Recycling
Posted: Fri 7 October, 2005 Filed under: Domestic, General, Green 1 Comment »Over the course of this year, I’ve got more and more into recycling and general Green stuff. I’ve always been into it to a degree, but I found that while living in Manchester it was something that was seriously difficult to do, as there were no decent local recycling banks, and the paper-recycling collection was – well, sporadic, to say the least. In fact, there was little to no chance to recycle stuff while I lived there – something I hope has changed a bit now, but while I was there it was definitely difficult to do.
Since moving to Bracknell though, it’s become a lot easier. First of all, the council actually do a regular collection of recyclable stuff, and just that simple fact makes it all a lot easier. We can get rid of all our cardboard, paper, and plastics in this way, and they collect once a fortnight. On the alternate weeks, they do a “garden waste” collection, which goes off to be composted – although they charge for the bags in which to put the waste, which always strikes me as a bit of a scam, considering the amount we’re already paying for council tax, which includes rubbish collection. Still, we don’t use that one that much, as most of our garden waste goes back on the compost heap anyway.
Herself is also a fairly avid recycler and so on, so the garden already had a serious compost heap (well, one of the plastic compost bins, which then ended up being two bins as one was always full, and has now become a proper heap in its own container) where most of the garden waste and raw food waste went (veg peelings and the like) and the basic stuff was already in place, containers for the plastics, papers, etc., so in that way as well it’s now a lot easier to do the recycling stuff than before.
Of late, we’ve also been watching the BBC series “No Waste Like Home“, which has made for interesting viewing, and helped to show just how much people in general chuck away that can be recycled.
As a result, we’ve also just bought a wormery from a company called Wiggly Wigglers (I swear I’m not making this up) which will also help on breaking down food waste (both cooked and raw) into decent compost. We set it up last night, and so far it’s all looking pretty good.
I’m sure there’ll be more posts about this kind of thing as time goes on, so I’m also going to add in a new category, just titled “Green”.
Anti-tourism
Posted: Thu 6 October, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 4 Comments »Reason #3,401 to not visit Florida. 20 foot long Burmese Pythons that try to kill and eat an alligator.
OK, not a great result for either of them, but still – definitely a reason to avoid the everglades in my opinion…
Wordage
Posted: Thu 6 October, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 2 Comments »In a fit of truly sad “I wonder…”, observant readers will have noticed that there’s a little wordcount thing over there –>
It probably won’t last long, but I was having a bit of a statisticky moment, having just passed that 3,000th post, so I thought it might be somewhat interesting. Of course, it’s not really, and it’s of no use to anyone except me. But all the same, well, I thought I’d find out.
In other news, I’m now a lot more familiar with some of how WordPress works, so that much-mooted anti-sweary “worksafe” version may just come into being at some point soonish. Maybe. If you’re lucky.
Alleyway
Posted: Wed 5 October, 2005 Filed under: Charm School 5 Comments »The Scenario : Lunch-hour, and I have to go through a narrow alleyway, populated on both sides by shops. In the middle (both lengthwise and widthwise) of the alley, two couples have met up, and decided to have a natter. A side-effect of this is that, of course, they’ve completely blocked the alleyway, so no-one else can get through – and there’s no easy/quick way to get round them either. Selfish blinkered tossers.
“Excuse Me.”
[ absolutely no response. Not a dickie-bird.]
“Excuse Me.”
[ again, nothing. Obviously I am a speck of dirt on a shoe ]
“OY! Deafarse! Get out the bloody way!”
[They move, to much tutting. As I go past I hear…]
“No bloody manners, these people today”
“Well, perhaps if older people had some manners themselves, and moved their arses instead of blocking up pathways and then ignoring people politely asking them to move, then people wouldn’t fucking swear at you. You twat.”
That rumbling noise you hear in the background? It’s the head teacher of the Charm School spinning in his grave.
Conflict
Posted: Wed 5 October, 2005 Filed under: Animals 6 Comments »I don’t know quite what’s caused it, but at the moment Psycho Cat and Hound seem to be at war. It kicked off over the weekend, while we were out. I think that Hound had been trying to sleep on the same bed as Psycho Cat, or had been annoying him in some way, but I don’t honestly know.
Anyway, Sunday evening Psycho Cat stalked into the room where Hound was wandering out about, walked up to her and slashed across the back of Hound’s legs. Vicious little git. Hound was obviously unimpressed by this, and barked at Psycho Cat. And that was the end of it.
Until 3am. Again, neither of us knows what happened exactly, as we were both asleep, but all we heard was Psycho Cat hissing, then a yelp and a bark from Hound, who then jumped on the bed. And by the time we’d got her off the bed and downstairs, Cat was fast asleep on the bed, looking smug. I suspect that Hound had been sleeping in the doorway, and the Cat wanted IN to sleep on the bed. And of course rather than stepping round Hound, or anything simple, the psychotic little twat belted Hound.
Monday night was quiet – a state of truce existed…
This morning (we’re talking 5.30am) that truce apparently died. I’m not sure what got into Psycho Cat, but he was bouncing off the walls, scratching carpets, jumping around, the lot. Normally this means his food’s not down (or not in the right place – I kid ye not) so I got up, sorted that out, and went back to bed. That didn’t stop Psycho Cat though, who kept on bouncing round the place. All went quiet, and then Hound started barking.
I suspect that Cat got bored, went downstairs to where Hound was sleeping at the bottom of the stairs, whacked her again, then stalked out the back door. Probably stopping just outside the cat-flap so that Hound could see him. That’s about the norm.
Hopefully at some point peace will again reign. In the meantime, I suspect at least a couple more disturbed nights will be heading our way…
Dubious
Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Why is this news?
Sometimes the sheer triviality of the cult of “celebrity” leaves me utterly cold, and more than slightly befuddled.
3,000
Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts Leave a comment »Bloody hell, this is the 3,000th post on d4d™. That’s going some. I know that the actual post ID is something like 3,020, but there’s been posts I’ve started writing and then deleted, and that sort of thing, which knackers the numbering system. However, WP has a “you have written xxx posts, and that says that this one is number 3,000 – so that’s what I’m going with.
Looking back over the archives, I find it interesting to see just how much d4d™ has changed over the three years it’s been writing. There’s been a lot of progress, both in writing style, and in the life behind the writing. (ooh, check that out for semi-pretentious. Get me, indeed. Heh)
The last year in particular has held one hell of a lot of changes. This time last year I was still working for the Council of the Damned alongside Stinky. I was travelling on most weekends to see Herself, which helped stress-levels both a) go up while travelling, and b) go down once I’d got there. (As a small aside, I’ve just noticed that it’s less than 13 months since I did post #2000, that’s something like 3 posts a day on average over the last year.) I was looking at moving away from Manchester, although we hadn’t decided on what the domestic situation would be once I’d done so.
Over the last twelve months I’ve become a lot more settled, moved, sorted out a lot of stuff, passed the driving test, got myself out of debt, folded up the old company completely, and had two jobs. I’m a lot calmer than I was, and less ranty – although a lot of stuff still bugs me.
I wonder what’ll happen in the next 1,000 posts?
Speeding
Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions, Thoughts 3 Comments »Last night had one part that was kind of fun.
Going along the dual-carriageway to pick up Herself from her night out (damn, knew this driving lark had a downside! *grin*), I was going past a whole row of cars, although still “only” doing 70 when there’s a whole rain of blue flashing lights in the mirror. Fark – having only just passed, I’m only allowed 6 points before I have to go through the entire malarkey again.
So I check the speedo, and yes, I’m only going 70. OK, the buggers can’t be after me. Fucketty shit he’s coming up fast. And bugger, there’s a whole shitload of cars on the left, so I can’t pull in safely to let him past.
Sod it, speed up – he’s going somewhere else, and if I get stopped for speeding, I can pretty much justify it.
85mph past the traffic, straight back into the left lane, and whoosh, off he goes into the night. Thank chuff for a car that’s got some poke…
Speed of Communications
Posted: Tue 4 October, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness Leave a comment »After the conversation today, I’m beginning to suspect that either a)Argos exists in a different dimension to the rest of the world, or b) they’re a bunch of fucktard cunts with the technical skills of a slightly retarded marmoset. Or c) Both.
I’ve ordered a new sofa-bed for the spare bedroom – a long story I can’t be arsed to go into now, but it was needed – and ordered it from Argos. No particular reason, other than that they had one we liked. Which, when all’s said and done, is as good a reason as any.
The first insult-to-injury moment comes when the website says “This item is only available for home delivery” – fair enough, I don’t want to load a sofa-bed plus mattress etc into a Ford Focus – and I can see that this kind of thing would take up room in the shop warehouse, so great, deliver it directly to me. “Delivery costs £5 extra”. Cunts. Charging me to deliver something I can’t collect from the store – not just because it’s a hassle, but because you won’t stock it in the shops is taking the piss. But hey ho, it’s only a fiver. I can live with that.
So I ordered it. Easy. Except no confirmation comes through to my email address – it should do, they say they’ve sent one. And I can’t log back in using the email address I thought I’d given them, which means I’ve probably fucked it up. I call the customer helpline…
“Oh, don’t worry, the order’s gone through, but sometimes we it takes two days to send out the email”
“Eh? You’re taking the piss. Two days to send an email?”
“No, that’s right. It can take two days. It takes at least twenty-four hours for your customer account to be sorted out too.”
“But I did it all online – the information’s in the bloody database already!”
“Yeah, but it still takes time to set up…”
I despair. Bunch of idiots in a parallel dimension, I’m sure of it.
High Street
Posted: Mon 3 October, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last couple of weeks (probably longer, but I’ve noticed this to think about only in the last fortnight or so – so there!) I’ve noticed a bundle of stories about how major “high street” stores are yet again burbling on that sales are down in the high street, that people are buying less, we’re heading for a recession, blah, blah, blah.
Anyway, it’s made me do some thinking. Not a common occurrence, admittedly – but hey, it still happens on occasion.
So – OK, sales in “the high street” may be down – but do reports like this take into account the number of people who now prefer to buy things online, rather than queueing in the shops behind a bunch of people for whom the description “thicker than pig-shit” would be a step up? I know I do this – in fact there’s very little that’s “easier” to buy in a shop than it is using (archaic expression alert) e-commerce. Books and music? That’ll be Amazon then. (Or Play.com, but more often Amazon) Getting photos printed etc.? Photobox ahoy. OK, clothes are easier to buy in a shop, but I’ve even been doing more of that kind of shopping on-line too.
So – is it a looming recession? Or is it more that the market assessors and so on actually still rely on a source of information that’s outmoded as more people go for the simpler option?
Dedication (‘s what you need)
Posted: Mon 3 October, 2005 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »Over the weekend, we went to a dedication for the youngest son of one of our friends. All well and good, it’s one of those things that you go to when friends have families. After all, this was the second one we’ve been to this year, although this time just as friends rather than either of us playing a “bigger role”, as it were.
On this occasion it was combined with a harvest festival thing, and the entire church genre was the one occasionally (well, chez Lyle anyway) known as “Happy Clappy”. In fairness to the entire thing, it was a lot more fun than the standard stoic po-faced type of service, but in some ways I find myself becoming oddly traditional. I’m not a churchgoer normally (hey, you’d never have guessed, would you?) but if I were, I’d prefer the more stoic stuff – to my mind it’s supposed to be about serious things, and a more serious perspective on life, and the Happy Clappys seem to be more of a Kid’s TV version. Tabloid vs. Broadsheet Religion, if you will.
Anyway, all this to the side, the actual event was quite fun. Well, I haven’t found myself giggling quite so hard in a long time. Some of the hymns were truly godawful, and of the “Rogers and Hammerstein” rhyming school. (“Raise your hands to Jesus / he’s the one who frees us” being one memorable example) The more – to me – disturbing aspect was the selection of Happys who also raised one arm for the choruses (chorii?) in order – apparently – to show how devout they were. It all struck me as either a) very American in it’s outlook, or b) very reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s films of Nazi Germany, with whole bunches of the crowd/congregation/whatever stood there reverently raising one arm at 45°. Quite spooky.
In fact, I think that’s what worries me the most about the Happy Clappy types – they’re all so bloody vocal. Fair enough, they do what suits them, and who am I to argue? But I found myself expecting to hear the audience doing the full-on Blues Brothers-esque church revival “Praise the Lord!” schtick.
But at the end of the day, I suppose the entire thing did bring some kind of belief to me. In fact, come the prayers, all I could say was “Dear God, is it over yet?“.
Expensive Hobby
Posted: Mon 3 October, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Having just ordered some of the things I forgot when I went to Quicks, I’ve now spent just under £600 on archery, and have so far had exactly one session using the bow etc.
Of course, that average should now change quite rapidly – I’m going to be going to one of the local archery clubs on a regular basis, and don’t intend to spend any more on equipment for a good few months. But all the same, getting started on this one has most definitely not been cheap…
Arching
Posted: Sat 1 October, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »The archery session went ahead last night, and all went well. I’ve got a stonking bruise on my arm where the string hit it a couple of times (I may even post up a photo of it, you never know) and my shoulders ache like a bastard, but that’s just through exercise they haven’t had in far too many years.
The bow’s bloody good though, and I’m really pleased with how easily everything came together. I’ve got to get a couple more things from the Archery place, but in the meantime all’s well, and I’m really pleased with how well it all clicked back into place.
So yes, who knows, perhaps even some serious competitive shooting in 2006…
Unavailable
Posted: Sat 1 October, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thoughts 5 Comments »I don’t know why, but on several occasion this week, d4d™ has been coming up on my browser as “connection refused” or even “does not exist”. I suspect it’s been happening to other people as well – because my readership figures are at about 75% of the ones from the rest of the month, which I guess is pretty significant.
If you’ve had this problem at all, can you let me know? (I know you haven’t had it this time, or you wouldn’t be reading the page, but hey, I’m sure you’ll figure it out) I want to know a bit more before I go chasing up 34sp.com about it all…
Bow-legged
Posted: Fri 30 September, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »Well, with all things being well, I should be finally getting to start myself up on the archery front again tonight. Since buying the bow a couple of weeks back, I’ve either been manically busy, or simply timings haven’t conspired to make it possible to get to any of the local clubs. It’s been a pain in the neck, because I’ve been wanting to do it, but everything’s worked against it.
Even now, if it starts raining I could be shit out of luck. I hope not – but it’s possible.
We’ll just have to see…
Disorganised
Posted: Fri 30 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »For some reason, this week I’ve been incapable of actually organising myself properly at all. A prime example of this would be that I had a day where I’d simply a) forgotten to charge up my phone, then realised this in the morning, thought “I’ll put the charger in my bag”, followed by b) utterly and completely forgetting to pick up the charger. And there’ve been things like that all week.
Last night I took my headphones home for the first time in ages, as we were going to the gym and I needed them for the MP3 player. Only I forgot the MP3 player. This morning I’ve remembered the MP3 player but – you’re way ahead of me here, aren’t you? – I’ve left the bloody headphones at home.
Fortunately, my work stuff has been a lot more organised, so it’s only the domestic bit that’s chaotic. Hopefully I’ll be far more together after the weekend, although I’m not currently convinced of this…
Hep C
Posted: Fri 30 September, 2005 Filed under: Cynicism, Health, Thoughts 3 Comments »The BBC today has been banging on about how Britain is ‘failing’ on Hepatitis C, and failing to diagnose it in the majority of cases.
Now OK, I’m sure I’m just being thick here, but how can a story say something like this?
[the study estimated] 500,000 UK people had the virus, which attacks the liver, but only one in seven knew. Only 1-2% of those with the disease in the UK had been identified and treated with approved drugs, which can cure between 60-80% of those treated, it said.
They estimate 500,000 people may have the virus, but they don’t know. I don’t see how you can come up with such a seemingly arbitrary figure as “we’re only diagnosing 2%” (or 10%, or 20% – the figure doesn’t matter) – because in honesty you have no fucking idea how many people actually carry the virus. That “2% diagnosed” could actually be 50% of the people with the virus – you don’t know, because you haven’t bloody well diagnosed them all.
Short of making it a compulsory test – and that would be too expensive to be feasible, I suspect – the figures are bollocks, and it all comes down to hype.
Or am I missing something relevant?
Kyoto
Posted: Thu 29 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Is it just me that finds it rather amusing that the scientists currently banging on about the Arctic ice shrinking far faster than it should be are Americans, and thus part of the nation that refuses to acknowledge that it needs to reduce it’s emissions of greenhouse gases and the like?
From the article…
“The melting and retreat trends are accelerating,” Ted Scambos, of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said in a statement released by the university. The results have not yet been published in a scientific journal.
“The one common thread,” Scambos said, “is that Arctic temperatures over the ice, ocean and surrounding land have increased in recent decades.”
The scientists stopped short of directly blaming the melting trend on global warming but said they have few other explanations at this point.
Course Thoughts
Posted: Thu 29 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 3 Comments »Well, the course went OK last night. It’s weird being back in an environment that just feels very like being back at school, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
In the meantime, I’m more and more convinced that accountants arse actually sorcerers, and double-entry book-keeping is either a) a black art or b) accountants making shit look far more complicated than it needs to be, in order to justify the amounts they can charge. I haven’t yet decided which of these it is, or perhaps it’s actually both.
Time will tell.
Back to Skool
Posted: Wed 28 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Tonight’s the first night in our ten-part course on book-keeping. I’ve no idea what to expect, having successfully avoided any proper “educashunal” environments for the best part of fifteen years now.
Still, it’s something that’ll be useful, and I’ve already paid for it, so it’s worth going (although I’m going to miss one episode through being in Amsterdam, from the look of it) and seeing how we do. And with luck it’ll all go some way to fuelling a desire to go back and do other stuff in the other terms, and next year or whatever. We’ll see.
I’ll write more about it either tonight or tomorrow, along with some thoughts etc.
Charm School
Posted: Wed 28 September, 2005 Filed under: Charm School 2 Comments »Today, a woman walked straight into my side as she dithered around the shop. The following conversation took place…
Woman : You should watch where you’re going!
Me : If I’d realised you were bloody stupid, I would’ve.
Yet again, the charm school is thankful it refused to take me on…
WW
Posted: Tue 27 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, General, Thoughts 2 Comments »Today’s post contained a serious goodie – well, two goodies if you count the photos from the weekend’s Murder Mystery Party.
But no, the main goodie came from Amazon, that I’d (almost) forgotten I’d ordered – Season Six of “The West Wing“, which hasn’t even made it onto E4 yet over here, let alone Channel 4. Yes, I could’ve downloaded the episodes, and watched them after they came out, and I could even do the same with the current Season Seven, but I either keep forgetting, or can’t be arsed – I know it’ll come out over here as a box-set, so why hurry and then have to wait even longer?
Still, it does mean we’ve got plenty to watch over the oncoming darker nights.
And yes, I suppose I could/should wait ’til my birthday for this kind of thing when it’s come out barely a month before, but well, some things can’t wait. The West Wing is one of them. Sad, but true.
Despair
Posted: Tue 27 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »For some reason unknown to all but themselves, I’ve recently been getting a lot of contacts from a couple of IT agencies (I won’t name them here, because why should I give them any credit? Instead I shall name them Aldous and Regressive – which should be enough of a clue for any other IT people who read this…) about jobs in Manchester. Now, I told all the agencies I deal with (including Aldous and Regressive) that I had moved – and let’s face it, we’re talking nine months ago here, so you’d think they might have had time to alter their records by now.
Anyway, yesterday I got emails from both companies, despite repeatedly telling them by phone and email that I a) had moved, and b) wasn’t looking for work. You’d think that was fairly blunt, wouldn’t you?
But oh no, not in Regressive’s case. Instead, I got the following reply.
Thanks for the update- where are you now looking for work? Regressive has offices across the Uk and Europe and we would be more than happy to keep you posted about other suitable roles.
Kind regards
Sometimes agencies are just too bloody thick to be believed.
Murderous
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »
Over the weekend, as I commented earlier, Herself & I organised and went to a Murder Mystery Party, held in honour of Herself’s mum’s birthday. (Knowing she reads this on occasion, I won’t mention the age…) As part of this, we’d ordered (and received) the Murder in the Wild West pack, which made a lot of the organisation one hell of a lot easier.
There are some very important things to know about these Murder Mystery parties-
- It really does help if everyone gets properly involved, and dresses up “in theme” for them- in this case, everyone did, and it added a whole dimension to the evening
- I don’t know about the others, but “Wild West” is definitely not for the prudish and polite. Some of the humour in it is decidedly adult, and close to the knuckle in places
- It’s best to have one person “extra” to act as host, and organise the other stuff, otherwise it has the potential to be bloody chaotic
- Finally, it’s recommended that there should be large amounts of alcohol on hand
It also helps to have at least one person (and ideally a couple of people) incapable of taking the entire thing seriously, and – in this case at least – adding a bundle of humour as the World’s Campest Indian.(and yes, he’s going to kill me for putting up the photo) The character started off as “lowerwatha”, which was OK – but then a certain person who shall remain nameless (OK, OK, it was me) used the name “‘iyawatha”, with the ‘iya! done very high-pitched and camp. Despite repeated threats of violence against my person (and tackle) Mr. Watha ended up taking this and turning into a high-pitched Camp Indian. Politically correct? Hell, no. Funny as chuff? Oh, most definitely yes.
All in all, the entire evening was highly successful. I haven’t laughed so much in ages – not just at Mr Watha, but also at General Custard’s wig, which was straight off the Monkees, and many other things beside. My ribs hurt in the morning. Of course, the alcohol helped too.
Based on a sample of one, the Murder Mystery sets are bloody good, and we’ll definitely be making use of at least one more, I think.
Let there be light
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News 6 Comments »Now I have to say, this is a pretty cool idea – one of those where everyone suddenly goes “Why didn’t I think of that?!?”
Hereditary
Posted: Mon 26 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Stupidity and daftness run in my family, I’m sure of it.
My brother spent the weekend surfing – off the coast of North Wales, which even he admits was “effing cold”. I spent Saturday taking party in a “Murder in the Wild West” mystery party. (of which more later)
There’s not even any real hope for me in the future – the party was for Herself’s mum, who is currently slightly laid-up, having broken her ankle in two places getting off her narrowboat in order to tie it up while they went through a lock.
I don’t know about “Misery loves company”, but Insanity sure as hell does.
Bye
Posted: Sat 24 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »RIP to my old company – I got it removed from Companies House earlier this month, and today the web-space and domain name have died the death too.
So, should I decide to go self-employed again at any point, it’s going to be started from scratch. In many ways, though, that’s a good thing. It leaves my options a lot wider than they have been.
But all the same, it does feel like the final closing of a chapter…
Henman
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »BBC Story : Henman says “I may quit” – since when is this news? He does that in every competition he enters…
Arses
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s going to be one of those days today. The ineffable tossers at TicketMaster sent out an email today containing an offer that – for once – was actually going to be of use to me, as it involved tickets for a new London show at half price. Perfect for Mother’s birthday in late November, in fact.
So I went to order them, typed in the password that was on the page they gave me, and an error message popped up. “That password doesn’t exist on our system”, sayeth the message. “Oh bugger”, thoughteth I, “must’ve typed it wrong”. But no – repeated tried later, it’s still knackered.
I finally got hold of ticketmaster on the phone, to be confronted with what can only be described as an idiot. “You must have an offer code, or I can’t enter it”. “There isn’t one on the email ticketmaster sent out, nor on the web-page”. “There must be – I can’t enter the offer without the code”. So forth, so fifth. Yes, another prize twunt-monkey employed by Twuntmaster.
Eventually, a supervisor comes on the line. “Yeah, the password was entered wrongly. We’re sorting it out now.”
And lo, job done – but surely it’s better to let the front-line frigmonkeys know that there’s a problem, rather than ending up with pissed-off customers, and complaints?
Mickey D’s
Posted: Fri 23 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »This one’s been brewing since last weekend – you have been warned!
Currently, there’s an advert on TV for McDonalds, telling everyone about their “great” new toasted deli sandwiches, “freshly prepared on the premises”. (In fact, it says it on the website too – “Did you know that our Deli sandwiches are freshly made on the spot?“) OK, all fair and good.
On the weekend, on our way down to Portsmouth/ Waterlooville, we ended up stopping at a McDonalds for the first time in ages. Now, Herself is vegetarian, which kind of limits the choices in a burger place, but all the same you don’t expect to be greeted with the response “Sorry, we don’t do veggie burgers any more, we only do these “Grilled Veggie Melt” sandwiches. Which, frankly, sucks – if you’re going to something like fucking McDonalds, you’re pretty likely to want a fucking burger, not some grilled sandwich with houmous, pitta bread, and chargrilled vegetables. It’s not rocket science, but apparently McDonalds (advised by those pious holier-than-thou cocksucker in the Vegetarian Society) have decided that vegetarians don’t want burgers, they want these godforsaken concoctions loaded with bland cheese and – having now tried one – no fucking taste whatsoever.
The secondary factor is that, for reasons known only to Herself, she doesn’t like courgette. Fair enough. These pox-arsed sandwiches are – let’s not forget – “prepared fresh on the spot”, so we can just ask for one without courgettes in, can’t we? Um, no. When they say “prepared fresh on the spot”, the bullshitting lying corporate tosswhores knows as McDonalds actually mean “we get in bags of pre-mixed vegetable concoction, and thaw it out in the morning. When you order it, we put the stuff together, which is how we can get away with calling it ‘prepared on the spot'”. So you’ve a) no choice, b) no options, and c) a diagram involving a canoe, a creek, and the exact directions to the nearest paddle-store, 100km away. Cunts.
Smooth Marketing
Posted: Thu 22 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Festering Season, Thoughts Leave a comment »
I’ve written before about the (in my opinion) really rather good company, Hotel Chocolat, who do some of the best chocolate I’ve had in a very long time.
In a similar kind of vein to Innocent, Hotel Chocolat have looked at the way people buy things, and have applied it to their company – and this is something that certainly shows up in both the way they market themselves, and the ordering process.
When you order with them, you can choose the dates you want the items to arrive – particularly in the case of things like Easter, Christmas etc. this can be really useful, as you can order well in advance, and choose to have them delivered to you immediately (so you can wrap it and send it on, or give it as a gift, I assume) or delivered straight to the recipient’s door as close to the day as possible. It doesn’t sound like much, but it shows the thought that’s gone into the process.
An example of the marketing skill came through in the post yesterday – an order form from them with a cover note that basically said “These are the people you ordered stuff for through us last Christmas – tell us what you’d like to order for them this year, and it’s all sorted” (I assume you had to pay them too, but that wasn’t mentioned in the letter) It just struck me that it was again something really simple, but that kept Hotel Chocolat in mind, and made you think “that’s actually really rather clever”.
Well, it impressed me, anyway. But I’m kind of sad like that.
Grauniad
Posted: Thu 22 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Reviews(ish), Thoughts 4 Comments »On Monday 12th September, the Guardian newspaper changed it’s paper size, reducing from the old broadsheet (AKA the “impossible to read without folding, or laying it on the floor”) to the new “Berliner” size. Still a bit bigger than normal tabloids, I find that the entire thing is a great improvement on the broadsheet, and that feeling was an immediate response, rather than the “oh, it’s new, I don’t like it” response that seemed to come from a lot of people at the time..
A lot of people weren’t impressed with the change – Mike TD wrote a fair and balanced view on the plus and minus points – although the main protests seemed to be the loss of the daily cartoon thing, “Doonesbury”. Frankly, I would have to work really hard in order to care less about things like Doonesbury. Then again, maybe I just don’t “get it” – something I’ve been accused of many times in the past.
Anyway, personally I like the new format. I always found the broadsheet Guardian to be more effort than it was necessarily worth, so I ended up not reading all of it. This was particularly true of the Saturday edition – too much guff, too much hassle. Since the re-size though, I’ve found that I read far more of the paper. It’s easier to handle without needing to have degree-level skills in Origami, and that makes the entire thing a lot more accessible. In short, I like the new size a lot more.
My only question, though, is why resize the Guardian, yet leave the Observer at the full-whack broadsheet size?
Attention Deficit
Posted: Wed 21 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 5 Comments »I find myself in somewhat of a quandary when it comes to the story of the heavily edited/abridged “100-minute bible” (helpfully described on TV this morning as “The Ronseal Bible” – it does what it says on the cover) and my response to it.
While I would never refer to myself as a Christian (even the concept of that one should have some readers wetting themselves with laughter) I have actually read the Bible from cover to cover. Hey, I was bored, what can I say? Mind you, I’ve also read the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and a couple of other major texts in a similar vein. I know that puts me in a minority, but I don’t mind – at the time I wanted to read them, and see what all the fuss was about, along with balancing out all the biggies at once. Sad, but true.
Anyway, I find myself wondering about the purpose of this 100-Minute bible. Basically, it’s “the good bits” or “the relevant bits” while getting rid of all that guff about who begat who and why. But what’s the point? If you weren’t going to read the Bible anyway, this abridged edition isn’t likely to change your mind. If you’re of Christian mind anyway (some, less charitable than I, would say this was a tautology – but I won’t be that harsh) then you’re more likely to want to have the full thing, rather than Bible-‘lite’.
Somehow, I just don’t see it being the next “Harry Potter”, with people sitting on the train reading the thing “because it’s easier to read than that big full version”. I could be wrong, but there we go.
Slight concern
Posted: Wed 21 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 3 Comments »OK, this is a geeky post par excellence, so if you’re not interested in geeky-type stuff, there’ll be a more normal post a bit later on. Otherwise, click on the more link…
Domestic Gardening
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: Domestic 2 Comments »Ouchy. I’ve just ordered £80’s worth of bulbs and plants from Suttons Seeds. Talk about domestic, plus the dubious status of the kind of post you never thought you’d see Lyle write!
Amaryllis, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocus (crocusses? crocii?), and a bundle of other stuff I can’t be arsed to write about for now. Eighty bloody quids worth. I must be mental.
Dead, not gone
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »RIP Simon Wiesenthal. “The voice of the Holocaust” indeed – I suspect that there are some old ex-Nazis sleeping safer in their beds tonight, knowing that this man is no longer with us.
Incompetence
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday was almost amusing on the trains into work. Over the weekend, the line between Reading and Ascot was having engineering work done on it, so the train service was replaced by buses. Hey ho, all part of the joys of train travel – but at least it now affects me far less than it used to.
Monday morning and the local news (both BBC and ITV) were reporting that buses were still replacing trains, due to engineering work. OK, that slightly chuffs my morning travel, but thankfully not too much. Get to the station, the ticket machines have been turned off, and there’s a sheet of paper across each one saying that due to engineering works there’s no trains, and for some godforsaken reason known only to the train operating twats, you can only buy tickets from the ticket office itself. No good reason, it just must’ve seemed like a good idea at the time. Or something.
However, getting in to the ticket hall itself, there’s people waiting on the platforms. Eh? So when I get to the Ticket Twunt behind his little bulletproof glass shield, I ask where we’re supposed to be getting the bus from, and why are there people on the platforms? “Don’t know what you mean, mate – trains are running fine today” Turns out that the fuckwit cunts have a) forgotten to take the paper off the machines, b) turn the ticket machines on, and c) tell anyone that the train service is back to what passes for normal.
Still, it made my travel that little bit easier, not having to get a bus instead. But Jesus Christ, it’s really not that difficult to sort out, is it?
Inducing Fear
Posted: Tue 20 September, 2005 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »A couple of people have commented that it seems pretty dangerous, a slightly irate and easily annoyed person such as myself now having a compound bow, arrows, etc.
I can see their point, to a degree. But let me put it this way : if I were carrying something like that around in public (and, interestingly, carrying a bow in public isn’t actually illegal – it’s certainly not a concealed weapon, and in theory if I’m just carrying it it’s not threatening behaviour either) do you think anyone would be dumb enough to get in my way and piss me off? *grin*
As far as I see it, if there were the distinct possibility of people getting hurt (i.e. my continued suggestions that everyone should be equipped with a stun-gun, and could “reward” foul behaviour or plain unutterable stupidity with a brief dollop of 40,000 volts) then people would behave better. Yes, the training might take a couple of weeks, where inconsiderate fuckwad twats still wandered in front of other people, or behaved like tossers, but once the message got through (roughly the same time as their hair stopped being frizzy, I’d reckon) they’d soon learn. Yeah sure, it’s Pavlovian, but sometimes it seems that might be the only way to teach people.
And no, I’m actually not a proponent of firearms or lethal weaponry in general. It doesn’t solve anything, and doesn’t make a society more law-abiding. Non-lethal concepts, however, now they’ve got potential…
Well Done
Posted: Mon 19 September, 2005 Filed under: Health, News 1 Comment »On a different note, I just wanted to say well done to a friend of mine, Jules, who today completed the Great North Run in 2.25 hours. I’m really pleased she made it, and completed the run successfully – although I’m still sad I didn’t make it up there for the day, but due to being epically disorganised I didn’t get round to trying to book a room ’til WAY too late.
UPDATED : Oops, knew I’d forgotten something when writing this post. Also a huge “well done” to Pix for completing her 17mile hike round the above-ground route of the Circle Line in London. Even better, it was all for a good cause.
Bugger
Posted: Mon 19 September, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts Leave a comment »OK, I’ve just decided that one thing I really need to do is organise myself a lot better. I was planning on entering a photographic competition ages ago, but had it fixed in my head that the closing date was the end of September. Having just looked at the site again, turns out it was the end of August, and the deadline was September 1st. Arses.
So yes, what with one thing and another over the last couple of weeks, I really need to start organising myself. Maybe I’ll register with Gordon‘s recommendation, Upcoming, which certainly looks like it’s pretty handy for that kind of thing!
Weekend
Posted: Sun 18 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Health 2 Comments »Well, I now own a bow. And arrows. And case, quiver, sight, tab, bracer, stabilser, etc. And I’m £520 lighter for it too. Sheesh. One of these days I might even involve myself with a sport that’s cheap. One day. Maybe.
Other than that, the store we went to in Waterlooville was OK, but Waterlooville itself is – to be frank – a fucking dump. Strange, strange place.
And the weekend has been very quiet internet-wise, as we seem to be cursed by joint problems with the wireless network and the NTL connection. Not helped by the fact that motherfucking NTL don’t even have a customer services department that’s open on a Sunday. The cuntwit tossbags. So we’re unconnected (except via a slightly shonky dial-up connection through Tiscali, of all things) until tomorrow. Gah.
So all in all, a quiet weekend, and quite an expensive one. Roll on work. Never thought I’d say that…
Compound
Posted: Sat 17 September, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the weekend, I’m intending to go down to Quicks Archery Store in Portsmouth, and sort myself out with a new compound bow, along with all the other gubbins necessary. I’m actually really rather looking forward to it.
I used to do archery about fifteen years ago, and was fairly good at it, even shooting at county competition level. In the intervening time my interest in it waned, the equipment got sold, and I moved on to other stuff.
But then we went off to Center Parcs earlier this year, and one of the activites was – you’ve guessed it – archery. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it, and as it turned out I was also still pretty good at it, so since then I’ve been thinking about getting back to being involved in it, finding out about local clubs, all that type of thing.
The limiting factor for it was not driving – a decent compound bow isn’t particularly small, nor easy to walk around with, let alone riding a bike while carrying one. But now that the test’s been passed too, it’s time to sort out everything else – and that’s what I’m doing this weekend. I’ll have more news, and possibly photos, later in the weekend.
Cutting Down
Posted: Fri 16 September, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 2 Comments »One of my regular sins/addictions is caffeine. I know I drink too much of it (drink? take? whatever), although I do regularly reduce my intake when I know it’s getting way too high. Over the last couple of months – well, all this year, to be honest – it’s been gradually increasing, and so I decided that while we were away last week, I’d reduce my intake again.
My main source for caffeine now is diet Coke®. Yes, I know it’s bad for me, and all the chemicals etc. don’t do me any real favours. However, Coke/Diet Coke® is still one of the very few drinks I actually like drinking, as opposed to the “Oh god, if I have to” feeling that comes (for me) with most drinks. And at least I no longer drink coffee, the strength of which would probably have been dissolving my insides far more than Coke can. In fact, so far as I was concerned, coffee strength was determined by a) whether it dissolved the spoon, and b) whether the coffee could be served in slices. If both conditions were fulfilled, then it was about right.
Anyway, I digress. (Hey, there’s a change to normal. Not.) My caffeine intake has now been dramatically reduced – it’s been better than halved, if I’m honest. I still drink “too much”, but it’s nowhere near the level it was at.
I’m actually quite pleased with myself for reducing the intake in this way. But equally I’m sure it’ll have a bit of a resurgence, and the cycle will begin again. No willpower, you see. *grin*
Reincarnation
Posted: Fri 16 September, 2005 Filed under: Music 1 Comment »Apparently, it’s 28 years ago today that Marc Bolan died.
And it seems that his spirit lives on with Goldfrapp, whose latest album “Supernature” I got yesterday. Wow, it’s just like glam rock revisited, and bloody ace. Well worth the money.
T minus 100
Posted: Fri 16 September, 2005 Filed under: Festering Season, Sweary 1 Comment »There are days when I really hate Diamond Geezer. Today is one of those days, and for one good reason.
Yes, he’s revealed that there are now precisely 100 days ’til the Festering Season™. I’ve already seen the fucking neon house “decorations” going up for sale, along with poxy tinsel and general Festering stuff. I despair. Now, where’s my scrooge image? (UPDATED : – ah, there he is)
Technology
Posted: Thu 15 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »Over the last few weeks it’s occurred to me that in some ways I can be a really awkward bugger. Among other things, I’m currently looking at ordering all the bits for a new PC – again, I just haven’t got round to ordering them yet, but I will, probably this weekend – which will be the first one I’ve had in about four years. Because of the stuff I do, I don’t need my PC to be constantly updated to the newest, whizziest processor/memory/graphics card – I don’t play PC games much, so I don’t need cutting-edge stuff to keep up with that market. However, the stuff I’m going to be getting for the new PC is going to be as up-to-date as possible, potentially even getting a 64-bit processor for a bit of future-proofing.
Recently, one of the guys at work got a Sony PSP, and yes, I really want one of those – it’s something I can see myself using for a variety of things. It most certainly would’ve made waiting around Thiefrow and Schiphol a lot easier this week, if nothing else!
And yet when I see Gordon‘s new 4Gb iPod Nano I just don’t feel the need or the desire for one at all. I’ve got a little MP3 player USB stick thing which holds 6 albums, and that’s all I really need. It’s nice, and it’s sufficient for my requirements.
So what kind of techie geek does that really make me?
Amsterdam
Posted: Wed 14 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »I have to say, I really did enjoy seeing bits of Amsterdam over the last couple of days. It’s always been on the “to do” list of places to go, and while the RAI isn’t the best introduction to the place, it at least gave me the chance to finally get over and see a bit of the place.
There’s a lot that I didn’t get to see, obviously, but the taster I got courtesy of “The Maddest Cabbie since Travis Bickle”™ (who seemed to take pride in jumping as many red (traffic, you perv) lights as possible as fast as possible) was enough to make me certain I wanted to return.
One other thing that I appreciated was the public transport – both the trains and the metro tram/trains were superb, on-time, quiet, and busy. The trains in particular were interesting, as they were “double-decker” ones where you got on at platform level, and then went either up or down a set of stairs. I wonder why these haven’t been used in the UK? The height didn’t appear to be that much different to the standard Virgin trains I’ve come to know and loathe so much, but they were much better, and able to carry far more people without resorting to the *ahem* “corridor seating” known to all regular Virgin travellers.
However, the taxi drivers appear (generalising from a sample of two) to be completely insane. Mind you, the roads are nightmarish, with the added joys of psychotic cyclists and street trams to deal with as well as the standard car users, so I can understand it to a degree.
Anyway, definitely a place I intend to return to before very long…
Oh Bugger
Posted: Wed 14 September, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »I hate forgetting friend’s birthdays – it’s a silly thing, but it really annoys me wen I realise I’ve done it.
Mind you, “Sorry, I was in Amsterdam” is, as these things go, a bit of a better excuse than just “Bollocks, sorry, I forgot”. Well, I think so, anyway. No idea whether they’ll feel the same though.
Going Spare
Posted: Wed 14 September, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts Leave a comment »Like the numpty twat I truly am, I managed to lose the lens-cap for my camera while we were at Wells-next-the-Sea last week. Oops. It’s meant that I can’t/won’t carry my camera around with me (and thus also didn’t get any photos while in Amsterdam) as I do tend to just chuck the camera in my rucksack and be done with it.
Anyway, I’ve just ordered a new lens-cap from Fuji, the manufacturers, and it should arrive at home by the weekend. Not bad at all, particularly for a camera they haven’t been selling for a year.
New Numbers
Posted: Sun 11 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »You know, I love getting text messages about “I’ve got a new number” – even when (as in this case) it’s signed with a name, as I don’t necessarily only know one person with that name.
Ah well, I’m sure I’ll figure it out sooner or later. Or not. Who knows.
Nightwatch
Posted: Sun 11 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News 1 Comment »The currently-elusive Dragon wrote about the film “Night Watch” (or “Nochnoy Dozor” in the original Russian) a while back, but it’s soon to be released in the UK.
And I have to say, the trailer looks stunning. Herself will despair of me – she’s not into horror stuff in particular, and vampire gubbins in particular – but this one is definitely on the “must see” list for me.
MyBookYourBook
Posted: Sat 10 September, 2005 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts 4 Comments »A while back, the BBC had a story about a new online “library” called MyBookYourBook. Herself is continually telling me I should find new ways to disperse some of my books, and this seemed like another interesting way of doing it, so I’ve signed up.
All the gubbins that came with it arrived just before we left on Holiday, so I haven’t completed it all yet – but I’ll write more when I’ve had time to use it a bit.
In the meantime, it’s certainly an interesting idea. It’s also given me a couple of ideas for the future, so I’ll have been doing some thinking about that during the week off too…
Coastal
Posted: Fri 9 September, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Travel 1 Comment »We’ve spent a fantastic day out on the north Norfolk coast, at Wells-next-the-Sea. We didn’t spend much time in the town itself, instead taking the two Hounds that we’re housesitting to the beach. And oh boy, did they enjoy it. An hour of playing in the sea – it’s amazing how many time you can chuck a Kong into the waves for two idiot Black Labs to retrieve – as well as a good long walk along the side of the beach – and they’re now knackered.
In fact, at half seven, both Chunky and Monkey were fast asleep, with Chunky actually having gone to her bed voluntarily. Most shocking, but fantastically fun.
Redistribution of Mortality
Posted: Fri 9 September, 2005 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I don’t know if it’s just me in this case, but the news about Gordon Brown announcing a plan to increase the number of vaccinations in Africa and potentially “save 10 million lives” raised a question in my mind.
If they’re saving all these lives, given the current conditions in the area, won’t this just be 10 million more people who have the potential to die from starvation/famine, instead of from measles, polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, and diphtheria?
Or am I missing a point somewhere?
Yowch
Posted: Fri 9 September, 2005 Filed under: General 4 Comments »I saw this a while back, but thought I’d delay the post, just for the hell of it really.
I defy any male to read this story about a controversial “anti-rape” female condom without wimpering slightly. The picture in the story doesn’t help much either.
The device, concealed inside a woman’s body, hooks onto a rapist during penetration and must be surgically removed.
Ms Ehlers said the rape trap would be so painful for a rapist that it would disable him immediately, enabling his victim to escape; but would cause no long-term physical damage and could not injure the woman.
Personally I think it’s a good idea, but all the same, ouchy.
Domain Names
Posted: Thu 8 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 4 Comments »Gah – nightmare. I’ve got an idea for a site that would have major potential on the social networking front, and also in a section that’s currently not being approached at all.
But can I find a suitable available domain name? Can I bollocks.
Here, inspiration. Walkies. Here boy. Come on, inspiration, where are you? Biscuits.
Dying Out
Posted: Thu 8 September, 2005 Filed under: News Leave a comment »According to one report, the great apes could all be extinct within a generation.
“All of the great apes are listed as either endangered or critically endangered,” co-author Lera Miles from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre near Cambridge told the BBC News website.
“Critically endangered means that their numbers have decreased, or will decrease, by 80% within three generations.”
Norwich
Posted: Tue 6 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »Spent most of the day in Norwich today – it’s a city that I really like in general. But Jesus Christ, the people! You just wouldn’t believe the sheer number of people who can wander around stupidly, or stop in the middle of the – narrow – path for absolutely no good fucking reason.
Still, it’s been pretty good all told – so far the week off is going pretty well, although I do find I’m still sorting out a bundle of work-related stuff. Then again, I guess if I didn’t want to look at it, I wouldn’t look at the webmail…
One Born Every Minute
Posted: Tue 6 September, 2005 Filed under: 1BEM, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Again, a title that may end up becoming a category – in fact, in this case I think it’s a certainty.
The latest piece of Barnumism is this – a “businessman” who bottles “Welsh air” for expats to breathe and (supposedly) go back to their homeland for a while. For the princely sum of – are you sitting down? – £24 per bottle.
How fucking brilliant is that? And if there are people who’ll go for this sort of crap, I’ve a lovely bridge I can sell ’em…
Time Flies (Again)
Posted: Mon 5 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Bejasus, it’s just occurred to me that in two month’s time, I’ll be thirty-bleedin’-four. Now that’s scary.
It doesn’t seem all that long since we were down at Prospect Tower in Kent for my thirty-third last November, but then again it doesn’t seem like all that long since I was seeing in my thirtieth sat on the beaches in Lanzarote either.
Time flies when you’re having fun. Or so they say.
Wireless
Posted: Mon 5 September, 2005 Filed under: News, Travel 1 Comment »Bloody encrypted wireless networks.
Not that I can say too much about them, as my own one at home is equally encrypted. But at least I know the password to that one. The one here in Norfolk is a little bit more arcane, and I haven’t yet sorted out Airsnort in order to pick up the password. Maybe later.
As it is, I’m on Herself’s Sister’s laptop, which has all the gubbins already set up (and one of the dodgierst H keys known to man) so it’s not too bad. It also means that when I do some work-related stuff (and yes, I still am doing some work-based development) it’s on my own laptop, and thus I can’t get disturbed by the temptation of using the net at the same time. Some would say this is a bad thing, but on occasion it has its uses.
Anyway, we’ve had a good time so far, a day in Norwich, and a visit to the Norfolk Police Gala, which was much the same as every other agricultural show you’ve ever been to – only without animals. That’s it. But it’s been pleasant so far, the weather’s OK, and we’re going to have a good relaxed week.
Just thought you might like to know.
Electric Sheep
Posted: Mon 5 September, 2005 Filed under: Geeky Leave a comment »via BSAG, I discovered the Electric Sheep screensaver the other day.
I’m not normally into screensavers – they either annoy me or bore me, so in general I just don’t bother. ElectricSheep is something different though. You need broadband for it, and it uses spare processor cycles when you’re off doing nothing to create yet more fractal graphic type things for when you’re using the screensaver.
In short, it’s ace.
Grey’s Anatomy
Posted: Sun 4 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Next in line to be a potentially good series? Grey’s Anatomy, on Living TV, Mondays.
The pilot episode was shown last week, and if that’s anything to go by, I think this one might just be a winner. Expect to see it on C4, E4 or Five before long…
Away
Posted: Fri 2 September, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Travel 1 Comment »Well, we’re off to Norfolk for a week. When I get back next Sunday I’m then off to Amsterdam on Monday, and not back ’til Tuesday.
So d4d™ may be a bit quiet. There’s stuff queued up to be posted, but it’s not going to be as prolific as normal. Live with it.
E111 EHI card
Posted: Fri 2 September, 2005 Filed under: Health, Travel 8 Comments »
If you’re resident in the UK, and intend to visit somewhere in the EU, you now need to get an EHI card. The old E111 form expired yesterday, so any future travel needs the new card.
Fortunately, you can apply for it online, which saves a good amount of time/bureaucracy. You do need to know your NHS or NI number for the application, but that’s no great hardship.
Or am I the only person who knows their NI number off by heart?
Gated Community
Posted: Thu 1 September, 2005 Filed under: Domestic, General Leave a comment »Earlier in the year, we started work to sort out the garden, primarily by splitting it in two, and making one half “dog-friendly” while letting the other half end up with decent grass and “human-friendly”. It’s been a fairly hefty process, involving two tons of gravel for the dog-friendly half (it’s easier to pick the dog-shite off gravel than it is in grass), a skip for removing all the turf from that half, putting in fencing to divide it all up, and some other stuff.
Over the summer we kind of took a break from it, but while we’re away next week we’ve got a friend who’s going to finish things off – stuff like putting in a new gate within the fence, which’ll finish off the divider between grass and gravel. He’s also going to do some other odds and sods – finishing off edging the flower beds with railway sleepers, that kind of thing.
Anyway, yesterday it suddenly occurred to us that with all this happening, and with us being away as of tomorrow, we’d really best buy the gate that’s going to be fitted. And of course then get a 6′ by 3′ iron gate home. In a Ford Focus.
We managed it – pure comedy, and some creative organisation/positioning, and lo, we now have a gate.
Beyond Me
Posted: Thu 1 September, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »I find stories such as the one yesterday of the woman who jumped in front of a 100mph train with her two children very hard to understand. I don’t have any particular problem with people killing themselves – I have my own beliefs on the subject, obviously, but at the end of the day I don’t have some huge ethical/moral issue with suicide.
However, I do have a problem with those who take other people with them – whether it’s their children, or simply people around them.
If you want to kill yourself, fine – personally I’ve decided it’s a chicken-shit way out, but I can understand when some people don’t believe there’s any other way out. My own experiences show that there are ways out of pretty much any situation – you “just” have to be prepared to do the work to get out. Suicide is seen as a last resort, but in my eyes it’s more about an easier way to stop all the hurt instead of doing the hard work to stop it.
But if you’re going to kill yourself, just kill yourself. Not other people, particularly those too young to have a say in it. That’s just selfish and – frankly – scummy.
Darwin
Posted: Wed 31 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes you just have to wonder what goes through people’s minds. In this case, that of a man who decided to let his 7-year old son drive the car on the M5 motorway – from the passenger seat. Dad had been drinking, but just how much do you have to drink before that seems like a good idea?
Battling On
Posted: Wed 31 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 6 Comments »Interesting idea in a story in the Guardian today. Apparently Peterborough council has had a problem with fights between “goths” and “chavs” in the city centre, and has tried to defuse it by sending them off to shoot at each other in local woodland.
In a lot of ways I hope it works – if a scheme like this can release some of the inter-clique tensions, and also take that tension out of the town centre where apparently it’s also been affecting other members of the public, then it may even be a good thing. Of course there’ll also be the lobby bleating on about how it promotes guns and blah blah blah, but if it’s done as an obvious game along with adequate safety information etc., I still think it’s probably going to be beneficial.
Being organised
Posted: Wed 31 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of the sadder aspects of my life is that I still actually own – and use – a FiloFax. Thankfully they no longer seem to have the “yuppie” overtones of the 80s, which is no bad thing. I have used electronic organisers too, but find that invariably they’re a pain in the arse, and that I can’t be arsed to go through all the gubbins in order to simply write a note, or a reminder, or just look up a phone number.
In some ways I’m just so not a techie. But I digress.
The only time when a Filofax is more of a pain in the arse than something electronic is when it comes to the diary. I’ve just bought a new diary for 2006, and so I’ve got to trawl through 2005, making a note of all the important dates, anniversarys, birthdays, etc., and make sure they’re carried forward into the 2006 one. I’ll also then make sure I archive off (for which read : open the binder and take out the pages) all the older stuff, which has the happy side effect of making the bloody thing less heavy again.
At some point I really should also go through and tidy up the addresses/phone number pages too, as some have been in there for four years or so. But I can’t be arsed. Maybe while I’m away.
Time Flies
Posted: Tue 30 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Yes, another post under the “time flies” banner. I really should make it into a category title – but then I’d look even sadder than I already am.
Anyway – while I was in Oxford I finally got round to buying a new pair of Cat boots from Oxford Boot Store, which is a bit of a return to form, as it’s where I always used to get my boots when I lived in the area. I knew I hadn’t had the other pair all that long (well, in Cat boot terms, anyway) and thought I’d look back on d4d™ to see when it was I got them.
So I looked back, and it turned out that it was in June last year, and I had to get the new boots in time to go for the wedding where Herself and I got together properly for the first time. Hard to believe they’ve been going as long as we have.
Lost – A Prediction
Posted: Tue 30 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 5 Comments »OK, so we’re now four weeks in on “Lost” (Ok, five weeks in if you’re watching the next episode on E4 too – but I’m not, so it doesn’t count for purposes of this post) and I’ve a couple of predictions and thoughts…
Read the rest of this entry »
All quiet on the d4d™ front
Posted: Tue 30 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 1 Comment »Yesterday turned out to be one of those “can’t be arsed” days. I turned the PC on to get the emails, and then turned it off again. No idea why, but I just wasn’t in the mood to do much at all. Mind you, isn’t that what bank holidays are for?
It may be a bit quiet here next week too – we’re away for the week, so while I will probably leave some stuff to go up during the week, I’m not sure what else will be going on. Just have to wait and see, I suppose…
Muzzled
Posted: Sun 28 August, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Thoughts 1 Comment »Every so often I get accused of being far too derogatory about my fellow human beings – primarily because I apparently decide that they’re “all” (for which read “the great majority”) effing stupid, and normally with more feet than IQ points. On a charitable day I might allege that they’ve more digits than IQ points. But that’s about as far as it goes.
On the other hand, I sometimes believe that I still actually over-estimate the intelligence, common sense, and general willingness to continue living. Or at least living with a full complement of those aforementioned digits.
Today’s example…
If you were to see a bloody huge German Shepherd dog tied up outside a supermarket, with no owner in sight, would you approach it, saying “Oh, what a cute dog?” Possibly.
If the same dog were visibly pissed off and growling, would you still go up to it? Probably not.
If the same dog, as well as being pissed off and growling, was wearing a very solid muzzle – and let’s bear in mind, here, that German Shep’s aren’t listed under the Dangerous Dogs Act, and so don’t have to be muzzled in public – then would you go near it? Almost certainly a resounding “fucking hell, no” is the reaction here.
But no, as I came out of the supermarket, two stupid twats were trying to stroke it. Despite growling, hackles, and barking through the muzzle. Fortunately the owner came out just after me, and suggested that perhaps the twats should fuck off out of it before he decided to just take the muzzle off, and let the dog have some fresh meat. If you’d seen the owner, you’d have believed him too.
The point of this is that I was actually considering taking Hound down, and doing the same thing – she gets anxious and snappy when strangers come up to her, so I’d definitely have muzzled her, but I did think that having the muzzle on would suggest to people that she shouldn’t be approached. See what I mean about over-estimating now?
Windy Ridge
Posted: Sat 27 August, 2005 Filed under: Animals Leave a comment »Oh God, Hound has the farts. And trust me, they’re really really bad tonight. I think I may have to leave the computer for a few minutes…
Oxford
Posted: Sat 27 August, 2005 Filed under: Sweary, Thoughts, Travel 5 Comments »A quiet day today with not much planned, so I ended up going over to Oxford. I haven’t been there in a while, despite growing up (well, as much as I’ve ever grown up, anyway) in the area and so on, so I figured I might as well.
It was kind of weird being back in the city, actually – a lot has changed, including the infamous Cornmarket re-paving project that ran somewhere around £4.5m over budget. Mind you, from the state of people in Oxford, I can see why the council tried to make the centre “safer” and pedestrianise it – there’s just an amazing number of fuckwits who either dither out into the road for no good reason, or the shit-for-brains cunts who walk (fucking slowly) three abreast, thus meaning faster-moving people have to go out into the road instead.
Oh, and the woman with the five kids and a double buggy, saying “I’m going to belt someone in a minute” to her mate? Got news for you, love – you’re the fucking problem, not the solution. Shift your arse, stop talking to your mate who also has a double fucking buggy, and start looking where the fuck you’re walking, you mouthy scabarse.
So, what were my feelings about the place? It was nice to go back for a quick visit – and I managed to get some new Cat boots, among other things – but Jesus, I could never live there again. Too many people, too few IQ points – kind of sad, for a place renowned for its students and colleges.
Colours 2
Posted: Fri 26 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 5 Comments »I’ve been doing a bit of research into the colour-switcher up at the top of the page, following on from the question I asked earlier in the week. Basically, I started wondering which colours were the most popular (although I was pretty sure that yellow, as the default, would be highest) and least popular.
At the time of writing, the results are :
| Colour | No of uses | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Yellow | 2548 | 94.58% |
| White | 83 | 3.08% |
| Pink | 26 | 0.97% |
| Blue | 17 | 0.63% |
| Green | 8 | 0.3% |
| Red | 6 | 0.22% |
| Purple | 6 | 0.22% |
| Total Number of Records : 2694 | ||
I’m actually quite surprised how few people use alternative colours, and also that bloody Pink comes in so highly – it’s the colour scheme that I personally loathe the most (although Red comes a close second).
I may have a bit of a twat-about with some of the colour-schemes to make them a bit less offensive, but I don’t know – haven’t decided yet. It’s a thought for the future, anyway.
Ten Years On
Posted: Thu 25 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »It really doesn’t seem like ten years today since Windows 95™® was released, does it?
Computers have changed radically in those ten years, and – in some ways – so has Windows. But still, bloody hell, ten years?
Then again, I realised last night – during a conversation where Herself discovered I can reel off all the letters on a keyboard in order without any prompting, and decided that as such I’m “irredeemably sad” – that I got my first computer 25 years ago. A cute little ZX80. Quarter of a century ago.
I’m just going to go off and have a cry now. Where’s my zimmer frame?
Forward Planning
Posted: Thu 25 August, 2005 Filed under: Music Leave a comment »There are days where I can be almost worryingly organised. Fortunately, they are few and far between.
Today, though, I’ve actually booked us tickets for the V festival. In 2006. Yes, tickets for a festival in a years time. How’s that for organised? In fairness it’s mainly because a) they’re selling them at ’05 prices instead of ’06, and b) because I’ll never remember in time when they go back on sale next June/July and sell out in three hours.
Of course, it could also turn out that the line-up next year is utter crap – but that’s the chances you take. Besides, I’m sure there’ll be more than enough there to keep us amused.
But all the same, dear christ, it amounts to being worryingly organised.
Vroom
Posted: Thu 25 August, 2005 Filed under: General, Travel 2 Comments »Yes, the new car got picked up last night – and very nice it is, too. And just in time too, as Herself is away to Somerset this weekend to help the charity we work with. They’re doing a “holiday weekend” which should be fun.
And I get to look after Hound.
Two Years On
Posted: Thu 25 August, 2005 Filed under: General, Music, Thoughts Leave a comment »Blimey, looking back through the archives, it’s now two years to the day since I saw Massive Attack last. It doesn’t seem anywhere near that long – time flies when you’re having fun. Reading through the archive for August 2003, it also means it’s just over two years since the house was broken into, and two years next month when I moved in to the next house, which turned out to be my last one in Manchester.
It also means that it’s now a year since I heard from a long-term friend who I fell out with. I didn’t write much about it at the time, but may do later in the week.
Colours
Posted: Wed 24 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts 8 Comments »I’ve just been norking about with one of the colour-schemes for the site, making it so it’s not quite as loud and nasty as it was. All of which made me wonder – which colour-schemes do people actually use?
So go on – which one do you use/prefer? Mine’s “worksafe” in general.
Coming to a phone near you
Posted: Wed 24 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »A couple of places this week have been talking about a new form of advertising, which sends out information from an advert billboard by Bluetooth to a mobile phone. Dubbed Bluecasting, you do have to have Bluetooth enabled and turned on on your phone in order to accept the data, but all the same it does make me wonder a bit.
First of all, as Bruce Schneier says, what’s to stop someone from sending a phone virus in this way, and secondly, would you trust information coming from an advertisement? I know I wouldn’t.
Personally, I always have Bluetooth switched off on my phone (and it needs a passcode in order to activate it) – but I suspect I’m in the minority on that score. A lot of people seem to leave it on all the time – in fact, 14,000 people accepted the data from the prototype adverts – although that was “only” 17% of the 87,000 Bluetooth enabled phones detected by the adverts in a two week period. To me that just seems like a great way to end up with a carked phone. But hey, what would I know?
Resetting
Posted: Tue 23 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 4 Comments »Back in April we got Sky+ installed, and in general it’s been pretty good. OK, I still don’t like it as much as the TiVo we’ve got upstairs, and there’s some *cough* “functionality” on Sky+ that drives me up the wall (the inability to go back and see whatever was on while you were looking at the Sky+ menus, or programming something to record, for instance) but yeah, in general it’s been OK.
Over the last month or two though, we’ve been getting some problems – recordings had been coming up with “failed”, and the Sky+ box had managed to lose about 15% of its available space. I think it was the “failed” recordings that had actually succeeded, but because the box said “failed” it wouldn’t delete those items. But anyway, we could see that there was a chunk of space that we couldn’t access or record over. Unsurprisingly, after a while this was getting to be fucking annoying.
A couple of weeks ago we did a “Sky planner rebuild”, which restored some of the space (if anyone’s interested, if you hit Services, 4, 0, 1 Select in order, you get to a ‘secret’ menu with some options for doing this kind of thing. It doesn’t invalidate your warranty, but you do do this stuff at your own risk) but then it rapildy lost the reclaimed space again.
So on Sunday night we got rid of the last stuff that hadn’t been watched, went back to that ‘secret’ menu, and did a full system reset. It’s an easy task, but do make sure to write down all the stuff you were going to record, because it kills everything.
At the moment we’re back to having the full 100% back and recordable. Only time will tell whether the same problem occurs again. I hope not.
On a TiVo vs. Sky+ note, it’s also worth saying that I’ve had TiVo now since February 2003, and it hasn’t needed to be reset or reorganised at all. We’ve had Sky+ less than six months and it’s already needed a kicking. So, another cross in the Sky+ account.
Stag
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »Apparently it’s not just the costs of a marriage that are going up, but also the average spend at stag-dos and hen-nights, although men supposedly spend more than women (an average of £35 more, to be exact).
Quite honestly, I’ve never yet been on a stag-do (although bizarrely I have been on a couple of hen nights) – they’re just not something that really appeals to me, but then again, the entire “drink ’til you puke, then drink some more to wash away the aftertaste” concept has always been a bit beyond me anyway.
Supposedly it’s now the “done thing” to go off for a stag do in a foreign city – Prague, Amsterdam, etc. etc. Personally, if I’m going to those places I’d rather see something of them, instead of being the ubiquitous “Brit on the Piss”, or anything even close to that stereotype. Maybe that makes me boring, or an old fart – to be honest, I don’t care. What it does make me is (on average) £500 better off for every one I’ve never been on.
Sounds good to me!
Organ-ised
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: Health 3 Comments »
The BBC this week is launching a season called “DoNation“, designed to make more people sign up to be organ donors. I’m not sure how useful it will be – but anything that gets more people to sign up is a good thing in my book.
Personally, I believe that the organ donation scheme should be one where you have to “opt out” rather than “opt in” – although on the BBC breakfast programme this morning there was a spokesman for the NHS who said that it shouldn’t be this way, because the donation of organs was a gift from a person, and as such should be seen that way, rather than a requirement. And when it’s phrased like that, I can’t disagree. All the same though, when you see how many people don’t sign up “because it’s too much effort”, you do start to wonder just how simple it has to be in order for people to do it. And if the situation were reversed, how many would actually “make the effort” to ensure they weren’t on the list?
In order to make things “easier”, the NHS has even sorted out a way to register online to be on the organ donor database. It’s an amazingly easy thing to do – one set of information, and that’s it. Or you can sign up by calling the NHS on 0845 60 60 400. Go on, it’s worth it.
Reality
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Just as we lose one piece of reality TV shite, yes, along comes another.
Is there any chance that people are going to get sick of these reality series? Personally speaking I’ve never seen the appeal of Big Brother, and as for the self-publicising aggrandisement that is Flop Idol/ Lame Academy/ Y? Factor/ Flopstars/ so forth, so fifth, it’s pretty much beyond me too.
A bunch of (loose terminology) singers, all doing covers, with no coverage given to those who can a) show any true originality, b) posess the skill to play any musical instrument (I suspect the triangle is beyond most of ’em) or c) show any talent or skill – like, say, song-writing. It’s just a variation on “money for old rope”.
The *cough* winner of the last Y? Factor admittedly managed a Number one single and album, but since then has already been dumped by his record label for not fulfilling his potential. Quite what the potential was, I don’t know – except as that aforementioned old rope merchant.
And as Herself said while watching bits of it,
“I bet there’s psychologists all over the country saying ‘I recognise that one – knew they’d be on something like this”
Slashing and Summary
Posted: Mon 22 August, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Well, today is truly not a summer’s day. It’s chucking it down – not quite a thunderstorm, but equally not far off. Still, at least I can just sit in the office and watch other people get wet. Much more fun.
The weekend was actually fairly busy in the end – failure to find the other two car dealerships resulted in us ending up just going for the car we were 98% certain to be getting anyway. Well, I say failure to find, but it actually amounts to “could see on the other side of the dual carriageway, and when we tried turning round there was no feasible way to do so without travelling round another four miles of Reading’s inescapable one-way system, so we thought ‘fuck this’ and went home”
So on Thursday we become the owners of a slate-grey Focus 1.6. It’ll do all we want, and should be a lot more fun.
Other than that, I finally got out and had a proper drivbe on my own. A lot of people had warned me that it was weird doing the first bit of proper driving without an instructor burbling “slow down, turn right, change gear, blah blah blah“, but to be honest I didn’t have any real issue with it at all. Still, it was fun.
I’m sure I’ll burble on more about these things later, but for now for some reason I’m just not in the mood…
Mr Big
Posted: Sun 21 August, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Caution: Criminal Mastermind at work.
Funniest thing all day.
Accessible?
Posted: Sat 20 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Would someone remind me why the blue blazing fiddly fuck I’m bothering to use Access at all? I’m realising more and more what an amazingly useless user-hostile bucket of fuckpigs it really is.
Sodding thing. Piece o’ crap.
Car hunting
Posted: Sat 20 August, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions, Travel Leave a comment »Over this weekend, we’re going to be looking at getting a new car. Not a completely brand-new “fresh from the garage” one, but a car that’s new to us, at least. Currently Herself has a Ford Fiesta, which is fine for her but for me is – let’s say – comical. I’m 6’4″, and built like the proverbial shithouse, so a Fiesta is kind of cramped and compact. Which is phrasing things tactfully.
Anyway, we’re going to be looking at going up a size when it comes to cars – we’re pretty sure of what we’ll be getting, it’s just dependent on fun stuff like price.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll write more about it after the weekend, but yeah, that’s the kind of fun stuff that this weekend holds for us.
Badger
Posted: Fri 19 August, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Over the last week I’ve been feeling – to put it tactfully – rougher than a badger’s arse in wintertime. It started last Friday on the train, where it was chuffing freezing thanks to an overzealous application of the air-conditioning. Probably going from train to smoky pub didn’t help in the long run, but anyway, by the end of the night my throat was feeling decidedly dodgy. Ah well, it’d been loud and smoky, it’ll wear off I’m sure.
How wrong I was. Saturday it was worse, and by the time I got home on Sunday I was beginning to sound like some kind of 0898 chatline porn bint, I was so husky. Generous dosings of paracetamol and so on have meant it’s eased off a fair bit over the course of the week, but now it’s Friday evening, and I’m back to feeling rough.
Sore throat, plus additional cold stuff (sneezing and snot, primarily) mean it’s likely to be another couple of days feeling blocked up and shitty.
I’m not going to make out it’s flu, or anything “male” like that – it’s just a bummer that I feel like shite. Ah well.
And why is it that these things always kick in on a weekend, rather than during the working week?
2,900
Posted: Fri 19 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 1 Comment »Somehow I’ve now managed to write a grand total (according to WordPress) of 2,900 posts on d4d™
That really is going some – just under 1,000 posts per year of d4d™’s life.
I really, really need to get out more, don’t I?
One Born Every Minute
Posted: Fri 19 August, 2005 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, News 3 Comments »Sometimes you just have to wonder about people, don’t you? Today’s Barnum moment comes courtesy of Cornwall’s Trading Standards (although how they got involved, I’m not quite sure) and the story in the BBC today about a letter scam that’s been doing the rounds.
Basically, the letter comes with an enclosed Jack of Spades playing card, and tells the gullible fuckwit, sorry, recipient that they’ve been cursed, and that in order to rescind the curse they need to rip the card into quarters, and send it back to the sender wrapped in a £10 note. Now, duh, I’m sorry but send that to me, the fucker’s going in the bin.
Cursed? By post? Excuse me while I fall off my chair with laughter.
Quite honestly, anyone who does send the card and £10 back bloody well deserves to be fleeced. Call it a stupidity/gullibility tax and be done with it.
Courses
Posted: Fri 19 August, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions 2 Comments »It’s taken a long time to get round to happening, but I’ve finally signed myself on for a course or two from September at the local FE college. I’ve been banging on for a long time about OU stuff and the like, but well, I can’t deny it, I’ve just never really found a course that interests me that much – particularly if it’s going to be something I’ve got to keep on doing for five or six years, one way or another.
On an introspective front, I know I’m far too flighty, and my interests range too far, for sticking with one subject to be of much use or long-term benefit for me. That’s just being brutally honest – by the time I’ve studied something intensively for six years, I’m not likely to want to look at that subject again for at least a similar stretch of time.
So as a kind of halfway house, I’ve gone for a shorter course. The entire thing will take the best part of a year, but it’s in three modules of about 10 or 12 weeks at a time, which should help a lot on that score.
And the subject? Well, in line with a few plans we’ve got for the next year or so – of which more at a later date – I’m going to be starting off with a course on Book-keeping and business finances. Kind of scary, kind of grown-up, but also most definitely something that should come in useful what with one thing and another…
Hotel Chocolat
Posted: Thu 18 August, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions 1 Comment »I know I mention this company on a semi-regular basis, but I still think that the stuff Hotel Chocolat do is – in general – bloody fantastic.
Herself got me one of their “Ultimate Chocolate Dipping Experience” boxes as a thing for me for passing that bloody driving test, and we opened it tonight. Wow.
The dried strawberries aren’t up to much – they rarely are – but the rest is fantastic so far. And of course if we really push it we’ll just get some small fresh strawbs when we have the rest of it over the weekend. Maybe even go to the local pick-your-own place. Hmm, now there’s an idea…
Posting the Changes
Posted: Thu 18 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »So, Royal mail are planning on changing the way posted items are charged for in one years time, and basing it on size and weight. This could be quite interesting – a small heavy parcel will cost more to send than a large light one, for example.
Of course, it’ll also be a thousand times more confusing. If there’s no simple rule ( i.e. First Class items under 60g cost 28p, or whatever ) then most people simply won’t know what to pay for postage. I suspect Royal Mail are hoping that either they’ll just pay over the odds “to make sure it gets there”, or that they’ll use Post Offices more.
The second option is more likely to be the one that people go for, but there’s a problem with it – Post Offices are fucked up, with normally huge queues already. So how will this scheme make them any better?
Showing Restraint
Posted: Thu 18 August, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts 3 Comments »Last weekend while I was in Manchester I made a very bad move. We went in to the Jessops camera store, and I had a serious look at the three main contenders on my Digital-SLR list. For those with a short memory span, the list is
The main thing I’m still unsure about is whether I should go for a more “entry level” SLR like the 350d or the slightly more advanced/complicated 20d. The 350d is currently running at about £650 including a lens, and the 20d is about £1200. Oh, and the Fuji is closer to the £2000 mark, which is the main thing that puts it out of the running in my estimation.
Anyway, I looked at all three, and I think I’m most likely coming down in favour of the 20d. But we’ll see.
And in the meantime, I did manage to show some restraint, and actually not just buy one and the hell with it. This may be more of a problem next month, when I’ve been paid an obscene amount again…
Cashing In
Posted: Wed 17 August, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »I see that the government is already trying to help party contributors advertisers and corporate entities by introducing the ‘2012 Act’ or (more properly) the Olympics Bill, which (among other things) would “make it illegal to combine words like “games”, “medals”, “gold”, “2012”, “sponsor” or “summer” in any form of advertising”.
Technically, this would also mean that you could get fined for using the sentence “We do not sponsor any of the medals in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games”.
Again, I wittled on about this last year for the 2004 Athens Games, where they had a very specific and detailed policy for ‘all’ hyperlinks relating to the games. But this legislation is whole orders of magnitude worse. With luck, it’ll get changed and amended in the meantime.
Observant
Posted: Wed 17 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 6 Comments »A week ago, I got my replacement Switch (sorry, Maestro) card – the old one had been in my wallet for a year and was bent/cracking to within an inch of its life. That’s about normal.
Anyway, I got the card, and just shoved it in my wallet, as usual. Nothing special. I’ve used it since, so the old card is now a piece of worthless (and cracked) plastic, and I’ve got to re-remember my new card number, which is a bit of a pain in the arse, but I’ll do it. Such is life. At least they didn’t change the PIN this time without telling me they were going to. Always a good thing.
However, I did do one thing differently. Not consciously, because I’ve only just realised it today. But I didn’t sign the back. Oh whoops, oh bugger, oh chuff, I hear you cry. And yes, you’d be right. Except, and here’s the thing – I’ve been using the card. Not just online, but in shops. And I’m sure I’ve done at least one transaction where I’ve had to sign it, rather than using the PIN.
Which all goes to show, I suppose, just how few places actually check signatures etc. in the first place. It’s a bit worrying really, isn’t it?
Whoops
Posted: Wed 17 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »So, it’s slowly emerging that the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes was even worse than had previously been speculated. I’ve suspected that this story was going to be a nightmare (and have said so previously) and now it looks like going roughly the way I thought.
So now the media are already asking “what went wrong?”. I’d be more tempted to ask “what went right?” – because the answer to the former is “everything” and to the latter is “nothing”. Let’s look at the list…
- Menezes wasn’t positively identified as the suspect when he left the building, because the relevant officer was having a piss. Good start
- Menezes wasn’t wearing a heavy coat, and was actually wearing a denim shirt/jacket
- Menezes perhaps ran to catch a train that was already at the platform
- Menezes wasn’t warned he was being followed, or given a warning before being shot
- Menezes wasn’t positively identified as the suspect, although it seems that assumptions were made that “someone else” had identified him
Is there even that much of a resemblance between the two men?
Suspect :Target :
The entire thing is a catalogue of screw-ups, errors, and mis-communication. With no warning being given, 8 shots to the head, and that (according to the leaked documents) he was being held down by a community police officer before being shot, surely this just looks more and more like an execution?
Safari
Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 Filed under: Travel Leave a comment »Looks like – well, in some circumstances at least – the Comedy Smart Car and it’s ilk are at risk from more interesting things than just ‘everything else on the road’.
Helpful
Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Weirdness Leave a comment »According to the BBC, a road in Oxfordshire is to be closed for resurfacing on Thursday. This is the full “story”
Drivers are being warned that a part of a road in Oxfordshire will be shut for resurfacing work.
A section of Wykham Lane will be closed between the A361 Bloxham Road and White Post Lane for one day on Thursday.
The county council said to avoid confusion with the continuing closure of the A361 at South Newington there would be no diversion signs.
The emergency services and those residents who live within the closed area, will still have access.
Now OK, I’m sure that’s useful – but where is it in Oxfordshire? – No town is given! The only location it reveals is that it is (I assume) somewhere near Stoke Newington.
So perhaps not as helpful as it could’ve been…
Updating
Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Sweary 2 Comments »Ah, that was one (thanks, Gordon) – Windows Bloody Update.
At work I’m using Windows XP, along with all the latest updates including the dreaded SP2. It’s not too bad – and I might as well get used to it, as the new PC I’m going to be building is going to run on it too. Anyway, I did all the updates the other day, and then got nagged every ten fucking minutes to restart the computer.
I didn’t want to restart the keffing thing, as it was in the middle of doing that log analysis, and I didn’t want to have to restart that either. So I kept on saying “no, do it later” – everyone in the office could tell when I was clicking it, because the comment of “No I don’t, now fuck off!” got louder as the day wore on.
But now, thanks to Gordon and his link, I have fixed it for the future. If anyone else wants to know, do the following :
Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc -> Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations.
Fuckin’ brilyunt.
Drafts
Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts Leave a comment »You know, sometimes I really think I should set myself up a proper list of draft posts, just for days like today when I’ve got about 8 things I know I was going to remember to write, but of course now I’ve forgotten what they were.
Maybe I should just carry a notebook around – or, hey, use some of the pages in my filofax – now there’s a novel idea! It just gets so frustrating sometimes, knowing there were things I was thinking “Yeah, I’ll leave that ’til tomorrow to write about”, and now thinking “What the fuck was it I was going to say?”.
So yeah, I may just end up with a little notebook or something (or use that Filofax) to get some more productivity out of all this. We’ll see.
Repellent
Posted: Tue 16 August, 2005 Filed under: Health, Weirdness 1 Comment »This story contains one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a long time. The first “Mr. Afghanistan”, a body-builder. And is it me, or is he actually gold?
Personally I’ve never been able to see the appeal in bodybuilding, particularly to this kind of extreme. It’s just grotesque.
Quite, Quite Barmy
Posted: Mon 15 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Travel Leave a comment »I love this story, which perfectly illustrates that we really can be quite cracked on occasion.
A family were travelling on the M11 in Kent when a gust of wind blew the 10 year old child’s cuddly toy out of the window. The family turned round at the next junction (which shows a degree of common sense, rather than the “oh, we’ve got to stop straight away” method that many seem to adopt) and discovered that the toy was in the central reservation. Again, rather than being brain-dead and trying to run across three lanes of high-speed traffic (which I know has been done before) they carried on, but called the highway police. ( I don’t know, but I suspect they didn’t even use 999 to do so – all due respect for them being sane)
The motorway police, being utter barmpots, managed to rescue the toy by setting up a “rolling road-block” to protect an officer walking onto the central reservation to pick up the toy. In effect they closed an entire section of a motorway to pick up a kids toy, and then post it to the family.
Mad as Cheese, but definitely a great story!
“Food”
Posted: Mon 15 August, 2005 Filed under: General, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »The weekend in Manchester was actually really good, despite the weather taking on a rather soggy turn on Saturday.
One place we went that I hadn’t previously visited was the food hall in Selfridges, which was definitely worthwhile. (and resulted in the purchase of some fantastic cheeses. I could’ve spent far more than I did, but decided to be good, for once) However, there was one small section that was just manky – which was the part run by Edible.
Edible specialise in foodstuffs that most people would go “yuck” at. Giant Ants, Snake Vodka, Thai Green Crocodile Curry, that kind of thing. Fair enough, I don’t mind the ants per se, and several other things – but really, coffee beens that’ve been passed through an animal already? I’ll pass, cheers. (pardon the pun) As for Hornet Honey, again, I just don’t see the attraction.
Maybe I’m getting boring in my old age, but while there’s a certain gross-out factor in Edible’s stuff, I really don’t like the attitude that goes with it.
Lost
Posted: Mon 15 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »I wonder if Channel 4 are currently shiteing it a bit, what with having spent millions on “Lost“, only for there to be a plane crash in Greece that killed all passengers. Will Ep. 3 of Lost be shown on Wednesday? Who knows…
Gobsmacked
Posted: Mon 15 August, 2005 Filed under: Travel 1 Comment »In my travels to and from Manchester this week, courtesy of the oft-maligned (and sworn at) Virgin Trains, I was truly amazed to realise that both my journeys were actually on time. It’s unnatural. Maybe they knew it was likely to be my last long-distance trip with them, considering the events of last Thursday.
So yes, all went well – with the minor exception of the pissed Irish twat who thought “Quiet Zone” meant “get pissed and keep on trying to sing your way through the four hour journey”. But well, that’s what headphones were designed for. (I should point out that in the “Quiet Zone” (which never is) you’re also not supposed to use personal stereos or mobile phones, but my headphones are linked in to the laptop, so I kind of squeeze through that one)
Content Management
Posted: Sun 14 August, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »In my spare time, as well as working on a couple of websites and so on (Yes, Si, I know, yours is one of them – no excuses other than just generally being crap, though) I’m slowly working on the concept and initial code for a photographic content management system so I can do a photoblog as well as the stuff within WordPress. It probably won’t site on d4d™, because I do want to keep them seperate (and I’ve a buttload of webspace just sitting around doing sod-all) but the ideas are slowly coming together for how it’ll all work.
However, I think I really do need to get out more, rather than working on geeky stuff like this all the time. Ah well, maybe one day…
Banned
Posted: Sat 13 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Earlier this week there was a story about whether an Islamic preacher can be kept out of the UK despite his avowed intention to return. As part of the surrounding coverage, there was talk about the UK government “banning” certain Islamic/Islamist groups.
When will governments learn that banning something doesn’t make it go away? Instead, it just goes underground (Oooh, sorry, connecting “Islamic radicals” and “underground” isn’t the wisest move, is it?) and becomes even more removed and secretive.
Banning anything makes it more glamourous and attractive, a sign of “rebellion” etc. etc. Whether it’s a chart single (think “Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, for a perfect example), a “sport” (cock-fighting, dog-fighting, badger-baiting, the list is endless), firearms (now an increasing problem – and yes, I did nearly say “exploding” problem – since the banning of handguns after Dunblane) or anything else – as soon as its banned, it becomes impossible to police.
In this case, any savvy “radical Islamic priest” is also going to be able to say “look how dangerous we are, the government tries to silence us, and yet we’re still here”. Being banned just adds “glamour” to the group, and then the longer they continue unabated, the more it looks like they’re the ones who are winning in this supposed War against Terror.
Weekend
Posted: Fri 12 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Travel 1 Comment »This weekend I’m away up to Manchester to see friends. It’s the first time I’ve been there this year, and it’s going to be quite fun seeing the old place again.
There’ll still be a couple of posts to go up over the weekend though – don’t you just love the delayed publishing stuff in WordPress?
Übercreepy
Posted: Fri 12 August, 2005 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »via GreenFairy comes one of the creepiest things I’ve seen in a long time.
The Egg Babies are individually hand sculpted in polymer clay. The babies range in size from 2 to 5 inches.
The eggshell underscores the fragility of the life of a baby in the womb.
Yick, Yick, and thricely Yick.
Eventually
Posted: Thu 11 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Resolutions 7 Comments »Well, that’s one success that was well and truly deferred.
Test One was back in ’98, down in Dorchester in Dorset. I failed horrifically, having stalled the car on a hairpin hill curve while on the way back from Weymouth to Dorchester. And rolled back bigtime. Not an auspsicious start.
Test Two came three months later, and put me off driving for a very long time, by the forty-five minutes I’d spent with every other road user trying to kill me. It was market-day, and (among other things) I was nearly side-onned by an idiot coming out of a side-road, rear-ended by a speeding coach, and narrowly avoided a slow-moving (OK, Stationary) skip on a blind corner.
Test Three was in 2003 in Manchester. Another failure for “failing to do proper observations”. I still argue the toss on that one, but well, it’s all in the past now. Bizarrely it again involved a skip, but this time on a junction so I couldn’t see round the fucker. I pulled out to see round it, and then went. The examiner said I should’ve stopped at the line. The response “Could you see round that fucking great skip? Because I bloody couldn’t.” didn’t go down well.
Test Four was in April this year and failed due to fucking up my clutch control at a junction. Unimpressed, but fair to fail me on it.
Test Five was taken in June, and failed for exactly the same reason as Test Four, bizarrely. Not the same junction, but exactly the same fault.
Test Six was today. And yes, at fucking last, I’ve passed. Halle-sodding-lujah!
Twat
Posted: Thu 11 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Sweary 4 Comments »There’s always at least one cunt in any party, isn’t there? You know the sort, sneering at everyone else, deciding they’re all a waste of space, and generally being a snide fuckmonkey cunt.
In my case, yesterday it was Ken and his comment.
suggest you rename site
SELF-OBSESSION FOR DUMMIES
Well, I’d suggest that either a) Ken sticks his head back up his arse, and farts, or b) that if he’s going to fucking sneer at other people, perhaps the marmoset-cocked wonder should learn some proper English (like wot I knows) and consider use of words like “I” and “your”, which make the comment at least look literate, if still somewhat fuckwitted.
Cunt.
The Report
Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts Leave a comment »Well, it turns out that in three years d4d™ has had 6,376,116 hits, and shown 2,214,576 pages. Not bad going at all. The full report is is here. There are a few days where there appears to have been no logfile created or moved, so the figure is probably slightly on the low side, but hell, I’m more than happy with averaging 2.1 million hits a year, or 738,192 pages.
In some ways it’s really hard to believe that d4d™’s been that busy, particularly when I think about it just really being a personal site. d4d™ started off as a little thing to see if I could keep a project going – I’d had the idea, but at the time (and still, to a greater or lesser degree) I was great at having the ideas, and far less good at carrying them through. d4d™ was a thing to prove to myself that I could keep on with a project past the initial stages.
Sometimes I’m still not sure if I can – I keep feeling that d4d™ is really still in those “initial” stages, even after three years. I don’t know what the future holds – and when I look at the differences the last year has had, I don’t want to know what even the next 12 months hold in stall, because I’ll just go with it, and have a good time.
In truth I never really believed that d4d™ would take off – perhaps that’s what made it easier to continue. Three years on, and I’m still enjoying writing it, and keeping up with new ideas. (although I know I haven’t innovated that much this year yet. There’s stuff in the wings though, although whether it’ll be ’05 or ’06 before it happens, Gawd only knows at the moment) So whatever else goes on, I’m pretty sure d4d™ will still be here to celebrate its fourth and fifth birthdays too.
And a big thanks to all those who do read, comment, pass on the word, whatever. Thanks is too small a word, but for now it’ll have to do.
Time
Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 4 Comments »Bloody Hell, this log analysis takes some time. I started it running four hours ago, and it’s still plodding through…
Considering I’m using a PC with twin 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 processors and 1Gb of DDR RAM, that’s one shit of a lot of computation.
UPDATED : It finally took from 9.15 to 2.30 -5 and a quarter hours. That’s a lot of work.
3
Posted: Wed 10 August, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 6 Comments »Yes, d4d™ has now been being written for three solid years. I’m having problems believing that myself, but it’s true. Over 1,000 days, and coming up to the three thousand posts mark, which is pretty good in anyone’s book.
Of course, there are plenty of blogs that’ve been round far longer than d4d, and thousands are better-written, better-designed, whatever. But still, I’m pleased with how it’s gone over the last three years.
D4D™ didn’t have a party this time like it did last year, but there’s that kind of acknowledgement of growing up. I’m currently running a log-analysis to see just how busy d4d™ has been over that three years, and I’ll post the results once the PC has wheezed it’s way through the 110Mb of zipped-up logfiles, including all the DNS lookup and so on. I think it’ll probably be a fairly big figure though.
Anyway, onwards and upwards to the next year, three years, five years, whatever.
Abandonment pt. 2
Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from last week’s post about the 15year old girl who was left alone in the UK when her mother decided to move to Turkey after a holiday romance, I see that the mother has now put in an appearance.
No, not in the UK to answer any form of enquiry about why she did it, but instead on Turkish TV, telling how she’s so in love.
“We really liked each other and saw each other every day and when I went back to England I promised I would come back because I want to be with Ali.
“I did everything I could and got back within three weeks. I came back to stay with Ali because I love him.”
No expression of guilt about her daughter, nothing – just self-centred selfish behaviour. Grrr.
Barking
Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Weirdness Leave a comment »In a fit of “Mad as a bath-full of hippos” insanity comes this effort, letters sent by the stadd of an American sex-toy store along with a shipment of vibrators to some women in Iraq.
…I hope that when you use this vibrator you realize that Americans do not hate you or your country. We are a kind and loving people who just want everyone to live freely and without oppression….
Utterly, totally, 100% barking.
Security
Posted: Tue 9 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Waiting at the station for today’s train, an announcement came over the speakers that suddenly struck me a little differently to usual. It’s the fairly standard fare about
In this time of increased security, please do not leave your belongings anywhere on the station or the train. Help us to not have security alerts by taking care of your posessions
OK, I’m paraphrasing a little, but all the security alert announcements say the same thing about not leaving your stuff around. Now yes, that’s fair enough – an abandoned package can always look a bit dodgy and so on.
But what struck me was this – if we’re now dealing with suicide bombers, surely they’re not going to leave the packages around? In fact, aren’t you also now going to be looking out for people who clutch their bags to them, or keep on fiddling about with them?
Not really a shock
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »The BBC today has a story saying that one in four applicants for jobs in the financial industries have lied on their CVs. Having worked with a bunch of financial types over the years, I really can’t say I’m surprised – most of them seem to have a “can-do” attitude to bullshit that’s second only to that of advertising and marketing execs.
Based on a study of 3,000 CVs, the group found the biggest lies involved academic qualifications, previous jobs, gaps in employment and directorships.
Then again, I don’t think that kind of attitude is limited to just financial applications. But I do wonder what percentage of estate agents have lied on their CVs. And with estate agents, is it to be expected?
35mm
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »I’m going to be slightly hypocritical on this, as I don’t use a 35mm camera myself, but I do think it’s pretty sad that Dixons has announced it is to stop stocking 35mm cameras once their current supplies run out. A lot of new photographers go straight to digital cameras now (I know, because that’s what I did) but that doesn’t mean there’s not still a large demand for 35mm cameras.
Many camera companies are having trouble at the moment with continuing to manufacture their 35mm range, and are all heading towards making only digital cameras. Maybe this is progress, the gradual removal of a film standard in favour of digital. Maybe it’ll just make 35mm cameras a more “professional” choice – but I know I’d hate to see them die out altogether.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »Well, last night we finally got round to seeing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“. And loved it.
It sticks pretty closely to the book, the only real addition being that Willy Wonka now has a bit of a backstory showing why/how he became so interested in chocolate, and some of the motivations for it all. Which actually worked pretty well, it has to be said.
There are so many bits that stick in the mind, the squirrels are fantastic, the Oompa Loompa songs had me howling with the way they’re done (and how impressive is it that there’s only one guy playing all the Oompa Loompas?), the TV room referring to 2001:A space odyssey, the sheer beauty and accuracy of the portrayal of the Bucket household, and many others.
A couple of small points jarred, such as constantly referring to chocolate as candy, (the film seems to be set in the UK, but one assumes it needed a couple of points for american audiences to refer to) and the use of a ten-dollar bill for Charlie to buy the chocolate bar, which seemed like an odd piece of continuity error, but these are minor jars, nothing major.
Johnny Depp is fantastic as Wonka, with a role that must have been at least semi-influenced by Michael Jackson. I think that really Tim Burton was the only current director capable of making the entire thing seem as weird, dark and magical as it appeared – he has a vision that seems so in tune with Dahl’s original, always enjoying the multi-layered stories with a slight “adult” tinge while maintaining the child-friendly appeal of the main story.
But all the same, I do think the show-stealers were the squirrels and the Oompa-Loompas…
Magpie
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: Animals 3 Comments »One small interesting event over the weekend – we had a magpie in the chimney. Luckily (for the magpie) we haven’t yet got round to properly blocking the chimney, so it came right down into the fire-space which luckily (for us) has a board over it to block draughts etc.
Of course, if we hadn’t had the board, either a) the magpie wouldn’t have fallen down the chimney in the first place, or b) we’d have come home to an insane magpie flapping about, a moronic (and slightly insane) Hound chasing it around, or c) home to a dead magpie and a very smug cat.
Instead we got home to a quiet house, with some weird noises coming from the fireplace. Taking the board out, lo and behold, there’s one dazed (and surprisingly placid – I think it’d gone to sleep, as it was dark) magpie. We put the board back, opened the patio doors so the cretinous corvine could fly out, locked Hound out of the room, and took the board out. Of course, the bird then flew the wrong way, bashing itself on the ceiling too, but then got the hint, and flew out of the open doors, and chuffed off just fine.
So all in all it went well, and was just odd. But it does make me wonder how a stupid bird can fall down a chimney in the first place.
Purchasing
Posted: Sun 7 August, 2005 Filed under: General, News, Thoughts 4 Comments »You know, we really shouldn’t go out sometimes. Yesterday’s plan was “a couple of plants for the new office” and “possibly a new bed for the Hound”. Oh dear, a plant-shop and a pet-shop. Cue lots of other things.
We ended up with :
New Hound bed, food bowl, collar, two toys, and a 30kg bag of food. Oh, and dog-shit bags. Lovely.
The office has a trio of passion-flowers in one pot, two spider plants (although they were an in-house transfer) a begonia, a polka-dot plant, and a leafy thing whose leaves turn all flame-coloured round the edges. There’s also a “rude plant”, (where the stamen just looks rude – photo to follow at some point) another polka-dot plant, a couple of leafy things with no name as yet, a money plant, and a gardenia that’s gone a little bit mental.
However, I’ve come to the conclusion (yet again) that I really shouldn’t be let out with a wallet sometimes.
Banksy
Posted: Sat 6 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve written stuff about him before, but I do like a lot of the “art” stuff done by Banksy.
His latest escapade, painting on Israel’s “security wall” is typical of his stuff – making a point, but with a certain amount of humour. Well, it made me smile, anyway.
Abandonment
Posted: Fri 5 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »One of the regular “summer season” stories that get carried by the media are the “Home Alone” ones where children are left behind while their parents bugger off on cheap holidays. I’ve never been able to understand the thinking behind doing this – but then again, I don’t have kids, and if I did then perhaps I’d understand more. *grin*
All the same though, it’s just not something I can figure out. But even they pale a bit when you read about one selfish bastard loving parent who moved to Turkey, leaving her 15 year old daughter on her own in the UK. You just have to wonder about the mind-set that would allow anyone to do that, don’t you?
Lunchhour
Posted: Fri 5 August, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »In the last hour while I’ve been on lunch, I’ve managed the following :
- Booking two places on part-time education courses for September
- Booking tickets to see Dan Cruickshank and Jo Brand (on different days, I should add)
- Ordered a new Switch card, as my current one is heading for Bendsville and Crack City
- Bought and eaten lunch (best to not forget that one)
- Bought two cards, one for Brother’s birthday and one as a good luck thing for a friend starting a new job on Monday
- read another 50 pages of my current book
and
Lazing on a Friday afternoon indeed.
microCash
Posted: Fri 5 August, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 4 Comments »Yesterday I suddenly realised I wasn’t as organised as usual, and didn’t have the change necessary for buying my train ticket. (All due to the bloody carpet fitter insisting on being paid cash rather than cheque, but that’s another story entirely) Anyway, it made me think about technology that would actually be useful – in this instance mPay, or mobile (or in fact micro, depending on who you believe) payments.
The basic idea is that you have an extra chip in your mobile phone that is basically a payment system, and can either be used in a similar way to a Switch/Maestro card, where money comes directly from your bank account, or alternatively you can have these small amounts added to your monthly phone bill. The system is in use in Japan already as part of the DoCoMo network where it’s known as iMode (I wonder if Apple will sue for that brandname?) and seems to be taking off.
I know it would be a nightmare to implement at first, as there’d be one hell of a lot of infrastructure to put in place. Then again, a similar (although slightly more low-tech) method is already being used for car-parking in Edinburgh, so maybe there’s hope for the concept yet?
C4 in trouble
Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 5 Comments »I wish I could say I was surprised by the news that Big Brother has become even more extreme, and has received complaints today about one participant’s sex antics. Big Brother has always prized the exhibitionists, the people who will happily make cunts of themselves in order to grab hold of their fifteen minutes of fame. And as an extension of that, each series will be more extreme than the last – if the people in it only do the same as last year, it won’t be “newsworthy”, and won’t get their faces/arses/tits/whatever in the papers. It’s always going to get worse. Now that one of the munters has apparently been seen wanking (or at least simulating it – and to be honest, the media won’t care whether it’s true or made-up) it won’t be long until there’s a couple “caught” shagging without cover.
At the same time, Channel 4’s been fined twice in the last two days for naughtiness within advertising – the first one was for having an advert “starring” Davina McCall within a programme presented by her. Apparently this is a breach of the advertising rules, which I didn’t know – and, in honesty didn’t care about either. And then they’ve also been done for Richard and Judy supposedly endorsing Red Bull. Red Bull must be ecstatic about it – not only did they get the freebie plug on air, but then it’s featured as a brand-name in the story about the fine. Talk about free publicity…
Belt Up
Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »Apparently, in June 1,800 drivers were stopped in four counties for not wearing seatbelts. The seatbelt law has been in place for more than a decade now, and yet still people don’t wear them – quite honestly, I’m surprised that the figure is as low as it was.
Now it’d be nice if the same could be done for the immense number of fuckwits I see every day still using their mobile phones while driving…
Plod
Posted: Thu 4 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »A while back I wrote about the useless police presence that had been placed on Bracknell station since the London bombings. At the time I really wasn’t impressed, and my attitutde on that score remains the same still.
Today, precisely four weeks after the bombings on 7th July and two weeks after the abortive ones on July 21st, there’s supposedly a massively increased police and security presence in London in order to prevent any possible attack. (which means, of course, that instead it’ll be tomorrow, or it’ll be in Birmingham or Edinburgh or somewhere – basically anywhere that isn’t London) And today is the first day since those bombings when there’s been absolutely no police presence – nor, in fact, any ticket inspectors – at Bracknell station. The mind boggles sometimes.
60 Years On
Posted: Wed 3 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Sixty years ago, the US used atomic weapons against Japan. The BBC has a set of photos of Hiroshima now and then, some of which are really quite affecting.
Oddly enough I was watching an episode of West Wing from Season Five a couple of nights ago that talked about nuclear weapons. (It was “The Warfare of Genghis Khan, should anyone care) Within it, they said that the US was still the only country to have actually used a nuclear bomb in anger – which is true, of course, but I’d never actually thought of it like that.
TOTP
Posted: Tue 2 August, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »Skytower will be utterly unshocked to hear this : the ‘new’ Top Of The Pops has already managed to alienate/lose half its original audience.
Colour me utterly, utterly unshocked. If nothing else, Fearne Cotton should be replaced with a park bench. It’d be a lot more animated, quite possibly a lot funnier, and definitely a whole order of magnitude more intelligent. Particularly if it had any bird shit on it at the time.
Euphemistic
Posted: Tue 2 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Why is it that we (well, the media) currently insist on glamourising stupid/dangerous activities by giving them “cool” names?
Recently we’ve had the shit about “Happy Slapping” (AKA “Assault” or “Rape”), “Deferred Success” (AKA “fucking it up” or “failing”) , “Joyriding” (AKA “stealing a car”) and too many others to mention.
Now we have “tombstoning“, which is correctly known as “Being a twat and jumping off a cliff into the sea, not knowing what awaits”.
Why does the media think these things need glamourising by use of these euphemisms? Or is it just to make the truly stupid think they’re cool by joining in with the next “big thing”?
Shite
Posted: Tue 2 August, 2005 Filed under: Health 2 Comments »While I do think that the idea of the home testing kits for bowel cancer are a good idea, one quote in the news sent my mind off on a little alternative trip.
“To use it, you just put the stick into a lump, then send it off to the testing centre”
Now there’s one place I really wouldn’t want to be in charge of opening the post…
Effnic
Posted: Tue 2 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »I’ve been thinking a lot (ok, a bit) about the latest news regarding stopping and searching people based on their ethnic background, which was in all the news and papers yesterday. Personally, I don’t understand the entire aspect of “we’ll do it more based on whether we think you’re Muslim or not”, which seems to be the main thrust of the argument.
If you’re publicly targetting one sector of society more than others, then any potential threat will do itself up to not fit in with that stereotype. In fact,the police are probably less likely to catch anyone using this method than they are by just saying “We’re increasing the likelihood that anyone could be stopped and searched at random”.
Of course, the Metropolitan police have always had a bit of a preference for singling out certain ethnicities for their stop and search programmes and so on. So I suppose it shouldn’t really be a surprise that they’d seize (pardon the pun) on this set of events as an excuse to target the same sections of the community that protested last time the stop and search became overly politicised.
</cynic>
Socks Appeal
Posted: Sun 31 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals 2 Comments »Oh Dear.
Herself has just chucked away a selection of manky socks, which is fair enough. They’re clean – but old, tired, and in need of chucking away. However, Hound has found them in the bin, and they’re now scattered all over the house, where she’s been playing with them. She particularly likes them when the socks are still bundled in pairs, as it means she can also undo the bundles, but once they’re undone, she likes playing pulling.
When doing this, I can actually lift her front feet off the ground completely. I’m currently debating the wisdom of trying to lift her completely off the ground, and how she’ll handle that…
Memory
Posted: Sat 30 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 4 Comments »It’s just occurred to me, while dong some online shopping that I actually know the number to my Switch (sorry, Maestro) card off by heart. I don’t even need to take the thing out of my wallet when I’m doing online purchases.
Does this mean that a) I need to get out more, b) I really should do less online shopping or c) I’m really rather sad with the things I can remember ?
Competitive
Posted: Sat 30 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 1 Comment »Part of my Resolutions this year was to start working harder on my photography stuff, and to both enter more competitions and build up my portfolio. All of these things are now happening, slowly but surely.
Currently, though, I find entering competitions to be quite a demoralising experience. Last month I sent off one I’m particularly pleased with (and, in fact, that we’ve had printed up and framed for the house) of The Hound, taken when we were in Somerset earlier this year. I sent it in to Amateur Photographer‘s “Amateur Photographer of the Year” competition as part of their “Pets” category, and – I can’t deny – I was optimistic. Technically it’s pretty much spot-on, except for the fact it can be a victim of the “it’s not an SLR” snobbery occasionally evidenced in AP, because I took it with my Fuji S5000. But there’s been no alteration to the image at all – no curves adjustment, or white-balance alterations. Not even a crop to make the photo better – that’s how I took it, and as such, yes, I’m bloody pleased with it.
The results were published from the Pets round this week, and of course it came nowhere in the top 30, which is all that’s published in the magazine. And while I can see why some of the images won, there are others that I simply don’t rate at all, and wonder how they were class as winners.
Photography is a horrendously subjective discipline at the best of times, and I suspect that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of entries in each round. I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes, because it isn’t – I’m not going to throw my toys out of the pram screaming “It’s not fair!”. I just wanted to write out some thoughts about the entire thing. I’m not going to stop submitting photos I’m proud of – in fact, there’s two more competitions that I’ll be entering this weekend – and I’m not going to stop working on building a portfolio.
But yes, sometimes I do find it demoralising, sending off stuff I’m pleased with or proud of, only to see it fail to even be rated. Maybe I’ll learn to harden myself a bit to this sort of thing, I don’t know. For now, well, we’ll see.
Flat Battery
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »Yet again, my cordless mouse battery is reporting that it’s flatter than a hamster hit by a juggernaut. I don’t know why this time, as it was definitely left in the cradle overnight to recharge. Cordless mice and keyboards are a pain in the arse – it’s lucky I’m OK at navigating round most things on the computer by using keyboard shortcuts.
I guess that shows I’m quite a sad old techie too. But ah well, things could be worse.
However, it may be obvious, but I have to say that trying to do stuff in Photoshop without a mouse is an absolute pain in the knackers. This has been my learning experience for the day.
Validation
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Well, I’ve banged on about it enough – and particularly in recent conversations with a few people both at work and in other commercial stuff – so I’ve finally got round to ensuring that this page on d4d™ validates against the W3C’s CSS and XHTML standards.
And lo, it does. I’m sure there’ll be odds and sods where I still fall over (the one that readily springs to mind concerns when I add images into the main part of d4d™) but as a general rule of thumb I’m now compliant with all the guidelines. Which is nice.
In other semi-related news, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Stinky from my employers last year has been making a rabid arse of himself, getting all militant and bullshitty. I’m really pleased I’m no longer working there, because I’d have to be listening to his ranting every day. Even worse, he’d probably be waving his arms about while doing so, and there wouldn’t be a nose-peg handy for dealing with the resultant olfactory offences.
So – always best to look on the bright side of these things!
(Oh, and yes, I do realise that the rest of d4d™ still needs some work before I can get site-wide validation – particularly the older photo pages and rants etc. I’ll get there one day soon, promise.)
Industrial
Posted: Fri 29 July, 2005 Filed under: Music, Thoughts 2 Comments »(I suspect I know who will be able to answer this, but I may be surprised)
Walking home last night after work, I was listening to a bundle of tracks by RevCo (or The Revolting Cocks, to give them their full title) which were a real blast from the past, and it made me start thinking. Well, I’ve got 20-25 minutes walking, the brain goes off on some strange tangents. You know how it is.
Anyway. What I was wondering was “What’s happened to all the decent industrial bands of the 90s?“. I know Al Jourgensen from Ministry is still going strong, but what’s happened with bands like KMFDM, Pig, Pigface and so on?
I used to listen to a whole bunch of the industrial stuff – Ministry, KMFDM, Pigface, Chris Connelly, Murder Inc., RevCo, Skinny Puppy, SkateNigs and so on, and probably a bundle of others that haven’t stuck in the memory quite as much. And yes, Nine Inch Nails too, although I’ve never quite seen them as Industrial per se. But most of them seem to have disappeared, or perhaps I’m just out of touch?
Back to Work
Posted: Thu 28 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 3 Comments »They finally turned up at just gone mid-day. So – not morning at all then. Tossers.
The work itself took just about an hour. Turns out that the company that had orginally fitted the carpet were utter fuckwits, and had managed to put in every single gripper-rod facing the wrong way, so basically the carpet just slipped off the nails that were supposed to be holding it in place. Cue lots of head-shaking, and “I’ve never seen a job as bad as this. Ever.” repeatedly.
To cap it all, I haven’t paid them. “Oh, the boss’ll be round to get the cheque. I don’t deal with the money side” sayeth the fitter. OK, this is the boss who couldn’t be arsed to tell me when they were coming until I called him to find out, the one who promised a quote for the other work we want doing and hasn’t provided it, and also the one who says “morning” and means “noon”. Fuck that, I’m not waiting for him to just turn up when he wants to in order to get his money, so I’m now in the office, and the shitepot can call me when he’s good and ready.
Seems fair to me.
Waiting…
Posted: Thu 28 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »I swear sometimes that my concept of time is utterly different to anyone elses. I’m waiting working at home this morning, waiting for a carpet fitter who is supposed to be doing some work “this morning”. It’s now 10 past 11. Morning is rapidly disappearing, as is my tolerance and patience.
Suicide?
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »As I said in the previous post, the New York Times has a piece debating whether the bombers actually meant to commit suicide (just type access for both username and password, if it asks) – which gives a lot of the resultant hysteria an interesting perspective.
Investigators raising doubts about the suicide assumption have cited evidence to support this theory. Each of the four men who died in the July 7 attacks purchased round-trip railway tickets from Luton to London. Germaine Lindsay’s rented car left in Luton had a seven-day parking sticker on the dashboard.
A large quantity of explosives were stored in the trunk of that car, perhaps for another attack. Another bomber had just spent a large sum to repair his car. The men carried driver’s licenses and other ID cards with them to their deaths, unusual for suicide bombers.
In addition, none left behind a note, videotape or Internet trail as suicide bombers have done in the past. And the bombers’ families were baffled by what seemed to be their decisions to kill themselves.
While some of these clues could be seen as the work of men intent on covering their trail, some investigators increasingly believe that the men may have been conned into carrying the bombs onto the trains and leaving them, thinking they were going to explode minutes later.
…
The suicide question has major implications not only for the investigation, but also for the assessment of the terrorist threat that London faces. If the attacks were a suicide mission, they would be the first suicide bombings on European soil, and signal a dangerous new threat. Suicide could indicate a higher level of commitment and point to the existence within Britain of extremists willing to die for a cause. If the men were not suicide bombers, some of the most basic assumptions of the investigation would change. On one level, the idea makes the plot less ominous. It is much easier to recruit “mules” who will carry and deposit explosives than people who are prepared to die
I must admit, I find a lot of the views given to be quite convincing.
We Come In Peace
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Apparently, armed police don’t need to give a warning to someone they suspect of being a suicide bomber – if nothing else it means that I suspect the death of Jean Charles de Menezes won’t be the last such occurrence of this sort. (<cynic>particularly if the police marksman wants a free holiday</cynic>) In addition, the New York Times is speculating about whether the bombers were actually suicide bombers at all, which I’ll write about later.
Yes, sure, a suicide bomber is likely to try and detonate their device if they know that they are being followed by police, as the Guardian article says. But equally if a suspect isn’t actually a suicide bomber then they’re far more likely to stop when being told they’re in the sights of armed police right now than they are to keep moving.
Thing is, to my mind the warning isn’t just for the sake of the suspect – it’s for the sake of the armed officer, too. If the warning’s been given, and the suspect continues to act in the same way, or to make moves to detonate their device, then it’s a justified act to stop them. If they’re not, or it turns out that (as in the case last week) they’re innocent but still ran, then the officer can at least have the reassurance that yes, they were warned, and if they ignored that warning then that’s their choice. But at least they were warned– they had the choice to stop, to halt the chain of events. Without that warning, the shooting of an innocent suspect is – to me – plain murder.
The story of Menezes’ shooting/murder will come out in the end, I’m sure – but already it’s looking smellier and smellier, the more the police backtrack and attempt to justify their actions.
Resurgence
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »Interesting to see that cycling has had a bit of a renaissance since the London bombings, with the shop mentioned in the article going from selling 3 bikes a day to 15 a day now.
I find I do have a couple of doubts about the entire thing though – first of all, people are quoted saying “The Tube is dangerous, I feel safer cycling”. In London?!? These people are quite blatantly insane. I know my life is made dodgier by cycling on the roads in Bracknell – I don’t even want to think about adding London buses and taxis in to the equation. OK, so they’re no longer at risk of being involved in a bomb on the tube. But there were also incidents on buses – and a bus roof landing on/near a cyclist isn’t going to be good for the health either.
Second, I have to wonder what these people will do once it starts raining again (as it has here today) or as the nights draw in and it gets colder. Will the ones who are so willing to get back into cycling during the balmy light summer evenings be so willing to use their bikes on a cold wet November night?
No shit
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: General, Music, Thoughts 1 Comment »Hallelujah, for the tide may be about to turn. Research is showing that people who download music buy more music. Personally I’ve always thought this was the case – I use online music in a similar way to how we used to use cassettes from friends etc. – it’s a chance to hear some new stuff, and then if you like it, buy the album.
According to this report, people who download music spend four and a half times as much on music as those who don’t download any. I’m sure that the record industry will say “yes, but that’s not the point” and come up with some half-arsed defence, but maybe – just maybe – there’s a chance that they’ll start seeing sense now.
Mind you, I wouldn’t hold my breath hoping for that to happen.
And So It Begins
Posted: Wed 27 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »Today is, apparently, exactly seven years until the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games in 2012. And in a striking coincidence, the first National Lottery scratchcard to help fund the Olympics is launched today too.
This scratchcard (along with other Olympic-themed ones) is meant to help raise £750m of the £1.5bn needed for the games. So doesn’t this just mean that the public will be paying for at least half of the games?
Hot Coffee
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »I’ve been thinking a lot about the American furore about GTA-San Andreas “Hot Coffee” mod which enables the player to ‘have sex’ with in-game girlfriends. It seems that now even US politicians are getting involved and demanding a federal investigation into the game, because of how the nudity can corrupt the game-playing children.
Now I’m sorry, but what?!? This is a game where you’re actively encouraged to shoot policemen, and hire prostitutes. Half the missions involve theft, violence, guns, and the like. And it’s the nudity that’s going to corrupt? Fuck me dead, that’s some weird system of morality.
<Pause while I try to find something I thought I’d written, but it turns out I hadn’t>. Way back in Feb 2004, Janet Jackson caused outrage in the US when her tit got displayed on prime-time TV during the superbowl – an event which has since meant a whole new bundle of rules regarding live TV transmission in the US, and also a raft of fines for supposed “indecency” on-air. But they can still show as much violence as they want without any worry of castigation or financial retribution.
GTA does the same thing – it glorifies violence and death, but one mod where *shock* the characters get nude and some teenage boys can see some pixellated nipples and some nudity, and the game suddenly has to be “adults only”.
No wonder we sent the bloody puritan twats off on the fucking Mayflower…
Protected?
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »Since last Thursday, Bracknell station has had the addition of a couple of policemen standing on the platform all day. I assume this is supposed to be some kind of deterrent to terrorists carrying bombs, or somesuch.
Quite honestly, it’s effing useless. The plods aren’t armed, and seem to be about as alert as a very inert caterpillar. I’ve seen them change platforms once, but other than that they just stand around doing nowt, and not even paying attention to the people waiting for a train.
If one uses the current stereotype of a terrorist suicide bomber (i.e. a man of Asian descent, carrying a big rucksack loaded with ‘stuff’), there’s always at least three or four “potential terrorists” waiting for a train into London in the morning. No-one gets stopped, or asked what’s in their bag. Mine looked dodgy as shite yesterday, as I was carrying a video camera (left by last weekend’s house guests, and which needed to be posted back) in it as well as my normal daily stuff. But no, no questions, not even a look of interest. Then again, I don’t fit the other half of the blueprint for “typical terrorist”, if there is such a thing.
Does this kind of presence make people feel safer? Possibly. Does it actually do anything to prevent another bombing attack? No, most probably not. The entire thing of terrorism is that you don’t know who’s going to do it, or when. OK, if someone’s visibly nervous, and fulfils all the cliched requirements (or has something dumb, like ‘visible wires’) then they might get stopped. But any terrorist worth their salt isn’t going to do that – they’ll walk onto the train calmly, knowing that their vision of heaven awaits.
And just because so far all the bombers have fitted a certain set of criteria doesn’t mean they always will. In fact, because of the way people are now more aware of that set of criteria, it’s pretty dumb to use the same sorts again. For instance, in Russia the Chechnyans have seen the power of using female bombers. While rucksacks have become the “weapon of choice”, what’s to stop it being a woman with a large handbag/ holdall? Nothing. Even within the current set of criteria, what’s to stop it from being an Asian person, suited and booted, “going to work in the city” – laptop bag, briefcase, whatever?
Missed It
Posted: Tue 26 July, 2005 Filed under: Health, News 5 Comments »As it turns out, you can miss stuff happening if you blink. According to research, when you blink, certain parts of your brain (primarily the visual system, funnily enough) shut down. That’s why we don’t perceive blinks as mini-periods of darkness. Allegedly.
Interesting stuff, though.
And please note, I have avoided all use of the <blink> tag, and any “humour” therein.
Kinja
Posted: Mon 25 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 2 Comments »Out of interest, has Kinja died the death recently? I’ve used it for a while, but it seems to be just not there any more, and the links all end up as “URL couldn’t be found”.
UPDATED : Ah, it’s me, I’m a tube. I’d forgotten part of the URL – which doesn’t help. Problem now sorted.
All Change
Posted: Sun 24 July, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »The weekend’s involved a lot of moving around – the office at home has moved into the second bedroom, so that we’ve both now got desks and the like. Of course this has also meant moving computers, and the bed out of the bedroom and in to the garage for a while ’til we get a decent second bed for the (smaller) new second bedroom.
All fun – and of course sorting out a wireless network etc. as well as everything else really made life fun.
Still, it’s all done now, and everything seems to be (so far) running smoothly. No-one is more amazed than me. *grin*
Shuttle
Posted: Sun 24 July, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 2 Comments »At some point in the next couple of months, I’m going to be building myself a new PC to replace the creaking 1Ghz Athlon that I’ve been using for the last three years. The intention is for the new box to be pretty quick, and fairly close to top-spec in the stuff I need. This doesn’t include shit-hot graphics card, as I really don’t play games on it, or anything that seriously needs top-notch graphics.
I’m thinking also that I’m going to go for a small form-factor, and probably use a Shuttle box rather than the hefty great tower box form-factor.
So what I want to know is this : has anyone else been using one of these, and are there any issues I should beware of?
Flipflops
Posted: Sat 23 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 6 Comments »I have to say, I’ve decided that I really fucking hate the current fashion for wearing flip-flop type shoes. It’s the noise they make as people walk that really grates with me, that sort of sloppy scraping noise because the shoe doesn’t come of the ground properly, and instead just scrawps along the path.
I can’t see how they’d be comfortable to wear for a long time either, but there we go, that’s just me.
Grrr.
The Big Question
Posted: Fri 22 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »The BBC asks “how can you make the Tube safe?“. The true answer, when taking into account that you’re dealing with individuals is “you can’t”.
In the end it all comes down to luck.
Shot
Posted: Fri 22 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s hard to know what to say about the man shot dead by police in London today. Was he a terrorist planning another explosion? We don’t know. Was he “acting suspiciously”? We don’t know.
In fact, we know so little – and, I suspect, nor do the police, or anyone else – about why this happened. Personally I find it worrying that there are armed officers on the tube (and thus likely out of radio contact with the Outside World) who are prepared to shoot to kill on this basis. But then again, is one death better than several, had there been an explosion?
It’s hard to say.
Lookalikes
Posted: Thu 21 July, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Is it me, or does Charles Clarke bear a striking resemblance to Bill Oddie?
HP VI
Posted: Thu 21 July, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Well, I’ve finished Harry Potter and the Penultimate Cash-In. In fairness, it’s not too bad at all – and far better than the awful sack of shite known as Order of the Phoenix.
There’s a fair amount going on throughout the book, and while it’s not rocket-science, I’ll admit there were a couple of bits where I thought “Hmmm, I wonder if what’s happening is…?”. Of course, I was wrong – but at least it made me wonder. More than can be said for …Phoenix.
A couple of twists at the end – and a semi-unexpected development or two – and yes, overall not bad at all.
Racial Tolerance
Posted: Wed 20 July, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »I’ve kept on forgetting about this – I think my brain’s trying to eliminate it from memory – but when we went down to London on July 10th for the christening (and I still have problems believing I’m actually a godfather, too) the service came up with an utter gem. The poor woman next to me couldn’t stop giggling.
In the middle of a prayer regarding the bombings in London, and preaching religious tolerance came the line :
For all people, whether they be white, black, khaki, or yellow
I think everyone who heard it (i.e. all those who weren’t comatose/ braindead by that point) just thought “What the hell?”
Successfully Deferred
Posted: Wed 20 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 4 Comments »So, yes, as expected, some thoughts about “deferred success“, or “failure”, as it used to be known. I thought I’d whittled on about this before now, but having done a search with the aid of El Googster, I can’t find owt, so maybe my brain and memory are playing tricks on me.
Anyway. Over the last fifteen to twenty years, we’ve been turning into a kind of nannied molly-coddled state where people- and particularly children- aren’t allowed to fail. There’s been a reduction in competitive events such as sports days, because in races (and sports in general) people win or lose. And that’s not on. Supposedly everyone should be seen as a success, even if they came last. They were successfully slowest, they achieved the distinction of the lowest score, they did well to let in so many goals, or drop the egg so many times off the spoon. Teams are discouraged, because, well, teams have leaders, don’t they? Someone who might just be (shudder to say it) better at something.
Exams are the same. We went from O-levels and CSEs, where CSE were a kind of “lower grade” to the infamous GCSE where (in theory at least) nothing was a failing grade. You had to work hard in order to fail a GCSE. Of course, employers didn’t give a shit about this piece of parsimonious happy-clappy hippie-arsed shite, and still maintained their stance of “Grade C or above”, as did further education. But even if Little Shaney got six G-grades, he’d still passed his GCSEs. (I should point out here that I did manage to fail a couple of GCSEs with an X-grade, which meant I hadn’t done the coursework. Go me.)
And yet, in this arena where people aren’t supposed to be perceived as failures (or, in fact, to perceive themselves as failures) schoolchildren now face more exams and tests than ever before. There’s a dichotomy there that I find hard to handle – two or three lots of SATs (an Americanism I hate, but we’ll gloss over that for now), League Tables, assessment exams, GCSEs and so on. So there’s the “testing” phase, but it’s tests that one isn’t supposed to pass or fail – it’s all degrees of success.
I’ve tried to find a quote I agree with in this concept, and I can’t find one. In fact, the only valid quote comes from another source, one disagreeing with the idea.
But others feel failure is as important for children as success – deferred or otherwise. “Everyone fails at some time in their lives and it is often in those circumstances that we learn the most,” said Nick Seaton of the Campaign for Real Education.
© Guardian Newspapers 2005
Motivation is a difficult subject – we all get motivated by different things. Personally, if I fail at something, I want to be able to do it better, and build on what I’ve already learned. I disagree with the person in the BBC story who says “But failing an exam – especially if it involves repeating an entire year – does demolish and make you start again.” Failing an exam doesn’t mean you forget all the stuff you were taught in the last year – it means that if you go back and do a re-take, you build from what you’ve learned already, and when you have that basic framework in place, you can build from it.
But you also learn more about yourself through failing. You learn how you feel, and whether you’re the kind of person who gives up, or who does try again. Of course, failing at skydiving is a bit different, but in general if someone fails first time around, they can try again.
Instead we seem to be developing a generation that only knows how to “succeed”, how to be mollycoddled and nursed, and never know about failure. How does that generation handle it, the first time they don’t get a job at interview, the first time they lose something, the first time they get called on getting something wrong? Failure is part of life, and it’s something that everyone needs to be able to cope with.
In that way, failure is perhaps something to be cherished, to be understood as a simple fact of life. We learn from those failures and mistakes. We try, we fail, we try again. And that’s the important thing – we learn to try again, to succeed through work, not through some mealy-mouthed politician who thinks everyone should be brilliant.
Chromasia
Posted: Wed 20 July, 2005 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »I’ve written about Chromasia‘s photos a couple of times recently, as he’s becoming a fairly major influence on how I want to go with photography etc. As such, I’m really pleased to see his photos and thoughts featured in a BBC piece today on Photoblogging. Congratulations!
And the same goes to Sam at Daily Dose of Imagery, also featured in the piece.
No such thing as failure
Posted: Tue 19 July, 2005 Filed under: General 5 Comments »I’m sorry, but I just can’t resist.
I’m not going to do it tonight, but worrieth not, a rant will be forthcoming on this one, you can be sure.
Deferred success, my aching ringpiece.
Note to Self
Posted: Tue 19 July, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »When abusing a driver for being a dickless wonder who can’t turn his fucking wheel in time to catch a gap in the bloody traffic, and commenting that perhaps said driver should go back to driving school in order to learn how to pull his thumb from out of his arse, it is best to check whether the twat’s window is open.
If it is, he can hear every word you’re saying, Lyle…
Bees
Posted: Tue 19 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals 3 Comments »I forgot to write about this when it happened, but it turns out that we’re not the only people with an idiot dog. It’s now a couple of weeks ago, and thankfully she’s OK, but this is what happened…
Herself’s sister (the one in Norfolk) has an idiot Black Lab. Beautiful dog, but IQ of a housebrick. Anyway, she’d been out in the garden, messing about in the sun as idiot dogs do. (I should point out, I’ve no idea yet what I’m going to call the braindead beast, I’m sure I’ll figure out something sooner or later) And the gormless bugger swallowed a bee.
Bees being bees, it stung her as it went down, and she staggered into the office, having problems breathing. And collapsed.
A speeding trip to the vets ensued, and fortunately the idioit creature’s fine – I believe she’s also a bit more wary about buzzing insects now, too.
This is also the same dog who managed to get her head stuck in a metal wine-rack as a pup, which ended up needing to get firemen to cut her out of it. I think they should’ve taken the hint then…
Buzz
Posted: Tue 19 July, 2005 Filed under: News Leave a comment »I’ve just had to laugh at the mental image provided by this story in today’s BBC website. The offending paragraph was :
Eleven woman were called to court to identify their underwear and sex toys at Stephan’s first trial.
It just conjured a vision of some poor woman having to stand up in court and say “Yes, Your Honour, that’s my thong and rampant rabbit vibrator.”.
*shudder*