting over 80 mph.
Now my problem with this is simple – surely all the bad weather detailed above is exactly what you’d expect when you’re on the top of a mountain that’s some 3,560ft (nearly 1,100m) above sea level. What the fuck did they expect on a mountain top in Wales? Perfect sunny weather for two years?
So I just don’t see why it’s such a big thing – it would be far more newsworthy if the thing had been opened on time. In fact, it would be far more newsworthy if Carillion, the contractors, had actually planned the project and timescales correctly in the first place. Common sense, competence and professionalism breaks out? That’s a story that would be front page news at the moment.
National vs. Local
Posted: Thu 17 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Way back in May, Gert left a comment on a post I’d written about local elections.
And why on earth should national and international factors matter in local elections? Or are you saying people are too thick to understand democracy…which is a rather patronising view?
Now, at the time I wasn’t saying that at all. But when I look at certain politics stories, it’s certainly true that both the media and the various political parties do connect national and local politics in local elections.
You only have to look at yesterday’s stories about Gordon Brown postponing the 2p fuel duty rise – “The planned 2p fuel duty rise is postponed – but Gordon Brown denies the move is linked to next week’s by-election.” (the BBC’s summary paragraph)
And in last week’s by-election win by David Davis, the story carried a quote of “Mr Davis said: ‘We have fired a shot across the bows of Gordon Brown’s arrogant, arbitrary and authoritarian government.’”
So yes, it certainly seems like there’s plenty of people who do connect up national and local elections and politics.
Non-suspicious?
Posted: Mon 14 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »There’s something about this story that’s just bizarre.
A man – the last resident of a block destined for redevelopment – is found in his house beheaded by a chainsaw. And the police say it’s “non-suspicious”.
Now it’s obvious that I read far too many crime/thriller type novels, but the entire thing just sounds dodgy as shit to me. If nothing else, it’s an impressive way to kill yourself – using a chainsaw to behead yourself.
Still, as I’ve said before, I’ve just got a cynical mind.
Dual Carriageways
Posted: Mon 14 July, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts 4 Comments »I know, I’m writing a lot about driving standards at the moment – it’s mainly because I seem to be doing one hell of a lot of driving at the moment on some of the poxier roads in the region, namely the A14, A127, M11 and M25.
The great majority of those roads are dual-carriageway. Obviously the M25 isn’t, and a small section of the M11 isn’t – but the great majority is dual-carriageway.
And the more I drive on them, the more I’m convinced that if there were one new law/rule that would improve traffic flow and reduce road congestion (and, not coincidentally, driver frustration) it would be to insist that truck drivers can’t overtake on dual carriageways.
I’ve lost count of the number of times over the last few weeks where the entire road has been held up because two or three fuckwit bastard truck drivers have been playing leapfrog down the M11. All it does is lead to jammed up traffic – not stationary, but jammed up and queueing behind the trucks for miles, which just then leads to people being stupid and making stupid manoeuvres any time they see a gap. God knows, it’s tempted me on occasion to drive past the shit-for-brains twats on the hard shoulder. I never have – but dear Lord, it’s been a temptation.
So yes, to sort out a lot of driver frustration and traffic hassle, that’s the law that should be made. No overtaking for truck drivers. And if they don’t like it, well, they shouldn’t have driven like arseholes in the first place.
English Test
Posted: Thu 3 July, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Writing 6 Comments »The BBC has a 20-questions test on English (with Maths next week)
I got 20 out of 20. But then I’m
- Incredibly sad
- At least vaguely literate
How about you?
Neat(ish) New Spam
Posted: Wed 2 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Now that my email server is back in the land of the living, I’ve received a bundle of delayed emails, which included two copies of a neat new “phishing” spam email. Not a banking one for once, but instead they’re doing some social engineering stuff, and it looks like this…
Tax Refund: You are eligible to receive a tax refund of È252.80
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of È252.80.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 15-30 days in order to process it.ATENTION: Insufficient or incorrect information may lenghten the whole process. Usually does not take more than one week from the date you have provided us with your details. In some cases (especially submitted by those without permanent National Insurance Number) this may take considerably longer.
You have 48 hours to complete your tax refund claim. To access the secure form for your tax refund, please click here [link deleted, for obvious reasons]
The link address is to some ropy domain callled mail.betreuungsverein-aachen.de which kind of gives the game away (if the J instead of a £ character, and mis-spelling of ‘ATTENTION’ hadn’t flagged it up already) but I can imagine that a fair number of idiots will click on the link for the prize of £250ish. Idiot Tax ahoy!
Your Oil Dollars At Work
Posted: Thu 26 June, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 4 Comments »So, this is one of the projects that we’ll be paying for by paying for petrol. A skyscraper that rotates, and constantly changes shape.
The plans have been revealed, and it would be situated in Dubai – with the possibility of a similar one in Moscow.
And while I’d have my reservations about living in it, it does look seriously cool…
Laser-driven Topography
Posted: Wed 11 June, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »There’s an interesting thing on the BBC today about using a laser radar from a plan to map the topography of the United Kingdom. One aspect of this work is to estimate which parts of the country are most liable to flooding.
However, one quote from the piece amused me.
“During our flight, he told me: “The difference between an area flooding and not flooding is 6ins and the data we are gathering here has an accuracy in elevation of about 15cm. That could be the difference between the water flowing over the threshold of somebody’s doorstep and not.”
© BBC 2008Now I’m pretty sure that 6in is the same as 15cm. The change in measurement is enough to screw things up on occasion (See the Mars Lander with Beagle II on it for a perfect example) but this one is quite funny all the same.
“Scarecrow” by Matthew Reilly
Posted: Tue 10 June, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Writing 3 Comments »While we were on holiday, I ran out of things to read – quite a shock to the system, it has to be said. Fortunately (and I use the term in its loosest possible sense) the place we were staying had some books as well. Unfortunately, the one I chose to read (as per the title of the post) was Matthew Reilly’s “Scarecrow“.
Oh. My. God.
If I’m being polite, I’d say that it managed to redefine my limits of “Worst book I’ve ever read”. I could even say that it managed the previously unheard-of achievement of making “The Da Vinci Code” look well-written and intelligent.
If I’m going back to being Lyle, I’d just say that it’s easily the biggest piece of shit it’s ever been my misfortune to set eyes on. It’s fucking awful. (And yes, I did finish the bloody thing. I’m really bad at admitting defeat with a book, even if it does suck the balls of dead donkeys)
You can see that Reilly really wants this book to be a film – it’s written in that style, and even adds emphasis and italics (and exclamation marks) to the bits you can tell he thinks would make good action scenes. However, even Michael Bay would decide that it’s fucking awful, and would make a rubbish film – and he’s the one who gave us “The Rock” and “Bad Boys, for fuck’s sake. Scarecrow really is that bad.
I don’t mind the odd thriller cliché – the last minute escape, for example. But Scarecrow managed to have about eight or nine of these last-minute “He just managed to jump out of the speeding truck in time” things – one is OK, two stretches credibility, but eight just makes you think “Oh for christ’s sake, get another idea. PLEASE.”. Or words to that effect.
All told, it was an execrable pile of festering donkey-shit. I hope to never read another book by the same author, even in times of desperation. If I wanted donkey-shit masquerading as fiction, I’d rather read the Daily Mail next time.
Parking a BMW
Posted: Wed 21 May, 2008 Filed under: BMW Drivers, Charm School, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts 5 Comments »[Note: This is one of those posts I’ve kept on meaning to write, and it’s been lagging in my brain for about a month now]
As regular readers (Assuming there are any, still) of D4D™ will know, I’m really not a great fan of BMW users. OK, let’s be honest, I think that the massive majority (roughly 99.5% of ’em) of BMW owners are total dickheads. Those rare few BMW owners who aren’t complete tosswads? Exceptions to the rule, that’s it. You’ll also note that I tend to not refer to them as “drivers”. (“Arseholes” or “Wankers” is a far more probably piece of terminology)
One of the people in my current office is – you’ve guessed it – a BMW user. Every day – every day he rolls up in the carpark, and plonks his (small) BMW slap-bang over the separating line, so his car takes up two spaces, with half a car’s-width of space either side. It’s completely intentional – I don’t know why he does it, but he does it every day.
Thankfully, the car-park isn’t short of spaces, so this cock’s behaviour doesn’t actually inconvenience people for the most part. But it’s just so indicative of BMW owners, like their cars are something special, and should be treated differently from all others.
And in fairness, I do treat it differently to the other cars. Because I really want to key it, to scratch the shit out of this bell-end’s oh-so-previous paintwork. And I never feel like that about cars. Except for this one.
Communications Database
Posted: Tue 20 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »The BBC are today reporting a plan by the government to store every phone call and email in a database. Hell, even communist russia couldn’t manage to record everything – talk about totalitarian crap. But I must admit that the entire database concept both fascinates and annoys me simultaneously.
First, how long will it take to set up something like this? (Bearing in mind we’re working on Government-time, rather than anything sane) Let’s not forget that the NHS ‘national database’ won’t be completed ’til at least 2014, having already been in development for a fair number of years.
Secondly, how will the data be collected? Would I have to register my home-based SMTP server as something that could be indexed by the database? Or is it a case that all email traffic would just be collected by the ISPs? What about spam? Will the database be recording that as well? What about text messages? Will they be stored? If not, why not? And with the incidence of pay as you go mobile phones for calls etc., how would you trace them to the right person. I suspect there’d be a lot of phones registered in the name Michael Mouse, or Donald Duck, for example.
Then there’s the entire issue of data protection – and even of how long the data will be kept. Twelve months? Twenty-four? Sixty? Considering the data-protection screw-ups of the last twelve months, would you expect the data about your emails and phone calls to stay protected any more securely than – for example – the information about your child benefits, driving licence details, credit card details, or anything else that the Government’s lost copies of recently?
Of course, those questions don’t even scratch the surface of the problems. Why the hell should the government be allowed to just keep all records, based on the premise that they might (and let’s be honest, it’s a pretty fucking slim chance. Even 1000 ‘terrorist’ cases – a number I’ve pulled out of the air – would be less than 1% of 1% of the UK’s populace.) be needed in some kind of anti-terrorism case.
Even more importantly, if this system were to be created and used by the government, now that it’s been publicised, you’d have to be a remarkably fucking stupid terrorist to then communicate via email, phone call, or (perhaps) text message. Instead, they could just go back to using the post, or meeting up, or notice-boards.
Communication doesn’t rely on email and mobile phones – no matter how much the Government wishes it would, so that they could record everything.
Almost Quackricide
Posted: Thu 15 May, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »At the end of our road is a duck-pond (one of four in the village) which has it’s own community of ducks. They’re never exactly afraid of cars at the best of times – one of the people on the road feeds them regularly, so it’s quite common to see a whole line of mallards crossing the road – but they’re even worse at the moment.
It’s breeding/hatching season, you see – so it’s not just all the mature adult ducks, but whole conglomerations of fresh-out ducklings too. And they’re even more food-focussed than the adults. Or maybe they’re just dafter, I’m not sure.
This morning, on leaving the house, I had to stop and wait for the whole line of feathered (OK, downy) fuckwits to cross the road before I could get on with my journey. I don’t mind really – it’s nice to see them plonking about – but it does make me wonder how many will actually survive through to adulthood.
New Releases
Posted: Thu 15 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »In the last week, I’ve received three newly published books. For some reason, a lot of the authors I like (and regularly read/re-read) publish books at about the same time. In this case it’s not too bad, because I can save at least two for a couple of weeks ’til we’re on holiday.
As it is, I’ve bought (they were all on pre-order, but they’ve now been paid for, too) new books from:
- Quintin Jardine
- John Connolly
and- Alastair Reynolds
Not bad going, over all. I’m looking forward to reading them while on holiday (well, I’ve started the Quintin Jardine already, but there we go) although it’ll then be back to waiting for their next ones.
Iron Man
Posted: Mon 12 May, 2008 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 3 Comments »So another film adaptation of a comic book. Ho hum. However, this one’s got Robert Downey Junior in the starring role – which should at least guarantee it’s watchable.
In fairness, Iron Man was actually OK. I’ve seen far worse comic-book adaptations (I’m looking at you, Hulk) but nor is it one of the best – not by a long chalk.
The storyline has a lot of bits that feel like afterthoughts, or “Oh yeah, we could do that” moments. Effects-wise it’s fantastic, and Jeff Bridges makes for a pretty good baddie – but all the same it’s let down (in my opinion) by a pretty ropy and by-the-numbers storyline that leaves too much stuff either a) up in the air or b) forgotten about.
Compared to the (currently re-showing on BBC) Indiana Jones trilogy, it really shows its weakness – Iron Man’s OK to watch once, but would I think “Oooh, good” if I saw it on TV in even ten years time? Absolutely not.
Mains Restored?
Posted: Tue 6 May, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Health, Thoughts 2 Comments »It’s possible that today we will be finally re-allowed to use mains water for drinking and cooking. It’s not certain yet, because they’re doing ‘final’ tests today to decide. (Of course, if we still can’t, it won’t be final tests, but there we go)
We’ve been on bottled water since 17th April.
In that time, we’ve had a dropped off leaflet about why we couldn’t drink the water, and one letter – addressed to the previous occupants, who moved out at least eighteen months ago. And that’s it. It really hasn’t been Anglian Water‘s finest hour (three-and-a-half weeks. Whatever) in terms of customer service.
Any information that’s been acquired has been gained by us calling them. In fact, we wouldn’t know about today’s tests if I hadn’t spoken to Anglian Water‘s customer services people on Friday. And because they couldn’t be bothered to tell us, it would’ve meant that all the access to the back of the house (where there’s an outside tap they could use to test the water) would have been locked, so they couldn’t test our place.
We also took the opportunity to get them to deliver more bottled water to everyone on the road, as on Friday there were two six-packs of bottled water left on the pallet dumped on the roadside a couple of weeks ago. For a bank holiday weekend. As it is, I’ve been dropping off some of those six-packs of water to the older people on the road (and bear in mind that a good 50% of the people on our road are at least sixty) rather than them having to try lugging bloody heavy loads of water back to the house.
All told, it’s been a total farce from start to finish. And once we’re actually back on the mains service I’m going to be having a serious conversation with Anglian Water about why the hell it’s been such a fuckup. That’ll be a fun conversation, for sure.
Solid
Posted: Tue 6 May, 2008 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 3 Comments »Following on from a stomach bug (food poisoning, viral thing, whatever) there’s a stage in the recovery process that is a real throwback to childhood, but that has a joy all of its own – and far out of proportion with the actual import of the event.
That event is the first post-illness solid dump. There’s a true happiness about this, coupled with knowing that you can finally drop your guard a bit, and not worry that every single occasion involving that area is going to necessitate a run to the closest loo.
Or, to quote a friend…
Thought I was going to fart.
Was wrong.
Election Losses
Posted: Sat 3 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »“Gordon Brown says it has been a “bad and disappointing” election for Labour“
In light of the recent governmentary cockups – 10% tax rate, house prices going down, oil (and just about every other) price going up, fuel price exploding, multiple strikes etc. – is it really any surprise to see that people are finally getting sick of Labour?
And when we then get told that £50bn of our money is going to help out the banks (and is thus at risk of being lost, if those banks collapse in the credit crunch) while the 10% tax rate is abolished (as Ian Hislop put it on Have I Got News For You, “the government has taken from the poor and given to the rich”) it’s just another nail in the coffin of Labour.
A “bad and disappointing” election? Only to the people in Labour. Most of the people with any common sense see it as the beginning of a very well deserved end…
Spell Cheque
Posted: Fri 2 May, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »I’ve just had an email from an agency (that will remain nameless) describing…
This highly sort-after role
Of course, you know what they mean is sought-after , but that’s the joy of spell-checkers.
Maybe when someone writes a spell-checker that can work semantically from the words around it, and understands phonemes and the like, we might get somewhere closer. Thing is, that’d involve lots of AI, fuzzy logic, and nightmarish rule structures.
Or just, you know, education.
May Day
Posted: Thu 1 May, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »May? Already?
How did that happen?
Offensive
Posted: Wed 30 April, 2008 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »The BBC has a piece today about 2007’s most offensive adverts (in this case ‘most offensive’ equals ‘most complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority’).
What I find interesting is that out of the ten cases, in only three and a half (one ad had ‘some complaints upheld’) cases did the complaints actually come to anything. Which is only something like a 37.5% of complaints are upheld.
Mind you, I didn’t think most of the adverts were offensive, so I can understand that, too.
Ah well.
147
Posted: Tue 29 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I managed to see Ronnie O’Sullivan’s latest 147 break (on TV, obviously, rather than ‘live’) last night, and I do think it’s a joy to watch when someone is that on form. The entire frame was just about perfect.
But it also annoys me – because O’Sullivan really is a stunning player when he’s on form, but when he’s not on form he’s a spoilt brat who storms off in temper tantrums, ‘retires’ on a regular basis, and really is just a pain in the arse.
I know there’s all the clichés about ‘fine line between genius and madness’ and so on, but still, I just wish he’d be more stable when he’s on a bad streak, and use that amazing talent to come back from bad streaks rather than succumbing to them.
Still, it was a fantastic frame, and a pretty stunning way to end a match, too. (I would think that the £157,000 prize for a 147 break came through as a pretty good motivator as well, of course.) I think O’Sullivan’s a fantastic player – I’d just prefer it if he also wasn’t quite such a complete cock.
Vulcan
Posted: Thu 17 April, 2008 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m so pleased to see that the last remaining Vulcan bomber has finally flown again. It’s taken fourteen years to restore it to this state, and to me it’s just a marvellous thing.
Seeing Vulcan’s flying is something I remember from airshows and holidays before – we used to go on holiday where a lot of the test flights and training flights were done, over the Bristol Channel – and it’s always been wonderful, in a similar way to how seeing Concorde used to be a wonderful sight.
Even on the ground, Vulcans are an impressive thing – but in the sky, well, there’s just nothing to match the sight. Long may this one continue to fly at shows and the like.
Wild Life
Posted: Thu 17 April, 2008 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »I confess, I’m a bit of a spod when it comes to nature programmes on TV – always have been, and likely always will be. But at the moment there seem to be two methods of doing nature programmes, and both drive me crackers.
First of all – and probably the less offensive of the two, although not by much – is the Simon “Supersmug” King method (for examples see “Big Cat Diary”, “[Season]Watch” and the like). Here all the animals have names, and are given human emotions and feelings by the narrators. It’s a method that Simon King has made his own, and it’s incredibly bloody annoying. In fact, if he’s on, I normally mute the sound on the TV.
The second school of thought, though, drives me crackers. I just can’t actually watch the programmes. They’re the ones by people like Steve Irwin, Nigel Marven and the like – and I just don’t even understand the motivation behind them. Sure, show people the animals – but what is the point of then chasing those animals, catching them, disturbing them, and looking like an utter tit? Fair enough, in the case of Steve Irwin at least Nature fought back and showed the tit who the real boss was – and that was a great day.
I just wonder what other people think of either of these ways of showing Nature programmes. Personally, I stick with the third way, the David Attenborough type documentaries that don’t anthropomorphosise, and don’t try to capture every animal or show how heroic the hosts are.
Norfolk Weekend
Posted: Sun 13 April, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, House Work, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s been a funny weekend, really – I haven’t had the time (or inclination) to be writing stuff for D4D™, as we’ve been fairly busy, yet it doesn’t feel like we’ve been busy enough to have a decent excuse.
Still, we’ve been getting a fair amount done.
Friday night was a social evening for a local charity connected (tangentially) to Herself’s work, doing a wine-tasting event – although it was a bit of a bummer to be the designated driver for the evening, as it meant I didn’t get to do any of the tasting!
Saturday sort of slipped away, really – doing a number of housey things, including fitting a new doorbell (we haven’t had one since we moved in, although the old bell-push was still on the door, which led to lots of annoyed delivery people) and just general domestic rubbish – shopping, sorting out plans for the weekend, that kind of thing.
Today we’ve been doing more stuff in the garden, including planting a whole bundle of veg in the veg patch (admittedly, that was mainly Herself) and sorting out some issues with our various water butts and the like. Oh, and I’ve spent some time putting together the basics for a new site, getting it all set up and ready to go.
So – busy, but not massively so. Just a fairly occupied weekend.
Doing the Maths
Posted: Fri 11 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m quite amazed by the scale of the scam in this story, about a couple who claimed benefits for no less than sixteen children – all while living in what’s described as a “one-room property”. I don’t know if that means ‘one bedroom’ or was just a unit in a hostel, or somesuch, but either way it’s awesome to be claiming to have eighteen people living in that property.
After all, I assume that they were also claiming some kind of housing benefit for living in that property – so any decent piece of joined-up work would enable the Tax Credits people, or the Benefits Agency (or whatever the hell it’s called this week) to possibly think that the claim might be just a weeny bit fraudulent.
How were they able to claim for so many children? Because the Tax Credits Agency doesn’t (or, one hopes, didn’t) require parents to provide a birth certificate as proof that the children existed.
It’s the final paragraph of the story that drives me crackers, though.
After the case Sarah Bamford, of HM Revenue and Customs, said: “This case is the result of many months of intense and thorough work by a dedicated team of tax credit investigation officers, determined to see that these fraudsters were brought to justice.”
© BBC News website 2008If the system had been in place initially, there’d have been no sodding need for the investigation, because they wouldn’t have been able to make such a massive fraudulent claim at all. Fucking jobsworth self-serving HMRC doublespeak dickwads.
GPS Question
Posted: Thu 10 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 7 Comments »A question for those of you who have a GPS system.
Where do you put it in the car?
By which I mean where on the windscreen, of course.
When I’m using it, the GPS/Satnav goes down on the bottom right-hand corner of the window. There I can see it without having to take my eyes too far off the road, and it doesn’t obstruct my view. To me that makes sense.
However, I notice that a lot of people seem to put the SatNav in the bottom middle of the windscreen, directly above the centre console of the dashboard. To me this just seems like a really awkward place, causing you to move your eyes right away from the road, and also blocking the view of a certain bit of road.
So I’m just wondering what other people who read this do.
Eco-Towns
Posted: Fri 4 April, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Green, Thoughts Leave a comment »While I don’t agree with all the new locations for the proposed ‘eco-towns’, I do think that they’re (in general) a good idea. If we are so in need of new housing, I’d far rather that it was housing that was done with some decent thought towards green power, water recycling, insulation and the like.
I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in one of the houses – although that’s mainly because I like being out here in the country, rather than in a giant housing-estate, as well as the fact we’re going to keep on working on our own green lifestyle/credentials. but I do think they’re a good thing, and if I had to live in a modern giant housing estate, I’d rather it was one of the eco-towns.
Flying Time
Posted: Fri 28 March, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »I can’t believe it’s already a week since we came back from the Lake District. It’s been a busy week, and full of crap weather which hasn’t helped (Snow over the weekend, and then it seems to have pissed it down constantly since Easter) but still it just doesn’t quite compute that it’s only seven days since we came home.
Psycho Cat is still deeply unamused at the entire haircut thing – and even less amused since Herself decided (rightly) that he was getting too cold, and so bought him a couple of little baby t-shirt things to cover him up. He looks utterly ridiculous (and deeply comical) and it took him a good couple of hours to get used to it, but he seems to have relaxed a bit now – and at least he’s warm. I’m not going to mortify him even more by putting up photos (well, not today anyway) but suffice it to say, he looks really bloody funny.
Incommunicado
Posted: Fri 28 March, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of the things I really liked about the cottage we stayed in when we’re in the Lake District is that there’s no coverage for our mobile phones, and no internet access. It means that while we’re there, it’s very hard for us to be contacted by work- or by anyone else.
In particular, I like having no internet access. I know that if it were there, I’d be using it – I’m a sad and simple geek, and I’d make use of internet access if it were available. When on holiday, well, it’s just a lot nicer to not have the tempation there in the first place. Yes, it means that I’ll have a whole bundle of emails to deal with when I get home (and I didn’t bother this time with an out-of-office message for my email) but I think it’s a worthwhile price for a peaceful week.
As always, if anyone had really needed to get hold of either of us, they could have called and left a message. (And in fact several people did exactly that, including a couple of agencies with possibilities of work for me) It’s not an ideal system, but it does seem to work, and people seem to understand that when I/we call them back – particularly if I explain that we’ve been in “the land of no-coverage”.
And now we’re back with all the communication devices. It’s been a nice week, but in a lot of ways it’ll be good to be back with ‘normal’ communications. It’s still good to have days or weeks where those things don’t exist though – it just means it’s a proper break, with no urge to stay in touch. No bad thing at all.
Crush A Grape…
Posted: Thu 13 March, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’m pleased to see that the accountant who tried sueing M&S for supposedly slipping on a grape in their carpark has lost his case. It was pretty spurious, obviously – with evidence based on the fact that once he’d fallen, the fruit was found on the sole of his shoe.
So I’m not surprised to see that the case has failed – to my mind it would’ve led to even more stupid Health and Safety notices, regulations, and general faffery, and to be honest we’ve got enough of those already.
Mind you, it’s also a surprise that the case was lost, because logic doesn’t seem to apply in these things, and particularly when a case is spurious and stupid, and could cause a whole bundle of new Health and Safety regulations.
Coproxamol ‘Community’
Posted: Tue 11 March, 2008 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts 1 Comment »Way back at the end of January 2005, I wrote a post about the (at that time) recently announced withdrawal of the painkiller Coproxamol. Weirdly, it since appears to have become almost a noticeboard for people with views about the withdrawal and (over the last month or so) a discussion about where to keep on getting it, the best places, and customs/excise issues with importing it from other countries.
In fact, at the time of writing it’s got 122 comments on it – making it by far the most popular post on D4D™.
It strikes me as weird, actually, that there’s all this discussion on D4D™. Maybe it’s because the other site mentioned in those comments, Coproxamol.org.uk is down, with no sign of life at all. I don’t know. (It does make me think that there could be some opportunities around that site name, though- if only the owner of it were prepared to do something with it.)
Getting Away With It
Posted: Fri 22 February, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve written about a similar subject before, but I have to say that the news yesterday infuriated me. To me, the fact that some utter cockwad can film himself driving at 130+mph using his mobile phone, brag about it by uploading the video to YouTube, get prosecuted and get away with a four-month suspended sentence and an 18 months ban (oh, let’s not forget the 210 hours of community service) is just astonishing. It shouldn’t be, with the knowledge of the guy who drove at 172mph only getting a 10-week jail sentence, but it is.
I don’t understand the mentality of someone who films themselves speeding by taking one hand off the wheel, and filming it with a mobile phone, to me that’s a charge of dangerous driving right there. Doing it at 130+mph, that’s another charge. Posting it up to YouTube? OK, Terminal stupidity isn’t a criminal offence (although sometimes I think it should be) but still, I do think the sentence is still completely out of whack with the offence(s).
Brits
Posted: Thu 21 February, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Music, Thoughts 3 Comments »I’m just wondering, how did Mark Ronson get ‘Best British Male’ at the Brits over the other
non-entitiesnominees, Jamie T, Mika, Newton Faulkner, Richard Hawley ?Now don’t get me wrong, I really like Ronson’s “Version” album for the most part – but he’s still more the producer/creator/rearranger than the performer. All the vocals are done by other singers, rather than by Ronson.
When all’s said and done, Mark Ronson is still “just” a DJ. And because of that, I don’t really understand how he’s “Best British Male”.
But maybe that’s just me.
Cookery Lessons
Posted: Tue 22 January, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Health, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »On first read, the news that cookery lessons are to become part of the compulsory school schedule is great news. I did cookery lessons way back when I was in school, and it was a useful grounding. (Admittedly, I don’t do a great deal of cooking, but at least I can cook, and can do enough to mean I’m OK without needing to go to a takeaway for meals.)
But then you take a look at the fine print. One hour a week, for one term? Not really a comprehensive course then. (Or a grammar one – ha, education joke. I slay me.) If it were one hour a week for the full school year, you’d have pupils with a decent knowledge of cooking, basic recipes, and general nutritional knowledge that might actually go some way towards the end goal.
Once a week for one term? It’s hardly worth the effort. Of course, even a tiny bit of effort is better than none at all, but still, there’s so much more that could be done with this.
Corrections
Posted: Mon 7 January, 2008 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »When you’re looking at a ‘news’ site for the town you grew up in, how pedantic is it to email the editor and suggest that they use a spell checker?
In the case I’m thinking of, they’d managed to mis-spell “Helicopter”, which is fairly impressive in the first place.
And if, when you’ve sent in that suggestion and they respond saying thanks, but with the first two words being “Quiet right”, would it be really snarky to point that out too?
After all, this is a site that is trying to make out it’s a news site, and the epitome of local journalism for that town, yet they manage to get at least one spelling error per day…
Or should I just leave well alone?
Another Big Brother
Posted: Sat 22 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Is it just me, or does this entire concept for Big Brother sound utterly, utterly unappealing?
Not that I watch the “normal” Big Brother stuff on TV either, but still, this one manages to appeal even less than the usual ones. Which is quite an achievement, in fairness.
Foglights
Posted: Thu 20 December, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel 11 Comments »Ah, you knew it wouldn’t be long ’til this one happened (again).
This morning I was driving in to work, and the weather was fairly grungy – lots of freezing fog, and not much fun at all. However, it has to be pointed out that this was at 7am this morning, while it was still completely dark. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Fog-lights are only supposed to be used in thick fog when visibility is abysmal. They’re not meant as “It’s foggy, use your lights” – there’s supposed to be some application of common sense. In this case, because it’s night, I can see cars half a fucking mile away. There’s no need for foglights if you can see that fucking far, you bollock-minded individuals!
Yes, of course, the foglights came on, and stayed on. Even in the clear bits. Hell, most of the twunts will still have them on this evening when I drive home, I’m sure.
The highway code is a bit wishy-washy on this one – again, I assume, because of the
necessityhope of using common sense in these situations – but still it makes it pretty clear that foglights should only be used in poor visibility. Of course, common sense is a commodity in short supply at the moment, so maybe it needs to be re-written in light of that.Personally, I think that car manufacturers are (slightly) to blame on this one as well – you get a warning light on the dashboard when you put the lights on, but there’s no extra warning/reminder to tell you you’ve put the foglights on. (Well, in Ford cars anyway. I can’t be certain if the same applies to all/most other car manufacturers) But then, if a driver hasn’t got the memory-span to remember they’ve turned the foglights on, should they really be allowed to be driving in the first place?
8 days to go
Posted: Mon 17 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Festering Season, Thoughts Leave a comment »
All around us in the village, people have been decorating their houses with lights, icicles, glowing bloody santas, and all sorts of tat. In fairness, there are a couple of places that actually look pretty good (including one I’ve nicknamed “The gingerbread house” – all the lights seem to be aimed at that kind of theme) but they’re far outweighed by the ones that just look utterly naff and tacky.
At some point this week, I plan to go off on a small tour and get some photos of the abhorrences, just for future delectation. There’s one in particular that just leaves me shaking my head every time I go past – and not in a good or admiring way. Although I suppose it does serve its purpose of making Christmas more religious, because each time I see the place, I find myself saying “Jesus Fucking Christ”. Ahem.
Still, I find myself wondering why people do it, in much the same way I wonder why some people wear the outfits they do. It’s that “Do they really think that looks good/cool/classy?” thought again.
OK, I’m distinctly Scroogian at the best of times, but house decorations leave me completely befuddled – I just don’t understand the motivation for covering one’s house in manky faux-neon flashing tat.
Bah Humbug, indeed.
Drink Driving
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Festering Season, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »While I’m not usually a great proponent of the entire “User-generated content” thing, sometimes it can be interesting and useful. One example is this BBC piece about drink-driving, and this year’s advertising campaign to make people think again about drinking and driving. After the piece, there’s a whole set of stories of personal experiences of drink-driving, and being banned, and it makes for interesting reading.
Personally, I don’t drink at all if I’m driving. It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t see the point of the entire “Oh, I’ll be OK if I just have the one” point of view. I could probably get away with one (or even two) because of my size, but to be honest, why risk it?
Night Driving
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 6 Comments »As the nights have drawn in, I’ve found myself repeatedly thinking about driving standards. In particular, with regard to the way people now use their headlights.
When I was younger, and also when I was taking (lots of) driving lessons, I always thought that before you used full (or even dipped) headlights, you first used sidelights only – kind of a “for being seen, not for seeing by” thing. They got used ’til you needed to turn on the headlights/dipped headlights in order to see.
Now though it seems like the majority of people just switch straight to full headlights, without ever really using the sidelights at all. The Highway Code suggests that it should still be done with the sidelights first, then headlights – but it just doesn’t seem to be the done thing any more.
Now when did that start happening Or is it just something I hadn’t noticed until recently?
CeltX
Posted: Mon 19 November, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts, Writing 4 Comments »Recently, having been thinking about getting back into it for *cough* years, I’ve been thinking that it really is about time I start off on getting some of my writing ideas down on paper (OK, on hard drive), rather than letting them float round in my head, at constant risk of being lost/forgotten/amended. There are two main reasons for this – namely 1) It’s about fucking time and 2) I’ve got something in there at the moment that is radical and could be seriously fun to write – along with some added impetus from seeing how Tom is doing, and doing a bit of proof-reading and cliché-avoidance on his work.
The main stumbling block for me is the classic “Where the hell do I start?” (and any answers of “at the beginning” will be soundly ignored) And, in my case, additionally “What format am I going to do – book, screenplay, both?”. Hell, I’m even somewhat tempted by the idea of writing a radio play. Go figure.
Among other things, I’ve been thinking about using Final Draft as a writing aid/tool, but coming up against another minor stumbling block, this time of “Do I really want to spend £130 or so, and then not actually use the thing?”.
But last week I came across a different tool, CeltX which may actually be quite handy – it certainly gets me past the “spending out” block – and provides some interesting tools along the way. I’m going to give it a go anyway, and just see where it takes me.
This is a subject that may get a lot more stuff written about it over 2008, be warned…
Lose Some Weight in ’08
Posted: Wed 14 November, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Introspective, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of the things I know I really should/need to do over the next year is get back into going to the gym, doing more exercise of whatever type, and generally lsing some weight.
This last year, and particularly following on from the farce with Holmes Place (Now Virgin Active, but still scumbag dickheads) I lost all real motivation to keep going to the gym, which was a habit I’d managed to get in to before starting work in Cambridge.
About two months ago, we did get round to joining the one in Dereham, although not paying a monthly subscription – and maybe that’s part of the problem as well. Because it’s “Pay as you go” rather than “Pay regardless” it means that there’s still not actually much drive to get us there. If they were taking £35 a month from us and we weren’t using it, we’d feel far more guilty, and would have more drive to go.
At the same time, this year we’ve been hyper-busy with stuff on the house and garden, which has also added to our lack of motivation for going to the gym. Of course, working in the garden should also add to the general exercise regime, and probably will, but it’s not quite the same as a gym session.
So I know that in the new year (possibly before then, although the way the next seven weeks are looking at the moment, I wouldn’t guarantee it) I need to do more on the exercise and fitness front. It won’t just be the gym, I suspect – I still want to get back into the archery, but when it’s only held on a Sunday, it eats in to the time I’ve got for dealing with house stuff too. Still, I’ll look round, see what other clubs are available – I don’t mind taking up an evening with going, but a Sunday is (at the moment anyway) a bit too much.
I also need to think about getting the bike back on the road – I had it serviced and repaired recently, so that it’s in full working order again, but then just haen’t been using it, or really feeling like I want to get out and use it. I may make use of it in the time between Christmas and New Year, when I’m not working, and see how things go.
All told though, I know that I need to get back to where I was in mid 2006, regularly going to the gym and generally getting into it, losing a fair amount of weight, and gaining a commensurate amount of fitness. I know I need to do it, but I still need to locate the motivation to actually do so. And that’s what I need to work on first, breaking back into the habit, and wanting to go, rather than “just” knowing I need to.
Moving Around
Posted: Sun 11 November, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »In one way (OK, at least one way) the last three years have been quite odd, in that I seem to have gone back down the ‘town-size’ ladder. I think some people (mainly estate agents and the like) call it downsizing, but that’s not true either – this is about the size of the place we live in, not the house we live in. Ah, I know what I mean, anyway.
The basic premise is this – I grew up in a small market town. Not a bad place to grow up, I admit, if boring as hell. But since then (and we’ll cut out some of the jogging about) in order I’ve lived in…
- Woburn : (Another) Small market town
- Rugby : Large Town
- Whitstable : Small Town
- Burnham Beeches : Village
- Worcester: Town
- Weymouth: Large Town
- Oxford : City
- Manchester : Large City
- Bracknell:
Utter fucking dumpLarge Town- Attleborough : Small town
- Current Location, just outside Attleborough: Village
So all told, I’ve lived in most types of city/town/village. Those are just the main places, I’ve done a lot of shorter terms in places as well, so they’re just the bullet points really. (Now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d see myself saying) But definitely the last four places have been a defined order towards living somewhere like where we are now – and it suits me just fine.
In a lot of ways, I feel I’ve kind of “done” my entire city-living thing, and now while I don’t have the things I used to love about city living in easy reach, instead I have other things that really work for me now – peace, no traffic noise, proper darkness, lots of cracking photo locations, and all that jazz. Oh, and also the gardenm and all the potential that holds.
Would I go back to living in a city? Probably not, unless I absolutely had to. Circumstances may change over the years, but I definitely far prefer being in a village for life things in general.
Too much camera
Posted: Wed 7 November, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »One of my colleagues at work has just bought a Canon EOS40D. I’m not quite sure why – other than as a status symbol, really – because the photos I’ve seen of theirs taken with a Sony Cybershot compact camera are (to be blunt) bloody horrible.
Seeing them buy this Canon camera, while not knowing anything about what the lenses do, or even that this meant that the lenses detached from the camera body, well, it just saddens me really.
Now OK, I’m not a great photographer – I’d like to think I’m fairly good, but I’m in no way great – but I progressed through the various stages of compact camera, bridge camera, then made my way up to the SLR. And I’m pleased with how things have gone, and will keep on learning as I go on.
But to me that’s the way it’s supposed to be – that you learn, and progress. Not just jump in to buying a bloody great SLR with no understanding, and somehow expect it to “make” you take better pictures. Because the fact is, it won’t. I went from taking pretty good photos with the bridge camera to taking some truly bloody awful ones with the SLR. I’m still learning about it now, just over two years down the line, and still make fuck-ups on a regular basis.
So I wonder how long it’ll be before this EOS 40D is consigned to a cupboard somewhere “because it’s a crap camera”. And I think it’s a pity, because it’s a fantastic bit of kit, and I’d love one. Not as much as I’d love a 5D or a 1Ds Mk III, but that’s life. Maybe one day, when I either a) have made a decent level of money from photography, and can rationalise the purchase or b) when I’ve run up to the limitations of the 20D.
Drawing In
Posted: Fri 2 November, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s been quite surprising just how quickly the days have got shorter this week.
On Monday I got home at 5.30 and the light was fading when I took Hound out for a walk, although I could still (just about) see.
By last night, it was pitch dark at 5.30, and I needed to take a torch with me in order to see my way round the field.It looks to me like the daylight has shortened by a good 45 minutes or so in just four days, which is pretty impressive really.
New Old Design
Posted: Fri 2 November, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Is it me, or does the new BMW Z4 Coupé look seriously reminiscent of the old Jaguar E-Type – and also the TVR Tuscan.
Suppose this is why it gets called a design classic…
TV dramas
Posted: Wed 31 October, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Or, more accurately, dramas about TV.
Now, what I want to know is how come “30 Rock” managed to get itself renewed for another season, while “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” got canned after one season.
30 Rock is (in my opinion) one of the most unfunny shows currently on TV – alongside BBC’s “Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle” – while Studio60 has kept me consistently amused and interested.
Strange, the way the dramas we like are the ones that America tends not to.
Business Redesign – Ongoing
Posted: Fri 26 October, 2007 Filed under: Own Business, Thoughts Leave a comment »The redesign of the business site is still continuing, amazingly. The “About Me” profile/bio section has been just about completed now, and I’m actually fairly pleased with the way it worked out. There’s still plenty of room for tweaking, but it’s getting there.
I’m now just starting on entirely reworking the ‘clients’ section, which is another big old job. I could leave it ’til I’ve put in a database back-end, and I still might, but at least now I’ve got the site structure that I want.
Other than that, the letterhead stuff that I ordered a couple of weeks ago from Vistaprint arrived last night (as well as a letterhead for the photography side of things, which also matches the business cards) and looks damn good. So over the course of the next week, I’ll most likely be starting to use it to send out some letters.
It’s all actually quite a fun process, and it’s making me think a lot about the business, where it’s been, where it’s going, and a whole bundle of other things too – which is all good, and none of it is negative at all. Happy day.
Get Up And Go
Posted: Wed 24 October, 2007 Filed under: Introspective, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »Or the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking (again) about the way my body and brain work in the mornings. It’s interesting to me because the way I work just doesn’t appear to be the way most other people do when it comes to this early morning guff.
First of all, I know that my body-clock is deeply screwed. ‘Twas always thus. The main part of it seems to be that I actualy get proper sleep between the hours of 7am and 9am – which is obviously fairly unfeasible with regard to work, for obvious reasons. If I get to sleep between 7 and 9, I’m pretty good for the rest of the day. On the other hand, if I’m woken up in that time, I’m like a bear with a sore head for the rest of the day.
As a result, I tend to get up earlier than 7am. About 5.30, for the most part. In many ways it actually suits me – I get the 7am train to work, I’m in just after 8am, I leave at about 3.45pm, get home for about six, and all’s good. In some ways I would say I’m on autopilot for the first few hours, but that’s not really true. Admittedly when I’m getting up I do use/need some form of routine, so I can do stuff while gradually waking up.
But the thing is, the alarm goes off, and bang, I’m awake and moving. I don’t do this thing of lying in bed, I just get moving. I’ve always been like that to some degree – even at school age I would get up ad go, rather than trying t stay in bed. It’s just the way I’m wired. It shifted up a gear when I was running shops, pubs and hotels, because of having to be able to deal with alarms in the middle of the night, and all that joy.
I’ve never really lost that ability. I’m sat on the train while writing this, going to work. It’s 7am, and a good 80-85% of the other passengers are asleep while I’m writing stuff for D4D™, and also doing other stuff for clients, writing web pages, database migration bits and the like.
I was thinking about this yesterday morning too, while driving to work. I’d woken up at half five, and was on the road by six. Not tired at all – although God knows, I should’ve been- and absolutely fine to drive. Admittedly, I stopped off for a quick break at about eight, just for breakfast, but that was it – no tiredness and no hassle.
I don’t know why I’m wired this way, but given the choice of sleeping an extra hour on the train, or getting work and writing done, I know which I prefer.
Rugby Final
Posted: Mon 15 October, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »So, England are in the final of the Rugby World Cup, and play South Africa. For once in my life, I actually ended up watching both games – and bearing in mind my comprehensive lack of knowledge, as well as being aware of being supposedly “unpatriotic” I have to say, I think England are going to receive a serious kicking next Saturday.
To me, the South Africa/Argentina game on Sunday was a far ‘better’ game than the England/France one, and the gameplay by South Africa was far better than England. Now OK, I realise that “points are points” regardless of how they’re scored, but England currently seem to rely primarily on penalties and drop goals rather than the tries and conversions that are (in my novice opinion) the ‘bread and butter’ of the game.
South Africa relied more on tries and conversions, and knocked up the points accordingly with four tries, and four conversions – although admittedly they also scored from three penalties. England scraped through (until the last five/ten minutes) with a scrappy game where they scored one try, no conversions, and two penalties. In the earlier game against Australia, all the England points were through penalties.
Maybe I’m naïve – it wouldn’t be the first time, when it comes to sport – but to me, South Africa currently seem to be playing a more rounded game of rugby than England do, and I suspect that may influence the result next weekend.
Of course, I could be wrong too – again, not the first time- and if so, I’ll be the first one to say “I was wrong”.
Rabbits
Posted: Thu 4 October, 2007 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 1 Comment »I don’t often bang on about TV adverts and so on, but every so often something comes up that is truly worthy of notice.
In this case, it’s the adverts for the Sony Bravia™ ®. The first two (the now well-known bouncing balls, and exploding paint) were great, but the new one featuring plasticine rabbits is, frankly, bloody marvellous.
Lazy Scripting
Posted: Thu 4 October, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish), Thoughts, Writing 3 Comments »One of my favourite programmes at the moment is “Not Going Out”, on BBC1. It’s a very silly sitcom, but well-written, and with a far higher selection of jokes than most of the other comedies on TV. Mainly because at least half the script seems to consist of one-liners, but what the hell, it makes me laugh more than just about anything else on TV.
It’s in its second series now, which is just as good as the first all ways but one, and it’s that one piece that annoys me.
In the first season, a woman appeared as a masseur in one episode. That’s fine. But now, in the second season, the same actress is now playing a cleaner. Same character, different job. And what annoys me is that this change of job has never been mentioned, much less explained. It wouldn’t take much, just a simple nod to having been a masseur, but wanting to do a cleaner job, or somesuch. That’s all it would have taken, but its not been done.
In short, it’s just lazy script-writing. It wouldn’t have taken any real effort to either write a bit more script, or even just to cast a different actress, but no they couldn’t be bothered. And that annoys me. It won’t stop me from liking the programme, but it does annoy me when I watch it.
Self Defence
Posted: Thu 27 September, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Thoughts 3 Comments »Apparently, Jack Straw wants to overhaul the self-defence laws, and “eliminate the grey areas in the law”. Personally, I have no problem with this, and fully agree that it needs doing.
However, rather than simply clearing things up, I personally would opt for the following:
Anyone who breaks into your house absolves all their personal rights at that point
In other words, anyone breaking in accepts responsibility for their actions, and has no personal rights once they’ve broken in, and the householder can take reasonable action to protect their property.
Works for me, anyway.
172mph
Posted: Mon 24 September, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 4 Comments »I find that I’m completely infuriated by the 10-week jail sentence handed down today to the man clocked at 172mph in Oxford – the fastest speed recorded by the UK police. Now OK, he also got banned from driving for three years, and will have to take an extended driving test before he’s allowed back on the road – but all the same, is it really a fitting punishment?
Personally, I don’t think so. Particularly when you see that most of the media are focussing on just the 10-week jail sentence, which makes it look like that’s all that the stupid git got.
Now, if I were caught speeding at over 100mph, I’d fully expect to be given a ban, and a big fine. If it were significantly over that 100mph, I’d expect either a *huge* ban, *huge* fine, and potentially jail. After all, I know the speed limit, and if I insist on not “just” breaking it, but smashing it completely, then that’s my choice and I have to accept the consequences.
But a 10 week jail sentence? It’s not exactly a significant deterrent, is it? Particularly when you think that with parole, the twat will be out in five or six weeks. The three-year ban is more of a deterrent, but it’s not really any more than he’d have got for speeding at, for example, 110mph. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something – but the entire sentence just seems a bit paltry for the speed, and size of the offence.
Cost-cutting
Posted: Fri 21 September, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »This story about two Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who stood by while a child drowned ‘because they weren’t trained for it’ goes to illustrate (yet again) an oft-repeated question- Just what use are PCSOs, anyway?
In short, they’re no flamin’ use at all. They don’t have powers of arrest, they can’t stop and search. Really all they are is extra bodies that count towards “police presence”- without being able to do anything that’s actually useful. Except, I suppose, from directing people to the nearest police station in order to report a crime.
Ban It?
Posted: Thu 6 September, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »Yesterday’s “big” news every time I listened was about doctors calling for cage fighting to be banned. Now, while I have absolutely no desire to see a cage fight, I don’t think it should be banned. I feel much the same way about boxing.
In both cases, while the sport is legal, it’s known about. It has support, medical personnel in attendance, rules, and a certain degree of protection and protective gear.
If the fights were to be banned, they wouldn’t stop. They’d just go underground, with no medical support, in illegal spaces, and would just be far more dangerous than the current legal situation. And I suspect that it would cause far more serious injuries – and/or deaths – if it all became illegal.
Personally, I hate boxing and fighting. But I would still far rather it were legal, and to some degree safe, than to see it banned. And that’s what the doctors calling for the ban haven’t thought about at all.
Writing Ambition
Posted: Sat 18 August, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Introspective, Thoughts, Writing 1 Comment »Having seen D4D™ hit its fifth birthday recently has made me start doing a fair amount of thinking. Well, it’s more the combination of D4D™ being five, and watching “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip“. Which just makes things even weirder.
One of the things that I wanted to do with D4D™ when I started it was to build up my writing. I used to do a lot of writing of other stuff, and along the way I churned out two novel-length (OK, if I’m honest, one novel-length, one novella-length) pieces of work. At the time they were more about therapy than anything else, but they were OK – and Herself had copies of both of them from when I initially did them. I re-read them recently and while they’re not good exactly – there’s stuff that’s too self-referential and/or indulgent, and a lot of it is “of it’s time”, shall we say – nor are they bad, either.
Anyway, along the way, D4D™ has become a bit of an entity of its own. I’ve written (at the time of doing this piece) some 4,500 posts over five years, amounting to just under 630,000 words- not including the rants and thoughts. A fair amount of it is crap, obviously – but with a fair amount of OK and good stuff thrown into the mix too. (He said, modestly) But at the same time, D4D™ is a greedy beast, and I spend more time writing odds and sods for here , which means that rather than fuelling the drive, impetus and maybe even need to write, instead it’s become the outlet, and that requirement to write is the fuel for D4D™ instead.
And where does Studio 60 come into it? Simple, really. Aaron Sorkin is one of my writing gods – I absolutely adore West Wing, and I think Studio 60 is another part of that pantheon, although I can also understand why it got canned after one season.
Over the weekend, Gordon pondered what would we do if we won the lottery. The thing I would do in that circumstance would be to take a year completely out of work (well, out of paid work, anyway) and instead use that time to put fingers to keyboard, and work to bring about some of the writing ideas that’ve taken up residence in my head over the years.
And that’s the dream, really. A life/job where the creative side takes precedence, so that I can both write and take photos for a living. The odds are fairly long that I’ll ever get there, although I still want to try.
But if I’m going to do that, perhaps D4D™ needs to go on pause, so that I have to find another outlet for the writing. It’s not going to happen just yet, but it’s something to think about. And it’s something I am thinking about. I don’t know whether it would work, but it’s something that I might just have to try…
Taxing
Posted: Mon 13 August, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »I’ve now had my car nearly six months. Which, of course, means that it’s also coming up to the expiry of the six month road-tax I got with it.
I got the reminder for the road tax last week, and decided to have a go at the entire Road Tax online thing – and it all went really painlessly. Herself had tried it last month for her car, and hadn’t been able to get through the process, so I was wondering how good it would be, but yeah, the entire process was easy – and a lot less time-consuming than going to get the disc at the Post Office!
Real Men
Posted: Sun 12 August, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Watching BBC’s “Real Men” documentary tonight has been really interesting – it’s been about guys who work on the North Sea oil industry, and spend a month in a diving chamber, pressurised to the depth they’ll be working at so that the guys don’t need to keep woring about the bends, decompression stops etc.
It’s certainly a job I couldn’t do – I couldn’t spend that length of time in a small confined space. Also, a month spent at the pressure equivalent of 200m, which is scary. (As they said, it’s just about the height of two Big Bens)
But at the same time, man what comedy value – the month at the bottom is spent breathing helium mix, rather than air – so half the programme involved them all talking in Micky-Mouse voices. Deadly serious, but very funny.
Fuzzy
Posted: Tue 7 August, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I can always tell when I’ve actually (finally) managed to get some decent quality sleep, because my head feels like someone’s filled it with feathers, then beaten it with a velvet-covered sledgehammer.
It’s weird, because I should feel bright and invigorated, refreshed after sleep. But what I find instead is that my brain says “Oh, bloody hell, I remember this sleep thing. I want more of it. Now.”
No prizes for guessing how I feel today.
Real or Fake
Posted: Wed 1 August, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »I must admit, I really don’t get the entire hysteria about ‘faked’ TV programmes. (the latest one is here, about the ITV documentary of a man dying with Alzheimers)
Now while I fully understand the problems with the ‘live’ TV shows with the faked winners of phone-in prizes, this supposed revelation that TV programmes are cut and edited to show a certain story – or cut and edited to link things together that didn’t actually happen at the same time – is (to me, anyway) a complete no-brainer. After all, how fucking stupid would you have to be to think that – for example – David Attenbrough is just walking around finding all these super-rare animals? Or that he’s the one diving with sharks, whales etc.?
To me, documentary programmes are actually the worst culprits of the lot (as Matt says in his comment on Dragon’s semi-related post) – where a so-called survival “expert” appears to have been in the wilderness for days surviving by drinking rancid horse piss or whatever, when he’s actually shacked up overnight in some hotel. But at the same time, again, what form of crackhead would actually believe he’s out there ‘alone’ when there’s a bloody huge TV crew around him?
I really don’t understand why all this crap about “TV is lying to us” is coming up now. It always has lied to us – well, since the invention of video-tape, anyway, as that’s when TV stopped being broadcast completely live. Every non-live programme is recorded, cut, edited and hacked about until it bears little (and sometimes no) resemblance to what actually happened. With dramas and so on, you know it’s fiction (OK, you’re supposed to know it’s fiction) and thus prone to cutting. But the documentaries and docu-dramas are still, to some degree or other, also fiction – they merely show portrayals as the director wants them. It’s not reality. Never has been, never will be.
Actually, one of the more interesting things about Attenborough’s “Planet Earth” series (I think that’s what it was called) was the ten minute mini-documentary bits at the end of each episode, which went some way to showing that a) it’s not all just David Attenborough finding all the animals, and b) that it could take days, weeks or months of filming before finding that elusive animal/bird.
But in the meantime, anyone who thinks that documentary programmes on TV are filmed as is, and are accurate portrayals of reality, well, they’re just delusional crackheads in the first place.
Tour de France+1
Posted: Thu 26 July, 2007 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I think this story about a guy cycling the Tour de France on his own, with backup from his mum is utterly fantastic. He’s riding each stage one day before the main Tour does it, but all the same, he’s doing the full Tour.
Quite, quite barmy – but utterly fantastic too. Particularly in light of all the stories this year about ‘professional’ riders failing drugs tests left, right and centre and who have massive dollops of support and sponsorship, while this amateur cyclist – who’s only been cycling for a year – is doing the entire thing for a current spend of less than £2000, no sponsorship, and really for the sheer hell of it.
All power to his wheels, in my opinion.
Reading Speed
Posted: Mon 23 July, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »Sometimes my reading speed worries me a bit. But before I go on, I’m just going to get one thing out in the open – I’m a sad sod, have no life whatsoever, and need to get out more.
The reason for this admission, and linking it to reading speed? Well, on Saturday I got the final Harry Potter novel delivered – the joys of pre-orders on Amazon. Not that I’d ever queue in order to get the book – I’m not that sad, for chuff’s sake. But yeah, I’d pre-ordered it from Amazon, so it arrived on Saturday about 11am.
And by Sunday evening I’d finished it. Not that I’d sat and read it at the expense of all else, or anything like that. I think it took me about 3.5 – 4 hours of reading time all told.
I’m not claiming to be any kind of world-class speed-reader or anything. But all the same, I figure that getting through a 600-odd page wodge of book in that kind of time isn’t too shabby.
And the book itself? Yeah, it’s OK. Not great, but OK. If you’ve read the others, it’s more of the same, but at least it comes to an end. If you haven’t read the others, you won’t want to read this one either.
Redesign?
Posted: Sun 22 July, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Own Business, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s that time of year (again) when a techies thoughts turn to redesign. Well OK, it’s that time of year where I think about redesigns, anyway.
Primarily I’m thinking about redesigning (and in fact pretty much completely re-doing) the site I have for my private business. It’s been the same way for a year or two now, and as I need to update the information on it anyway, I’m seriously debating redoing the design and back-end as well. (When I say ‘redoing’ the back-end, I mean ‘creating’ the back-end, as currently it doesn’t have anything funky in the background, just normal flattish PHP pages)
At the same time, though, I’m already contemplating some tuning-up and/or tweaking on the photography site, as the two are closely related. There’s also been the small matter of some new business cards that bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the site.
The only thing that’s stopping me, really, is that once I start, it’ll be a fairly big job. Alongside that, I’m still fairly uninspired about how a redesigned site would look. I just want to do it, I don’t yet know the details. Perhaps that’s the biggest hint that I should wait.
Currently, I’ve pretty much got the time to do a redesign project on the sites. There’s a lot of other stuff sitting on the back burner, waiting for things to happen, (designs, concepts, background information, that kind of thing) and I just know that if I got into a redesign project, then all the other more important stuff would suddenly all come back on me at once. Life’s like that.
So it’s all a bit up in the air at the moment. I haven’t yet decided what I’ll do. Time will tell.
Oh, and no, I’m still not planning a full upgrade for d4d™ I know I should do. But well, I’m not.
Predicting the Weather
Posted: Sat 21 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »While I realise that a lot of the people trapped in floods, or inconvenienced by the stopping of train services etc. aren’t having much fun, I do think it’s pretty impressive the way a number of agencies and organisations have been dealing with the unexpected effects of the weather.
Now OK, pretty much everyone should’ve known that yesterday was going to be exceptionally wet, with (according to a couple of sources) two months worth of rain dolloping down in 24 hours, but the unexpected bit came down to the effects of that rain on unexpected places. Over the last few years we seem to be getting a lot more cases where floods happen in places that’ve never flooded before – or at least have only flooded once every thirty years, or something. Yesterday, who expected that the M5 would be closed because of flooding, for example.
The quote that sums it up for me comes from John Kelly, Oxfordshire’s emergency planner (and what a weird job that must be, always expecting/planning for the worst or most bizarre situations. Hmm, must look at what it involves…)
We’ve ordered 150 sleeping bags from the Army… and some of my staff have gone down to the local Tesco to get things like towels, toothpaste and soap.
“This is part of our plan, this is a thing we plan for, and we make arrangements for, but things always go wrong.
“This is not the first choice of school, because the one we were going to had actually been flooded itself.” (from the BBC story linked above)Yes, the place that was on the plan to be a safe haven from flooding was – um – flooded.
However, even with (I would expect) most people knowing it was going to piss down all day, how come I saw so many people in Cambridge yesterday dressed in just thin summer clothes, with no jackets, umbrellas etc. ? Did they just think that the prediction wouldn’t happen? Or that it wouldn’t affect them? Weird.
Domestic Overload
Posted: Thu 19 July, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last couple of months, D4D™ has become a bit boring, I’m afraid. It’s primarily due to the fact that most of my waking (Yes, that’s waking – dirty-minded bastards) hours are currently occupied with either work or the new house, along with the odd side-track off into photography and/or introspection.
I definitely will be returning to the world of random outspouts, but well, not just yet. Sorry about that.
For now though. I’m aware of the issue, and looking into it. Normal service will resume as soon as possible. Probably. Before that, though, there still may be a couple of ‘before and after’ shots of the house. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Google Cookies
Posted: Tue 17 July, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Thoughts 1 Comment »So Google are now supposedly all heroic for saying that they’ll set their cookies to delete after two years (my emphasis) instead of the current setting, where they will expire in 2039.
I’m sorry, but two years is still bollocks. Along the way they also say that two year expiry entails not visiting any Google website in that time.
Now, I use cookies on a lot of sites – they’re a standard thing, after all. But with any site I work on, they’re usually set to delete in 30 or 60 days. Yes, of course if a user re-visits the site then the cookie gets re-set, but still with the 30 or 60 day expiry. If a user hasn’t visited the site in that time, then the cookie deletes, and if they re-visit after that, then they might have to re-set a preference or two.
I don’t understand why a company like Google can’t set their cookie to expire after something sensible, like 90 – or even 180 – days. If someone hasn’t come back in three (or six) months, then the cookie expires. More than fair.
Why on earth would you want a cookie to hang around for two years?
Taking Photography Forward
Posted: Thu 12 July, 2007 Filed under: Introspective, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »Yesterday I was writing a bit about the portfolio site, and what to do with it. At the same time, I’ve also been looking at what I need to do as the next ‘phase’ of the photography that I do. And when all’s said and done, the simple answer to that one is ‘take more photos’. It’s when you get to the question of ‘What of?’ that my brain currently stumbles a bit.
As it is, I’ve got several projects in mind, and once I’ve started them off, I’ll be fine – it’s just those initial stages where getting started requires some energy, inspiration, and motivation. Not necessarily in that order. But they’re the bits in which I’m currently lacking quite significantly.
In the mean time, I’ve also gone back to some earlier ideas, and been thinking about the best ways to get certain photos I want to try. Currently my big weakness is that I’m really bad at just asking people if I can take photos of them, even when they’re in a public place, and in theory I don’t even need to ask permission at that point. As it is though, well, I feel uncomfortable doing that – although I feel even more uncomfortable asking people. I’ve ordered some business cards, though, which will hopefully come in handy. To my mind, it’s all too easy to just say “I’d like to take your photo – I’m legit, honest!” without any corroboration, and I figure that the cards might help a bit on that score, and at least lend the semblance of being somewhat competent. We’ll see.
At the same time, I’m considering getting some decent(ish) notepaper done up – it won’t be too expensive, and again it’s probably going to come in useful. I know I need (or, more accurately, feel the need) to gain permission from certain places before going off to photograph them, so again it strikes me that having a request come through on ‘proper’ paper, rather than just any old printer paper might be a bit of a bonus.
As with many things this year, I suspect that a lot of this is all about initally “laying out the groundwork”, getting everything in place so that when I do have the inclination/motivation/energy, I don’t have to hang around doing the organisational scutwork – by that time, everything will be as in place as I can make it.
Terrorism Bollocks
Posted: Thu 5 July, 2007 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Security, Thoughts 3 Comments »On the way home last night, I got ‘stop and search’ed in the entrance hall of Cambridge station under the auspices of the Terrorism Act 2000. It wasn’t for any reason, just part of the random shite during ‘heightened’ alerts.
Now, in general I don’t really have a problem with the stop-and-search stuff. I got used to it a long time ago, when I was in the throes of heavy insomnia, and would regularly get stopped and searched at 4am when I was out for a walk. I understand the principles of it, and the Bentham-esque supposed panopticism, where the theory goes that if you are under constant scrutiny, you never know when They really are watching you. It’s the same motive that underlies all the CCTV crap, and many other bits of our current legal surveillance framework.
What I do object to is that when I get stop-and-searched, the search is so cursory as to be utterly fucking pointless. Yesterday’s one was a case in point.
All they did was look in my backpack. That was it. I didn’t have to turn on the laptop that was in there, to ‘prove’ that it wasn’t an explosive device cunningly disguised. I didn’t have to open the bottle of water there, to prove it was water, and not some colourless liquid explosive. They didn’t even open the pockets on the bag – at least one of which was heavy with portable hard-drive, USB stick, headphone cables, metal pen, and some other stuff that had all the hallmarks of a small explosive device. (electronics, wires, small compact box, blah blah)
They didn’t check me at all. I could’ve had weapons on me, small gas canisters (those little gas capsules for CO2, for example) or been wired to chuff and back – hell, my entire belly area could’ve been padding and C4. But none of it was checked.
And let’s be honest, if I were some numpty bent on self-immolation with a C4 waistcoat or whatever, would a stop-and-search have any effect? Would it bollocks. If I were that dedicated/committed to blowing myself to kingdom come, and taking as many people as possible with me, (which I must emphasise to the hard-of-thinking I am most certainly not) then fuck it, the rail station entrance hall is as good a place as any. And ooh look, the chance to take out three or four policemen as well. Bonus.
Would stop-and-search have been of any use in the current wave of so-called ‘attacks’. Would it bollocks. Well, unless they’ve a method for using stop-and-search against oncoming burning vehicles, or ones being driven at speed towards the station.
And when all’s said and done, that’s what I object to – the fact that the entire thing is just staged shit to make people ‘feel’ more secure. It’s got no practical use whatsoever. Maybe iit would’ve had some use f I’d started sweating, or praying, or some other massive giveaway. I doubt it though.
Photographic Memory
Posted: Wed 4 July, 2007 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the last few days, I’ve been going through the archives of my photos, all the way back to 2002. In many ways it’s been quite interesting, looking at the way things have developed (pardon the pun) over that time, and the differences in the way I take photos.
At the same time, though, it’s also interesting to see that even back at the start, I was getting images that I was (and still am) proud of, and happy to have prints of up on the walls. I guess that that’s the real sign of being able to get the essential images – that it doesn’t matter what gear is being used, whether it’s a low-end digital compact, a super-zoom ‘bridge’ camera, or a semi-professional DSLR. And I suppose the corollary is that it’s also just as easy to get ropy images whatever equipment you use – god knows, I’ve got any number of those!
I suppose I could go back through the archive and spend some time deleting the really bad stuff, the blurred fuzzy out-of-focus ones and so on. But sometimes even those can bring back memories, regardless of how much I wince and wish I’d taken a better shot at the time. At the same time, it’s good to go through them, and firstly get a reality check – while the majority of the stuff I’ve taken is at least ‘OK’, there’s still a lot that’s really bloody bad, and maybe one in ten, or one in twenty that’re really good, but also to look at ways I can improve in the future.
The archive as a whole has its uses. It reminds me of ideas and locations, and gives me inspiration for future ideas. There are at least two complete sets where I just want to go back, revisit the location and/or client, and do a better job with the improved gear I have at my disposal. Also, it gives me a huge repository of files that I can work on to improve my skills with either Photoshop or PhaseOne.
Does my archive depress me? Hell no, even with the seriously bad photos. And even then, I know there are also plenty of really good ones that are certainly of printable quality, and that people (either ourselves, or others) like to have on their walls. And to me, that’s what it’s all about.
Two Titled
Posted: Sat 30 June, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Cynicism, Sweary, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite a fan of the books by Richard Morgan – I’ve read (and re-read) all of his stuff so far: Altered Carbon, Woken Furies, Broken Angels, and Market Forces.
So I was fairly high on the purchase list for the new novel, Black Man, and read it when I received it.
Between ordering Black Man a while back, and the time it (finally) got delivered, I noticed that there was another Richard Morgan novel coming out – also in hardback, but two months later than Black Man. This one was called ‘Thirteen’ (Or ‘Th1rte3n’, if you believe the typography) so, like the fanboy I so obviously am, I ordered that too. Great, two novels in a short time – that explains the delay in releasing Black Man, and how long it’s taken the new stuff to come out.
I received ‘Thirteen’ (sorry, I just can’t be arsed with the typographical nancing about) yesterday. And it turns out it’s just ‘Black Man’ with a different title and cover.
To me that’s a pretty scummy way to do things. I don’t know if it’s been decided that ‘Black Man’ is a title that won’t sell, or something. But I would have thought it better to have some form of notification that it was actually a rebranded title, rather than alienating Morgan’s readers, and making the book purchasers feel like shit-for-brains arsehats who’ve been taken for a ride and bought two copies of the same fucking book.
Features and Functionality
Posted: Fri 22 June, 2007 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Thoughts 1 Comment »When I wrote about upgrading/changing my phone, Gordon commented that he’d rather put up with repeated crashes rather than a phone operating system that’s just broken and overly-complicated. Then again, that’s his fault for buying a Samsung. *grin*
When I got the XDA, I had some specific reasons for getting it. (As well as the geeky “it’s got a slide-out keyboard!” factor, of course) At the time, the laptop I had was old, slow, and didn’t have built-in wireless access. It made sense to have another device that could get emails etc., and – more importantly – open attachments from clients in MS Word, Excel and the like. In addition, the ability to use the XDA in order to write emails on the move without getting Texter’s Thumb along the way was – at the time – a massive advantage. Add in the ability to link to a wireless network, and it was a winner. I could tolerate the constant silent crashes, because the additional functionality of the phone was important to me.
Since then, I’ve upgraded the laptop (and the PC, but that’s another thing) to one that has built-in wireless. And at that point, a lot of my main requirements for the XDA disappeared. I no longer needed it if I was out-and-about, because the laptop connected up, and meant that any client documents etc. could be viewed far more easily than they could on the XDA. And when I started using the XDA just for phone calls and text messages, the constant silent crashes rapidly became a hindrance, and then a pain in the arse.
Now, with the K800i, I can’t read attached documents. I don’t have Wi-Fi access on the phone. I can’t use SSH and PuTTY to connect to a website, or a server, and do some work via the phone. (And yes, geek that I am, I have done that on several occasions with the XDA) But – and this is the important bit – I don’t need to. I’ve got the laptop for that. OK, it’s not as svelte and tiny as the XDA (Ha, not that that’s a revelation) but it does the work I need it to.
The K800i makes calls, takes calls, and sends and receives text messages. It takes photos – admittedly, fairly impressive 3.2Mp ones – not that I use the camera on a phone that much anyway. I can still send and receive email on it if I want to, and it’s got a whole bundle of other functions and features that I may or may not use as time goes on. What it doesn’t do is crash. (So far, anyway) I don’t have to worry that using the camera is going to make it lock up and need a full reboot. I don’t have to worry about whether it’s keeled over silently when I’m expecting a call or a message.
It’s “just” a phone.
And that’s exactly what I wanted.
Address Migration
Posted: Thu 21 June, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky, Getting Organised, Technology, Thoughts 1 Comment »One of the things that always infuriates me when I get a new phone is the sheer hassle that’s always present when it comes to moving the address book (and/or contacts) from one to the other. For some reason it’s just never as simple as it could/should be.
Of course, there’s the ‘classic’ option, of saving all the contacts onto the SIM card instead of on the phone. But if you actually use the contacts and address book, then you need them to be on the phone – the SIM just holds ‘name &number’ data. So if you have a contact called (for example) Tom, and he has a home phone, work phone, mobile, and email, that’s four records on the SIM. On the phone, it’s one record – which is, of course, how it should be.
But I’m yet to find a phone that has a simple “Send all the contacts from this phone to another one” – whether that’s by Messaging, Bluetooth, IR, or anything else. Even (or, perhaps, particularly) Windows Mobile can’t manage this task – it can send your contacts one at a time, so why can’t it do all of them in one big bundle of data?
In fairness to Windows Mobile®, it does synchronise with MS Office on a PC. Fortunately, so does my new phone. So I could connect the XDA to the PC, synch all the contacts off the phone into MS Outlook , disconnect the XDA, connect the K800i (which, of course, also has a completely different cable) and synch the contacts out of Outlook onto the K800i. But all the same, what a faff.
Is it really that difficult to handle phone contact transfers?
I know (before Gordon says it) that this is one of those events where user-centred design would work really nicely. I don’t care how the phone transfers the address book – I want it to Just Work™, without being a nightmare faff of cables, or one-by-one data transfers. Just one simple ‘Move my address book to another phone’ option – or perhaps even a first-use option (i.e. one where the process is part of the initial phone set-up) that simply says “Copy the address book from your old phone?” – and if you choose it, you get to choose whether the data transfer is done by IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, or something else. (Bluetooth is the ideal candidate, of course, with WiFi a close second).
Is that too much to ask?
Purple
Posted: Mon 18 June, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts 5 Comments »On Saturday, I took delivery of a pair of probably the most butt-ugly shoes in history. The Crocs® Cayman. In purple.
Thankfully, they’re amazingly comfortable – which kind of makes up for being a) butt-ugly and b) fluorescent purple.
Even better, they’re actually ideal for what I wanted – a kind of hard-sole house-shoe, so that I can wander about the house, go into the garden, or out on the drive or whatever, and not have to worry about keeping on changing shoes. And for that, they’re perfect.
But man they’re ugly. Definitely not everyday wear, or really for wearing outside the house.
@Media Day One – thoughts
Posted: Mon 11 June, 2007 Filed under: @Media2007, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 2 Comments »For the Thursday, these are the presentations I saw…
- Jesse James Garrett : Beyond Ajax
- Molly E. Holzschlag : Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem
- Nate Koechly : High Performance Web Pages
- Dan Cederholm : Interface Design Juggling
- Mark Boulton : Five Simple Steps to Better Typography
- Joe Clark : When Accessibility Is Not Your Problem
*Clicky* on the ‘more’ link to see what I thought…
Read the rest of this entry »
@Media – First thoughts
Posted: Sun 10 June, 2007 Filed under: @Media2007, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »So, @Media 2007. Was it any good?
The short answer? Yes, absolutely. Was it worth the (roughly) £700 for it ?(including the price of the conference, hotel for two nights, and train ticket etc.) Again, to me, a resounding yes. Mind you, I just wish that- when you consider the amount of money spent per person– for the conference, the food wasn’t such generic slop, despite being a different supplier to last year. Then again, I said that last year too…
That’s the basic summary – I’ll be writing more over the next couple of days about the presentations I saw, and some thoughts about them. Call me Mr Comprehensive…
Ulterior Motives
Posted: Sat 9 June, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Offensive Repetition, Thoughts 1 Comment »I truly don’t care one jot about Big Brother at the best of times. So far I think I’ve seen maybe 30 seconds of the new series, while flicking through channels.
I truly disliked the entire hysteria and unpleasantness around the racism claims from the last season of Celebrity Big Brother, although to some degree I also find the current paranoia about any further racism claims to be very funny, especially when one considers that the initial plan for Big Brother was to show people “as they truly are”.
However, in this week’s micro-fight about racism, I find it truly objectionable that the story has given all the media the supposed ‘right’ to print an offensive slur, and all the while dress it up as “news”.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
Ouchy
Posted: Wed 6 June, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »A couple of weeks back, because of moving and so on, I shoved a safety razor in a pocket in my bag, so that if/when I got too stubbly, I could have a quick shave when I got in to work, and look at least vaguely human.
I then forgot about it.
Last night, on the train, I was looking for my headphones and shoved my hand into the pocket on my bag. Suddenly, I remembered the safety razor in there. But only after I’d managed to shave a layer off the pad of my little finger, which is now suspiciously flat.
It bled like a bastard, unsurprisingly, but is all OK, except for being extremely painful on occasion. It’s got a poxy big plaster over it, so it’s safe, but does get knocked all the time. And just before going to @Media tomorrow, as well. Typical.
My name’s Lyle, and I can be a right twonk sometimes.
2012 Logo
Posted: Mon 4 June, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Thoughts 5 Comments »OK, now just what the fuck is the new logo for the London 2012 Olympics supposed to be representing?
The old logo with the outline of the Thames running through it at least made sense.
This one looks more like a four-year-old has been playing with pink post-it® notes and scissors…
EDIT : Ok, having looked at the logo a bit more, I can now discern the ‘2012’ in the pink bits of the logo. So it makes a bit more sense now. Still looks like shite to me though. Then again, I’m neither a designer nor a marketer.
New Environments
Posted: Mon 21 May, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »Over the weekend – and on other occasions recently – I’ve been taking Hound out for walks around the place we’ll be moving to, and I have to say, it’s going to be a massive difference from either Bracknell or Attleborough.
The new place is really quite rural – we’ve got fields within 50 yards of the front and side of the house – and we’re precisely one house from the end of the village. When I take Hound out round the fields, there’s no traffic noise, and hardly any noise of other people. All you get to hear, really, are the occasional tractor, a lot of birdsong, and the occasional peacock. (There’s a colony of them somewhere in the village) When we’re walking, we usually get to see pheasants, partridges, loads of rabbits, and various less interesting birds. On occasion we’ve already seen jays, hares, and a green woodpecker.
In some ways it seems amazing to me, the way I’ve changed in the last couple of years, having lived in Manchester for five years, then moving to a far smaller town (Bracknell) at the start of 2006, then to a market town (Attleborough) at the end of ’06, and now to a village that has – at most – 100 houses all told. And all in the space of eighteen months.
Truth be told, I don’t mind at all. Manchester was great for the life I had at the time, particularly being able to go to concerts pretty much when I wanted, with no real need for planning, and for general access to stuff, it was never somewhere I could see myself staying long-term. If I’m honest, I think even five years was a bit of a shock, and went past the expected timescale for being there. As for Bracknell and Attleborough, they’ve both always been more ‘stepping stones’ than places to make into a home. Again, I didn’t mind – I’ve never had a problem with being a bit transient, and knowing I was going to be moving on again.
In fact, in some ways the new place is more of a change for me than anywhere else has been. It’s more permanent – it’s the first place I’ve owned (well, joing owner, but you know what I mean) as opposed to renting, and because of that it means I don’t have to see things any more in six-month installments. We’re making massive changes to the place, and that’s good – it’s a lot of work at the moment, (as my back is telling me this morning) but we’re definitely getting there – and in the long run, it’ll be worth it.
As always, there’s still a long way to go. But with the current changes, things feel like they’re beginning to settle into the way they should be, and into the way I/we want them to.
And of course, with walks like that all round us, and the expanse of garden in the new place, there’s no way Hound’s going to object, either.
