Unshocked

Following on from the post below (and I have to say, some of my regular readers are deeply sad and scary – no wonder I feel so at home here), this is hardly a surprise…

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Buzzwords

Oh dear. Someone’s just hit d4d™ following a search for productisation LAWS – which was, of course, the bullshitfest that I attended two weeks ago. D4D™ comes up 12th on the google search list. Remembering the other bullshit buzzword from the event, I checked out Polyhierachical LAWS. No.1, baby…

Now I know why I write under a pseudonym. *grin*

Gubbins

A small piece of alteration today to this page. The “Link and Think” image has finally fallen off from the right hand side (only took me five months), and the title of the page has changed, thanks to a suggestion by Lori. How long it’ll stay for, I just don’t know.

Other than that, I’m not sure what the quality of updates will be today. I’m feeling generally wiped-out – not coldy, not flu-ey (is that even a word?), more like just the crumbling edge of exhaustion. Easter weekend is looking like it may descend into a pit of sleep, which is perhaps not good as I’m also supposed to have a TMA from the Open Uni to complete. One that I haven’t even looked at yet. Ooops. There’s also a nagging problem from Monday’s networking gubbins, where the office can’t get email from the POP3 server on their hosted website, yet I can get it from work, from home, and even over the mobile. (Geek? Me?) And yes, they can get email from another POP3 server, so it’s not that the ****ing ****ing bastarding firewall‘s blocking access to Port 25 or anything like that. Despair and lack of ideas are beginning to appear on the horizons of my mind’s eye. Or something equally hippyish.

Sleepy

Have you ever been tired enough that when standing still, you actually wobble slightly, like a trapeze artist trying to maintain their balance on the wire?

Welcome to my world today.

CBA

I’m supposed to be at another presentation tomorrow about E-Government and Broadband. I just can’t face it, it’ll be more of the same kind of bollocks as a couple of weeks ago. Knackers to that.

No, really?

Children shoved in front of the TV consistently may have a higher risk of Attention Deficit Disorder.
File under Sherlock, No Shit.

The track to hell

Coming back from Middlesbrough last night was an utter ‘mare. The train finally left Middlesbrough twenty minutes late, and in one of the vilest states I’ve seen in a while. Litter was everywhere, and a good third of the seats were knackered (for which read “utterly fucked and impossible to sit on”) – not a good sign.

It was also actually the second train. The first one had been pulled out of service for some reason known only to Transpennine. (Don’t be fooled by the nice fancy train on that page – the ones on the Manchester to Middlesbrough route seem to be from The Rolling Stock That Time Forgot™) And the staff who were at the station didn’t appear to be in on the information dissemination either – so far, not going very far towards their stated aim of

TransPennine Express – Our Vision

Our vision for the new TransPennine Express franchise is to re-vitalise and redevelop TransPennine Express, making it the preferred mode of transport for our customers in the North of England

<mutter>Fat fucking chance</mutter>

Eventually, we got to Leeds station. The train stopped. Then got turned off completely. A muttered announcement came over the tannoy. “mummwbwnd mewmewu mureuirbq murewuuipw” This apparently translates as “Hello Passengers. Your train is officially classified as “well fucked”, and has now been pulled from service. Please get your stuff together, get off the train, and go to the train waiting in front of this one. You have twenty seconds to comply” Not a word from the uniformed (and uninformed) goblin stood at the doors of the carriage in Transpennine garb. He just stood there watching people go “what the fuck?” Useless wazzock.

Finally, everyone is off the train, and standing on the platform. There’s no train in front of the one we’ve just got off. A twunt in a uniform appears (it would be uncharitable to mention the expression “ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag” at this point) and is asked “Pray tell, kind sir, where is the train that we were helpfully informed was waiting for us?” (or words to that effect, that may, or may not, have included “wherezthefockintrainyacunt?” from the pissheads in front of me)

“Oh, it’ll be back in a minute. The driver got told to leave the platform, because there was a train coming in behind him.” (yes, that was the train we’d all just got off) “He’ll reverse in a minute, and you can all get on”

At long last I got into Manchester, half an hour late, a three hour journey that involved three and a half hours, and three trains.

Now, where’s the number for BSM?

Networking Redux

Typical. I come in today, and within 90 minutes the entire thing that was being an utter motherfucking shitbag on Wednesday is now fixed. I could cry. I could, but I won’t. Because if I cry, I’ll lose the plot even more, and then kick the crap out of the server, and then I’d be back to Square One.

Le Sigh

‘Nads

We’ve just been watching a very odd TV “infomercial” for a hair-removal product from Australia. The unfortunate name for it is – wait for it – Nads (OK, as a commenter said, it should be “Nad’s”, but that’s not quite as much fun. Damn you, Pedant of the Western World). We’ve been giggling like idiots to expressions such as

“Your entire life can change with Nads”

Hilarity can be very chldish. *Grin*

04/04/04

In a fit of Diamond Geezer-esque bobblehatdom, I’ve noticed that today is the fourth day of the fourth month of 2004. In two-digit notation, that’s (as per the title) 04/04/04 – no matter whether you use dd/mm/yy, yy/mm/dd, or mm/dd/yy. And yes, I do still derive a weird bit of enjoyment from timestamps like 04:04 04/04/04.

My name’s Lyle, and I need to get out more.

Part Troll

Oh, and I’ve finally got my finger out, and got a ticket to Bill Bailey‘s new tour, “Part Troll“. Amazingly, because I’m utterly disorganised, it now turns out I’m seeing him on the tour’s first night, an extra show at The Lowry on May 3rd. Sometimes it’s good to be chaotic. (and via Gert, a very good interview with the man himself)

Travelling

Yes, I’m away again this weekend. Updates may be sporadic (good word) but we’ll see. And my heavy reading for the journey? After the hassles earlier this week, it just had to be a refresher on TCP/IP. Oh dear. Who was it said something about needing to get out more? Well, this is what happens when I do – while I’m going there, I’ll still descend into basic ubergeekdom.

Sunny D-Shite

Interesting today to see that Procter and Gamble has flogged off Sunny Delight to a bunch of US Investors. (The Grauniad didn’t name them, but the P & G press release names them as J W Childs, a Boston-based private equity firm)

In some ways I’m not surprised that it’s been sold off – it had bad press from day one, but at the same time, it still has annual sales of $550m, which is hardly chicken-feed.

Prettifying

Ye gods, I despair sometimes. Today will be spent making an utterly functional piece of web application into a pretty version. The voices from On High want it to look pretty. Apparently (according to them) auditors care more about how something looks than whether it works OK. I don’t believe them, but there we go – what would I know?

So it’s all about prettifying, about a nice clickable interface that looks good. It doesn’t add any functionality, so it’s likely to be the ubiquitous Waste of Money, but hey, the auditors won’t care about that. They’ll want it to look good.

And of course they won’t pay any attention to the fact that the Senior Management never even look at the results from this application, which is all about performance indicators and the like. Nah, that’s irrelevant. So long as it looks good.

Return to Type

Meh. That’s all my brain said at 7am today. Meh. Loudly, and repeatedly. It’s been networked out for the last three days, installing a complete wireless network, plus server, router, access point, and ADSL modem. The network side worked fine. The connection to the ADSL modem didn’t. It’s taken two days to sort out, and it’s still a tempramental piece of crap.

I’m stumped as to why. Monday will involve another visit to the site (possibly with a hammer) because last night it died – and hasn’t come back – for no reason at all. The entire thing had been shut down and rebooted (including to power-off level) three times, and was fine. Then for no good reason, it just died. The router/access point can see the modem, and communicate with it. But the modem doesn’t want to communicate with the outside world. And there’s no reason I can see for it.

I hate networks and networking. I can do the basics – and the wireless network side has worked fine, even with WEP, SSIDs and the lot, it’s all connecting fine. One computer keeps deciding to lose it’s workgroup, which is a pain in the bum, but the network is fine. It’s just the connection to the ADSL that’s a cunt. And when it gets to that kind of problem, it’s just a nightmare for me – considering that networking is supposed to be logical and easy, it’s the most complicated, user-hostile and illogical occurrence ever. I hate it – because it doesn’t make sense.

I’d also like to point out that the fuckhead who decided that things like routers and modems should have web-accessible interfaces deserves a kick in the bollocks with pointy stilettos. Accessing the different bits when only one is working, or when gateways are chuffed is a total nightmare of constantly altering IP addresses and the like.

I’m just immensely thankful that I’ve got a couple of friends who are pretty damn good at network-based stuff, and who are prepared to help me when I’m out of my depth. One of them I know owe big-time for helping bail me out yesterday. And yes, I find it strangely comforting to hear them saying “What the hell?” as well – it means it’s not just me making a stupid mistake.

Grrrr

It would be sweary, but I can’t be keffed. Wireless Networks. ADSL modems. Routers. Firewalls. Printers – Network Ready. (HA!) An extra day. Already. Forgetting to set my email to forward to somewhere locally. Dreading the amount of spam tonight. Knackered. Ratty. Vey very fucking ratty.

*sob*

Brief Hi8

Ooops, forgot to say, I’m off for a couple of days, putting in a nice big wireless network and the like, so blogging will be in short supply. I’ll be back tomorrow evening, honest.

Photos

Oh dear. The originals at full size are available if necessary (and why on earth _would_ you want to?), but photos of the BM4 (Blogmeet 4) are now available here. Lori’s photos are available here. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Back

I really should be more hungover than I am. Come to that, I really should be hungover.

And did you remember to put your clocks forward?

Out – BlogMeet 4

Yes, today’s the day of the infamous Blogmeet. I think this is the fourth one now, and it’s the first where we see people in daylight! Be afraid…

Photos will follow, tonight, tomorrow, sometime. The camera’s got a 256Mb card in it, so there should be a couple of good ones. *Grin*

Fan-Mail

An email received today.

Just had to say I loved your rant about Virgin Trains. I work for the lovely company and have put up your rant on the mess room notice board and everyone thought it was well class! apartfrom the management that it becuase it can’t possible be true, its a world class service! Ha Ha

Guestweek

Chuff, that was a struggle. An inspired (if slightly surreal and double-entendre-laden) tale of “The Littlest Cucumber” (each word there links to a different section of the piece of crap silly tale) got me through, and now it’s just the cocktails to organise, so we’re doing OK. God knows what next week will bring.

In other news, I’ve now got to “prettify” a section of the intranet for the council. It’s purely functional at the moment, and the smegwits on the Fourteenth Floor now want it to look pretty, in order to enter some kind of executive pissing contest with another local local authority. Ah joy.

Personally, I thought the point of putting the Chief Execs on the 14th floor was to prove that they actually do shit on people from a very great height…

Why Me?

It always happens like this. Every time I think I’m sorted, that I’m paid up on all my bills and with no more due in for a month or so, one always turns up. Completely unexpected, and a total pain in the arse.

This time, it was my old battlepals, British Gas. The motherfuckers. Apparently I’ve managed the impossible, and have two electricity accounts for the same property. I paid one electricity bill about six weeks ago, which they conveniently have no record of. This account has been overdue for about three months, so it’s snotty letter time. It’s paid now, and I’ll keep on looking into how they’ve managed to get two accounts, only one of which is traceable.

Of course, British Gas themselves are about as useful as condoms in a nunnery, and can’t trace payments, can’t list payments coming from one account (“That might break Data Protection” “I authorise you to do it” “No, it still might break Data Protection” Cunts) and are basically as un-fucking-helpful as it’s possible to be. So I pay twice for a cockup from British Gas – and they’ll do cock-all to try and find out why it’s happened. When I find out, I may just swear lots, and be rather unpleasant.

Document Structure

Over the last couple of years, one of the big buzzwords when it comes to web page design has been “document structure”. Because of the rise of technologies such as CSS and XHTML, the actual HTML in a page has finally become more about the content, instead of primarily being involved with the layout of the page. As this has happened, the structure of the content, the actual text, has become more important.

Headings are now one of the major parts of document structure – for instance, a page title should be an <h1>, the next heading should be an <h2>, the next one an <h3> and so on. Having the correct structure like this helps with bookmarking pages, with producing tables of contents, and many other odds and sods.

Here at work, Stinky® is supposed to be the evangelist for all things to do with accessibility, page structure, CSS, etc. While he’s been on holiday, I’ve been working on a couple of sections I don’t normally touch. These sections are – to be polite – an utter sack of shite, don’t have any document structure, the CSS is abominable, and in fact it looks like the Legoland® version of a website. Total bobbins.

I guess what annoys me is the double standards of it all. In a way I’m in the same boat, because d4d™ doesn’t adhere to those standards of document structure etc. either. However, I’ve never claimed it does. The CSS validates, but I’ve never claimed the pages do. (Which is fortunate, as they don’t even validate to HTML 4.01 – Ooops) When I redesign d4d™, I’ll be looking at making sure that it does exactly what it says on the tin, but ’til then I’m not going to make false claims about its accessibility. However, Stinky® is forever bleating on about how sites don’t adhere to standards, aren’t compliant with various definitions, yawn, yawn, yawn. And yet the stuff he’s written for the council actually is some of the most nastily broken stuff I’ve seen in a long time.

Frustrating.

Organise, Pissup, Brewery

We regret to inform you that the CD which was enclosed in the product packs at the LAWs dissemination event in Manchester yesterday contains a virus despite having been scanned before production.

The virus does not affect Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but can have severe effects on Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me.

We would request that you do not place it in your CD drive but that you destroy it immediately. However, if you have already opened the CD, please contact your IT team and tell them that you may have W95.Spaces.1445.

Words fail me.

Meeting – Aftermath

A Lyle Semi-Sweary® Production. © 2004.

Well, fucking hell, what a waste of time/effort/a day. I’ve heard more corporate-speak bullshit in the last ten hours than I have in the last ten months. People from local authorities all over the north of England, and most of them actually look like they’re eating up this guff like it’s caviar.

APLAWS, LAWS, GCL, LACL, XML, XSLT, SOAP, D4D, HP, FLOB, ODPM, OeE, ESD, and many more. All utter utter bollocks. Do you remember Gus from Drop the Dead Donkey? Management guff of the “I’m not here” variety. He had a shedload to learn from the cunch of bunts today.

More to the point, it wasn’t even an informative or useful seminar. In fact it was shit – pure, unadulterated, shit. Nothing of relevance about how all this stuff really works, just about “what we’ve done in the last year with all these TLAs”. It was like the first day back to school after the summer holidays. Attending events like that drives me fucking barmy – such a complete and utter waste of taxpayers money. Grrrrrrr.

This post was brought to you by the ‘words’ (and I mean that in the loosest possible sense) “polyhierarchical” and “productisation“, both of which were bandied about repeatedly throughout the day.

Meeting

Kill me now. Today is not going to be a day where I update much. I’m stuck in a meeting all day about APLAWS (Accessible & Personalised Local Authority Websites), LAWS (Local Authorities Websites – National Project) and the GCL (Government Category List).

As you can probably tell from that little lot, I’m likely to be bored out of my brain, and wearing my world-famous “Oh, Who gives a fuck?” face. There may be ventage later.

Note to Self

Vent about Document Structure later.

Charm

“Hey, Mister, you know drinking Diet Coke’s bad for you, don’t’cha?“
“Yes, and so’s being an interfering mouthy little gobshite. Now fuck off.“

Ventage

Lyle, can you put this document up on the intranet please?
It’s important, it has to be available from Monday, or we break one of our prome Government requirements.
Thanks. I’m now off for a week, so any questions about it will have to wait ’til my return.

Department $#!+

Ok, that’s not a difficult request. One document, to go on the intranet. Knowing where would be nice, but I can probably figure that out. Knowing what the blue blazing fuck they mean by “(link)” (and of course some clue about what the (link) is supposed to bastard well link to) next to some of the document references would be useful. Actually having some of the documents that are purportedly part of this ultra-important e-Government bullshit would be kind of handy too. Come to that, some kind of guidelines regarding how they want the document to look, and what the fiddly shit they’re blithering on about would be fairy usefull as well.

So – do I make sure the document is on the intranet for Monday, cock-ups and all, so that the deadline is appeased, but the originator of the document looks like a moron? Or do I wait for the fucktard to come back, blow the deadline out of the water, get a bollocking, and have a sensible document made available a couple of days late?

End of an Era

It looks like EMAP have pretty much decided that the next issue of The Face will be the last unless a last-minute purchaser can be found. It’s been running now for 24 years, and the last issue will be published on April 8th.

They’re also saying that Just Seventeen is also likely to close down – both of these magazines have been running for over 20 years. It’ll be sad to see them go…

Sod Redux

Ah, I’ve remembered the email and log-in for the domain that’s moved. But what a nad-up – I thought I’d got all my eggs in one basket one account with all the domain names in it, and it turns out I’ve actually got three different accounts, each with a couple of domains linked to it. Ooops.

Also, and this is where it gets really confusing for my poor inadequate braincells, the passwords aren’t what I thought they were either. The subconscious is a wonderful thing, allegedly, but when it comes to registering passwords and log-ins, it’s an absolute tosser.

Communication

Stinky is off for a week (Yay!), so I would like to apologise to the inhabitants of Toronto in advance. However, if someone could push the dirty smelly fucker into the Niagara Falls, it’d be greatly appreciated.

While he’s away though, I’ve got some webpages to write and put up on the council’s site. I’ve been given the set of pages in MS Word documents (well, in one document, to be precise) and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So it’s going to be a fun day while I try to drain my brain and recall what was said about these poxy pages, and how they should be appearing. Or even where…

Guesting

I must be getting popular in my old age. Either that or desperate for more readers. So this week I’m also writing for Uborka along with qB. So it’s a bit of a mad week, and I’m still not quite sure what I’ll be writing on the Uborka side.

A few ideas are surfacing – slowly – so we’ll see how it goes.

Sod

As I posted a couple of days ago, I’ve been moving a domain from Easyspace to 34sp. The process has been remarkably smooth so far, except for one small roadhump. I’ve forgotten the logon/password combination for the new domain space on 34sp.com. I’ll get it tomorrow, but it’s a bit of a balls-up, and entirely my own fault. Mea Culpa, but sod, all the same.

Zero7 – Manchester Academy 1

Oops, meant to write a bit about this yesterday, but didn’t get round to it. Story of my life this weekend.

Unfortunately there’s no pictures – a) the gig was filled with lanky tosspots, and from the back of the gig, even the 10x zoom struggled to get a decent image. Stunning camera, but needed more light than the “intimate” atmosphere of this concert. Bit of a bummer, but there we go.

The concert itself was pretty stunning – utterly different to last week’s Reel Big Fish gig, in msucial style, crowd-age, lighting, atmosphere, the lot. I’m never quite sure how to sum up Zero 7 – their first album has been heard just about everywhere, from adverts to TV home makeover shows, stopping off on various soundtracks along the way, and in most pubs, restaurants, and shops at some point. It was last year’s version of Moby’s “Play” album, where everyone heard it somewhere.

And as such, the concert was more of the same. The new album has only been out for about a month, but it’s likely to end up with a similar profile – the TV producer’s favourite. Overall it was a good concert – but really nothing special. The stylre of music doesn’t really lend itself to huge lighting displays, or even domineering stage presences. A very laid back “lounge” gig, all things considered.

Mastermind

Off to see Mastermind being recorded in the BBC studios in Water Street. Then onto the Old Wellington for food. A good evening should be had by all…

Arndale

It had never really struck me til today, but shopping on a Saturday, particularly at a shopping centre like the Manchester Arndale centre really is just the scallie version of promenading. Showing off how cool, sexy and alluring you are. 4.5 carat gold, trackie trousers tucked into socks, fake Burberry, the lot.

*Shudder*

Ooops

In what can only be described as a fuck-up, Coca-Cola’s new bottled water, “Dasani” has been recalled. From its infamous “as pure as bottled water gets” slogan (and in fact it’s as pure as tap water gets too) apparently has more than the legal quantity of bromate so they’re recalling about half a million bottles.

Disturbed

I don’t know what the hell happened last night, but I think my pillows tried to attack me. Either that or it was bloody noisy outside last night.

I know I had a badly disturbed night, but when I woke up this morning one pillow was on the other side of the room, and the other was hanging half out of the window I’d left open.

Finances

Ye gods, that’s been a lot of money paid out. Council Tax, Gas Bill, two phone bills (a slight matter of one being way overdue, as explained here), and an outstanding bookclub one that I’d forgotten about. Ooops.

In addition, new business cards (another Oooops – I’d forgotten about them when I ditched the Three phone – Arse!), Mothering Sunday, mugs, books, and a thank-you pressie. As well as food/drink and changing a domain from here to here. Fairly quiet day, really.

Political

It’s one of those days/weeks/months. Stinky, the manager, is off on holiday for two weeks. Instead of reeking out the office, some 400 people will be lucky enough to be trapped in a metal tube for eight hours with him as he goes to Canada. My sympathies.

During his (much awaited) absence, Yours Truly has been delegated to take all the flak and deal with any incoming workload. All well and good, except that I’m a contractor, and the other person on the “team” (while I agree that “there is no I in team”, there is also no “fuck you” – which I believe to be a major oversight) is a full-time permanent employee of the council. Needless to say, he’s not overly happy that I get to do “da manager”‘s job, instead of him.

The next fortnight promises to be – interesting…

Yellow Brick Road

Having previous commented yesterday about various twadge-ups, the concept of drivers following a police car whose driver had left the ‘follow me’ sign on accidentally simply has to be mentioned.

Along with the word “twunts“.

Sleeeeeeeeeeep

No, it’s not getting any better. I didn’t think I’d had an overly disturbed night, but my entire body – and particularly my eyeballs – are crying out to just go home and go to bed. It won’t happen – I’ve got domestic stuff and shopping to do tonight before a houseful of people tomorrow, so that’s up the creek too. Bugger.

But oh yes, sleep is deeply appealing. Of course this also means I’ll be shattered ’til about 10pm, at which point I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just in time for bed. I want to break my bodyclock.

Slow Day

I don’t know quite what’s happened today, but there’s very little going on at all. In fact, I almost wish I’d just stayed in bed. It would’ve been a much smarter move, all things considered.

Twadge 2

This morning I collected my ticket for the Barenaked Ladies concert in Manchester on Wednesday May 5th. It had been posted (as per usual) recorded delivery, and because my wanky postal service doesn’t deliver ’til 11am or so, I was at work. So hi-ho off to the sorting office to pick up the envelope. Grand.

Upon opening it, also enclosed with the ticket (for 5th May,let’s not forget) was a flyer for (God help us) Sarah Brightman playing at Wembley Arena. On Wednesday 5th May.

Yet again, I despair.

Twadge

I despair.

“Can you take a look at the homepage of the site?“
“Yeah, what’s the problem?“
“Well, x, y and z, but I wanted to check if your version of the internet was saying the same as mine“

Some people just shouldn’t be allowed near technology.

Diversions

Sometimes the best way to put all the other stuff on hold is to immerse myself in other things – and being a geek that normally ends up being some weird program module or similar. Today it’s been phpBB. Having recently looked at a site where the phpBB installation is – to be civil – a right twadge-up, I agreed that I’d have a look at how to get it working properly, and how customisable it was.

I downloaded it yesterday, and installed it on a client’s site (fortuitously they also wanted a set of forums/bulletin boards) in less than half an hour, including database setup, and initial user administration.

Today’s displacement activity has involved customising all of the output, eliminating stuff that’s not needed, adding in page furniture and look and feel to make the forums match the rest of the site, and a whole range of tweaks that have left me feeling bizarrely chuffed with the amount I can get done in less than 24 hours.

Crash – and rebound

OK, I’m going to close this chapter here. I’ve whinged on for long enough. As per the statement below, life goes on, and it will improve.

And yes, I do feel better for having just spouted all that lot out, rather than letting it fester. With luck, the curve will now be back in a more upwards direction, and we’ll just see where things go from here. Yes, there are some issues that need to be dealt with – but that’s for a time in the future. If I do it right now it’ll just be a case of lashing out while I’m hurting, wanting other people to hurt too – and that’s not my style. So those issues will be on hold, and will get dealt with when I’m ready. The decisions have been pretty much made, it’s now just down to communicating them. *Grin*

Crash – part 3 – the future

As Sarah so pithily puts it

Sob your heart out, but for fecks sake, it does improve.

And yes, it does – and I know it does. Not everyone’s crap, not all friends walk away, and at the end of the day, the rollercoaster rides always come to a stop, back to where they started. ‘Twas always thus.

But am I being unreasonable with those who do fall by the wayside in my opinion? Yeah, possibly. Maybe I expect them to pick up on more than they do – but is it such a bad thing to assume some intelligence, rather than assuming that they’re pig-thick and need everything spelled out? Mea Culpa, I’m atrocious at asking for help, as I wrote below. But – and this one’s a big but – all the people who know me well know that to be the case, and they also know that in all but the worst times, I’ll say “I’m OK” or “I’m fine”. To hear me say “No, I’m not doing well”, or “I’m doing badly” is/should be the equivalent of a 21-gun salute, along with flares, flags, and “breaking news” announcements. “I need to take a break, a big one” is the Lyle version of “hide all the bladed items and pointy things”.

I’m not perfect – Lord knows, I’m probably more flawed than most – and I try my hardest to not expect too much from people. In some cases, to expect anything at all. But is it not fair to at least hope that people can pick up these things, when they’ve known me for 10 or 15 years? The ones who’ve let me down this time have done so before, it’s not a “one fault and you’re out” scenario. In better days I’ve explained why I feel hurt and let-down by their prior actions – I haven’t changed the ground rules this time, yet the same scenario has played out again. How many times should I try to be benevolent and understanding that I’m not perfect on this either?

Many, many thanks to those who’ve commented – as I said before, it means more than I can say. Yes, I’ll be OK, I’ll get through it, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The last few weeks have been a pig, and the sense of loss and let-down is still very fresh, and there are still some large repercussions that are likely to happen. But I’ll be OK, and I’ll get through the dark periods. And thank you to the people on here that I’m honoured to call “friends”

Crash – part 2

I think that the other part of why I’ve been hit so hard on this occasion by the Black Dog (Other than my occasional habit of carrying sausages in my pocket – must stop doing that) is the feeling from various sources of not even being noticed. In contrast to that, the responses from the first part of Crash have been hugely appreciated, and thanks to all who have written anything. Some of the kind words there have left me virtually speechless, and I can’t really express my thanks for them.

On the flip side of that, some of the people I’ve been closest to for years have been found to be deeply wanting this year. “Friends” who I speak to at least weekly, if not more often, and who simply haven’t noticed (or at least haven’t commented on) the descent. Some of those have crowed before that they can read me like a book, that they’re great with people and can get to the root of any problem. That their interest and study of psychology means that they’d never miss obvious signs; that they’re so “tuned in” to me (and others) that they’ll “simply know” if anything’s wrong. And while I admit I don’t normally wear my depression on the sleeve (it’s too heavy, and pulls the fabric horrendously) then equally I haven’t gone to any great efforts to conceal it. But it’s been missed all the same.

It’s something where I’m still not quite sure how to handle the situation. Perhaps the depression isn’t helping that decision either – in some ways it’s like a nagging demon on one shoulder saying “Well, they don’t really give a fuck about you, so why bother sticking around to get hurt again?” At the same time, it also says “Well, you know that people don’t really notice much outside their own spheres, so you should be more vocal when you need help” – another notch in the ego.

Admitting my truly black periods is something I’ve never been good at. Many many reasons for it, but when all’s said and done I’m either too independent, or too insecure to ask for help. I know that in the end I will deal with this period the same as I’ve dealt with all the others, without help, without exterior support – because it’s what I’m used to, I expect people to let me down, to not be there when they’ve said they will be. Part of the reason to not ask for help is because I don’t believe it will actually be there, and so asking for it is a self-negating proposition, and just leaves me feeling worse, and more let-down. Also, in my own strange brain, I don’t feel that help should be asked-for. It’s where I possibly expect too much from close friends, to hope that help would be freely-given, that it shouldn’t need to be requested. I hate asking for help, admitting that weakness that says “I can’t handle this at the moment”. With my own friends, I try to not put them in that position, I want to offer the help, relaxation, stress-relief etc., and not have to be asked to provide it. These situations are stressful enough, and people feel inadequate enough during depression and stress without having to come cap-in-hand to friends for some guidance in how to get through. Well, I know that’s how I feel, and I’d hate for those people I care about to feel in any way as low as I do when asking for assistance, for help, to admitting that I can’t fight on my own.

Yet at the end of the day, that’s what it always comes back to. Self-reliance. And each cycle of this, every time it happens, it leaves me more self-reliant. Each let-down, each sin of omission is another brick in the wall, another layer to the defences, another slice of “no-one was there for me, the only way to get through was to rely on myself”. It makes me more loath to ask for help next time, because each time I ask for it, and it’s not given, it’s just another scar to add to the collection. And frankly, I’ve got enough scars already.

Those scars, those healed-over (but not actually fixed) wounds, they’re all still there as reminders of what should have been, what could have been, but what ultimately wasn’t. (That’s lousy English/Grammar, but it conveys what I want). Luckily for the most part they’re scars on the psyche, not on the body – but there are enough that are physical, that I can see. Another form of self-harm, the compulsive picking at wounds in order to make sure they leave a permanent reminder. Each one is there for a reason, even if the original cause wasn’t particularly related.

The other really stupid thing is that in some ways this post is inherently pointless. The people I’m thinking off, for all their supposed interest in what I do and so on, don’t even read d4d™. They know of it, but (to my knowledge – I’m working on the theory that they’ve never commented about d4d™, either here, or as in “oh, I saw you say about that the other day” in conversation) don’t even bother to look at it. To some degree I find even that hurtful, that for all the lipservice paid, for all the “of course we’re friends, of course I’m interested” there’s not even the effort made to read, or bookmark.

So – do I feel bitter about that kind of behaviour? Sometimes, yes, I can’t deny it. Unfortunately that also makes me feel crap and selfish, of putting my own wants/desires in front of other peoples, but at some point logic kicks in and says “Yeah, but fuck that, you’re only human – we all want that to some degree or other“. Is it too much to ask for? To actually want (split infinitive and all) the actions to match the words? To want friends who do what they say they will? To be able to say “I’m not doing well, and don’t know if I can get through this period” without the accompanying fear/expectation of seeing those “friends” running for the horizon just as quick as they can? (Even during the writing of this, I’ve had a phone call with exactly that scenario:
“I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’m doing the other, how’re you?“
“Not good, to be honest – hitting breaking point”
“Right, well, I’ve got to be off, people want to talk to me“)

Or is it just selfish,and I should be, if not content with my lot, then at least just more comfortable with being self-reliant, and just figuring that some of my “friend”s are just self-obsessed lying bastards?

Oh Arse

I knew there’d be something I’d forgotten when it came to swapping mobile numbers, and getting rid of the Three phone. What I’d failed to recall – and this really is a rather relevant point for it to have fallen off the back of my brain – is that all my business cards have a phone number on. Guess which one it is?

Oh absolute twadge.

BO

I’d just like to point out that today, by 9:30am, my boss stinks like a week-dead roadkill skunk.

While unpleasant (to understate the point by several orders of magnitude) I still find myself slightly in awe of someone who can smell that bad by first thing in the week. God help us all by Friday…

Sweary Supremacy

<worship>
The perfect set of swears – NOT safe for work.
</worship>

Twadge Mug

Finally, after one “lost in the post” farce, the first Twadge! mug has arrived. And reet chuffed with it I am, too.

It’s not perfect – the image for the next one will be much larger, as this one obviously had to be blown up to fit (pixellation on the diagonals of the 4 are the main giveaway) but that’s the perfectionist in me speaking. As with several of my own ideas and photos, it’s only when I point out the “defect” that anyone else really notices it.

Also, in a seperate branding-related incident, the Scary-Tshirt has arrived. Yay! So for the blogmeet in a couple of week’s time, I shall be wearing a white t-shirt with DCUK on the front. Should stand out…

Reel Big Fish / Goldfinger
Manchester Academy 1

And lo, it came to pass that it was time to attend my first gig of the year. From now, it’s utter gig madness for the next couple of months, putting the average back up to a rough parallel of last year’s gig listing. (18 or so)

Goldfinger were first up (there were two bands prior, but we didn’t get to see them, due to epic disorganisation – the same reason there’s no photos) and were pretty good, although very much a generic LA/California “punk” band. Quite fun, but nothing to write home about. As appears to be normally the case, their sound setup was OK, but not really all that great. They performed with loads of energy, (including getting the crowd to support the singer as he stepped out into the audience – brave move!) but for me ultimately this sound is becoming very formulaic again, and it’s hard to tell the difference on occasion between a variety of bands.

Reel Big Fish on the other hand are a ska/punk band, and much more fun. As soon as they hit the stage, the star quality shines through loud and clear. They played all the crowd’s favourites, and really were just bloody good. It’s hard to identify where they differ from other bands of the same ilk – I suppose the other band they resemble the most for me is Barenaked Ladies. Both seem to have a habit of dragging people up from the audience to be on stage (although this was nearly misguided when one of the brass section discovered that the girl he’d been drinking, smoking and dancing with while she danced in her overloaded bra was actually only 15), talking/chatting between band members (and to the audience) between songs (favourite line : “Look, piss off throwing bottles at me. Just because your girlfriend’s more interested in me than she is in you”) and generally carrying off the idea that they were there to have a good time, rather than just perform songs.

This appears to still be a very American/Canadian trait, most of the UK bands I’ve seen tend to be more music-oriented, and stay slightly removed from the audience. It’s just a difference in philosophies, but it makes things interesting.

Overall, a pretty good gig, and I have to say, it’s good to be back, and to come back to a decent one.

Next week : Zero 7 (caution : link only appears to work “properly” in IE)

Crash

I’ve a feeling this may be one post that doesn’t last long on the site. Then again, I may leave it here, just as a reminder. I don’t know yet. Those four words appear to be one of the tenets of the last few weeks.

There’s been a lot of stuff going on over the last few weeks. Months, in fact. Since last November/December time, there’s been a resurgence in my depression. My workload has exploded, which hasn’t helped matters – sometimes it feels like there’s no escape, that there hasn’t really been time off at all. Yes, I took time out in January – but all the same, the work was still there on the horizon, deadlines getting closer, and although I needed the space, it still wasn’t relaxing. All the same, it was needed.

But since then, it’s ramped up again. Workload is my version of self-harm, it’s the way I have of dealing with depression – or attempting to. Like self-harm, it’s a quick fix, a diversion activity. Long-term it’s ultimately unsuccessful, but still there’s the compulsion to do it.

The depression has built up further over the last fortnight or so – I don’t know why, no real clues or triggers have been present. It’s not seasonal, because the days are (at long last) getting longer again. Instead it’s just a feeling of being constantly in demand, feeling depleted because of that, and perhaps with little to no headspace. I’ve started doing something about it, removing some of the people from my Messenger friends list who have proved that any “friendship” has been one-sided. Maybe that’s nasty, to simply walk away from people, not even letting them know that I’m doing it, but there we go. Needs must when the Black Dog drives. (or rides – whichever. I can never remember that one properly)

Of course, it’s still there – it doesn’t disappear overnight, or with the application of one or two simple measures. My head is still in it’s ever-decreasing cycle, knowing that it’s depressed, yet unable to break out of the thought processes that are a facet of the depression. It’s a downward spiral – and experience has shown me many times that this spiral is one it’s better to ride than to fight. It does end, it does wear off, but if I try to derail it early, it just builds in the background, and eventually comes back far worse. It’s no fun – I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, or even on Blair – but even though at the moment I want to curl up and die (or alternatively simply destroy myself – but that’s not really an option, although it’s bloody tempting on occasion) I know that ultimately I will get through this, same as I have many times before.

And yet…

Ah yes – the flip side. I don’t like the depression – as I said, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But at the same time, it’s vicious, my words flow more when I’m depressed than they do in the normal flow of things. I can write more easily, the ideas spring out fully-fludged, and the creativity surges even while my will to live ebbs. I’m going to be using the time to work through some ideas while also still working on trying to find the balance between depression/creativity and sanity/normality. I don’t want to be like this all the time – I don’t know that I’d last a year.

I need the time out – come July, once the contract with the council is finished, I’m going to take a month out if at all possible, use it as recovery time. I want to write more, I want to see how that side of things develops. But more than anything else I just want the time out, the time to sort my head out again, to break away from this mental downward spiral. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not going to hiate d4d™, mainly because it’s one of my connections to reality, and those are much needed right now. As for everything else, well, only time will tell.

BNL

Woo, and indeed Yay. While I know I should be cutting back on my gig tendencies ( I’ve only currently got about 8 on the agenda… ) I still have a few bands where it’s a certainty that I’ll see them advertised, and just go. One of those is Barenaked Ladies. I’ve seen them three times before, and they’ve always been excellent. I got an email yesterday from ticketline, telling me that they’re playing Manchester Apollo on Wednesday 5th May – and I’ve now got a ticket! Yay!

</livejournal>

Madrid

Oddly enough, I find it quite hard to express my opinions about things like the Madrid train bombs. I wasn’t writing d4d™ at the time of September 11th, and probably wouldn’t have said much about that either – or I’d have probably said something highly contentious about the planning, and the probable effects. I feel much the same with Madrid and the images coming from there – it’s horrendous, but I can’t bring myself to join in a chorus of shock and horror.

Obviously I’ve heard of Eta before, but I couldn’t tell you thing one about their history, objectives, or motivations. On a selfish/solipsistic side, I didn’t know anyone in Madrid, so there isn’t the personal affect there either. (and yes, for the pedants, the word ‘affect’ is the one I wanted, not ‘effect’) Yes, the events themselves are terrible, but they’re also almost certainly counter-productive to the aims of Eta, and that’s what I find most disturbing – that these 180+ lives have been extinguished for no good reason whatsoever. The only real “justification” for the event is that it’s now focussed the world’s media on Eta and it’s so-called portfolio.

The BBC has a further piece wondering who’s to blame? There’s going to be a scapegoat for this, for sure, but at the end of the day it can happen all too easily. This is where the US is still discovering problems – sure, they’ve pretty much closed the door on airline terrorism, but they’ve focussed so much on that one avenue, but this bombing could just as easily have happened on Amtrak, or anywhere else the public can go. At the end of the day it doesn’t need exotic plots or weaponry to perform acts like Madrid, or September 11th – all that’s really needed is some explosives (or even just a handgun) and believers people determined to carry out the actions to further their cause, no matter what it is.

We can’t protect ourselves against fanatics, we can’t spend our entire lives paranoid that these events might occur. They’ll happen, time and time again, because the only alternatives are thought-police, or a public utterly caged and under control, where every single movement is tracked. Blair can pledge to go on fighting terrorism in every corner of the world, but it’ll ultimately be unsuccessful – the terrorists will wise up to the various methods used to track them, and will find new ways to circumvent them. Small cells will still be able to put together events like Madrid – I don’t think there’ll be anything on the global scale of September 11th for a while now – with little communication needed outside the cell. And that’s where things like Echelon, GCHQ and the like also ultimately fail – because in a group of three to five organised individuals, there’s little to no need for extra communication. If those people have never raised their heads into the view of the authorities, then they’re not likely to even be under surveillance.

My prediction is that the Madrid bombs will be found to be caused and planned by a small cell from Eta, all people that have never previously been associated with terrorism. Their neighbours will say “they were nice quiet people, we never thought they would be involved in something like this”. That, of course, is if they’re ever found – something I have my doubts on.

World Domination

It had to happen. I’m now the proud owner of Twadge.com. No idea yet what I’m going to do with it, but yes, the domain is mine!

Bwahahahahahahaha!

150,000

I’m not sure exactly when we went past the 100,000th page (turns out it was October 6th ) impression, but the 150,000th was registered on the 9th March. How pleased am I?

Retrograde

Back at the end of September, I bought a Three phone – a Motorola A920 to be exact. This week, I’ve quit the contract, and gone back to a 2.5G phone, the Nokia 7250i.

While I liked the Motorola, the Three network itself is utterly shonky, and the way they’ve crippled the 920 is nothing short of a sin. If it had been allowed to do what it was designed for (i.e. a high-speed access phone, capable of rendering most sites through it’s Opera mobile browser, with Bluetooth and infra-red as standard ) then it would’ve been fine. Instead, Three decided to cripple the Bluetooth and IR, ringfence the internet access to solely their content, and turn a potentially stunning phone into an utter sack of shite.

That’s not to say that the phone didn’t have its problems too. The battery life was abysmal (roughly a day between charges, even if only left on standby) and since Christmas it’s needed rebooting at least once a day. Quite simply, an utterly unacceptable state of affairs. But – and this is worth pointing out – when it actually worked, the A920 is a stunning bit of kit.

For now though, I’m going to take this “backward” step. Backwards to a phone that works, that has a standby time of close to two weeks, to a network that, while shite, is still better than Three. We’ll see how things go.

Weirdness and Obscurity

Over the years, one of my favourite authors has been a not-overly-well-known writer, Jack O’Connell. He’s not written anything in about four years now, although there was supposed to be something in the offing back in 2001. I’ve been a fan of his work right back to the first novel, “Box Nine”, then through “Wireless” (my personal favourite), “Skin Palace” and “Word Made Flesh”. All deeply strange, and based around the fictional American industrial town of Quinsigamond (the town doesn’t exist, but the name does.), O’connell manages to construct not just a place, but the entire history of it, the areas, the stories behind individual landmarks and buildings, and also major events that have affected Quinsigamond, such as a pogrom in the city of Maisel (again, to my knowledge a fictional location) which brought a great number of emigrés to the town. In addition, he has an obsession with language and communication, with spoken word (in Wireless and Box Nine), visual shorthand (Skin Palace) and the written word (Word Made Flesh) and the ways it works. Intelligently written, and conveying ideas far beyond the scope of a simple “noir” novel

On a different scale, I’ve also always loved the music of Yello. Formed in 1979 in Zurich, they’ve been recording albums ever since, including last year’s “The Eye”. Every album has felt like it could be the soundtrack to a film – the album holds themes together, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so, but it’s always there, the feeling that the album is more than just ten or twelve tracks plonked together on a disc. There’s a storyline, a set of events portrayed, and done in a way that some would class as “avant garde”, others as “way ahead of their time”.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been re-reading O’Connell’s “Word Made Flesh“, the novel that I’ve always found to be the darkest and most impenetrable of the four novels. It’s a novel about insanity, obsession, the written word, the Maisel Sweep, and many other subjects besides. It starts with a breathtaking description of a man being skinned alive, and just carries on from there. However, because I’ve mainly been reading it on the bus while commuting to and from work, I’ve also had the MP3 player going, and that’s been playing Yello’s “Motion Picture” album – and the two have converged into almost a working mental film. Very very strange, and also somehow very moving.

Bizarrely Proud

In other news (and because I haven’t mentioned them in a while) I’m strangely chuffed to come up #2 in Google for “how shite are united utilities?“. (The answer, by the way, is very. I even ended up doing some work on their “Green Energy” section, and yes, they’re definitely shite.

In the more surreal searches, an AOL search for “irregular heartbeats in hockey players” manages to find d4d™, as does a Yahoo! search for “brownfield munitions risk” – not sure what that’s about, but there we go.

I’m sure there are plenty of other surreal searches that end up here, but they’re the ones my strange brain noticed today.

Return to Type

It couldn’t last.

Excuse me, is there something wrong with your bollocks? (resisting the temptation to add “and if not, would you like there to be?”)
No
Well would you mind closing your fucking legs then, so someone else can sit on that seat too?

Am I in the minority by being male, and being able to sit with my legs together, rather than with a 100° angle between them?

Irony in action

I love the story today of the twitchers who (pardon the pun) flocked to see a rare American Robin in Grimsby (you can tell that the poor sodding thing was lost, can’t you?) only to watch it get ripped to shreds by a sparrowhawk.

Absolutely hilarious.

Change of Attitude

Contrary to the impression perhaps conveyed by the post below, I’m currently trying to not be quite such a ratty twat. The last few weeks have pushed me more than usual, so some time off would be nice.

However, from the evidence of today, I should perhaps also invest in full page ads in every paper reporting this desire to have some peace, and also a full suit of armour. Or alternatively a force-field of Death Star-esque proportions.

Walking back to the office, a knobber actually collided with me. He was running for the bus, and bang, straight into me. Understandable(ish) if it were a side-impact, if one of us had crossed into the path of the other. But no, this was from behind (ooooer missus), and a direct impact. The man was just a cockhead – I’m 6’4″ish, and hardly a beanpole. I’m about as missable as, oooh, an office block, say. But no, this knobber managed to collide. It was all I could do not to kick him in the head after he’d hit the ground. There’d have been no worries about brain-damage – he didn’t fall on his arse.

Potential Merchandising – Part Three

Following on from last week’s design ideas, this one occurred today. I was going to get one done for the idiot ringlicking twunt colleague who STILL can’t add images to Word® documents, but as he’s the PR officer for the entire council, it’s possibly not such a smart idea.

But it’s still bloody tempting. Akin to a statement of “I can put an image on a mug, you can’t even put ’em in a bloody Word doc.” (Oh, and yes, the original concept had a MUCH ruder word. *Grin*)

Moose – Addition

OK, now that’s confusing. I had a card last week from the Post Office, telling me there was a package I had to collect. Wasn’t expecting anything (other than the – still not arrived – mug from last week ) I didn’t have a chance to collect it from the Post Office ’til this morning. Hmmm, large box – that’s bloody big packaging for a mug…

Of course, it wasn’t a mug. It’s a Moose. (Well, they say it’s a reindeer. But we know better… )A moose from – even more bizarrely – La Senza, and posted from Nottingham. All very strange.

But thank you, whoever sent it.

Music and Sociology

The entire of this article could be filed under “No Shit, Sherlock”.

Apparently, people like to wear music players (be they MP3, cassette (showing yer age there, Lyle) or CD) so that they can have more control of their surroundings, and also to provide an illusion of public space where really there is none. Music on earphones provides a personal “bubble” that is controlled solely by ourselves, and this helps to relieve the stress of everyday urban life.

I think that’s pretty much the précis of the article. Hands up who’d never realised that kind of thing before this academic study…

Dogs

Out of interest, what the hell gave the award to the whippet? Utterly bizarre. The Giant Schnauzer was utterly beautiful, and deserved the award. Grrr.

Revisit – Permanence pt 3

Visiting my home town is always a good way of reminding me of the stuff that really doesn’t enthuse me at all. Every time I go back, I can be guaranteed to meet various people I went to school with, ones who swore they’d leave Thame and never go back. Except it turned out to be “where their mates were” and “the place they knew best” – the massive majority of them have come back there, made homes near their parents and/or friends, and now have children who are going to the same schools their parents went to.

Fair enough – that’s their perogative, at the end of the day. For me it’s just something that appeals about as much as agreeing to receive an hourly kick in the bollocks. Sure, I can think of worse things than going back and living in my home town – but I don’t want to do those either, and given the choice, they’re all pretty much lumped together. Personally I find it virtually soul-destroying to go back, to know that nothing radical will have happened, that the town just shambles along, looking pretty, and slowly becoming a dormitory for commuters.

It’s not just Thame though – the same thing happens everywhere. It’s not just a village thing, or a town thing – even in cities there are whole family dynasties that never leave the area. Maybe it’s just the natural thing to do, that urge to stay close to family, to friends, to the familiar. Are we just really creatures of habit, and the ones who travel, who find new places to live (or at least different ones) are the exceptions, rather than the rule. If so, that’s not something that bothers me – I’m happy to be an exception.

Back when I was at school, so many of my classmates swore they’d leave and never return. Of the ones I know, or know of, there’s about ten who have actually lived up to what they said they’d do. Fair enough, one of them has helped out the average a lot, as he’s now a pilot out of Hong Kong, but the massive majority – probably 90-95% – have returned. What I find even more amazing/ridiculous is that when I see them, they don’t even appear actually to like Thame. “It’s boring, but it’s close to work”, “there’s not much to do, but my mates are here”, “I’d move. but there’s nowhere that’s better”. That’s just three quotes from this weekend – there were several others.

For me, I could never go back on a permanent basis to Thame. It’s not my kind of place at all – plus it would feel somewhat like a backward step, a retrograde maneouvre, a return to a place of history. I’ve never been any good at going backwards, of going back to places I’ve already been to, to things I’ve already done. Perhaps that’s my own character flaw – the need to do new things, rather than returning to the security of the known, the reduced risk of the previously experienced.

Nokia

It’s fascinating – why do SO many people keep that hugely annoying diddle-ee-dee diddle-ee-dee daa Nokia standard ringtone? Do they not know it’s now legally a justification for GBH, Assault, and even Criminal Damage (to whit, flinging the phone out of the nearest window) and that it qualifies under the Geneva Convention as a cruel and unusual punishment? It’s on a par with dum-dum bullets and mental torture.

Even worse – amazing as this concept may seem – is the newer polyphonic Nokia enema ringtone. Diddle-ee-dee diddle-ee-dee daa, only with knobs and bells on. And why is it that on a train, where you’re not really all that likely to miss the bloody call, and surrounded by 80 other people, is it essential to have the phone’s ringtone on maximum possible volume? Already I want to find out who owns that phone on this train carriage, and by the time I’m done with it, they’ll have to clench their arse-cheeks in order to answer the bloody thing.

Stopped in the Street

How to kill a conversation in four words.

Hello Sir, can you stop for 30 seconds to learn how to Help the Aged?

Can I suggest Euthanasia?

And before certain people go up in arms, I’d just like to point out that I don’t actually believe in it, but a) it was pissing down, b) I was in a hurry, and c) I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with bloody on-the-street fundraisers.

This weekend will be quiet

In the name of familial harmony – and the fact I haven’t seen them since December! – this weekend will be low on updates here at d4d™. I’m chez parental units, and doubt I’ll be anywhere near a PC. I’ve got some stuff that needs writing while I’m travelling (and yes, that includes emails to some people I haven’t written to this year in far too long) and so I’ll probably add some content come Sunday or Monday (depending on when I return from the wilds of the Home Counties)

In addition, I’m finally going to be able to take the A3 print down to them that I got done back in January for them. (The A2 print would have been to large to fit in anywhere properly, but I think the A3 will be about right) I just hope they like it – again, I’m sure they will, but that old insecurity bug still kicks in…

And I may even take some photos of the dump town. Woo-hoo, I bet you’re excited now…

Changes – Permanence pt. 2

Over at Naked Blog, Peter was asking about what you would shed if you could. And as part of the general existential funk that I’m in at the moment (see here for slightly more details) I’ve been thinking about some of the changes that I think I’m going to go through in the next few months.

Over the last six months or so, I’ve been feeling more and more drained, generally lacking energy or inclination. In part this has been due to the fact I’ve felt constantly “in demand” with very little self-time. Fair enough, it’s nice to be wanted, but not all the time. I need a break. More importantly, I need to look at some of the people around me, and decide whether I actually want to stay in touch with them.

During the winter the seasonal depression hit me a lot harder than normal, and I think that a fair percentage can be laid at the door of keeping “busy”. For reasons only attributable to my family’s work ethic – and general stupidity – my “busy” equates pretty well with most people’s “Stop the world, I want to get off!”, and in general I’ve now been “busy” (AKA Manic) for about six months. Again, having a hectic social life is good in some ways, but it also needs time off.

Anyway, even though I was hectic as hell, the depression still hit very hard. Throughout 2003 I had people telling me “you’re always there to listen to my problems – you know I’ll be there to do the same for you if you need it” – and towards the end of the year, I did. And of the people I did talk to, and say I was having a hard time of it, not one of them lived up to their promise. Not bloody one. I’m not going to feel sorry for myself about it – mainly because it was still pretty much what I expected – but it doesn’t make it any easier. Perhaps I expect too much from people, just to be treated in the same way I treat them.

The thing is, I still feel drained by these people. I think that the next few months are going to be a bit of a sea-change, as I move away from being always available, perhaps become a bit more obtuse and reclusive. There are some odds and sods that I want to try (Semi-related to yesterday’s question – that should keep you guessing!), and that I need the time for. (And not forgetting that bloody OU course too! Aaargh!) So yes, I think I’ll be spending some time sorting out my own life for a while, and getting headed towards things I want to do. Selfish is a new thing for me, so that might be interesting too. We’ll see.

Detection Fault

Ah, now it’s time to get the readers involved for once. It’s a simple question, but I’ve been racking my brains over it for the last week, and I’m still stumped. So, answers in the comments box to this…

Can anyone think of a UK or US TV series involving detectives/police where the main character has been gay?

I can’t. The closest I’ve really come is the gay cop in Six Feet Under – but that’s not the kind of thing I mean. I’m thinking more of the main character, similar to a Frost, Morse, or whatever, but any detective/policeperson who’s gay. Male/Female doesn’t matter, I’m just stumped…

All responses gratefully received. Bobblehats on, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

Easy Come, Easy Go

It’s definitely one of those days today. Money comes in, money goes out – this time I’ve had to pay off the finale of my council tax, following a complete cock-up by the local authority. When I moved to the new place, they sent me a notification of what I owed, and I was able to pay the entire thing at once. No worries, I’m sorted ’til April-ish.

Last week I got a letter from them saying I still owed them £100.20. A suspiciously round(ish) figure. So I rang them up, trying to find out why it’d gone up by a hundred quid, and why they hadn’t let me know ’til now.

Well, we sent you out the first bill, which you paid. However, there was a reduction on that because at the time you hadn’t moved in to the house, so once you’d moved in we put the bill up to the correct amount, rather than the discounted rate you got while you weren’t in the house. However, we realised that on that bill we hadn’t given you the single person discount, so we had to send you another notificiation, which was for £whatever, which includes that £100.20.

As for why we didn’t tell you til now, even though you paid us in one lump sum, our system runs monthly, so it’s only this month that that first payment has run out, which is why we’ve now let you know that you owe some more money

Grrrrrrrr, bloody local authorities. I sometimes wonder if their systems aren’t just designed to make life as complicated as possible, and thus justify huge numbers of bean-counters and middle managers.

Squirrel Shag Support

I saw this on the local TV news, and thought it was hilarious. The Highways Agency has created a suspended bridge to allow randy squirrels to cross a road without getting squished. How perfect is that? The branches that overhung (overhanged?) the road were all cut back by the Highways Agency, so the red squirrels in Formby, Merseyside were having to run across the road instead – and were getting squashed more often than not.

Now, they have a rope “bridge” across the road. I hope they use it, but I do think the entire concept is pretty damn funny.

Will to Live – Permanence pt. 1

Well, it’s been confirmed that my contract is being extended (again) with the council, so I’m here for another three months now. I don’t mind the work- it’s hardly rocket science, after all – and it’s been OK to work on other stuff for myself at the same time, which probably comes under the terms “getting away with murder”, or alternatively “having your cake, and eating it”.

But at the same time, I don’t really feel overly enthused about staying here ’til July. I’ll do it, no worries – but I have to say that right now I really wouldn’t have been upset at all if they’d turned round and said “Sorry, we don’t need you after the end of this contract period”. There’s been a lot of stuff going on recently, both within the council and with my own work everywhere else, and in some ways I just want to get on with it all, and get some changes under way.

Deep inside, I know a lot of the issues are to do with permanence, and the way that affects me. I’ve been here doing one contract for 11 months, and by the end it’ll now be near as dammit a year and a quarter in once place. That’s the longest time in one workplace in more than a decade. In fact, I think it’s close to the longest I’ve ever stayed in one workplace. Today’s the fifth anniversary of me moving up to Manchester, and that’s the longest I’ve lived in any one place since I was 16. It’s one of those days where I feel weighted down, where things just feel permanent. It’s not a place I like being. Something makes me think I’ll be doing some changing of stuff in the next couple of weeks.

And yes, I think there will be some more bits about Permanence over the next few days. Perhaps another aspect of this all being in my head at the moment is the fact I’m seeing my parents this weekend…

Ring of Fire

Finally, I’ve just looked at my visitors, and come across this

Sense of humour? Sponsored by Preparation H?

Potential Merchandising – Part Two

There is, however, another candidate. I haven’t ordered one, just knocked up the design. But I’m tempted…

So, if given the choice, which would you go for?

Potential Merchandising

Following on from David‘s post today about mugs with logos/banners on them, I had a look at TShirt Studio to do a d4d mug. I’ve sent off a preliminary design, so I’ll know soon enough what it’ll look like. (And yes, the idea is slightly nicked from the Scarymug, but as I designed that too, then so be it.

Shallows

Regardless of everything else, sometimes Lyle really isn’t far below the surface with me.

Today’s instance has been a case in point. Having queued in order to buy a paper, some old duffer just walks in front of me in order to get served.

Oi, there’s a queue here, you know
Well, I’ve been pushed in front of loads of times
Well, I’m sure that makes it fair, you arrogant old fucker.

I’d feel ashamed, but he was a rude bastard, and frankly, fuck that.

I should point out, that “old” is simply a statement of fact, not a pejorative. I’d have been just the same (if not ruder) if he’d been 21. Particularly if he’d had a burberry cap on.

Blockquote styling

Yes, I’ve changed the colour of the blockquote style in the CSS. Actually, it looks OK. Personally I didn’t have a problem with the purple, but apparently it messed up some people’s eyes, so in the interests of being semi-tolerant (it’s the first of the month, give me time… Exceptions, rules, and all that jazz) we’ll see how this one goes. Enjoy.

Monday Morons

Happy March. And just where have the last two months gone? Scary.

BT put me on “incoming calls only” yesterday. Nice of ’em – no warning, no messing, try to make a call, and get told that it’s been diverted to BT, and that I should call them in office hours. Yup, Monday – Saturday. Hardly guaranteed to put me in a good mood for calling them this morning. As any reader with half an IQ point will know, I don’t handle incompetence well. So I call them today.

“a) Why was my phone cut off on a Sunday, when I can’t speak to the department at all ’til Monday?
b)Why was it cut off at all?
c) Why wasn’t I warned about it, or told what the keff was going on?

Answer a)
“Our system didn’t realise it was a leap year, so it thought it was cutting you off today”
(I’m virtually speechless, but still manage a brisk “And how is that my problem?“

Answer b)
You haven’t paid your bill.
What bill?
The one you received in December.
I say again, what bill?
Well you must have received it – our system says we sent it.
Does your system check with the postman? Or send it recorded?
No
So how do you ‘know’ I’ve received it?
Well, our system says we sent it.

Answer c) We sent out a notification.
Is that the same system that sends out the bills?
Yes.
Got news – I didn’t get the reminder either, you know, for the bill I haven’t paid because I haven’t received it.
You must have received it. We sent it out.

And then they’ll wonder why people get rude on the phone to customer services. I didn’t get rude, I should point out – just queried the competence of an organisation that says “you must’ve received it, we sent it out”, but won’t accept the same reason in return when told “well you must’ve received my cheque, I posted it to you”.

Musical Madness (or Insania, if you prefer)

Christ, it never rains but pours. First of all, Peter bloody Andre is back at Number One with the truly awful “Mysterious Girl”, and then comes news that Paul McCartney is to release a sequel to his rancid Frog Chorus film from a few years back. I think I’m just going to give up now.

The McCartney sequel, Tropic Island Hum, “stars” a Liverpudlian squirrel – called Wirral. I despair. Got any spare razor blades?

Blimey

Wow, Blogrolling has been sold – to Tucows. It’ll be interesting to see what works out.

It’s amazing, the things you can find in Asda

There’s something slightly distasteful about the story of the couple who got married in Asda. Fair enough, it’s where they met, and all that gubbins – but somehow it just makes me think “Yick!”

Supposedly the Asda in York is the first supermarket to be approved for holding full wedding ceremonies, rather than just blessings, but I seriously hope that not many others (if any at all) do the same thing. In a world where consumerism has already become rife, the idea of being married in a supermarket is – well, apt I suppose. But still deeply distasteful, to me at least.

Bestseller

Yesterday, I got a copy of Market Forces, the new book by Richard Morgan. It’s been released early (it was supposed to be released on 4th March), and the edition I have is a first-edition hardback. So – and this kind of intrigues me, to be honest – how come the cover can say “his bestselling new novel” ? Obviously it’s not yet a bestseller, because it’s been published for a whole three days – and that doesn’t take into account the additional fact that still most people don’t know anything about Morgan’s novels. Are the publishers prescient?

Self Improvement

You know, sometimes it’s possible to go up in the world without even trying. I’ve just started doing an OU foundation course to set me up for the degree course from autumn this year, but that involves some effort.

However, you can set yourself up as a Reverend with virtually no effort whatsoever. The Universal Life Church allows you to become an ordained minister of the church – online. No expense, no twelve years in the seminary, no effort. You can now refer to me as Reverend Lyle. *Grin*

Independence

Recently, I’ve been working for a client, developing a load of client management stuff in PHP. To-do lists, client history and tracking, contact management, payment gubbins, the whole nine yards. And all written by me – no copyright issues, even with Open Source modules. I can honestly say that – at risk of trumpet blowing – I’m seriously bloody pleased with myself, considering I didn’t really know anything but the basics of PHP this time last year.

In fact, the only potentially dark cloud on this particular horizon was the need to do email notifications of the various happenings within the system. I’ve never written a PHP mail script (and hadn’t written a mail script in that level of detail before at all) so I went with the “easy” option of using formmail.php – yes, a module written by someone else. Shocking.

What was more shocking was that the module was an utter sack of shit. It caused me more problems than enough – and particularly when trying to customise it to my requirements. An absolute nightmare. So instead today I’ve spent some time writing a basic mail script that does what I needed it to – MIME types, priority flags, cc:s and bcc:s, and that doesn’t fuck up. I’m sure that it could be written better, or more securely, but at the end of the day it works, and it’s secure enough for my current purposes.

I’m too independent for my own good, I suppose. I don’t like using other people’s code where I can possibly avoid doing so. Yes, the learning curve can be cliff-like in its steepness on occasion, but seeing the working end result is still hugely satisfying. I’m seriously pleased with the entire load of code – and you can bet I’ll be writing more as time goes on.

Child Care

I completely forgot to blether about this yesterday – I think shock set in – but I find it amazing that up to two-thirds of child car-seats are fitted incorrectly.

Every year more than 100,000 children are involved in crashes where it is crucial how well the seat is fitted.

Most receive little more than a jolt, but 10,000 are hurt, with 670 seriously injured and 30 killed, the AA said.

Too many parents make mistakes or take shortcuts to keep children happy, the AA Motoring Trust said.

So that’s 10% of children who get hurt when involved in crashes, and 1% seriously injured. Because parents make mistakes, or don’t do it properly because their little darling isn’t comfortable. Keff that, the little sod will get used to it, and trust me, it’s less comfortable to spend three months wrapped in plaster.

I’d say more, but I can feel that vein on the side of my head pulsing, so I’m going to take some deep breaths instead.

Memetastic

You knew I’d go for it in the end, didn’t you? Heh. So – the first twenty tracks out of my MP3 collection go like this :-

1. Martina Topley-Bird : Lullaby
2. Voice of the Beehive – Just a City
3. Tom Jones – Jezebel
4. Unkle – What Are You To Me?
5. Tom Waits – Coney Island Baby
6. Good Charlotte – Story of My Old Man
7. Chickasaw Mudd Puppies – Prison
8. Elbow – Snooks
9. Alabama 3 – Let The Caged Bird Sing
10. Massive Attack – Blue Lines
11. Beloved – Paradise Found
12. Ministry – Breathe
13. Machines of Loving Grace – Lilith/Eve
14. Erasure – Sometimes
15. Coldplay – A Rush Of Blood To The Head
16. Soft Cell – Le Grand Guignol
17. Alabama 3 – Hotel California
18. Reverend Horton Heat – Beer
19. Loudon Wainwright III – It’s Love and I Hate It
20. Nina Simone – Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Talking to Murderers

I restrained myself from commenting at the time about the police interviewing as many serial killers as possible in order to build up a ‘profile’. I can kind of see the reasons behind it – but there are several flaws there too. The biggest one that I can see is that – when it comes to apprehending killers, anyway – the common factor with all of the ones that would be interviewed is that they’ve been caught. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? But if they’ve been caught then in general they’re likely to have made a mistake or done something that got them caught, or raised suspicion.

It’s like the old theory that prisons were a good place to learn abotu crime – in fact they’re a good place to learn how to get caught.

Anyway, it’s also no surprise to me that Ian Brady has already refused to help or be interviewed, and I suspect that others will follow suit. Even without taking everything else into consideration, what on earth makes the police think that any decent serial killer is going to want to help them, for chuff’s sake?

MP3 Playlist

No, I’m not going to do that meme (yet) – but following on from yesterday’s post, the combination of tracks on my little 128Mb MP3 player today is quite varied :

• Scissor Sisters album
• Diamanda Galas “Sporting Life” album
• Reel Big Fish “Favourite Noise” album

and just to fill some space

• Alabama3 and Orbital – Ska’d for life
• OPM – Heaven is a Halfpipe
• Peter Gabriel – Growing Up

Having it on random makes life fairly interesting…

So much, So little.

There’s loads of things I could probably blither on about today (and in fact may do so later) including the film of Christ’s temptation opening to controversy in the US (regular readers can imagine my surprise on that one), the NHS cheapskates only being prepared to fund one round of IVF treatment, the first UK citizenship ceremony, and Blunkett attempting to put on a swastika armband in an effort to look less like a fascist totalitarian in the name of anti-terror. All rate as fair game, and I’m sure at least two will get more of a rant later.

In addition there’s Halifux being sleazy buggers (again) and the exceptionally dodgy “it wasn’t us, we didn’t do it” story from the parents of Shafilea Ahmed (to the resounding accompaniment of a chorus of “Aye, right. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on” from the audience.

So much to blither about, so little inclination to do so.

Pounding

A while back, I commented about wearing headphones at work, and having music while working on repetitive, dull crappy tasks council websites. Today I’m definitely needing music, as the combination of a) workmen replacing the security barriers outside the office, b) fucking morons talking (loudly) about keff all [bear in mind I can hear them – over the headphones – from the other side of the office], c) dull repetitive stuff (roll on the Content Management System), and d) semi-tropical office temperatures has induced a headache of epic proportions. Again.

It’s a choice between music and homicide. Even with music, homicide is still an option. I wonder if I can beat someone’s face in while keeping with the rhythm?

Note to Self : Diamanda Galas’ “Sporting Life” album is probably not the best thing to listen to in order to maintain sanity. It is, however, funky as hell.

Shagged

Sorry about the lack of comments currently, but it looks like Haloscan’s database has disappeared up its own output port again. Poxy system. And yes, I know, I know, MT is the way to go. Give me a spare month and I might get round to it.

It’s back now – no explanation. I really need that spare month…

Fascist Weasel

So, George Bush wants to change the US Constitution in order to make gay marriage illegal, does he? Frankly, what difference is there between a religious extremist killing others because they don’t hold the same faith, and some fundamentalist Texan telling people how they should live their lives – and trying to effectively make part of their lifestyle illegal?

In a related story, Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said

Because the city and county of San Francisco’s actions [in allowing gay marriage] are directly contrary to state law and present an imminent risk to civil order

Yes, that’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of films like Terminator, Commando, and Predator – all proponents of civil order.

Where does it end? If gay marriage is made constitutionally illegal, then the gates are open for any other forms of discrimination to come in.

Corporate Incompetence

Before Christmas, regular readers may recall that I was sorting out a small office unit for my company. The business park I was going to be using was the Cariocca Enterprise Park in Manchester, who were offering the units at a very decent price. Well, I now know why they were so cheap.

Since I paid out my deposit and so on, and did all the paperwork, I’ve had nothing but hassle and incompetence from them. Despite multiple phone calls, they never even managed to provide me with a set of keys for the unit I was renting – in other words, I’ve still never set foot in the unit I’d paid for. Apparently this was my fault, for not chasing them up – we’ll try to ignore the weekly calls (which then became twice a week) that I made after the first fortnight. I’m now involved in a fight with the Manchester City Council Business Rates Unit, because they insist that I was in the office unit, and that any claim to the contrary is obviously me trying to get out of paying rates, rather than that the business centre are conning inefficient complacent cocksuckers.

In the end, I cancelled the agreement, and wanted a refund. God, I’m so naïve. Because apparently it was all my fault that I hadn’t gone in and kicked the everloving shit out of the receptionist ’til she gave me the keys collected the keys (which allegedly had been in reception all the time, and supposedly I was told this on repeated occasions – again, I must be hallucinating, and of course I’d leave keys there rather than picking them up for a unit I was renting) I was still liable for the rent payments, which instead were taken out of the deposit I’d paid.

I finally got the cheque yesterday – made out to my own name, rather than the company name – and for about a third of what it should’ve been. No compliments slip, no breakdown of what I’ve been ripped off charged for, no anything. Useless bastards. I’ve called them up today, asking for a breakdown of the charges (no problem – so why the blazing frak wasn’t it done anyway) and a letter confirming that the agreement is now terminated.

Oooh, we don’t normally do that.
Well, frankly I hope that this isn’t a normal situation, and as such I’d like it done and sent to me, because the hassle I’m now going through is entirely due to Cariocca.
Well, I’ll see what I can do.

The words “organise” “pissup” and “brewery” keep on coming into my head for some reason…

Arseing Twat

Today I shall mainly be writing PHP pages for the bits I’d forgotten on a couple of sites. Mainly for error-checking, and ensuring that essential data is actually present, rather than simply expected. Yes, I’d fallen into the classic trap of thinking that making it bloody obvious on the data entry screens would be enough to get people to enter the data. I was wrong – Oh, so wrong. *sigh*

By ‘eck

I’d slacked off on the log-file analysis a bit recently, but did do a report last night. It’s only got about a third of yesterday’s hits, but the current total since May ’02 when d4d™ started now stands at just over 145,000 page views, and a princely 1.7million hits. Not bad going for a little old personal site/blog. *grin*

Of course, the blog is the main part of the site, and it’s birthday isn’t until August 9th, so really d4d™ is only 18months old, rather than approaching two years. Honest.

Cuentral Trains – Part Two

(Part the First is below) The return journey was even worse. As I’ve ranted about before, train companies do maintenance on weekends, and replace the normal train service. With Buses. Other than apoplexy, the other main result of this is that everything takes a shedload longer to do – and that’s assuming that there’s anything resembling competence/intelligence/common sense going into the planning of this. Instead, Heath Robinson would be proud.

The train runs fine from Nottingham to Sheffield. Again, it’s fucking rigid (another two-carriage job) aided and abetted by screaming hellspawn, snoring scallies, and a press of bodies that I’d previously thought outmoded since the Black Hole of Calcutta. The train gets into Sheffield, and everyone has to get off to “utilise road travel in order to facilitate the continuance of your onward journey” (thanks to the station announcer for that little gem)

There are no signs to say where the coaches are leaving from – it turns out to be outside the station, in a fenced-off bit of carpark. Two coaches appear – no signs to say where each is going. It’s only when people have got on them that they say “this one’s for Liverpool. If you’re going to Manchester you need the other coach”. Thanks very fucking much, you peanut-chomping retard offspring of the liaison between a rabid goat and a lust-crazed colobus. Thankfully, the driver of the other bus has managed to perform the same fuckup, so there are some spaces.

Now, if you were wedged like sardines travelling in a coach, wouldn’t you put your rigid, wheeled mini-suitcase in the luggage space under the coach? You know, those big cavernous spaces where suitcases are supposed to go? No, of course you bloody woudn’t, you halfwit daughter of a goatherd, you’d put the bloody thing on your lap. For two hours. And woe betide the poor cretin (yes, that’s Me) who has to sit next to you, with the wheels leaving what feel like permanent imprints in the gap between knee-cap and knee joint. Ah, the joys of that journey.

We eventually arrived in Manchester – again, an hour later than expected. I can honestly say that Snake Pass (or, for purists, the A57 ) is “interesting” at night, in an overloaded coach. The rest of the journey was fairly insignificant, as I was concentrating more on making sure my 6’4″ frame was still going to be mobile by the time I escaped got off the coach of Calcutta, ideally with both kneecaps intact, and no murder charge in my future.

Cuentral Trains – Part One

Ah, the joys of a weekend on the trains. Travel between Manchester and Nottingham on a train actually isn’t rocket science – there’s no need to change trains, it’s a direct service, and runs semi-regularly (approximately hourly, if for some strange reason you care about these things) but it does have one major problem. The service is run by Central Trains. Oh dear, what a calamity.

Friday’s journey to Nottingham should have been utterly uneventful – in fact, I’d go so far as to describe it as “a piece of piss”. Get on train. Sit down. Wait two hours. Get out at Nottingham. The problems start when you remember that a) you’re travelling on a Friday, and b) it’s 5.30pm. OK.

One of the idiosyncracies of Manchester travel is that there are two stations that the train stops at – Oxford Road, and Piccadilly. If you get on at Piccadilly, the service is ram-packed, and impossible to even get a seat. If you’re smart, you get on at Oxford Road, and you’re in with a head-start by the time the train gets to Piccadilly, and hordes want to get on/off. It’s well worth doing. And for once, I remembered to do it. Thank Christ.

The complete twadges who plan train availablilty for Cuentral Trains had decided that because it was a Friday rush-hour train, obviously no-one would want to travel. Two fucking carriages. Yes, Two. Even the normal train has three, or even four. But no, Friday, 17.30, Two carriages. So of course that’s going to be rigid. Getting on at Oxford Road was OKish – still plenty of keffwits with eight suitcases, as well as the people who see that the carriage is filled to the gills, but still stay sat down ’til the train pulls into Piccadilly. Already I’m beginning to wish we had less legislation on stun-guns. Luckily, though, I’ve at least got a seat.

By the time the train finally leaves Piccadilly, you could maybe get two more people on. Assuming they knew each other pretty well already. If they didn’t, they soon would. The train gets to Stockport, disgorges a few, rams a few more in. And waits… And waits… And waits…

Thirty minutes later, we’re told that one of the two power units on the train is now officially knackered, and that the people in one carriage are going to be travelling in the dark. Guess which carriage, folks? Yup, my one. Half an hour late, the train staggers out of the station, dangerously overcrowded, and totally underpowered. Sheffield involved another twenty minute wait while they tried to wind up the clockwork sort out the power unit (and failed) so we eventually collapsed into Nottingham over an hour late (on a two hour journey). At which point the guard apologised for the lateness that’d been caused by a) a fucked power-unit, and b) too many people on the train. So now it’s our fault. If people hadn’t been so pissed off, I think there’d have been a lynching on Nottingham Station.

One of those days

Another day, another email to a shithead debt recovery agency that couldn’t find it’s arse with both hands and a flashlight.

To whom it may concern,

I have just come off the phone following the most incredibly obstructive and unhelpful call in the history of mankind.

This morning I received a completely incomprehensible statement from Britannia, accompanied by a cover letter from Mary Carney at your office. When I called for an explanation of this statement, I was told Mary Carney doesn’t even answer calls “because she’s a manager”, and all she apparently does is sign letters.

Unfortunately I didn’t get the name of the person who took my call – I hope his name is listed on my customer record somewhere. The call operative took my details (including a very badly worded request for my details – yes, I can confirm my address, but that doesn’t mean I have to) at which point the shutters came down completely.

The statement from Britannia is littered with “returned goods” and items that I have never even ordered, let alone received. Your call operative refused to be of any help at all, and apparantly was incapable of even listing what I supposedly owe Britannia money for. I was told I should take the matter up with Britannia. When I explained that I’d already spoken to Britannia, and they had insisted it was no longer their problem, it should be dealt with via Robinson Way, he simply repeated that I should take it up with Britannia.

Finally, he also said that I should take it up in writing with Robinson Way, but refused to give me a contact name within Robinson Way. The only reason I asked for a contact name (and I will directly quote myself) was “because Mary Carney apparently does eff all except sign letters“. This is a precise quote – no swearing was involved at any time. However, this is apparently an offensive comment, at which point your call operative stated he was ending the call.

I am utterly furious with the way Robinson Way has handled this matter. I am trying to find out what I supposedly owe money for from Britannia, and have requested this information on several occasions. The only item that has been forthcoming has been this statement from Britannia, which I suspect might be understandable if I were Polish, or perhaps an employee of Britannia. As I am neither, it’s incomprehensible.

My request is simple – I want to know what I am supposed to have received that I owe money for. As soon as I find that out, I will happily pay whatever debt there is against those items. However, as I have had nothing from Britannia since before the 1st August 2003, and the statement lists multiple items since then, the entire account is in dispute, and currently remains so.

I would appreciate some contact from Robinson Way to let me know what is happening with this account. It is obviously an utter nightmare somewhere along the line, and the sooner I am shot of the problem, the happier I will be.

I am contactable all day on 077xx xxxxxx, or by reply to this email address.

Yours Sincerely

Lyle

On Track

Tomorrow I’ll write more about wanky Central Trains, and their utterly crap service. If I do it today, I’ll just end up swearing more than even an 18 certificate would allow, so I’m going to decompress for 12-24 hours first. I doubt it’ll be that much of an effective plan, but we’ll see…

Public Art

I have to say, I love the idea of a field of fluorescent tubes that lights up as darkness falls, merely by being in the vicinity of electricity pylons. On display until 29th February, near Junction 18 of the M5, the installation has been designed by Richard Box, the artist-in-residence for the University of Bristol. Utterly superb, I love this type of public art.

Didn’t Miss Much

Well, according to the MEN’s review, the Gary Jules gig on Thursday was a) pretty wank, and b) fucking deserted. I’m surprised, following the Christmas success, but not all that surprised. Mad World’s very different to the rest of the music he does, and I suspect we won’t hear very much more from Mr Jules.

So I’m not too disheartened about not going to the gig – and besides, I’ve got some excellent ones still upcoming this year. Reel Big Fish, Zero 7, Pink, Chris Rea, Peter Gabriel, and probably several others. It’s going to be another good gig year, regardless of the way it’s started.

A Decision

So many things this week have been left up in the air, so for once I’ve made a decision. It’s partly on a “why not?” kind of theme, but also I’ve been looking at lots of pics lately, have just found two places I can get cheaper flights from, and well keff it, I need some kind of plan for a break to look forward to.

Timing is still unplanned, but I’m going to go to Toronto during the spring/summer. Sounds like a plan to me.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

I’m pleased to say that it looks like finally the terrorists prisoners from Guantanamo Bay are beginning to get released, with five UK citizens being released in the next week or so. Of course, they’re now going to face investigation by British anti-terror detectives too, but at least they’re more likely to be questioned legally, rather than interrogated and “persuaded” to tell the “truth” that the US authorities wanted.

However, it strikes me that if, as I suspect, these people are actually keff-all to do with terrorism etc., the US has done a top job of creating a bunch of people who really do have a stupendous reason to now hate the US with a passion, and who would happily see it crash and burn.

Eyes

I’m not sure if this is something that only I experience, or if it’s common. I’ve just been rubbing my eye, and it felt like it cramped – does that make any sense? Very sore, and quite unpleasant – it always eases off again pretty quickly, but it’s still definitely on the queasier side of “yick!”

CBA

Yes, I was supposed to be seeing Gary Jules tonight at the Academy 3. I did well – got most of the way there, and just decided I couldn’t be bothered. Just not in the mood.

I don’t know why the mood isn’t there – but it’s not. Instead I just want to curl up and sleep, or something. I do feel kind of crap for not going, but sometimes I just know I wouldn’t enjoy it, no matter how good it might have been. It doesn’t stop the crap feeling though. Wasted money, the idea that the ticket would have better gone to someone who actually went to the gig, that kind of thing. Ah the hell with it, it’s over and done with now, and in some ways I’m glad I didn’t go, but in others I just feel like a wanker. All part of the fun and games, obviously.

Abysmal

In a similar vein to Jann’s post on the same subject, yesterday here could be described as many things. However, “Shit” seems to be the word of preference – and also an entirely justified one. It was one of those where staying in bed would’ve been the wisest option, but you actually know that if you’d done that, the roof would’ve caved in.

Part of it was due to suffering a coding anti-Midas, where everything I even laid eyes on turned immediately to crap. Stuff that should take twenty minutes to write took four hours.

Going home didn’t improve anything. I received a letter from my local council saying I owed an extra £100 in council tax – quite impressive when I’d actually paid it off entirely when I moved to the new house – and had seven days to pay it, or go to court. No prior warnings, no “you’re late with a payment”, no knack all. My stuff from the OU has also arrived, except I can’t get to it because my neighbour (who received the parcel while I was out) has disappeared off the face of the earth.

As the evening wound on, it just went further downhill. The OnDigital ITV Digital Freeview box was playing silly keffers, as it’s wont to do on occasion, and so viewing anything via TiVo was like trying to follow a conversation with someone who’s photocopying their face as they talk, and only giving you the pictures. And then I got a phone call from a pregnant friend who was having a potential miscarriage, and didn’t know what to do. I still don’t know the results on that one, but at least we ended up with her going to get checked up in hospital.

All in all, an utterly f’king pants day. I just hope today goes better.

</slight self pity>

UPDATED : She was OK – it wasn’t a miscarriage, but under definite orders to do keff all for a while. Thank Christ.

Proliferation

When I looked back the other day at the archives, I realised that I really don’t add as much stuff to d4d™ as I used to a year ago. I’m sure the reasons for this are legion, but I wasn’t really aware that I’d cut down on the contributions. Still, other than when I’m away and not really able to get an internet connection, d4d™ gets updated pretty much every day.

It’s odd in some ways – I’ve seen so many sites end up with hiatus periods, points where it all gets too much, and a break is needed. I’ve never really felt like that with d4d – maybe I will one day, but for now it’s still going to keep ambling along in the normal shambolic fashion. Yes, there are things I want to do with it – a redesign, make the CSS easier to use, that kind of thing. But I still don’t feel the need for a break per se.

We’ll see, anyway. Maybe come the time I’ve been writing it for two years, I’ll want to take space, I don’t know. But for the moment d4d™’s going to keep on going.

Travelling Light

I would love to say that I was surprised to see that a man managed to travel through to Italy using his wife’s passport instead of his own. Every time I’ve travelled, the passport photo has received no more than a cursory glance (both pre- and post-September 11th) and I’d often wondered what would happen if I were to replace my photo with that of someone else. From the look of it, the answer to that would be “absolutely knack all”. Imagine my surprise…

Jewellery

For some reason my brain’s fixed on this at the moment, but I can’t find what I’m looking for. A few years ago, I saw a beautiful cross, done in silver or pewter, and wanted one. I’d forgotten it ’til now, and so I can’t remember who’d designed it or anything. It was on a leather necklace (described as a leather thong, although that seems to have changed definition), and the pieces of the cross had what appeared to be thorns on them. It was a fantastic thing, and if memory serves it was in Paradiso Bodyworks in London’s Compton Street.

In the meantime, any ideas on who did the design? Or where I could find one?

Anniversary

I was just looking back at the archives for this time last year, to see what I was up to – memory like a sieve, and all that jazz. So – did you know that it’s a year tomorrow since the London congestion charge came in? Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

February 14

So, another of the milestones (or should that be millstones?) for the year has now passed us by. The joys of the day with the second highest suicide rate in this country, and in many others. Unsurprising as it may seem to the regular reader, I really dislike – perhaps even despise – the marketing bollocks that goes on around the event. Flower prices treble, supposedly because of demand, but I suspect that demand is the one on behalf of the stockholders etc., who want more profits, and thus the ability to gouge as much as possible out of the average lovestruck punter. Clinton Cards, Hallmark, WH Smith, and a thousand others suddenly drape themselves in red hearts, and provide a range of cards in which the unimaginative can persuade their devotion’s target of their love/lust/illicit liaisons. Restaurants gear up for special romantic evenings, full of “meals for two” while those who prefer to remain single can stay at home with their meals for one/two.

To my mind, there shouldn’t have to be one day per year where people feel the need to express their love/affection. It’s something that should be able to happen at any time, at random. In many ways, St Valentine’s Day is an easy out, a way to express emotions without feeling vulnerable, or really any risk of rejection. The retailers make it easy to organise anything you want to do, and in theory it doesn’t tae a lot of heavy thinking. But that’s the way it is.

Knowing my views on the entire thing, I would probably now be more naffed off is someone were to buy me a Valentines card, but that’s slightly by the by.

But – and this is a big but (rather like the pole-dancers described below) if I were with someone, I’d still do something for the day. In some ways my principles go out of the window when it’s at the cost of someone I care about. Yeah, I don’t want anything, but if my partner still sees it as something important then I’ll do something for it – because it’s important to them, and Valentine’s is about making the people you care about happy.

So there we go – I’m a hypocrite on that one too…

Lapdances

Oh what jolly japes. The bunch of friends I was with last night decided it would be fun to go to a lapdancing club. In Redcar. Wow, how sexy. I’ve seen bowls of cornflakes with more sex appeal. (Quite honestly, this morng a bowl of cornflakes would go down very well indeed. Which is more than I can probably say for the munters dancers on dsplay last night) Pure, pure nasty.

So – two questions. One :- Is all this supposed to be sexy, or is it normally only attended by bunches of lads and/or single men with no imagination and less taste? Two :- I bet that pole smells really realy bad…

UPDATED : Further to Peter’s comment, I should explain. It actually is both lapdancing and poledancing – in the main area, the munters dancers gyrate around the pole, but if you are a mug want to, you can pay out some extra (I think it was £10) you go to a back-room, where they do a lapdance. And no, I didn’t have one – I don’t know what the ethos is in these places, but I’d have turned one down even if the people I was with had paid for it. (I think the expression “keep the money, you obviously need it” may not be the best one to use, but it’d be hard to avoid) It would probably have got me kicked out of the place (hmm, status symbol, kicked out of “Dr Hammer’s House of Dancers”) but it would’ve been worth it. Ah well.

Headphones

Note to self (soon to be forgotten) : leave the headphones in the bloody bag pocket next time. One day I’ll get more organised – and part of this will involve the common sense move of leaving headphones in my bag. Otherwise I get what happened last night/today, that the ones I was using will have mysteriously moved (I’m reckoning it was probably when I tidied up on Wednesday) to somewhere “safe” (for which read “un-fucking-traceable”) and the other pairs have all disappeared too. Not that they were that good, but it’s just very bloody annoying.

Well, I’ve got another pair. My journey to Middlesbrough will now have music, thanks to the joys of laptops, MP3 files, and – yes – headphones. These ones have a nice little plastic case too, so it shouldn’t be rocket science to keep them in their rightful place. However, knowing me, expect a similar post next Friday…

Ouch

Maybe it’s just because I’m tired and my eyes feel like they’ve got grit in them, but this story has made me wince. Lots.

Presentations

Two down, one to go. DiamondGeezer’s post today shows that he’s having a similar set of problems. Thanks, DG, it’s made me chuckle.

Bias by any other name

In work today, an email has been circulated by the head honcho. There’s a form being distributed asking for each employee of the council to record their personal details (address, ethnicity, blah, blah, blah) as allegedly the HR department (AKA “that bunch of useless twadges”) doesn’t have them recorded.

One part of the missive from upon-high is this

Collecting this information is important for other reasons. For example, the government have set targets for local authorities to achieve on the percentage of ethnic minority staff employed by local authorities compared with the local population. At the moment, we do not have all this information on our workforce and if we are to meet government targets, we need a system in place to collect and monitor it.

Now, to my mind that’s just Inverted Racism. The government issues targets, which should be adhered to. So what happens when – as I suspect – the council discovers it’s ‘below target’ for some ethnicities? Do we see a situation where a less-qualified person gets the job so that the “ethnic diversity” boxes can be ticked?

I thought/hoped we’d got past all this shit when we entered the 21st century. Obviously I was wrong. To my mind, people should be employed on their attributes, their skills, their job history – not because of their gender, ethnicity, religious preference, sexuality, or any of the other politically correct stereotypes. Is that too much to ask for? I feel the same about the forms that circulate with every job application now, requesting that you detail ethnic background etc. Frankly, what relevance is it to my application whether I come from Africa, Asia, America, Australia, or Europe? What does it show? Surely it’s better to simply take people on because of their application, not in order to fill in a little tick-box to show how ethnically diverse the company is.

UPDATED : As she says in the comments, Gert has added her own piece here in response to this post. Thought-provoking, definitely.

Gary Jules – Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets

In a fit of bandwagon-jumping on a par with the media’s new-found love of Jordan following I’m a non-entity, I’ll be seeing Gary Jules in concert next Thursday. Anyway, it occurred to me that I really should know more of his recordings than just “Mad World”, so I got a copy of the album “Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets”.

And I have to say, it’s actually not bad. His voice is very reminiscent of Cat Stevens Yusuf Islam throughout – for me that’s no bad thing, but other people may disagree. Not a bad album – but also nothing else on the album is even vaguely reminiscent of Mad World, which seems slightly strange.

FirebirdFox (again)

I take it all back – FireFox is now running at a decent speed again. I’ll blame the spunk-twadges of Dell instead of those at Mozilla.

Additions

The observant among you will notice another addition to the sidebar over there >> . Mozilla’s FirebirdFox version 0.8 has now been released, and I’m using it. It’s still one of the better browsers on the market for the geeky among us. However, it does seem to have slowed down a bit since Firebird 0.6. Still, maybe that’s just me being picky.

And it’s better than what I’ve spent my morning doing. The first of three presentations about which Content Management System the council really really wants. The first one used MS Word® to enter the content, and doesn’t appear to be overly keen on anything other than IE as a browser – their main sales/developer geek went white when I mentioned Opera…

Even better, we’ve got Stellent at some point this week. I’ve got my sharpened shitty stick primed and ready for action. Imagine my joy.

SAD revisited

As Peter asked, so shall I tell. Yes, the SAD has eased off a fair amount recently. The days are getting longer – although they’re still horrifically grey and unpleasant at the moment. But still, the increase in daylight is perceptible, and it’s helping. Over the weekend I didn’t need to put the lights on ’til gone 5pm, and now the sun is rising between 7.30 and 8am, which is beginning to make mornings a tad easier too. No bad thing at all.

Of course, it’s still not completely gone – that’ll happen in around March or so. But for now it’s getting better, the depression is easing off, and that’ll do me.

As always, there are good days and bad days – but there’s more of the former, and less of the latter. I still want to batter the twadge who told me it was easier to deal with SAD if I stayed busy – but fortunately for the aforementioned twadge, I can’t remember who told me. When I do, though…

Bizarre

I love a good bizarre story, and the one today about the American Airlines pilot who wanted Christians and non-Christians to talk about their religions is definitely one out of the cracker barrel. Or, more accurately the “completely crackers” barrel. But all the same, it’s a good sign that the “religious” keffwits aren’t only sitting in passenger’s seats.

Don’t make me laugh

A report has been issued saying that the UK needs high-speed rail links. Supposedly, we should have a network for trains capable of up to 200mph. My favourite quote is :

A report from the commission warns that existing intercity routes will run out of capacity by 2015, forcing rail companies to price passengers off trains and onto already overcrowded roads.

Honey, that’s not going to wait ’til 2015 to happen, the buggers have been doing it for years.

And quite honestly, I think there’s rather more chance that we can all be commuting via the new medium of flying pig than by high-speed rail. My experiences this weekend yet again show that we can hardly manage a service that runs at 60mph, let alone something three times that speed. In fact, mastering teleportation has more probablilty than a high-speed rail link.

Sick joke

Two sharks were swimming off the sea in Newquay.

“I’m bored of surf’n’turf, let’s go to Morecambe for a chinese.

*Gets coat, and exits stage left*

Feh

Do you ever have one of those days where your motivation is actually well into the negative figures? Where you don’t want to do much, and normally there’s a shedload of stuff waiting in the wings, needing to happen, and/or be done?

Yes, today is one of those days. I’m on a train down to Reading this afternoon/evening, and there’s a load of things I could/should be doing during the journey. However, I think that at least some of it is going to go on hold while I read “Be My Enemy“, (aka “Fuck this for a game of soldiers“, according to the first page) the new novel by Christopher Brookmyre.

Ah well, we’ll see. Also, the site may not be updated as much this weekend, depending on how online I can be bothered to go…

Angels in America

While I’m on the subject of Channel 4, and things that should be worth recording, they’re showing “Angels in America” over the weekend. I’ve no idea if it will be as good as it promises to be, but it’s certainly got a noteworthy pedigree. Originally written by Tony Kushner as a stage play, and adapted by him for television. Directed by Mike Nichols (who has previously done films including Primary Colo(u)rs and The Graudate (among many others)).

The cast is pretty stellar too – Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Simon Callow (who I’d just typed as Simon Cowell – damn my brain) and even Maurice Sendak (not a star per se, but hell, he wrote “Where the Wild Things Are” – that makes him stellar in my book *Grin*)

The basic premise of it doesn’t sound overly cheery – primarily, it’s based around people with AIDS in New York, but the plotlines give it some chance to be interesting. Based partly on the story of the lawyer Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS in ’86, all the time denying even his homosexuality, it also deals with sexuality, politics, and death. Newsweek described it as

“Daring and Dazzling! The most ambitious American play of our time: an epic that ranges from earth to heaven; focuses on politics, sex and religion; transports us to Washington, the Kremlin, the South Bronx, Salt Lake City and Antarctica; deals with Jews, Mormons, WASPs, blacks; switches between realism and fantasy, from the tragedy of AIDS to the camp comedy of drag queens to the death or at least the absconding of God.”

As I said, I’ve no idea if it will be as good as it promises to be, but I think it’ll be worth taping at least. Oh, and it’s bloody huge – 7 hours in all – so set it on long play. And if TiVo fucks me about on this, it’ll get reprogrammed with a very large hammer…

Channel of Preference

Looking at what TiVo’s recording for me over the next two weeks, I discovered that at the moment everything I watch/record is on either Channel 4 or Five. Nothing from BBC or ITV at all.

Now – remind me why I pay for a TV licence?

UPDATED : OK, Pat came up with a reason I can’t fight – the BBC website. And I should point out (again) that it’s just a personal perspective. I agree, there are loads of good things about the BBC – it’s just that recently I haven’t used any of ’em (other than the website). Everything I’ve been watching has been on C4 and C5, simple as that.

Fritters

Over the last week or so, I’ve started using a different anti-spam filter on my email at home. It’s one of the newer Bayesian filters, going by the imaginative name of SpamBayes – and so far, I’ve been fairly impressed. The learning curve has been pretty high, with it learning from scratch what I regard as spam, but after a week it’s been working well, with less and less false positives – in fact, I’d say there’ve been no false positives in the last couple of days.

However, the BBC is now reporting on a method to bypass the Bayesian filters. It’ll be interesting to see how SpamBayes handles this kind of thing.

History Repeats Itself

I’ve tried to avoid mentioning much about I’m a non-entity, get me a publicist, but today’s news of people complaining because John Lydon said ‘fucking cunts’ struck me as quite amusing – and rather high on the deja vu scale.

Of course, it’s what the TV executives were hoping for when they put Lydon into the show – after all, he’s the same person who said “fuck” back in December ’76 to yet another outcry. The execs were wanting him to swear – it’s free publicity, and hardly unexpected – and they’ve been waiting over a week for him to do it. They must’ve been shitting themselves in case he didn’t do it at all.

I also find it quite amusing that in the 12 hours after the transmission, 91 people had complained – 18 to Ofcom, the rest to the channel itself. Out of an estimated 10.2 million viewers, 91 people complained. That’s roughly 0.001% of the viewers. (Very roughly – I’m sure someone will correct me and be more accurate), 10 complaints for every million viewers. Fark, that’s what I call high outrage.

Shit Shower

It has to be said, it couldn’t have happened in a more appropriate place. a town-centre “superloo” exploded, blowing the roof off, and lifting areas of the surrounding pavement. Thankfully, it happened in Hanley which needs all the publicity it can get.

Smoking

So, the latest ‘repulsive’ anti-smoking ads have been one of the most successful campaigns ever, have they? There’s one fact missing from this – and I honestly don’t know if it was a question that was even asked – and that is this :

Out of the 68,000 who visited the website, and 10,000 who called the helpline (0800 169 1900) , how many had been motivated to do it because of the advert itself? And how many just wanted advice on stopping smoking, rather than were “persuaded” to do so by the advert?

Yes, it’s good that so many people want to stop – but I’d rather know how many were actually influenced by the advert to do so.

Teasers

Has anyone else seen the set of teaser adverts on Channel 4 at the moment? There’s two so far, to my knowledge – one where various C4 presenters and cast members from C4 dramas are asked when they lost their virginity, and one where they’re asked what makes them happy. There’s no tagline at the end of it, and no idea what it’s promoting.

So – any ideas?

UPDATED : Many thanks for the responses. I should point out, I actually like them, think they’re quite interesting and novel – and strangely reminiscent of the BBC’s “Perfect Day” promo from a few years back. I was really hoping it’s not a promotion for some wank “celebs tell all” show, and the majority of responses indicate that they really are just channel promos. Happy day. *Grin*

Love Film

Recently, dvd at Fuddland was talking about Love Film (which used to be “DVDs on Tap” but has recently rebranded) so I had a look. Basically, it’s a DVD rental place, but everything works online and through the post. Depending on the level of subscription (£10, £15 gets two DVDs, or £20 per month) you can get one, two or three DVDs at a time. There are no late charges, and they include a postage-paid envelope to return the disc in.

Once subscribed, you select a range of the DVDs you’d like to see, and then they send them out when they’re available. Currently there’s also a two-week free trial happening, which has been interesting, and has enabled me to see what they’re like. So far, I’m very impressed with the service, so we’ll see how it keeps on working. Oh, and the other good thing is that there’s no minimum contract term – if you want to bail out and stop using the service, it’s a simple process that says “cancel subscription”, no hassle. I like that too…

Back to normality

Well, as close to “normality” as d4d™ ever really gets, anyway. I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d changed the templates and so on while I was at work, and I also hadn’t realised that I hadn’t backed it all up back to home in a while. Big Oooops. Still, I’ll remember for a while again now. And at least I do keep back-ups, just not always up-to-date ones – well, I do, it’s just they’re at two different locations, which can sometimes be problematic.

Anyway, the problems have been rectified now (and in fairness it turned out mainly to be errors with how d4d™ renders BlogRolling more than anything else) and everything’s backed up and been sent back home too (I love .zip files. ) Now, what else can I screw up?

Manic

My God, that was busy. The trains were completely un-natural, and ran on-time. Most bizarre. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff I could blether about from today, and from various news stories etc., but I’ll leave it ’til tomorrow.

Spring Fair

Don’t expect much in the way of updates today (hey, it’s the weekend, you weren’t expecting many anyway) as I’m putting myself at the mercy of Virgin Trains to go and visit the International Spring Fair down at the Birmingham NEC. With luck it’ll be productive – so long as the Virgin service isn’t well and truly fucked, as per usual. (oh, the irony, an utterly screwed service being run by Virgin)

Fixed-ish

Well, it’s been kind of hacked back together. Not what I needed on a Saturday morning, but hey ho, at least it’s semi-fixed.

Bollocks, Arse, and Fucking Shit

Yes, I made an addition to the template yesterday. And yes, I made a right monkey’s cock out of it. So, in the spirit of fuckwitdom, it may have to stay like this ’til Monday, as I have apparently not been as rigorous in backing up my template. There’s definitely a copy at work, but the one here was well and truly out of date. Bugger.

Content remains the same, it’s just that it’s gone back to the page “design” without CSS. Ooops. Anyway, I’m aware of it, I can do close to fock all about it ’til Monday, so we’ll just have to live with it. Hey Ho.

Disability Flights

I have to say, I’m really pleased to see that Ryanair were found guilty of discrimination by charging a disabled man for use of a wheelchair today. As the Disability Rights Commission chairman, Bert Massie, said in the story

“It beggars belief that a company with £165.23m annual profits last year, should quibble over meeting the cost of providing disabled people with a wheelchair.”

Ryanair have always been penny-pinching bastards, but this case was one of the better examples, and I can’t see that their petty “we’ll levy a 50p wheelchair levy on everyone who flies from Stansted and Gatwick with us” attitude is going to win them any friends either.

Fluffy Disease

via Parm, I have to agree with Chris, I really want these these fluffy toys. Quite how you explain your collection of fluffy lethal diseases, I have no idea – but the concept is sufficiently warped that it seriously appeals. And the idea of explaining to – say – a friend that you’ve got their kid a cuddly Black Death, well, that’s just comedy in the making…

Interference

According to the BBC, Lancaster City Council are considering whether people should report relationships with colleagues. Personally, I think it’s intrusive and pointless – yes, perhaps if there were problems with nepotism or, for example, an MD promoting their partner in preference to someone better qualified. But to my mind this entire thing should be an exercise in discretion – and generally, what the hell business is it of an employer to know whether one employee is shagging/living with/ married to another ?

According to this concept, it still wouldn’t be necessary to declare if one’s partner were working for a company that was tendering for council business, or any of the other infinitely dodgy practices normally detailed in Private Eye.

In the same week, Wigan council has barred all its workers from using the Internet, which is equally interfering, and a pain in the arse for all concerned. Again, to my mind so long as the internet use doesn’t interfere with everyday work, and is used sensibly (as opposed to looking for porn, downloading music, or *cough* blogging ) then who cares?

I simply don’t understand this nannying “we know what’s best” attitude, particularly when combined with a Big-Brother-esque surveillance of all employees, as with Lancaster council.

Slebs

While I haven’t yet watched any of it, of course it’s impossible to miss the media hype surrounding “I’m a non-entity, get me a publicist!” I wish I could fix a bleep button to my brain so that just mention of the words rendered me temporarily dead/blind so I could ignore the thing completely.

But I haven’t – and so I’ve been considering the d4d™ alternative version. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the idea for…… <drumroll> Dead Famous™ </drumroll>…

In the preliminaries, the public has a vote. We’re already used to Big Brother-type voting, and also for the 100 best books/films/comedies/positions/magicians/alcoholics. This is similar – but this time the public picks their 10 most-loathed celebrities.

Once that’s been done, the preparation takes place. Transporting the ten celebrities to a specially made compound, somewhere in a remote location (each series could have a different location) – they know that the winner can get £5m, and that the other nine will have more media coverage than they would normally get, by being involved with Dead Famous™. Once they’ve been dropped off at the location, and the helicopters/coaches/whatever have disappeared over the horizon, the celebrities are told why they’ll become famous.

Basically, the rules will be very simple. For the first week (or until a certain level of votes has been reached – whichever is earlier) all they have to do is live together, and be “normal”. Daily tasks have to be performed in order to get food/water. Each day, two of the rations of food and water are also spiked with a hallucinogenic – but that’s just so that the next day is more fun for the viewers.Throughout the first week, viewers are voting for the celebrities – depending on whatever vagaries the viewers want.

At the start of the second week, things change. The challenges are nowmore difficult, and decidedly more lethal – and with no health and safety adviser. If the nominated celebrity fails the task, then they die. The public vote for who they want to take the tasks. And at the end of the day, the last one living is the winner, and £5m better off.

Now I have to say, that’s a gameshow I’d watch…

But who would you want to see in the show?

Bucket of Shite

So, the government gets absolved of all wrong-doing yet again. Who’d have expected that, eh? And the report’s been done by a Lord, so it must all be kpsher kosher and above-board.

*Yawn*

Speaking of being cold

I wonder who was looking for “my micropenis pics” in google, and came up with this site. They must’ve been sorely disappointed – although having waited for a bus for 45 minutes this morning, perhaps I qualify after all. *Grin*

Crap country

It’s amazing – how does this country (I should just say England, according to Gordon, but I think I’ll leave it as “this country” just to annoy the haggis-munching pedant. *grin*) maange to come to a stop after just one spell of slightly shit weather? Yes, it’s snowed – and so everything goes to shit. We’ve had a week’s warning that it was going to happen, but still it turns out that people can’t drive in snow (even when the roads are at least half-clear) so it’s taken me nearly 2 hours to get to work. The entire of the main road on which I live was nose-to-tail with cunts who won’t overtake because they might have to drive on – shock! horror! – snow. Utterly pathetic.

I don’t even understand what it is that makes us so crap at dealing with “extremes” of weather. (By which I mean, “extreme” according to the UK – people elsewhere would regard it as mild) Recently I’ve been reading Daily Dose of Imagery, based in Toronto, Canada. Currently they’re in the midst of a -30°C winter, yet everything runs as normal. I could perhaps understand it if the temperature here was around -10 or so, but it’s hardly gone sub-zero. We’re just pathetic.

UPDATED : Further to comments and also to reference made on Parm it may be that Manchester City Council are a bigger bunch of slack-arsed twats than I’d previously allowed for. However, that doesn’t explain the stories about Manchester Airport having to close its runways because of snow, nor that transport links in Lodnon were equally keffed. And yes, Gordon, I know the Scots are far hardier than the wee Jessie southerners, but bits of Scotland had the same problems too. So nyah! *Grin*

I’ll also point out that I’m not actually complaining about the weather – I don’t mind it at all – but more about the reactions of other people to it, and the general levels of incompetence in dealing with anything as extreme as little lumps of white falling from the sky.

Bills and Accounts

Sometimes I could really begin to believe that UK companies have a dark plot to stop people from moving house. They seem to love making the entire process so complicated and stressful that it’s almost easier to say “Oh, fuck it, I’ll stay where I am”.

As regular readers of d4d™ (there are still some of you out there, aren’t there? *grin*) I moved to the current house about five months ago (and oh shit, I’d best nag the letting agency to find out about renewing the tenancy, hadn’t I?) at which point I had to move the accounts for the gas and electric supply. Like an utter, utter primate, I stuck with the same suppliers – British Motherfucking Gas. I really should know better by now. Unsurprisingly, they’ve made a complete monkey’s cock of the entire thing.

Today I’ve received not one but two bills – one for my old address, one for the current one. For the same bloody time-period! I ring them up, and they then told me “Oh, we haven’t listed your change of address” – which doesn’t quite explain the correct(ish) bill for the new house. “Oh, ah, um, I don’t know what’s happened there then”

I don’t think that the answer “I do. It’s that British Gas couldn’t find their backsides with both hands and a flashlight” went down too well…

Carlucci

I’ve just finished a book called Carlucci by Richard Paul Russo. It’s actually three books in one, all based around a future San Francisco, and the eponymous detective. The book was very much a speculative purchase, a case of “that looks like it might be interesting” – and it was. A very dark view of the future, with huge levels of corruption and corporate machinations, but ultimately pretty believable.

Over the years, one thing I’ve found I like in certain – primarily sci-fi – books is that they don’t feel the need to explain everything. I find that books with timescales, with fixed dates for when events occur, annoy me – and once those dates are passed, they just feel dated. So many authors also feel the need to explain all their definitions – for me that just detracts from a story. I’d rather the slang or whatever was used, and let my brain come up with images. Much more fun.

Anyway, the Carlucci books have managed to be damn good stories, and not fallen into either of the above traps, so they come well recommended.

Life vs. Art

Is it just me, or is the entire farce about university top-up fees, and the votes surrounding it very reminiscent of a whole range of episodes in the West Wing where votes are suddenly lost at the last minute etc.?

Of course, the concept of John Prescott taking the place of Josh Lyman makes me smile.

“Fookin’ ‘ell, Tony, we’ve lost ten votes!”

Acid Brass

The perfect music for an unhinged and disjointed day is the “Acid Brass” album by the Williams Fairey Brass Band. I’ve a nagging feeling that I have probably waffled on about this album before, but it still makes me smile.

The basic premise was to get a standard brass band to play classic ‘Acid House’ tunes. Tracks like 808 State’s “Cubik”, and the KLF’s “What time is love?” – all performed by brass. Utterly surreal, and just strangely happy.

Day Confusion

Today is going to be non-fun. My brain’s utterly up it, and thinks that it’s currently Sunday. Nothing makes sense – it can’t understand why I’m working on a Sunday, or anything that’s going on. This is not a good indicator for the rest of the day. So I’m taking it fairly easy – all complex tasks will be postponed ’til tomorrow at least – and just getting through it for now.

I hope everyone else is having rather more organised, or at least logical days. *Grin*

Guests

As I said yesterday, I had three friends staying here last night. We’d decided to go out for a meal (yes, Beluga again – no-one can say I’m not supporting them! *Grin*) Again, the meal was bloody good – I really do enjoy going there.

The evening was really pleasant all round – it’s been a good weekend. Out of the friends who stayed, only one had been here before – so the 24 hours before had been a little bit hypersonic, I still worry a bit about first impressions and so on, and no matter how many times I go through this and it all works out fine, yes, I still worry. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Anyway, all went well, and it’ll be happening more regularly.

TV – Boss Swap

For the last two weeks, Channel 4 has been showing a new variant on the Wife Swap genre, Boss Swap. I’m a sad geek – I find documentary-type programmes about business fascinating, particularly the type where the owners or bosses are uprooted into a new environment, or where troubled businesses are looked at.

With Boss Swap, obviously they’ve been made to make for good TV, but the bosses so far (and bear in mind I’m working from a sample of two here) have all been complete cockheads. It’s infuriating – I know that some of the personality flaws displayed are the ones that have driven them to become self-employed and drive towards their own businesses and empires, but so far they’ve all got a vile personality, completely abrasive, blinkered, and apparently incapable of receiving criticism. Deeply annoying TV.

Grrr

I finally got round to ordering the mounting cards for the two prints I got done last week. “They won’t be ready ’til about 3pm, dear” – no worries, I’ll just head home, tidy up, then run round like a bollockwit at about 2.30 in order to get back into town, pick up the mounts, get home, get sorted for guests later. (of which more in a bit) I’ve just got home, the phone rings “The mounts are ready for you, dear”. It’s 12.30. Aargh.

Words Fail Me

There’s only so much I can say about “I’m a nonentity – get me a publicist” without spitting, but the story from Ananova that Jordan wanted to take a vibrator into the ‘jungle’. Although, as we discussed in Fab cafe yesterday, I do wonder just how badly Jordan (wrong link – this one, if you must), John Lydon (Johhny Rotten) and Peter Andre are going to get on together…

Regional Insanity

For some reason, Nottingham seems to be getting right into it on the tourism/branding front at the moment. Not only have they finally got their tram system working, they’ve also managed to get East Midlands Airport renamed to Nottingham East Midlands Airport. An impressive achievement in its own way, particularly as Nottingham is further from the airport than either Leicester or Derby. Obviously, the councils for both cities are up in arms, and generally protesting away – far, far too late.

And now, Yorkshire is trying to claim ownership of Robin Hood, and get tourism signs saying “home of Robin Hood” moved 60 miles up the road. If it weren’t all so pathetic, it’d be quite funny.

Blogmeet – the summing-up

Yes, it was fun – Meg turned up, and that dirty little stop-away Stuart didn’t. We’ll get him one day, I’m sure…

Photos will be up later – some were _very_ shonky, so may not see the light of day. Fab cafe ran out of Budvar – focking disgraceful. *Grin* Le knacker du Chris was an early theme for conversation, followed by (in no certain order) films with too many endings (mentioning no names); whether Princess Bride is a good film, or “just shit”(©Topper); hobbit porn; tattoos; body mods in general; whether some people should even be allowed out of the house; whether the same people look in the mirror before going out, and think “Fuck, yeah, I look hot tonight!“; whether striped tops are a priviledge or a right , and a whole range of other disparaging comments and subjects. It was fun.

When’s the next one?

Quiet

There’s not much been happening today. The entire working day has been filled with skirmishes and running battles between PHP, CSS, and SQL. Overall, a lot of progress has been made, but each section has been a struggle with something new, or not working, or not doing the job properly, or some combination of those.

Luckily the evening is looking like it should be good – the first Manchester Blogmeet of ’04 is happening tonight, and I’ll be there. So will (in no particular order) Lori, Jane and Adrian. Unfortunately, Chris is (ahem) out of action, and Sarah’s broke, so neither of them are likely to be arriving. New guests are welcome – and Meg Intergalactic is looking to be one of them. Possibly Stuart too – he’s been invited, but remains quiet so far. It should be a good night…

Larceny

On a different tack, I’m fascinated by the story of the secretary who allegedly embezzled £4million from her employer, Goldman Sachs. The money was transferred from the personal accounts of three bankers with Goldman Sachs – and they didn’t even notice, until she’d been caught. I know the saying about having “more money than sense”, but this really takes the piss. One transfer – the largest – was for £2.25million. How the hell do you not notice an amount like that?

She was being paid £42,000 – so how come no-one noticed that she was buying a £650,000 house in Cyprus, or that she owned a powerboat, and spent £300,000 on Cartier jewellery? Another utterly bizarre story, ably showing how the other half lives.

Apathy

Yes, I’m slow on the uptake with this one – it really hadn’t entered my consciousness ’til yesterday, and then it fell right back out again. So, what I’m wondering is who actually gives a flying donkey-dollop whether John Leslie and his partner were involved in group sex? I certainly don’t – so long as all the people were consenting partners, then it’s about as newsworthy as someone taking a shit.

I see even less point in sacking his partner from her ad hoc TV presenting slot. Does the fact that she gets involved in this kind of thing affect her reporting ability? Or her objectivity? No. (Well, unless she’s feigning shock at orgies in Little Britain Middle England or something) So – and I’m really intrigued by this – who cares?

Priorities

The BBC today has a story about the Russian army salvaging barrels of beer from a frozen river. The truck carrying the barrels had come off the road and toppled into the River Irtysh near Omsk – the driver managed to escape, but the truck sank.

In all it took six divers, ten men with electric saws – and a tank. They managed to get the beer kegs, and then the rope snapped, so the truck sank back again.

Now that’s what I call priorities. *Grin*

Litrucy

via Gert, the BBC’s site has a story about pupils having difficulty with spelling – which includes a small test. (And yes, I did get eight out of eight, but that’s beside the point.) Personally, I find that it’s an incredibly sad state of affairs when 60% of the sample tested couldn’t spell “effortless” or “knowledge” correctly. It’s sad – but it’s not a surprise.

At school, my year were the first to take the GCSE. In primary school, we had a more “traditional” education, with weekly spelling tests, and numeracy/maths tests. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn the times tables by rote, and as a result I still have to work it out rather than instantly knowing. But when it came to English, and literacy, the theory was that if it wasn’t correct, it wasn’t acceptable.

Since then, the education system has headed for a more relaxed route, where “it doesn’t matter how it’s spelled/presented, it’s the way the thoughts are formed that counts” – and results like those in the BBC story are finally revealing the flaw in that. Unless we wish to end up with a two-tier system, the literati and the illiterati, then there seems to be a need for the education system to change the philosophy of the last decade or so, and return to an emphasis on literacy. To my mind, it’s an essential – I’ve no desire to see a society where it’s frowned upon to be literate, nor one where everything becomes pictographic in order for those who can’t read/write to still be able to operate machinery etc.

In many ways, I feel that computers haven’t helped with regard to literacy. MS Windows uses pictograms as a reference point, rather than words. Spellcheckers mean that people don’t need to spell correctly – instead they can just press F7 and voila, everything’s done. (Of course, it’s still occasionally fun to play “fowl up the spellchequer”, because they’re still unable to cope with context – but you’ve got to be literate to understand that particular amusement) So why bother learning to spell, when machines can correct it all anyway?

I was lucky – both my parents are intensely literate, and in fact I was reading way before school age. They instilled in me a love of both words and literature, and an understanding that being literate was a good thing, that it would enable me to express all of my ideas, as well as allowing more (metaphorical) doors to be open than would be available if I couldn’t spell/punctuate/write. Maybe that makes them elitists, or intelligentsia, but I don’t honestly care – they opened those metaphorical doors, and it’s been up to me whether they have stayed open or not. But not one opportunity has ever been closed to me by way of a lack of literacy.

All of d4d™, no matter how vile and vituperative it may be, is at least literate. The ideas come through although some, as over the weekend, may end up being more visual than literal now. Would the same be true in ten/fifteen years’ time, if I were just now coming to the end of the basic educational period?

Caffeine

Amazingly, the reduction in caffeine intake is still working pretty well. I’ve said before that caffeine is really the only remaining addiction or habit in my life, so it’s good to see that cutting it down is working out for now. I’ve even managed to avoid most of the vile headaches that normally are part of the reduction process. So all things considered, it’s pretty optimistic. The other part of it is to be drinking more water – and that’s going OK too.

The weekend meant I didn’t drink as much water as I perhaps should have done, but still, I’m trying to keep the intake up on what it was. But today I’m back at work with a 2l bottle of water, so even if I manage 5 days out of 7, I’ll be happy with that. Now I just need to get myself motivated for going to the gym more again…

Time Flies

I was just reading this story in the BBC about the New Cross fire – I really can’t believe that it’s now 23 years ago. I was 10 at the time, but can still remember reading about the fire, which killed 14 people during a birthday party.

It’s always been a suspicious fire, so it’ll be interesting to see what the new inquest makes of things. After 20+ years of asking for it, it was finally approved back in 2002. The BBC also has a link to the original story as well as an overview of the entire thing.

Walking the Dead

As well as a few other things today, I ended up going for a walk (about two to three miles all told) to the Phillips Park, and then to the cemetery there. I used to live closer to this area, and even wandered through the street I used to live on – the first house I moved to here in Manchester, nearly five years ago. Considering how close it is to several major roads, I find it amazing just how peaceful and quiet it is. Well, except for the bone-idle fuckheads who insist on driving through the graveyard to the right area. But there we go – anything with people in it will always have something for bone-idle morons to chuff up.

Unfortunately, in this particular cemetery the morons have had the chance to play with other things too. Because of the area covered by the cemetery, it’s divided into several denominations, including Catholic, Protestant – and Jewish.

Every single marker and memorial in that Jewish section has been knocked over, broken, and just generally vandalised. It’s a deeply saddening, infuriating sight – thankfully there’s no graffiti to add icing to the cake, but all the same, it’s just intensely depressing, to see these stones and memorials broken and destroyed simply because of the faith behind them. I’ve taken several photographs there today, and they’re now online here… But in the meantime – just what the fuck is the point of vandalising gravestones like that?

Manchester has had a Jewish community since 1740, for crying out loud – it’s not like there’s even some shite excuse about being illegal immigrants. It’s just bigotry because of religion – and I’m willing to lay money that the wankers that have been big and brave enough to kick over gravestones don’t even know what Judaism’s all about. I admit – I don’t know either. I’ve never read the Talmud, nor been inside a synagogue. But that doesn’t mean I’m biased against anyone, just on the basis of their beliefs. It’s beyond me, this ability of people to hate others just for not conforming to their concept of what is “right”.

I’m sorry, I’m being slightly incoherent here – this set of photos, particularly the one above, just keeps on hitting me. It’s not fun, not in the slightest. And yet there’s nothing I can do. Frustrating doesn’t even come into it.

Niff

OK, now here’s the thing – what do you do when you have a manager that you can tell is in the office just by opening the door? Suggest deodourant? Breathe shallowly? Pray?

Photo-Geekery pt. 3

The prints arrived in the post this morning. Less than 24 hours since being ordered. I can’t help it – I’m impressed by effieiency like that.

And the print quality? Let me explain in two sentences.
1 ) I’m going to be looking for frames this weekend
2) I’m definitely going to use Photobox again.

Question answered. *Grin*

UPDATED : Well, not so much an update, just some extra information. I’ll probably, as per Gordon’s request, include a photo of the prints – but A2 is roughly 60cm x 45cm (24″ x 18″) so yeah, they’re pretty large prints. All the more impressive to have received them less than 24 hours after being ordered.

A reminder

Just a quick note to remind anyone who’s interested, the first Manchester blogmeet of 2004 will be taking place this time next week. Thursday 22nd January, FAB Cafe on Portland Street, 8pm or any time after that. Stupid t-shirts and fluffy toys welcome…

Photo-Geekery pt. 2

Many thanks for the recommendations, particularly those a) referring me towards Peak Imaging, and b) recommending I don’t use Jessops on-line developing stuff. (Can’t find a link to the actual developing stuff, but there we go).

Unless I’m reading Peak’s site incorrectly, I don’t think that the images I’m using (2832×2128 pixels – i.e. approx. 6.0megapixels)) are actually big enough for them to do the print size I want (A2 or above) without some resizing, which isn’t really what I wanted to do. So for now I’ve ordered two blow-up prints at A2 size from Photobox, which have cost me the princely sum of £30. See how they look, and work from there.

Personally, I still find I’m wavering on whether getting these prints done for myself is vanity or just being pleased with a good photo. Vanity, and that level of – to my mind – ego and self-centredness aren’t things that sit comfortably with me, and it’s taken some serious persuasion from friends and family to even get me to the point where I’ve ordered these prints. I’ll admit, I’m looking forward to seeing them at full size on glossy photo-paper – once that’s done, I may even get them framed, if I still like them.

One friend suggested that for ones I’m really pleased with, and that have received praise/comments from other people, is to possibly get a small set of prints done, and then I can self-justify having a print myself as “being part of a very limited edition” – although of course there’s also the side issue of the ego required to send out one of my own photos as a present to others. Heh. Ah well, we’ll see.

Yes, Karen, you can… (and yes, the larger images are still just under half the size of the originals – they’re fairly large all the same though)

UPDATED : I ordered these photos at about 10.30 this morning. It’s now 13.30, and I’ve just received an email saying “We’ve sent out your order”. I really hope the quality of the prints is up to the quality/speed of the service.

Cutting Down

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about reducing my intake of certain things. First and foremost among them at the moment is caffeine. Anyone who knows me will know how much coffee and diet Coke^® I drink in any given day. I’m not being stupid and just stopping it totally – if I didn’t have to work with people, I probably would cut it out in one go, but as I have to be in an office, it’s better to just cut it down massively. It means there’s also less chance of bloodshed.

I’ve already halved the intake – and managed it without the joys of caffiene headaches, which is even better. Coffee’s been completely cut out, and the diet Coke is on the wane. Only time will tell on the success of it all, but for now I feel OK.

Photo-Geekery

One thing I want to get done fairly early this year is to get some big – and I mean poster-size – prints of some of the photos I’ve done. Now, all these photos are done on a digital camera, and as such don’t have negatives. What I want to know is this : can anyone recommend somewhere that’ll do good prints of digital images, ideally from a CD, and is capable of doing them to a decent size?

I’ve had a couple of things suggested, but they sound like a complete pain in the arse.

The first option was to get a photo-print done to about 6″x4″ or even 7″x5″, then get a negative made from that so that it can be blown up to the large size I want. Of course, that’s through the shonkmeisters known as Boots photo centre, so I’m sure there are better options out there. I’ve looked at Photobox‘s services, and they seem pretty good, but I’d be interested to know if anyone’s used them, or has any recommendations of who to go to.

Shameless – Channel 4, Tuesdays 10pm.

After a small amount of fanfare, and a middling amount of advertising, Paul Abbott’s latest drama Shameless hit the screens last night. Abbott has written a huge number of successful TV dramas now, so anything new by him is likely to hold promise – and Shameless doesn’t look like it’ll be breaking that reputation.

Set in a run-down Manchester council estate (and yes, I do keep on thinking “I know that place” – I think I can even identify most of the location for the estate), it features the Gallaghers, six children whose mother left years ago, leaving them in the care of the father, Frank, and the eldest daughter Fiona – who does far more to keep them all together than her father, who mainly appears to drink himself comatose. Most of the other children weren’t really detailed in the first episode, although “Lip” appears to be the other main protagonist, along with his gay-but-not-out brother. There’s a lot of other plot-threads still to appear, I’m sure – but Shameless looks like it’ll be worth keeping an eye open for.

Um.

Do you ever have one of those days where there’s loads of things you want to say, but none of them seem to be working out quite right? All the ideas are just rattling round, clamouring for some form of escape, and yet every time you try, they just come out looking like (and sometimes smelling like) shite? Well, today’s one of those days.

I’ve already hit the “delete” button on Blogger more times today than any time in the last month – maybe I’m getting more self-critical or something, but I suspect it’s more likely that I just know that what was being written was utter utter shite. There will be stuff written here today, I’ms ure – but for now it may just get written off as “shite night, no writing skill at all, so don’t hold your breath. Besides, there’s a blogroll over there…”

Kilroy Silk

Google’s obviously getting hit lots for anything to do with that Kilroy-Silk weasel. As such, I currently come up third for Robert Kilroy Silk Prick – and oh lord I hope that’s an epithet, not a request for images – and seventh for Robert Kilroy-Silk bastard. Yahoo lists me first for Robert Kilroy Silk webpage too.

I’m glad I issued a rapid disclaimer to the theory that he’s a bastard. I’d better not call him a cocksucker. *Grin*

A special room in Hell

So, Harold Shipman has been found hanging in his cell – so sad. This man has never shown any remorse – and in fact continued to deny his crimes at all. There aren’t many who I find myself hoping that there’s a hell for – but Shipman is one.

Roast.

Cadbury’s Creme Eggs

Last Wednesday, during my post about the finale of the Festering Season, Gordon asked “what do I have against Creme Eggs?” I was going to write something about it over the weekend, but quite honestly, I forgot. So – here goes.

I don’t have anything against Creme Eggs per se. They’re revoltingly sweet and sticky, and put diabetics at risk of insulin coma just by walking past them, but there we go – that’s a personal viewpoint. Some would call it a taste thing, except everyone knows I’ve got no taste anyway. The TV adverts are incredibly annoying, but again, hey ho. Most of the time I can avoid them.

In fact, it’s more about the advertising than anything else – or more accurately, the marketing of them. No sooner has Christmas disappeared over the horizon (and not a moment too soon, so far as I’m concerned) than the TV adverts start to happen. The hoardings appear, and the little teaser adverts. Easter’s not until the 11^th April this year, so that’s near as dammit four bloody months of advertising for yet another consumer-fest. And in between we’ve still got Valentine’s Day – although that’s still a rant for another day.

So no, Gordon, I don’t hate Creme Eggs themselves, just the marketing wazzocks who foist them on us from January 1^st each year.

Flak and Character Assassination

Oh, the joys of working for local authorities. Talk about blame culture. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to work with such a bunch of jobsworth responsibility-dodging fadge-lickers.

Each week, the council’s chief exec publishes his “briefing” on the events of the week as a Word^® document on the council’s intranet. It’s wank, and no-one reads it. Recently it’s been made more “reader-friendly” by adding a photo of him to the document. Part of the problem is that apparently it’s beyond the skillset of the chief exec’s secretary – or the PR department – to put the photo into the Word^® document themselves, so it’s down to the web monkeys to do it. (i.e. me, or my manager – and it normally falls to the manager) God knows why, but the secretary and PR department won’t take any responsibility for it.

Last week, my manager was off sick, so it was down to me to put the briefing on the intranet. No worries. The secretary sent down the image, and the document. Lo and behold, 30 seconds later the two were married together, and five minutes after that the entire thing was on the intranet. Rocket science this ain’t. All’s well, and I naff off home for the weekend.

This morning it’s been like a scene from the Dambusters, there’s been so much flak flying. The PR department has decided that “the wrong photo” of the chief exec was used, because he looks smug and complacent as though he’s smiling, while the briefing has a message of condolence for a member of council staff who died over the christmas break. Big focking deal, I hear you cry. But of course it’s the web department that’s taking the flak – and I’ve never been exactly great at taking the blame for other people’s idiocy and incompetence. Today’s no different to normal on that score. Luckily, I’d kept the email with the photo attached, and have been able to say “not my problem – they sent it, I stuck it on”. Cue the next period of flak-flinging.

At this point, my sense of tact rather went out of the window. I wondered aloud why the secretaries can’t add the picture in themselves (along with mutterings suggesting “well, my pet gerbil can manage it, so why can’t they?”) and thus take responsibility for the entire document (and yes, that does answer the question) as well as a rather vocal suggestion that perhaps the head of PR could be replaced by a badly-trained mongoose, which would almost certainly do a better job.

This one could run and run…

Oh, Arse

I’d been planning to start a course with the Open University, but I’ve missed the dealine. Fucking arse. I’m annoyed at myself for not getting my finger out in time, although I did actually receive the paperwork on the day before the deadline, as it turns out – so the chances of getting in were pretty low anyway. But all the same, yes, I’m still pissed off with myself for missing it. I’ll get in for the next course start though…

And in the meantime, I’m going to take the time to make sure that I set myself up for it, make sure I can do it properly. And in the meantime? I think I might wedge in an extra course on something geeky – learning to use Photoshop properly appeals bigtime.

Customer Dis-service

If there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to drive me barmy, then it’s customer services. This time it was my old favourite – BT. I’m going to try and be good for once, and not swear – but it’ll be a struggle. In another of their fits of *cough* professionalism, I got a snotty red letter yesterday telling me to pay my bill within seven days. OK, fair enough – but it would’ve been nice to receive a bill in the first place, particularly as apparently I’m spending £50 per month on calls at the moment, which is definitely wrong.

I was out all day yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to call them. Fair enough, call them on Sunday. So I go through the four levels of their AVR (Automated Voice Response) system for billing, and finally get put through to the right department.

“This department is closed. Please call back between 8am and 8pm Monday to Saturday. Thank you for your call.

Now, I’ve installed AVR systems, and I know that they can be set up with a timing system – so why doesn’t BT’s own system have the ability to tell you at some time before you’ve gone through the entire set of menus? Grrrr.

Still the same

I watched ET tonight, and even now, 22 years after it first came out, it still makes me cry. I should know better than to watch the bloody film, but still it comes on and I watch it.

But what a stunning piece of work, to still have that same emotional impact despite repeated viewings, despite everyone knowing how it happens, and how it ends.

Kilroy woz there

Oh, it’s true what they say – every cloud does have a silver lining. Robert Kilroy-Silk has pulled suspended the Kilroy programme while he’s busy being accused of the truth – i.e. that he’s a bigoted racist elitist bastard. Oh no, that’s libellous – I’ve no proof that his parents weren’t married at the time of conception.

Any rumour that the only reason there’s no “father’s name” on his birth certificate is because no-one wanted to accept responsibility would be a cruel and vicious lie, with no basis whatsoever in truth.

Logfiles

Back on October 6th, d4d™ hit the 100,000th page impression. Yesterday, three months down the line, we went past the 130,000th page impression. 10,000 per month, on average. Yes, I can live with that. I still find it amazing that so many people do look at d4d™ – of course the busiest time was during the entire Wileys furore, but still, there must be something that makes people come back.

Maybe they’re just hoping it’ll get better in time… *Grin*

Snail Mail

I commented on this back in June, but the last mail trains run tonight. I still think it’s a great shame that it’s happened, and that the profit-conscious cocksuckers have decided that the trains should be phased out. Mail trains have been running since 1838 (although the 23:17 always ran a bit late) Supposedly the trains were “a Victorian solution to a Victorian problem of moving post around the country before the era of motorways and air travel” which explains why they’re still in use today, when we recently celebrated 100 years since the first flight by the Wright brothers.

Relaxation

I was out last night with a friend who’d come up for the night – and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s been far too long since I’d just been out with friends for a few drinks and talking, no pressures of time or whatever. We ended up in Prague 5 (I’d add a weblink, but the site isn’t set up yet – Guess who I’m writing to over the weekend? *grin*), putting the world to rights, with some decent bass-heavy music as background, and luscious leather seats.

It’s definitely something I plan to do more often in 2004.

Bush on Mars

So, President Bollockbrain Bush has announced plans to put a man on Mars, and also manned missions to the Moon. Big shock – this man’s not just the greatest threat to humanity, but now he’s aiming to expand America into the Solar System. I know he can’t spell it, but does anyone think he knows the meaning of the word “megalomaniac“?

Now, what I really want to know is – which man is bush planning to leave on Mars? Hussein? Bin Laden?

Hardly a shocker

The BBC is reporting that Robert Kilroy-Silk is being accused of being a racist after an anti-Arab rant over the weekend. Now, let’s get real – was anybody ever under the impression that he wasn’t a bigoted prick with an ego the size of a planet? This man has made a life’s career out of being the Daily Mail of the chatshow world, a biased tosspot who appears to be racist, sexist, homophobic, class-ist (is there such a thing?), and a complete arse. To hear that he’s been reported to the police for it can only be seen as a good thing.

Immigration

From the sublime to the ridiculous in one easy move – the US is proving itself to be ever more paranoid. Todays two stories, firstly that the US wants airlines to ask passengers to not ‘congregate’ near the ‘plane toilets, and second, that Britons may need visas to enter the US. Frankly, the entire thing is just hysteria – I’m amazed they haven’t gone completely insular, and just said “right, we’re closing our borders to everyone. We can get out, but you can’t come in.” As it is, they seem to be doing that, only in incremental steps rather than one monumental move.

The first story would be hilarious if it weren’t so obviously the ravings of a paranoid delusional. As Warren Bennett, from the Australian Board of Airline Representatives is quoted as saying

Passengers are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they are advised to move around an aircraft during flights for health reasons; but now they are being told not to congregate. It doesn’t make any sense”

The entire US Department of Homeland Security appears to be living on planet chuffhead – my favourite quote from Darrin Kayser (a spokesman for the US Transport and Security Administration, itself part of Homeland Security) in the story is

“We frequently say security is not a spectator sport… we can’t be successful about stopping terrorism without everyone playing a role”

As for the story regarding visas – again, it’s just laughable. If you have a passport issued before October 26th, then it doesn’t matter – as long as it has a barcode, you won’t need a visitors visa to the US. If the passport is issued after October 26th (and why didn’t they just go the whole hog, and make the deadline September 11th?) and is non-biometric – i.e. doesn’t contain data on fingerprints, and/or digital photographs (because, like, no-one can fake those, can they? *rolls on the floor laughing*) – then you’ll need a visitor’s visa. And again, it’s not like a terrorist would get caught at the stage of getting a visitor’s visa.

All of this “improved security” really is just cosmetics – regardless of all of it, if terrorists want to attack the US again, then they will. Osama Bin Laden must be just about killing himself with laughter by now, seeing all of these “precautions” that won’t add up to a cup of warm piss when/if the next attack happens. Maybe that’s the US’s “plan” – to make him laugh so hard he breaks several internal organs?

Stunned

via Meg, a regular joy that I’d forgotten about. Avon and Somerset police record all their 999 calls, and the most spectacular wastes of 999 time get put on their very own webpage. It’s simply amazing the kind of things that the fuckheads general public think deserve a 999 call – in this case, my “favourite” is the “very angry” person calling to complain that the police are doing bugger all about there being no buses on one particular road. Hopefully, he can be sent back to his own planet any day now.

Twelfth Night

So yes, that was Christmas ’03. All over and done with. The one nod to the Festering Season™ on d4d has been altered back to how it should be, and we can all wend our merry way through the adverts for Cadbury’s bastard Creme Eggs, and Valentine’s Day cards in the shops instead. Oh, what rapacious materialists we are.

As I was wandering round the city centre this morning though, I did find myself wondering about Twelfth Night. Is it something that people still believe in? Supposedly if you haven’t taken the Christmas decorations down by Twelfth Night then bad luck will follow you all year, and really you should leave the decorations up for the complete year. Looking around the town hall, the tree was still up this morning, and all the decorations – I found myself thinking it was a shame that the council didn’t organise it so that (even for overtime) all the decorations came down overnight on the 6th, so that when people came into the city on the 7th, the decorations had all just disappeared. Now that would be something fun – and add some sense of magic back to the season. Christ knows, it needs it.

Cat, meet Pigeons

My dentists has a policy where if you don’t turn up for an appointment, or cancel it on the day for an unconvincing reason, you still get charged for it. That’s fair enough, stops people pissing them about as much.

Today, I turned up at 8.45 for my 8.50 appointment. Nothing special, just one of those scrape and clean jobs, about 10-15 minutes all told. By 9.15, I still hadn’t been seen – not even a word from the receptionists. So I asked to make it for another day, and do it first thing.

However, the suggestion that they should pay me the cancelled appointment fee, as it was their chuff-up rather than mine, was definitely not well received. In fact, you’ve never seen a mouth turn into a replica of a cat’s arse so quickly – it was hilarious.

UK Advertising

Is it me, or is all the Sky One advertising for their latest import, “Nip/Tuck” beginning to reek slightly of desperation? I don’t know how much they’ve paid for this series – which, to be honest, sounds like Six Feet Under for cosmetic surgeons – but it certainly feels like they’re now trying to drum up interest in the programme just so they can justify the expense of it.

Personally, I suspect it’s one I’ll be giving a miss, as the adverts have sent me in the opposite direction, and made it look more and more unappealing. (or less and less appealing, whichever you prefer)

International Advertising

I meant to write a little bit about this story before Christmas, then completely forgot about it. As such, thanks Meg for reminding me about it. AdAge produced a list of ten adverts that the US will never see – it makes for quite interesting reading. Several of them have been seen in the UK already, including the #1 “Mr Kipling’s Nativity Play“, which had me laughing out loud, but received 570 complaints, primarily for the closing punchline of “it’s a girl!“.

Lardy

Did anyone else watch the documentary on Channel 4 on Sunday, about “America’s Fattest City” ? (Sorry, I can’t find a link to it at the moment) It was pretty horrendous – although apparently Detroit has now deposed Houston as America’s Fattest City – and included people who apparently drive their children the 50 feet to the stop for the bus-stop. The old rumour that Americans are going to evolve into limbless creatures still appears to (pardon the pun) have legs.

And was it just me, or were a good 75% of the adverts in the programme for diet programs like Weightwatchers? Never let it be said that advertisers don’t have a sense of irony.