Stunned

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-entity

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

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

Travelling

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toymaster

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

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

Away

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

We wish you a Merry Fester

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

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

Fester All The Way

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

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

Ad Blocking

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

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

Despairing

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

300,000

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

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

Spammage

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

Transplants

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

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

Squalor

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

Surge

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

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

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

© Boing Boing.

Countdown

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

VCR

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

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

Organisation

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

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

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

Foo-go

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

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

Innocent Drinks

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

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

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

Charity Work

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

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

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

©Lyle 2004.

Children in Need

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

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

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

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

Snowfall

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

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

First Aid

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

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

Snow

It’s fucking snowing. Oh joy.

Licensing

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

Traumatic Childhood

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

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

Fanmail Part 2.

In the email just now…

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

Please email me back and let me know

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

Beauty

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

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

Frustration 2

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

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

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

Wankbiscuits

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks a bundle.

Frustrations

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

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

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

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

Blame Culture

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

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

Timetable

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

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

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

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

TiVo

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

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

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

Monday

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

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

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

Descriptive

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

Gone Silent

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

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

Visual

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

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

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

Prints

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

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

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

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

Applications

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

Interested

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

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

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

Prospect Tower (again)

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

Enjoy.

Upgraded

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

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

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

Theoretical

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

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

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

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

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

Not Good

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

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

Time Flies

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

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

Train Travel – Derailment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Landmark Trust – Prospect Tower

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

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

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

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

Growing Up

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

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

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

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

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

©Peter Gabriel 2002/3 “Up” album

See you all on Tuesday when I get back.

Barred from Blogging

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

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

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

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

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

Godlike

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

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

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

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

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

She’s Back!

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

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

Protection

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

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

Daddy G – DJ Kicks

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

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

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

Perfection.

Frothing

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

Bah fucking humbug

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

Fan-Mail

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

Hi,

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

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

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



xoxo,
Alexa

Erlection Day

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

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

Daylight Hours

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

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

Early Edition

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

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

Festerous

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

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

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

Stunned

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

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

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

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

999

I tried to not comment too much about the idiot Cambridge student who called 999 to get some paracetamol because frankly anyone that lazy and stupid doesn’t deserve the publicity. However, Reynolds then spoke about it a bit in his blog and it was interesting to see it from the point of view of an ambulance driver/paramedic too.

Anyway, after that I was thinking (and yes, I commented on Reynold’s blog too) about what would stop people from calling 999 for fucking stupid non-urgent calls. Personally, I would think about having a charge that could be levied (in the same way that some parts of the Fire Brigade do) for spurious calls – a charge of, for example, £250 would soon stop a lot of people from calling for stupid reasons. The other alternative was to charge a smaller fee, say £10 or £15 per callout (with some age limits, so that certain age groups/demographic sections weren’t charged) would still stop people making non-urgent 999 calls.

Both have pros and cons – personally I don’t like the £15 per callout idea as it heads too close to the US’s “pay for every medical service” model, but the £250 “penalty fee” could stop some people from calling even if it were an urgent call.

So – discussion time while I’m away for the weekend – what do you think would work?

Air Freshener 2

Harking back to earlier in the week, I can now understand why the air-freshener spray in the toilets at work has “Do not inhale” written on it.

The thing bloody stinks. In fact it’s worse than the original odour.

Pink stuff

While I’m not necessarily one to blither about every single charity day, I do think that Wear It Pink day is a good idea. (Even if the site is a piece of shite that only really works in IE) It’s part of the Breast Cancer Campaign, which has always been a worthwhile cause.

And it seems like a pretty good occasion to point out the Walk the Walk charity too – I’m planning on doing the London event (although I don’t plan on wearing a pink bra to do so) next June, and publicity is always a good thing…

Bank of Mum and Dad

Over the last three or four weeks, BBC has had a series called “The Bank of Mum and Dad“, where people who are hugely in debt get advice on how to budget etc. from their parents. It’s been an interesting series in a way, although I also consistently find myself being abusive to the idiots who have run up the debts.

I find it interesting the way they seem to have no concept of debt, that when they owe thousands of pounds in loans and so on, they have to be paid back. But I also find the psychology of it fascinating, that so many of the people seem to spend in order to feel better about themselves. It’s a very materialistic way of living, and in some ways it’s not something I really understand, although I know I can be careless on occasion – but I know also that I owe very little money to anyone. I think that’s the difference.

There’s a lot of background that’s never really explored; particularly the obvious parent-child relationships that are on view. However, even with the abuse I hurl at the idiots, it does make for an interesting programme.

Daylight Saving

Oh God, it’s THAT weekend again. The clocks go back at 2am on Sunday, and suddenly we’ll be heading home from work in the dark, and it’s definitely winter. I’ve been noticing over the last month that I’ve been getting more sluggish, not feeling as bright, and the SAD is slowly coming in again.

Daylight bulbs go some way to helping, and they’ve been in for long enough that I think I might get away with deceiving the brain a little bit again this year. Coupled with that, there’s a lot of other stuff where I need to be staying busy, and perhaps that’ll help take my mind off it.

Last year I tried staying manically busy, and that didn’t work. I’m not going to be doing that this year, although with work, interviews, and travelling I’m still going to be pretty busy – but I’m going to work on avoiding the manically busy stuff, all the same. We’ll just have to see how this winter goes – but it can’t be as grotty as the last one.

Searching

Even before the post below, it turns out I’m number one in google for “Robert Kilroy-Silk Prick“, which I’m hoping will also come up when the words “Is a” are included. (Ah no, just checked, I only come in 9th for that one)

Also, I come in 3rd for “things to do in Oldham when it’s wet” (although if Google were truly all-knowing, it would just answer with “fuck all“)

Leaving the Party

I can’t deny it, I found the story of Kilroy-Silk walking out on his UKIP colleagues in European Parliament yesterday.

It was also amusing to see the self-serving twat “insisting he had pre-empted a move to expel him from Ukip’s 12-strong parliamentary group, [and depicting] himself as a moderating force who condemned his former colleagues as extremists.”

According to the BBC, “The East Midlands MEP said he was remaining in the party but would not work with his colleagues in Strasbourg.” which just makes me wonder what the point of the entire thing was in the first place.

Then again, I’ve often wondered that about Kilroy-Silk.

Irony

I witnessed a glorious piece of behaviour at lunch-time today. Because it’s half-term, a bunch of the local schoolchild scallies were hanging round the shopping centre. They were all dressed in the trademark tracksuit and baseball cap, emblazoned with sportswear logos etc. – the sort you can see here any day of the week.

Yet they were abusing other people (and rightly so, in the case of the woman in the pink tweed suit and pink faux swede knee-length boots) by calling them “Chavs”. I just thought it was a spectacular demonstration of absolutely zero self-awareness.

Banned

Did you know that if you try and access the site of George Bush’s presidential re-election campaign from outside the US, you get a message saying “Access Denied“? The BBC has a story about it – now, who mentioned “Insular”?

UPDATED : The US has tried explaining why they’re blocking access – well, not really. “It’s for security reasons” isn’t a valid excuse, although in light of the “War against Terror” it seems to be seen as one.

ONE:Life

From the following review from the Guardian, I’m really quite glad I decided to give the programme a miss…

It was probably a mistake for Gary Hart to take part in ONE Life: Asleep At the Wheel (BBC1). Hart is the man whose Land Rover crashed on to a railway line at Selby in 2001, causing the deaths of 10 people. Hart says he didn’t fall asleep, a jury disagreed, and he was given a five-year jail sentence. He was released after serving half of it. Now he’s told his side of the story.

But even if what he says is true, and that the car hit something or suffered a mechanical failure, as a PR exercise this film was a disaster. He just comes across as a really nasty piece of work.

Yes, people were bereaved, but so was his family, he says – it was like a bereavement for them having him in prison for two and a half years. He’s suffered the same way as they have. And what about his car insurance? Who knows how much it will be when his ban is over.

Finally, when Hart looks at a photo of the post-crash carnage, the first thing he thinks about is not the people who died but his Land Rover. “I loved that old truck,” he says. It’s hardly surprising the victims’ families are struggling to forgive him.

The BBC had carried a story yesterday about the programme which made me fairly sure that it would be one of those weaselly PR-based programmes to say “it’s not fair, it wasn’t my fault”. (in much the same way that Rogue Trader did for Nick Leeson) That’s normally one of the types of TV (along with party political broadcasts) that just ends up with me shouting obscenities at the screen. So all in all, yeah, I’m glad I missed it.

Sweary

I can’t believe I’d missed this bunch of nerfherders, but Vicky at Highrise points out the – frankly hilarious – Cuss Control Academy.

“You probably swear because it is easy, fun, candid, emphatic, expressive, breaks rules, and somehow partially reduces anger and pain. But the negatives outweigh the positives.” Nope, I swear because sometimes what the situation deserves is a healthy yell of “Fucking Buggery Bollocks!”.

“You really don’t win an argument by swearing.“. Wanna bet?

“ You don’t prove that you are smart or articulate. You don’t earn respect or admiration.“. Again, wanna bet? Some of my swearier fests have brought praise from many others.

“You don’t motivate, you intimidate. Swearing doesn’t get you hired, promoted, or romantically connected.” Well, perhaps. Although it can get you fired, demoted, or romantically chuffed.

But that’s just a small sample of the site’s triteness. It’s well worth reading just for humour value. Or just to email them to say “Fucking Hairy-arsed Cunty Badgery Bollockweasels”. Which is what I’ve done.

UPDATED : And Green Fairy also comments on the same thing..

John Peel

Bloody hell, John Peel has died of a heart-attack while in Peru on holiday. RIP. Late night radio just won’t be the same without him.

Previous

I’m still trying to work out quite how I feel about the proposed legislation announced yesterday that means some juries may be informed of a person’s prior criminal record. I’ve never sat on Jury service, which will come as no shock to anyone who knows me – but if I were to do so, would I want to know about prior convictions?

To me the potential for this is to erode the concept of “reasonable doubt” – a jury is supposed to decide the merits of the case they’re trying, and come up with a verdict from that. However, if a case hasn’t been fully proven, where a jury would previously have opted for “not guilty”, if they know that someone has been accused and tried for a similar offence in the past, is there not a chance that they’ll then opt for “guilty” – “he’s done it before, the chances are he did it again“?

Blunkett said the measure would allow juries to have greater access to information about previous convictions and other types of misconduct “without unduly prejudicing the fairness of the trial”

“Trials should be a search for the truth and juries should be trusted with all the relevant evidence available to help them to reach proper and fair decisions,” said Mr Blunkett.

© Guardian Newspapers

I find this to be a troublesome concept – the jails we have are full to bursting, yet this initiative seems likely to find more people guilty, rather than less.

I think that when all’s said and done I would prefer to look at a case the way it’s done now, on the basis of the merits and evidence of that case, without having the information about what the accused has done before.

Lemon-scented

The gents toilet at work has (finally) had a new can of air-freshener put inside it. Being the sad git I am, I had a look at the warning label on the can.

“Caution : Do not inhale spray”

Um, it’s bloody air-freshener…

Email

It’s now officially one of those days. I’ve had two emails today regarding putting documents onto the intranet. On the first one they’d managed to not attach the “attached” document – not once, but twice. Which is impressive. The second one was rather more succinct.

“Can you please put the attached document on the intranet ASAP.”

That was it. Fair enough, the document’s attached on this occasion, but the intranet is over 2,000 pages, split between five major groups and then all the little fiefdoms under that. So God knows exactly where it’s supposed to go. But it’s definitely shaping up as one of those days. Roll on 5pm.

Nuptials

Ye Gods, last week was obviously the week of the blogwedding, what with Graybo getting hitched to Hels and also Stuart and Krissa doing a similar thing in the US.

All the best to both couples.

Gone Quiet

I’m not sure quite what’s happened today, but there seems to be very little going on. The roads were quiet this morning, and the office is virtually deserted. On a plus point, Stinky® is on a week off, which is a Good Thing and gives me some peace, and my sense of smell some recovery time.

But it’s definitely quiet, and there’s not a lot at the moment worthy of commentation. (if that’s a word – I suspect it’s not) And it looks like Gordon is suffering the same problem.

Defrosted

Of all the things that aren’t much fun to do on a Sunday, cleaning out a freezer comes high on the list. Particularly when it wasn’t planned at all. It looks like at some point this week I’d not closed the freezer door properly, so everything had defrosted to some degree, and the freezer resembled a small cross-section of the Polar regions.

As it is, I’ve opted for the safer choice, and simply chucked out everything. (Well, except for the vodka, but that doesn’t care about being defrosted) It’s a pain in the arse, but less of one than a dollop of food poisoning can be. And besides, it gave me a chance to clear out stuff and be done with it. But now it’s cleaned out, defrosted, and probably running a bit more efficiently. Just would’ve been nice to have to clean it out on my own timetable, rather than having it inflicted upon me. Ah well.

Scissor Sisters, Manchester Apollo

I’d had tickets to the previous Scissor Sisters gig in Manchester a couple of months ago, but missed it due to some work commitments – they don’t happen often, but when they do they have to be handled.

Anyway, when the next tour was announced, I picked up tickets again, and was determined to see them this time round. And wow, it was worth it. The camera did a bit better too, and came up with some stuff I’m really quite pleased with. The support act were decidedly odd – I think they were called “Fifi and Herm”, although it might have been “KiKi and Herm” – memory fails. Very odd bunch of New York cabaret-style cover versions (although the initial “Hit Me Baby One More Time” was deeply noteworthy, as was the ability to mix up “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”) were amusing, but not really successful as a warm-up to the main attraction. On the other hand, DJ Sammy Jo who provided the music in between acts was superb, and warmed people up far more than the support act had managed.

When the curtain went up for the Scissor Sisters, they’d managed to transform the stage into a type of glam ballroom, chandelier and all – and a light-show that wouldn’t have been out of place at a much larger venue. They kicked in and played everything off their album, as well as three new tracks which sounded like they’d fit right in, and hold a lot of promise for the second album when they get round to recording it. (I think that first of all they need to get some time where they’re not touring!) They even managed to make Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” sound good – quite an achievement in its own right.

Over all the entire gig was superb, full of energy, and with the passion and sound to go a long way further – I reckon the next venue they play in Manchester might well be headlining at the Evening News Arena. They’ve already played there as support for Duran Duran, and I can see them playing there several times before long on their own merit. Well worth catching any time they play in the vicinity.

West Wing Season Four

I’ve just finished watching the DVDs of Season Four of the West Wing. It’s taken me longer than usual to watch the complete season, primarily because there’s been so much other stuff going on in life at the moment, but I’ve still got through the last two discs in about three days.

And the combined effect of those two discs can be summed up as either “Wow” or “Fucking Hell!” depending on who you’re talking to. I’ve always been impressed by the series, by the scripting, the acting, and the story curve – but I have to say that the final three episodes of Season Four are an amazing example.

And the only other reaction I’ve got having seen those last episodes is to thank the Lord that Season Five is already showing on E4, and TiVo has got sorted so that I can find out what happens…

Hungry Caterpillar

Amazingly, the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is now 35 years old today. Since being published, it’s sold at least one copy every second minute (My mistake) of every day somewhere in the world. That’s quite something.

The piece in the Guardian is fascinating, detailing the way it’s been popular with not just children but also teachers, education authorities, artists, and even US Presidents (Bet you can’t guess which one…) There can’t be many people who don’t know the book, and I think it’s a stunning achievement to have been constantly in print for 35 years. Long may it continue. (Along with “Where the Wild Things Are“, which is slightly older at 37years old.)

Buzz

Apparently, Boots are considering going into partnership with Durex, and selling vibrators and sex toys in the new year. So far I’m impressed that no-one has called this “A shake-up of the business plan“.

Anti-chav

Interesting to see that Liverpool is launching a campaign to get people to remove hats, helmets, or hoods before going into shops. I can see that this is – potentially – a good idea, having seen the number of little scallie bastards in Manchester who use these items to conceal their faces. In the majority of cases I’ve no idea whether they’re doing it to “buy into” the stereotype ‘urban criminal’ look, or whether it’s because they intend to steal/threaten – however, it’s deeply unsubtle, and I’ve often wondered whether in fact that style of appearance doesn’t attract more attention from store detectives and CCTV operators etc., instead of providing the intended anonymity and prevention of identification.

Deprived

You know, there’s one brilliant indicator that’ll tell you if an area is depressed or not. And that sign is this :

When the local “pound shop” is closing down, and has a sign on the window reading “Closing Down. Everything Half Price“

Oldham has a shop doing this.

Nicely Avoided

Further to the guff from yesterday about the work Christmas Do, an email has just come round saying that all the remaining tickets have now been sold.

Even better, not one of the tickets has been sold to me. A couple of people yesterday suggested I should go, but well, no, I think I’ll avoid it. Wednesday the 23rd is going to be my last day in the current job anyway, so to finish and then go to the Christmas Do would be dedication above and beyond. Besides, I can think of several better things to do. Watching paint dry, for one. Celebrate the end of the contract, for two. Pack a bag for the Festering Season being another.

But now it’s a moot point – the tickets have been sold, and I’m not going. Works just fine for me.

Festerous

Do you have days where you simply despair of both the retail world, people in general, and really just the Festering Season™ altogether? Yes, you’ve guessed it – this is one of those days. And it’s only October.

Superdrug has all its Christmas-theme wrapping paper stocked up at the front of the shop, Tesco has a load of boxed chocolates and special Festive-type fare (including Mince Pies, for fuck’s sake) and – as observed last week – Next in the city centre has bloody silver christmas trees in the window. (And I must remember to get photographic proof of that one…)

However, not content with that little lot, this email came round last night at work…

DEAR ALL,
There are only 35 tickets left for the work’s Christmas Do on Wednesday 22nd December.
We have been informed that if anyone wants to go, they are going to have to
be pretty quick. It is definitely first come first served now.
Can you let me know by tomorrow at the latest who wants a ticket, so we can
reserve them.
We have been informed that at the rate they are going, all tickets will be
gone by Friday.
Be quick if you don’t want to be disappointed!
[the organiser]

Two bloody months beforehand, and people are buying tickets for a work Christmas Do. I dearly hope I’m never that organised…

Turned Down

A while back, I said that I’d submitted a selection of my photos to a local exhibition space who were looking for new work.

I’ve now received a letter saying thanks, but no thanks. No explanations of why, though, so I’m going to reply, and see if they can give me any feedback. As with so many things at the moment, as with so many risks, there’s nothing to lose by trying.

I can’t deny, I’m a bit keffed off about it – but then, reality kicks in, and why the hell would I expect to be accepted on my first submission?

But it does seem to sum up the day for me today. Ah well – tomorrow’s something else.

Mis-reading

I’ve looked at this story about Abu Hamza three times now, and on each occasion I’ve misread “soliciting for murder” as “murdering solicitors”. I think I need to get out more.

Busy?

I’m sure there’s a load of stuff I’m supposed to be doing today, but quite honestly I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was. This is not a good state of affairs.

Up it

It’s obviously one of those days. Blogrolling appears to be chuffed (again) and Blogger is taking a dog’s age to upload anything. It might be them, it might be my workplace’s connection, but either way, it’s definitely all officially Up It.

God-daughter

We went over yesterday to see my god-daughter. It’s already six weeks since the birth, and it was the first time I’d seen her. Cue a disturbingly mushy Lyle – be afraid.

Marc Almond

Having been travelling most of the day, I can’t believe the news that Marc Almond is critically ill in hospital following a bike crash. The BBC is now reporting that he’s ‘stable’ in hospital. (first time he’s been stable anywhere – but that’s as good a place as any, I suppose)

Fingers crossed that he recovers from this.

Autumn/Winter Blogmeet

As most regulars now know, I’m only going to be up here in Manchester another couple of months, and my weekends are manic. So – while I’m away this weekend, and can leave this back up at the top of today’s posts, who’s up for a Manchester blogmeet one weeknight between here and the end of December? (or January, at a push)

Comments and answers either in the comments box, or email me if you’ve got the address. (And really, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find…) *Grin*

Scrooge

It gets earlier every year, doesn’t it? Last year I don’t think the old sod made an appearance ’til November, this year there he is, decorating a post for 14th October. (EDIT : Actually I’ve just checked the October archive page and he’s on one from the 18th)

Bloody Christmas crap in the middle of October. Grrr.

All the 3s

I’ve just looked in my diary. In three weeks time (three weeks today, in fact) I’ll be thirty-three. Thirty-bloody-three. Where’s the time gone? It doesn’t seem like a year (OK, currently 49 weeks) since I posted this for the last one.

But this time I’ll be down in Kent, staying at Prospect Tower. That should be fun – I’m certainly looking forward to it.

Stolen

It’s Friday, and yet Scary’s story contains no porn, vomit, or shit.

I think someone’s stolen Scary, and replaced him with an android running Mary_Whitehouse_1.3.1

Next

It may be just up here, and in fact dear God I hope it’s just up here, but has anyone else’s Next store got silver christmas trees in the window?

Repeat after me : “IT’S TOO FUCKING EARLY!“

Writing and Webstuff

Well, the application I was utterly logjammed on yesterday has now been submitted. No idea how well I’ll do, but the supporting letter ended up being deemed OK on its third re-write, and then got checked by two good friends, tweaked slightly, and it’s now winging its way to the organisation concerned.

I’ve no idea how it’ll do, but I do know it’s a position I’d like to take up. In fact, the only stumbling block with the job itself is the title that goes with it.

Why do some organisations stick with the title “Webmaster”? It’s bloody atrocious, and as one person said last night, “evokes memories of Dungeons and Dragons, some image of a gnomish wizened character casting spells to make the site work”. It’s wank, and worse it’s early-90’s wank, with a healthy dose of pretension. Given the opportunity, the title may get subtly changed.

But in the meantime, what do other organisations use as a title for that “webmaster”-type role?

Sarcasm

Oops. Ever have a day where a dose of minor sarcasm is really misguided?

*Phone rings*
“Hello, IT, Stinky’s phone”
“Ah, hello, is Stinky in?“
“No, he’s not come in yet.”
“OK, I’ll call back later – will he be in for 9.30?“
“I’m not sure – he’s not in yet.”
“Oh, I’ll call back at 9.30 then.“
“OK, but he might not be in ’til ten. Do you want me to check via telepathy?”
“I’ll try him at ten. Let him know it’s *IT Chief Exec, Stinky’s boss’s boss’s boss.*“
“OK”. *puts phone down* “Oh, bugger.”

In fairness, he a) was being effing stupid, and b) didn’t give his name ’til the end of the call. But all the same, Ooops.

Boy,4, saves sister.

You know, there are times (and yes, today is one of them) where stories like this one about a 4yr old boy saving his little sister from drowning that enrage me. Great, the little darling saved his sister when she had an epileptic-type fit in the bath. No problem with that. What causes me the problem is explained in the next couple of paragraphs from the story.

Sophie’s fit began without warning while she was in the bath with Bradley at the family home in Chadderton, near Oldham.

Andrea, who was bathing them, had gone into the bedroom to get their pyjamas. She returned immediately and found Bradley had lifted Sophie’s head over the side of the bath to stop her drowning.

Sophie has suffered convulsions for about a year. They occur without warning and cause her to shake violently and lose consciousness.

So let’s get this one right. The girl has had these fits for a year – and they kick in with no warning. Yet the mother has both her kids in the bath, and walks off out of the room to get their pyjamas?!? Is the woman bloody unhinged? Or just disorganised?

I wonder what the story would have said, had she buggered off out of the room and come back to find her daughter drowned? Whose fault would it all have been then? She’s flaming lucky that the boy was there, and knew something of what to do. He does deserve to be recognised for that, definitely – but equally the mother deserves to be recognised as the kind of idiot who leaves her young children in the bath unattended, regardless of whether one is prone to fits or not.

RoSPA (The Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents) on its page about Child Safety says “Never leave children or babies in the bath unsupervised, even for a moment.“. (down near the bottom of the page, under “Drowning”) According to their figures on the same page, 20 children a year die of drowning – this woman is lucky her daughter didn’t become one more part of that statistic.

Bob Marley (we’re Jammin’)

Yesterday France passed a law allowing jamming of mobile phones in certain areas (cinemas, theatre, etc.) On the BBC’s site today, they ask whether we should have the same thing in the UK. Having spent plenty of time in the “Quiet” coaches of trains with the Nokia ringtone blaring out at top volume, I can honestly say that the answer should be a resounding “YES!“.

What say you?

Writing

Gah. Why is it that I can write stuff on here all day if necessary (and given the inclination/material/time) yet when I really need to get a supporting statement for a job application done, the entire thing just falls over and fails me?

What’s worse is that this one is for a job I actually quite fancy doing – charity-based, fairly well-paid, decent location, and mega kudos on the CV. Plus they’re not likely to be a fly-by-night organisation that just folds up and fucks off. So it’s all well and good, and I’m more than qualified. I just can’t get the supporting stuff to flow properly. Gah.

Photography

Over at the BBC it’s time to vote for their photographer of the year. Some of the images are quite spectacular – enjoy.

Search Terms

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but a couple of search terms today have made me chuckle.

Apparently I’m #7 on Google for “spastic retard name calling how do people with learning disabilities feel“, which is probably one I shouldn’t publicise too much. I also come in at #11 for “Psychologist Gordon Ramsay” – no idea what that actually means, but there we go. I’m amazed I’m not higher than #17 for “Debenham is Shit” (because it IS shit, and so’s their website) and completely befuddled at being #4 for “Queen Bouddica fashion“. Woad is me.

Moving Home

A quick pointer (slightly belated) that Pixeldiva has moved home, and is now back on her original domain at www.pixeldiva.co.uk. The blogroll has been edited to reflect the changes for both her and Kitchentable.

At some point I may even get round to adding a couple of new people to the list!

Applications

Do you ever get to a point with a job application and think “Oh, fuck that for a game of soldiers”?

I did last night – I’d done most of the basic guff, and was looking through the job spec for extra details on what they did and didn’t want. It was at that point that I started getting worried. I’ll get exact quotes later once I’ve got back home, but for a job with a closing date of 19th October, the part of the specification that said “Have site content prepared and ready for testing by the end of September 2004” became a bit of a worry. Explaining that “team leaders are very busy and will avoid discussion of the extranet project” showed the entire thing to be a bit of a political problem, and “Demonstrating the extranet to people who will be extremely averse to using it” was the final straw.

At that point I realised that no matter what, some things are just too much stress and hassle, and that this job was one of them. I deleted the application form (it was a – badly formatted – Word™ document) and decided I’d got better things to do.

Retirement

Stuart at Kitchentable has decided to retire. Fair enough – and good luck for the future. Kitchentable’s provided me with many a smile over the last year or two, so I hope he does well, and gets all the happiness he deserves.

Le Weekend (mini linkfest)

So, other than Urbis, what else did we get up to over the weekend? Well, Saturday involved a trip into the city centre, avoiding the fans of the England vs. Wales match, and instead looking round at a whole range of places including Green and Benz (and no getting any ideas about why we were there!) and Pyramid Glass, and then a meal in the evening at Beluga, which is still one of my favourite places in Manchester. They’ve just launched a new menu, and it’s just as good as the old one, although a couple of my preferences have now disappeared. But £60 for two people, including wine, strikes me as pretty good all round. Utterly recommended.

Sunday involved an exceptionally lazy morning, and then a trip out to Ladybower Dam and the Derwent Valley (the link goes to last year’s photos of the same area) in the afternoon along with a late lunch at the Yorkshire Bridge before going off to the gig in the evening.

And that’s how to do a weekend…

Cowboy Junkies, Manchester Academy

In a word. “Wow”. An utterly superb gig. I haven’t seen them in about fifteen years – and scarily they celebrate their 20th anniversary next year – so it was a bit of a priority to get tickets when they went on sale. And well worth the effort, it has to be said.

Support came from Vic Chesnutt, who I hadn’t previously heard anything by. That situation will soon be rectified – I haven’t laughed so hard at lyrics in a long time, and anyone who can get away with describing a frozen lake as “so cold that even the ducks are avoiding it” is fine in my book.

The only real downside of this concert was that the lighting was exceptionally dim, and so photographs were a problem. Out of the 50-odd that I took, about 5 were actually useable, which is a bit of a disappointment, but there we go. I’ll add on a couple to this once I’ve sorted them out a bit.

The Cowboy Junkies themselves though were superb, and just about flawless. It was good to see that they didn’t just focus on the latest album but instead played stuff from just about every one they’d done (with the exception of “Black Eyed Man”, which always was a piece of shit) right back to “Whites Off Earth Now!”, the first album they recorded. Definite value for money. All told, they played for about ninety minutes – and after nineteen years of recording, obviously they weren’t going to play everyone’s favourite track, but they made a pretty good attempt at doing so. Now I just hope I get to see them again far sooner – I’m already looking forward to it!

Oops

Of course, it’s fixed now, but the big “Go Live” switch on of the new content-managed website over the weekend was – to be frank – a bit disastrous. A small matter of the web server failing to connect to the database was the main problem. And of course with a content managed website it’s – um – all on the database. So, bit of a clang there then.

Other than that, it kind of went OK. There’s still stuff from “testing” that’s visible on the live site which isn’t really something you want happening. And the style-sheet was pigged on a basic problem, as a certain person *cough*Stinky hadn’t remembered to make sure the page background colour was defined – thus the site looked shite if you’d got a background colour set to anything except white.

But it’s all fixed now, and beginning to look pretty good. About bloody time!

All Quiet

It’s a peaceful weekend chez Lyle – the calm before the storm of the rest of the month. Tonight is the Cowboy Junkies gig, and I’m hoping I can get some good photos from it too – it’s at Academy 3, so a nice small space. We’ll see.

Other than that, it’s a far nicer weekend than had been expected weather-wise, and yesterday involved a large wander around the city centre, and my first (and last) visit to the inside of Urbis. The design of the building is fantastic, and as regular readers know, I love it to bits. I just wish I could say the same for the contents. Thank chuff it’s free to get in…

Global Vote 2004

(via ChasingDaisy)

Even if you are not a US citizen, the November 2 presidential election will have a huge impact on your life. The very idea of democracy requires that you should have a say in choosing who determines your destiny. This site therefore allows non-Americans to vote in the 2004 US presidential election.

GLOBALVOTE2004.ORG is totally neutral. You may vote for any candidate. Your vote will be kept secret. And you may only vote once.We will count the votes 48 hours before the election and submit the result to the US media. Just letting US citizens know how the world has voted could influence what looks like a tight race.

Go on, add your vote to the global “Die, George, Die!” appeal.

Testing Times

Just under a month ago, I booked for a driving theory test. At the time the website was shite, needing Internet Explorer, and about 4 pop-up windows. And all it said at the time was “Pearson Test Centre, Oldham”. Not the most helpful. But hey, it’s OK, because “confirmation will be sent out by post”. Will it fuckerslike.

So, I call them today (yes, I should’ve done it a couple of days ago, but it’s been manic) to ask where the frig the centre is, assuming it’s in the town centre somewhere. Um, no, it’s on (they say) Whitney Court. Which, according to Streetmap doesn’t even exist. Anywhere in the UK. Not the most helpful.

So, because I’ve no confirmation of the test, and no clue how to get there (the expression “Just by the station” doesn’t help much in this case, as Oldham doesn’t have a station.) I ask to move it to another date – not an unreasonable request, I’d have thought.

Oh no, that’s most unreasonable. It’s not their problem that they haven’t sent out confirmation, and it’s not their fault that the location doesn’t exist according to any other sources. This is all my fault, I should apparently know where to go, via some form of telepathic connection with the test centre. They’re not prepared to move the date, nor to refund the charge. So far as I can tell, this comes down to the company being utterly shite. So it’s going to be a fight… Joy.

Now to be named “Lucky”

I didn’t see this yesterday, but there’s a little story on the BBC about a deer that got hit by a car, and survived. The driver thought he’d only hit a stone (unlikely, even a muntjac deer is likely to have rather more size/weight than a stone, but OK) and carried on to work. At which point his colleagues pointed to the deer that was still wedged – alive and only with cuts and bruises – in the front of his car. There’s a photo included in the story, so look and be amazed.

New Opportunities

It seems like it’s taken forever, (although I know it’s actually been an exceptionally speedy process) but I’m pleased to announce that I’ve got my first contract to do some photographs. Oh, and design a website too – although that’s nowhere near a first. But the photographs are the real thing, I can’t believe it, it’s a start. It’s for a local charity dealing with soup-kitchens, the homeless, and disowned and dispossessed around the area.

Over the next month I’ll be out with the people involved in the charity, doing photos at the soup-kitchens, and also in the red-light areas. We’ve discussed some ideas already, and then we’ll see how it goes. It’s a start, and if it does work out, it’s got the potential to open up a lot of other markets for me too. Where it’ll all take me, only time will tell – but these first steps feel damn, damn good.

Bizarro Mundo

This announcement has just come round via work e-mail.

THe Café – the Civic Centre’s new dining area – is now up and running.

THe café (the ‘e’ is for electronic, as in e-mail) will serve lunches between 11.30am and 1.45pm every day, with coffees and snacks also available until 4.00pm.

The new facilities include a coffee area where you can relax, chat and enjoy a drink or snack. There is also a more formal seating area, with tables and chairs, where you can enjoy a lunchtime meal.

Yes, they’ve finally added in a canteen. There used to be one years ago, apparently, which was then withdrawn because it wasn’t cost-effective.

I’m still to work out the relevance of that “the e is for electronic” – corporate bollocks at its best.

Incomprehensible

I’ve just taken a call from a telesales person, trying to sell my company “mobile upgrades and savings”. Supposedly the company was called “amoco” (pronounced “ammer co”) only she didn’t explain enough for me to be able to get any kind of link or website to verify.

However, considering they were calling a business *cough*, they were amazingly incapable of providing any details. In fact, the conversation ended up with…

Telesales : “We’re offering to get you some upgrades and savings”
Me : “Ok, what’re you offering, how much will it cost me, and what does it do?”
Telesales : “Oh, it won’t cost you anything, it’s just some upgrades and savings”
Me : “On what?”
Telesales : *click*

So it was a completely wasted effort, and I’ve still no idea what they were bollocksing on about. Most bizarre.

Progress

Well, the entire Content Management project is progressing slowly – the new site will go live on Friday in time for the CPA starting on Monday, although there will be some bits that won’t be working immediately. With luck (he said, hopelessly optimistically) the idiots in the departments will be able to engineer the assessors away from the missing sections while they get updated/migrated/sorted.

So, a couple more days of struggling against the chuffwits, and then it’ll be back to a slightly calmer atmosphere while fixing what idiots who don’t understand the process have done.

As a result, updates here may be slightly less than normal. As well as the CMS deadlines here, I’ve got a couple of job applications to get completed, and two other deadlines that are approaching rapidly too.

It never rains…

Jungle: The Challenge – BBC2

Can a sales manager from Putney take on the Outdoor Quest in the jungles of Borneo, running, biking, climbing and kayaking over 200 miles in 40 degree heat and 90% humidity?

This is the fastest adventure race in the world, offering four days of physical and mental punishment.

I’ve just watched this programme, and it’s left me stunned. I’d never really seen or heard of adventure racers before – but wow, I’m impressed by them now. 200 kilometres of racing in 90% humidity and 35°C heat over four days, running, cycling, rollerblading, kayaking, swimming, and even an abseil.

So far as I’m concerned, anyone who completes even one adventure race is heroic beyond normal measures. To keep on running them like Team Saab Salomon is dedication bordering on insanity. I’m in absolute and utter awe.

Organised?

Today (and in fact the rest of this week) is shaping up to be utterly shit. Fair enough, for the last fifteen months I’ve been pissing and moaning about not having much work to do, and it’s been true.

However, next week the place I work has it’s CPA (Corporate Performance Assessment) which I’ve blithered about plenty of times before now. However, the arrival of this Inspection and Assessment appears to be news to most of the departments, as they’re all only now going into a mad panic and realising that their web-pages and so on are – to be blunt – fucked.

So not only are we working at getting the new Content Managed site up and working in time for Monday, but we’re getting mad panic from all areas wanting their Internet and Intranet pages updated in time for – you guessed it – Monday.

The entire process should be filed under “Organised, Couldn’t, Piss in a Bucket“. Murder may have been committed by Friday.

You Don’t Say

Ooops. Donald Rumsfeld has now said that he doubts there was ever any connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Nice work, Einstein.

Of course, the problem with this is that the “link” between the two was one of George W.’s main cases for the war against Iraq. Anyone with half an IQ point (which, of course, excludes George) knew already that Bin Laden and Hussein were more likely to be deadly enemies than allies, as Hussein had that eeny-weeny loathing of the Kurds, which is (of course) the main section of support for Bin Laden. So, bit of a clang there then.

Right since the start of this bullshit conflict, I’ve always said that the best thing that Bin Laden could have done would have been to eliminate Hussein himself. I’d love to have seen what the result would have been, had Public Enemy #1 been seen on TV holding the decapitated head of Public Enemy #2 (aka Hussein) in his hands. Of course, it never happened, but I still smile at the idea of GW having to say “Thanks” to Bin Laden….

Celebrations. Ish

Well, I can’t help but celebrate to learn that Paul Sykes, the biggest contributor to the UK Independence Party has donated his last. Slightly more worrying (and potentially listed under “Death, Kiss of”) is that he’s switched his allegiance to the Tory party.

Mr Sykes told the Today programme the Conservatives were the only Eurosceptic party capable of forming a government.

Damning with faint praise, methinks.

High-Rise

In a rare event, today the office where I work will be allowing access to the roof of the tower – although only in small groups. It’s one of the highest buildings in the area (15ish floors, and then higher still by virtue of being on top of a hill anyway) so the views should be interesting, to say the least.

The camera’s going up with me, anyway – as is the UV filter. We’ll just have to see what I manage to get…

Communication

This week we’re due to start testing the new version of the website. It’s (supposedly) got an IP address that the consultancy company can use to load-test the site. (which is really just the Web equivalent of “smack it with a hammer – hard – and see if anything breaks. Then keep on doing it.”)

Now, none of that should be difficult. However, it occurred to me that this one IP address is going to be getting hit hard over the next week while they try to break it, so it might be worth checking that the company firewall to make sure it’s not going to sound the various alarms that say “Help! I’m being attacked by hackers!”. Of course, no-one had actually thought of doing that – the joys of corporate communications.

As it turned out, it was lucky I did speculate about it, because the numpty twadge who’d set up the IP address hadn’t informed the firewall team at all, so it wasn’t actually working at all.

There’s an air of despair around my desk today. Roll on December 23rd.

Double-checking

I know I’ve posted about this before, but it still drives me bananas. What IS the point of sending an email, then calling up to say “Have you received the email I’ve just sent you“?

Wedding Train

There’s a nice little story on the BBC’s website today about a couple getting married on a train. OK, it’s slightly bobble-hatty, but at least they’re train-workers rather than train-spotters!

Maybe I’m just feeling slightly mellow today, but I do think that – regardless of how it wouldn’t suit me – it’s quite a nice way to do it, and acknowledging a joint interest.

Updating Bloggery

I’ve been thinking for a while about a redesign/revamp of d4d – it’s slowly happening, but there’s still a way to go. Simply put, part of the problem (well, part of the reason it’s taken so long) is that there’s one hell of a lot of stuff within d4d as a site now, although a fair bit of it hasn’t been updated in quite a while.

I haven’t updated the thoughts and rants in the best part of a year, and the blog has become the main part, along with photos etc. So – do I get rid of the rants and so on, and leave the site primarily as the blog and photos for now? And work on altering the old pages to fit into the new style as and when I get round to it?

It’s possible for me to do it that way – the new navigation I’ve worked on is a dynamic “include” file, so I know I can have a small selection at first, and then change the navigation when/if I update the older sections. This section of d4d will migrate over to WordPress (assuming I ever suss it out properly – I’m currently thinking of just reinstalling the basic template and working from there) along with the new style-sheet etc., and then it’s just decisions about the future of the other sections.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is effectively running two blogs within d4d, one standard, and one “photoblog”. However, I’m still in two minds about this, as I don’t come up with enough photographic stuff as yet to justify a daily-update photographic blog. Still, it’s all stuff to be thought about for the future.

So – what are your thoughts on keeping the older sections etc.? Should I bother – does anyone ever really go back and read the rants or thoughts, for example?

De-focussed

RIP Richard Avedon, who died today aged 81.

At Home

Amazingly, for once I’m actually not travelling this weekend. I’m at home, in Manchester. It’s a very strange feeling. Friday evening’s are normally spent cursing Virgin Trains and abusing the text message system in order to vent ire and wrath, as well as information on my delayed ETA to whatever destination I’m aiming for.

This time I simply went home, cooked, and did feck all. Even more amazingly, housemate is staying here this weekend too – it’s the first weekend we’ve both spent in the house since she moved in three months ago. That’s a pretty scary average, all things considered.

Still, it’s nice – and even more surprising is that next week will be more of the same, although on this occasion Herself will be coming up here, and we’ll be seeing Cowboy Junkies in concert on Sunday night. But that’s next week – for now I’m just going to enjoy this one.

Bad Day

I thought I was having a bad day, but Scaryduck has convinced me I’m wrong. Don’t read it if you’re trying to look serious, or like you’re doing work.

Festering Season

It’s always nice to see common sense reigning for once. Aylesbury Council workers “got the date wrong” (because Christmas is such a moveable feast, and isn’t on the same day every year or anything) and put up Christmas trees in the middle of September.

After several complaints, they’ve had to take them down again, but I bet they’re back up by the middle of November…

Memetic – What’s on your Wall?

One of my regular reads, Terreus is trying to launch his own meme, titled “What’s on your wall?”. Or, as he puts it,

“Let’s all see what favourite work of art you have in the most prominent place in your home. You know, Vladimir Tretchikoff’s ‘Chinese Girl’ above the fireplace, or van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ on the bedroom wall.”

I quite like the idea of this, although I find I’m slightly stumped as there are a couple that I love, so I’m going to go with two that I’ve got, and one that is due to go up this weekend.

The first one is a semi-cliche now, but it’s also a painting I’ve loved for at least five years now, so what the hell. I do like a lot of the work by Jack Vettriano, but still I find myself coming back to “Dance Me To The End Of Love” as a favourite. There are others too, but well, this is the one that’s ended up in central position in my main living room. There are so many things about it that I like, including the feeling (which, as it turns out, is very like Edward Hopper’s work) where the people are actually quite solitary, no contact except for each other, and looking away from the “camera”. You don’t see their faces, everything about the painting is in the body language, and it’s just an image I love.

The other print I have in the main living room is a portrait shot of New York’s Flatiron building, and this print is huge – 100cm x 50cm. (approximately 3 feet high and 1.5 wide) yet the photoclarity is perfect throughout the shot. I’ve no idea what kind of lens was used, or what skills – it could be a wide-angle lens that’s been vertically aligned instead of horizontally, but I don’t know for sure. For some reason I love triangular buildings, as a result of which I’m also a committed fan of Manchester’s Urbis building too, and have even tried taking a similar photo of the Urbis, so I could have the two side-by-side. It’s never worked yet, but well, I’m getting better at this photography malarkey all the time.

And that’s where the newest print comes in. It’s been ordered, and as yet hasn’t arrived or been framed. That should happen this weekend, with luck. The basic underlying photo was OK, but then I decided to have a play in Photoshop, effectively thinking about adding “filters” in post-processing. It’s not something I’d ever really thought about before, and a lot of the things I tried were, to be charitable, “OK”, but nothing special. In a couple of examples, they were actually bloody atrocious. It’s all a bit of a learning curve, Photoshop’s such a huge bit of kit and I wonder if any one person ever uses more than about fifty percent of it.

Anyway, on this shot I played with some colour layers and opacity etc., and suddenly I’d got this, which I really liked. I just hope it works as well when it’s been printed. Oh, and if you want to see it at a bit of a bigger size, just click on the image.

Incompetence

Hmmm, it’s not just one of those days, it’s one of those weeks.

The people supposed to be doing the work to fix the leaking bathroom failed to turn up. Considering they were supposed to be starting at 9am, they finally told me at 2pm. Luckily it wasn’t me waiting, it was my housemate, who’s still feeling cruddy post-extraction. Instead, they’ll now “definitely” be there tomorrow. Useless twats.

And to top the day off, the agency I’ve been working for over the last two years sent out the paperwork for the contract extension. To the address I lived in until a year ago. No-one knows why, they just did. Lucky I checked up as I hadn’t received it yet, isn’t it?

Interview

The interview I found out about last week after three months of waiting was today. It went fine – so now we’ll just have to see what they say. I think Stinky®’s one is tomorrow. Comedy moments ahoy.

Bloody thing

Yes, observant readers will have noticed that I chuffed up and managed to post the thing below four times. Basically, Blogger had a fit and while it was actually publishing the post, insisted it wasn’t.

Still, all fixed now.

Online Processing

Harping back to yesterday’s post about online photo processing and the like, I opted to try the top three from the Amateur Photographer testing. Part of the reason for this is that I’ve decided to enter yet another competition with a couple of photos, and they need to be prints rather than on a CD. So obviously I want to get the best results I can, and it seemed like a good opportunity to do some comparison testing. I was only going to try the best processor, but well – I couldn’t.

The top three (in order) were :

1. Colourmailer
2. Truprint

and

3. one whose name I can’t remember, but will edit later

(it’s one of those days)

Colourmailer were OK-ish – reasonable prices for larger prints, although the standard 6″x4″ are more expensive, the upload stuff seemed to work fine and so on, but the useless bastards only take visa and mastercard. So that’s that plan stuffed.

Truprint (supposedly a really good site) which had the joint problems of a) being IE only, and b) still having errors in IE, so it wouldn’t even upload the photos.

And the third one wasn’t actually available. (Which is why I can’t remember the name of the company – it just kept on coming up with a DNS error)

So all in all, I’ve deciced that for the moment I’m going to stick with
Photobox. They might not be the cheapest, but I’m yet to have a problem with them, and the stuff they’ve printed for me so far has been excellent, all the way up to A2 size prints.

So now I just have to see how the prints come out at A4 size for the competition. They should arrive tomorrow…

Desperately Sad

Yesterday I got my complete West Wing Season 4 on DVD. I haven’t seen any of that season, as Channel 4 are utter bastards, and only started showing it two weeks ago.

Anyway, is it exceedingly sad at that point to have already watched the first three episodes last night?

Photographica

The photos from Photobox, and the quality of them is superb. As always with their products, I’m so pleased with how they’ve turned out. A while back one of the photography magazines did a review of the online developers and they came out as “average” – I must admit I haven’t tried the reviewer’s favourite yet, but if Photobox are average, then the other lot must be fantastic. I’d hope.

Sometime in the next few weeks, I’m going to be putting together some more prints on a larger format again, so I might experiment with Colourmailer, who were the top scoring online lab in the survey. It’ll be interesting to do a comparison!

Dentistry

Well, all went well – Manchester Dental Hospital seem to be people who actually know what they’re up to. So all’s been done, and all gone well.

Criticism

From this morning’s comments, I couldn’t resist posting more about adso’s one in the post below. I’d offer a link or a mailto, but they’ve not been brave enough to leave a valid one, sadly.

Jesus Christ you’re a miserable cunt aren’t you!

Really, life is too short to have such a cynical attitude as yours. There aint nothing cool about being jaundiced. You need to change your attitude before your life turns out to have been a complete waste of air.

I’m not quite sure how, in a post containing the phrase “find it funny” I get to be called a miserable cunt. But there we go – freedom of speech and all that jazz.

As for life being too short to have a cynical attitude, I’d disagree. Yes, I can be cynical (Shush, you at the back there) but it’s not a permanent state of affairs. Jaundiced? Yeah, I resemble that comment on occasion too.

But what adso has failed to realise in all his wisdom is that it’s all a matter of perspective. The stuff here is one facet, and there’s much more. But even here I’m not solely cynical and jaundiced, and if the divvy little git had read further, or perhaps removed head from arse, they’d have realised that.

All the same, it’s fun to get hatemailcomments every so often, even if only for a bit of a reality check.

Inspired

Yes, I’m sure it was “in bad taste” but I can’t deny that I found it funny seeing the story about staff from a private gym handing out promotional literature as the nearby council-run gym burned down. It takes a particular form of warped logic to seize the opportunity on something like that, and while I might disagree with the principle, I do still find myself with a slight respect for anyone brave/quick enough to take that initiative.

Frustration

Ever have one of those days where people all around you appear to be experts in fuckwitdom? Today’s been one of those for me.

Not content with the already-posted cretins of the workplace, I come home to a card on the doormat. The contractors who were supposed to be here on Thursday have decided they’d come today instead. And the mobile number they left on the back of the card was – you guessed it – wrong.

Then BT called – well, their Indian call-centre. “You haven’t paid your bill”. “Yes I have”. and so on. I ask to be put through to customer accounts. “We can’t do that from here, we’re just here to tell you you haven’t paid”. Grrr.

Then the person who was supposed to be helping my house-mate after her wisdom-tooth extraction tomorrow has decided he can’t make it after all. She’s going to be sedated for the operation, and I know how bad that can make you feel. So I’m going to be taking some time off (again) to make sure she’s OK.

It’s one of those days when I could just spit.

Filtration

Yay, the filters I ordered last Friday from Jessops arrived last night. Two little boxes, wrapped in a bundle of air-bubbles and cardboard about 8 times the size of the filters. Never let it be said they’re shoddy with packaging. Stupid maybe, but not shoddy. So anyway, now I’ve just got to experiment with them a bit and see what I can come up with.

In the meantime, I’ve ordered a selection of prints from Photobox, mainly of some of my macro shots of flowers. I’ve no idea what it is I like about doing these shots, but I find them to be extremely satisfying, and the results can be spectacular. (I’m probably going to add some more to that macros page in the next couple of days, too) It’ll be interesting to see how they turn out as 7″x5″ prints, anyway. What’s really impressive with Photobox is that I uploaded and ordered the photos at 3pm today, and by 4pm I’d been told they’d been not just printed, but dispatched. So far as I’m concerned, that’s absolutely superb service.

Security

On a regular basis, we get emails about “security” and being aware of security risks. In theory, I assume it would be nasty to get a bomb in a council office, or whatever.

So it was a bit of a surprise yesterday when I saw a satchel-type bag abandoned on one of the main stair entrances to the offices. I’ll be honest, I didn’t give enough of a shit while leaving the office to go back to reception and point it out.

Far more of a concern was when I ambled in this morning and the bloody thing was still there though. So much for awareness, and letting people know. Bear in mind that probably the best part of 500 or so people have gone past the flaming thing. (Well, it wasn’t flaming, but you know what I mean) And yet when I checked with reception, not bloody one of them had reported it, or even mentioned it. It’s gone now, the security nork just walked up and opened it. Not the best idea should it be a device, but there we go – that’s training (or lack of it) for you, I suppose. But all the same, I find it amazing that in mind of the constant reminders and general media hysteria about terrorism and yadda, yadda, yadda no-one said a bloody thing for nearly 24 hours.

Ouchie

Thank you, Virgin Trains for this.

Ouch.

No, No, No

According to various sources, Richard Branson wants to make spaceflight more commercially viable for passengers. Now OK, it’s a nice idea, and it’s what the X-Prize and so on is all about.

But there’s one massive problem with this. Virgin poxing Trains can’t even sort out making a three-hour journey across the country on time (as commented on in MANY places on d4d) and even today’s launch of the ’tilting train’ service was a cock-up with trains breaking down or not even starting.

They can’t manage a train service – so I ask you this. Would YOU trust them with getting you into orbit?

And so it begins

Eek blimey. Because of the move in January, I’m looking at work and job ads in the area. I wasn’t planning on sorting out any applications and so on for another couple of weeks, but today’s paper contained a couple that looked interesting, so tonight I’m going to be spiffing up the CV and getting it sent off. It’s all beginning to happen…

Crap Towns

Apparently, Luton has come top of a list of crap towns. There’s a flaw in this list (well, there’s several) but the main one is simply this – how come Coventry hasn’t come anywhere in the top ten? Nor Slough?

In order, the top ten is : Luton, Windsor, Sunderland, Glasgow and Edinburgh, Clapham, Bath, Nottingham, Corby, and Middlesbrough.

Chuff only knows how “Glasgow and Edinburgh” got linked together, and Bath’s not THAT bad (well, in comparison to such dungholes as Coventry, Bedford, Bradford, Leeds, and Slough, anyway) so really I suspect that this list is just an utter sack of shit.

Arse

Not content with simply being left in a miasma of smells today, I’ve also been an utter, utter twadge, and left my phone in Reading. It now has to be entrusted to Royal Snail.

Arses.

Vomitarium

Today’s travelling has taught me one thing, and one thing only. That lesson is this :

Train air-conditioning does not get rid of the smell of vomit.

The snot-grobbling little squealing hellspawn barfed at Banbury. Then didn’t get off the fucking train ’til Manchester. Two and a half hours of the most vile smells, accompanied by additional retches from people who got whiffs of the chunk-blowing exorcist-reject barfbin’s produce. God knows how his parents stood it – I assume they’re used to it as the incompetent frunts didn’t even take him to the toilets to hose him off.

It was actually a joy to get off the train in Manchester’s rain-clean atmosphere. Of course, the smelly bastard on the bus didn’t help – but even he smelled fresher than vom-boy.

Travelation

Well, sod it, I’m travelling back tomorrow morning. It’s been a good weekend, and I don’t really want my mood altering by Virgin tonight. So I’ll do it all tomorrow, and go into work in a shitty mood instead. Sounds like a plan to me.

If I’m feeling really brave, I may even include a photo of the bruise on my leg incurred while wedged under a table on Friday’s journey. It’s not a sight for the squeamish, let me tell you.

Penetrating

via Gert comes one of the funniest (in a kind of sad and pathetic way) pieces in a while. The Sun’s Dear Deirdre answering some questions about sex. If people keep on asking, for example, “How can I stop losing my erection?” truly should be answered with “Keep it tied to you with reins, and be more careful with where you leave it next time.” As well as being a lousy trainer, I’d make a shockingly bad agony aunt/uncle, although going for the Denis Leary “Shut the fuck up” method from “No Cure for Cancer” would probably be may main oeuvre.

Moving Swiftly

Back in June you may recall I mentioned about my workplace going through a restructuring where Stinky was convinced he’d be fine for his own job and no-one else would want it.

So I stuck in an application for the job. I don’t want it, but well, I’ve never dealt well with other people’s complacency.

I’ve got an interview for it. On Thursday. It’s taken them four bloody months to get round to it. The wheels of local government don’t so much move as drag…

Learning Curve pt. 2

Of course the other problem with the current training course is that it deals with Content Management, and the office’s new Content Management System (CMS). I’m not quite sure why I’ve been told to go on this, as I’ve been using CMS’s for at least the last four years, and I was actually contracted here to – um – install and set up the CMS. (That job’s been taken away from me by Stinky who apparently fears for his little fiefdom, and his *cough* ‘superior’ role within it) So it’s hardly the most stimulating day or subject matter in the first place…

Learning Curve

I now know (well, I knew already, but today is proving it) that I’d never be any good as a trainer. I simply don’t have the patience when it comes to dealing with desperately slow people.

Trainer : “OK, now click on the button that says “close data input””
Slow person (to me, sat next to her) : “Which button’s that?”
Me (already exasperated after ten similar questions) : “It’s the one at the top of the screen. With ‘close data input’ written on it.”

See, sarcasm. Sure it’s supposed to be the lowest form of wit, but sometimes it’s the only viable form that has any hope of conveying the necessary message. I can’t help it, it’s not even a conscious decision to be sarky – it’s just there, on the tip of my tongue, and the brain’s given up on self-censoring.

It’s not really all that beneficial for working relationships – however, with luck it also means she’ll never ask me for help outside this session…

Low Levels of Input

It’s going to be quiet chez D4D for a couple of days. I’m in a training course (AKA learning how to do stuff I’ve been doing for six months) today, then away again for the weekend. I still haven’t decided whether I’m coming back on Sunday night or Monday morning (and to be honest it’s going to be a bit of a 2-person decision anyway) so updates will happen on one of those two occasions.

In the meantime, well, I may update, but I may not. It’s all a bit random really, isn’t it?

250,000

Bloody hell – sometime in the last couple of days, d4d™ had its 250,000th page impression. Quarter of a million page views – that’s not bad going at all. Of course, I missed the actual event because I wasn’t paying attention, and somewhere along the line it looks like I’ve also lost a couple of days of logfiles (they’ll be around somewhere, I know – it’s just finding the bloody things!) so it was probably really about a week ago that it went over, and I’ve only just noticed.

Mea Culpa, but all the same, bloody hell, quarter of a million. Colour me chuffed.

Inertia

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve found myself really settling into the idea of moving come January. I’m tied in to the current contract ’til then, which is a pain in the bum, but for once it gives me some opportunity to get organised, to look at what I’ll be doing when I’m down there, and generally just to get sorted prior to actually moving.

However, one thing I’m really bad at is waiting. The decisions have been made, and given a choice, I’d be getting everything done now, and moving within the next month. I can’t, because of the contract, and that’s frustrating. I feel like there’s an inertia effect, things have started rolling on, and now I’m just waiting for it all to happen.

In the meantime, though, it means I get to look at some of the things I need to deal with. Finances (yick), Letting Agents (yick yick yick), Job sites, Work agencies, that type of thing. Even down to filling in an iProfile for work agencies to use as a reference point. Scarily organised.

I’m even looking at stuff on the social side – thinking about doing a couple of evening courses once I’ve moved, and even ordered a prospectus to that end. Hell, I’m even looking at photography and gallery resources down there.

I don’t know, though – is all this preparation just making me realise how much I don’t want to be up here any more? Or is it simply sensible and prudent to be thinking about these things now, rather than my more normal method of moving and then sorting out all this sort of thing?

Employment Agencies

Thanks, Karen, for the advice. I’m now a lot more sorted out with regards to opting-out (and yes, as I’m a single-person limited company doing contracting, opting-out seems to be the best option) and happier about the entire thing.

Sometimes the internet’s just bloody great.

Photographic Geekery

Blimey, it’s official, I’m definitely heading into the deep dark world of photographic geekery. The evidence of this is that I’ve just ordered my first two filters for the camera – a polarising filter and a UV one. Quite honestly I’ve no idea as yet what I’m going to do with them, or what effects they’ll have on photos, but it’s all getting a bit more advanced than just point-n-shoot.

And yes, that digital SLR is looking more and more likely for the future. A sign that perhaps I should consider getting out less. Or something.

Ceefax

I bet Diamondgeezer writes about this tomorrow, but did you know that it’ll be Ceefax’s 30^th Birthday?

It’s amazing how long the service has been going, but I can understand in some ways why it still gets 20 million users per week, even in the age of broadband etc.

Happy Birthday, Ceefax.

Shit-pit

As regular readers will know, the local council is spiffing up its offices for the CPA (Corporate Performance Assessment) next month. The outside walls have been sandblasted and pressure-washed, bits have been repainted, paving slabs replaced, so forth, so fifth.

I’m not sure quite what all this prettifying has to do with corporate/council performance as the CPA is more to do with making sure that information is accessible and understandable, and that there are policies in place for relevant things like housing, social services and the like. But that’s not something I get to care about.

However, you’d think that any organisation worth anything would have figured out that if you’re cleaning the walls of the building, it’s a better idea to clean the roof first so that the shit from the roof doesn’t wash down your nice clean walls come the first rain-fall…

Paranoia and Persecution

One thing I’ve noticed about the UK (and that I get reminded of at inopportune moments) is that you really have to work at being self-employed and so on in the face of epic levels of bureaucratic shit. As most people know, I’m an IT contractor, and in the last week I’ve been taking a whole shed-load of flak lately regarding the Conduct Of Employment Agencies Act.

Currently, no-one I deal with actually seems to know a bloody thing about this act, except that they’ve now got to comply with it. Apparently as a contractor I can opt-in or opt-out of this act, but no-one can tell me which is the best option, and the only company that I was recommended to contact about it turned out to be approximately as useful as a fart in a tornado.

I think that what’s frustrating about this is that it’s supposedly something important, yet no-one knows a chuff about it. It’s bad enough having to go through all the guff of tax, NI, companies house, customs and excise and the countless other hurdles and hoops that bureaucrats hurl into the path of the self-employed, without then having to deal with even more shit that is utterly mysterious and – ultimately – pointless.

Lookalike

Is it just me, or is there a serious resemblance between Edwina Currie and the photo of Rihab Rashid Taha in this story about the fact she’s likely to be released from US custody?

I bet they’re never seen in the same room…

One of those days

All morning waiting for the British Gas engineer – arriving sometime between 8am and 1pm, so that was nice and precise. Turns out, the utter tossers at BG had sent not an engineer to check the meter, but a moron to read it. Not what had been arranged at all. Cue Lyle the Orbital.

They’re now going back over the call-tape (anyone want to bet it’s been “mislaid”?) to see what the tosspot actually said. We’ve already established that while he was calling the person an engineer, he was actually intending to send a meter-reader, as the customer gets charged for an engineer visit, whether they find anything or not. British Gas are in a win-win on that one, they don’t lose money, and instead it means that customers don’t actually save a frigging thing unless their bill has been overcharged by more than £100 in the first place. Yup, roughly £100 for an engineer visit. It’s no fucking wonder most people simply end up accepting being overcharged by the tossers.

So – can anyone recommend a better gas/electric supplier?

It’s Back

Welcome back little Blogroll, with your red stars for updated sites. It’s been odd while you were up the creek, but now you appear to be back, and so I shall now have to find new things to complain about.

Shouldn’t be a challenge.

Nightmare Site

I’ve just booked a thery test with the Driving Standards Agency. Jesus christ, what an utterly nightmarish site. Just to start with, it’s an IE-Only site – not for any good reason, just that whoever created the abortion didn’t know any better. To book the test then involves no less than three new pop-up windows (which should be forbidden as of October 1st when the new Disability Discrimination rulings come into law – I’m not sure they will be, but they certainly should be) and quarter of an hour of my time – and that’s on a serious internet connection, rather than dial-up. An utter piece of shit.

Still, it’s all booked now, so there we go.

Trains again

I’m sorry to have to post yet again about Virgin Trains, but last night’s journey was spectacular for one reason. For the first time ever, I was on a train where the driver went the wrong way.

Birmingham New Street station is (like most stations) a straight-through job. Reading can be weird, because you do reverse your journey if you’re going on from there – which is always amusing in itself, watching idiots panic as the train pulls away going in the direction it just came from. But I digree. BNS is a straight-through station.

So it was a bit disconcerting to pull away from it last night going in the direction we’d come in from. Leamington Spa – Birmingham New Street – Wolverhampton does not involve going back towards Coventry. Well, unless you’re the driver we had last night.

It took them about 10-15 minutes to realise too. So we ended up seeing BNS twice. I’d seen Stockport three fucking times on the way down, although that was supposedly intentional. This one was just a cock-up.

Quite scary too, really. You’d think someone would have figured it out – not just the driver, but also the signalling staff. And what would’ve happened if another train had been coming towards us as we “left” BNS? The mind boggles.

Harridan

Do you ever have those days where it feels like all you’re doing is nagging and chasing people up in order to get them to do the stuff they’d actually promised to do already? That’s what my day is like today.

I’ve had to chase up the contractors who are supposed to be checking a couple of useful things in the house, (like gas supply, and making sure that the waste pipe in the bathroom isn’t utterly chuffed, and just needs to be repaired/replaced at the joint) another plumber for a quote that he should’ve done three weeks ago, the bank regarding a double-charge that stuck me over the overdraft limit (In a surreal moment they stopped a £10 direct debit that would’ve made me overdrawn, and then – um – charged me £30 for doing so, thus sending me £20 more overdrawn than the original direct debit would have done. I absolutely loathe banks.) and a couple of other minor chuff-ups (including still sending certain bits of post to the address I haven’t lived in for a year), British Gas to ensure that the engineer who’s supposed to be coming tomorrow is actually going to do so, and finally BT to check why they’ve suddenly decided I’m on paperless e-billing when I’ve always told them I don’t want that because they’re inefficient as shit anyway and I prefer to check what they’ve screwed up.

In fact, the only pearl today so far is Photobox who’ve yet again managed to receive my order by 10am and send it out by 11am. Isn’t it sad when you’re actually impressed that someone/anyone can simply provide the service that they say they can?

Paralympics

I’ve been really pleased this year to see the BBC showing the Paralympics as well as the standard Olympics. It’s been avoided like the plague for so many years, and finally they seem to be doing the right thing.

Even better, according to the Guardian (You may need free registration to see the page, I’m not sure) it’s pulling in 2 million viewers, 12% of the available audience at the time. Superb stuff.

Still Up It

And yes, four days on, and Blogrolling is still well and truly chuffed. What a joy. I’m really glad I don’t pay for the service, or I’d be even more irritated.

Mileage

I’ve been trying to avoid this set of maths and thoughts, but while sitting on this train I’ve been thinking a bit about the mileage I’ve covered this month. For once I’m going to start with the 12ish mile daily round-trip to work, which amounts to a juicy 240ish miles a month on its own. By the time September comes to a close, I’ll have been to Reading twice, Oxford once, Stanstead once, and a small matter of a trip to Iceland. It’s about a 400-mile round trip to Reading, and not much under that for Oxford when you include the travelling to the parental home. So that’s 1200 miles, and a total of approximately 1500. Oxford to Stanstead is about 100 miles (total : 1700 miles), and Reykjavik is roughly 1100 miles from Stanstead. So all told, that’s just under 4000 miles.

Come the start of 2005, once I’ve moved myself to the Reading area, it’s going to be a massive reduction in my mileage, and probably a corresponding one in my stress levels. In truth, the train service is stressing me out less as I’m a) travelling on it more (again, there’s a logic there, but I’ll be damned if I can find it) and b) knowing that whatever the torture, it’s finite – three months, and I’m done on the huge mileages for a while. Even should I end up commuting to London for a couple of months (and I do hope I don’t have to do that, but I will if I have to) it’ll amount to less mileage. Of course, the Iceland trip skewed the mileage a bit for this month, but it’s still pretty heavy going even without that.

Logical

I swear I’ll never figure out the “logic” on which Virgin Trains runs their service. In fairness the journey on Friday was only cocked up by problems outside Virgin’s control – some fuckwit decided to drive into a bridge that the train tracks went over. So they had to get the bridge checked before sending a train over the bridge. Not much they can do about that – and because it was going to take so long, they decided to re-route the train instead. 75 minutes late in the end, but what the hell, it arrived, and there really wasn’t a lot Virgin could do about it.

Tonight though, it’s (yet again) the 1805 from Reading to Manchester. 6pm on a Sunday – there’s likely to be one or two people on that one, aren’t there? So I know, why don’t we just put four carriages on? That’ll make life so much easier instead of the eight carriages that we have at stupid times like 6am or 9pm. Peak time? Lets ram ’em in like sardines.

I simply don’t understand the logistics of that. Maybe it’s just me, and there really is some great piece of logic at work. Personally, I think it’s just a big cosmic joke, except no-one’s told us the punchline yet.

Up It

On the face of current evidence (i.e. I find it impossible to believe no-one’s updating) it looks like good old Blogrolling is currently well and truly up it.

Underage

So it’s now news that the majority of pubs serve drinks to under-age customers. Shocker. This has been happening for years – when I was at school it was always well-known which pubs would serve under-age, and it wasn’t a new thing then.

There’s currently a load of media/political hysteria about “binge drinking”. Again, this is nothing new. The UK has always had a “binge” ethos to drink, where Friday and Saturday night were the big events, and the rest of the week was virtually sober. We still have this archaic (and weird) attitude to drinking – one only has to look at the excesses of things like Club 18-30 holidays etc. to prove it. Even if we were to get more “European” licensing laws, it wouldn’t work – there’d still be the trouble, the people drinking underage and fighting at closing time.

The British attitude seems to be more about “drink as much as possible as quickly as possible” – yes, I know that’s the definition of “binge” – and it’ll take generations to change that, not politics.

I don’t know what causes it – perhaps it is the entire “underage” thing. A lot of children never get to try or taste alcohol, so as soon as they appear old enough to buy it, it’s a sign of passage, a “growing up” thing. And of course because it’s illegal, the booze gets drunk as quickly as possible – and there we go, the start of a binge-drinking mind-set.

Quiet

There really hasn’t been much going on today. Stinky’s back, and has been dropped in the shit about leaving things knackered yesterday. Bonus.

And yes, in relation to the comments yesterday on Ranty, he could in theory try going the “Oh, that was the contractor’s fault” route once I’ve gone – but as all three levels of management above him know that I’ve got no access to the system whatsoever, it’s an excuse that won’t hold water.

Ranty

Stinky’s off today. That’s normally a good thing – in this office it’s a novelty to be breathing non-polluted air. However, before the motherfucker left yesterday, it looks like he’s managed to utterly shaft the content management system. So today I’m getting a shedload of calls from people trying to use it, and I can’t fix it because in a fit of glory-seeking, he refuses to give me access to it all at all.

Yes, the CMS was supposed to be what I was hired to sort out and install, but now Stinky has figured out that if that happened, he wouldn’t get the praise and kudos for doing it. The problem with this is that he also hasn’t realised that when he screws it up (as now) he’ll be the one to get all the shite for it, because I can’t even access the system – therefore any fuckups are utterly out of my responsibility. So he’ll carry the can for it. OK, so that’s no bad thing in my book. Still a pain in the sphincter though.

Other than that, I’ve been given a selection of documents by a moron a colleague who’s got less clues than feet. They’re all supposedly important, but the documents have been given names like “Appendix C” – I’ve got three of those – with no correlation to what they should have come from. It’s a nightmare – but it’s also a nightmare I can pass straight back to them, because I’ve no idea, and Stinky is too much of an incompetent tosser to have done anything except pass it on to me.

Oh, and the documents that aren’t named utterly uselessly instead have a whole range of different names such as “document 2_1995.part2.doc” – which is an utter screw-up. Filenaming is something I’m a bit of a fiend about in the first place, but when it comes to idiots who put in extra full-stops, and/or spaces into a filename, I end up turning homicidal. And again, a lot of this problem stems from Stinky, who can’t even organise things so that there’s a standard filename convention, and won’t tell people how to do things properly.

Ah, I’ve had enough of this – thank Christ and his seven holy dwarves that I’m not here permanently. Four months and I’m outta here, then they can take their chances with the cock-knocker.

Photographica

Yes, at long last some of the photos from the Iceland trip are online. From the sheer number I’ve taken, I may add some more – or indeed a second page – in the next couple of days, but for now they’re up in the photos section. Enjoy.

Fotografica

Harping back to last week’s post regarding a variety of things that were happening, yes, it was the Fotografica people to whom I’ve submitted the Cemetery shots. As yet I’ve heard nothing, but we’ll see how it goes.

As for the Redeye meeting, I’m going to be tactful for now and say that I need to go to at least one more before I can formulate a balanced opinion, rather than a decision based on a sample of one. However, I certainly wasn’t impressed with a lot of the experience from that meeting. Time will tell.

Confused

I have NO idea what my co-workers were watching on TV last night, but for some reason “anal leakage” (Hello, Google) seems to be the main theme of conversation between them this morning.

If I’m honest, I don’t think I even want to know what they watched. But it does seem like the ideal conversation for a bunch of arse’oles.

Editing

Making my way through 160+ images from the weekend away, and the page will be uploaded today, promise. Coming back to work’s been a right ballache – loads of useless emails (Some people should be fucking barred from “Reply To All” and sending emails to a group, I’ve had 15 that had no fucking use to me at all) along with one or two that mean I’ve actually got some work to do today. Makes a change.

So anyway, business as usual – stuff to do, pages to edit, posts to write. I’d say it’s good to be back, but well, it’d be a lie. Roll on the Festering Season™.

Comment Spam

Over the time I was away, d4d™ got hit by a small deluge of comment spam. I didn’t know Haloscan was prone to it, but yes, it got some. I almost feel now like I’m popular, or accepted. Most sad, but true.

Anyway, the IPs have been banned, and I’ll keep an eye on it in the future. Must sort out WordPress. Must.

Back

OK, normal service will be resumed – but probably tomorrow. When I said photos on Tuesday, fuck it, I lied. There’s 160 to go through, so it’ll be tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that the weekend’s been ace, Iceland’s fantastic (but expensive) and I want to go there again. I’m back in Manchester, and putting my thoughts back together, as well as wading through a veritable shitload of email. More later, or tomorrow. But yes, normal service.

Insofar as d4d™ is ever normal.

Update

No, it´s not all rotted shark-meat as food – although you can have that if you want. However, it´s nothing short of “Fuck me dead!” expensive. Four beers – £24. Four bowls of soup with rolls (admittedly, at the top of one of the most fantastic waterfalls I´ve seen – and yes, lots of photos later…) – £36. There´s roughly one hundred Icelandic Kroner to the pound. So in theory the exchange rate is equivalent – 1Kroner = 1p. Then realise that even a pizza will run to 2,000 Kroner. Let alone anything fancy. It´s an expensive place.

It´s still fantastic though. 120 photos so far, and I´ve just dumped the memory card to the laptop, so there´s plenty more to come.

Arrival

Well, a blog entry from Reyjavik. What more could you want. I´m even mastering a bloody Icelandic keyboard. Haven´t quite worked out what´s missing yet, but several buttons have moved. Ah, including the < signs. Tags may get interesting.

Got them. Yes, I´m in love with this place – it´s small, but perfectly formed. Arrived yesterday, and on a coach tour today, with whale-watching tomorrow. Back on Monday. Photos on Tuesday.

Away

No, not a hiatus – but there’s not likely to be any posts here now ’til next Tuesday. The simple reason? I’m away – in Iceland from Tomorrow ’til Monday, but not coming home ’til Tuesday. So there.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty added on Tuesday night, but until then have a good one, and go read the other sites on the blogroll. They’re worth it.

NY-LON revisited

A couple of weeks ago I talked about NY-LON on Channel4, and gave it the benefit of the doubt. It hadn’t started overly well, but there we go, some things don’t. However, we’re now nearly halfway through it and I can honestly say, I’m not going to keep on.

I don’t care if they stay together, or split up. I don’t care who does what, or why. There’s a problem with dramas based entirely around love, regardless of whether it’s seperated by a wall or an ocean, and that is purely that to keep the drama going, it’s going to be much the same in each episode – they’re in love, they argue, they split up, they make up, they’re in love. This kind of drama is fine for a one-off single episode thing, but over time and episodes, frankly it fucking drags. No two ways about it.

So I’m sorry Stuart and Edie, but you’ve lost me. And as a result, so have you, Channel 4.

Marie Celeste

Is it just me, or have the blogging contingent been very quiet today? It seems like hardly anyone I read has updated at all…

Dodging the Blame

As some people know, I’ve been involved over the last 15 months in a project to put in a Content Management System (CMS). It’s been a fuck-up from the start, and has taken 13 months just for the council to decide which system they want. But progress is finally being made, and we’ve got a deadline of 11th October for it to go live. Nothing like pressure at all.

In a meeting today about it, half the people have suddenly realised that come next week, they’re going to be at least part-way responsible for the website content that goes up from their departments. They’ve got to check it and make sure it’s right. Now, being a bunch of workshy blame-dodging motherfuckers, we’ve just spent three hours – yes, three fucking hours talking about whether there should be an extra approval system put in (bearing in mind a deadline a month away) so that they don’t have to take too much responsibility. This project has been on the go for more than a year, and yet these cocksuckers have left it til now to realise it means they might actually have to do something. It’s like the last year has never even happened. Like we’ve not had monthly discussions and meetings where all this has been gone through. Like they’ve been sleepwalking through, always assuming that final responsibility would be Someone Else’s. (In councils that’s the best form of responsibility there is)

I’ve now got an utterly bouncing headache, but I’ve been good, I have managed to get through the entire farce without once just saying “This should’ve been sorted out six months ago, you bastards“. But it’s been close, I can’t deny it.

Roll on Christmas. Yes, you heard that right – I’m looking forward to the Festering Season. Why? Because my contract finishes on December 24th. (I may move it a couple of days forward from there, but we’ll see.) So Christmas ’04 may actually be a happy, happy time.

Weird phase

Have you ever noticed that sometimes things just all click together at once? Where things you’ve been planning to do “when you get round to them” all suddenly start happening?

This week’s already been like that here. First of all was the resurgence (at long last) of the creative writing. That’s something I’ve been thinking about for at least six months. Then I finally got round to attending the public meeting of Redeye, a photographers collective around the northwest. Again, something I’ve been thinking about for the best part of this year, just never got round to.

And then to put the icing on the cake, I found out about a gallery space that’s looking for new photographers, and so I’ve got some prints done to submit to them. Nothing to lose really, and everything to gain. But that’s also been something that I’ve been talking about doing for most of this year.

I don’t know what’s made all this come together this week – but I’m sure as hell not going to knock it either.

Godfather

At long last, after a nightmarishly long labour, a friend of mine has given birth to her first daughter, Layla. 8lb 3oz. And amazingly, she trusts me to be the godfather. That’s going to be one messed-up kid…

The Teak House, Wokingham

A while back I wrote about the St George and Dragon in Wargrave, and wasn’t overly impressed with the place. Last weekend we went to The Teak House in Wokingham, which was a far better experience.

It’s a Thai restaurant, and came well recommended – and it deserved the recommendation. I know we’ll be going back more often. The service is attentive, although it’s obviously quite a small business. The food’s ace, and it’s just a pleasant place to spend an evening. And the prices weren’t bad either. Definitely recommended.

Yawn 2

Now here’s an idea I could live with – particularly after a lousy night’s sleep. Beds in the office – that way I could snooze and get paid for it, instead of sleepwalking like I do at the moment.

Of course, I’d have to sort out something about the snoring…

Yawn

I have to say, following making two purchases there, that the Filofax website is one of the slowest sites I’ve dealt with in years. It’s taken me about fifteen minutes to buy two sets of refill pages – it really is that slow.

Of course, the irony is that Filofax always tries to make out that it’s essential for organisational stuff, and saves time. Perhaps a site upgrade is needed. Wonder if I can persuade them…

Bankers

Do you ever have one of those days where you wonder if it’s you, or everyone else? That’s today for me. The bank account I have is with the Royal Bank of Scotland, and as part of the service I pay for on the account, it includes travel insurance (as mentioned the other day) but also no charges for foreign currency. So, as I’m off this weekend to foreign climes, I thought “Oooh, best order some currency, as they won’t have Icelandic kroner just in the bank on demand”. So far, so good.

Having checked the booklet about the member services for the account, it says “call us to sort out your currency requirements” (Slight paraphrasing there, but not by much) along with a number. When called, you go into the Automated Voice Response (AVR) system, and it says “for all travel requirements except Travel Insurance, press 1″. Off we go, pressing number 1.

“Oh no, we don’t deal with currency. You’ll need to go through the system again.”
“But this is the option for everything to do with travel”
“Yes, but we don’t deal with foreign currency.”
“…” (the sound of an utterly speechless Lyle)

Another call, this time going through multiple options in order to speak to a human being (well, bank worker, anyway)

“Oh no, you need the travel section for that. We don’t do anything financial”
“But the travel section don’t do currency, I’ve just spoken to them.”
“Well, we don’t do anything financial. You need to speak to the travel section.”
“…”

I’ve ended up talking to the business manager at the branch I’ll be collecting the currency from, and sorting it out at branch level instead of the “priority” customer services line dedicated to the people with my breed of account. I despair.