No Shit, Sherlock

As expected, the jealous ex-wife Rena Salmon has been found guilty of murdering her husband’s lover. Really, from the media coverage of this case, it was the only real option for the verdict – it’s hard to persuade a jury that you didn’t know what you were doing when you’ve managed to con a locksmith into opening up the gun cabinet, drove the 60-odd miles to London, and then shot the other woman twice.

What does amaze me though is the concept, as GreenFairy says in her May 7th post (permalinks appear to be keffed, so you’ll have to find the day yourself), that it’s better to go after the lover/mistress/whatever of your partner, rather than going for the one who’s actually done the betraying and the cheating. I’m sure there’s a logic there, but it’s beyond me to work out what it is.

Open comments

To the couple with matching umbrellas : It’s very sweet, seeing you walking down the street hand-in-hand, with his’n’hers umbrellas keeping you both in your little oasis of dryness. However, it’s a complete pain in the arse when you won’t let go of each other, and you’re walking through the narrowest parts of the street, so no-one can get past you. In fact, it makes people want to take the umbrellas, and use them as tools for drumming up business for proctologists.

To the inventor of musical ringtones : My God, I hope you’ve died in the most painful way possible. Sitting on a bus surrounded by mobiles ringing with (in rough order) Walting fucking Matilda, the Nokia signature tune, the Flight of the Fucking Bastard Bumblebee, and Mission Im-sodding-possible, as well as some self-obsessed braindead gimp who thought he’d best find a new ringtone by trying all the ones he’d got, I found myself praying that you end up in a subterranean hell that’s sponsored by bastard Nokia.

Chuff

Ah, I love it when things suddenly slam together to make life really awkward. As of Monday, I’m working for a month for a company called Amaze in Liverpool. However, this also means I’ve had to postpone a dentist’s appointment for next week, and will have to look at re-organised train times for when I’m travelling to see friends for the bank holiday weekend.

Fun, fun fun.

Professional Skiving

via Slashdot, a truly brilliant article from the online Wall Street Journal about how people are finding new ways to look like they’re working when they’re not. Print it off, make it your bible. *Grin*

Quiet day and cereal

It’s been a quiet day chez Lyle today, hence not many updates. I’m sure that’ll change as the evening progresses, and my head’s no longer blocked up by stuff involving SQL and databases. Mind you, no guarantees on that score.

In fact, other than databases, the main thought that’s so far occupied me today is this : What is it that makes the “cereal dust” at the bottom of a packet of cereal always taste 1000% better than the rest of it? And why can’t Kelloggs or whoever just market packets of the dust?

I need to get out more.

Badger Frenzy

I know that Meg has already commented about this story but the entire story of the man in Worcester who was “suddenly” attacked by a badger stinks worse than my week old socks.

I don’t know what was really happening – but I simply don’t believe that “the badger slowly approached, then attacked him, latching on to his arm and tearing his flesh away” – there must have been some kind of provocation. Badgers are grouchy bastards for sure, but they still don’t “suddenly attack” unless they’re trapped or threatened. So – what the hell was this dickhead doing to bait the badger, and I wonder whether the story will ever be honestly told?

Fking Tw@s

Unbelievably, there is now a course teaching adults how to send text messages, and generally use a mobile phone – two hours on how 2 txt. I honestly didn’t realise it was a difficult concept – hell, even my parents can send text messages without any problem.

“The Day Britain Stopped”
BBC2, yesterday

I didn’t see this programme last night, but did manage to record it. I’ve watched it this afternoon – and all I can say is “Wow”. Almost worth the entire licence fee in itself – it was the kind of drama/documentary that the BBC should make more of. Last year they did one on Smallpox and chemical weapons, and this one was just as good.

Basically using a set of supposedly unrelated events – a train disaster leading to a national rail strike, a friendly international football match in Manchester, being the last Friday before Christmas, and a road accident on the M25 – it showed how the current traffic status could lead to the entire of London being gridlocked. As things progressed, one road accident led to two, leading to the M25 being solid, which then leads to every other motorway being jammed. Because replacements couldn’t come in to work, the air traffic controllers for Heathrow and Gatwick were overworked, stressed, and inevitably a mistake is made, resulting in two planes colliding.

Truly a shocking story – and one that was all too believable. Obviously a lot of the footage was taken from standard footage of jammed motorways and so on, which helped make it more believable. It struck me that if you’d flicked over halfway through and managed to get into one of the news broadcasts, it would be all too easy to believe that it had happened that day. And I suppose that’s the lithmus test of a documentary – if you come in halfway through, do you believe it could be real? In this case, yes, you could.

If you missed it, you can catch it through the BBC website here.

Currency

So, supposedly the UK public fully expects the government to stop using the pound despite the fact that the Euro is increasingly unpopular. 75% of the people surveyed think that the pound will be history within a decade.

However, there’s one question that wasn’t asked – or at least, the results weren’t published. I wonder what the response would have been to the query “Which currency would you see replacing the pound? The Euro or the Dollar?“

Hill carvings

Today the BBC has a story about the EC is saying that a carving on the Kent countryside (don’t spoonerise that, kids) is illegal. The carving was done on a site of Special Scientific Interest, and authorised by the local council despite the protests from Friends of the Earth and other organisations. And now the EC has issued a “formal notice” to the UK Government in protest.

Now, if only we could get them to do the same about the Big Brother logo by the White Horse of Uffington.

Seroxat

Peter has already commented about this, but I wanted to add in my own ten pence too. (don’t you love inflation? *grin*) Basically, Seroxat (or Paxil, as it’s also known) is being revealed to be rather nastier than initially thought, the so-called “side-effect free” drug turns out to have rather a larger potential mortality rate than expected and there are calls for massive levels of re-testing of the drug.

I’m in two minds about this entire thing – being a long-term sufferer of depression myself, I’ve been on antidepressants, and three years ago was even prescribed Seroxat/Paxil. I can’t say what effects it had, because I didn’t end up taking the stuff – in the end I’m too independent and bloody-minded to to want to have my thoughts and moods governed or ameliorated by a drug. For me (and I stress that more than I can imagine, as with every mental illness, no two people are alike, and depression is a hugely personal issue) the drug method simply doesn’t work – but in that way, I’m in the minority. For many other people, it works, and the SSSI/SSRI families of anti-depressants work exceptionally well. For another minority of people, these anti-depressants work in a way that makes suicide seem almost appealing.

My own experience nine years ago on Prozac shows that it’s quite probable that if I’d started taking Seroxat, I’d have been one of the minority. I found Prozac numbed all of my responses to a level where nothing actually mattered – it was easier to contemplate suicide and plan it while on Prozac, because there was just an emotional flatline to the entire process. I could look at it, and not be involved. The decisions were easy, because I didn’t care one way or the other.

But should Seroxat be pulled from the shelves because there is this minority group who react badly to it? Personally, regardless of my own experiences, I don’t think so. More testing should be done, and more training of so-called medical “professionals” should be undertaken. But there are so many positive examples of these drugs doing what they’re supposed to that no, I don’t think they should be removed from supply. It’s more of an education issue than one of human safety.

The real thing that needs changing is the attitudes of the doctors, who at present seem content to dole out happy pills to all and sundry, often on a quite minimal inspection. Unless someone is right on the brink of breakdown, you can’t look at them and say “you’re depressed”, it takes time to address the issues and evaluate the patient. Depression has become de rigeur in the 90s and 00s (whatever the hell we decide to call them) and it’s now almost a sign of growing up to be in receipt of your first anti-depressant prescription. Want some time off work? Claim you’re depressed. Want to avoid going to work, and just stick with incapacity benefit? Claim you’re depressed and suffering from stress. Most of the quacks will just dole out the pills and the sick notes with hardly a glance at the patient history, or a look at deeper issues. True depression is hard – in fact almost impossible – to fake. It’s a soul deep darkness, a pit where the most light that can be seen is the size of a 5p piece at the top of an insurmountable shaft. It’s not something that can be shrugged off with a three month supply of pills and a sick note so you can be off work for a fortnight. And that’s how it should be perceived – not as some cheap easy excuse for a holiday. As with dyslexia, hyperactivity, and many others, the more cliched and “in vogue” it is to have a complaint along those lines, the more harm will be done to the true sufferers, the people who really do need the help, the drug, the advice: these are the people who will be drowned out in the clamour of demand for a quick fix.

When they were launched in the 80s, these two families of drugs, the Prozacs and the Paxils were regarded as the new wonder drug. They were cure-alls, everything from anxieties to phobias, with supposedly no side-effects, no addiction problems in the way that the Valiums and Libriums of the 60s and 70s had – they were going to be the magic bullet against depression and all it’s nasty little buddies. But medical science never learns – Forty years ago, Thalidomide was the same kind of magic bullet only this time it was to cure morning sickness. Of course, it’s now coming back as a potential magic bullet against certain cancers. Before that, back in the 30s and 40s, LSD was being used as a wonder drug to help with schizophrenia, and to aid in it’s study. With hindsight, we know that these ideas were flawed, to say the least. When it comes to 2050, will we look back on Seroxat and Prozac in the same light?

I smell spicy brains

I’m not sure that “stolen” is a valid term in this context, but the stories over the weekend about the brains of mentally ill people and suicides being removed and stored for medical research is still pretty horrendous. Obviously if all these people had given their permission for their parts to be used, there’d be no problems, but instead it’s been done without asking permission.

It’s like another case of Alder Hey and their own organ retention problems.

Vindication

I know that regular readers will just tut and groan when they realise this is another (hopefully the final for a while) installment of the bank saga. Tough. *Grin*

Having launched a full formal complaint on Saturday about the lack of communication and messages coming from the bank that shall not be named since my business account opened, I received a call and message this morning from the Business “Manager” I’ve been dealing with. Quelle surprise

Now, she’s obviously either recording the call, or got her direct manager listening in to the call – I don’t particularly care which. Allegedly she (I’m not going to say the name, for obvious reasons) has been leaving me “lots” of messages, but has absolutely no answer to the question “so why did you not call the mobile number I’ve left every time?” – but no, she’s left lots of messages. No record, of course, of when any of these calls have taken place. And she’s replied to my email that I sent too, but has no record of when it was sent. I think she was then quite upset when I could tell her that I sent her the email on the 1st of May at 9.39am – obviously, one of us has been keeping records. *Grin* (Fact is, I keep the majority of my sent emails for at least six months)

The suggestion that perhaps a better contact management database would be a good idea for the business managers really didn’t go down well – or maybe it was me saying that I could do the system for them, as I’ve done them for other large organisations. Far be it from me to stoop to petty insinuations and suggestions, just to illustrate a point.

She’s “most upset” that I’ve launched a complaint without giving a chance for her side of the story to be put – I was unreasonable to turn up on a Saturday when I knew she wouldn’t be there. Which conveniently ignored the fact I’ve also been in the branch on Tuesday and Thursday to try and see her, and left messages on both occasions that if I didn’t receive a call by the end of the working week, I’d be launching a formal complaint. When I pointed this out, the only response was “Oh”.
Anyway, the complaint stands – but we appear to have sorted out most of the issues now. We’ll see how things go from here on in.

Weird codenames

Maybe this is just me, but why the hell was the British mole in the IRA codenamed Stakeknife? I could understand (ish) being codenamed “Steak-knife”, but “Stakeknife” just sounds like a typo, from one name to the other.

Still, what would I know about the wond’rous logic of our security forces?

Famous last words

It had to happen sometime. After all my own blatherings about convenience food and so on, I finally did it. For the first time that I can remember, I’ve made a complete bugger’s muddle of cooking rice. I have no idea what I did wrong, but it was a congealed starchy mess. Still edible, but compared to normal, it was definitely a fuck-up.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to Tesco to buy some easy cook rice.

Blanks would’ve been more apt

I can’t believe that royal protection police can ‘accidentally’ fire a gun while unloading it – particularly when their protectee was in the building. (Accounts vary as to whether he was in the next room or not) Still – even if it was ‘accidental’, you’d have thought they could have been more accurate. *Grin*

May Day Project – kind of.

The Mayday Project was due to happen today – various people around the world all taking pictures of their days. I’ve sort of half-participated (typical), and the photos from today’s stroll through Manchester are happily sitting here. Enjoy, or be bored by them – it’s up to you.

Tribute or plagiarism

While wandering through Manchester today, I took a couple of photos of Urbis (again), and a bit later wandered through one of the shopping arcades. In the window of one of the shops was an image of New York’s Flatiron Building. At that point, you have to wonder whether the architect of Urbis was really being inspirational, or whether it was more of an (ahem) tribute to an older generation of building. There’s certainly a wide range of similarities between the two designs. However, for me it doesn’t detract form either of them – they’re both stunning bits of architecture.

Cog

Further to various posts in various places about the wonderful Honda advert “Cog“, Honda have now released the ad, plus “making of” etc as a DVD – it’s available in today’s Guardian. Ah, the joy. I’d imagine it’s also in other papers this weekend, so keep your eyes open.

Bright, flashing lights

Oddly enough, two light-related stories in the media today. Strange, the way coincidences work, isn’t it?

The Guardian has a feature about astronomers (Stick with me on this one, OK?) and others starting a campaign to reduce the levels of light pollution. We can’t see the night skies anymore, because of the rise in the use of security lights, street lights, decorative illuminations on buildings, and the like.The CPRE are wanting to cure the “night blight” (their phrase, not mine) with a variety of measures, including streetlights that switch off after a certain time, and fitting shields around exterior light fittings.

Meanwhile, over at the BBC, there’s a piece reporting that a huge majority of children now never see true darkness because there’s always a nightlight, or a light on the landing. Supposedly, only 2% of children now sleep in total darkness.

My own recent experience of how much light pollution affects us came about when I was up in Scotland at the end of February. There wasn’t a streetlight in about 50 miles, and the nights were beautiful – I’d forgotten quite how many stars and so on there are, and how clearly they can all be seen. No matter how crazed it sounds, I do think that a reduction in light pollution is nothing but a good thing – if only because it also helps reduce our consumption of power, electricity that at the moment is just thrown out into the sky so that we can see our roads and feel safe.

Genetic talents/interests

This thought may get translated into a larger piece at some later point, but for now it goes something like this:

Both my parents are journalists – which of course makes me genetically predisposed to misquoting people as and when I wish to – and infected me with their literacy and love of the English language. (Although sometimes you’d be hard put to discern that from this site) However, I always said I definitely didn’t want to be a journalist.

However, it turns out that I got into the content editing/creation side of things on a couple of the big website contracts I worked on, and enjoyed it. And now with d4d and so on, there’s obviously some kind of urge to produce written work, personal viewpoints and so on – which really is what an awful lot of journalism, when you get right down to it.

So – do we end up being interested in the same things as our parents? Or do those interests become the exact opposite of what we want to do/be? Or is it all just random coincidence?

Train fares

Over at the BBC, they’re asking for public opinion about the fact that most train fares are likely to rise significantly this year. Considering that my first response was “Fucking Robbing Cunts”, I doubt mine’ll get published anytime soon.

Actually, it worries me as to what they term as a “significant” rise – since moving to Manchester four years ago, the price of a standard return ticket to London has risen from £80ish to £175ish today. And that’s not even first class. So if it’s been going up by £20-25 per year anyway, what the hell is a significant rise going to be?

Peterloo

Sometimes I think I should just pat my TiVo, because it’s such a neat device. Channel Four has recently had a series on called “Georgian Underworld“, a documentary about (unsurprisingly) Georgian Britain, and some of the lesser-publicised (in fact, completely bloody unknown, in a couple of cases) factors about life in that time. I’d managed to see most of them when they were broadcast, but I’d missed the fact that one was being transmitted on a completely different day. (Helpful of the programmers, wasn’t it?) Anyway, because of TiVo’s Season Pass feature, it still got recorded.

Bizarrely, it was actually the edition I’d most wanted to see – about the Peterloo Massacre. As I’ve noticed and noted on more than one occasion, my knowledge of UK history is woeful. Well, on a good day it’s woeful – on a bad day it’s simpy fucking abysmal. When my parents were up here a while back, we were walking in the City Centre, and my father said something about Peter Street being where the Peterloo massacre had taken place- an event I knew absolutely sod all about.

Anyway, the programme was all about that, and it was fascinating. The entire series has been very innovative and quirky in it’s styles of being shot – each one was done by a different director, in different visual styles. Some have been stunning, a couple have been distinctly ish. The one on Peterloo was done in a courtroom style, as an inquest on one of the people killed, and how the story came out of what happened. For me the real lithmus test is whether I’ve learned something from it – and in the 90 minutes it was on, I learned more about one portion of British history than I did in four years at secondary school. Sad, isn’t it?

Sins – Sloth

Today, Acerbia’s request is for Sloth. This is obviously a weird week for these sins, the days seem to be mimicing (mimicking?) them pretty well. Having been to the dentist’s (no sloth there, unfortunately) I’m now back to feeling as shite as I always do post-dental-anaesthetic. So I’m going to just vegetate a bit and collapse. I wish I knew what it was about that dental stuff that makes all my joints feel like I’ve got ‘flu, but there we go. So Sloth is easy.

Dentists – again

Well, I’m off again to the dentists, and hopefully this temporary crown will be a lot less temporary than the last one. It lasted less than six hours before falling out. Distinctly unimpressed – but then, that’s life.

Back later.

Nature Geek

While still watching the news, I was also really pleased to know that the nesting pair of Ospreys in Cumbria have returned for another year. The link also includes a webcam of the osprey nest, if you’re as much of a bobble-hat as I am.

The New New Towns

Embarassingly, considering I live in the vicinity of it, I’d never heard of Buckshaw Village until a news report on it today. It turns out that it’s the new version of the New Towns of the 1950s-70s, such as Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City. Buckshaw is a smaller-scale development, created on a brownfield site where a munitions factory used to be situated. In the end it’ll have 2000 homes, and a full set of facilities – almost a small town, rather than a village.

The difference is that the entire development is owned privately by Redrow Homes rather than being a government-controlled process. It’s an interesting plan, one taken with the long-term in mind – this “village” won’t be completed for another ten or more years, and it’ll be an interesting project to keep on watching how it develops.

Sins – Pride

Dead easy, this one. Acerbia wants to deal with Pride today, and it just so happens that I’ve been for an interview with the Caudwell Group for an “in-at-the-beginning-of-something-very-cool-and-new” kind of job. Unfortunately, the interview also included an NDA so I’ve got to keep lip zipped about most of it. However, Pride certainly took a major part in the interview – well, it was either Pride or Egotistical Twat – the jury’s out for now, so we’ll see.

And in a smaller dollop of Pride (coupled with self-referential linky lovefests) Gordon awarded me the accolade of Article Title of the Day – I’m assuming for “The Butler Did It”, but who knows. Either way, it’s another small dollop of Pride, and another step down towards Hell’s epicentre (AKA Coventry)

The butler did it

Personally, I’m amazed that Sophie thingy has announced she’s pregnant – I didn’t think Edward was someone who was interested in women at all.

Maybe we’ll find out in the end that Sophie’s been getting poked by the manservants or something. I’m sure Edward’s been getting poked by them too.

Sins – Anger

OK, So I missed out on yesterday’s Envy – nothing to envy, so I didn’t get involved. But today’s Sin is Anger and I’ve had enough of that today to last a while. Nothing’s been broken, although the necks of at least two bank clerks deserve to require the services of traction. I’ve been to the bank to find out why they still can’t get their fucking act together enough to send out a cashpoint card within three weeks, and why they’ve got all the communication abilities of Helen Keller in a straitjacket. Closely followed by a sojourn to the dentists, as detailed below.

Following that, a client changing their minds on what they wanted on the site, once it had already been uploaded for 24 hours. Dealing with it doesn’t take long, but the fact that they’d had the documents, OK’d them, and then only when they went online did they turn round and say “Oh, a lot of those numbers weren’t supposed to be accessible online”. Still, it’s all done now.

Thing is, yes, it’s annoying at the time, and drives me mental, but it’s over and done with, there’s no held over anger, so is it a sin? Who knows.

Feeling Shit

One thing I’d forgotten about today was that I had to go to the dentists again. Joy, Happiness. “Luckily”, this time only involved four lots of root canal work, and the preparation for post & crown replacements for a couple of teeth.

So right now I’m back to feeling like some kind soul has just beaten me senseless. The anaesthetic really isn’t any fun either, it leaves me feeling distinctly crap.

Maybe more later, but maybe not. Enjoy.

UPDATED : Great – one of the temporary crowns has already fallen out. I’m back at the dentists on Thursday, but that won’t help tomorrow when I’m off at an interview. Don’t you just love fate’s superb sense of timing.

Eight Nine months and counting…

Amazingly (Well, amazingly to me, anyway) d4d yesterday passed the 50,000th page impression mark. This blog section (personal publishing, whatever) started off on August 9th, so it’s *counts on fingers* actually nine months of blog existence. Still, not bad at all – just under 600,000 hits, but it’s the page impressions that are important (allegedly) so that’s what I count.

Oh, and if I take out the logfile references for my own IP address? I’ll still hit 50,000 by the end of the week. (Just before certain people start alleging it’s all me looking at the site. *grin*)

Peter won’t be amused

I should think that Naked Blog will be spitting feathers at the news of Butlins trying to bring bingo “up to date” with some new rhyming slang. I have no idea why there’s a need to update the phrases, but then, I’m not renowned for having my finger on the pulse of these things.

Another new page

It looks like the floodgates have finally cracked open a bit – and as a result, I’ve also added a piece on Writer’s Block to the section on thoughts.

Big Brother? Neigh – not in this house

Now maybe I’m showing my age a bit (and the already well-known fact that I’m a sad geek on occasion) but I’m quite amazed that the National Trust allowed Channel 4 to advertise Big Brother 4 by painting a Big Brother Eye buy the White Horse of Uffington. Quite what made them think it would be a good idea, feck only knows. I’d have imagined that C4 provided them with some much-needed money for it, but it turns out they accepted £2000 for it. Well, what a bargain.

Smack is bad for you

Part of today’s news has been that child-minders will now not be allowed to smack children in their care – even if the childminder already has written permission from the parents to do so. They’re also not allowed to smoke while looking after children – which, knowing some of the little sods darlings I’ve come across seems like a particularly cruel punishment on the child-minders.

I must admit, I’m not sure about the entire concept of being anti-smacking. I can understand the concept, and the fact that there are people (Parents, teachers, child-minders, whatever) who will always go over the top on things like smacking etc., but at the same time, is it right to completely remove it from being an available route?

I’m not a parent – but I’ve lived with families, have friends with children of all ages, and been involved with helping to bring up a couple along the way. Within that realm of knowledge, I believe that all children need to have some form of established limits – it’s part of the entire process of growing up. I don’t think that smacking, corporal punishment, or whatever other niceties there now are for it is necessarily the way forwards – but there always needs to be some kind of “If you misbehave, this will happen”, an established line. It’s always struck me that too many children now have parents that are frightened of establishing these lines, however they’re done, because they’ll be seen as physically abusing their child – and somewhere in there is a very fucked up piece of logic. There’s a difference between one smack for being a little bastard, and prolonged physical abuse – and the keyword, I believe, is “prolonged”. Too many times you hear parents saying “I’m going to get really angry in a minute”, and the expression on the child’s face eloquently says “Yeah right – it’s never happened yet”.

So is there a reason for the ban to be in place? Yes, in some ways there is – there’ve always been people who would rather batter the shit out of someone smaller than them. But at the same time that’s why there are laws about things like abuse, assault, and bodily harm. But to remove the ability completely? In honesty, I don’t think that’s right at all.

It’s getting hot in here

Following on from various other sites, I went off and took the Dantes Inferno test. These are the results:

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

New pages

Yes, it’s been a while since new pages were added into the main site of d4d – but today’s the day for the start of the renaissance. There’s going to be a small amount of twiddling of pages too in the near future, but that’s something for future revelations.

Today though, there’s a new picture in the Public Art section, and also a new page in the photos section, with some of the plants I’ve got here. I’ve also finally been writing some of the bigger pieces again, so they’ll get uploaded once they’re finished.

Today’s posts have been brought to you courtesy of Tracy Chapman, Massive Attack, Leftfield and the word “Bugger”.

Coming Soon

Via Gert, one of the projects for the next week (starting Bank Holiday Monday) will be Acerbia’s on-line Seven Deadly sins. Considering that I’m off to see the bank that shall not be named on Tuesday morning to sort out quite why they’re so fucking incompetent and unprofessional, I’m going to stick with Anger/Wrath for my performance piece.

Microsoft problems

If you’re using Internet Explorer don’t click on this link – it crashes IE impressively, and in only five lines of HTML. Nothing nasty like ActiveX or Javascript – just five HTML lines and zap, off goes IE.

Don’t you just love secure standards-compliant browsers? *Grin*

For fuck’s sake

I’m perfectly sure that there’s a great reason for a recovery truck to pick up a car at 1 in the morning, making as much bastard noise as possible, flashing lights and all, but considering that there was no owner nearby needing to get somewhere urgently, the car was parked up by the side of the road, and wasn’t causing an obstruction, I think that the timing of it could perhaps be defined as “over-zealous”, don’t you?

You cunt incredibly insensitive person.

UPDATED : And now, less than quarter of an hour later, there are two burglar alarms going off. If it carries on like this, I’m going to go out and kill people.

Health Warning

Note to self : papercuts on the fingers are exceptionally bloody painful when squeezing limes, and rubbing one’s eyes having chopped chilli peppers bloody hurts too.

Cooking Thai food is an experience that could be hazardous to one’s health/well-being.

Adieu, Goodbye, Farewell, Fuggoff

And finally, some news to celebrate. Mohammed Al Fayed has announced his intention to leave the UK, and live in Switzerland instead. After all the hassles over the years with (among others) Fayed wanting UK Citizenship, and protesting the removal of his “special tax status” that allowed him to only pay £240,000 per year he’s finally calling it a day and becoming another country’s problem.

And the Guardian has a history of Fayed in photos. They’re obviously as upset as I am about it.

Time to join Blockbuster again

Ah,the TV “summer season” is well and truly upon us. “Help, I’m a Z-lister, get me publicity” has restarted – although thankfully that’s only for two weeks, rather than the interminable shite that is Big Brother. The Big Brother house for Series Four has been opened up to journalists – <sarcasm> whoopee doo,I can’t wait.</sarcasm>

(As a complete tangent, I’ve just looked at the “I’m a Z-list” website, and it’s sponsored,by my favourite search engine, Ask Jeeves. Says it all, really – Z-list ‘celebs’ with a Z-List search engine)

Dream on, Virgin.

Over in the US, the researchers at Holloman High Speed Test Track managed to get a sled on a monorail to break the land speed record for rail vehicles – a record that they had set themselves 20 years ago. Preliminary figures assess the speed at about 6,400mph (Mach 8.6) – nearly nine times the speed of sound.

In the meantime, the UK dreams of getting trains to even 2% of that speed – and Network Rail (the successors to Railtrack) will be holding their annual meeting behind closed doors, with no members of the public present.

Banking Technology

This is probably just something I have a problem understanding, but quite honestly, how long can it take to return a phone call?

• An hour?
• Two hours?
• Six?
• Next working day?
• Three working days?
• A week?
• Fuck only knows – it hasn’t happened yet.

So far, yes, we’re on the last option. A week ago, the bank that should not speak it’s name promised to call me back regarding getting cashpoint cards and Internet access to the new business account.

Unsurprisingly, I’m still waiting.

X2 – Filmworks, Manchester

Yes, today was previews day for X2. (as it’s officially titled, but it’s the sequel to X-Men, if that helps at all) So of course I had to go – it’s a hard life, but someone’s got to have it *Grin*.

I loved the first X-Men, so I’m probably biased (and a bit of a fan of Hugh Jackman too) – but I still thoroughly enjoyed X2. It’s about half an hour longer, and still doesn’t feel like it’s too long at all – there are very few slack moments, it just keeps on going and going, and getting better. The story line is as daft as the last, but while watching the film, disbelief is very easy to suspend. The effects and character building were pretty good, and with a cast as huge as the original X-men comics, it’s always going to be an uphill struggle. But there were enough hints at future characters to keep fans happy, even to the extent of almost “cameo” performances by some of them.

Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler deserves particular mention, despite the dodgy German accent- I suppose it’s part of the character, but personally I found it irritating. Then again, that’s me. However, between the character and the special effects around it,the role seems to be a real scene-stealer every time. (Hardly a surprise when it comes to Cumming) BrianCox is up to his normal standards, and the entire cast appears to have had fun making the film – there’s an onscreen chemistry/cameraderie between them all that’s obvious, which helps build the idea that the characters are a team, despite personal differences etc.

Ian Mckellen’s still excellent as Magneto, and Patrick Stewart is – well – Patrick Stewart. It strikes me as impressive that between his roles as Gandalf and Magneto, McKellen’s in some of the biggest films of the last three years. Now all he needs is a bitpart in the Matrix sequels and he’ll be in every giant film of the 2000’s (so far).

All in all, it’s two hours that require suspension of disbelief, but that’s easy to achieve. Damn good fun – I’m sure I’ll see it again before long.

Now, when’s Matrix Reloaded out?

Couldn’t happen to a finer person

Over in Bradford, a candidate for the British National Party is being investigated for irregularities in the nomination process. The nominations can’t be cancelled before the election, but they can be contested afterwards.

Is that all?

The UK’s firearms amnesty has now come to a close, with 22,000 guns and nearly half a million rounds of ammunition handed in. But will it really have any effect? Personally, I doubt it – I suspect there are at least ten times that many in circulation.

But of course it’s not politically corrrect to say such things, so all you’ll hear is that 22,000 guns off the street is a major amount. And in a way it is – but it’s still not enough.

Ampleforth

There was a fascinating documentary on ITV tonight about Ampleforth College – a private school in Yorkshire run by Benedictine Monks. While I’m sure there was an element of “how weird, to be taught by monks” to the concept of the documentary, what actually came through the entire thing was that the teaching methods and attitudes were a lot more benevolent, understanding and fair than most other educational establishments I’ve seen.

One of the heads of house explained about the pupil’s weekend trips to the local pubs, saying “We understand that they don’t want to be trapped in this place with nothing to do, and it’s better to know where they are”, which struck me as exceptionally understanding.

Even the headmaster’s letter about the programme demonstrates the displayed attitude of the school. All in all, a very impressive piece of TV – not something that gets said too often.

51^st State

In a story in the Register, it’s revealed that Hilary Rosen is helping to write the new copyright laws for Iraq. Rosen is the Chief Executive of America’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), also known as “the people who shut down Napster and many others”.

So – it looks like Iraq is beginning to supplant the UK in the race to become the Fifty-First State of America. What a wonderful concept.

Fits of the giggles

I’ve been hearing some rumours today about a person who wants to stop the use of the word “brainstorming”, particularly in schools, because “it might be denigrating to epileptics”. I’ve no proof, couldn’t find anything online, but all the same, I almost want this exercise in political correctness to be true, it’s so pathetic, so funny, and so insulting in it’s own right.

Of course, if I do manage to find a link, I’ll add it in here. If anyone else knows about it, leave a link in the comments. I could do with proof, and another chuckle.

UPDATED : Thanks, Pat for providing the link to the story

Foodie rantings

The Restaurant magazine released it’s “Top 100” restaurants this week, and in the Guardian, Matthew Fort has some interesting thoughts about the entire process – mainly that there should have been more than just 11 British restaurants. It makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading, even if (like me) you’re never likely to eat at these paragons of gastronomic virtue.

Banking security

When you’re standing at the counter of a packed bank, and the cashier asks you what your security password is, do you…

1. Simply say the password.
2. Tell the cashier there’s no way you’ll say it out loud.
3. Tell the cashier to get stuffed.

Yours truly took (for once) option B – to a look of complete incredulity from the cashier. He then asked me to write down my password – on the back of the cheque I was getting cashed, which would give any potential fraudster all the information they need in one place – Account number, sort code, signature, password, and even handwriting samples. Fuck that for a game of muppets.

In the end, I wrote the password on a piece of paper, then watched him tear it up – and then got the torn up paper back too. Paranoid? Maybe. But I simply don’t see the point in making it easy for people to get access to that type of information – particularly when I’ve already gone to the extent of having seperate passwords for each account, rather than the typical (and still recommended) “mother’s maiden name” gambit.

Oh yes, and then complained to (as it turned out) the branch manager, explaining that I really didn’t think it was acceptable to ask for that kind of ID verbally. I’d be happier if a different form of verification were used, even a keypad on the counter on which to enter your PIN or password or a paper pad that enabled you to write down the password or whatever, then see it get destroyed afterwards. Hardly rocket science, and far better than saying it out loud.

The Criminal Mind – Part Two

Also over the weekend in Manchester, three paintings were stolen from the Whitworth Art Gallery, worth an estimated four million pounds between the three of them.

Less than 24 hours later, they were found “hidden” in a tube behind a public toilet, less than 200 metres from the gallery. Now, seriously, what the hell is happening when a) the police don’t even search a radius of 200metres froma crime scene, and b) what kind of chucklehead leaves £4m worth of painting outside in a cardboard tube? In Manchester, for fuck’s sake – rain capital of the UK.

Not exactly the Einstein of the criminal world, obviously.

UPDATED : According to another source, the entire thing was done to illustrate the lack of security at the gallery, rather than to steal the artworks for profit. However, they may still be damaged due to last night’s rain.

Meanwhile, back in Kansas

Ananova has pictures of the world’s most expensive shoes. Platinum thread, 642 rubies, based on Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz.One million quid. The world is insane.

The Criminal Mind

Sometimes you just have to decide that people are simply too stupid to remain free.

About 5 o’clock this morning, there were the various sounds of a car being raced through the back streets, including screeching tyres, thrashed engines, and rapid journeys through the gearbox – sometimes even managing to connect with a gear for a while. In the end this car came belting down my road, screeched to a halt slap bang in the middle of the crossroads (more by luck than judgement, I suspect, in light of the later happenings) followed by doors opening, and running feet. Yup, “joy”-riders, or as they’re known now , TWOCers .

Two of the car’s occupants ran away – no idea if they were caught or not. But two decided – even with the police car bearing down on them at a rate of knots – to stand outside their mates house and use the patented Mancunian Fuckwit technique to get their mate to wake up, open the door to his house and let them in, so they can look like the sweet innocent little bastards darlings they so obviously really are. I should point out at this time that the “Mancunian Fuckwit” technique relies not on anything sane like doorbells, or knocking on the door to be let in, but instead consists of standing on the path outside the house, and whistling to get the occupant’s attention. To my knowledge, this method has never gained results within ten minutes, and at 5am you can normally be betting on at least double that.

Needless to say, the two gormless little twats were promptly arrested, bounced off the bonnet of the police car while being handcuffed, and taken away.

United Against Racism – Manchester Apollo
RDB, Chumbawumba, Uncut, Alabama 3

Organised by UNISON and the TUC to mark the “no them and us” campaign, this event was always going to be a bit impressive. It was preceded by a march through Manchester (which I admit I didn’t attend) and the tickets themselves cost the princely sum of £6. For four bands.

The first band on stage were RDB (Rhythm, Dhol and Bass), a collective I’d never heard of before. It’s always been a surprise in many ways that bhangra has never caught on with the mainstream music world, particularly those who go clubbing and so on – the beats and rhythms always seemed perfect for clubbing. But I suppose that in it’s own way the music world is as racist as any other – but I hope it will change in the end. RDB were bloody good, and worked the crowd well. It set the mood for the night.

Surprisingly, next up were ChumbaWumba – I’d thought they would be headliners, or one off, not second in line. Still, no complaints for me. I’ve liked Chumbawumba for years now, and had seen them a couple of times before, but not in at least ten years. It seems to be the month for revisiting old bands, having seen Sisters of Mercy, and seeing Erasure in a couple of weeks time, as well as the B-52s (until they cancelled) and now Chumbawumba. As well as performing their best known track, “Tubthumping”, they included several older ones including “Mouthful of Shit” and “Bigmouth Strikes Again” – continuing to get the crowd involved and enjoying the gig. It was a joy to see them again – and scary to know that none of them have really changed all that much at all.

The third band were Uncut. They’re still veyr new to the music scene, and from the music they showcased tonight, deserve to go on and be huge. The crowd loved them, the material went down really well, and they had the confidence to carry it all off smoothly too. In honesty I don’t know how many concerts they’ve done before, but this one will hopefully just be the start of great things to come.

And finally, after an exceptionally long pause, the headliners – Alabama 3. Regular readers will already know I adore Alabama 3 and have done now since the first single, back iin 1996. (And realising that they’ve been going for seven years already is enough to make me feel very, very old!) In the last six months they’ve gone from tiny 300 person venues up to 750-1000 person venues, and now to the Apollo, a 2,500 – 3000 seater. And the transition hasn’t affected them at all – it’s just better lit, with more room to move around (well, when the mic lead isn’t tangled around the stand and allows them to, anyway) and that’s really the sole difference for them. When they finally hit the stage, they hit it running, introduced by one of Stephen Lawrence‘s relatives – apt, in the week that was the tenth anniversary of his death. Starting off with “Let The Caged Bird Sing”, they proceeded to blow the roof off the venue in the way that their fans recognise.

All in all, an absolutely stunning evening – I’d have paid treble the ticket price, both for the cause, and to see the bands, so it was well worth it. I’ve been lucky – three absolutely sensational concerts in a row – I hope the run continues for a while.

Zen and the art of timing

It now looks like I was lucky to see Sinead O’Connor at the Massive Attack concert a couple of weeks ago. According to reports, she’s retiring from the music world (again) so the guest appearances at the Manchester Massive Attack gigs may have been her last live performances.

Celebrate that special day

Fark.com held a competition for people to submit ideas for google to do to their logo on special days. It takes a while to load, but it’s worth it- some made me laugh out loud.

Hen night

I tell you, you do get some funny looks being the only man out with eleven women on a hen night. Thankfully it wasn’t the entire “L-plates, false cocks and dodgy veils” type of event (not that that would’ve stopped me, of course), but instead turned out to be really good fun.

I’m not sure if I qualified as “honorary girlie” or “token bloke”, but either way, it’s been a damn good night. Food at Dmitri’s (Greek cuisine), followed by a night of partying at Copacabana. And yes, I wish I could get the horrendous Barry Manilow track out of my head, but there we go. Turns out Copacabana has been there for about 20 years now, and I can’t believe I’ve never been before. Salsa, drink, excellent musicm and an atmosphere that doesn’t consist of every man being out on the pull. Instead, it’s just full of people who want to dance, and love the music. Long may it last.

The new title

Following several queries (OK, three, if I’m honest) about the new title for this page. There’s no ulterior motives or hidden meanings – it’s simply a lyric from the Sisters of Mercy’s “I Was Wrong“. I’d forgotten the song, and then hearing it live (and surprisingly acapella) on Wednesday made me want to use it. Simple, really.

Tiny PC case

At the moment there seems to be a trend towards smaller PC cases, enabling them to be in living rooms and so on, acting like TiVos, or just so they’re not as intrusive as some PCs are at the moment. But this system seems to be taking it to extremes. All the same – a silent, unobtrusive PC certainly has it’s uses.

Not that I’m a techie or anything.

Thoughts from a City Centre on a Friday lunchtime

• All people who buy umbrellas should be forced to undergo “Umbrella Awareness Training”
• I will be patenting that phrase
• Or maybe they should undergo IQ tests too.
• Is IQ a diminishing function? It seems like the more people in a crowd, the thicker they become.
• Or maybe it’s just that any amount of space has a finite IQ handling capability
• What is it with the “fashion” for cropped trousers at the moment? The street looks like an Armenian market.
• Wearing cropped trousers accompanied by either knee high boots or silver stilettos is a crime.
• Why is it that shoplifters always look so bloody dodgy, signalling their intent from about 5 miles off?
• And why are they so funny when they get stopped?
• Why can’t anyone walk in a straight line any more?

Thank Christ I never took on that contract

Ah, how we all love Ask Jeeves, it’s shit adverts, and even shitter search engine. Someone came to d4d from ask yesterday, using the phrase “I need pictures of people who are sad for a report“. None of which should result in d4d at all – no matter how ungrammatical the search request. But in Ask’s world, I’m #1.

Bizarrely, about four years ago I got asked to work on the language processing for Ask, when it was just starting up. Having seen the way it’s developed since, I’m really bloody glad I didn’t do it. Who’d want to admit on the CV to working for ’em?

Winnie the Crook

According to the Guardian, Winnie Mandela has been found guilty of fraud to the tune of about £75,000. Hardly chicken-feed, is it? Then again, this was a set of frauds based upon a completely false bank – at which point it really is chickenfeed compared to what she could have done.

All the same, it’s still somewhat sad to see another national hero toppled off her plinth.

Terminator 3 Trailer

If you’ve got Apple’s Quick-Time plug-in, you can now go and see the new trailer for Terminator 3 trailer – it looks bloody good.

Matrix on the big, big, BIG screen

The two Matrix sequels will apparently be released in an IMAX format as well as normal cinema screens. IMAX is a huge film-format, on a screen 27m (80 feet) high and 19m (65 feet) wide. Fucking enormous, to put it bluntly.

So I’ll definitely be seeing each film at least twice. *Grin*

One day in May

It’s all too coincidental for words. On one day, the 18th of May to be precise, there are now no less than four concerts I want to see in Manchester. Of course, it also means there’s a shedload of decent (and sub-decent) venues here, but in one evening there’s Erasure playing at the Apollo, Peter Gabriel (which is the one I’m going to see) at the MEN Arena, Ladysmith Black Mambazo at the Bridgewater Hall, and the Dandy Warhols at Manchester Academy.

Maybe I should just decide to like one type of music, rather than being as varied in my tastes – that might make it all a bit easier.

Geeky and trivial – it’s SO me

Bearing in mind that cricket is, for me, rather less interesting than – say – the Gross National Economy of Outer Mongolia in 1847, it’s somewhat surprising that I actually found this to be of any relevance whatsoever. But there we go. Wisden’s cricket almanac, having been in production for 140 years, has done it’s first photographic cover. It also turns out that it was the last contribution Sir Paul Getty made before pegging it earlier this month.

Arse

Just had a call from the ticket office to say that the B-52s have cancelled their date in Manchester, and no plans to re-arrange it. What a bummer.

Time to digit extractum

According to The Register today, it looks like Nominet are to start charging £35 for transferring domain names from May 19th. Best get my finger out and move d4d over to 34sp.com pretty quick, hadn’t I?

<sarcasm>Another great loss to music

In another shocking piece of world news today, S Club 7 have announced they will split at the end of May. I eagerly await the messages, the pleas, the heartbroken fans, all appealing for them to do it at the end of April instead.

RIP Nina Simone

RIP Nina Simone who died on Sunday. A great loss to the musical world.

Who wants to be a *cough* fraudster

Tonight I’ve been watching the broadcast of the episode of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” where three people conspired to cheat and win the million pounds. In honesty, I’m amazed at how blatant the cheating was – quite stunningly unsubtle.

Also, it’s such a british way of cheating, this complete belief that no-one would ever accuse an ex-army Major, an officer and a gentleman, of cheating. It’s entirely surreal, and exceptionally funny.

But at the same time, what an incredibly contemptuous way of cheating, again, the assumption that no-one would even notice these coughs and ‘whispered’ “no”‘s. It’s a scheme that really carries all the subtlety of a swift kick in the knackers with steel-toecapped boots. The audience noticed, the stage-crew noticed – I suspect you’d have to have an IQ of about 30 to NOT notice. Yet all through the court case too, they didn’t even seem to believe they’d been cheating. They just seemed to have complete contempt for everyone else in the studio. An amazing scheme – both for it’s simplicity and sheer audacity.

May Day Project

Via Gert, news of the mayday project. On Saturday May 10th, people around the world will be taking photos throughout the day, nominally one per hour.

Having looked at the calendar, it’s actually one of my few free weekends between now and July, so I may just pootle off somewhere with the camera – you never know.

Well-balanced?

I got referred today to the Guardian’s quiz about what brain type you have. It’s based on two ratings, empathising quotient (EQ) and systemising quotient (SQ) – and then the two get plotted on a graph to reveal the type of brain you have.

It’s all a bit experimental and theoretical, and the best way for me to know it’s pretty much a load of old garbage is that I come out with a score of 34 on each test, which makes me appear to be a well balanced person. Which we all know is complete shite. *Grin*

Let’s do the timewarp again

Watching The American President on TV, it’s almost like a timewarp into the West Wing. The West Wing’s President Bartlett (Martin Sheen) is the American President’s White House Chief of Staff. The West Wing’s Defence Chief (Anna Deavere Smith) is the Press Secretary for the American President.

Of course, all this is helped by the fact they’re both written by Aaron Sorkin.

Risks of the Season

By a major error of planning, I ended up catching the first couple of minutes of BBC’s “Songs of Praise” – something I try and avoid wherever possible. Today it was being broadcast from the Butlin’s Somerwestworld in Minehead, Somerset, where there’s recently been a huge dose of “mystery” virus (since identified as “probably Norwalk”). Turns out they host Spring Harvest, the biggest Christian event in Europe.

So – 60,000 Christians in a place that has only just had a virus infecting hundreds of people?

God moves in mysterious ways. *Grin*

Domestic stuff

Flipping through various odds and sods today, I found a surreal concept – baths made of wood. Utterly lovely, sodding expensive, and already making me think “I wonder if I can have something like that when I’ve bought a house?”.

And then I also found Sottini’s roll-top baths and just drooled. I need a house with about four bathrooms in order to fulfil my bath dreams now. Oh, and about £30,000.

Watson completes marathon

No, no dodgy jokes about him being accompanied by Holmes or anything. The ex-boxer Michael Watson has completed the London Marathon course. Doesn’t sound like much? This is the man who was told he’d never walk again, never talk again, who was comatose for six weeks after his final fight with Chris Eubank in 1991, and who still has full use of only one leg.

He’s been doing approximately four miles of the course every day, and has raised somewhere between £150,000 and £250,000 for the Brain and Spine Foundation during the last week. An incredible achievement all round.

Names for dogs

Sat down by the canal this afternoon, enjoying the sun reflecting off the water, I heard a man in the field yelling something. At first I thought he was being randomly abusive (some things are pretty common in Manchester *Grin* ) and was just yelling “Wanker!” at the top of his voice. As time went on, it became obvious that he was yelling at the dog that ran past me (not heading towards it’s owner, I hasten to add…) and it was called Franco. Which made a bit more sense.

As he walked towards me, and the volume reduced a bit, it turned out the dog was called Frankie. Which, compared to the other two versions, really was a bit of an anticlimax.

Surreal terrorist targets

A model village had problems getting insured because “it was at risk of terrorist attack”. I’m intrigued to know what type of attack was envisioned that would make it worthwhile to attack a model village. Maybe they could fly a remote-controlled plane into a scale replica of the World Trade Centre? (sorry, Center) Maybe send a model pyramid into orbit? Recreate Hatfield in the middle of the replica train set? A real example of the “shock and awe” method of terrorist attacks.

(And yes, I do realise that it’s more likely to be the recipient of some form of biological weapon, although the same can be said of anywhere that a large group of people is likely to congregate)

Isn’t hacking supposed to be a challenge?

There’s a story in The Register today about passwords. In a very simple survey, 75% of people wrote down their password when asked simply “what is your password?”. In all, 90% of people gave up their password with a bare minimum of social engineering.

It’s amazing to me, that people still don’t realise that things like passwords really shouldn’t be disclosed. It does make me wonder whether they’d do the same with thir cash-machine PIN numbers. In the meantime, I’m off out with a clipboard and a questionnaire. *Grin*

Lunacy

I suspect that Bar-Stool Racing could only be thought up by someone truly stoned out of their mind on some very interesting substances…

So near and yet so far

In the Guardian today, President Blair says he’d have resigned if the Iraq war vote had failed. I hope the “rebels” who suddenly caved in again are now busy kicking themselves.

Page updates

As per Vicky‘s comment about Moveable Type and D4D, yes, it’s still in the process of being worked on. Moving hosting companies is the first part of the struggle – probably to 34sp (thanks Pat and Jez for the recommendation) which has been slightly problematic while still being keffed about fiscally.

Still, all those problems should come to a close next week, so the process may well start up then.

In the meantime, I’ve taken out the code to Stats4All, which also seems to have speeded up the entire download. Once I get rid of the other shonky bastards as well, it should all run quickly and smoothly again. Which would be a shock to the system. I did receive an email a while back from Stats4All saying they were shutting down their free service anyway, and what the hell, I do my own log analysis – having the counters on each page was a pain in the arse, and blatantly innaccurate, but it was nice to be able to get a quick glance at how many people had looked at the page today, rather than just a one off. Just see how it all goes really.

A shocking case

Five police forces around the UK have today started trialling the use of stun guns as an alternative to pepper sprays, truncheons and even firearms. The specs for the stungun they’re using make interesting reading, particularly the fact that each time the TASER (which, for purposes of tragic pedantry, stands for Thomas A Swift Electric Rifle) is fired, it records the time and date it was used, and also ejects AFID tags that can be used to further identify who fired the stun-gun etc. If that helps this kind of device from being mis-used, then I’m all for it.

In the meantime, the forces trialling these things are London’s Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley Police, Northamptonshire Police, Lincolnshire Police and North Wales Police. If you’re in their areas, it’s time to be good, otherwise it could be revoltingly painful. It’ll be interesting to see how the trials go, and how the media reacts when the first person has one used on them.

Not for those of a delicate disposition

Over at Swish Cottage, there’s a shot of a man with a back so hairy it could double as a carpet. I’ve copied it here so as not to nick any of his bandwidth, but for the full glory, click on the image and it’ll link to the full size image. For me it’s not just the hair (which looks like some kind of bizarre experiement in recombinant DNA) it’s the lime-green trunks that add that certain je ne sais quos (French for “Jesus, that looks fucking horrible!”) to the entire image.

Summer sunbathing isn’t a right, it’s a priviledge. *Grin*

Catching up with TiVo

Since February, I’ve had a TiVo (Geeky video recorder) and last night I caught up on some of the stuff it had recorded for me. (I should point out that this is one of TiVo’s selling points – based on ratings you give programmes, it then records similar thiings that you might not have noticed. Very clever, but it’s been a slog to get it taught that I really don’t want to watch chat shows, soaps, and bloody Tweenies and Fimbles) Two of the recordings it had made were complete opposites – LA7 and Opposite Sex.

LA7 was definite proof that TiVo isn’t all the way there yet on learning my likings – something to do with S Club 7 – truly dire. Opposite Sex (I can only find this dodgy interview site to do with the series, which is a bummer – more research needed) , however, could turn out to be a little gem. Channel 4 is showing it at some ungodly hour on Sunday mornings (just before 4am, according to TiVo) which is a pity – if it were shown in mainstream times, I think it could take off as a popular series.

The basic show is set in an American High School – very ho hum standard teenish drama. The twist, which so far (having only seen the pilot episode) could be the lifesaver is that the three main male characters are the first male students in a girls-only school that has only just gone co-educational. Obviously there’s all the hassles of bias and sexism, as well as some of the funniest fish-out-of-water scenes I’ve seen in a while. In the pilot episode, the three male characters even performed “I Will Survive” (cliché a go-go) in the style of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Yes, it’s got some of the clichés, and it’s something that will take time to mature – but for now it’s got a lot of potential.

Snd more txts

Interesting piece in The Register today about the rate that SMS (“texting”) has exploded over the years. Worldwide, there are now one billion text messages sent every day. Globally there’s a huge difference in the number of messages sent per person in each country – in Singapore and Hong Kong, it’s about 200 per month, and in the US it comes down to about 7 per month, for reasons that are explained in the article.

The part that I found particularly interesting though, was this : “In the UK nine out of ten children own a mobile phone, and spend £100,000 a day solely on text messaging. Some research suggests that for teenagers, receiving messages boosts their confidence, as they use the number of messages they receive as a measure of their popularity“. At first it depressed me that people gauged their popularity by how many texts they received, but on further reflection I realised that it’s nothing new. It’s just the method of receiving the messages that has changed – but people still gauge their popularity by how many Christmas/Birthday/Valentine’s cards they receive, by how many people are prepared to go out for a drink on a friday night with them, by how many people they have in their address book, and all manner of other methods.

So it’s nothing new – more just a synbol of how ubiquitous the text message has now become. Now if only we could get the little sods to spell their messages correctly, instead of bloody text abrevyashuns abbreviations (it’s no good, I can’t do the text thing to save my life *Grin*). Or, as Vicki would put it, “Tw@s”.

Combine Harvester – a vile “restaurant” with bar attached

Wandering through The Guardian‘s site today to get to the crossword, I came across the “Are you a die-hard townie” quiz – which is very funny, and also meant I came out as pure-bred country boy. (Sad, but almost true)

Train Misery over Easter – now there’s a shock

Yes, in a truly world-shattering piece of news, Guards on UK trains will be on strike tomorrow – no surprises there then.

Actually, I personally don’t see why it’ll cause as much hassle as people say – the position of “Guard” doesn’t seem to exist on trains any more. They’re all “Train Managers”, “Ticket Inspectors” (sorry, “Revenue Protection Officers”), and a role of other job titles that have absolutely feck-all resemblance to the word “Guard”. I did have to laugh at the fact Virgin Trains will be affected – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been on Virgin Trains and never even seen anyone thinking about checking tickets and so on.

Still, it’s a good excuse for running a shonky service on the days when more people are likely to be travelling so they can get home to families etc for Easter.

Random Bureaucracy

I got a snotty letter today from the personal banking section of my bank. When I called them about it, it turned out that because I now have a Business Account with them too, I should never have received the letter – the Business section should’ve added some kind of new code to my account to say it was linked with the Business one (or something – my brain gave up and committed suicide rather than keeping on listening in detail) so I should disregard the letter they sent.

Isn’t organisation a wonderful thing? Last Friday I got told at 4.45pm that there’d been a problem, and they’d “hoped” it would be sorted by the end of the day, except it wasn’t. My comment at the time about “when did hope become part of professionalism” went down like a sack of shit at a wedding, although I did (and still do) think it was a valid point. OK, I could’ve worded it slightly more tactfully, but there we go.

Anyway, as per usual within the banking world, it turns out that two departments don’t communicate with each other. Big Shock. However, I do find it more than slightly infuriating to know that these two departments are seperated by nothing more than a flight of stairs. They’re in the same building – personal accounts on 1st floor, business on 2nd floor. Despair utterly set in when the person in Personal Accounts said she’d phone the person in Business Accounts.

King to Castle 2

Jonathan King is trying to get his sentence reassessed – personally, I hope that the Criminal Cases Review Commission takes a good look at the case and doubles the length of time he should be in prison for. Even if they just take “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” into account, it’s less than he deserves.

Iraqis Anonymous

I had to laugh upon seeing the headline on this story in the Guardian, that there is now a “13 Step Plan” to rebuild Iraq. Is this just so it’s like one step better than the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step-plan?

It makes me think of the Spinal Tap quote about the amps going to 11 so they could be one louder than everyone else.

Bunny Suits

I know this’ll mean fuck all to anyone outside the UK, but whyis it that every time I see the Easter advert for KFC (the one with the group of guys in Pink bunny suits) I start thinking that the next time I go out clubbing etc., it’d be fun to go out in a bunny suit for the night?

Not that I’m an attention-seeker at all, honest…

An improvement

Finally, the business bank account is now sorted, as both the bank and Companies House have finally got their combined bureaucracies in order and sorted. Needless to say, my blood pressure is now about 20 points lower than it was before everything was confirmed. The tickets for the Peter Gabriel gig arrived (Now I’ve just got to figure out what to do with the Erasure one for the same night) and having looked at the website, it looks like it’ll be bloody amazing.

So all in all it’s not been a bad day. Which makes a change, recently.

Massive Attack – Manchester Apollo

I’ve been wanting to see Massive Attack in concert for several years now, and when I saw that they’d be doing a concert in Manchester, I was one of the first in the queue for tickets, even before the new album came out. I had no idea what to expect, no idea how their music would translate to the live scene. But all the same, I wanted to see it happen. And last night was the night. Right from the start, it was always going to be different – all that could be seen was some purple lighting, and a red digital clock showing the time. It was dark enough that you couldn’t even see the band come on stage – but when the bassline for “Future Proof” kicked in, the lights came up, the “clock” turned out to be a huge screen, and the gig was utterly stunning for the next two and a quarter hours. The screen displayed various things all the way through the show, it was a geek extravaganza, bits of webpages, world statistics, NASDAQ tickers, news, weather reports, all sorts of things happening behind the band. The entire concert probably is better described as “an experience” – more than the music, more than seeing the band, it was amazing. Oddly enough, the actual members of Massive Attack were hardly visible – always backlit, very very enigmatic. A whole range of different singers for the various tracks – including Horace Andy, and Sinead O’Connor performing the tracks she sings on the 100th Window album. This really just added to my own enjoyment of the gig, because she’s another one I’ve wanted to see for a long time, so to see two long-term “want to sees” in one venue was a true prize. In many ways, it was a strange concert – considering the fact that I really didn’t like the Avril Lavigne concert because it was so technically perfect and passionless, which is exactly the same as the concert last night, but for Massive Attack it was somehow right, it fitted. The entire concert was about atmosphere, allowing the band’s music to speak for itself – and that’s what it did. Loud and clear.

Sitting on the hard-shoulder of the Information Superhighway

Not quite sure what happened yesterday, but the site appeared to disappear off the face of the Interwebnet for a while. No words from my hosting company on why it happened, but normal service has now been resumed. (Well, what I laughingly call normal, anyway)

Soap Box

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never wanted to do what everyone else does. I never wanted the entire marriage, kids, house, car thing that most of my peers seem to rate so highly. I never even wanted the stable job/career – for me, the dictionary definition of career, “to ricochet wildly from place to place” was infinitely preferable.

So for the last decade or more, I’ve lived my own life, never wanted any of the things that the people around me rated as important, and just got on with my own thing. Yeah, most of the time I’ve kind of stayed under the radar of things like authority, banks, credit scoring, electoral rolls and all of that jazz, but it suited my purposes. Because of how I worked, I moved around more in a year than most people do in a decade, so I just really never ended up registered for voting, credit, bills, or anything.

In the last three or four years, things have changed a bit. I’ve settled down, even to the extent of having lived in the same house now for nearly two years, and yes, I do want to buy my own house now. I’ve been building up my presence (for want of a better word), appearing on the electoral roll, slowly trying to fit in with what other people want and dream of. But of course I still don’t have the mental software to fit in properly – if I do these things, I still want it to be on my own terms, have no desire to do everything the way everyone else does.

But it’s hard – every inch of the way is a fight, because of the years I’ve spent not fitting in, it’s a hassle to get anything done. Credit scoring loathes me still, because of the fact that according to their records I didn’t even exist ’til about three years ago. Coming into this world of bureaucrats and computerised records that are “policed” by complete cretins who seem to have nothing better to do with their lives is a frustrating experience.

And I’m tired of it – tired of feeling I have to fight for every inch of every achievement, that anything I need or want to sort out has to be fought for, pushed for, trying to get people to do things they way they should be done, not necessarily the way they’ve always done them. The last two weeks of petty bureaucracy have pushed me too far too quickly, it’s left me in a state where all I really want to do is walk away, admit defeat, go back to the under-the-radar life I used to have. Long-term I won’t do that, because it’s just giving in, letting other people win, letting “the system” win, and I’m utterly crap at doing that. But just once I’d like to find a procedure that works smoothly without any hassle, where I didn’t have to feel I’d fought for it all. I doubt it will ever happen, but hey, I can dream.

I Quit

After two weeks of pure bureaucratic hassle with what seems like fuck all to show for it except higher stress levels, that’s it. They win. I’ve had enough of fighting everything every single inch of the way, of trying to chase up through layers of incompetence, of burning myself out trying to get things done. Fuck it all.

Grooming

Calling it grooming is a complete misnomer really, but it’s to do with haircuts. Close, but no cigar. Anyway, I finally got my hair cut today – it’s been about six or eight weeks since the last one (I confess, I don’t keep track all that well *Grin*) and it was getting ridiculously long (well, by my standards anyway).

Every time I get my hair cut, I find I’d forgotten how good it feels to have short hair. Strange how some memories last so long, and others don’t even appear to last a month.

RIP Concorde

Well, after flying since 1969, it looks like Concorde will stop flying in November. Various things have aided in the downfall including technical faults, crashes, and (inevitably, or so it seems) September 11th – but mainly it’s been down to people losing confidence in paying £7,000 for a return flight.

For me it’ll be a pity to no longer see Concorde flying after it’s taken off from Heathrow – of course, I haven’t seen that in a while anyway, as I don’t live in the area any more – but it’s still a firm memory from years gone past.

Unbelievable

Further to yesterday’s post, that selfsame Government agency (and no, Peter, it’s not the Inland Revenue – but I’m sure I’ll have to fight them at some point too) apparently is now taking five days to even open it’s post. Is it any surprise that documents get “lost” (or should that be “filed for later retrieval”?) all the time, if they’re so backlogged that it takes a working week for the useless fuckers to even get round to opening their mail?

Paranoid ?

A question. If you deal with a nameless government organisation who in the last three years have managed to lose seven relevant documents (at least one of which has the potential to cost me upwards of £1000 in fines) of fairly major importance, is it then paranoia or reasonable to wonder if the organisation has some sort of problem with me?

Surely seven lost documents is pushing way past the boundaries of coincidence, and forging it’s way headlong into conspiracy theories? Or is this sort of thing precisely the reason that the word coincidence is in the dictionary in the first place?

Weapons of Mass Invisibility

What a shock. El Presidente Blair is still certain that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. (Of course he is, the UK and US sold the bastard things to Iraq in the first place) None have actually been found yet, but that is because they’ve been so well hidden, not because Iraq got rid of them when they said they would.

However, it does make me wonder if it’s not another case like the SAS in Gibraltar, where the phrase “if they’re not carrying weapons when we shoot them, make sure they are when they’re found” seemed to be applicable.

That personal touch

After three attempts at promised callbacks from the bank, isn’t it amazing the effect that going in to the branch and seeing the people has? I’ve now got a new business account sorted, got the account numbers etc., and things are finally looking up on the financial side of life.

I wish it didn’t have to require a visit in order for them to get their finger out, life would be so much easier if people simply did what they promised they would – but then life would be simple, and I’d have less to piss and moan about. Swings and roundabouts, I guess.

Bureaucracy

Utterly crap day – going back to my normal habitat of fighting with banks becuasebecause they’re all inefficient cunts who seem to think they can be as slack as fark because their customers need them, and would never ever consider changing accounts because of shite service.

They should know that I’ll do exactly that, although sometimes it’s a pain in the bum, because they’re really all as bad as each other.

As promised

Yes, I finally got round to it. The page for the photos of chester is now done and sat happily in the photos section.

Who wanted to be a millionaire

Well, the people who wanted to cheat Who Wants To Be A Millionaire out of the top prize have been found guilty. They’ve also been fined between £10,000 and £15,000 each, along with court costs etc.

I’m not sure of how the fining thing works, because the case had already established that all the accused parties had debts already totally at least £20,000 each – so what do they do to pay off the rest? Have another go at a high-prize quiz-show?

Glastonbury Equipment

As a friend has just pointed out to me these are the perfect camping accessory for Glastonbury, and the multiple other music festivals this summer.

Getting out less

At long last, the first half of the second series of the West Wing came out on DVD today – I’ve already watched the first disc.

Yes, I need to get out more – but I’ve been doing that for the last month, so it was nice to have some down time…

Chester

Most of yesterday was consumed by a trip to Chester. First time I’d been there – and definitely not the last. Pictures will follow, when I’ve put the page together.

A bominable name

My favourite band of all time?

Why of course, it’s Bigfoot and the Groincrushers. Let’s get them into Google.

And another petard gets raised

On the same (sort of) subject as the post below, Microsoft has possibly been giving out dodgy copies of it’s own software. At a student conference, M$ gave out copies of Visual Studio .NET, clearly marked “Illegal without license” and no licenses. However, as this story shows, M$ don’t really know what’s happening yet. The tale is still ongoing, but should be fun to see how the M$ weasels get out of this one.

Hoisted by one’s own petard

What a joy. The Home Secretary’s attempts to rescind the citizenship of Sheikh Abu Hamza, the Islamic cleric with hooks instead of hands (which sounds like I’m being derogatory (and I am, in a way) but it’s the easiest way to recognise the name) has started to descend into a total farce.

The process has been started under the new (i.e. it came in last week) Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, which among other things allows a person with dual citizenship to be stripped of their UK citizenship if they are deemed to be “a hazard to national interests”. (Which sounds like a very American phrase, but that’s a slight tangent)

It’s now being alleged that Hamza hasn’t got citizenship anywhere else, as they’d previously thought, so stripping him of UK citizenship means he becomes stateless. Which conveniently happens to be a breach of the Human Rights Act, which was so roundly supported by the government that’s now fallen foul of it.

It seems to me that Hamza has put in far more research and preparation on this idea than the UK government has. And also means that the first case under the new Act is a total (to be blunt and non-political) balls-up. Hardly a surprise, but still very funny.

Fun on buses

This morning I got to play one of my favourite mind-games with people on the bus. For sheer comedy effect, it’s best to be done on a half empty bus, but any old time is suitable really.

All you have to do is get on the bus, and rather than sit down (regardless of the empty seats) stand near the front of the bus. It’s utterly funny to observe how many people will see one person standing, and then become utterly impervious to the empty seats, and also stand. It’s as though they suddenly become blinkered, and if one person is standing then there can’t be any available spaces.

The best punchline though – the one I managed to do today – is to get four people standing at the front, then wander off and sit down. If anyone else has been paying attention (and there’s normally at least one) then they tend to laugh, or at least smile, too.

We wanna get on, we wanna get on

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been working just outside Huddersfield, and getting the train from Manchester to Huddersfield. Every time the train has pulled up at the station, people have been trying to get on the train before anyone who’s trying to get off has managed to. So instead the people wanting to get on the train stand right in front of the doors. What’s the point? If you’re that eager to get on the fecking train, stand to the side of the doors, let the people who need to get out of the train do so, and then the way will be clear to get on.

But no – instead the people getting off the train are treated to cretinous muppets standing in the way, blocking the way out, and then receiving evil glares from these self-same fuckheads as thought they’re saying “I want to get on this train – why are you slowing me down by wanting to get off first?” I despair.

Websites and Banks

Spent last night filling in forms for a new company bank account (bureaucracy in one of it’s favourite environments) and shopping, so I’ve still had no time to build up some of the stuff on the new domain name. The ideas are there – I just haven’t had the time to get it all sorted. Maybe over the weekend, or next week. We’ll see.

Congested

The Government is trying to tell us that tolls and congestion charges are the only way to prevent traffic congestion – absolute bollocks. There are two things I can think of that would massively reduce the number of people in cars etc. (well, three – but I think people might object to a decent dose of bio-war) – the first would be to impose compulsory driving re-tests every five years, and the second would be to invest in a decent public transport system, rather than the shonky excuse that shouldn’t even really be called a system.

Sleepless

Why is it that I feel far more awake and conscious after one night of minimal sleep and another of no sleep at all than I do on the rare occasions when I’m sleeping properly?

I’m sure there’s something marketable in that concept – but hey ho.

The words “rip” and “off” spring to mind.

Australia’s Department of Communications, IT and the Arts has a new website. It cost AUS$4M (about £1.5m or US$2.4m) – takes forever to download, and could’ve been done on a home PC for about £500. Don’t you love to see how taxes get spent around the world? *Grin*

(Thanks to The Register for the link/story)

Email from Stagecoach

After Monday’s hassles with buses etc., where the fucker sailed right on past me (and about ten others), I complained in email to Stagecoach. And got a reply today…
01st April 2003

Stuart Roughley
Operations Manager

So – we’ll just have to see what happens next. *Grin*

Virgin trains

Nice to see it’s not just me who hates Virgin Trains. Anna has written an open letter to Richard Branson – and it’s spot-on.

Props

Has anyone got some matchsticks I can use to keep my eyes open today? It’d be much appreciated.

Anyway, the visit to the bank went quite smoothly, which has to be a first for this week. Looks like with luck I’ll have the necessary bank account opened by Tuesday (the joys of needing stuff to be sorted out that isn’t solely in Manchester) which will then make life a bit easier once stuff gets paid in there instead.

In the meantime, it’s just a bit of a nightmare, but there we go – sometimes we have to have nightmares in order to appreciate how smoothly things run normally.

Not for the faint-hearted

One of the real joys yesterday was that one of the two toilets in the office got blocked yesterday – and we had to email the landlords to get them to get someone out to fix it. Which of course involved having to take a photo. Not a fun task at the best of times, worse when it’s blocked and stinking. Think yourselves lucky I can’t take a compressed sample of the smell too. Guess who got the job?

Nasty image

I really hope I’m not the only one who came up with a vile image upon reading the headline “Missing British war reporter turns up in Jordan” – but common sense assumes they mean the country, not the “model”.

Not suitable for sensitive ears/eyes

Work today has consisted of building a set of dynamic newsletters – doesn’t sound like much ’til you try putting it in (as the fuckwit client wants) an Access “database”. God I loathe Access, it’s a total &*”!)ing *(&-*-@&$£ **((&^&ing hunk of shite.

Still, it’s all working now. And tomorrow I have to go and sort out a business account, so that the fucking cunting bastard bureaucrats in the agency’s accounts department can be happy to pay me. Twats.

Still, it’s been a better day than yesterday.

Interviewing technique

The Bastard Operator From Hell has a quiz in The Register about the best Interviewing Techniques. Amusing, in a geeky techy kind of manner – which would explain why I enjoyed reading it…

Circle line Party II

On a much lighter note, the Circle Line Party 2 was held recently in London. 600 people riding on a tube train round the circle line for two complete journeys, including disco balls, lights, DJs and dancers. And it looks like it was great fun.

April the First

Yes, yes, I’m sure that whatever the papers are doing for April Fool’s Day is very very funny indeed. I’m impressed. No really, I am.

However, I do find myself hoping that this story about Coalition forces being seen as villains in the Middle East “but that’ll change”, says David Blunkett is a huge pisstake. What did they expect? For all the Iraqis to simply turn round and go “Oh yes, thanks for invading our country, killing our (civilian) citizens as well as the soldiers, and for wanting to kill our leader. Would you like a nice cup of tea? Thanks so much for bombing the shit out of that city – it was a real eyesore, don’t you know.“???

Bush and Blair, you can admit it now, this war is just one very large unfunny (and fairly lethal) joke. The problem is, the only people looking like fools are yourselves.

Surreal – but somehow amusing

I’ve been very good on this, and not mentioned the Who Wants to be a Millionaire cheats court case, but the fact that the case got adjourned for a day because the jury were overcome by a fit of coughing was just too surreal to go without some form of mention.

Shit end to a shit day

Got back to Manchester, and just missed the bus. So I had to wait for the next one – and of course because of Stagecoach Bus‘s fucking shonky timetable after 7pm, they run every half hour. So the 7.30 finally arrives – and coasts straight on past, half empty and obviously driven by a complete arsehole.

I finally got home nearly an hour after arriving in Manchester – and the first thing that got done was a shitty email to Stagecoach. We’ll see how it goes with that one, anyway.

Getting Paid

Today’s definitely qualified as “one of those days”. I’m in the mood to murder some poxy fucking bureaucrat. And it’s all down to my favourite people in the world, the banking industry. (People who know me will somehow not find this a surprise)

For the last two weeks, I’ve been working for a web-design company over in Huddersfiled, on a contract organised by an agency who shall remain nameless. A week ago, I sent off the first invoice of this contract, which should have been paid into my bank account last Friday. It wasn’t. Because I’d worked for this agency before (about 18 months ago, give or take) they’d still got my bank details on file – unfortunately, they were for an account with a bank who shall remain equally nameless which I closed three months ago after a nine month battle. Oh fucking whoops.

Today, I’ve been told that they can’t pay the money into the correct account until they’ve got the money back from the bank they sent it to incorrectly. The general attitude seems to be “well, it’s not our problem – you’ll just have to wait”. The fact that they didn’t even pay me the correct amount is, of course, utterly irrelevant.

And along with that, I’ve been having to write webpages that will work off an Access backend – a total nightmare, to say the least. I’m a database geek, can’t deny it – but Access bears the same resemblance to a decent database as a dog-turd bears to a diamond.

Hopefully tomorrow will improve.

Considering a move

Following on from various comments, not least being today’s one from Peter about the growing shonkyness of Haloscan for commenting etc., I’m considering moving hosting over from EasySpace to 34sp.com (mainly on the recommendation of Pat) over the next couple of weeks. Who knows, I might even go the whole hog and consider cursing Moveable Type.

In all honesty, right now it’s going to depend on a couple of factors. 1) Having some spare time. 2) Getting paid. After that, it’ll all happen, and hopefully it’ll be a smooth process. Ha. Who am I trying to kid?

Children and contraceptives

I’m turning into another Green Fairy. (which won’t surprise anyone who knows me) The Grauniad is reporting today that the Green Party has launched it’s new policy on abortion and sex education. Part of this policy is to give out free contraception (A Good Thing) and improved sex education (also A Good Thing) to children of school age. Considering the Marie Stopes report last week that children are having sex from the age of 11 now, I can’t help but think that the provision of contraception and better education are an improvement on the current situation where they can’t obtain medical contraception (such as the Pill etc.) without their parent’s permission/knowledge until they’re sixteen.

As for better sex education, well, anything that means they don’t have to keep writing to Just 17 or whatever, saying “I gave my boyfriend a blowjob, can I get pregnant?” has to be an improvement.

The phrase that Green Fairy will froth at though (my prediction for the day) is this one : “Improved support should also be given to women on low incomes, so they were not driven to terminate pregnancies for financial reasons, they said.“. It seems to be saying “hey, it’s OK to have loads of kids even if you can’t afford it”, which is just an extrapolation of the current attitude, involving “have more kids and you can claim more benefit”. Maybe that’s just my perspective on it though.

Weekend

Well, there wasn’t much updating getting done over the weekend, due to an invasion by the parents. Nothing too bad – having seen them last back in November, and quarterly visitations are OK in the grand scheme of things. It’s a year now since my father had his heart attack, and he’s doing really well after it, which is always a good thing to see.

Anyway – Saturday involved a trip to Manchester Airport to drop off my brother so he could go off for a week’s ski-ing. Not that he knew exactly where he was headed (“it’s either Grenoble or Lyon, depending on what happens“) or whether he’d meet the people he intended to meet once over there. It’s been that kind of level of organisation – which reassures me that it’s a family trait, not just me. Following a visit to a pub while working out where to go next, a visit to the Whitworth art gallery, and then an intention to visit Werneth Low park – which was doomed from the start due to piss-poor navigation on both my part and then my mother’s. Being fairly well lost (although still knowing we could get back dead easy) resulted in a trip around a fair amount of South Manchester, including Cheadle Hulme, Wilmslow, Handforth Dean and several others.

Finally got back, and then went out for a meal in the city centre on Saturday night – very pleasant.

And now they’ve gone, and the house is back to being mine ’til next weekend, when I’ve got more friends staying…

People are strange

Looking through yesterday’s logfiles (So I’m a geek, and pay attention… *Grin*) it looks like some of the Google searches that found d4d were – how shall I put this? – slightly out of the ordinary. (Hey, nice understatement there, lyle).

I’m not sure which is worse – that I come up #1 on this search, or that someone typed it all in.all i have wanted is simply to get back to the normality of things, if there is such a normality. then i pause to think, is the normality of things really so great? when every day of my life is wasted…

And then I spotted this one : Can you help me find some things on farts? Looks like I’m #6 on that one. Then we find the epic mis-spelling of Kick Poxing, for which yours truly is sat happily at #3.

And finally, the truth is obviously out there. a Yahoo search on I hate ashton-under-lyne brings up d4d at #6. I can live with that.

War thought

I’ve been trying to avoid blethering on about the war for the most part, because many other people are doing it far better than I can – but the more I see stories about the US and UK getting ready for a long war rrather than the short hyper-war they bollocksed on about beforehand the more I wonder if this isn’t going to be the Vietnam of the ’00s.

Lesser of evils

I’m not sure what’s scarier about this story about many children losing their virginity at the age of 11 or so – whether it’s that sex seems to rear it’s head earlier and earlier, or the stunning lack of knowledge on the part of those interviewed.

More than 50 percent “didn’t know that wearing condoms can prevent HIV“, and 10 percent “think that HIV can be passed on via kissing“. Looks like there’s still a long way to go on the education front then.

Unlucky? I think not

And in the news today, Brighton’s West Pier is burning. In the last six months this pier has had two collapses, and is now burning away merrily. Anyone would think it had some enemies or something…

Recorded Delivery

While I was at work yesterday, I got a card through the door from Royal Mail saying that they’d tried to deliver a package, no-one had been there to sign for it, so I’d have to get it from the sorting office. Bit of a bummer, but no worries – I can do it on the way in to work.

So today, I get down to the sorting office, and sign for the – envelope? Hang on, that’s not what I was expecting – if anything, it was going to be a DVD or two. But an envelope? What the feck?

Upon opening it (I was curious, OK?) it turns out to be a ticket for a concert I’m seeing. Nothing expensive – the ticket’s face value is only six quid. I paid £7ish for it from TicketMaster, I think, what with the dodgy booking fee shite we all know and love. Tet it’s cost half that face value to send it out recorded delivery – weird.

Car Junk

For some reason I was obviously slightly more conscious than usual this morning, so on the way into the city, I was looking out of the bus window, and a couple of things struck me. (Not literally – we’re talking about ideas, not physical objects)

First of all – why do so many people have so much junk in their cars? As they went past, I could see cuddly toys, fluffy things, nodding cows (Quite cool cows, but all the same), what can only be described as wicker-ware, ornaments, gadgets and general crap of all varieties/sizes/breeds. Why? All it seems to do is block up the windows and so on, and become a distracting influence. Then again, people seem to do the same thing to their desks at work, “personalising” their space with toys and so on – but when everyone does it (Or even the majority do it) then it becomes commonplace, and hardly personalised at all. I love the way expressions of individuality all blend into one homogenised object, normally known as “clutter”.

And Second – what’s the point of having “Baby on Board” (Or, as I saw today, a “Little Person on Board” one) stickers on windows? I always thought they were initially there in case of an emergency, to help rescue workers etc. know if there were more than one person in a car. But now they seem to be pretty ubiquitous – plus the search techniques and technology is far better now anyway.

So what’s the point of them? The car I saw today with one of these stickers on it had a baby seat in, but there wasn’t even a child in there – so the bloody thing wasn’t even on board. Is it just an advertisement, a statement of “Yes, I’m a parent – aren’t you pleased for me?” broody mawkishness? Is it just something to say “Yes, I’ve had sex at some point in my life”?

Seriously – what’s the point of these things?

For Fucks Sake

First of all, i should point out that I don’t drive. Not banned, not disqualified from driving – it’s just one of those things I never got round to. I’d like to get it sorted this year, because I’ve been made to realise that it would make life easier in certain areas.

Because of this, I notice a piece in the Guardian that’s detailing how the UK driving test is about to get harder. As of 1st September, as well as everything else, it’s also now going to require some knowledge of things like how to change the oil, check tyre pressures and so on.

I can sort of see the point in this – but not by much. OK, it can be useful to know how to check the oil and so on, but surely a far more life-threatening occurrence (not just for the driver, but for anyone in the vicinity) is a car skidding on ice/oil/any other shit on the roads? Yet that’s not an integral part of the test – most people never learn how to deal with skids until they’re in one, at which point it’s too late.

Personally, I think that a lot of this has to do with the Government’s pledge to get more people off the roads and using public transport. Unfortunately, as with so many Governmental directives, it’s completely arse-about-face. Yes, training people to be better drivers is A Good Thing. However, it doesn’t get people off the roads. A far better plan for getting people off the roads would be a re-test every five years that had to be passed in order to keep driving. Far too many people simply pass their driving tests, then decide they need never learn another thing about driving – the results of which are visible on every road in the country.

Anna’s Lists

Anna says she was sober when she came up with a list of differences between roses and spoons. I’m not so sure…

40,000 and counting

Blimey – nearly didn’t spot that one. It turns out that yesterday, d4d had it’s 40,000th page impression. Not bad for six months in existence. Well, it made me smile, anyway.

My head hurts

Via Slashdot, I was just reading about a lens that improves the resolution of an image. The concept of this makes my head hurt. I love this sort of thing. the new discoveries, theories and inventions – but sometimes they’re just so amazingly counter-intuitive that my brain might as well sit down and say “Huh?”

I’m a bad person

Well, following on from yesterday’s post about the domain name idea, all I can say is I’m a bad, bad person. And once it’s confirmed, and the webspace is online, I’ll have to find something to put there. Ideas abound – but bringing them through to reality may be a different matter.

Meanwhile, in a mountain range

And while all attention is on Iraq and America, Pakistan and India go back to “testing” nuclear-capable missiles.

But it’s OK, these nukes aren’t Weapons of Mass Destruction, because everyone’s signed the nuclear treaties, and bought all their stocks from authorised suppliers. Unlike Iraq, who’ve bought from pretty much anyone, including most of the authorised suppliers…

War is business

I do love seeing the excuses that companies churn out when they’re bringing forwards job cuts and so on. Today (in what I suspect will be the first of many) BA announced they were cutting their number of flights, oh, and accelerating their redundancy programme for 3000 people.

Their excuse? “People are travelling less because of the war” So, absolutely fuck all to do with the extortionate prices BA charge then.

Two years ago, everyone and their dog used September 11th as an excuse for fiscal hardships. BA was one of the first on the bandwagon then too – but think about it, did anyone you knew actually decide not to fly because of September 11? Hell, do you know anyone who knows anyone who stopped flying because of it? I certainly don’t, and neither do any of the people I’ve asked about it.

Privacy vs. Big Brother

In a related thing to the one below, I also read that Privacy International released its winner’s list for the UK’s Big Brother 2003 Awards. My personal favourite is the “Dog Poo on a Stick” award, given to the person they most wanted to not even give a gold-plated award to. Step forward, David Blunkett.

Actually, the entire thing makes for an interesting read – I think personal privacy is going to be one of the absolutely huge political issues over the next five to ten years.

Don’t Tell Them Your Name, Pike

Considering how much the US has been bollocksing on about Iraq breaching the Geneva Convention and yadda yadda yadda, I found it particularly interesting to see that today the US Department of “Justice” has ruled the FBI don’t need to make stringent checks on the truth/accuracy of the data they hold on people.

So, along with prisoners kept in Guantanamo Bay not being allowed US justice rights (the last I heard on this one is that “it doesn’t matter about the Geneva convention, these people are terrorists, not POWs” – don’t you just love semantics?) it looks like the US is trying to turn itself into a dictatorship of its own.

Getting Out More

For some reason, my social life has exploded this year. In a good way – more like a fun firework than a naffing large landmine. I’ve just looked through the diary – my next free weekend is Easter. After that, June’s looking like it’s got a gap. Maybe.

In the meantime, how to convert a Nintendo game system into a PC is good for a chuckle – although it is geeky in the extreme (but still not as geeky as the Teddy Borg). Ah well.

VSTL

Initially it was written as a quick reply to this post of Gerts, but it just had to be written about here too.

I’ve just spent an hour on a packed train with one woman’s arse pretty much right in my face. Some people would say that’s not such a bad deal – in some circumstances I might even be prompted to agree with them. However, the arse in question today was encased in black knickers, wrapped in skintight white leggings. The pleasantness quotient suddenly starts to fall, doesn’t it?

And then it actually achieves negativity – because not only was this a horror of a backside wrapped in Lycra/nylon mix, but it had the ultimate in Visible Lines – the infamous Visible Sanitary Towel Line. It really wasn’t a good train journey.

What a shock

Nice to see the Grauniad reporting that Geoffrey Robinson, the Paymaster General, has had the charges dropped against him with regard to cocaine found in his car. Hardly a surprise, I suppose – it’s not the first time that police have conveniently “failed to find relevant evidence” linking Robinson to the cocaine – other than it bveing in his car, of course.

Ah well. Such are the vagaries of power and politics, eh?

Temptation

Every so often an idea for a new site/domain-name comes into my head – and then I check it and the domain actually exists and is available. I’ve no idea what content I’d put on it, but the name appeals to me enough that I really want to own it. That’s how the name “destruction for dummies” came about (and yes, I’m still waiting for the lawyers to get hold of me, particularly considering something else I read yesterday) as well as a couple of others.

I’m in that situation again at the moment. A conversation last night brought up (as a completely spur-of-the-moment thing) an idea – I’ve checked it, and it’s available. So I’m in that quandary moment right now – thinking “do I? don’t I?” It’s exceptionally tempting – but I’ve no idea what I’d do with it (yet).

And I just know that the Daily Mail would love it as a domain. For now, that’s the only clue you’re getting. *Grin*

Normal service restored

Yes, I’m back on form – regardless of feeling like I’ve been repeatedly smacked in the mouth with a hammer. And with luck that’s the last I’ll say on the subject for a while.

Many thanks to the people who commented below – the ideas re chocolate mousse and MullerRice were well received. *Grin* (And if you don’t know what I’m on about, just read the bloody comments I also found that doing a semi-casserole of vegetables and chicken, accompanied by cous-cous ( which for some reason my brain always gets mixed up with glis-glis, which is edible dormouse) also works very well on the “no real need to chew hard” front.

Dental hysteria

At 9am today, I’m going to be in the dentists, starting off on the work that needs doing. Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to it at all. However, my mind’s set on the end result, not the process for getting there – which seems like a smart way to do things.

But what on earth posessed me to make a ninety minute appointment for 9am on a Monday? I wish I knew. Still, I suppose the week won’t be able to get much worse after having this as a starting point.

Redesigns (again) and things

Anna is now out of the gutter, and instead looking into the clouds (with minor apologies to Oscar Wilde) – and very nice it looks too. She’s also the “token woman” on Mike‘s next project…

Gadgets

Also in the list of purchases yesterday was a new little cheap digital camera – not bad for only £20. It’s no piece of high-res camera technology, but it’ll do nicely for snapshots – and it’s a lot easier to carry and use than the £500 thing I normally use.

Geneva convention

Following on with war-related concepts, Rumsfeld today has been bleating on about how showing American POWs on Iraqi TV is against the Geneva convention. And fair enough, it probably is.

What it looks like he’s forgotten though is that (to my knowledge) America never even signed the Geneva convention, and I’m about 95% sure that Iraq failed to do so either. Which makes it all a bit of a moot point really. Of course I could be wrong.

But considering that America has recently decided that it’s OK to hold POWs at Guantanamo Bay (technically US soil in Cuba) because they’re actually not subject to the US Bill of Rights, it’s just another fine example of “do as we say, not as we do”.

Geeky piss-take

I’ve just had a conversation with another website owner where she was saying she’d been trying to put a proper multiplication sign (i.e. an “x”) instead of the computer notation for it ( i.e. a “*”).

It didn’t take much to point out that it was simple to use the keyboard “x” for this notation.

Own Goals

Following on from the Tornado jet getting shot down by ‘friendly fire’, the BBC has a feature on How it can happen. Personally (if slightly xenophobically) I’d say that it’s mainly caused by fighting on the same side as the Americans – they seem to be far more lethal to their bloody allies than to their enemies.

ADDED – I knew I’d seen something else about friendly fire and American “marksmanship” – it’s here at Scaryduck’s special archive site.

The drugs don’t work

Looking through the Grauniad’s website, there’s an interesting piece from today’s Observer about drug-testing at work, as well as some of the outcomes that positive tests can have.

Writer’s Blog

Apologies for the appalling pun, but I’d just like to say that I’m really chuffed at having discovered the blog of Chaz Brenchley, an author I’ve been impressed with for years.

New addition

As part of today’s shopping mission, Sam bought me a new moose to join the collection. Bizarrely, it’s (I haven’t decided whether it’s male or female yet – so far there’s only one that’s definitely female in the collection) actually a cover for a hot-water bottle, and yes, I’m using the loop to hang it from a picture-nail in the wall. Anyway, the problem is – I’ve no idea what to call it. Any suggestions will be gratefully received/considered. UPDATE – I should point out that, as with other members of the collection, all names should be a piss-poor pun involving the word “Moose”. Because this one is a hot-water-bottle holder, I’ve kind of ended up stuck with a name from Monsters Inc – but calling him Watter Moose would be sad. I need inspiration. And I absolutely refuse to stick with Boots’ own idea (from the label) of “Roger the Moose”. UPDATE 2 – Oh, and Peter, Sam is a friend – it was her and her daughter I went to see Avril Lavigne with on Friday. But yes, I should’ve been more diligent in my reporting. *Makes sound of very loud raspberry being blown* (which is in no way slang, nor is it defamatory, although it definitely sounds better in my head)

Avril Lavigne – Manchester Apollo

Well, I’d have written this earlier today (i.e. around moidnight or 1am) but for various reasons I didn’t.Hey Ho.

I have to say, I love the Apollo as a venue, one of the best features is that it’s got an angled floor, which makes it dead easy for shorter people to see over the tops of the lanky gits who always get in the way. Also, the people who work for venue security are some of the best in the city – tonight they were spraying water over the people in the crowd at the front to cool them down, helping kids out of the crush as necessary, walking through making sure everyone had the best possible time at the concert. If there could be a group award, an honours list for venues or areas, then the people in security at the Apollo should be first in the queue to receive one.

As for the concert, well – hard to describe really. Technically, it was an absolute blinder – lighting, sound balance, and music were all spot on. In fact, it was so close to perfect, for me it was almost like listening to a CD. And that was where the problem lay – I didn’t feel there was any real passion – it was just a recital of the songs, it could’ve been done in a studio. When I think of the way Pink reacted to the crowd – a crowd that was just as adoring and into the music and experience as the crowd tonight were – there was just no similarity in the reactions.

So in many ways it was a disappointment – technically perfect, and with no soul at all. There were moments of brilliance – the cover of Green Day’s “Basketcase” was superb, Complicated was a tour de force and it did pick up after that, for all of the three songs that remained. The set was amazingly short too – an hour and five minutes, including the encore. It was a good gig – just lacking in that certain something, that stage presence that’s the real sign of someone who gigs because they love it, rather than just wanting to do it as a commercial venture.

Arseing Bollocks

Well, what a complete tosspot. I’ve got tickets for (among others) both Peter Gabriel and Erasure concerts. And when I opened the diary to write them all down, they’re both on the same fucking day. Bugger.

How do they know?

Looking at the Guardian, I’m told tonight will be “one of the biggest nights of the war“. Or, as it’s known in less well informed circles “the third night of the war” – so how the fuck do they know it’ll be one of the biggest?

And just what makes it a “big night”? Are they persuading the sun to stay down for a bit longer, so it’s a nice long night? Or is it just going to be darker than the others?

Nominations

As normal when my brain is in entirely different places to normal (about which more later/tomorrow/soon), I knew I’d forgotten to mention something. D4D’s been nominated for anti-Bloggies by Kristen. Luckily it’s about as serious as an extremely flippant thing, but it made me smile, so that’s what makes it all worthwhile.

However, it does mean the tagline’s going to change sometime soon.

In the meantime though, I’m off to see Avril Lavigne – and I’ve just realised my camera’s batteries are dead, so no pics tonight. Ah well.

Thoughts

While travelling to work on the bus this morning, for a moment there was a van beside me with the sign “No tools left in this van overnight” on it.

So what I was wondering was : do these vans still get broken into, just on the offchance that the owner of the van is lazy and/or lying? Or do the little scrots just believe the sign and decide it’s not worth the hassle?

Protests

The Guardian today is full of stuff about anti-war protests – and no bad thing either. I’ve been caught up in two of them now, with people chaining themselves to train tracks and railings, and laying down in the middle of busy roads etc. – it’s a pity I still believe it’ll do fuck all, but there we go.

Seeing the way Bush and Blair were attacking at something like hyperspeed, I honestly can’t believe that there was ever any intention not to go to war.

And as for the soldiers who’ve died in a helicopter accident, well, some things never change – the Chinook and it’s brethren continue to kill more soldiers than the Iraqis. Friendly Fire indeed.

Rebuttal of the Bandwidth Thief

Just a quick thanks to LooeyB who did take the image off (or used it from his owwn webspace, not sure which) and was very apologetic.

Thanks. :¬D

Bandwidth thief

Over the last couple of days, I’d noticed a large number of hits coming from a site called Vodatones, or more accurately from a user of Vodatones called LooeyB. Turns out he’s linked to my logo pic (the little pointing man) directly, and used it as his avatar/image on this chat/message board.

I’ve emailed him today to ask him to stop. We’ll just have to see what happens after that.

Sleep plans interrupted – Part 2

Also, can anyone tell me the relevance of dreaming about shopping in a packed-out Tesco (or any other supermarket) and continually colliding with some old bastard (that’s not a pejorative, just a description – he was old, and he was a bastard) who was screaming on and on about “If they won’t get out the way nicely, just ram them ’til they’re out the way!“?

Personally, I’ve no idea what it’s about – but it certainly was weird enough to be noteworthy.

Sleep plans interrupted – Part 1

Considering how shattered and exhausted I was yesterday, it’s no surprise that I managed to crash out early (for me) last night, and actually get some sleep.

However, the semi-conscious plan to sleep right through ’til the alarm went off was utterly keffed by the sounds of police “knocking” on the door of the house next door with an FBH at 5am. I have no idea what they were after, but I hope at least one of them dropped the FBH on his foot.

Of course, they also then had to get someone out to “secure” the property again – also known as “making a fucking load of noise with drills and hammers at 6 in the morning”. And then people wonder why I’m not a great fan of the police.

Shock departure

Another one joins the “off on hiatus” list – I’ve just been over to Naked Blog and it’s got a message saying “We’re gone.”. I hope it’s a short-term thing, but whichever way it goes, my best wishes and hopes for the future still go out to Peter.

CORRECTION – Hmmm – strange. Looks like Naked Blog’s back now – not quite sure what happened. I should’ve done a screen grab or something. (Ah the joys of hindsight)

Still, the best wishes and hopes are already on their way, so the sentiment stays the same. *Grin*

Chuff

Well, so much for the rebellion of MPs then. Unsurprisingly, they put up a minor show of disagreement, then bowed under. No surprises, obviously no real contact with the people who don’t want war, and it’s all just political business as usual.

Cunts.

Now there’s a thing

Nice to see that no matter what happens, politicians still stay the same. After all the press and media bobbins last week about her, Clare Short is now saying she won’t leave the government – a U-turn which really is remarkable only for the swiftness with which it was executed.

Still – what would the world be coming to if politicians actually did what they said they would?

Sorry

No updates yesterday for a variety of reasons, but really coming down to “not in the mood”.

Normal service will be resumed ASAP.

Snoozy

Can I just say that working on the ins and outs of an ASP Content Management System on two hours sleep really isn’t much fun.

And yes, I’m using the wonderful British habit of stating the fecking obvious…

Quick, Easy, Nutritious

When you get home at nearly half past ten, having had naff all to eat since noon, what’s the best thing to go for?

Fish finger sandwiches

God, I feel almost human again.

Now that’s what I call comic relief

Sometimes, some things are just too sublime for words. Anthea Turner and her partner getting robbed of £40,000 while watching Comic Relief is one of the better ones. Talk about ironic…

Major Arcana Blues

As most of the regular readers will be aware, I do tarot readings on occasions, both for myself and for others. One thing I try to avoid doing with it is readings for very close friends, for people where I know them well and can be seen as “tailoring” readings to suit what I know they want. However sometimes I still do the reading, but make sure that the friend knows I’ll be reading from the cards, not the knowledge.

Doing a reading today for one of my closest friends was one of the hardest readings I’ve ever had to do. Everything about it related to things I knew – and trying to see a clear meaning through it, trying to divorce the level of knowledge from what the cards were telling me – and failing, because they were so parallel. For the first time ever, it left me with a card reading that I didn’t want to interpret honestly, because of what it portrayed. The outcome was one that involved struggle, major life changes, and it won’t be easy – and I truly didn’t want to say about it.

In the end I did do the reading honestly, going through it all to the best of my abilities. It wouldn’t have been fair to lie or to avoid parts of the reading, regardless of the extra information I had in my possession – but I hated doing so on a number of levels, not least just because of the depths of work and struggle that the reading represented.

It won’t stop me from doing readings – as it turned out, there’ve been other readings that have said much the same, so rather than being the bearer of news, my role was more as a confirmer of it. But it’s a long time since I’ve been that affected by a reading – and in many ways I hope it’s a long time until I’m affected at that level by another one.

17.50 from Scrote-ville

*Written on the laptop
Travelling back home, I’m on the train, and it seems to be filled with mouthy fuckwits. I must be getting older, or something.

With regard to the foursome sitting on the table opposite mine, I simply don’t give a stuff about the whys and wherefores of your car’s breaking down on the A47, which is why you’re now going home on the train. The fact you’ve spent the last thirty minutes yelling down your mobile phone to your mother about how it’s “embarassing” to not have been rung back, how if it had been Laura she’d have been called back, and whether they should have still gone out for the meal or not is all utterly irrelevant. I find it hard to believe you’re not utterly embarassed at the display you’re making, and the way your children appear to have free reign to fight each other while your idiot partner does fuck all to help – for me all of those things would be perceived as embarassing, but then again, I probably wouldn’t be broadcasting it all at a level that can be heard by at least two thirds of the occupants of the carriage.

As for the bunch of pubescent schoolgirls, squealing and giggling at what appears to be their first trip away from home (“Yes, mummy, I’ll call you when we get there. Yes Daddy, I’ll be good”) I’m already considering compulsory ballgags for all travelling groups of under-16s unaccompanied by an adult. Please God, you’re only travelling one stop. It’s not often I consider intense prayer as a method of alleviating problems, but in this case I’m prepared to make an exception.

However, for comic effect, I’ve been sat opposite a besuited educator. I can tell he’s involved in education because of the Music exams he’s marking – Sherlock Holmes would be proud. He’s sighing and rolling his eyes, either at the noise from the aformentioned groups, or at some of the items he’s marking. The real joy comes when someone else’s mobile phone rings close by, with it’s stylised Rolf Harris stylophone rendition of Toccata and Fugue. (the Nokia remix) On journeys like this, you get your laughs where you find them.

There are several other groups worthy of mention, but for now I’ll be good/restrained. This piece may be upgraded and/or edited if the journey gets worse, but for now I’m going to simply allow myself to journey away with the Talahassee album by the Mountain Goats. I am truly thankful for the joys of MP3.

Dante may have summed up the Inferno for the Middle Ages with it’s multiple levels of Hell, but he had absolutely no idea of the purgatory that is a Central Trains service on a Sunday evening.

Mini-hiatus

And now a probable small pause in normal service – I’m off seeing friends in Cambridge. Things may be added, but don’t hold your breath. Back on Sunday.

Troubled Comments

Further to yesterday’s post regarding Mike‘s project to get more than 234 comments on one post before midnight tonight, he’s well and truly blown the target out of the water already. When I looked just now there were 265, and the comment system he uses (YACCS) is limited to 250, so it’s deleting some of the first comments to make room for the newer ones. (*mumble*Sack of shit*/mumble*)

Anyway, early congratulations to mike, even though it’s cost him £100, and it’s also cost Badge over at Wafflybollox the same amount (that’ll teach him to not believe) – all proceeds going to Comic Relief.

Comic Relief

On a slight tangent, is it wise to have Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking door-to-door on Comic Relief day?

And really, is it fair to ask “do you know who we represent?”? I mean, dressed all in black, carrying bibles, I just had to ask if they were Morons Mormons. Ah well, it gave me a laugh.

Health drinks

And can I just say that yes, I know it’s a knee-jerk reaction, but the concept of marketing urine as a health drink is really quite revolting. Most things like that really don’t bother me, the entire “I won’t eat that, even though I’ve never tried it, because I know don’t think I’ll like it” is so not me. (Well, except for octopus tentacles. *shudder* If they were battered, a la calamari then I probably could, but just out there in the open? Sorry, vision takes over from taste at that point) But drinking urine because it’s “healthy” goes past the line for me.

OK, when it comes to health/energy drinks, Purdey’s is pretty similar to piss in both taste and appearance, but at least it’s not actually piss. (I hope)

Relevant days

In the American form of date notation, today is 3.14. In the geek community, it’s known as Pi day (as in π, not as in Weebl and Bob(still a favourite cartoon of mine, and a perfect use for Flash)). Depending on the way you wrote down the time and date, 1:59:26 this morning was the most π moment of the year.

Sad, isn’t it?

Renewable energy

OK, I forgot to say anything about this yesterday, although I did intend to. On the local news around here yesterday, there was a story that an offshore wind-farm has been approved just offshore from Barrow, in Cumbria. This application has been through all kinds of bureaucratic hoops because of the NIMBY cunts who were complaining about it obstructing their views or whatever.

Anyway, the application has been approved, and so far as I’m concerned, it’s about bloody time. As this page shows it’s not even like the wind-farms would be interfering with people’s sightlines – for the most part they’re over the horizon for anyone standing on the beach/seafront.

For myself, I love the sight of wind-farms, and most of the other renewable sources of energy. There are a couple of windfarms already near (well, semi-near) me, and I find the sight of these creations to be incredibly uplifting. No idea why, but there we go.

235 comments, or the cat gets it

Over at Troubled Diva, Mike is doing his own thing for Comic Relief. He wants to get a post with the most comments on it, and if the target of (hard to believe, but true all the same) 235 then he’ll pledge £100 to Comic Relief.

Personally, my day of Comic Relief will be spent on trains – not so much Comic Relief as “Arrrrrrgh! Get me off this fucking train!”. Good luck ot Mike in his mission…

Questioning thoughts

According to various news sources, there’s a Home Office White Paper considering with-holding housing benefit to noisy tenants. Now OK, it’s a plan, I suppose – but one thing occurred to me – what happens if a tenant is someone who’s employed, yet is still an unreasonable neighbour, or whatever?

Surely if the punishment scheme is going to involve with-holding benefits, then a tenant who’s not on benefit is going to be laughing?

It appears to me that both government and media are obsessed with the people on benefits, and forget that not every tenant is on benefits. Maybe they are in the minority (I’ve experienced it personally, that’s not some media-based bias – when I was a council tenant, I was the only tenant on my street with a job, and by some weird coincidence I was also the only one without a satellite dish on the house) but they still exist.

Renaming frenzy

Nice to see that the Americans are still completely insane when it comes to things about patriotism, and thinking/believing/knowing they’re in the right etc. etc.

The BBC is today reporting that because of France’s promise to veto any resolution for war with Iraq, America is now stopping use of the word “French” – the ubiquitous “French Fry” is now – wait for it – a “Freedom Fry” (words fail me at this point, I’m afraid – I have a nagging suspicion that Green Fairy will sum it up far more succinctly, and with less use of swearwords) and “French Toast” will become “freedom toast”.

Basically, it’s all just more American reactionary hypocritical bollocks, but sometimes it’s just amazing the sort of shit they’ll come up with. I do love the quote within the story of “I don’t think we have to retaliate against France. They have isolated themselves. They have resigned from any responsibility for the war on terror.” – which seems to sum it all up from the American perspective.

The best sort of copper

Had to laugh at the mental image of police in Warwickshire holding a shoplifting spree to highlight to shops how easy it was to do. Shop managers are “reviewing their security policies”.

My personal favourite was the fact they managed to get away with a giant teddy-bear worth over £100. Sometimes the mind just boggles. Then again, I also know that one of the best ways to steal stuff is to simply walk out looking like it’s something you’ve already purchased – if you have the confidence to do it without looking all shifty as if you expect to get caught, most shop assistants simply assume it’s yours in the first place.

Thomas the crashed engine

At risk of jumping on the bandwagon after Gert and Graybo, I really can’t believe that there’s a psychologist who thinks Thomas the Tank Engine is putting children off travelling by train. He thinks that because there are so many accidents in the programmes/books, children expect the same thing to happen in reality.

Now, I’m no parent, but in my experience, if kids thought there was a real possibility of an accident, they’d be all for travelling by train. Also, when I saw the BBC TV news story about it, all the children asked replied that they weren’t scared of trains because of the Thomas stories. Which makes it pretty much a complete non-story really. *Grin* And at the end of the day, there’s a major difference between Thomas and real trains – which I suspect the person who came up with this theory may have failed to notice – in that real trains don’t have bloody great faces on the front of them, and nor do they have Ringo fucking Starr narrating the announcements. (Although that might actually make it more fun on occasion)

Dresscode Sexism

I know I’ve been a bit evangelical about this one, but I’m utterly overjoyed to see that a tribunal has agreed that the insistence on men wearing “business dress” (shirt and tie) while women can wear pretty much anything is a sexist policy. A “civil servant” in Stockport accused the Jobcentree he worked in of being sexist, they disciplined him, he took them to tribunal with the support of his union. They’re now saying there’s another 40-odd cases lined up.

Hopefully we’ll end up with a far more sane scheme before long – it’s been waiting to happen for far too long.