Chicken
Posted: Fri 9 February, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel 2 Comments »So, did I go to Brixton last night to see Massive Attack?
No, I didn’t.
I can’t deny it, I chickened out. Instead, I just ended up going home, and curling up with a laptop and a website that needed some work. Not the most productive, and definitely not as much fun as seeing Massive Attack would’ve almost certainly been.
But I gave up. I looked at the road maps, and the traffic reports, then at where I needed to go, and combined it with my usual cynical attitude towards people, and figured I couldn’t be arsed.
Mind you, looking at the roads this morning, and the fact there were three or four abandoned (i.e. had slid/skidded off the road) cars this morning on the bit I’d have been driving on at roughly 1am, I don’t think I was being too stupid to figure it was just not worth the hassle.
Self-Promotion – revisited
Posted: Fri 9 February, 2007 Filed under: General 3 Comments »A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about starting to do more work to promote my own stuff, and I’m pleased to say that it’s all going quite well at the moment.
I’ve been accepted in to the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) and my UK Webdesigners Association (UKWDA) profile has been updated, my Linked In network is slowly growing, and the portfolio website is beginning to look pretty good (in my own humble opinion, of course) although I’m not going to link to it just yet, as there’s some basic stuff that needs to be reconsidered/redone before it goes live. I’ve also hoyed out some letters to various places in order to see whether I can get permission to do photos’n’stuff at them
I do, however, still find that this is the thing I hate the most. Hard as it may sometimes be to believe, I’m really not good at just standing up and saying “Me? I’m bloody great, I am”. It’s still extremely rare to hear (see, read, whatever) me saying something like that, although I’m kind of getting better at it. Gradually.
Plotting
Posted: Thu 8 February, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, News Leave a comment »I don’t know if it’s just me that finds this amusing, but there’s a certain juxtaposition in the media at the moment that makes me smile.
In Box One, we have this story, about an alleged ‘plot’ in the UK to kidnap a Muslim member of the UK armed forces, and behead him, a la the Iraq kidnappings of Ken Bigley, et al.
In Box Two, we have this, where UK police are warning people to be on the alert for suspect packages being sent in the mail.
So – we have one ‘terrorism’ plot, which could’ve been lifted from pretty much any Tom Clancy type thriller, that was detected before it even (supposedly) happened, and the media says “Oh, that’s terrible, good old security forces”. We have another ‘terrorism’ scheme – this time which is already happening, and which is harming people – and the police haven’t got a bloody clue who, where, when, why, how, or whatever. Yet the media stays quiet, rather than asking “Eh? How’s that happened?”.
In short, yet again I’m being brought to the conclusion that these alleged plots are an utter, utter load of old bollocks, custom-designed to keep people scared.
Automatic
Posted: Thu 8 February, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Travel 3 Comments »Oh God, this is going to be interesting.
While I’m still undecided about London tonight, I’ve collected the car I’d booked from Avis for the journey. Well, I’d booked it, and it’s paid for, so bugger it, might as well use it.
And what’ve they given me? An automatic. Never driven one before. Ever. So – this should be fun!
Snowed
Posted: Thu 8 February, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts 1 Comment »So, it was supposed to snow heavily last night. Only when we woke up this morning, not even a flake of the white stuff. Which is fine.
Of course, by the time I got to Cambridge, there’s maybe (optimistically) two centimetres of it laying around, and so things are starting to go tits up. It truly scares me how many people can’t drive in the stuff – even on fairly clear, if soggy/slushy/mushy roads, I’ve already seen three cars slide to a stop. And it really isn’t that dodgy.
Then again, most people appear to be unable to walk in the stuff either. Just on the walk from the station, there were countless people either slipping and sliding along, or taking little tiny baby steps in order to keep their balance. Maybe I’m missing something – OK, I didn’t walk at quite my normal speed, but at the same time I didn’t have any problems with loss of traction, and was fine to overtake the massive majority of people.
What does concern me, though, is tonight. I’m supposed to be going in to London to see Massive Attack at Brixton Academy. The car’s booked, and everything’s in place – I’ve even brought in the satnav, so I can stick it in the car and get through London without any problems – but the idea of driving home to deepest, darkest Norfolk at midnight and gone is currently rather unappealing.
So I don’t know whether I’m going to go or not. It’s not going to be for want of trying, but I do think that a healthy dose of realism may be the primary deciding factor…
Forewarned is…
Posted: Thu 8 February, 2007 Filed under: Thoughts Leave a comment »Recently, I saw the film Kinky Boots, which was OK, but had one thing that really annoyed me.
In fairness, it’s not just that one film that does it – it’s almost a staple cliché of the film industry – Dirty Harry did it for sure, and so have many, many others.
The sin? Lazy writing. When a film – or anything else, in fact – relies on something relevant being repeated. In the instance of Kinky Boots, yes, it’s amusing when the boot lands on the microphone’s activation switch, and thus the entire factory hears what is being talked about in the office. It is NOT as amusing when that self-same device is then used again towards the end of the film. It’s just lazy. Find something else, some other way of doing what is essentially the same joke.
In the other example I used, Dirty Harry repeats his trademark line – if he’d only done so once, at the end of the film, it would have had far more impact than it does at the end when it’s already been done before. It’s dull, and makes the character – previously ruthless and decidedly unconventional – repetitive and unimaginative too. Which isn’t how it should be.
I don’t have an answer, I don’t know how to fix it. It’s just something that really annoys me.
It’s fun to stay at the…
Posted: Wed 7 February, 2007 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness 1 Comment »via Stuart ‘KitchenTable’, I just couldn’t resist this…
It’s fun to stay at the…
