CSS Reboot
Posted: Sat 30 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »Like Pix, I’ve been thinking of getting involved in the CSS Reboot , which basically involves redesigning the entire site to a CSS implementation.
Then I thought “But I’ve got sod all time anyway, I redid a lot of this to CSS back at the end of ’04, and I haven’t completed changing the old pages here yet, let alone going through and re-doing it all again.”
So I’m afraid that come May 1st there won’t be a pretty new redesign here on d4d. I just ran out of time/ inclination/ inspiration.
Sorry about that.
Weight Loss – continued
Posted: Fri 29 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions 2 Comments »It’s been a while since I last wrote about the weight loss.
It’s frustrating, but it’s been a slow process. I thought I’d be losing it a lot quicker than I am – but at least it’s still going in a downward direction. I just wish the fucker’d fall off faster. Still, maybe if it comes off slowely it’ll stay off. Or somesuch garbage. We’ll see.
Anyway, as of last Sunday, I’m 19st 10lb. I’ve lost a full stone this year, and it’s stayed off. I still want to lose more – and I think that with the cycling and the more sensible diet (by which I mean “the stuff I eat” not whether it’s Weightwatchers, Atkins, HighGI, F-Plan or whatever) it’s going to keep coming off. With more exercise in the lifestyle too – and a fair amount of gardening and dog-walking into the bargain – I’m still optimistic about losing the weight, and gaining the target weights I want to. I’m not demoralised – well, not too much – and I still want to keep on with this plan.
We’ll just have to see where I end up.
Great North Run
Posted: Tue 26 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts, Travel 5 Comments »Flippin’ ‘eck, one of my friends (I’d say she’s insane, but hey, horses for courses) has managed to get herself on a team who are doing the Great North Run on 18th September. Utter madness.
Still, we’ll be going up there to add to the (im)moral support and so on, so it should be quite fun. I’ve never been to a marathon-type event before, so I’m quite looking forward to it.
Bandwidth – Yet again
Posted: Mon 25 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 1 Comment »Well, reducing the number of posts on the front page and so on really didn’t work. So I’ve gone for the next part of the plan.
One of my huge referrers every day is a Google images search for a link I did back in April 2003. For some reason I get about 15 referrers per day . So I’ve checked into it, and removed the link through Google.
With luck that should kick in today, and my bandwidth for May won’t be quite as horrific as it has been for April.
T’raaa
Posted: Mon 25 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ Leave a comment »Away ’til Saturday, so don’t expect too much. Although, of course, there will be posts each day that’ve been done already through Word Press.
In the meantime, have a good time, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t.
Gardenage
Posted: Sun 24 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, General 2 Comments »In today’s impressive tasklist, one achievement stands out above all others.
I broke a spade.
Yes, I actually broke the thing. Cracked the metal blade right across. In fairness, it was fairly old (about seven or eight years) and not overly strong, plus we were digging in fairly clay-y soil, but still, I’ve broked a spade. Bizarrely I’m quite chuffed about this. Although it does mean that we need to buy a new – and far sturdier – spade once we get back next weekend. It’s a hardship.
However, today we’ve also put up two fence panels plus metposts, concrete, trellis, the lot. There’s been a lot of preparation done for the week away, and now we’re both – frankly – utterly fucked.
Hound is now away for the week too, at her favourite kennel-type place, and the house is horrendously quiet without the barky little sod. Roll on tonight, and tomorrow’s travel etc.
Domestic Life
Posted: Sun 24 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Thoughts 3 Comments »It’s been four months now since I moved in with Herself. A third of a year. Which seems like as good an opportunity as any to take a bit of stock of how the year’s going, and how we’re going.
And I have to say, it’s pretty good. In fact, the worst aspect of the move so far has been the job – and that’s not the fault of Herself at all. I made a fairly bad decision – the job, not the move – and it’ll get sorted. Just I’m going to take my time about it this time, and not dive into another mis-placed idea about work. Don’t believe the hype, and all that jazz. I’m in the process of looking, but it’s not at the point (and quite honestly, I don’t intend it to get to the point) where “anything’ll do, so long as it’s not here”. I want to be selective, to be picky, to take on something where I’m actually going to be challenged, rather than bored and ultimately uninterested.
Domestically though, it’s all good. We’re pretty much settled, and stuff has been distributed within the space. Having a widescreen TV in the bedroom is slightly decadent, but hell, why not. Books and bookcases have been sorted out, furniture has been placed, purchased, or chucked, and really it’s all looking pretty damn good at the moment.
The animals are settled, and have decided that (for the most part) they like me. Gawd knows why, I’m dead rotten to them a lot of the time – Hound sometimes gets called Fuckface, and (to my slight shame) is now beginning to respond to it. Cat is just a bastard, but seems to like being stroked, and sleeping on my face. OK, so that’s not ideal, but there we go. Could be worse – the little sod could still be trying to turn my legs into stumps. He tried that a couple of times, then realised that when he does it, he takes a flying lesson.
Herself – as my father observed during a conversation earlier this week – appears to have the sanity gene necessary when dealing with idiots like me. She can talk sense into me, making me see that it might be a better option to cycle 4ish miles a day and let the train do the tough bits, rather than my busting a gut with the entire route from day one. My mother has the same trait when dealing with my father. It’s necessary.
I’m still a messy sod, but even the worst excesses of that are getting tamed. Obviously there are things I do that annoy her – but equally there’s stuff that annoys me. It’s a mutual thing, a development, a relationship.
And that’s the thing – it IS a relationship. We know each other so well anyway, and yet with every day or week, we know each other better. I wonder how long that can keep on happening? We’ve both got ambitions, for ourselves, and for each other, and we’ll work towards achieving them.
On current evidence, we’re doing well – coming up to being together for a year – and it looks like that’s going to be the continued trend.
Four months in, and many more to go. Maybe even a lifetime, but who knows? Who can predict?
Death Watch
Posted: Sat 23 April, 2005 Filed under: News Leave a comment »RIP Sir Eduardo Paolozzi yesterday, and Sir John Mills today.
Puntastic
Posted: Sat 23 April, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Apparently, one of the cardinals up for selection was a cardinal named Sicola.
He was voted out because they didn’t want a Pope Sicola.
Kerboom, and indeed tish.
Bike Routes
Posted: Fri 22 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, Travel, Weirdness 5 Comments »
Over the last week, it’s occurred to me that the majority of bike routes (or cycle paths) in this area are, frankly, shite.
There’s one just round the corner from the house which is supposed to allow cyclists to avoid the chicane “road calming” methodology. That’d be great, except there’s some silly old bastard (not ageist, he’s about 70, and definitely a silly bastard) who parks his fucking metro right in the cycle-path. I’m considering talking to the local plod and seeing if they can do something about it. The alternative is writing up a couple of A4 sheets with “Thanks for parking like a cunt”, and supergluing them to his windscreen. That’ll learn him.
Going through Bracknell you get to see subways that bikes aren’t allowed through. You also get to see “cycle paths” that have full-height kerbstones at every junction, so you only use ’em at risk of buckling the bike wheels. There’s even junctions on the cycle paths where to turn left you have to bounce up a full-height kerb.
It’s actually kind of interesting too to see how drivers attitudes have changed. In fairness, a lot of the time drivers are now far more aware of cyclists, and some even let you out when the alternative is to face-plant a parked car. But most of them appear to see cyclists, then ignore them utterly. Leaving the office at half-five is as close to “dicing with death” as I’ve been in a while. There’s no chance – the drivers all rub against the kerb, and it’s nose to tail. The “safest” place is to ride down the middle of the bloody road. Or walk. Which kind of defeats the theory of cycling.
Next Week
Posted: Thu 21 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 6 Comments »Next week I’m going to be away – and nowhere near a PC with any luck. We’ll be at Center Parcs from Monday to Friday. Very little idea what to expect, as I’ve never been to one before, but hey, it should be fun.
So – the camera will be going with me, as will a laptop to store images on, and perhaps do a bit of letter-writing and the like.
There will be updates to D4D™, but I’m writing them over the next couple of days, and then post-dating them in the database. See, I knew WordPress had some uses over Movable Type…
Anyway, that’s just a bit of an advanced warning for you all – next week will be quiet chez D4D™. Not dead, but definitely in repose.
Rebooked
Posted: Thu 21 April, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions Leave a comment »Fucking hell, talk about a leadtime. Monday 20th June is was the next available date for a re-test. Still, it’s booked now. Just two bloody months to wait…
Pedestrian
Posted: Wed 20 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »After the rest of today’s activities, I decided I couldn’t be arsed to use the bike to get to work this afternoon, so I walked instead. Not the entire distance, just to the train station, then from train-station to office. And, of course, the same on the way back.
It’s not going to be a common-place “can’t be arsed” attitude, but today I just felt I’d had enough of road-users for some reason.
Flickr Pro
Posted: Wed 20 April, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Photography 1 Comment »Well, after the thoughts a while back about whether I should try Flickr out for a while, a very nice person has given me one of the Flickr Pro accounts that he was offered yesterday.
So I’ve still no idea what I’m going to do with the Flickr account, but it’s given me some impetus to do something with it, anyway.
In the meantime, Photobox are offering a sale on 7×5″ prints for 10p each, so I think I’ll be getting some more stuff done by them.
Bandwidth Arse
Posted: Wed 20 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 2 Comments »Fucketty Bugger.
I thought a while back that I’d reduced the number of posts on the front page, in a bid to chop down the bandwidth a bit. Well, fucking oops, I’d forgotten that I’d installed the Custom Posts Per Page plug-in, which meant it was over-riding the change I’d made in the options. Arsenuggets.
Anyway, I’ve changed that now – hopefully I’ll see an effect on next month’s bandwidth.
Fuckety Cunt.
Posted: Wed 20 April, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions, Sweary 2 Comments »Buggered it up. Only four or five minor mistakes (you can get away with up to 15, apparently) but one serious, which fucked it up, as you’re not supposed to get one of them. Arse-spoons.
So – booking it again. Chuff. Another £40 up the swannee.
Crashing
Posted: Wed 20 April, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions Leave a comment »Updates will be made later today. For now though, I’m off doing stuff that’s part of the resolutions.
Regular readers will probably know what I’m waffling about. Or not.
Scientific Study
Posted: Tue 19 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, News 6 Comments »Well, another set of scientific study results get filed under “Sherlock, Shit, No.”. According to researchers at the University of Bristol, children in affluent families grow up taller and thinner than those in less well-off families. No, really? What a shocker.
And of course there’s no correlation between an affluent family, and not having to buy “value” food items. No sir. None at all.
Firefox 1.0.3
Posted: Tue 19 April, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 3 Comments »Hmmm, well, Firefox is now being a pain. I installed the latest 1.0.3 yesterday, and the entire thing now keeps going tits up.
The pop-ups keep being blocked, which is great – except that it also blocks pop-ups that’re requested – you know, like blog comments, for instance.
So I’ve gone back to 1.0.2 and the hell with some of those sneaky pain-in-the-arse advertising pop-ups.
Ouchy
Posted: Tue 19 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions 3 Comments »Well, the ride home only took about 50 minutes. But shite I was knackered at the end of it. Still, I’ve proved I can do it now.
However, this morning all I can say is “Ow!”. There’s a couple of places where the saddle contacts with my body – no, not those bits – but bloody close – which hurt like a bastard. I knew they would, but still, Jesus Christ.
So today I’ve wimped out a bit, and rather than doing the full sixish miles each way, I’ve cheated and ridden to the train-station, used the train, then from trainstation to work. It’s still about two miles all told each way, but as Herself said last night, now I’ve proved to myself I can do it, and I’ve got a goal, I should perhaps take it a little bit easier than doing the full distance every day right from the start.
So yeah, I’m going to keep on doing it – but maybe just a little bit more sensibly than I did yesterday.
Oh, and yes, Anni, in relation to your comment, I was way optimistic on my timings. I know, I know. Definite faults in the calculations.
Biking
Posted: Mon 18 April, 2005 Filed under: Health, News 2 Comments »Maybe it’s just something that’s on my mind today, so I’m noticing it more, but it’s interesting to see that Transport For London has launched a series of TV ads to promote bike usage, and a school in North Yorkshire is encouraging children to cycle to school by giving them a bacon sandwich when they get there. Possibly not the greatest way to encourage weight-loss – but I can see the motivation.
After all, I’d have killed for a bacon sarnie when I got in this morning.
Wobbly
Posted: Mon 18 April, 2005 Filed under: News 1 Comment »I had to laugh today, reading about the wobbly yellow lines that a road contractor has managed to do in Peterborough. The photo that accompanies the story is brilliant – you’ve just got to be at least slightly impressed by someone so incomptent that they thought “yeah, that’ll do”.
Moggy – Finalé
Posted: Sun 17 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 5 Comments »Well, the cat is shaved. (And please, no jokes about shaved pussies (hello Google) – they’ve all been done already)
Not entirely, which is most disappointing – but he’s decidedly patchy. And epically pissed off. Which is why I haven’t yet been able to get a photo of the little sod’s bald bits.
Personally, I think he’d have actually looked far better just done as a poodle instead of the “hacked to death by a YTS trainee hairdresser on her first day” look that the vet has opted for. Still, the cat’s mortified by this turn of events, so I suppose it might still all turn out for the best…
UPDATED : Got the photos…
Before :After :
Bizarrity
Posted: Fri 15 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness 2 Comments »No, Anni, I’ve no idea why people are coming to you from my April ’03 page. I’ve looked into the source and links, and the only place you’re listed is in the blogroll over there ->
So I’m afraid I’m a bit stumped.
Sorry.
Getting Sorted
Posted: Fri 15 April, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »The Cat is now at the vets, having successfully been unfed, caught, boxed, and delivered.
He will now be going under heavy sedation, and they’ll be pretty much shaving him, except for head, tail, and paws. So yeah, kind of like a poodle. I can’t wait.
And yes, photos will be posted.
Moggy
Posted: Thu 14 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 4 Comments »I don’t write much about Herself’s psychotic cat. Most of the time no-one would believe the stuff the little git does anyway.
However, one thing that is beyond dispute is that this cat is a dirty sod. I’ve never seen it in a cat before,but he just doesn’t clean himself up at all. Most of the time this isn’t too bad, but come spring he goes outside and sleeps under cars, and generally ends up oily, dirty, and – frankly – bloody manky. At the moment his fur is almost in dreadlocks in places – utterly matted.
We’d made an appointment for the little sod to go to the vets and get the matted bits removed. Yes, the vets need to do it. He’s a dangerous wee beastie – the people who read Mike Ripley’s “Angel” books will understand if I say that this thing would give Springsteen a run for his money. To get sorted out he needs to be anaesthetised, and then they can trim/shave the fur.
Of course, this means that the cat can’t have food for 12 hours or so before going in – and he wasn’t in in time to eat last night before 8pm. So he’s had no food all night, and thus keeps us awake by yowling for food, plucking carpet, attacking beds, anything to get attention and thus get food. But no, we were good, and didn’t feed the annoying little sod.
By morning though, I have to say I wasn’t awake. Residue from yesterday’s joys plus lack of sleep equated with twuntdom.
I let the bloody cat out. As Scary would say, “Oh spoons“.
So we’ve now got to go through it all again tonight. I may just nail the little sod’s feet to the floor, and superglue his lips together. Alternatively, I’m going to ask the vet to shave the cat in the style of a poodle. If everyone laughs at him for three months while the fur grows again, he may learn to clean himself up…
Feeling Better
Posted: Thu 14 April, 2005 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »Well, yesterday was grotty. I still don’t know why, but dental anaesthetic simply flattens me. My joints end up with the kind of aches one normally associates with a dollop of ‘flu – although thankfully not this one – and I’m just groggy, grouchy, and flat for about 24 hours.
The anaesthetic itself wears off really quickly – within two hours I was completely un-numbed (if that’s a word) and back to ‘normal’,or at least as close to it as I ever get. But the after-effects hit me like a hammer, and last bloody ages.
Surprisingly, my jaw doesn’t feel too bad at all today. Yesterday it felt like I’d been kicked by a horse, but today while there’s a mild ache, it’s not bad at all – particularly considering the size of the bloody tooth they pulled out. (Literally bloody, by the way – fucker took ages to stop, too). I’ve not even bothered with any paracetamol today.
In fact, the worst bit now is the antiseptic padding they put in – I keep getting little tastes of something TCP-esque. Not nice.
Kilroy and the Gypsies
Posted: Thu 14 April, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »I didn’t get to see Channel 4’s Kilroy and the Gypsies when it was transmitted, but caught up with it thanks to TiVo knowing my viewing tendencies, and recording it without being prompted.
Much to my surprise, Kilroy – despite starting off as an utter tosser, which was no real shock – actually started to see the point of view of some of the people he was living with. By the end of the programme, when he saw the “gypsies” being evicted from land that they actually owned, he seemed to be almost human, and quite upset by what he saw.
The cynic in me says that he reacted this way because it was on TV – but there’s that nagging optimism that maybe he did see things from their side as well.
I still think Kilroy’s a tosspot, and I don’t know that anything will change that opinion. But as TV goes, the programme actually managed to be quite thought-provoking, and not too “ooh, look at the funny people” in tone.
Counting The Days – Again
Posted: Wed 13 April, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »- In One Week – Driving Test
- In Ten Days – Away for a week.
- in Two and a Half Weeks – Faithless concert at Alexandra Palace, London
- In Five weeks – Away to Ireland for a week
Not that I’m looking forward to any of this stuff, obviously.
Downage
Posted: Wed 13 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »Apologies to anyone who had problems finding d4d™ this morning. According to 34sp’s status page something major went “fzzzt” and knackered lots of network connections within the host.
Anyway, all should be back to being well now.
The Levellers – Oxford Brookes’ SU.
Posted: Wed 13 April, 2005 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »Well, we did make it in the end – and as normal photos will be posted later today, or tomorrow morning. I just haven’t sorted them off the camera yet.
Brookes Uni SU bar isn’t much of a venue, it has to be said. The people behind the bar had obviously suffered some kind of genetic cross-patch with snails, as was made evident by both their speed and their lack of anything resembling a personality. Quarter of an hour to get served, which takes the piss rather than serving it. (Yeah, they had Budweiser on tap, so serving piss is meant literaly)
On the other hand, the gig itself was pretty damn good. The support act, McDermott’s Two Hours were OK – perfect for the “crusty” image of the Levellers and so on. Irish, political, slightly odd, and with a fiddle player to die for. Supposedly they’re one of the main influences on the Levellers, so fair play.
The Levellers themselves were – to me, anyway – a bit of a surprise. In appearance they were far more “pub rock” than “crusty” – well, the bass-player fitted the bill, but the rest were strangely ‘normal’. I found the same with Offspring, among others – and the lead singer does remind me of Offspring quite a lot. Punk and rebellion-type music doesn’t really seem to have stayed with students and teenagers, but instead has grown-up and aged with its original audience.
Anyway, they were bloody good. Right from the start, they were stunning – loud, fast, and just how they should be. All the old favourites were played, along with stuff from the new album.
Thoroughly enjoyed it, even with the bunch of arseholes stood next to us. Oh, and the woman one of them was groping, who could only be described as “rougher than a badger’s arse in Autumn”. But they just provided amusement/bemusement. The gig itself was great.
Blah.
Posted: Wed 13 April, 2005 Filed under: Health 2 Comments »Ah joy, a visit to the dentist first thing in the morning. Even better, an extraction. As readers will recall from about eighteen months ago, my body doesn’t like the anaesthetic that dentists use, and processes it really quickly.
Six – yeah, count ’em, fucking six – jabs of anaesthetic later, I’m done. I had so much painkiller in my face that it finally went numb from ear down through lower jaw and across to the other side. My mouth feels like I’ve been punched. And the paracetamol hasn’t kicked in yet.
Blah.
Front Page News. Not.
Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Hardly a headline, is it? “Politician caught lying“. Nope, doesn’t really do much for me either, particularly on the “shock” stakes.
It does seem like a particularly silly thing to do and lie about though. Even by political “standards”. (Now there’s two words you rarely see together)
Time Warp
Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 Filed under: Music 2 Comments »Tonight’s gig is The Levellers at Oxford Brookes University Student Union.
Quite a blast from the past! But it should be fun. I’m looking forward to it, anyway.
UPDATE : Knackers. Looks like the car’s buggered (brakes being fairly useful to the entire moving/stopping thing), so we may miss the gig after all. Fucking wankhand cunty bastard piece-of-crap shitbag junk.
Britannia
Posted: Tue 12 April, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 10 Comments »Ah, joy. About eighteen months ago I had to deal with a debt collection agency who were operating on behalf of Britannia.
Today, I got a snotty letter (to my old address, but we’ll gloss over that) from a different company. This time it’s some shower with the imaginative company name “Debt Managers Ltd.” Having checked with Companies House at least this time they’re a valid company, which makes a change.
Anyway, this letter said that I still owe Shitannia money from nearly three years ago. Yes, the self-same account I disputed a year ago with the Robinson Way agency, who then referred it back to Britannia. And it’s taken them a year of doing fuck all before referring it to another debt agency. No contact at all in the meantime. Tossers.
So, a call to Debt Managers ensues.
I’d like to find out why I’ve got this letter from yourselves regarding a debt from Britannia.
We can’t help, we just collect the debt.
Well, can you request that Britannia send me a statement explaining what I owe, in accordance with the Credit Act’s provisions.
No, we can’t. We don’t sort out disputes, we just collect the money.
Can you give me a number for Britannia so I can do it?
No.
Well, I’d just like to say that’s the worst bit of customer service I’ve seen in a long time.
We’re not trained to do customer service. You’re not a customer, you’re a debtor.
Finally I ended up speaking to a supervisor, and after another ten minutes she’s agreed to send it back to Britannia “as the account is obviously in dispute” and of course they don’t deal with disputes, merely debts. They can’t confirm this in writing to me “as it’s not a standard letter”. And apparently typing is beyond them too.
So – back to Britannia, and a shitty letter will be written to them in the meantime.
As for Debt Managers Ltd.? (company number SC219618) Well, all I can say is that they’re one of the rudest, most unhelpful companies it’s ever been my misfortune to deal with. With luck I’ll never have to hear from the useless tossers again.
Overheard
Posted: Mon 11 April, 2005 Filed under: Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »Ah, knew I’d forgotten to write about something. (Actually, there’s a couple of things I’ve failed to write about, despite repeatedly thinking “Must do that”, but well, maybe I need a d4d™ to-do list as well!)
Anyway – while sat on the train to the DCD gig last week, I heard the most brilliant conversation…
Her (on mobile phone) : [blah, blah] and what time is ER on E4 tonight?
Him : [must’ve said 9pm, as that’s when it was]
Her : Oh, OK. I don’t think I’ll be back by then. What time does it start on E4+1?
This was said entirely straight-faced.
(For foreign readers, or those without satellite, I should point out that E4+1’s programmes start exactly one hour after E4’s hence the +1 in the name)
Archaic
Posted: Sun 10 April, 2005 Filed under: Geeky Leave a comment »Over this weekend I’ve successfully moved Tivo, which means we now have something like 80 hours available for recording TV. I doubt we’ll need that much, but we’ll see.
I’ve also been plundering old data off old PCs before they go to the great repair shop in the sky, which has been kind of fun, in a very sad and geeky way.
One PC was old enough to be drawing an IT pension – a Pentium 1 chip, and still using a serial port for the mouse. No CD-Writer, no USB, no networking, Windows 95 (just), and no modem jack – that used a serial port too. The data’s been moved off that by floppy disk, it’s so old. I can’t remember the last time I used Win95, but hopefully I won’t have to do so again for a while.
The other one’s not quite so bad – Win 98, anyway. Still no USB, but at least it’s got standard mouse and keyboard sockets, so I could resurrect one of my old spare sets of gear. And I can use a CD burner on it, which makes life a lot easier.
After the data’s come off them both, I’m not quite sure what we’ll do with the (slightly) more modern one – it may end up servicing as a Linux machine or something. I just haven’t decided yet.
The other one though is likely to find it’s way to the IT dump in the sky. Even third world countries wouldn’t want it.
Jug-Ears and Horseface revisited
Posted: Sun 10 April, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »OK, I said I would be quite happy to get the hype over with, but there’s just one more thing to observe upon about the entire affair (pardon the expression)
They’re having their honeymoon in Aberdeen, of all places. Christopher Brookmyre summed up Aberdeen in my estimation.
‘Scotland’s Fourth City’ wasn’t exactly a winning slogan, especially considering that there was a dizzingly steep drop-off after the first two, and it still put them behind the ungodly shit-hole that was Dundee.
The also self-conferred nickname ‘Silver City’ was another over-reaching feat of turd-polishing euphemism. It was grey. Everything was grey. There was just no getting away from it. The buildings were all – all – made of granite, and the sky was covered in a thick layer of permacloud. It. Was. Grey. If Aberdeen was silver, then shite wasn’t brown, it was coppertone. It was grey, as in dull, as in dreary, as in chromatically challenged. It was grey, grey, grey. And the only thing greyer than the city itself was the the fucking natives.
“A big boy did it and ran away” © Christopher Brookmyre, 2001
Says it all really. What a fun honeymoon they’re going to have.
Dead Can Dance – Photos
Posted: Sat 9 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography 3 Comments »As promised, photos from Thursday’s Dead Can Dance concert at the London Forum. As always, click the thumbnails to biggify.
Jug-Ears vs. Horseface
Posted: Sat 9 April, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Hallelujah, Jug Ears has finally tied the knot with HorseFace.
Now can we all shut the fuck up about it and move on?
Good.
Sky+
Posted: Fri 8 April, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »We’ve now got Sky+ installed in the house. (Well, if I’m honest we’ve had it since Tuesday, it’s just I haven’t really been around to play with it yet) We went for the Sky Multiroom malarkey, which is all very nice too – although I suspect that having a widescreen TV in the bedroom is a sign of either a) more money than sense, or b) two people who’ve moved in together having had seperate homes beforehand.
The other part of this though is that at the moment we’ve got both Sky+ and TiVo downstairs, which isn’t worth doing. So tonight TiVo will be moving upstairs. The problem is that it’s a bit big for the unit upon which the TV is residing, so I may need to find some strange way of doing it. I wonder if I can stand TiVo on it’s side? Hope so, because that’s the plan at the moment…
Dead Can Dance – The Gig
Posted: Fri 8 April, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 7 Comments »(NOTE : Photos will follow, probably tonight or tomorrow – they’re at home and I didn’t get a chance to crop them etc. yet)
It’s been a fair while since I’ve seen Dead Can Dance – the last time I saw Lisa Gerrard was about seven years ago (in fact, having looked at the album‘s release date, it was probably nine years ago) and it must be back in the early ’90s when I saw DCD. Ye Gods that makes me feel old.
So last night was always going to be a bit special – and it was the last night of the european section of their tour. The Forum has always been a bit of a sweatbox, and last night hasn’t changed my opinion of it – the place was heaving. And sweating. For some reason a huge percentage of the audience was apparently from Scandinavia – no idea why, but there we go. Movement was difficult, it was so busy – for the most part I just stayed in one place, against the wall of the sound-desk and got battered by people shoving past. I wish I knew what it is about people that makes them keep going for drinks, bogs, whatever while the act they’ve paid at least (in this case) £20 per ticket to see is on stage. Or, even more annoying, keep talking to their mates while the main act’s on. It’s fucking annoying – if you want to talk, fuck off. If you want to see the gig, stay. Just don’t do both – because your “talking” is at such a volume that the people all around can hear you too, you self-obsessed spaff-wit tossburger.
This trait is particularly noticeable during a gig like tonights, where the main act isn’t a wall-of-noise type band, and in fact a lot of their stuff is surprisingly delicate. Bass-heavy as chuff in a lot of cases, but not all. In fact, Lisa Gerrard did perform some of her solo-voice almost madrigally operatic stuff, which is truly impressive. By my reckoning her voice covers about five or six octaves – sometimes in one lyric. The only person I’ve seen with a greater range is Diamanda Galas, and she’s just scary. But that’s something for another day.
The gig was excellent – as expected, they performed a lot of their more well-known stuff, with “The Ubiquitous Mr LoveGrove” getting an ovation from the first beat, along with several others. They commanded the Forum amazingly well, especially considering that they hardly said twenty words to the audience all night. A definite presence, but not a personality, if that makes any sense at all.
Unfortunately my MP3 recorder failed utterly to capture the gig decently – if I’m going to attempt that again, I think I’ll need to sort out a proper microphone, or start getting to know people on the sound-desks. The photos came out pretty well – it was a very dimly-lit stage, yet I seem to have finally sussed out the right shutter speed (about 1/25th of a second, if you’re interested) that stops the people being too blurred, but also stops the shots from being too dark. Hell, it’s only taken me a year to sort out.
All things considered, it was a brilliant concert – but I can’t deny, I was glad to get out of the Forum and into the cool night to go home too. Fresh air – even London Fresh – was a joy after that crowd.
Dead Can Dance
Posted: Thu 7 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »Tonight I’m off to see Dead Can Dance at the London Forum. I haven’t seen them in at least five years, and I’m really looking forward to it.
No idea what to expect really, but with luck I’ll be able to get some photos.
And speaking of photos, I’m hoping to knock up some more photo pages over the weekend, when I’ve got some time to do so. Fingers crossed, and all that jazz.
A mini-review of the gig will go up tomorrow, when I’ve nowt better to do.
Another Step Forward
Posted: Thu 7 April, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions Leave a comment »One of the decisions I was going to be looking at as listed in the Resolutions page was whether I’d continue keeping my limited company active or not, and addressing which way I intended to head with it.
Some decisions still haven’t been finalised – such as whether any future work is done under a seperate company name as a “trading as” , or whether I continue to use the same company name as a “Trading As” without having all the guff of a proper Limited company. But one decision has been made, and has now been started – the dissolution of the Limited Company.
And I’ve just sent off the paperwork to get that sorted and dissolved. It’s a big step, I can’t deny – but I do feel that it’s the right one, and that this is the way it should go.
Driving Test
Posted: Thu 7 April, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions 4 Comments »Oh, for fuck’s sweet bleeding sake, I hate the DSA (Driving Standards Agency).
I’ve received a letter today, dated 5th April. (At least it wasn’t dated 1st April, I suppose) It basically says “We’ve cancelled your test on 12th April due to unforeseen circumstances. We’ve rebooked it for Wednesday 20th April instead. If this isn’t convenient, you need to tell us by 5th April, or you may lose you driving test fee”.
Which takes the piss, rather.
Cue a snotty phone call later, when my mood isn’t just to let rip with a tirade of vileness.
Festering
Posted: Wed 6 April, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »I must admit, I still find stories like this to be utterly horrific. A dead man who wasn’t found for six years, no-one listed him as missing, no-one noticed he hadn’t been around. Neighbours thought he’d moved away.
The coroner said it appeared the 63-year-old had fallen through the net despite repeated visits and letters by the housing trust, the Benefits Agency and the Pension Service.
After the inquest, Walsall Council’s chief executive Annie Shepperd, said the discovery would have been made sooner, if the flats had not been due to be demolished.
She said that the flat would have been rented to another tenant, and while it was being prepared for them, the body would have been found.
Too grim to think about.
Hostage
Posted: Wed 6 April, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 4 Comments »Last night we went to see “Hostage” – well, the other choice had been “Miss Congeniality 2“, with the dreaded Bullock, so Hostage it was.
The main thing I found myself thinking throughout the film was “How the hell did this manage to end up with only a 15 certificate?”. I’ve seen 18 cert films that were less graphic in their violence, let alone the depiction of dead or dying people. Yet there’s been no comments from certain aspect of the media that I’ve noticed at all.
Anyway – the film itself is pretty stunning. The ending slightly lets it down, there’s a couple of clichés that rankle slightly, but in general it’s bloody good. Not pleasant, not “entertainment” in the strictest sense, but it’s good. Dark as chuff, but it holds itself well in that context.
Bruce Willis’s character is interesting – even with the view of the now-standard White Vest. You keep expecting him to make a comment about having a really bad day a la Die Hard, or say “yippe-kie-aye motherfucker”. But he doesn’t. And that’s no bad thing, just a sign of stereotyping.
It’s also interesting that the girl who plays his daughter in the film actually is his daughter, Rumer. (Stupid name, but hey, that’s life in ‘ollywood)
Overall, Hostage doesn’t make for comfortable viewing, but the atmosphere and darkness of the entire film’s attitude makes it into a superb piece. Just don’t watch it while eating, particularly anything red…
Blood Test
Posted: Wed 6 April, 2005 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »Today’s the day of my blood test. I have no idea when I’ll get the results, but will hopefully know once I’ve been.
I’m not really looking forward to this test, but well, it’ll (hopefully) answer some questions. We’ll see, though.
UPDATED : All went well with the test. Now it’s just another week to wait before getting the results. *sigh*
B&Q – Google results
Posted: Wed 6 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 1 Comment »Having made the entire B&Q saga into a seperate page on d4d™, I was rather hoping I’d be doing OK and coming up pretty high on Google‘s results for a search regarding “B&Q Customer Services“. However, at the moment d4d™ only pulls in at #56 (although in fairness, that’s out of some 44,000 results!).
I may end up making a couple more posts regarding B&Q Customer Services, just to see how I do on the Google front!
Display
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Bugger. After less than a week, the display on my new phone has a scratch on it.
Entirely my own fault – I have a nasty habit of just shoving my phone in a trouser pocket, along with keys, change, whatever. Of course, this does mean there’s a tendency for metal to interact with glass phone display in a way that’s not complimentary to the phone.
So, in a fit of protective glory, I’ve bought a case for the phone. I normally don’t bother, but well, the display’s kind of useful on the phone, and I’ve got it for another 11 months or so, so I’d best take a bit of care of it.
Hyperactive
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »This week is one that can only be filed under either “Insane” or “Running Round Like a Fuckwit”. I haven’t decided which, yet.
Yesterday was mentally busy. Tonight involves going out with Herself for a meal and cinema. Wednesday is The Last Lesson Before The Test (eek), Thursday I’m seeing Dead Can Dance at London Forum (which used to be the Town and Country Club, back in the days), and Friday may just involve collapsing and doing nowt. Alternatively, it may involve something I simply haven’t remembered about yet.
The weekend’s not looking much better – another journey to sort out someone else’s video (their old knackered one is being replaced by one of our old working ones that’s been outmoded by TiVo and Sky+) which if I’d had a brain-cell I’d have done yesterday, only I forgot. *sigh*
Wrapped up in there too is seeing a friend who’s just had a new baby, churning out a newsletter and press-release for the charity, and a bundle of other things too.
Posts may be somewhat less than usual this week. Or they may be more prolific. It’s a toss-up.
Flickr
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 9 Comments »David asked why I didn’t bother using Flickr to display more of my photos. The simple answer is “because I never got round to it”.
The supplementary answer comes down to other things, including stuff to do with certain resolutions of mine. For a range of reasons, I’m not happy with passing copyright (or even potentially passing copyright) for my photos/images on to Flickr. Or anyone else, in fact. If I keep them hosted on d4d™ as I do now, then the copyright stays with me. Maybe that’s control-freak-esque, maybe it’s not. I don’t know. But it’s part of what I feel about Flickr, and the rest of the online photography stuff.
I rarely (if ever) leave the full-size images anywhere accessible, even on d4d™. They normally stay at 800×600, or perhaps 1024×768 if you’re lucky. Yes, they can be downloaded by people who look at d4d™, and that’s fine with me – I’ve posted them here, and it’s the only place they can be got from. I – for want of a better word – allow them to be used for that purpose from my site. With Flickr, they can be picked up by anyone, with no real link back to d4d™, other than user-name etc.
During 2005 I’m going to be seeking out some commercial opportunities and outlets for some of my photos. I’ve got some ideas already, and there’ll be more things happening. I just don’t want there to be any issues where anything I submit has been publicly available elsewhere previously. In some ways d4d™ suffers slightly for that – for instance this weekend there were a couple of photos that worked beautifully, but because I intend to see what I can do with them commercially,I’m not putting them here. There’s a balance to be drawn somewhere in all that, and I’m still working on managing to draw it.
So – I may try out Flickr, and indeed I’ve sorted myself out an account. But where I’ll use it, or what for, I don’t yet know. We’ll see. In the meantime though I’ll keep using the photos page on d4d™ for some, and this page for others.
Time will tell.
Prints
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »When we got back on Sunday, I ordered some prints of the favourite shots from the weekend from Photobox. They arrived this morning, and they’re great.
It’s easy to see how they’ve managed to keep getting awards for excellent service.
Birthday
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »Today is the birthday of Herself.
So Happy Birthday from me – although she’s already had the pressies and so on.
Yesterday
Posted: Tue 5 April, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »Yesterday was a “day off”. For those not in the know, a “day off” involves far more running round like a silly bastard than anything else yet discovered.
Yesterday involved :
- Picking up the van we’d hired for the day
- Back to the house, load up, and go to the dump with the first load
- Dump run complete,back to the house, and load :
- Sofa
- Rocking chair
- Double bed mattress plus two divan bases
- 3 75l bags of Compost
- two tables
- Electric fire
- two or three other bags of stuff
- fridge
- freezer
- Deliver the double bed to friends in Reading
- Drive to the parents, and deliver the fridge
- Drive to Herself’s grandfather’s place, and deliver the rest
- Having unloaded, load up two single beds plus divan bases
- Drive to local “house clearance” place, and drop off the beds and bases
- Back to grandfather’s place
- Drive back to Bracknell
Nice easy day off, as you can see.
Upgrading Cameras
Posted: Mon 4 April, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts 6 Comments »As I wrote a while back, I’m thinking of upgrading cameras at some point soon, and going for a digital SLR (DSLR), most likely either a Canon EOS 20 D or a Fuji S3 Pro.
However, weekends like the one I’ve just had leave me with a dilemma.
When I can churn out images with a quality like those posted yesterday, and do so on a regular basis, with my £400 Fuji S5000, then can I justify spending upwards of £1,000 on a new camera, plus lenses etc.?
I know that a DSLR will give me more creative control, and both the prime candidates have a higher resolution than the camera I’m working with, but well, can I justify the cost?
Weekend Break
Posted: Sun 3 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Photography, Thoughts, Travel 4 Comments »Well, we’re back. The weekend was fantastic, although it was altogether far too short. Then again, weekends always are.
We stayed in West Quantoxhead (also known as St. Audries, for reasons unknown to me) close to Minehead. But not too close – probably 10-15 miles away from Minehead, which is just fine with me. I used to go to north Somerset with my family years ago, to the same kind of area, but we worked out that I hadn’t actually been back for at least twenty years. And it’s amazing how little has actually changed.
Saturday dawned – for me – bloody early. In fact, at dawn. The site had a pheasant that insisted on squawking it’s way through the morning loudly. So by half six I was dressed and awake. As The Hound was also awake and perky, we went down to the beach, leaving Herself to sleep more. Besides, I’d got my camera, which has been woefully underused so far this year, so it’s time to recitfy that. Sixty photos later, yeah, it’s back to being well used. I’ve got some thoughts on cameras and so on which I’ll probably write up for tomorrow, but for now it’s safe to say that some of the stuff was stunning – including finally figuring out for myself how to take successful shots of waterfalls with that shutter speed that makes the water look like mist. It’s a photographic cliché, I know – but it was a shot I’d tried to take on several occasions before, and failed abysmally. But now I’ve got a few – OK, I’ve got a lot – but they work, and I’m well pleased with them as a result.
For most of the day we went over Porlock Hill and Countisbury Hill to Lynton and Lynmouth, which was fantastic. We spent a large proportion of time knackering The Hound, spending at least two hours on the beach playing catch, and getting her to dive into rockpools in order to retrieve the tennis ball. For some reason this also gained us a bit of an audience, but there we go. We also travelled up to Lynton on the funicular railway, a water counter-balanced system which is ace, if rickety as hell.
Travelling back, we then ended up spending another hour on the beach, wandering along and getting yet more photos I’m really pleased with, and a couple that are going to get printed out at A4 size and mounted/framed properly, we’re so chuffed with them.
Today has involved a trip to Watchet, which is still nothing special, and driving home. Knackered – utterly, utterly knackered. But also ultimately happy – it’s been lovely to have a truly relaxing weekend, even if it has involved about 120 photos, all told. But it’s been great.
Sigh
Posted: Sun 3 April, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »Why is it that weekends always seem so short? I think that really we should look at working a four day week, and having a three-day weekend. Much more like it.
And SO much more balanced, dahlings.
Away again
Posted: Sat 2 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, General, Travel Leave a comment »This weekend we’re away down in Somerset, and this time we’re taking The Hound, which should make life interesting. Walks along the beach, Hound chasing seagulls into the sea, all that kind of thing.
Of course, what this also means is that there won’t be many updates over the weekend. I’ve left a couple to go up at various times, but no, it’s going to be quiet for the weekend.
Have a good one!
Bandwidth
Posted: Sat 2 April, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky Leave a comment »I waffled on a bit earlier in the month about the joys of bandwidth, and how my useage on d4d™ had suddenly shot up – which I then realised was primarily due to installing WordPress, as now everything goes through the site, rather than Blogger’s remote access joys.
During March, I ended up going just under 1Gb over my bandwidth limit. So that’ll cost me about £1.50. No great hassle, really.
Anyway, observant readers will have noticed that the other thing I’ve done is halved the number of posts on the front page of d4d™. Instead of 20 posts visible, there’s now “only” ten. The reason I’d had so many was because I couldn’t get the archives to display everything, but since installing the “Custom Posts per Page” WordPress plugin, that seems to have been fixed. So, back to a sane number of posts on the front page, and we’ll just have to see what that does for the bandwidth issues.
AF
Posted: Fri 1 April, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Nice to see some timely spoofs on certain sites. Diamond Geezer has truly entered into the spirit of things, as has Troubled Diva.
Obviously these links will only work for today.
Me? Can’t be arsed to do much for April 1st. So there.
UPDATED : Mike has pointed out Anna’s Little Red Boot feels much the same, but Big’n’Juicy has entered into the spirit.
Catholicism
Posted: Fri 1 April, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 7 Comments »So – why am I so anti-Catholic? (in general)
The reasons are many. Recently, we saw a film called “The Magdalene Sisters“, which illustrates the Catholic Churches attitude in Ireland. It dealt with the stories of three girls, who were “guilty” of either having a baby outside marriage, or simply of flirting with boys. For committing these “sins”, they were consigned to a convent laundry, where they would be beaten for any infraction of the rules, and were basically slave labour for the church. There’s more information about the film here. This wasn’t a story based at the turn of the century – this was only the 1960s. The last laundry closed in 1996 – less than ten years ago.
To see a church that blithers on unremittingly about forgiveness and understanding, the way the Magdelene girls (and many, many others) was nothing short of Evil.
My primary reason though is my grandmother. She was, without any exaggeration, a poisonous old cow. She didn’t have a good word to say for anyone, believed herself to be devout, yet always judged everyone else against her standards. The final straw for me was that when my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimers, she packed him away to a nursing home. Fair enough, on that score – they were both in their 70s, I think, and neither was exactly on top form.
However, once he’d gone into the nursing home, she never visited him. Not once. Even when she was diagnosed with a virulent cancer, and given six months to live, she never went to see him, to tell him what was happening. When she died, my grandfather never understood, and my father had to tell him on every visit that his wife was dead, that she wouldn’t be visiting again, and go through the entire shock and grief process with him. For that, I could never ever forgive her.
At her funeral, the Catholic priest was new, and had barely met her. To all those who attended (and I suspect that for a fair number it was really just to make sure the old cow was actually dead) he described her as “a good Catholic”. If she was a good one, I don’t want to meet one that they think is a callous fucker.
Papal
Posted: Fri 1 April, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »So, the Pope had a heart attack and was read the Last Rites last night (try saying that when you’re drunk) – it does seem like the poor old sod really is on his last legs now.
As I’ve said before, while I despise Catholicism in general (by which I mean I’ve no time for the religion in general – on a personal basis I don’t give a stuff whether someone’s Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Muslim, or any other bloody thing) I think that Pope John Paul II has done an amazing amount for Christianity in general, rather than just Catholicism. Yes, there have been mistakes too, probably too many to mention. But it still stands that he’s been a sensational face for The Church. (by the way, any capitalisation like that is entirely intentional, before the pedants get at me)
I wonder what the next one will be like? And will he go on for another quarter century?
Personally, I hope that John Paul II dies peacefully. (or as peacefully as he can, current status and health stuff included) He’s already stated he doesn’t want to go back to hospital, and yes, I hope that if he’s going to die, it’ll be in his sleep, or somesuch.
By ‘Eck
Posted: Thu 31 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 8 Comments »Wow – according to this d4d™ was in the top ten British Blogs yesterday. Gob-smacked.
And yes,I have taken a screengrab, which’ll be posted tomorrow in place of the link. Or something.
Strewth.
Well Deserved
Posted: Thu 31 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Photography Leave a comment »Just a quick post to say congratulations to Chromasia for winning in the “Best European / British / Irish Photoblog” category of the 2005 Photobloggies Awards. Chromasia’s been an inspiration many times over the last year, and has made me think “Oh, I wonder if I can do something like that with my camera?” more times than I care to think about.
Also, congratulations to Daily Dose of Imagery for winning three categories in the same awards, including Photoblog of the year. On a personal preference, I enjoy far more of Chromasia’s shots than DDOI’s, but they’re still both excellent, and truly deserving of the awards.
Sony Ericsson
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 1 Comment »Well, that title should be good for a few Google hits in a couple of days. Thankfully, at least on this occasion it’s relevant.
So, some thoughts on SE phones. I’ve just upgraded to a K700i, and I have to say that on 24 hours use I’m well pleased with it, although (ah, come on, you wouldn’t expect anything else from me) there’s a couple of little niggles with it. Given a week I probably won’t notice or care about them, but moving from Nokia to SE they’re something I’m aware right now.
First of all – and this is such a minor one, it’s almost odd to write it down – the SE doesn’t show when it’s got a GPRS connection. The Nokia did. It was only a little G on the display, not intrusive at all, but when it came to knowing I could get a data connection, it was useful. The K700 doesn’t seem to have that – I’ve got the GPRS set up, no worries (One very nice function is that you can link to the Sony Ericsson site and get the settings sent directly to your phone for whichever call provider you’re using – a lot of time saved for very little effort indeed) but there’s no display to say so. Irritating.
The other one – and I suspect it’s a standard niggle – is that the predictive text key layout is different. Now, I know this is more about useability and so on, but T9 is a standard for the predictive text, and that’s fine – but if it’s a standard then the key layouts should match too. It’s a pain in the arse remembering that what was the space key is now just a zero, and what was the “Shift” to get a capital letter is now the space key. I’ll get used to it – I semi-regularly swap phone makers, rather than just models, and in a week’s time I’ll be back to texting without looking at the keys, but for now it’s a niggle.
One of my colleagues in the office (yes, the twunty manager, before anyone asks) also has an SE phone, but in his case it’s the P910i. And he can’t/won’t change the fucking ringtones, nor take it with him when he leaves the office. The call ringtone is one of the most annoying on the planet – yes, even worse than The Nokia Tone *spit*. SE in their wisdom have come up with what they call a “corporate” ringtone known imaginatively as “Ring, Ring, Ring”. I won’t be cruel and include a soundfile of it, because it’d drive you crackers – but it’s a woman’s voice ‘singing’ “Ring, Ring, Ring, wooo-hooo-oooooo, Ring Ring Ring”. Loudly, warbly, and just slightly out of tune. It’s incredibly annoying, and the twat won’t change it.
I’ve threatened to change it for him (although this may involve dropping it from a very great height) and this didn’t go down well. The twunt says he likes it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true, but equally I wouldn’t be surprised if the full sentence were “I like it because I can’t change it, and thus have to tolerate it”.
So – decent phone, but with some fuck-awful ringtones. Luckily mine’s already been changed. I did that first of all. Hmmm, I wonder if The Twunt understands Polish, if I change languages on his phone?
Helpful Messages
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky Leave a comment »As some readers will know, I regularly despair of error messages, particularly those provided by Microsoft, who seem to have raised user-hostility to an artform when it comes to anything more geeky than standard Windows™ operating systems.
Today’s special message was “Internal Server Error. (0x0)”
Upon searching through shitloads of files and database tables, it turns out that “(0x0)” actually translates from Microsoftese into “I can’t find the database table that this page is referring to, therefore the selection you require from that table can’t be obtained. You’re shit out of luck, sunshine. Now go fix it like the good twonk you are.“. Or words to that effect.
As you can see, this is obvious and completely legible. Well, it is if you live in some weird alternate reality where shorthand is the lingua franca.
Easter Chocolate
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »I’m not greatly into chocolate at the best of times, it has to be said. However, if you’re after something spectacularly good and chocolatey, you can’t do much better than Hotel Chocolat.
We both had one egg from them this year, and they’re utterly fantastic. Seriously thick chocolate for the egg itself, and filled with chocolates inside. Not just one or two in a bag, but both halves filled properly. Yes, they’re more expensive than the standard Smarties egg or whatever, but damn, they’re worth it.
Having made several orders now with Hotel Chocolat, I’d wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone who’s into chocolate.
Twunting about
Posted: Wed 30 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Geeky 4 Comments »You know, sometimes my bank just makes me despair. WAY back at the start of the year, their online banking system started coming up with a little news item about how they’d be opening the system to more browsers (this being the system that, until recently, still recommended you use IE 5 or Netscape 4.7, as it was a browser that’d been tested, and wouldn’t run on the more up to date, more secure Netscape 6/7 or IE 6) and making it all more accessible.
The dateline on that was February 28th of this year.
The news item is still there, only now it says :
Digital Banking
We’ll be making some improvements to our Digital Banking service in the near future. The service will be easier to use and more accessible for customers with disabilities
More information on these changes will be available soon.
So – a month late, and still waiting. Useless tossers.
Doctor Who
Posted: Tue 29 March, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) 4 Comments »It’s taken me a bit of time to write about the new series of Doctor Who, mainly because I’ve kept thinking “There’s something I was going to write, but what was it?”. Ah, if only we had time-travel…
But anyway, yes, in general I thought it was great to have it back. Christopher Ecclestone is grand as the new Doctor – someone who appears to be completely hyper about the end of the world, but with really bad social skills and (in a good sense) some very inappropriate responses. Billie Piper was a revelation – as she was in BBC’s Canterbury Tales last year – in that she’s actually a pretty capable actress.
What was, for me, more impressive was that for all the gloss and hype, it still maintained that “shaky sets” feel of the previous series. Yes, things have changed – but they haven’t changed all that much. The plots still have a major dose of silliness in them, the acting can be (to be charitable) a bit dodgy, but you can see that they’re actually having a laugh while doing the episodes. And it really does help to have a writer who is so obviously a fan of the earlier series – the initial episode seemed to have various threads that could develop over the run of the series, which is always a good thing.
Oh, and thank god that the awful boyfriend should now disappear. I’ve seen park benches that were less wooden.
But yeah, in general it was bloody great to have it back on the screens. Consider it Season Passed.
Bugger
Posted: Tue 29 March, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 2 Comments »It being Herself’s birthday next week, I’d sorted out what was (for her) a stonking present, one she’d said about but didn’t know I’d get. It was meant to be a surprise – upgrading her account to a nice shiny Sky+ box and multiroom Sky. (which does mean we’d have two PVRs in the house, Sky+ and my good old TiVo– sad, techie, geeky, and rather fun)
I say it WAS meant to be a surprise, because despite asking Sky to send all documentation for it to me, they’ve gone and been utter twunts, and sent it all to her instead.
The cunts.
So – one surprise professionally buggered, there’s just two more to go now. And a week in which companies can bugger them. The odds aren’t looking good…
Shocking
Posted: Tue 29 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Weirdness Leave a comment »Bloody hell, this is unnatural. Having ordered my upgrade phone last Thursday it arrived this morning.
OK, so O2 didn’t manage to send out the confirmation email that I’d requested, but there we go, that’s nothing unusual. When I chased it up over the weekend to make sure the order was actually in and being processed, I got replies very quickly – and even with the correct information in them!
So all in all, despite other hassles with O2 over the years, this time I have to say that they’ve done well – although I still find it quite demoralising that I get impressed with a company simply for doing what it says it will. Not for exceeding expectations, just for doing what it says.
Misnomer
Posted: Mon 28 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 4 Comments »Out of interest, when did a fourteen year-old leaving home with a boyfriend/partner/whatever go from “running away” to “abduction”?
I can understand a charge of “abduction” if the person has been removed unwillingly, but from the way the story is worded, that’s not the case here. No ransom’s been asked for, nothing like that.
So – runaway or abduction? Which is it? And when did one become the other?
Voiceovers
Posted: Mon 28 March, 2005 Filed under: General, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »Recently, I’ve noticed something on a couple of TV programmes that really annoys me. On both “The Apprentice” and “Masterchef” they have commentaries and voiceovers. It’s grating on the Apprentice, but it really annoys the fuck out of me on Masterchef.
The programme’s only 30 minutes long, for shite’s sake. Yet the viewer has to put up with some bint whittling on about “Will Andy’s lobster bisque impress the chefs?” or somesuch. We’ll find out in about thirty seconds anyway, not all of us have the attention span of a cerebrally challenged goldfish. “Norman’s first course didn’t impress the judges” (as we saw FIVE FUCKING MINUTES AGO, YOU SIMPERING TWAT) “so will he have cut the mustard on the second challenge” It’s something that makes me wish “interactive” TV were more like DVDs where you can at least turn off the bastard fucking scumshit commentators.
In a half hour programme – with no ad breaks, it’s on BBC2, let’s not forget – they remind the viewers at least three times for each competitor what’s happened. It’s not spread over days on end, or even hard to follow. Instead it seems to have been made for the type of people who find Jerry Springer tough to follow. Except of course that kind of person is busy watching Jerry fucking Springer (or the simpsons, whatever), not bloody Master-sodding-Chef.
It’s Summer
Posted: Sun 27 March, 2005 Filed under: General 3 Comments »I forgot to say earlier in the week – I’ve seen my first indication that Summer is definitely on the way.
No, not first cuckoos of Spring, first Daffodils, nothing like that. The first sign that it’s getting warmer again is my old bugbear – white leggings with a black thong underneath. At least this one didn’t also have VSTL, which is a bonus.
Happiness is…
Posted: Sat 26 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Well, in this case happiness is multiple. The first part is having the new book by Richard Morgan, titled “Woken Furies. I’ve loved two of the previous three books he’s written (the only exception being Market Forces, which was OK, but I need to re-read in order to firm up my feelings about it) and this one involved a return of the major characters from Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, so I’m optimistic.
Second happiness is – sad to say – geeky. The PC I wasn’t looking forward to sorting out is now sorted. It’s not quite as bad as I thought – at least it runs Windows 95 – but it’s still pretty bad. MS Office 6, 15Mb of RAM, and an 800Mb hard disk. Older than the ark…
Now there’s garden stuff to be done, it’s sunny, and there’s lunch out in the offing.
Have a good one, one and all.
Weight Loss
Posted: Sat 26 March, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions, Thoughts 3 Comments »One of my semi-resolutions that didn’t really get listed was the intention to lose some weight. At the start of this year I was at 21 stone (133Kg, for the metric among us) which really was too much, even for my height/frame.
So we started off on the weight-loss plan, aided and abetted by WeightWatchers, and a plan to go to the gym more. The gym’s happening, and I’m getting back into enjoying going, and there’s also the plan to buy a bike, although I’ve been whittling on about that one for a while now, so don’t hold your breath.
However, the weight hasn’t really come off the way I expected it to. Yeah, I’ve lost a stone, but that’s not really a lot, all things considered, for three month’s work. I’d wanted to lose more than that in this time. Don’t get me wrong, my body shape has changed, and I’ve lost an amount of fat, but the weight hasn’t changed as much as I’d expected hoped. I suspect that some of it has changed to muscle – which, in true Sod’s Law style, weighs more than fat, of course – or maybe I’ve just redistributed my lard a bit.
I’m not going to give up though – I still want to lose more, and there’s a few more ways I can think of to do it, but we’ll just have to see how it all works out, I suppose.
Countdown Begins
Posted: Fri 25 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky Leave a comment »In one month’s time both West Wing Season 5 on DVD and John Connolly’s new novel “The Black Angel are released.
Not that I’m counting the days or anything. Honest.
Off
Posted: Fri 25 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Good Friday? Bloody Brilliant Friday more like. A day off – and another one on Monday.
And even better, at the moment I even get paid for them. Can’t be bad.
In the meantime, go and look at the website for Banksy, one of the more renowned “graffiti” artists in the UK. I love a lot of his stuff, and the site is well worth looking through – especially the outdoors section.
Thought for the Weekend
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Now here’s a nice concept for your minds to work on over the Easter weekend.
Why DO some men seem to have an obsession with a) not flushing away their shits, and b) blocking toilets with shedloads of bog-roll ?
And why can’t they find some form of middle-ground, where they flush the shits away without blocking the fucking crappers?
Dirty stinking rancid fuckburger CUNTS. I’m glad we’re moving offices soon – with luck we’ll be leaving behind the shitting twats. But I’d like to find out who it is before we leave, so I can hold their faces down in their own waterlogged shite.
Reorganising
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »I’m not going to do it with most of the site, but thanks to the joys of CSS positioning etc., I’ve now made d4d™ into a “content first” page-load.
What this means – if you’re interested – is that rather than the standard way of loading the page in order (i.e. title first, then (in this case) the colour-switcher, then navigation, then all the content, it now loads in the order content, navigation, colour-switcher, title.
Having looked at that order, I may have to do a bit more twatting about – but that’s for later.
Anyway – this change means absolutely bollock all for most of the time. However, when you look at the site through a mobile phone, or a non-standard browser, it means you get to see the important stuff first. Always a good thing.
Firefox Update
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, News 1 Comment »I’m sure most people will know this anyway, but it’s worth pointing out that Firefox 1.02 is now available for download here. It fixes a couple of security issues and the like.
Tempting Fate
Posted: Thu 24 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, General 1 Comment »Following on from yesterday’s Customer Services farce(s) – and let’s face it, Sky are renowned for putting the arse in farce – I’ve really gone and done it now.
In a bid for “three-for-three” purity of failure, I’ve only gone and upgraded my phone with O2 from the Nokia I currently use to a Sony Ericsson K700i. Supposedly I may get the phone during the next week. Mind you, they also said they’d confirm this through email, and as yet they haven’t. So I’m not optimistic.
More pleasingly, considering the last time I had to deal with O2’s upgrade “service”, it’s costing me sod-all.
I must admit that when it comes to mobile phones I’m back to being a bit of a dinosaur. In 2004 I had a 3G phone for a while and won’t touch another one ’til the entire concept has been sorted out. Which, apparently, is still going to take some time. I don’t need video calling, I don’t particularly care about having a 1.3Mp camera (in my experience camera phones are still fairly bobbins, and as I always carry around my 6Mp camera anyway, I don’t need another one), and I don’t really need to sync the phone to the PC all the time. In short, I want a phone that makes and takes calls/messages, has a silent alert and/or a decent unobtrusive ring tone, has a decent battery life, has a GPRS (or better) connection so I can do basic webstuff, and doesn’t piss me off. As for other stuff, it all falls into the “OK, I might use it” – calculator, clock, email (sometimes handy, in my experience, particularly when running late for work or whatever), and an alarm function for reminders. But I wouldn’t miss any of those if they weren’t there.
So yeah, an SE K700i. It’s going to be interesting, swapping over to yet another phone maker. Assuming it happens, of course…
Sky’s the Limit
Posted: Wed 23 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 6 Comments »Ah, it’s obviously customer services day today
As most readers know, back at the end of December, I moved down to Berkshire, and went through all the fun of telling everyone. And yes, that included Sky. I wanted to do three things when I called them :
- Change my address details
- Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one
- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
Not rocket science, is it?
So I called, and lo – all done. “No Problem”, said the lady on the phone.
Change my address detailsChange my package to the lowest/cheapest oneInform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
I cancelled the direct debit this month – hey, they’ve had three bloody month’s notice – and got a snotty letter (to my old address) on Monday saying “you’ve cancelled. Pay us now.” And so I ring up Sky, and that’s where it all goes to shit.
Oh no, you can’t have given us three months notice. We only work with a months notice. So you can’t have given three. We’ll put you through to cancellations, but it’ll be one month from today.
Eh? I’m going to get charged a month extra, through Sky’s mistake?
Well, we can only work on a month’s notice, so yes, the notice will run from today.
But I gave you three month’s notice
But our system doesn’t say that. So it can’t have happened. Your notice will start from today
- Change my address details
Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
I go through to cancellations.
Ok, sir, I’ll sort out your cancellation, and as you’re not using your card at the moment, I’ll set the account on the lowest setting.
… *the sound of incredulity, and expletives being deleted pre-interface-with-gob*
- Change my address details
- Change my package to the lowest/cheapest one
- Inform them I’d be closing my account once the 12 months was up (March ’05)
Let’s see how the fuckers do with the process now.
Green
Posted: Wed 23 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »Now I have to say, this is a brilliant idea. Equipping a school with wind turbines and solar cells in order to generate some of its own power is one thing, connecting it to the National Grid is another.
And making the entire thing into an educational experience, and show energy conservation right from school is brilliance. I just hope that others follow the example – learning about this kind of thing is essential now, and should be made part of every curriculum.
Information
Posted: Wed 23 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Thoughts 2 Comments »A while back I ordered a couple of things for Herself’s birthday next week. (For obvious reasons I’m now not going to name suppliers etc. just yet – but maybe on April 6th I will) One of the places I used was one I’d had a mediocre experience with before, but it was a busy period, so I thought “OK, I’ll see what they’re like this time”.
In fairness, the ordering process wasn’t too nightmarish, although it’s fucking annoying to go through the entire process of finding the stuff, sorting out what’s needed, clicking it into the “basket”, then checking out, signing in to my account, and the bastard basket is suddenly emptied. That’s just bad coding, and meant I had to stay logged in and go through the guff again of finding bits, sorting out quantities, and putting them in the basket. But OK, it’s a minor hassle – more about useability than corporate efficiency.
Once the order’s been confirmed, the little doubts start creeping in. I haven’t had a confirmation email. No mention at all – not a “thanks for your order”, a “you’ve ordered this, and we’ll charge you for it soon”, nothing. Now that’s seriously not good. I’ve given my credit card number, yet you haven’t said it’s been received.
Check under “my account” on the site. And lo, the order’s there, all confirmed and so on. Let the heart-rate come down a bit now.
Today, it’s arrived. No fucking email to say “we’ve dispatched it”, no call, no mention under “my account” that the status of the order has changed at all.
I won’t be using the company again. And I’ll be writing to explain why. I may even refer them to this post…
Gothy Gardening
Posted: Tue 22 March, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »The Guardian today has an article about the first black hyacinth being cultivated and now commercially available. It’s taken at least 16 years, and the three “ancestor” bulbs were sold for the gob-smacking sum of £50,000 each.
I can’t deny, I’m a bit of a goth when it comes to a lot of plants, and the idea of a black hyacinth really quite appeals to me – in a similar way to the deep-red passion flower variants and so on that you now see. I wonder what other stuff we can come up with?
Wooden It Be Nice
Posted: Tue 22 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »via Slashdot, a guy has made a wooden laptop. Not just wood-covered, but the entire case is made from wood. Quite, quite barmy – but nicely different to the black and silver plastic that seems to be everywhere.
The world needs more barmpots like this, I think.
Sigh
Posted: Tue 22 March, 2005 Filed under: News 3 Comments »As with many things American, words fail.
Pie!
Posted: Mon 21 March, 2005 Filed under: General, News 2 Comments »On a related subject, I’m getting more and more desire to make an order with Lime Tree Pantry for some of their pies.
Must… Resist… Temptation…
Self-Publicising
Posted: Mon 21 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 1 Comment »via Gordon, I saw about Britblog, which supposedly lists who’s popular on a daily basis. We’ll see on that score, but I did think “Ah, what the hell, might as well sign up and give it a thrash”. So I did.
Only, when it comes to blog names, apparently d4d™ is (according to their data validation) too short. Bizarre, but true. So I’ve amended it to be “d4d™ Dummies for Destruction”, which seemed to appease it somewhat.
As for the rest, well, we’ll just see how it goes.
Rude Football
Posted: Mon 21 March, 2005 Filed under: Sweary 1 Comment »God, you’ve got to love Scaryduck sometimes. Today’s post about The football Double-Entendre XI is a gem, and has left a dollop of diet coke bobbling into the keyboard.
Bastard.
Urban Myth
Posted: Mon 21 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 2 Comments »The BBC today is covering a story that the idea that turning on a mobile phone at a petrol filling station can cause an explosion is a myth. Supposedly, out of 243 petrol station fires attributed to mobiles around the world in the last 11 years, not one was caused by a handset.
The “true” cause? Static Electricity, supposedly.
I must admit, I’ve always been dubious about the entire “turn your mobile off at the filling station” idea. If the problem is that it causes some kind of spark or electrical action when on/being turned on, then to me the odds are that it’d do the same thing when you turned it off. After all, you’ve got to activate the thing (i.e. turn off the keypad lock etc.) before you can turn it off. I can understand that there’s a possibility, however remote, that taking/making a call in a filling station wouldn’t be smart, but that’s hardly Einstein material anyway.
2,500
Posted: Sun 20 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 5 Comments »Amazingly, this is the 2,500th post I’ve written on d4d™. Well, according to WordPress, anyway. I thought I’d written a few more than that, but anyway, there’s two and a half thousand now. Quite impressive, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Now, here’s to the next 2,500!
Ideal Home – again
Posted: Sun 20 March, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 2 Comments »Well, the Ideal Home Show was interesting, to say the least. Lots of ideas have been forthcoming, and it looks like a bit of website business may be on the way too. Some surprise was expressed that I was prepared to find some business while out on a fun day “off”, but well, what the hell, spot an opportunity and exploit it – that’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.
I didn’t get any photos, unfortunately, but the place was so frigging busy I wasn’t going to be able to get much that didn’t involve having people scattered all over, which really wasn’t the mood I was going for. So yeah, no photos.
But we did have a good time – the logic of the layout is completely beyond me, sticking all the fancy guff on the ground floor, then having all the demonstrations upstairs in the narrower parts where people, by nature, stop and watch, thus blocking the entire fucking walkway. Genius. I’d like to find the person who came up with that concept and give them a bloody good kicking – and I can’t be the only one. I figure it must affect the sales and demonstrations too, because unless you can get people passing through fairly quickly you’re only going to see a percentage of any day’s custom, rather than all of it. Maybe I’m wrong, but if I were exhibiting there, it would be an issue that would piss me off. Paying God only knows how much to exhibit there (and let’s not forget it’s near as dammit a month of being there!) and yet probably missing a fair percentage of potential sales would certainly be a cause for being pissed off.
Anyway, that aside, it was actually a really good day. I wouldn’t say that anyone should go every year, or anything like that, but it’s definitely worth going. Hell, even just with balancing the cost of food (definitely take your own lunch, it’ll save you a shedload!) and drinks against the freebies we got, I’d say we probably broke even. And with the potential for some work, I probably came out well ahead of the game! Always a good thing…
Charity Work
Posted: Sun 20 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Yes, it’s “all for charidee, mate!”. Over the weekend I’ve been working more on organising fun stuff like balloon races for the charity I do some work with. I’m getting more involved in the fund-raising side, as well as the publicity and website bits I already do, and it’s pretty interesting.
This is all stuff I’ve not really been involved in before, so it’s fun, and makes for some interesting challenges. I’m thinking that I may even start doing a website (and/or a business sideline) in advice on these things for other people as I’m having the devil’s own job getting relevant information so far.
Still, all fun and games. And I’m sure I’ll write more about the various ideas and challenges as I go on with the process.
Ideal Home
Posted: Sat 19 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Today, we’re off down to the Ideal Home Show. I’ve never been before, so it should be quite fun.
No idea what to expect – open mind, booted feet, ready for most things.
Reports/Photos later/tomorrow.
Mobile d4d™
Posted: Fri 18 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 5 Comments »I can’t deny that this post is utterly sad and geeky, but I’m still obscurely pleased with this. While out at a meeting today, I was able to link in to d4d™ through my mobile and read through to see if anyone had added new comments to anything.
I’ve realised that I need to have a look at what I can do with a CSS sheet for purely mobile use, so that it gets rid of things like the style switcher etc., but for now I’m just ridiculously chuffed that the entire thing worked as advertised. I suppose I’d be less impressed if I had a super-geeky phone or whatever, but it’s just a standard Nokia 7250i.
Patrick’s Day
Posted: Thu 17 March, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Bejasus, Diamond Geezer’s turned green for the day. And of course Google has changed it’s title image too.
Of course, those links will mean shit-all if you click it anytime after today, so I may edit it later, or include a quick screendump. But I may not. We’ll see.
Security?
Posted: Thu 17 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts Leave a comment »Now this is how to do a security audit…
I know that this is an American story, but it’s really international – I’m quite certain that if an auditor in the UK contacted a department in the same way and posed as a technician then a lot of people would give out their passwords without any checking. I know that they would at my last workplace – I had the passwords of about half the IT team, let alone any of the people in, for example, social services.
Marmite
Posted: Wed 16 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Weirdness 2 Comments »I have to say that I agree with Terreus when it comes to the story today about the Marmite “blob” advert being pulled from kid’s TV. A whole six – yeah, count ’em, SIX – people complained that this ad “terrified” their children.
Now OK, personally I can’t see the attraction in jumping into a blob of Marmite, but that’s because I think the stuff’s revolting. But terrifying? Get a fucking life.
Shameless
Posted: Wed 16 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Reviews(ish) 2 Comments »It’s good to see that Shameless has won a hat-trick of awards yesterday at the Royal Television Society Awards. It’s creator, Paul Abbott, has been a major contributor to TV drama over the last few years, and deserves the recognition he’s finally getting.
A month ago, The Guardian had an interview with Abbott, which made for fascinating reading.
As for Shameless itself? Well, I’m looking forward to Series 3, having seen the finale of S2 a couple of weeks back. From the awards, it looks like it’ll be a certainty.
Nosmo King
Posted: Wed 16 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Health, Thoughts 1 Comment »Poo, I missed out on No Smoking Day. I saw a piece of guff about it yesterday, and was thinking “Oooh, nice title-bar image for d4d™, you know, one with loads of cigarette brands on it”. Maybe I’ll just leave it ’til next year – it gives me some time to knock the image together, anyway.
Twonk
Posted: Wed 16 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »Over the last couple of months, my bandwidth useage has shot through the roof here at d4d™. So much so that I’m nearly at the point of having to pay for some of it. And it’s only just occurred to me why that’s happened.
The smart amongst you will already be saying “it’s because you’ve installed WordPress, you twunt“. And you’d be right. When I was posting through Blogger, all the admin stuff, editing, changing sections etc. was done through Blogger, and thus didn’t affect the bandwidth allocation of d4d™. Now though it’s all contained within the site, and it all comes out through that bandwidth allocation.
It’s no great problem, just something I hadn’t thought of, or realised.
Twunt.
Printable Version
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 4 Comments »Well, sorting out that printer friendly css style turned out to be a total piece of piss.
And yes, Pix, there’s no fixed size on the text, should someone want to increase it at some point.
</chuffed>
Da Vinci Bollocks
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Sweary, Thoughts, Weirdness 6 Comments »No, not a new recently-discovered masterpiece. Instead, the Vatican has come out with a lecture about why the Da Vinci Code is bollocks. (OK, they didn’t phrase it quite like that, but hey, artistic licence and all that)
Frankly, who cares? Anyone who’s brain-dead enough to think that The Da Vinci Code is anything other than utter shite – admittedly, page-turning shite, but utter shite all the same – doesn’t deserve to have it explained to them, they deserve to receive a tattoo on their forehead saying “Gullible Fuckwit”. Ideally written in reverse, so that it makes sense every time they look in the mirror.
The Da Vinci Code is toss. Badly-written pulp novel toss, albeit with sales figures that feature in Tom Clancy’s wet dreams. I’ve read it. It’s toss. That’s my critical opinion of it. And of Dan Brown‘s other books too. Toss. All of ’em. I’m not jealous – fair play, he’s written a pile of shit, and made millions from it. Good for him. But to start linking it with reality is the sign of nothing more than epic levels of brain injury in lots of people.
As for debunking the theories in it, or explaining where they’re wrong, well all I can say is that the Vatican really hasn’t got its collective brain round the conspiracy theory idea yet, has it? “A denial is as good as an ovation to a rumour”, and all those other bon mots. But quite honestly the more people who stand up and say “the Da Vinci Code is bollocks, and knows it”, the better. But denying it is just going to make the tinfoil-hat brigade believe all the more. I bet the bloody thing sells in its hundreds around Area 51, and at the “Kennedy didn’t really die, it was all a plot, like when they faked the moon-landings” school of bullshit, Texas.
Upcoming Fun
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Over the weekend, I attended a committee meeting for one of the charities I work for, and oh dear lord it looks like we’re going to be busy over the next few months. However, some of it’s definitely going to be fun at the same time as being hectic.
One instance of this is that we’re going to be organising a balloon race for the start of June. I’ve never done one before, but we’re already finding out prices, comparing balloons, and looking at what we’ll need to do in order to make it a success.
For me though, along with all this, there’s one word that just brings a smile to my face in anticipation.
Helium.
And lots of it.
Tickets
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services 1 Comment »In today’s post I finally received my tickets for the Faithless gig in Alexandra Palace from Ticketmaster. Recorded delivery, but that’s no problem at all.
I’m also still waiting for my ticket to Dead Can Dance at the start of April in London. They’ve been delivered by some shower called Special Mail Services, only no-one was in at the time, so they left a sealed envelope that looks like junk mail (and in fact has to have “This is not a circular” (AKA Junk Mail) emblazoned all over the outside. Unfortunately, this just makes it look more like junk mail…) with instructions on how to get it redelivered.
Second time lucky on this one – they should now be delivering it to the work office on Thursday. Still, at least they’re not as bad as ParcelForce.
NHS
Posted: Tue 15 March, 2005 Filed under: Health 2 Comments »A couple of weeks back, I went to the local GP to sign up and sort out my basic details. At the time I also said I’d like to see a doctor about getting my thyroid function tested, as there’s a family history of it, blah, blah, showing some signs of it being a factor, blah blah.
I finally got to see the doctor this morning, and all went well. Ish. According to him, there’s no signs of thyroid mis-function (or whatever the word is), the patches of flaky skin around my eyebrows etc. aren’t really flaky, I’m not excessively warm (considering my reputation as a walking furnace, I raised my – flaky – eyebrows at that one) and that really I should be working harder to lose weight, not laying it at the door of thyroid malfunction.
Again, we’ll exclude the roughly 8,000 paces I do per day, the regular gym visits, and the Weightwatchers.
Anyway, I’m now booked for another visit to the doctors on 6th April for a blood test. Third time lucky, and all that cobblers.
Printable Version
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 2 Comments »Oooh, new geeky challenge. One thing that came up at a meeting yesterday was how one client’s website doesn’t print out nice and neatly, and instead it lags over the page margins by a just-noticeable amount. So over this week I’m going to come up with a couple of “printer-friendly” CSS files for that client and another couple that could do with it.
I’d not really thought about doing this ’til now, but it should be an interesting little side-project. Conveniently it probably also won’t take long- always a good thing!
Testing Times
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions 1 Comment »Ah, just what I needed – a reminder from the BBC that other people can make epic fuck-ups on their driving tests. In fairness, I’ve never forgotten where I’ve parked the car, but apparently some people have.
See, I’ve a whole new world of things to chuff up this time next month…
Antique
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »One task I got given over the weekend is to resurrect some data from what turns out to be an exceedingly old PC. Put it this way – the mouse runs off the serial port, the keyboard plug is keffing huge, and the modem runs from the parallel port.
In other words, O-L-D. If Noah had this thing on the ark, he bought it second-hand.
No CD writer, no USB, and I suspect (not having been brave enough to power it up yet) that it runs on either Windows 3.1, or 95 at a push.
The owner of it has wondered whether once the data’s been taken off it, it could be given to one of these charities who send PCs to the third world. I suspect even they might reject the thing…
Snoozy
Posted: Mon 14 March, 2005 Filed under: Health Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I went down with a bit of a bug. Not a huge nasty type flu or anything, but primarily it was down to aching joints and a throat that felt like someone had gone at it with sandpaper.
I’m not the sort of person who exaggerates how bad their feeling, I don’t do the “cold = flu, flu = pneumonia” type thing at all. However, what really pointed out to both me and Herself that I was feeling cack was that I went “for a lie down” at 4pm on Saturday, and woke up at 8am on Sunday.
So, yes, 16ish hours of sleep. I feel much better for it, and generally a bit less like Death Warmed Up, but at the same time it really doesn’t feel like I had much of a weekend…
Development
Posted: Sun 13 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »I’ve been thinking a bit of late about how I work when it comes to programming new modules for client requirements etc. Over the last couple of years, I’ve done a hell of a lot of work with PHP in particular, and learned a lot of new stuff. However, the “problem” with this is that it’s all based on work I’ve done, rather than any form of formalised training, and sometimes that can backfire.
In a couple of interviews I’ve had to go through technical tests on PHP where the people creating the test have obviously come through some kind of course in PHP, and thus know some of the really arcane crap that I’ve never needed to learn. Those tests are what’s made me think about all this.
When I’m writing stuff, I love working it from scratch. For me it’s the best way to learn – I don’t want to go to Hotscripts.com or wherever and use someone else’s code if I can write it myself. I can – and do – help out others with PHP queries on forums like Cre8asite, and also when certain people ask what needs fixing. So I do know a fair bit about developing, yet when I’m faced with a technical test, it all goes to shit because I’ve no idea what !(==*&^) does. Or whatever.
I look at the stuff I’ve written – and the stuff I continue to write – and I know I can do this stuff standing on my head. I just don’t have time for people who seem to want to say “look how comprehensive my knowledge is”. I bet they’ve never used the fucking functions either.
Driven to Distraction
Posted: Sat 12 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Nice to see I’m not the only one who’s learning to drive rather later in life than the norm.
ePlumber
Posted: Sat 12 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »God, you’ve just got to love people sometimes, haven’t you?
The BBC has a story about the first (and I hesitate to use the terminology) ‘digital plumbers’ having qualified from their course.
The “digital plumbing” qualification – CompTIA HTI+ – has been set up with the help of funding from Yorkshire Forward investment.
The course will make sure that dedicated certified professionals have the expertise to install and maintain home networks, providing a “one stop shop” for people.
Fair enough, I know that networking home stuff can be a total twunt to do, but “digital plumbers”? Give me a break.
Funny Guy
Posted: Fri 11 March, 2005 Filed under: News Leave a comment »I suppose it’s an apt day for this bit of news :
Cause
Posted: Fri 11 March, 2005 Filed under: General 11 Comments »“Cheer up! It’s for a good cause!”
Fuck Off.
A Valid Point
Posted: Fri 11 March, 2005 Filed under: Reviews(ish) Leave a comment »In today’s Guardian, Rupert Smith reviews a programme from BBC2 last night called “Blame the Parents”, and along the way sums up a lot of my feelings about ‘reality TV’.
Something turned them from innocent babes into teenage gremlins, and it was obvious that the parenting skills on show were somewhat lacking. But here lies the problem with Blame the Parents. This was not just about the fine-tuning of family dynamics. These weren’t naughty, unruly kids. These were people who appeared to have serious emotional, mental and behavioural problems, and to parade them on telly as if we can learn something from them while enjoying a good wallow in other people’s misery seems questionable at best. You can’t hold up an extreme as if it’s a commonplace. It’s like showing black people as muggers and crackheads, or gay men alternately shopping, shagging and taking crystal meth. If TV has gone so far into the realms of stereotyping that it’s even trashing white heterosexuals, then we’ve officially lost the plot.
© Guardian Newspapers 2005
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Cunning Stunts
Posted: Fri 11 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, General, Thoughts 3 Comments »Ah ‘good’ it’s Comic Relief day (or Red Nose Day). A day where people can act like complete twunts, and all in the name of “charity”.
Bah, fuckin’ humbug.
I wrote about this a long time ago, although that was more in regard to Children in Need than to RND. But all the same, it’s the type of charity event I’m deeply anti.
So no, D4D™ won’t be going red today. (well, unless you use the red colour scheme) I did think about it, and it’d be an easy fix. If you want to do something for RND then great, go for it.
Oh, and bear in mind that in Spain it’s a national day of mourning to mark the anniversary of the train bombs there one year ago.
Naming of the Shrew
Posted: Thu 10 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Resolutions 1 Comment »About a year ago, I bought the domain name Twadge.com, round about the same time I was having some fun designing mugs with the same word on. It’s not really been used since then – more as a data-space than as a website, if I’m honest.
However, one of my resolutions for ’05 was to fold up my old company and ring in the changes of lifestyle etc. by doing other stuff instead. That’s all continuing apace, and is going quite well so far.
But – and this is where life could get interesting – I’m still going to be doing website-y stuff for small clients and the like. So, should I fold up my existing company’s website as well, and go for total reinvention of website stuff as Twadge webdesign (which appeals in SO many ways – all of ’em wrong!) or keep the old company name active, but simply be me trading as that business name ?
Both ways are doable, and keeping the business name, although not as a limited company, means I don’t have to start completely from scratch.
Hmmm, decisions, decisions.
Accessories
Posted: Thu 10 March, 2005 Filed under: General, Weirdness 1 Comment »I’m sure that it’s been linked to everywhere else already, but I do have to say that I think this is one of the best knife-racks I’ve ever seen.
Want, want, want.
Driving On
Posted: Wed 9 March, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions 1 Comment »The driving lessons continue apace. The last two have been done in snow – two weeks ago it was more “snow showers”, but last week it was (pardon the pun) driving snow – which has been interesting, to say the least.
Tonight’s one will – hopefully – not have any snow, but is two hours instead of one. The test’s on the horizon, so this’ll be a longer one, which should be fun.
Comic Relief Memery
Posted: Wed 9 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Mike at Troubled Diva is doing a Red Nose Day blogparty soundtrack.
Imagine, if you will, the blogmeet to end all blogmeets. One blogosphere under a groove. A sea – nay, a veritable ocean – of “LOVE your work!” hugs, “Darling, you were ROBBED at The Bloggies!” air-kisses and “WHEN is someone going to PUBLISH you!” schmoozes, where tout le monde and their blogroll are getting royally rat-arsed on Vodka Red Bulls, and bopping around like maniacs to the sound of… WHAT, precisely?
My own suggestion would be something to just make me smile – “Voodoo Ray” by Acid Brass. Perfection…
NIN – again
Posted: Wed 9 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Thanks to Tom for pointing out that Nine Inch Nails had added more dates to their tour in the UK. I’ve managed to get one ticket for the final date of the tour, and now it’s all sold out again. That’s now nine UK dates, completely sold out. I wonder if they’ll add more?
Soothsaying
Posted: Wed 9 March, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts 1 Comment »You know the day’s not off to a good start when you’re walking to walk work, scratch your nose, and your glasses attempt to lemming towards the concrete…
You’re not quite sure how the day’s going to go when you catch them before they hit…
Ad-Vance
Posted: Tue 8 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »I must admit that – despite some people’s thoughts – I find myself quite unmoved by the death of Tommy Vance. Yeah, sure, I know who he was, but I rarely listened to his show.
Pix mentions that his show got her into a lot of rock music, and fair play, it’s as good a way as any to get introduced to it. I think I used to read Kerrang! or somesuch (in the days when it was actually quite good) along with the much-missed Melody Maker and NME. I still read NME fairly regularly, although I’m not quite as influenced by it as I used to be. But for the most part I was into the music anyway, and stayed in touch through a variety of methods.
So no, for me he’s not one of those life-altering people who’ll be missed.
In the meantime, I’ve got a delivery from Amazon of the Go! team‘s album, along with Green Day’s “American Idiot“, so I’m sorted musically for the day’s work.
D-SLRs
Posted: Mon 7 March, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts 2 Comments »As referred to in the post below, I’m looking at upgrading this year to a Digital-SLR camera. Really there are two in the running for it – well, three now that the Canon EOS350D has been released. However, the two that I’ve been primarily considering are the Canon EOS20D and the Fuji S3.
I’ve been impressed with the Canon results, up to a point – and Chromasia has done a lot to show me what the 20D is capable of doing. I was less impressed with the 300D when I played with that a while back, although I suspect a lot of that was down to the owner/user not really knowing what he was up to. And in honesty, I was pretty sure that the 20D was the way to go, until I saw about Fuji releasing the S3. I’ve used Fuji cameras all the way through my digital camera series so far, and I’m still very happy with the S5000 that I currently use, and have had for about 15 months now. Quite honestly, for anyone wanting a semi-pro camera, and particularly one that comes in at under £300 now, I’d recommend it and the upgraded S5500 without any hesitation at all.
What the S5000 does lack though is the creative controls. Sometimes I just can’t get the shot or effect I want with the camera, which is frustrating, to say the least. So I know that a DSLR is the way to go – it’s just which one to choose. I’ve a lot of loyalty for Fuji, so I suspect what I really need to do is see if I can find a decent photography club and get my mitts on both for a while. I don’t think the odds are high on that one, so I’ll just have to think more, and see which one I want to go for in the end. Unfortunately, at the current moment I don’t even know quite what the deciding characteristics will be. I’m sure I’ll write more about it soon though.
Photography
Posted: Sun 6 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Photography 6 Comments »Well, I did get quite a lot of photos over the weekend – some of which I’m really pleased with. A trip to Windsor to see the castle (the joys of friends with children) got some really good bits, and lots of portrait-type stuff which has worked out really well, although a lot of it won’t be publicised here due to certain issues with photos of kids, and the internet. Joy.
What I do find though – and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this – is that I take a lot of photos in “portrait” orientation, instead of landscape. It’s not something I think about a lot while taking photos, it’s just a natural camera positioning, but when it comes to Photoshop afterward, I probably have to re-orient about 2/3s of the shots, which can be a pain in the arse.
Of course, once a digital SLR is in my possession then it becomes less of an issue, as both of the main ones I’m considering come with the ability to automagically reorient themselves so that picture rotation becomes a thing of the past. But for now I’m stuck with using a Rotate function somewhere along the line. No big thing really, just an extra thing to do/ remember.
So – which format do you prefer for photos? And why?
Absenteeism
Posted: Fri 4 March, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 3 Comments »With the event of having guests for the weekend, it’s likely that I’ll be updating d4d™ even less than usual over this weekend. Don’t worry, all’s well – I’m just busy going out.
Maybe have some photos afterwards though. Or maybe not. Who knows?
Out
Posted: Fri 4 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, General Leave a comment »Another quiet day today, mainly due to being away from the computer, sorting out nasty – in some cases very nasty – technical tests and the like.
Not fun, but all part of life at the moment. *sigh*
Quiet
Posted: Thu 3 March, 2005 Filed under: Animals, General 3 Comments »We’ve got guests here this weekend, so The Hound is in kennels from today. I’ve just come home and wow, is it quiet without barking, door scratching, and all the noises you come to get used to with a dog in the house.
Definitely going to take some getting used to. Still, it’s only ’til Sunday afternoon…
M&S
Posted: Thu 3 March, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Interesting today to see that M&S have chosen to withdraw all their advertising from Associated Newspapers. (AKA Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, and London Evening Standard) It’s all to do with how the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (in particular) have apparently taken it upon themselves to slag off M&S at any opportunity. Considering that the Mail services the very same market that M&S aim for, it’s seen as possibly a bit of a self-inflicted wound, but it’ll be interesting to see what message gets conveyed to Associated Newspapers.
This advertising is worth at least £1m , with M&S paying (apparently) about £32,000 for a full-page ad in the Daily Mail. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what the response will be.
TV stuff
Posted: Thu 3 March, 2005 Filed under: General, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »No, TV as in Television, not as in Transvestism. Honest.
I’ve found Jamie’s School Dinners on Channel 4 really quite interesting so far. I like seeing someone with a passion for what they believe in trying to pass on that passion to others, and much as I loathe the lithping mockney twat, it’s obvious that he’s been shocked by what schoolchildren are being fed. It’s hard to imagine feeding kids on a budget of 37p per head for their entire lunch, and you can see why the lowest common denominator is what’s preferred. But Oliver’s attempts to improve the school diet make for interesting viewing, and it’s certainly thought-provoking. Particularly when you start thinking “Is that what I want to happen to my kids?”.
As for “Desperate Housewives, what can I say, I love it. OK, it’s not perfect, but there’s a decent slice of very black humour going through it – something that American dramas suddenly seem to be understanding far better. Six Feet Under, Sopranos, and several others have certainly raised the bar on this, and they’re getting better at it all the time. Housewives manages to combine funny bits with the dark side, and is acutely observed. I just find myself wondering whether they’ll sort it all out over the next six weeks, or whether everything will bleed over into Season 2. I suspect it will…
Googlism
Posted: Thu 3 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Bizarrely – and I’ve no idea why it’s suddenly being searched for so regularly – I come up as #2 on Google for “cuntflaps on countdown“. It’s a ‘lucky’ coincidence, as I’ve never seen that word mentioned on countdown. But obviously someone has…
Blame Allocation
Posted: Thu 3 March, 2005 Filed under: Weirdness 1 Comment »God, you’ve just got to love people sometimes. While I’m dealing with my own blame allocation issues here, up in Carlisle they’re blaming a stone carved with a 16th Century curse for their recent run of bad luck including flooding, job losses and the local football team doing badly.
Bizarre, but true.
Snowed
Posted: Wed 2 March, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »Snowed under, workwise.
Don’t expect much today.
Grrr
Posted: Tue 1 March, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »It’s going to be one of those weeks. Over the last fortnight I’ve been working on some reports that needed doing. Except I’ve no bloody idea what I’m doing, or why, or how the reports are supposed to look, or – to be honest – anything to do with this task. Which isn’t ideal. Any time I’ve been asked how it’s going, the response has been along the lines of
Well, I know fuck all about the system, the methods, the reports, and how it all goes together. I’m still waiting after [x] days for the information you promised. And I’ve no idea whether what I’m doing is correct or is a total waste of time. Other than that, it’s great.
As I’ve discovered today, it’s only the last sentence that has been sinking in. Sarcasm is obviously an unknown device here. And now we’ve got the clients coming in at the end of the week, and institutional panic has set in. Along with blame allocation.
Why didn’t you tell me you were having problems?
I did. Every day. You just chose to not bother.
This has not gone down well.
*sigh*
GP 2
Posted: Tue 1 March, 2005 Filed under: General, Health 5 Comments »Well, the visit to the doctors (well, practice nurse, as it turned out) went fine. Having pissed in a bottle, they seemed to do absolutely sod-all with it. Mind you, can’t really blame ’em, can you? I guess it’s just for their amusement “You think you’re so special, yet we made you piss on your fingers this morning. Ha!”
But blood-pressure’s fine ( 131 / 80 , if that means anything to anyone ), and there doesn’t seem to be anything else to worry about. I’ve got to make a proper doctor’s appointment in order to get thyroid levels etc. checked, so that appointment’s been made for a couple of week’s time. Oh goody.
GP
Posted: Mon 28 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Health Leave a comment »Tomorrow, for the first proper time in about four years, I’m going to be visiting my local doctor. Not for anything specific per se, but mainly in order to get myself registered and a basic check to ensure that I’m not dying of anything just yet.
One thing I am intending to get tested is my thyroid function. My father certainly has an underactive thyroid, and we’re about 95&percent; certain my grandfather had the same thing, so the odds are that it’s going to be relevant to me too. It would also go a fair way to explaining certain things about me, such as (to a degree) body shape, and the unwillingness of my body to lose weight in the way it should.
I don’t particularly like GPs, and tend not to visit them unless it’s important. This initial visit doesn’t really come under “important” for me, but I know it needs to be done at some point. In general though, I’m the direct opposite of the people who dial 999 because they’ve got a headache, in that I generally would rather GPs saw me (or indeed anyone else) for a valid reason, rather than from an acute attack of hypochondria.
So anyway, I’ll be there tomorrow morning. It’s playing a bit on my mind at the moment, even though I’m fairly certain there’s nothing wrong with me generally – but it’ll be good to get this thyroid question out of the way, all the same.
CatWoman
Posted: Mon 28 February, 2005 Filed under: News, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »I see in today’s news that Halle Berry turned up in person to accept her award for “Worst Actress” for her role in “CatWoman. All I can say is she deserves it. Oh, and to be buried in pigshit for a year, just to enforce in her head what happens when you immerse yourself in crap.
By a ‘lucky’ chance, Herself had listed Twatwoman from Lovefilm, and we got it this week. God knows why it’d been requested, but it had. And oh my dear sweet Lord, what a pile of inordinate shite it is. If I were the inventor of celluloid, I’d be spinning in my grave right now, knowing that my product had led to this.
The director, Pitof, has a pretty good track-record – he’s a disciple of one of my favourite directors, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. But God he can churn out the shite when he needs to. Visually, Twatwoman is kind of impressive – it’s got a nice feel to it in places, and some very stylistic shots. But I’ve seen MFI products less shaky than the story line, and the acting was so wooden it would’ve fitted in nicely on Eldorado.
Truly, truly awful – don’t let it anywhere near your TV.
A Bureaucracy that works
Posted: Mon 28 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Resolutions Leave a comment »Yes, you’re reading that title correctly. And no-one’s more surprised than I am – particularly when you realise that I’m talking about the DVLA. (Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency)
Part of my resolutions for this year is to sort out the driving test, and that’s progressing nicely. However, because I’ve moved, I needed to get my provisional licence updated with the new address, and all that gubbins. Then once I’d booked the test I thought “Oh fock”, and knew I needed to sort out the address change as soon as poss in time for the test.
Now, knowing most governmental bureaucracies, that was going to be an issue. After all, only six weeks to sort it? Never going to happen. I sent it off with fingers crossed. And it’s now back – all in all it took about a week to ten days. New licence with correct address, and new photocard with correct address. Same manky photo, mind. But there we go, nothing’s perfect.
But yes, I’m impressed – particularly when you think of the farce around the theory test, and finding the test centre…
Thermal Muppetry
Posted: Mon 28 February, 2005 Filed under: General 4 Comments »OK, so last night was fairly chilly – around the -6°C mark, which for this part of the UK is pretty chilly. Of course, for Sweden and Canada that almost counts as “summer”, but well, we’re not.
What does still surprise me though is the stupid things people do when it’s cold. As I’ve walked to work this morning (hey, it’s not that cold!) I’ve seen one guy destroy his windscreen by pouring boiling water on it to get rid of the ice. Thermal shock is a wonderful thing to behold. Particularly when it happens to someone else.
The other thing is that – were I that way inclined – I could’ve easily stolen four cars this morning. Not manky ones either – a Lexus L300, a Mitsubishi Shogun, an MR2, and an MG ZF. All of them had been left with the engines running to warm up/de-ice before their owners came back out of the house to a nice warm car. Or alternatively, to a space where their car used to be.
If you’re that much of a fanny that you can’t stand being in a cold car for a couple of minutes, buy a remote starter and all the gubbins. If you leave your car outside, with the keys in, while you go back to the house to stay warm then a) you’re a fanny, b) you stand a chance of getting your car nicked and c) you’re utterly uninsured for it. So not only are you a tosser, you’re a stupid tosser.
Always Impressive
Posted: Sun 27 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky 1 Comment »It’s just come round to time to renew the hosting on one of my sites. And could I remember the password to get in to the account management? Could I fuckerslike.
I’ve finally figured it out today – and while it’s one of the passwords I use on a semi-regular basis (i.e. I know what they are, and there’s about seven of them – but none of them are relevant to me, except as passwords. If that makes sense.) it does help if I type it in correctly on the original application, doesn’t it?
Still, I suppose that if I can’t figure out what a password is, then it’s likely to at least be pretty secure…
Missing Days
Posted: Sun 27 February, 2005 Filed under: General 1 Comment »I don’t know what it is at the moment about Saturdays, but I seem to be making a habit of missing them out in the daily writing thing. Weird, but true. Mind you, the amount of stuff I generally get written during the rest of the week makes it a bit easier to not feel guilty about missing a day every so often.
Of course, I could just mess about with the dating system on WordPress, and write some stuff on Friday for blithering about on Saturday, but somehow I just never get round to it. Maybe I will next weekend – who knows? Perhaps even a to-do list so that I can then cross it off as and when I get round to it.
In the meantime, yesterday and today have involved sorting out some kind of basic itinerary for our week in Ireland later this year, catching up on shedloads of stuff that TiVo had recorded, walking the dog in some of the shittiest weather so far, and general domestic stuff.
Oh, and I finally unpacked all my books, which was a bit of an ordeal, but was the final thing needing to be done on the move. Eight large boxes later, and I’ve managed to whittle it down by about a quarter, which I’m sure one of the local charity shops will appreciate. Ish.
Book List
Posted: Fri 25 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »As yet it’s not comprehensive (mainly because I’m having problems remembering some of the stuff I’ve read this year – Alzheimers is slowly kicking in) but the book list I detailed yesterday is now up and running.
I’m still going to twadge about with the idea a lot more, I’m sure – but it’s a start, and a project in progress. And yes, the database worked fine first time. God I’m sad.
Flavourings – Coke and Lime
Posted: Fri 25 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »As most people are already aware, Coke have been messing about with “Coke + flavouring” over the last couple of years. First came Vanilla, which is putrid (except with Vodka in it, but that’s perhaps missing the point slightly), then came Lemon, which most people associated with drinking Windolene.
With a lot less fanfare though comes Diet Coke with Lime. Sounds vile? (And yes, I know Pepsi are doing a Twisted Pepsi Max with Lemon and Lime.) Well, I wanted to try it, because on occasion I used to be known to put a dollop of lime cordial into normal coke, and it tasted pretty good. I’ve no idea where I got the idea from, but well, it tasted OK.
So, Diet Coke with Lime. Could be interesting. And I have to say, it’s really not bad. It might be on a limited-area trial at the moment, as the Coca-cola UK site doesn’t even mention it yet, but I’d say it’s definitely worth looking out for.
Snowy again
Posted: Fri 25 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Thoughts 1 Comment »For once, it’s actually snowed and settled overnight. A whole centimetre of the stuff. Maybe two in some places. Some schools are closed for the day, a couple of coach firms have said they’re not going to be driving, and the roads are a nightmare.
How did we get to be such an amazingly crap nation when it comes to snow? Every year we get a couple of little flurries, and everything grinds to a halt.
It’s nice to know that other people are wondering the same thing.
PICS
Posted: Thu 24 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Sweary 2 Comments »Via Gordon, who’s banging on about PICS labels, I’ve now added one to d4d™.
PICS “was originally designed to help parents and teachers control what children access on the Internet, but it also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing and privacy.�
As you can see here, I don’t have nudity or pictorial violence on the site, but the profanity count is through the roof. Can’t figure out why the shit I would be so high on that bastard though. Oh, um, yeah.
You can sort out your own PICS tag using The ICRA label generator. Fun for all the family.
Inspiration
Posted: Thu 24 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 3 Comments »It’s weird where inspiration strikes. I know I’ve been reading Karen’s reviews on Uborka.nu regularly, but this morning I woke up and had the database schema etc. for my own similar system all mapped out in my head. That’s really sad, isn’t it?
Anyway, I’ve been working on it today, and while I know I’m going to expand on the functionality in it later on in the week/month/year (depends when I get round to it) but the ability is there now. I just can’t be arsed to code it all at once. Pathetic, eh?
It’s not quite ready to be added to the navigation – but it’s going to happen in the next day or so for sure. Some tweaking (and, if I’m honest, some adding of data into the database first of all!) is still needed, as is a little bit of testing.
But why on earth did I wake up this morning with it just there in my head?
Dental Visit
Posted: Thu 24 February, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Oh joy, oh lucky me. A visit to the dentists. A necessary visit, in fairness, as I need a couple of little bits of work done fairly urgently.
And what’s all this guff about an NHS dentist being hard to find? I called one surgery which wasn’t taking on new patients, then they said “But you could try the surgery next door – I’m sure they’re taking on new NHS patients. Would you like the number?“. Hell yes. And lo, I rang them, no problem, come in ten minutes early for your appointment to fill in the paperwork. No problem.
Bates Motel
Posted: Thu 24 February, 2005 Filed under: Weirdness 6 Comments »I got a semi-spam email today from Figleaves.com which has left me utterly befuddled.
Mother’s Day – 6th March
Treat your mum to something gorgeous from Figleaves this Mother’s Day. To help you choose, we’ve put together some suggestions for different types of mother, from young to home-loving, chic to sporty
Now, you tell me – would you buy stuff like this (or even this) from Figleaves (or anywhere else, in fact) for your mother? I know I wouldn’t…
Worthwhile cause
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, News 2 Comments »It seems worth pointing out that Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is NOT the one in the current “Sudan 1” food scare. And the Worcester MP has filed an EDM to say so.
While the anchovy essence in Worcestershire sauce mean it’s not for vegetarians, it still has a whacking 99% share of the market. Not bad going, really.
New category
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services 6 Comments »In light of the fact they’re such utter, utter tossers, I’ve elected to give B&Q their own category.
I’m probably going to make up a seperate page on D4D™ for the posts as well. You know, just to make sure that Google and so on notice it too… *grin*
At the time of writing, D4D™ is #30 in Google for “B&Q Customer Services“. That’s only going to go up, if I’ve owt to do with it.
In the meantime, if you’ve come here looking for how to contact B&Q’s Customer Services, they can be reached on 0845 609 6688, or by emailing customerservicesdepartment@b-and-q.co.uk. Their address is listed here.
B&Q – You couldn’t make it up
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services, Weirdness 36 Comments »Following yesterday’s successful uplift of the-stuff-we-didn’t-order, I got a call from B&Q’s customer services person this morning. (Yes, I did mean person. I reckon they’ve only got three or four people to deal with the entire country) She was ringing to confirm that the uplift had happened, and told me that the refund on our now-cancelled order would happen once they could confirm that the items had been received back in the warehouse. Supposedly this could take up to two weeks!
“Oh, well I don’t know how often the delivery people return to the warehouse”
Every fucking day or two, I’d hope. Twat.
I also asked if she’d seen the report on BBC’s “Watchdog” last night about the shyster fuckwit twunts. She hadn’t.
“Oh no, I was watching the Sci-Fi channel instead”
Well, thanks for that information, but I really would have to try very hard in order to give a shit. Anyway, this meant she conveniently hadn’t seen that the majority of complaints regarding B&Q were regarding the fact they can’t find their own arses with both hands, a team-building exercise, and a flashlight. Let alone find the correct items in the warehouse, and deliver them to the correct house at the correct time. Rocket Science this ain’t.
The suggestion that perhaps I should write in to Watchdog myself, as they at least seemed to get some results out of B&Q didn’t go down overly well. Nor did the reminder from me when she said “well, we have to make sure that all the items are in good condition” that she had actually said I could leave the worktops out in the front garden ’til they were collected, and that she would authorise me to do so and it wouldn’t affect our refund. (We ignored their directive to leave it out, and kept it all dry in the house instead)
“Oh yes, I did say that didn’t I? I do hope you haven’t done so, the weather’s been awful in that two weeks.”
MP3
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »Today, Diamond Geezer’s writing about his new iPod Shuffle. I do kind of like the idea of the Shuffle, but the two main ‘selling points’ are the ones that would irritate me the most. No display, and an enforced random play. I like having the option to go through tracks randomly, but sometimes I want to just listen to the album straight through. And no display annoys the tits off me, and would do so even more with added random play.
My first ‘stick’ MP3 player was a 128Mb Phillips ‘wearable’ MP3 player (hey, they called it that, I didn’t) which didn’t have a display, and also had the bloody annoying habit of resetting itself to the start of the list of tracks for no good reason. But the 128Mb was enough to suffice for what I wanted – two or three albums worth, and no joggling or blipping when on the move. But it also had no display, and that bugged me after a while – I wanted to know what was playing, or whether it’d decided to reset back to the start, or what would come next. This was obviously a regular complaint about the product, as I notice that the latest one has a display on it.
Unfortunately, that one had a kind of canine-related accident. In other words I’d left it in the USB port on the computer (it also charged up via USB, which was kind of handy on occasion) and the dog’s wagging tail knocked it out, slightly knacking the USB plug. Ooops. So I ended up buying an iRiver 256Mb stick. It’s got a display, which is nice. I can choose whether I want to play sequentially, or randomly through an album, a selection, or through the entire 256Mb. It can also record and encode MP3 on the fly through an onboard microphone, or from the built-in radio. Well, it would if the radio function weren’t utterly shit. But recording line-in or through the microphone isn’t bad at all. It also gets about 40 hours of playback from one AA battery.
I don’t need a huge memory on the stick – yeah, sure, I could have bought the one with 1Gb of memory, but I wouldn’t have really utilised it. 256Mb holds six or seven albums, which is fine for a couple of days of walking to work, working, going to the gym, etc. Then I just wipe what’s on it and start again. Suits me fine.
Having the display is – for me – far better. I can navigate easily through the file structure to find the album I want without it turning into a nightmare of guesswork. (How many tracks on that album? How many keypresses will it register for skipping through the tracks?) The iRiver suits my needs – particularly now I’ve got the sound equaliser sorted, and at decent volume the bass comes through beautifully. And Pressure Drop’s “Food for Love” and “Elusive” albums illustrate that perfectly. But more about those – and some of the other music going through it – at some other point.
Hallelujah
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services Leave a comment »Well, blow me down. B&Q finally managed to get something right, and removed all the stuff yesterday. Wonders will never cease.
Of course, now we’ve still got to get the refund and compensation etc. out of the tightfisted pisswads, but well, at least we have a utility room that’s not doubling as stock storage for the arsehole tossers at B&Q.
Power
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts, Weirdness 10 Comments »It’s hard to believe, but most people in this office leave their computers on (although ‘locked’ from unauthorised access) overnight here. Most of the time they leave work-in-progress open under the ‘locked’ screen, or programs open. I’m one of the few who prefers to power-down completely and thus keep data etc. saved and safe instead.
Last night the office had a power-cut for a while. It’s been panic today while people have tried to restore and/or recreate the work they’d been doing yesterday which they hadn’t saved. And of course because the files were open, they weren’t backed up on the nightly data back-up. So in short, they’re shafted.
I can’t deny, I do have a little feeling of smugness this morning. I bet it’s company policy by the end of the week that all PCs should be shut down properly at night…
Changing Times
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: Resolutions Leave a comment »Back at the start of the year, I was thinking about whether the company I’ve had for the best part of seven years should fold. I’ve been self-employed for a lot of that, doing the IT contracting etc., but I’m wondering if that contracting era has come to an end – or is, at the very least, in need of a change.
So today I’ve started off the process of closing down my old company. It shouldn’t take too long, but the first step is to close the bank account, and the business insurance. No bad thing, the insurance was setting me back about £110 per month, but it’s a necessary business expense for a limited company. Once the bank has confirmed that the account’s closed I get to play with Companies House, the taxman, and VATman. VAT shouldn’t be an issue either, and tax has been taken care of through the year.
So – and I know I’m going to regret saying this – it should be a fairly painless process. But it’s definitely the right time to do it.
I’m currently undecided which way I’ll go next. I could form up a new limited company – and indeed would have to were I to start contracting again – or for the moment I could stick with simply “trading as”. I could even continue to use the same company name, it simply wouldn’t be a limited company any more. Or I could close the chapter entirely, and let some new idea rise, phoenix-like.
We’ll see – but for now I’m closing one door, and letting several others slide slightly open in its place. And that’s a good place to be.
Snowy 2
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, General Leave a comment »Actually, the walk to work wasn’t too bad at all. It felt warmer than it did last night (no blindingly obvious comments about it being daylight, please) so all in all it’s been an OK morning so far.
Herself is going to be dealing with the B&Q morons if/when they arrive. I’m still betting that they’ll have continued to screw it up, and won’t have the correct paperwork to remove all the items. Of course, I could be wrong. But I wouldn’t count on it, when it comes to that shower of shitheads.
Snowy
Posted: Tue 22 February, 2005 Filed under: General, News Leave a comment »Well, it’s actually snowed here in Bracknell – and over most of the rest of the country, I’m pretty sure. I didn’t think it would do so, more that there would be like a dome of wasted warmth over the town, and so all the snow would melt before it got here.
I was wrong. Now I just have to walk to work in it. Woo-hoo. </sarcasm>
Life
Posted: Mon 21 February, 2005 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Lots of stuff going on at the moment, what with one thing and another. However, there’s a fair amount of it that I’m just not going to write about yet. I’m sure the rants will come thick and fast when I do get round to them, but at the moment it’s just not happening.
For fans of general twuntery, you’ll be pleased to know that B&Q are supposed to be coming tomorrow and removing the shit that they delivered incorrectly nearly a month ago. I reckon they’ll still fuck it up.
In a second piece of twuntery Royal Mail have been busy screwing up my mail redirections from Manchester to Bracknell, which nearly resulted in me losing the cheque from a client who only had my old address on the invoice. Yes, it’s taken them that long to pay. But we’ll gloss over that for now. I’m looking forward to finding out what their excuse will be.
I’ve also realised that possibly one reason that the new job is becoming a tad slow (other than the general slow pace of any ‘training’ I’m getting *rolls around laughing*) and so on is because I really, truly, honestly don’t give a sod about the marketing bollocks that’s wrapped all round the product. Yet it appears that really this job is a blend of marketing and geekery. Hmmm. Is a rethink needed? We’ll see.
RIP
Posted: Mon 21 February, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Another RIP to start the day off – Hunter S Thompson apparently shot himself over the weekend.
I’ve loved a variety of Thompson’s writing, including Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hells Angels, and Songs of the Doomed.
Domesticity and Gardening
Posted: Sun 20 February, 2005 Filed under: General 2 Comments »Yes, most of the weekend has been spent in the garden – and I’m knackered. Most of it’s not too bad: let me loose with a pair of secateurs and I’m normally quite cheerful. The plants might not be, but I am.
Anyway, Jasmine’s a bastard, and grows everywhere. Pine sap makes me cough. Never noticed it before, but today it did. Russian Vines are a determined bunch of sods, and take a lot of time to cut right back. Buddleias are fun – and easy – you just cut ’em right back.
Composters, on the other hand, are an utter sod. We’ve got two, and both needed emptying of compost, and any manky shite that hadn’t yet broken down needed to go back in. That’s not so bad in one of them, which actually has a hatch at the bottom so you can get stuff out. The other one was designed by some utter twunt who couldn’t see why you’d need access to the bottom of it, so it’s designed as one solid body. Grrrr.
Still, we’ve got a load of good compost out of ’em, and it’s saved a bundle on buying the stuff. And all the rest is back in (or all over my clothes) and going to be rotting back down a bit more.
Now, is that domestic or what? Pretty good exercise though, all that forking, digging, and trimming.
Right Bloody Shower
Posted: Fri 18 February, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Thoughts 1 Comment »When I started my bank account with Royal Bank of Scotland I was told that part of the benefits of the account was that you could get a certain amount of legal advice either free, or at a very discounted rate.
Today I’ve tried using that service for the first time, and been told “Oh, sorry, we stopped doing that about nine months ago.” Would’ve been nice to have been informed about the change in services, as per your terms and conditions. “Oh, well, we stopped the motor insurance discount at the same time, and didn’t tell anyone about that, either“.
Hardly a recommendation, or designed to make me want to stay with ’em, is it?
NNnnoooooo! Rebranding Hell.
Posted: Fri 18 February, 2005 Filed under: News, Sweary 3 Comments »(via Gordon) It’s just unbelievable. Nestlé are going to repackage Smarties®. No more tube – it’s going to be a hexagonal job instead. (Easier to stack, and all that shite) No more plastic flip-off top, instead it’s going to be a cardboard tab.
And why’re they doing it? “to ensure the brand remained “fresh and interesting” to youngsters”.
Fucking twunts.
Suggestions
Posted: Fri 18 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™ 3 Comments »As most of you have probably noticed, the title for d4d™ now changes each refresh. Some of the titles are very childish, and there’s at least one that has snuck into the list by mistake, but that I can’t be arsed to delete. Well, it makes me smile when I see it still in there – sad, but true.
So anyway – what other suggestions have you got for new titles? Any, all, or none may make it into my little database table.
Gymmage (again)
Posted: Fri 18 February, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions, Thoughts 4 Comments »After nearly a month of going to the gym, I’ve come to the following conclusions :
- I really hate communal changing rooms. They’re the one place where I actually do feel body-conscious. Maybe in the end I won’t, but for now, yeah, totally.
- Whoever designed the cross-trainer missed out on a satisfying career creating torture devices for S&M people
- The TV screens in gyms are invariably filled with shite. Although at least we don’t have kids programmes like Adrian’s one does.
- My legs are far more developed and muscular than my arms/torso. Not in an unbalanced way, but it’s noticeable.
- Did I mention that cross-trainers are torturous?
Stylish Apology
Posted: Thu 17 February, 2005 Filed under: B&Q, Customer Services 2 Comments »I don’t normally read spam-mail from Amazon, and I didn’t read the original mail this refers to, but I do like the certain style with which they’ve apologised for the fuck up. It’s paragraph three that wins it for me…
We’re writing to correct a recent e-mail notification that we sent about “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6).”
In our e-mail, we stated that this title would not be immediately available from our suppliers, and that you may want to search for it elsewhere. We would like confirm that this book will be available from our suppliers and will be delivered to UK customers on the day of release (July 16th 2005).
We assure you that howlers have been sent to the muggles responsible for this action and we are investigating the possibility that You-Know-Who may have been involved.
I do like it when people can turn round, admit to a fuck up, and make me smile at the same time. Far better than the B&Q “It’s not our system, you must’ve ordered it incorrectly” methodology that makes me just want to reach for the over-powered cattle-prod.
Linkage
Posted: Thu 17 February, 2005 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 6 Comments »While I know I edited my .htaccess file so that any requests for random.html would get redirected to /random/index.php, I’m still quite surprised by how few people have changed their links from .html to the .php link.
So, in the aim of sorting out some of them, can I just point out that the address for this page is now
https://www.dummies-for-destruction.co.uk/random/index.php
Links can change accordingly. It’s just that if one day I screw up my .htaccess file or whatever, I’d hate to lose everyone overnight…
Derogatory
Posted: Thu 17 February, 2005 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Yes, the post below had a semi-derogatory term in it initially. I’ve changed it, for a number of reasons.
Partly, my mood wasn’t where it should’ve been yesterday, but that’s no excuse. Really, there’s no excuses at all. I was just being a slightly crass twat.
Ireland Beware!
Posted: Wed 16 February, 2005 Filed under: General, Travel 7 Comments »Advance Warning for inhabitants of the Republic of Ireland – it looks like we’re going to be visiting Dublin, Kilkenny, and a few other places in early June. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Food Stuff
Posted: Wed 16 February, 2005 Filed under: Health, Resolutions 6 Comments »While I am (in general) being pretty good food-wise at the moment, I do still have some thoughts about certain things.
- Following on from a gym session, walking the dog, and generally freezing one’s arse off, the restorative powers of chip butties (or, in this case, chip ‘wrap’s in tortillas) are greatly under-rated. And not excessively fatty.
- No matter how appetising their muffins and cookies look, there’s just something that stops me from buying Otis Spunkmeyer foods. Don’t know what *cough* other than a slightly childish sense of humour, but I just can’t do it.
- Cheese must have addictive qualities. I’ve cut down on my intake of it since moving, and it’s the only thing I crave.
- Hotel Chocolat‘s Chocolate enrobed fruit (particularly the Mangos and Oranges) are truly evil and lovely.
Mutterage
Posted: Wed 16 February, 2005 Filed under: General 6 Comments »At work I have to use Windows XP Pro. Frankly, I wouldn’t use it anywhere else.
The current bugbear is that it’s auto-updated today, and (as with Windows the world over) it now wants to restart. I don’t want it to yet – I’ve got a couple of processes running that need to be completed before I ditch them halfway through. XP’s just thrown up it’s fourth message telling me that it needs to restart, and there’s a nagging icon in the system tray.
The other part with that icon is that if you hover over it, it produces the message
This computer hasn’t been restarted since you last installed updates. Click here to complete the installation process
This isn’t quite as helpful as you may think. Clicking on it will stop everything you’re doing, dump all the processes, and restart the computer. That’s ‘completing the process’. No warning, just click on it and your work is fucked. Nice,helpful messages, and SO user-friendly.
Why doesn’t Windows have an “Oh, fuck off and stop bothering me, you sack of shit. I turn you off every night, fucking wait ’til then, for crying out loud!” option?