It’s Fucking September
Posted: Sun 27 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Festering Season 2 Comments »
I’m seriously thinking (allbeit for next year now) of getting some big stickers printed up that just say
For christ’s sake, it’s still only fucking September!
Where will I use them? In supermarkets, when they’re already selling Christmas cake, pudding, mince pies, and general Festive Tat.
I mean seriously, we haven’t even got the bloody Hallowe’en stuff out in some of the shops – let alone feckin’ fireworks – and yet there we are, all the food and tat for the Festering Season is on the shelves already.
One of the local garden centres even has on display all the chavtastic house-decoration shit.
It’s fucking September. I despair.
Marcus Brigstocke, Norwich Playhouse
Posted: Sat 26 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish) 2 Comments »On Thursday, we went to see Marcus Brigstocke‘s “GodCollar” tour in Norwich.
We’ve seen Brigstocke on TV a few times, but really had no idea what to expect from him live – and I’d made a positive effort to not read any reviews of the show at all. We’ve been disappointed by other shows where we’ve seen most of the material before (Frankie Boyle in particular) so we didn’t want that to happen again.
We needn’t have worried. The show was fantastic – although definitely not for those with a lack of humour about religion. It’s not offensive per se, although I can imagine some people might find it so, but more about Brigstocke’s thoughts around organised religion, and trying to find his own beliefs and thoughts about God.
He’s scathingly rude about most aspects – which in my opinion is always a good thing – and particularly about Richard Dawkins, iPhones (and users of iPhones) and plenty of other things besides.
It made for a fantastic two hours – both very funny and thought-provoking.
I’d happily go and see Brigstocke again – well worth it. But definitely not a show for the faint-hearted or easily offended.
Less Lucky
Posted: Thu 24 September, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Travel 7 Comments »Last night’s drive home was – to be blunt – a fucking nightmare.
From the look of it, someone had fallen under a bus on Mile End Road, which meant that everything going out of London in that direction was moving half a car-length at a time. It took me 90 minutes to get from my office to the A11/A12 roundabout. After that, it took me about 90 minutes to get home.
I don’t know the fate of the person – assuming that was what’d happened – as neither the local radio traffic news nor the BBC have seen fit to say anything about it. What I do know is that a section of the road, on both carriageways, was blocked by emergency services, so I assume it was at least serious, if not fatal.
But it would be nice if traffic reports would be a bit more honest/useful. If I’d heard “Avoid that road like the plague” I would’ve done, and would’ve cut north instead. As it was, the only reports were that “The A11 is slow-moving, because of an accident”. While I guess that was technically true – we were still moving, after all – it would’ve been far more useful to say “It’s blocked, diversions in place, but you’d be far better off avoiding it completely”
Weirdness and Taxidermy
Posted: Wed 23 September, 2009 Filed under: Art, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes you see a site and realise that some people on t’internet are very, very, very strange.
Blood Pressure
Posted: Wed 23 September, 2009 Filed under: Health, Weight Loss Leave a comment »Yesterday, I went to see my GP. Never my favourite way to spend time – I’m no fan of GPs at the best of times, and always go in expecting them to say “Oh, well, there’s not actually much we can do about that.”
In this case, I’ve whacked an existing scar, and opened it up again. Nothing special – it’s a fragile piece of skin, from the look of it, which is something my mother also has issues with – but more of an exploratory “Any suggestions on a) doing stuff to improve healing time on this? and b) preventing it in the future?” kind of thing. And I got exactly the expected answer. (But at least I know that for sure now)
Anyway, at the same time, the GP decided to check my blood pressure. This is one of the things that never fails to amuse me – considering I’m 6’4″ and distinctly overweight (although having now lost a stone from earlier this year) they always expect to give me a lecture on blood pressure. Bear in mind I’m rather known to be of the ranty persuasion as well, and they think it’s a no-brainer, which all goes to explain why they can never believe what it actually is.
In this case, the GP decided he’d done something wrong the first time, and checked it again.
But it still came out as 100/60. Which is ridiculously healthy and normal for someone of my dimensions and lifestyle. I don’t know how I manage it, but that’s pretty much what my blood pressure always works out to be.
Strange but true – and always fun to bemuse a GP with it.
Bell-End
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Photography, Stupidity Leave a comment »There are times where I am a complete twat. This evening was one of those times.
Part of the reason I’m doing a really stupid week of driving and travelling is because I thought it was this week for the meeting of the local camera club we formed following on from the NCFE course. Which was tonight.
Except, um, it wasn’t. You see, there’s another Tuesday still to come in September. Which means that…
- I’m a twat
- My mental calendar is at least a week out of kilter.
- I’m a twat, and don’t know what day it is.
Super-Lucky
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Travel 3 Comments »On the way home last night, I witnessed what was so nearly a fatal accident – and only wasn’t fatal because of the 50/50 chance of which way the man fell.
On the roundabout for A12/North Circular, a cement mixer came round too close to the kerb, and hit a cyclist. For once (so far as I could tell) the cyclist had been doing the right thing, hadn’t jumped a red light or anything (somewhat miraculous in itself) and the driver of the cement mixer had just come too close to the kerb.
I don’t know how, but the pushbike went under the wheels, and the rider came off onto the pavement. If he’d gone the other way, it would’ve been strawberry-jam time. As it was, the guy then stood up and was fine. The driver of the cement mixer was pretty shocked about the entire thing (with good reason) but it was all just so incredibly lucky that it wasn’t far, far worse.
A couple of other closer witnesses had already stopped to sort things out, so I buggered off past – I wouldn’t have been able to give any more information, or provide any assistance, so I’d have just been in the way.
All the same, it does make you think about the tiny things that lead to a difference between dead and alive…
Abandoned 2
Posted: Sun 20 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, BMW Drivers, Charm School, Driving, Parking, People, Stupidity 5 Comments »The same Tesco carpark as my previous post about arsewit parking, but this time it’s just *so* much more impressive. In this case, I’ve left the bell-end’s number-plate in view too. Screw it, parking like this needs to be recorded and credited to the correct knob-head.
Of course, it just had to be a BMW driver, didn’t it?
So bad it's hard to believe
Yep, not even just half-over the line – but parked up in a completely hatched off zone right next to the pedestrian crossing.
In this case I can’t deny it, I went in and spoke to the staff about it – the driver got a telling-off from them too. Seems fair to me.
Postal Strikes
Posted: Sun 20 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »As I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I really don’t understand how strikes are supposed to work.
The case of the (probably) upcoming national postal strike is a perfect example of this. As the BBC story says,
At the core of the dispute is the Royal Mail’s plans to trim its 121,000 frontline postal workers as part of the modernisation it says is needed to secure its future against a backdrop of falling mail levels.
But the strike itself, if called, will mean more people stop using the Royal Mail, and thus there’ll be a need for even more redundancies over time.
Because of previous strikes, for example, the last three agencies I’ve worked with have all done pretty much everything online. In the current one, only one thing goes through Royal Mail (because it’s a) more expensive to use, and b) not reliable) and that’s the payslip, which is fine to be delayed.
At the start, all my contract documents were sent as PDF files by email. My ‘timesheet’ is filled in online, and submitted electronically. My invoice for the week is created on the computer, and emailed across. Payment is done by BACS Faster Payments, and then the agency posts out the remittance advice. (And I’m sure they could automate that too)
However you look at it, that’s a significant bit of money that Royal Mail is losing out on – it would’ve been Special Delivery for the contract documents both ways (Recorded not being worth the paper it’s written on), first class post for invoices and timesheets, every week. When the agency deals with a couple of thousand contractors, that’s starting to add up even more. Bear in mind that there’s one hell of a lot of agencies out there doing this too, and that’s serious cash that Royal Mail isn’t receiving – and all because they can’t be relied upon to provide a good service.
Royal Mail spouting on about “needing to modernise” is all well and good – but they can’t modernise enough any more. People simply don’t rely on them, the service has steadily decreased over the years, and all those past ‘modernisations’ have left them with an organisation that can’t cope.
But the strikes don’t help either. If this new one happens, it’ll cause another wave of customer to go elsewhere – either online, sending things by email instead, or doing as companies like Amazon do, and using courier services for everything.
In my opinion, the best thing Royal Mail could do would be to go back to the service of twenty years ago – deliveries to the home first thing in the morning, a reliable service, and open to all. It would involve investment rather than modernisation and taking on more people instead of getting rid. It would be a massive PR win into the bargain – “We’re bringing back the service you want” – and would raise the public perception of their service in epic style.
However, I can’t help but suspect it would also be far too late to get back all the customers they’ve alienated over the last two decades. And that’s a great shame.
Unsalted
Posted: Sat 19 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Health, Norfolk, People, Stupidity, Sweary, Thoughts Leave a comment »Sometimes you read a story and your mind boggles right out of its tiny capsule.
In this case, it’s a story about Norfolk’s Trading Standards launching a campaign to get people to reduce their salt intake. “How?”, I hear you cry. Well, like this…
New saltshakers with fewer holes have provided for fish and chip shops in Norfolk to help cut salt consumption. The saltshakers only have five holes and dispense 50% less salt than the usual 17-hole versions.
What ?!?
So this ‘campaign’ is only in the 400-ish fish-and-chip places in Norfolk. If you’re in a chippy, I somehow suspect that the salt in it is far less of a long-term risk than the amount of fat that’s going into that meal. But no, we’ll focus on the salt. Genius.
And what the fuck has it got to do with Trading Standards? Are people no longer judged to have enough personal responsibility to manage their own salt levels on their food?
I despair. I truly do.
Abandoned
Posted: Sat 19 September, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Parking, Thoughts 3 Comments »One thing that is good about the local(ish) Tescos is the sheer amusement value you can get from seeing the way people park, and apparently think “That’ll do”.
This is today’s example.
Abandoned Car
I’ve blocked out the number-plate, although I’m not sure I should do – after all, people should be properly recognised for their achievements. What do you think?
Online/Offline
Posted: Fri 18 September, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, People, Thoughts 2 Comments »For me (and I know I’m not the only one), meeting bloggers etc is always a somewhat strange experience – you know so much about their lives yet have no idea what they look like, for example. (Unless they’ve posted proper photos, of course)
Even after (ye Gods) ten years of doing this kind of thing, whether through blogging or other internet connections, it’s still something that’s odd yet fun to do. And in my experience people never look like you imagine they will. Regardless of what you imagine, reality isn’t the same.
Anyway, in the spirit of this, I went off last night to see Mike ‘Troubled Diva‘ for his hour on The Plinth as part of the “One and Other” project. I’ve been reading TD for at least seven years, and he’s one of the few remaining bloggers I’d wanted to meet (the other remaining unmet ones are Gordon, Diamond Geezer, and – um – that’s about it) so being based just up the road, it simply had to be done.
And it was a fun evening – Mike is pretty much what I expected, but it’s still fantastic to finally meet, having read his life over all that time. We didn’t get a chance to talk for a long time – there were lots of people around – but it’s been great to meet, anyway.
Mind Crime
Posted: Fri 18 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, General, News, Thoughts 4 Comments »Over the last week or so, I’ve been churning this post around in my head – and it’s still a work in progress. I’ve written about it before on a couple of occasions, but in the last ten days there have been two big – and well-publicised – court cases based around conspiracies, and planning to commit offences.
In one case, two boys in Manchester were supposedly planning to blow up their school – and have now been found innocent of all charges, and there’s a small ruckus going on about whether the entire thing was actually a total waste of time and money. The second one (although it actually came first chronologically) was of course the ‘liquid bomb’ plot to detonate bombs in mid-air on several flights. They were found guilty, and this week got sentenced to incredibly long terms ( between 32 and 40 years each)
Now I can’t deny, I find I have a real problem with people going to court to answer a case that they were thinking about doing something bad.
Obviously, I haven’t been in the court hearings on either case, so I don’t know the true weight of evidence in either case. I just find myself uncomfortable with the concept of having people get taken to court and going through epic legal proceedings for an offence that has been talked about, but not actually committed.
Mind you, in my opinion terrorism is the ‘child porn’ of the 2000s, it’s the Big Bad Thing where people appear to say “Oh, well if [the accused] was into that then they’re beyond the pale, just lock ’em up and throw away the key”. It’s the “Ultimate Offence”, or whatever.
I suppose that the difference between the cases is that with the aeroplane bomb plan the people had actually put together the things they needed, whereas the Manchester one appears to have been more about talk and ‘let’s do that’ discussions, rather than serious preparation.
Even with that though – and I totally acknowledge the difference between ‘planning’ and ‘making the things necessary in preparation’ – I keep coming back to the entire concept of being able to be tried for an offence that hasn’t actually been committed. After all, isn’t that pretty much what Orwell described in “1984” as “Mindcrime”?
Dan Brown
Posted: Thu 17 September, 2009 Filed under: Writing 5 Comments »For once in my life, I’m not going to go off on a rant about Dan Brown’s writing style and so on. I’ve done enough of that via Twitter to last me a while. (I may add some thoughts over the weekend, but I wouldn’t count on it)
Instead, I’m going to let The Telegraph point things out in a far better, pithier (and significantly less sweary) way by just pointing you to this article showing what they list as Brown’s Worst Twenty Sentences.
And it’s fair to say I really don’t want to read his new novel.
Just Why?
Posted: Thu 17 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The Aston Martin Vantage is a beautiful, beautiful car. It’s one of the very few that I’d love to own – I know it’s an utterly unrealistic prospect for a number of reasons (Not least being that it costs somewhere north of £85,000) but there we go. It’s still a thing of beauty, and when one goes past, I’ll always appreciate it.
However.
On my current walk in to work, I get passed two or three times every week by a Vantage. And while I love the shape and design of the car, I really can’t believe that anyone sane would get one painted in what I can only describe as powder blue. (According to Aston Martin, so far as I can tell it’s called ‘Glacial Blue 2’, but it’s nowhere near as dark as in their car-configuration thingy)
The car’s still beautiful. The colour is – frankly – fucking horrific. With so many colours to choose from, why the hell would someone choose powder blue, for chuff’s sake?
Cycle Hire
Posted: Wed 16 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel 6 Comments »I noticed yesterday a piece on the BBC about cycle-hire programmes being introduced in some places in the UK.
And while I think it’s A Good Thing™ to bring cycle-hire etc to the fore and work on making it into a sustainable concept, I’ve got to ask what kind of Twunt puts a cycle-hire facility in fucking Blackpool? Yes, it’s fine as a UK tourist spot – but on windy days (and there are more of those than sunny ones in Blackpool, in my opinion) it’s hard enough to walk into the wind, let alone cycle into it. (And while it’ll be fine cycling with the wind behind you, in my experience the wind is always against you as a cyclist)
The bit that really makes me laugh, though is this :
According to tourism body Visit England, the number of UK holidaymakers visiting the resort in 2008 was down 26% on the previous year. Tourism bosses hope the scheme will be another attraction for people visiting the resort.
Tourists don’t (in general) cycle around cities like Oxford and Cambridge, where cycling is already de rigeur. So why the hell would they bother in effing Blackpool, for fuck’s sweet everloving sake?
Dying on the Same Day
Posted: Tue 15 September, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Today it’s been announced that both Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd have died. Not together, just on the same day.
In Floyd’s case, it’s ironic that the news comes the day after Channel 4 transmitted “When Keith met Keith” – about Keith Allen meeting Floyd in one of Floyd’s last ever interviews. Almost like he was hanging on for the programme…
Anyway, as Alan Cumming said,
“My greatest fear is dying on the same day as someone more famous than me”
Artistic Copyright etc.
Posted: Mon 14 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School Leave a comment »I still love Charlie Brooker.
This week’s summation by him of artistic integrity, rights, and copyrights is spot-on.
The arrest may not be Hirst’s fault, but sod it: let’s appropriate any resultant outrage and apply it to him anyway. Cartrain’s almost certainly a self-promoting gump and a poor man’s Banksy – but he’s 19, for heaven’s sake. He’s allowed to be an almost impossible arse.
But you’ll have to read the article to see how the above quote fits in with the one below…
In its heyday, the Radio 1 Sunday evening Top 40 countdown constituted the biggest file-sharing portal in British history, with millions of users hooked up simultaneously, mercilessly downloading content to their tape decks.
Blind teaching the Blind
Posted: Mon 14 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Education, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »I noticed this story today while reading over the shoulder of someone on the Tube – and then had to search it out online.
So – how many things can you spot that are wrong with this concept? The headline : “Primary schools bring in bankers to teach the credit crunch children”
Oh yes indeed – get children taught how to be fiscally responsible by the fucksticks responsible for the current situation. Awesome plan.
Although in fairness, I do think it’s a good idea to teach children far more about money, how to calculate interest, understanding APRs, and basic fiscal stuff. I know that I wish I’d had something like that in my education, anyway…
Product Placement
Posted: Sun 13 September, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »When it comes to product placement and the fact it’s now going to be allowed in programmes on commercial channels in the UK , I have to say that I’m actually more surprised it’s taken this long for it to happen.
I’ve been expecting it to come in since ITV started announcing that they were losing advertiser revenue – and the ‘credit crunch’ must have been another perfect excuse as well.
I don’t actually have much of an issue with product placement – we see a fair amount of it anyway, with the amount of imported American programmes already viewed. (And that’s been a neat little loophole on the entire product placement thing ’til now anyway) Think about the American drama programmes where just about everyone seems to have an iPhone and/or use Apple laptops – let alone the bigger things like clothing labels, car brands, (the truly awful ‘update’ of Knight Rider excelled at this one, for obvious reasons – but that also goes to show it’s been happening for a *very* long time) gadgets etc., and even down to what the actors eat and drink.
I think I’ll have more of an issue with the next logical step along this line, where programmes are ‘sponsored’ (i.e. paid for) by a company, which then plugs as many of its wares in one show as it can do. That ‘development’ will take some time of course – but I’m sure it’ll be on the cards.
Weight Loss stuff
Posted: Fri 11 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Weight Loss Leave a comment »What with all the other rubbish going on here, I’d forgotten to post a quick update about health, weight loss etc.
While I’m currently away during the week, I’m still working on the entire weight-loss thing, although I’m not managing to weigh myself regularly. I know I should (in theory) but I’m not doing – I’m quite happy with knowing it’s coming off.
Besides, I’ve got my own evidence that I’m still dropping weight.
For one thing my belt is now two holes in from where it used to be – that means that I’ve lost about an inch from round my waist.
The other big sign is that I’m now able to wear T-shirts one size smaller than I was when I started the weightloss. (And they’re T-Shirts from the same manufacturer, so none of this “one size in [company A], another size in [Company B]” malarkey) I’m now wearing a 2x shirt instead of a 3x.
It’s small things – and small but steady losses. I’m not wanting to drop five stone in five months, or anything insane like that. I am wanting to lose it, and keep it off. And as I do lose it, I’ll be doing more stuff in order to keep it off.
I’m happy with how I’m doing, anyway.
Three Nines
Posted: Wed 9 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thoughts Leave a comment »Of course, you also have to bear in mind that 911 was the main emergency number in the US well before the advent of 9/11, (or 11/9 – whichever you prefer) and there was always speculation that the date was chosen for exactly that reason.
As a result, I suspect there might be a few security agencies wondering whether 9/9/9 might be planned to be of similar significance/utilityin the UK…
Five Nines
Posted: Wed 9 September, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Thoughts Leave a comment »For no good reason except numerology, this is posted at exactly 09:09 on 09/09/09 .
Useless, but fun.
Plane Stupid
Posted: Wed 9 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thoughts 2 Comments »I still find it hard to understand the certainty of the Government and Security Forces that terrorist attacks will happen again on aeroplanes. Maybe they know something I don’t.
To me, security – or at least the perception of security – comes about through making easy targets into harder targets. When it comes to home security, we don’t look at making our houses completely thief-proof. We look at making them into a harder target than my neighbours.
In my opinion, people in general – whether it be your everyday office worker, a burglar, a politician, or a terrorist – are lazy. They’re not going to do something difficult if they can do something easy.
On the terrorism front, airports are (in theory at least) the hardest target around now. Bear in mind though that I’m still a firm believer in ‘Security Theatre‘ – so airports at least appear to be the hardest target. They’re certainly more hassle than (for example) sitting on a bus or a train.
So I find it hard to understand that conviction that planes are still the prime target. Personally I’d probably be trying to look at anything but planes and airports.
National Express searches
Posted: Tue 8 September, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, D4D™, National Express East Anglia, Travel Leave a comment »Is it very childish to be rather pleased that D4D™ now comes top in a Google search for “National Express East Anglia fare rise” ?
It also comes in fourth (currently) for “National Express fare rise”
Ah, the small things that please my tiny mind…
Un-fucking-Believable (Part 4)
Posted: Mon 7 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Customer Services, National Express East Anglia, Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from the rest of the story, today was the day that NEEA put the prices way up for my ticket from Attleborough to London.
The sole explanation of this anywhere on the station platform was one sheet of A4 paper wrapped in plastic sticky-taped to one noticeboard, which explained (and I may be paraphrasing slightly here…)
Because we’re profiteering fuckwit bastards, the line between Norwich and Cambridge has now been deemed a ‘peak-line’ train, which means we’ll rip you the fuck off for a full-price ticket until 10am.
This is to bring this service in line with other services leaving London. In other words, live with it, and we’ll take your money. Suckers.
The excuse of ‘bringing this service in line with others leaving London’ would be almost fine, if it weren’t for one or two very fucking significant points.
Point the First
The line between Cambridge and Norwich doesn’t go anywhere near London. At all. To travel to/from London, you’ve got to change first at Cambridge or Norwich. There is NO direct service.
Point the Second
Off-Peak tickets for leaving london only apply (according to NEEA’s own T&Cs) for trains arriving in London before 10am. The 7.55am service gets in to London Kings Cross at – um – 10.15am. Leaving at 7.55, in fact, there is no fucking way I can get to London before 10am.
In most cases the off peak day travelcard is not available for travel on trains arriving in London* before 1000 or departing from London before 0930. Travel is also not permitted on services departing from London* between 1629 and 1834 Monday to Friday, except for travel to stations between Hatfield Peverel and Braintree inclusive on the 1636 departure from London.
So all told, it just looks like a massive profiteering move on NEEA‘s part to double the prices and grab as much profit as humanly possible.
In the meantime, I’ve complained to NEEA direct, although I’m willing to bet that they don’t even bother responding. I’ll add the complaint letter as a post on D4D™ sometime this week, just for fun. I’m also going to be writing properly, rather than just in email – and I suspect a copy might make it’s way to the local papers etc. too…
Neil Gaiman’s Bookshelves
Posted: Sun 6 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Writing Leave a comment »This is just for reference, whenever Herself tells me I’ve got too many books…
At least I’m not Neil Gaiman – although I’m very envious of his bookshelves…
10:10 – Buying Yourself Green
Posted: Sat 5 September, 2009 Filed under: 10:10, 1BEM, Cynicism, Green, Thoughts 2 Comments »Looking at the list of the Guardian’s 10:10 suggestions from yesterday’s post, I couldn’t help but think that there was an awfully high number of those pointers that suggested buying/installing something new. Sure, they then (usually) said to recycle the old ones, but still, there was some significant investment involved in reducing that carbon footprint.
So, being a geek, I put the list into a table, and estimated some prices for those items with a cost…
(Click on the more link to see the table – it’s a biggie…)
10:10 – Realistic Chance?
Posted: Fri 4 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Domestic, Green, Thoughts 9 Comments »My initial thoughts on the Guardian’s 10:10 Campaign were pretty non-committal, but yesterday I read Charlie Stross’s full-size and well thought-out piece, so I thought I’d do something similar to his post, but based on my own life and/or carbon footprint, which might help fill out my own thoughts and ideas on it.
So, using The Guardian’s own “How to reduce your carbon emissions” list, here we go… (Click on the more link below)
Sweary Of The Day
Posted: Fri 4 September, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Driving, Sweary Leave a comment »I know, it’s pimping an ad almost certainly meant to be a viral anyway – but still, this ad from Volkswagen made me laugh…
NHS Staffing
Posted: Thu 3 September, 2009 Filed under: Business, Charm School, Creativity, Cynicism, Health, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »Today there’s a lot of coverage about a suggestion to reduce the workforce of the NHS by 10% – and the resultant kerfuffle between Government, the NHS, and management consultants.
Currently the Government is saying that they have rejected this advice by McKinsey and Company, (Never heard of ’em? Me either.) which included closing 137,000 clinical and admin posts in order to save £20bn by 2014.
I’m pretty sure I could show how to save the NHS that much money by 2014, without losing a single clinical staff member.
Mind you, it would involve getting rid of shitloads of middle-managers, consultants, and fuckstick accountants. And of course that’s a plan that would never achieve approval – because it’s got to go through all those levels of shitbag middle-managers, consultants and fuckstick accountants before it can happen. And those self-serving fuckers are never going to do themselves out of a job. (Which is the same reason the “paperless office” will never happen)
I’m not suggesting getting rid of all the managers, as I think most people would agree that there need to be some of the buggers around, if only in order to make sure that the clinical professionals don’t drown in paperwork and procedures in the meantime. (Although of course if you get rid of enough of the middle-managers, you probably get to eliminate a whole host of the bullshit paperwork at the same time – sorry, it’s “streamlining” now isn’t it, not “getting rid of the shit”)
Still, wield a big enough axe, drop it from high enough, I’m pretty sure it’d still work…
Steps
Posted: Thu 3 September, 2009 Filed under: Health, Thoughts, Weight Loss 3 Comments »In the ongoing work towards gaining fitness and losing weight, the current work environment is actually pretty good. In work I’m on the fourteenth floor, and in the Travelodge I’m currently on the 6th.
First of all, I’m walking between Travelodge and work – it’s roughly half a mile each way, which is fine. That now takes me about six or seven minutes (my kind of commute!) and a bit longer when I’m lugging my Big Bag on Mondays and Fridays.
Now, I’m also a lazy bastard – I admit it freely. So I really can’t be arsed to walk up the flights of stairs (if I could even find them – I know they’re here somewhere, but no idea quite where) to Floor 14 – besides which, I’d be a sweaty lump of dough by the time I got there.
But I do walk up/down the six floors of stairs (i.e. twelve flights of stairs) at the Travelodge rather than using the lift. I’m not knackered at the end of it, but I know I’ve done it (well, on the way up anyway) which is probably a good indication of how out of shape I am. But at least I’m working on it.
What does bemuse me, though, is the people – both at work and at the Travelodge – who take the lift to go up one floor. Fine, if they’ve got loads of bags or whatever, I’m not going to begrudge it. But seriously, if all you’ve got is your sodding iPod or whatever, one floor of stairs isn’t going to break you into a sweat.
How Not To Do It
Posted: Tue 1 September, 2009 Filed under: News, Stupidity Leave a comment »Over the weekend, the Daily Express managed to get a spectacular error on one headline.
The Guardian’s Media Monkey today has a small article on how it happened.
Incandescent
Posted: Tue 1 September, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Thoughts 8 Comments »From today, traditional 100W incandescent light-bulbs are no longer being sold. Under new EU rules the manufacture and import of 100 watt bulbs and all frosted bulbs will be banned in favour of the energy-saving variety.
I’m still in two minds about this, although we don’t actually use 100W bulbs around the house at all and we’re not prone to the health-issues that are being laid at the door of CFL (Compact Fluourescent Light) bulbs. But in certain cases, I’m still to be convinced about CFL bulbs as a replacement for incandescent ‘traditional’ light bulbs.
One of the things we made a slight mistake with when we moved in here was that we had spotlight downlighters fitted in most of the rooms, which use GU10 halogen bulbs. The light fittings are fine, and help with making the rooms feel like they’re a decent height (Which hanging light-fittings didn’t) But they do result in a significant use of energy, which is what we didn’t think about at the time.
We’ve looked at replacing the bulbs with CFL-replacements, but they most certainly do have a “warm-up” time. The ones we’ve used in the kitchen take a noticeable time to come on properly. In addition, they’re longer than the standard GU10s, so if/when we put them in to replace the ceiling lights, we’re going to have little humps of protruding light bulbs in all the positions.
As time goes on, and the current GU10s burn out, I’m sure we will replace them with CFL equivalents – but we’ll also keep on looking for better developments in those bulbs, rather than buying them all at once – particularly when they’re still at £8 or £9 per bulb – that’s a noticeable amount of money to be spending on lighting…
Clouds and Silver Linings
Posted: Mon 31 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I don’t know if it’s just me, but the recession of the last year does seem to have had one (slightly) positive effect this weekend – the number of TV adverts for “Bank Holiday Weekend Sales” appear to have dropped through the floor.
After all, there’s now no :
- MFI
- Sofa Warehouse
- Allied Carpets
- [several others I can’t currently recall]
who always used to do that kind of sale.
Of course, there’s still bloody DFS, (Although they just seem to have one big year-long sale) and B&Q and Homebase are both doing “15% off everything” weekends, but still it seems like there’s nowhere near as many Bank Holiday Sales this year.
Mind you, it could also be because I’ve hardly seen any TV over the last week or so…
Work
Posted: Sun 30 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »It’s a Bank Holiday weekend, which of course means we’re doing stuff on the house again.
To be exact, this time it’s the garage that needs sorting out.
It’s not actually a garage – whoever built the thing fucked it up, so it’s round a dog-leg corner behind the house, and thus well-night impossible to park a car in. (Of course, that just shows I’m getting old – who the hell parks their car in their garage these days?) As a result, it’s been a storage tip spot for stuff since we moved in.
It still will be a storage place, but we’ve sorted out a lot of the stuff inside it this weekend, taking out the bits we don’t need and/or putting things in far more order.
So far, it also means that I (with some help from Herself) have :
- Put up an offcut of the kitchen worktop, for use as work-surface (and storage surface) in the garage
- Put up two lots of ladder-hooks, and hung ladders from them (which haven’t yet fallen off again)
- Put up another set of hooks for a couple of other heavy odds and sods to hang off
- Done two runs to local tips, one with everyday rubbish to our normal recycling place at Snetterton, and one with tins of paint etc. to the rather more serious one at Knettishall
There’s still plenty more to do, but at least we’re getting somewhere. Even more importantly, it’s beginning to look like the garage will become properly usable space after all…
No, Really?
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Filed firmly under “No shit, Sherlock” comes this story courtesy of the Department of Health…
English holidaymakers are turning to drink on their breaks with the average adult consuming eight alcoholic drinks a day, a survey suggests.
Blimey, what a revelation. People on holiday drink more. Who’d have thought it?
As usual, the “survey” consisted of only 3,500 people (from however million who’ve been on holiday over the summer) and there’s no indication of the age ranges for the survey. So at best it’s “dip a finger in the water” guesswork.
Grammatically Challenged
Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Stupidity 1 Comment »I’ve just signed up for a website dealing with audiences for seeing the recording of TV shows, and had a confirmation page with the following text on it…
VERY IMPORTANT: Please ensure that your email spam filters will allow mail from [email address] as have just emailed you about you’re registration.
Now that’s got some scarily bad grammatical errors in it.
I wonder if I should email and tell them?
Belated Birthday
Posted: Thu 27 August, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Redesign 1 Comment »Buggeration. I’ve just realised that I missed D4D™’s 7th birthday, back on the 9th August.
I’m normally pretty good at pointing out birthdays on here, so I’m quite surprised (and somewhat annoyed) that I failed to mention this one.
It’s also made me realise that all the stuff I had done for custom headers etc. on certain days has gone by the by since the redesign as well. So that’s something I need to work on a bit when I get the chance. (And I wonder if I’ve still got the list of dates somewhere. Hope so!)
But anyway, wow – D4D™’s been going seven years now. That’s pretty good going.
And Happy Belated Birthday, little D4D™. Long may you continue.
Bye-bye BB
Posted: Wed 26 August, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Media, Thoughts Leave a comment »Happy, happy day.
Channel 4 have announced that the 2010 series (the 11th) of Big Brother is to be the last one on Channel Four. Viewing figures have been dropping in recent years, from the 2002 peak of 8million people down to the current series with an average of 2 million people watching.
Personally I don’t give a damn about Big Brother and/or its spin-off shows, but at least with luck it’ll be off mainstream TV after this time next year.
I’m quite certain that some other dumb-arse channel will scoop up Big Brother past 2010 – but hopefully it’ll be some little-watched satellite channel that thinks it’ll get the viewers.
And in the meantime, maybe – just maybe – it’ll be the start of a move away from these pox-ridden “reality” shows that seem to pollute so much TV at the moment.
iPhones Galore
Posted: Tue 25 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, iPhone, Technology, Thoughts Leave a comment »On the journey into London yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice how ubiquitous the iPhone now is – it seems like everyone and their dog has one.
When I used to commute in to London from Bracknell, Blackberrys were the thing everyone had – or at least all the “Look at me, I’m so important” fucksticks had, anyway.
While I do agree that iPhones are a nice bit of kit, I’m still not convinced I’d actually use one if I had one. That lack of a “proper” keyboard is (for me) still a significant factor, as most of what I do on a phone involves typing – text messages, emails, SSH connections to servers for admin, that kind of thing.
But there’s also the ubiquity of it that’s (for me) detracts from any desire to own one. It may be childish, but I have a built-in reaction to doing “what everyone else does”, and while it’s not an over-arching reason for not getting one, it certainly contributes.
Idiocy
Posted: Mon 24 August, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Stupidity, Thoughts 7 Comments »Having read this story about a rescue helicopter that couldn’t land because some people wouldn’t get out of the way (and thus endangered themselves by being in the way of the rotors) I think we’re just too nice to idiots.
In this case, once people have been told to get out the way, it’s their responsibility to do so. If they fail to do so, and don’t take into account bloody great (unmissable) rotor blades above them, then they’re idiots and thus accept all responsibility for any accidents and/or damage that occur as a result.
As I see it, people need to take more personal responsibility, rather than letting others do it for them. If you do something stupid, and your excuse is “Well nobody told me not to”, then sorry, but you damn well deserve to have been hurt.
Bank Holiday Holiday
Posted: Sun 23 August, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism 1 Comment »In the run-up to next Monday’s Bank Holiday, I’ve now had four emails from companies, all along the lines of “There’s still time to book a Bank Holiday weekend break“.
The text of the advert - yes, they saved it as an image...
While I understand that they’d rather be fully booked than (to pick a number out of the air) 75% full, promotional emails like these still make me think the companies are desperate for business.
Would you book a last-minute break on the basis of an email like this?
It’s Coming…
Posted: Sat 22 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Festering Season, Thoughts Leave a comment »Tonight, “The X-Factor” returns to Saturday Night TV. “Oh joy, oh happiness, oh bliss” etc. etc. in a suitably sarcastic tone of voice.
Not just a celebration of lip-syncing, unoriginality, freakshow auditions and an almost terminal lack of talent (in the presenters and judges as well as competitors) it’s also the first sign that yes, the Festering Season is soon(ish) to be upon us.
Fucking Hell, 2009’s going past fast…
Poll-Fixing
Posted: Fri 21 August, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Stupidity Leave a comment »(via Yorkshire Soul)
I wouldn’t normally add a link to a hate-mongering bigoted shit-rag (also known as the Daily Mail) but in this case I will.
Go to this survey (about halfway down the page) and vote Yes. The survey asks “Should the public fund a trans-gender police support group?”
Currently, the “Yes” result is pegging about 77%. Go on, fuck with the heads of Daily Mail readers – It’s certainly not the result they were expecting…
Denial
Posted: Thu 20 August, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts 4 Comments »I wonder, when is Paula Radcliffe just going to bite the bullet and announce she’s retiring from athletics?
After all, today she’s pulled out of the marathon at the Berlin meet, and it’s hardly the first one she’s pulled out of.
Gold Scam
Posted: Wed 19 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Thoughts 3 Comments »Sometimes, adverts on daytime TV are worthy of comment and/or incredulity. Today’s example covered both in one thirty-second slot.
It was an advert for some kind of “Money for your gold” organisation – yes, they had a web address on-screen, but I’m not going to promote the scam any more than I have to.
Anyway, the basic premise was as follows :
- Contact us, we’ll send you a “Free” postal packet insured for up to £2,500
- Send us your gold
- We’ll send you a valuation on it
- If you accept it, we’ll send you the cash.
- If you don’t, we’ll send you back your gold. (Honest, guv)
Now that just screams “Scam” to me – there’s so many healthy options for “lost in the post” excuses, plus (even if it’s legit) a nice little side-earner if one were to (for example) pawn the gold,have cash for it – always more than the “valuation” – and it’s in your account ’til you have to pay it to either the customer or back to the pawn-shop.
I’m tempted to see if the company directors are Derek and Rodney Trotter…
Inglourious
Posted: Mon 17 August, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Stupidity Leave a comment »Personally, I’m really not bothered about seeing the new Tarantino film, “Inglourious Basterds“. (Don’t blame me for that spelling – it drives me crackers too) I’m not even convinced I’ll bother when it comes out on DVD.
What is very funny at the moment though is that various places seem to be having utter conniptions about advertising it because of the “naughty word”.
I’ve seen a few adverts on pre-watershed TV (i.e. before 9pm) that are just calling it “Inglourious”, with the “Basterds” covered in bullet-holes. (I’m not quite sure how bullet-holes etc. are acceptable pre-watershed, but the word Bastard isn’t)
On radio, they’ve been reduced to simply referring to it as “the new Tarantino film”.
The marketing department for the film itself must be having fits about the fact that half the time, advertising and media can’t even say the name of the film. It’s a really silly state of affairs.
Photographer, Not Terrorist
Posted: Sun 16 August, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »As regular readers now, I do a fair amount of photography. Over the last couple of years it’s become clearer that more and more photographers are getting stopped and searched in anti-terror searches and the like.
Amateur Photographer magazine is running a campaign about Photographer’s Rights, (Not that you’d know it from their fucking awful website) and there are a few sites now relating to this problem.
The latest one is “I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist” – and while I’m not a great fan of the emotive title/subject, it’s doing a far better job than “Not a Crime”.
It’s going to be interesting to see how these campaigns work out – and hopefully get a bit of sanity back into life as well. We’ll see.
Intruder Alert
Posted: Sat 15 August, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »The other day, at about 5.30am, Hound started growling and barking. This is her ‘normal’ (in as much as anything Hound does ever being seen as normal) alarm behaviour, when something’s going on that she thinks we need to know about. It’s reserved for strange Bad Things happening.
In this case, all her attention was being paid to the front door, so I went and had a look.
It turned out to be daylight, coming through a tiny gap at the edge of the curtains that cover the front-door area at night. Hound’s Alarm Bark was because of sunlight.
As soon as I moved the curtain, she looked at it in a bemused “Where’s the invader gone?” expression. And then went and laid down in her basket again, to go back to sleep.
Poxy fucking creature.
Most Burgled
Posted: Fri 14 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Creativity, Cynicism, News Leave a comment »The story today about the “most burgled postcodes” in the UK makes for some interesting reading – but also misses out on a couple of rather relevant bits of information.
Firstly, it’s been done by MoneySupermarket.com (I’m not adding a link to them, because they’ve had enough PR out of this already) based on people trying to get home insurance. There’s no corroboration of these figures with any police reports etc.
Secondly, it’s this (from the story)…
Some 0.42% of people from Arnold who asked for quotes via the website said they had been burgled in the past five years, while that rate was above 0.24% in the rest of the top 20.
So 0.42% of people in Arnold (Nottinghamshire) have been burgled in the past five years. But that means that 99.58% of people in Arnold haven’t been burgled. Which (to me, anyway) is far more interesting, and actually helps to put all this shit in perspective a bit.
Thunderstorm
Posted: Fri 14 August, 2009 Filed under: Photography, Weather Leave a comment »This small video is absolutely fantastic – a thunderstorm in Toronto.
It’s taken by Sam Javanrouh from Daily Dose of Imagery, one of my favourite photographers. (There’s also an interview with Sam here, although that’s not related to the thunderstorm video)
All told, the video consists of 347 15-second shots, with two seconds between each shot. (I suspect he used his Pclix for it – he’s obviously better at programming it than I am with mine at the moment)
Well worth the effort, anyway.
Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.
Train Strikes
Posted: Thu 13 August, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Stupidity, Travel 1 Comment »While I can’t deny I’m pleased to see that the current train strikes that have been affecting us in Norfolk/Suffolk have been suspended, in a lot of ways I think it’s a great shame that National Express East Anglia have capitulated to the union’s demands at all.
Interestingly, neither the RMT or ASLEF sites actually detail what the deal was that they were trying to get. That in itself says to me that they know it was unreasonable – after all, why not try and gain support and understanding from the public if they’re really so hard done by?
The BBC mentioned some of the requests in one story, as follows…
National Express managers say the unions want a 2.5% pay rise, a four-day working week and a 4% increase in the number of train drivers.
Although as that’s from National Express managers, I can’t really say it’s 100% accurate, obviously. This story from the Guardian in 2002 suggests that the average train driver’s salary was around £30,000 seven years ago, along with 35-40 days holiday a year. MySalary estimates an average train-driver’s salary in 2009 as £35,000.And that’s before we consider overtime etc. as well.
That £35,000 is a good figure. In this area (excluding Cambridge) the average salary is around £19-20,000. Hard to have sympathy for people striking about wanting more money when they’re already on nearly double the regional average, isn’t it?
Additionally, the strikes of the last three weeks have been counter-productive in other ways. I don’t know of anyone who’s had sympathy for the train drivers, and I wonder how many people have decided that actually it’s more reliable to use their own transport (or car-pool or whatever) rather than relying on the train “service”. If that’s the case in a significant number of people, the train service has fewer paying customers, reducing the income to the company – which reduces their ability to pay the drivers.
How much have the strikes cost National Express? I don’t know – but again it’s going to be a significant figure. It has to be, due to dropping all but a handful of services. (I think they ran six to/from Norwich each day, instead of the usual 60+) Roughly speaking, that’s 10% of the income they would normally get. Yes, I know it’s a rough figure, but it’ll do.
If I were on the board of National Express, I would do three things.
- Tell the unions to get stuffed, that their actions had cost National Express £x00,000, so that was the figure that we’d be cutting the salary budget by.
- Look at how I could get extra drivers in (even perhaps train-drivers from the continent, or ones who had retired, but wanted some extra cash for a few days work) in order to run the service still. Hell, I’d possibly even look at organising a pool of standby-drivers – casual labour, but trained up and fully current.
I wonder whether you could get away with offering train-drivers a cash sum or extra money to break the strike and do their job. Not a salary-rise, but just a loyalty-bonus for sticking with the company. That one would be fun… - Finally, I’d have been completely up-front, and made it highly public about what deal National Express were offering, vs. what the unions wanted. I’d put the entire deal in the public eye, and see what the reaction was then.
I think that if those things had been done – and particularly number three – it would’ve made for a really interesting situation, where the unions could see what the public thought of them.
Mind you, that’s probably why I’ll never be on the board of a company like National Express – I suspect my way of handling things would be a bit confrontational for their tastes.
It’s still a pity that they seem to have compromised to any degree with the demands, though.
Frogfest
Posted: Wed 12 August, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »In general, I really don’t mind frogs and toads – we have loads of them in the garden, and they’re fine. Sure, they make me jump on occasion when they bounce around just as you’re walking through the grass. But OK, that’s what they do.
However, this just makes me shudder.
Not just the video of the frenzy of tadpoles eating unfertilised frog eggs, but the sheer size of the frog in the photo…
They run up to about 1kg in weight (Image (C) BBC)
Bleh.
Locational Errors
Posted: Tue 11 August, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Own Business, Travel, Web Development, Work-related 4 Comments »Checking out some information about the location I’m going to be based in over the next month or so (from a week on Monday) I had a look at the dreaded Tesco website to see what stores are close to the places I’ll be working/staying. (And in this case, the answer is pretty much “fuck all”) I’ve also looked at the locations for other supermarket-type places, and will obviously wander around the area a bit too, see what’s around that isn’t easily web-findable.
Anyway, while looking at the map on the Tesco site, I noticed this…
I think they haven't checked the work on placenames
Yep, there’s notation for “Waterloo Strain Station”…
NOTE : You can find the same thing by typing “SE1” into the store locator.
All Quiet
Posted: Mon 10 August, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic Leave a comment »A quiet day here at D4D (I know, again) for no good reason.
Plenty to be getting on with, work to be done and the like.
I’ve been working on some more of the night photo images, seeing if I can get anything out of them, and in general I’m fairly pleased with how that worked out. Still lots of other ideas on that score (Painting with light, among other things) but time will tell how that goes, I think.
Night Photography – Results
Posted: Sun 9 August, 2009 Filed under: Getting Organised, Photography Leave a comment »So, a couple of the results of my expeditions out to take photos in the dead of night…
They’re *very* long exposures – 10 minutes plus in some cases – but I’m really quite pleased with how they’ve turned out, although I’ve had to do some stuff in Photoshop with them to get them to this point…
As always, click on the photos to see a bigger version…
Hay Bales, taken at night
And the second one
Another long-exposure night shot of hay bales
Night Photography
Posted: Sat 8 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Weather Leave a comment »For the last two and a half years, I’ve had a mental image of a photograph I wanted to try and get – basically, haybales lit by moonlight, so they’d be silver rather than gold. I know, strange but true.
Over the last two summers, events have conspired against that plan – there’s been no full moon when the bales are available, and conversely no bales when the full moon’s around. And on the occasions when there was a full moon + bales, the nights have been too cloudy to do anything with it.
Last night, I finally got the perfect circumstances – lovely full moon, clear skies (OK, a tiny bit of cloud, but nothing important) and bales in the fields. So off I went.
And it’s been reasonably successful. I’m pleased with the results in general, except for one thing. They’re horrifically noisy as well as everything else. Now some of that’s my fault – the wrong ISO setting, for one thing – so I’m going to go out again tonight and see whether I get anything better while using a super-low ISO – 200 at most, but preferably 100. It’ll also probably mean I need to take even longer exposures, although the ones I got last night of about 2.5-3 minutes seemed to work OK.
Even at that point I think I’m still going to need to do some editing in Photoshop and/or Capture ONE in order to get the results I’m actually thinking of , as it turns out that my mental image is probably rather more “romantic” than the reality. Still, it’s fun to try.
Additionally, it also meant I finally got to use my PClix 100 properly for the first time since I bought it three years ago. It’s a nice bit of kit, but ’til now I haven’t really had the project and/or ideas that necessitated its use. Long exposures though are one of the areas it specialises in. Without the PClix, I wouldn’t have had any real chance of getting a decent exposure at all.
John Hughes
Posted: Fri 7 August, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Sad to see that John Hughes died yesterday.
Hughes made some of the definitive “teenager” 80s movies – Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, St Elmo’s Fire, Home Alone and many others. Just some of the ‘definitive moments’ are listed here.
And then this fantastic blog post shows just what kind of person John Hughes could be. (In fact, if Post of the Week were still going, I suspect this would be a hands-down winner)
Pseudo-Activism
Posted: Fri 7 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »If you’re a regular user of Twitter or Facebook, you can’t avoid seeing ‘campaigns’ of one sort or another. Facebook has infinitely more of them – there seems to be a campaign for everything from “Bring back Smarties in round tubes” to “Free [name person of choice here]”
Twitter ‘campaigns’ seem to be more about changing your ID picture. They went green in support of Iranian elections earlier, and now there’s one about Freeing Gary Mckinnon that adds a “Free Gary” (as opposed to charging for him, one supposes) bar to the Twitter avatar.
Personally, I don’t get involved in these campaigns at all. If I wanted to do so, I’d go to something like the ePetitions section at Number 10 (Not that they get any more attention, but at least it’s being done in the right place) rather than the frankly pointless ones elsewhere.
Because the thing is, Facebook et al may be “the voice of the people”, but governments and (in general) businesses don’t really give a shit about what people say. There are exceptions to the rule, of course – such as Cadbury’s bringing back the Wispa bar – but there’s no way they’d have done that without the expectation of making a significant amount of profit out of it.
Iran didn’t give a shit about how many people’s Twitter icons went green. Number 10 didn’t give a shit about the anti-war protests and marches.
Facebook et al like these campaigns, because they add to the marketing profile of the people who sign up for them. That’s it. You sign up to these things – say, “Bring back Smarties” and Rowntrees will start to know how many people extra might buy a “limited edition” round Smarties tube, and thus make profit for them.
And that’s all it is.
Cutting Down on Waste
Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Green, Stupidity, Thoughts 3 Comments »In the news today, there’s a piece about a Plymouth dairy that’s encouraging its customers to use “Milk Bags” – recyclable bags of milk, and a reusable ‘jug’ holding the bags.
According to the story,
Dairy spokesman Richard Pryor said customer research showed people wanted inexpensive and convenient ways to reduce the amount of rubbish they put in their dustbins.
“This development is another important step in reducing the environmental burden of the 130,000 tonnes of plastic used in milk packaging every year,” he said.
Obviously, Dairy Crest in Devon are using plastic bottles for delivering milk.
But it occurs to me, surely the single best way of reducing that tonnage of plastic used in milk packaging is to go back to using glass bottles instead of plastic ones?
Our milk gets delivered every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to the door in glass bottles. At the same time, the driver collects our used (and washed) bottles, and takes them to be reused. No ‘rubbish’ relating to the milk – the foil bottle tops go in the recycling bin.
On the (exceptionally rare) occasions when a bottle breaks, it gets put into the glass box, to go to the local bottle bank next time we’re in that direction. Again, no landfill, no waste – it’ll get recycled into a glass ‘something else’.
So, who is it who does our milk deliveries? Yep, it’s Dairy Crest – the same ones who deliver in plastic in Plymouth.
Funereal
Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »While I do think it’s sad – although hardly unexpected – to know that “the last Tommy” (the last British soldier from World War One) died at the end of July, I can’t help but find the way his funeral has been taken over today to be pretty objectionable.
Harry Patch’s request was for a small funeral party, for just family and friends. No fuss, no pomp – pretty much what one would expect from someone who led as quiet a life as he appears to have done.
Instead, there’s been tickets issued for the funeral, some 1,000-plus people in Wells Cathedral as well as a public parade, and people outside on Cathedral Green to see the proceedings on video screens. It’s turned into some kind of media carnival, with (on one report I heard just now) reporters doing a broadcast from inside the cathedral while the service was going on. (And regardless of everything else, the disrespect of that action just stuns me)
While I don’t really have a problem with people showing their respects to Harry Patch – although how many of them really knew him at all? – I don’t really get why the media et al feel that it’s OK to trample over his last wishes in this way.
Losing Weight
Posted: Wed 5 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Health, Weight Loss 1 Comment »I know, I’ve said many times before about the way I’ve been planning to lose some weight, and all that shit. And it’s always been “I intend to”, rather than “I am”.
Recently that’s changed though, and I am working on it. I’ve started going back to the gym, although I’m not back in the habit of it yet – I still need to think about it, and force myself to go. Hopefully that’ll improve though.
But I am already losing weight, because of the other thing. Over the last month, I’ve been going to a local Slimming World group, and it seems to be doing the trick.
Basically, it’s about “reprogramming” our food and diet a bit, getting rid of some of the convenience stuff we were making use of – by which I mean things like jars of curry or sweet’n’sour (or whatever) sauces, rather than doing our own. Other than that, I don’t think we’ve really changed a lot about what we eat or drink. We just think about it a bit more now.
One of the things I do like about Slimming World in comparison to Weightwatchers et al. is that you can set your own target for where you want to be – it’s not based on idiot BMI charts etc, unlike our experience with WeightWatchers a few years back which put me off going back. They also never announce your actual weight (nor the weight you started off at) which means no-one else knows/cares what you actually are, it’s about what you’ve lost. And that’s an attitude I quite like.
I’m not shy about it, though. I don’t have a problem with admitting that when I started, I was weighed at exactly 22st 1lb. I’m not happy (or proud) about it, but that’s what it was. And my current goal is to get back to where I was back in April 2005 , to be under 20 stone again. From there, I’ll see what happens – but that’s my current plan.
And I won’t write about it here every week – D4D™ isn’t going to turn into Dummies for Dieting anytime soon. I’ll write about it every so often, I’m sure, but not every week. That’s just dull.
What I will say now though is that in the time I’ve been going, I’ve already lost 8 and a half pounds. Not an awesome loss (just over half a stone) but equally, not bad either.
PR Words to Ban
Posted: Tue 4 August, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Charm School, Creativity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Just a quickie, but I love this TechCrunch article about “10 words I would love to see banned from press releases”
Thankfully I don’t get too many press releases, but I see enough of them online that I have to agree with pretty much all of what’s been said in this one…
Well Preserved
Posted: Mon 3 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic 1 Comment »Here, the weekend turned into a bit of a preserving fest.
On Saturday, another trip to the local “Pick Your Own” fruit place, another four punnets of raspberries – somewhere just north of 6lb of fruit – for a tenner. Going to a PYO place makes you realise just how obscene the profit margins are in supermarkets for fruit etc.
On Sunday, we harvested all the beetroot (both red and white), and cooked and pickled them. So that’s two lots of 1.25 litre bottles, one with white pickled beetroot and one with red.
Following from that, the majority of the raspberries from Saturday’s picking went to be made into jam – where we’ve got around 12lb of jam out of it.
Not bad at all – home-made preserves really can be quite fun.
Migrating Contacts
Posted: Mon 3 August, 2009 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, iPhone, Stupidity, Technology Leave a comment »As I said yesterday, one of the more interesting challenges with Herself’s new iPhone was getting the contacts to transfer across from her old Samsung G600 phone to the iPhone.
When it comes to contacts and phonebooks, Samsung are – to be polite about it – bloody awful. They don’t support useful standards like SyncML (basically a standard set of markup for addresses, contacts etc.) and instead stick to their own proprietary method. And their phones really don’t like giving up their data. In this case, it wouldn’t even send the information via BlueTooth, or save the details from the phone onto the SIM in order to transfer that across.
In short, a fucking abysmal experience when it comes to transferring away from a Samsung phone to anything else. (If memory serves, even Samsung to Samsung is a pain in the arse, let alone Samsung to anything else)
On my Sony-Ericsson phone, I can regularly sync the phonebook up to an online service called Zyb, who make the entire process pretty painless for phones that support SyncML. It also gives you a backup of the entire contacts database, which can be useful if (for example) you lose your phone, or have it stolen. They’re now owned by Vodafone, but in a fit of surprising sanity, Vodafone haven’t locked out non-Vodafone users from the service.
Through Zyb, when I upgraded my phone at the end of last year, importing the contacts etc. took ten minutes, and was one of the smoothest examples of that procedure I’ve ever done.
Anyway, on checking, it turns out the Zyb supports the iPhone – so that seemed to be the way to go.
After that, the process was fairly simple.
- Sign up Herself with an account at Zyb
- Install the iPhone app for Zyb (they even provide a link to it in the sign-up process, so it includes all the information necessary)
- Type in all the contacts from Herself’s Samsung, setting it up with correct addresses, merging mobile/contact/home/work numbers into one contact where necessary
- When done (about an hours work) sync the Zyb contacts onto the iPhone
- Job done.
Of course, if Samsung supported SyncML (or any other decent service) then it would’ve been a max of ten minutes to sort out. As it was, it took an hour. It could’ve been worse – far, far worse – if we’d been trying to do it via SIM or BlueTooth and then had to reorganise everything on the iPhone.
iPhone Replaced
Posted: Sun 2 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, iPhone 3 Comments »The actual exchange of the iPhone went fine in the end – went in to Norwich to the Carphone Warehouse (where Herself had got the first one) and explained the situation, and we got a replacement phone straight away.
The replacement version has worked out well so far.
It’s been updated to the 3.0.1 OS, and all is still well. I’ve got it all fixed up now with the connection details for our wireless network, Herself’s email account and so on.
The only downside at the moment is the fact that transferring the contacts and phone numbers from Herself’s phone to the iPhone may be a pig – Samsung phones are utter shit when it comes to transferring the phonebook to anything else.
iPhone Hassles
Posted: Sat 1 August, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, iPhone, Reviews(ish) 1 Comment »Yesterday, Herself went out and got an Apple iPhone from Carphone Warehouse.
Initially I was fairly impressed with it, there’s some nice interactions and stuff going on.
However, today we (OK, I) updated it to the latest version of the operating system, version 3.0.1. And since then the new iPhone has been a nightmare.
Firstly, Herself always has a lockcode set on the phone, so when you turn it on, you enter a four-digit PIN. Normally, no problem. However, as part of the upgrade to 3.0.1, the iPhone needs to connect back to iTunes, and iTunes can’t do that with a lock code set. Oh, and the iPhone wouldn’t do anything except say “connect me to iTunes”. Nothing else, no way to enter the lock code.
Cue a call to O2 to find out what needs doing, and then one to Apple. Which resulted in…
Factory Reset Number One. Yep, roll it all the way back to how we got it, loss of any settings we’d sorted. Square One. And an OS upgraded to 3.0.1.
And all was well. Um, except for not having any access to wi-fi settings (as in “Not installed” rather than “Not available”) or Bluetooth®. Totally greyed out, nothing there at all.
So a few resets, and another call to Apple.
Half an hour later, Factory Reset Number Two – and still no improvement.
So tomorrow we’re off to Carphone Warehouse, armed with an Issue Number from Apple, to get a replacement iPhone.
Let’s hope that one works better.
I’m not slagging off the iPhone per se – however, my experience with it so far has emphatically not been the most positive one. We’ll see how things go with the second one before I write up a valid review of it…
Shoplifters
Posted: Thu 30 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »As usual, I haven’t quite got round to figuring the logic relating to this sign in our local Sainsbury’s…
How is this related to my safety and security?
I don’t know how prosecuting thieves is for my safety/security.
In fact, I’d suggest that a rather more honest sign would read
For our profits, we always prosecute thieves
Be Afraid
Posted: Wed 29 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 4 Comments »Currently, Psycho Cat is Not Amused with us – and we don’t know why. He’s just in an utterly foul mood, not even sleeping on the bed at the moment. As a result, this is the kind of thing we’re living with at the moment…
You want to try moving him?
And if he sleeps outside, it’ll be on one of our cars, like this…
Asleep on the wipers
Aren’t we lucky?
Power of Suggestion
Posted: Tue 28 July, 2009 Filed under: Driving, News, Thoughts 3 Comments »Now here‘s something I didn’t know – although bear in mind that the statistic comes from BSM, so shouldn’t be treated as absolute gospel.
According to BSM, about 70% of learners buy the same car model as they pass their test in.
Admittedly, we did the same back when I (finally) passed my test, and ended up with a Ford Focus, as that was what I’d learned in.
All the same, it’s interesting that 70% of new drivers do the same thing.
Blind Dog
Posted: Tue 28 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals Leave a comment »No, not Hound.
This is a post about a dog going blind, and it makes for really interesting reading…
Delivery Weirdness
Posted: Tue 28 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of the more major changes (well, the major non-structural changes) when we re-did the kitchen this year was to get a new a gas cooker installed to replace the old electric piece of shit that came with the house. It was a significant change because we’re not on mains gas here, so it also involves using gas cylinders.
Our first cylinder has finally run out, which means it’s time to get a replacement from Calor. There’s no urgency, due to having two cylinders, but equally it’s better to have the replacement sorted well before we actually need the sodding thing.
As a result, yesterday I called Calor’s local depot in Norwich (from which the cylinders were obtained by the people who installed the cooker) to order the replacement one. Except, based on our postcode, it turns out we don’t deal with the Norwich supplier/depot, but instead we deal with the – um – Bury St Edmunds depot.
According to the people at Calor Direct, getting our gas delivered from Bury St Edmunds is “more efficient”. But having checked on my faithful Route Planner, from the Norwich depot to this house is 19 miles. From the Bury St Edmunds depot, it’s 36 miles – nearly double the distance.
So how is that more efficient?
Savings?
Posted: Mon 27 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »In the shops today, I came across something that I still can’t quite get my head around. It’s one of those things where you’re just not sure if you’ve missed something relevant, or if it really is that weird.
Let me explain.
At the moment, both Sainsburys and Tescos have a promotion where you can buy 2 two-litre bottles of Coke (or Diet Coke) for £2. That’s fine.
However, right next to the individual bottles, they have a “Big Value” pack of 4 two-litre bottles. For £5.18 .
So the “Big Value” pack costs £1.18 more than 2 lots of the 2×2-litre deal.
What’ve I missed?
Playing with Concrete
Posted: Sun 26 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, House Work 3 Comments »Regular readers already know that when it comes to DIY I’m pretty much a total bell-end. It’s a thing I’ve inherited from my father, who is a world-renowned DIY bell-end, and tales of his idiocies have been used for me and my brother to dine out on many times.
Anyway, about two years ago, I put in a thing for the rotary drier/airer in the garden. At the time it was fairly straight, but over time it’s got more and more wonky.
So this time we got another fitting (this time with a built-in spirit level – genius!) and a bag of Postmix cement. You can see already where this might go horribly wrong, can’t you?
Only it didn’t – the holder is now cemented in properly (and absolutely straight!) and the airer’s post fits in it fine.
At the same time (i.e. while waiting for the postmix to set) we’ve also put up a hosereel thingy on the wall of the house, which’ll hold a 25m hose-reel – enough to get almost halfway down the garden – which should make for a tidier garden without sodding hosepipe coiled up in random places.
Sometimes, a day can be quite successful. Of course, I’m now waiting to find something to screw up in order to balance things out again…
Portraiture
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Photography Leave a comment »I think that the photo accompanying this article is absolutely fantastic.
It sums up everything about the article in one image – you know what the person does straight away, and in my opinion it’s just brilliant.
Portrait of a bridge painter
Image (C) Guardian Newspapers 2009 and Murdo Macleod
How not to do it
Posted: Sat 25 July, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Security, Stupidity, Technology, Toyota IE | Tags: ian corbett, toyota ie Leave a comment »This post has been deleted, on the request of Ian Corbett, Marketing Manager of Toyota Ireland, and his legal advisers.
For more explanation, see here.
Mis-Spelling
Posted: Fri 24 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Stupidity, Thoughts 2 Comments »Yesterday, I got three spam emails attempting to go phishing for my log-in details.
Now, as I’ve said before many times, I feel that anyone who responds through these phishing emails deserves everything they get for being a bell-end and clicking on links in random emails. (Particularly when they then go to some very odd URLs that have nothing to do with the bank in question – in this case www.mybank.alliance-leicesterXXX.com)
And if anyone responded to any of these particular three emails, then they’re even more deserving of getting ripped off. In fact I’d then go so far as to simply term it as an idiot tax.
Because the subject line for all of these email addresses was :
Secure Message from Alliance & Liecester
And if you don’t spot that in the email, and still click on the links, you damn well deserve to lose your information/money.
Back to Where It Began
Posted: Thu 23 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Thoughts 2 Comments »I see that the ITV series “The Bill” is getting a lot of publicity about how it’s going from being a shitey soap-type programme down to a one-hour/episode-per-week drama series. It’s even going out post-watershed.
But what no-one seems to be commenting on is the fact that this isn’t a new thing for The Bill – in fact, that’s right where it started.
So this rethink and reschedule is really more an acknowledgement that all the fucking about with it over the last few years didn’t work, so it’s going to go back to its roots a bit, and see where it goes from there.
Personally, I hope it works out – when it first came out, The Bill was a decent police series. Maybe it’ll go back to being one again, although only time will tell on that score.
Electric vs. Diesel
Posted: Thu 23 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts, Travel 2 Comments »I have to say that attempting to justify electrifying the main train line between London and South Wales as “cutting the running cost and environmental impact of train services” really is utter, utter bollocks.
Now OK, I’m not an engineer, nor am I a train person in particular, so I don’t know the exact correlation of energy usage/efficiency between a diesel train and an electric one. And maybe the electric trains themselves are more energy-efficient than the diesel-powered ones. Fine.
But when you look at the bigger picture, that’s one fuck of a lot of electricity being chucked down the trainline. And that electricity has to be generated somewhere – which is still generating CO2 (unless it’s a nuclear power station, of course) and thus still having an effect.
So far as I can see, when you look at the entire thing, at least a diesel-powered train is using the energy it creates purely to power the train on demand. The electric line is (to my knowledge) powered constantly, rather than just “on demand”, which simply has to be more of a drain/waste, unless I’m completely mistaken.
This is the future. It’s greener, it’s cleaner, it’s faster, it’s more reliable. It’s making the railways fit for the 21st Century and encouraging more passengers to use the railways”
Aye, right. A £1billion project that’s not greener or cleaner. And I’d be more encouraged to use the railways if the services were a) on-time, b) organised and c) not utterly fucking extortionate.
Self Perception
Posted: Wed 22 July, 2009 Filed under: Health, Introspective, Thoughts, Weight Loss 1 Comment »One of the big issues for me when it comes to my weight is my own perception of it – or the lack thereof, I’m not sure which.
Firstly, there’s the simple fact that I’m pretty big anyway, although I’m not going to use (and never have used) the excuse of being “big-boned” for being the weight I am. However, one can’t escape the simple fact that (as I’ve said before) I’m still 6’3″(ish) tall, and have a chest measurement that’s at least 50″ on it’s own. And that’s a chest measurement, not a belly one – so we’re talking structure, not flab. All told, my body can take a fair bit of weight without looking like I’m fat.
Second, my mum (in particular) is by no means slim – that’s not meant nastily, simply a statement of fact – which has done something to my perceptions of size, in that “normal” in my head most definitely isn’t Size Ten, or whatever.
The third thing is that on the rare occasions I see a TV programme like “Biggest Loser” or whatever, I try to compare my own weight with that of the competitors. And that’s a problem – because I simply don’t have the rolls of fat that appear on them, even when those people are spposedly lighter than the just-over-300pounds that I am currently. (And yes, I know that I’m probably taller than they are too, etc. etc.)
I know I’m overweight, I know I need to lose some – and I’m working on it, of which more later in the week – but somewhere along the line I need to believe it as well as know it, if that makes any sense…
Overheating
Posted: Tue 21 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, News, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »I didn’t comment at the time when the story first broke, but I’m really pleased to see today that the police officer whose dogs died in a car outside the headquarters for Nottinghamshire Police is to be charged with causing unnecessary suffering to the animals.
Obviously no-one outside the situation knows the full story of what happened – yet. Regardless, it’s hard to imagine any dog owner – let alone the owner/trainer of two police dogs – just leaving their dog(s) in a car on a hot day. Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can let it happen.
I don’t care whether you’re in a meeting, or get called into something “important”, if it’s that hot and you know you’ve left dogs out in the car, you say so and then get out to make sure they’re OK. It’s that simple. Of course, ideally you’ve not got dogs in the car on a day like that anyway, but sometimes it does happen.
But whatever happens, if your job is based around animals, you simply don’t let those animals die (or suffer) needlessly.
Not Dead (Again)
Posted: Tue 21 July, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic 1 Comment »Over the weekend, we had a couple of dead days on D4D™ – something which I’ve noticed/realised has been happening quite a bit over the last few months.
I don’t know exactly why – I used to be really good at writing here at least daily, and generally I’m still pretty good at it, but for whatever reason, weekends just seem to mean I’m not updating as much as usual.
Of course that could be because we’re pretty busy over the weekend, along with the fact that after a week, I’m generally fairly naffed off with computers come the weekend. But still, it used to be that I made time for D4D™, whereas now D4D™ has to make time for me. Who knows, maybe that’s even a sign I’m growing up, or something.
Still, it could be worse – I could be not writing stuff here during the week, too.
Ouchy
Posted: Mon 20 July, 2009 Filed under: Driving, News, Thoughts, Travel Leave a comment »Well, it’s nice to see that the UK isn’t the only place for interesting road crashes etc. – I think this 259-car pile-up in Germany is a pretty impressive achievement.
Amazingly, no-one died in the accident, although 10 are apparently in a serious or critical condition in hospital. Even so, ten out of what? At least 259 people – which goes quite a way to showing how much safer cars are now than they used to be.
Related Insanity
Posted: Sun 19 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts Leave a comment »It’s nice (in some ways) to know that my father is just as barmy as I am on occasion.
Last weekend, we drove down to Oxfordshire for my dad’s 65th birthday, where he was having a surprise party organised by my mum and their friends. It was a fun evening, even with the 2hr drive on either side of it. Only, because I’m a prat (and was tired, I admit) I forgot my camera, and left it down in Oxfordshire. Arses.
Anyway, I was planning to get it sometime during the week while I was already travelling blummin’ miles, but traffic (and more accurately, traffic jams) conspired against that happening. Double Arses.
On Friday, my dad called and left a message on my mobile, which I clean forgot about, and didn’t get round to listening to.
So it was a complete surprise when the daft bugger turned up on the doorstep yesterday lunchtime, along with my camera. It turned out that my mum was on a day out somewhere, so once he’d dropped her off in [local town] he’d decided to give the car a run, and come out here, drop off the camera, look at the changes we’d done to the house since they were last up here, and then drive back – all told, nearly 300-mile round-trip.
Utterly, utterly barmy.
Of course, it’s much appreciated, and means I’ve got my camera back. And it shows pretty well where I’ve inherited my lack of concern regarding mileage and long(ish) drives from…
NIN/JA Tour, O2 Arena
Posted: Thu 16 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking 1 Comment »Way back in the day, I was a big fan of Janes Addiction, but never got to see them live. Then they reformed and created a new album (Strays), and I still didn’t get to see them live.
And I’ve been a fan of Nine Inch Nails all the way back to the first album, some twenty years ago now.
So it was a complete no-brainer that when the NIN/JA (Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction) tour was announced with UK dates, I was going to be going.
And lo, last night was the night – and amazingly, I got there in plenty of time. (Considering that last time I was going to see them, Ticketmaster never sent the tickets) Hell, I even got to see the support act – a band called Mew, who I wasn’t overly impressed with. Sorry, Lori, they just didn’t do it for me – but bear in mind I said the same thing way back when Muse supported Skunk Anansie, so don’t count on my opinions for much…
Jane’s Addiction, on the other hand, absolutely rocked the place. It was very much a case of “playing the known stuff” – although that’s not a massive challenge when you’ve only released three albums anyway. My only disappointment was that they didn’t play “Hypersonic” from the “Strays” album – but them’s the breaks. They played pretty much everything else they’ve done that was popular and/or well known.
As for NIN themselves, they did even more. Even though Jane’s had been fantastic (and loud!), with a storming lighting set-up, NIN just did the same only more so. Brighter, louder, harder. It was awe-inspiring. Even better, it seemed like almost a retrospective – again, lots of stuff from the first couple of albums, the real crowd-pleasers, with not much from the latest album at all.
Of course, we knew it was going to be something special for the NIN section when they started bringing out extra lights and speaker stacks as well as what had already been on the stage. What we didn’t expect, though, was a guest appearance by Gary Numan for two tracks – he’s been an inspiration to Trent Reznor (the lead of NIN) for years, but it was still pretty stunning to see him live as well.
All told, my enjoyment of the gig was only slightly damaged at the end, when some fuckwit girl called Lisa decided to keel over next to me – she’d been leaning on me for the previous track, and when it came to an end she just fell forwards, not even an attempt to stop herself. Luckily, I was standing right next to the sound-desk enclosure, so was able to yell and get a security guy’s attention, and while he sorted out getting her medical help (and, as it turned out, a wheelchair) I ended up being the main prop for her, with her holding on to the railings of the enclosure. I’ve no idea what she’d taken (it certainly wasn’t a fit, she wasn’t pissed, but her eyeballs were floating off in different directions) but she was like a sack of shit – and roughly as good as one at standing up. All due respect to the O2’s medical and security crews though, they were absolutely fantastic.
It meant I didn’t get to pay the full attention to the final track (an awesome version of “Hurt”) but well, priorities and all that.
Still, it was an absolutely stunning gig – as well as eye-fuckingly bright and brain-throbbingly loud too- and if it is to be (as rumoured) their last tour for a significant time, well it was certainly one hell of a way to go out on a high note…
(Oh, and just to rub it in, it took me less than two hours from leaving the O2 to get back home – I got in at 1am. So suck that Wembley, and your bullshit carparking farce)
Quote of the Day
Posted: Thu 16 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Thoughts Leave a comment »from Fabulous Lorraine
Couldn’t agree more.
Sure, I’m not perfect at it – who is? – but it’s certainly an ethos I subscribe to.
Missing Moggy
Posted: Mon 13 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Currently, Psycho Cat is missing – he had a bad day yesterday, which involved being stuck halfway up a neighbour’s tree for most of the afternoon. He got down with a bit of assistance in the end, but we haven’t seen him since.
I’m fairly sure he’s just in a grouch about it all, particularly in conjunction with his vet visit last week, but all the same, it’s a bit of a concern.
UPDATED : OK, found the little sod now. No idea where he’d been, but he was up annoying the chickens. So all’s OK, I’m pleased to say.
Vet Results
Posted: Fri 10 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic 2 Comments »Psycho Cat came back fine in the end – although the General Anaesthetic leaves him a twitchy, drooling wreck for the remainder of the day.
The lumps turned out to be serious clumps of fur, from the look of it – Psycho Cat hasn’t let us near him yet to check it out properly. Whatever, they haven’t needed surgical removal or anything. No bad thing, as I suspect Psycho Cat would never forgive us in that circumstance.
So all’s back to normal – or at least as close to it as we ever get.
And tomorrow is another long drive, down to Oxfordshire for my father’s 65th birthday, and then back home in the evening. Joy of joys.
Vet Visit
Posted: Thu 9 July, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic Leave a comment »Today, Psycho Cat is at the vets again.
Primarily it’s another de-matt (AKA “getting shaved”) as he’s ended up totally gunked up again down his belly and left-hand-side. We don’t know where he’s been going, or what he’s been doing to get in such a state, but it’s been pretty annoying for him.
Also, for whatever reason, while he’s quite happy to let us brush out his right-hand side, attempting to do the same on the left results in a full-on attack with claws and teeth. I know, as the scratches on my right hand have only just healed. There’s a couple of lumps in the fur that seem to cause him pain – we don’t yet know if these lumps are just really tightly-packed matts of fur, or if they’re something under the skin, so that’s something that’ll be checked out at the vets at the same time.
Because the cat is such a fucking Psycho, he needs to have a general anaesthetic while he’s being done – the last time someone tried doing it without the GA, they ended up needing a visit to the doctors themselves to get stitches and a tetanus shot.
However, having the GA means that the fuzzy little bastard isn’t supposed to eat after 9pm the previous evening. And you just try telling a cat that.
So come 4am this morning, all we had was whining and whinging from Psycho Cat that he was hungry. And boy, does he make a production job of it. There’s no way to sleep through it – it’s the full-on yowls of “Hungry. Feed Me!” coupled with scratching on the wicker chair in the bedroom (conveniently also guaranteed to wake Hound up) and jumping on the bed in order to yell closer to us.
In short, he’s a little shit. It’s not even like he’s actually hungry – he just wants to have a couple of mouthfuls of food when He wants, rather than when we say he can. And if he can’t have the food, he’ll make a complete pain in the arse of himself ’til he can.
Still, he’s at the vets now, so I guess that’s punishment enough for being a little fucker last night…
Wembley Stadium Parking Revisited
Posted: Thu 9 July, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, D4D™, Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking 1 Comment »Ten days ago (roughly) I was at Wembley Stadium, and at the end of the evening had a total farce of a time getting out of the car parks. The following morning, I sent off a complaint email to both CS Parking and Wembley Stadium’s “customer services” people.
In fairness to CS Parking, I got a response back pretty quickly from the MD of the company – impressive in itself – after which there was a fairly long email ‘conversation’ about what had happened. That all got closed off by last Friday (i.e. a week after the even) and was all fine. I still think the parking situation is
- Shit
- Unmanaged for people leaving Wembley Stadium
- Farcical
but I can at least now understand why it’s shit, unmanaged, and a total Grade One ClusterFuck.
Wembley Stadium’s customer services, on the other hand, have only just come back to me today, and their email is rather more of a “Not our problem, mate. Go complain to someone else” effort…
All event day parking is managed by a contracted 3rd party; City & Suburban Parking in partnership with the local authority Brent Council and the Metropolitan Police.
The official car parks were full, accommodating in excess of 3,000 cars and in addition there were approx 3,000 cars parked in unauthorised car parks and a further 1,000 vehicles collecting from the area after the concert. As a result of the high volume of traffic, there were delays clearing the car parks the main car parks were not clear until 1½ hours after the end of the concert. We do not believe that these delays are acceptable however the local roads are under the control of Brent Council, not Wembley Stadium. We will be reviewing the exit plans with Brent Council and the Metropolitan Police for future concert events.
Thank you once again for contacting us. We hope you will be able to visit Wembley Stadium again in the future.
Considering that I’ve since had comments here on D4D from people who had the same problem with Wembley Stadium’s Parking after the Take That concerts, I think it’s fair to say that you’re actually far better off if you can avoid using the car parking at Wembley Stadium. Well, either that or make use of the “pirate” car parks around the stadium, rather than the Stadium’s piece-of-shit “official” car parking.
Road Widening
Posted: Wed 8 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel 4 Comments »Oh Good, just to make life even more fun, the M25 is going to be buggered until at least 2012. Not only will it be getting widened between Junctions 16 (the M40) and 23 (The A1M), but there’s also going to be similar work going on round the other side, from the M11 to the Dartford River Crossing.
I know, it’s hardly a shock to the system to know that there’s going to be even more congestion on the M25, but widening it by only one carriageway isn’t going to do a damn thing – well, not until Peak Oil kicks in, anyway. By the time the work is completed, I’ll pretty much guarantee you that it’ll go straight to being solid traffic jams again – just on four lanes instead of three.
What I don’t understand is why the planners for these projects (or the people at the start, when the M25 was originally being created) don’t just say “Oh fuck it, let’s actually think ahead for once, and make it six lanes in each direction, to cater for future demand.” Do the whole job at once, no need for further sodding about.
I’m sure there’s a good reason (rather than just that the planners are fuckwits) but it’s beyond me right now.
Driving to the Conditions
Posted: Wed 8 July, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weather Leave a comment »As regular readers will be all too aware, one of my regular driving bug-bears is about the idiots who put on their foglights, and then forget to turn them off when the weather clears.
Rather more dangerous though, as I was reminded last night on my way home, are the idiots who don’t use foglights when they’re actually necessary – even if that isn’t in fog.
Last night, just before leaving the M11 to go onto the A11, the clouds opened. Full-on thunderstorm, and the torrential rain that seems to be part and parcel at the moment. Within moment, visibility had rolled down to dogshit (the official terminology for “less than 20ft”) and I’d slowed to about 40, having seen one person in front aquaplane and spin the car through a full 180° onto the hard shoulder. (That was impressive in itself – the driver handled it fine, but just span into the hard shoulder, no damage at all, just spin to a stop) At the same time, my lights went on – as usual, to enable people to see me, not in order to be seen.
The entire drive along the A11 until the A14 was the same – exceptionally low visibility, and incredibly heavy rainfall. You couldn’t see cars at all 100 ft away – and why? Because hardly any of them even put lights on, let alone the foglights that actually should have been on.
In fact, in the entire 10-ish miles of A11, I saw exactly one other driver with his foglights on.
It boggles my mind, the number of people who use their foglights when they don’t need them, but then don’t use them at all when they actually do need to be in use.
More and more, I find myself supporting the idea of drivers having to pass a “refresher” driving test every five years. I know it would be a pig to administrate, but I think it would lead to some significant improvements in driving.
Think 25 – A response
Posted: Tue 7 July, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism 11 Comments »I emailed Sainsbury’s yesterday, asking about why they’d introduced the Think 25 policy. This is what I (eventually) got back…
Thank you for your email asking why we have adopted the think 25 policy for the sale of alcohol.
Although there has been no change in the law for buying and selling alcohol, the policy is promoted by local authorities, health departments and the police to limit the consequences of selling alcohol to underage people. As cashiers now have a personal responsibility by law they must take this very seriously.
I am grateful for you taking the time to write to us and allowing me to explain the background to the policy.
So – despite all their waffle about it being related to ‘all age-related items’, it’s actually only related to the sale of alcohol. And it doesn’t actually explain why they can’t just check for ID that the purchaser is, you know, over 18.
In short, “Think 25” is utter, utter bollocks. What a shocker.
Think 25
Posted: Mon 6 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Security, Stupidity 2 Comments »Over the weekend, I noticed that Sainsbury’s (and, I assume, the other supermarkets) are now operating a “Think 25” policy, where if you’re buying items that are prohibited under a certain age, you’ll get asked for ID first.
What items are we talking about? Well, to my knowledge – and this isn’t a comprehensive list, although I could probably find one if I tried – it consists of :
- Cigarettes (18 or over – it used to be 16, but changed in October 2007)
- Alcohol (18 or over)
- Blades – knives, razor-blades etc. (18 or over)
It used to be that if you looked under eighteen, you’d be asked for ID. Fair enough – 18 was the limit for most of the age-limited items.
Then the stores started getting paranoid about customers who just “looked” 18 getting through the system, so they invoked the “Check 21” policy, where even though you were legally allowed to buy said products, if you looked up to three years older than that, you would still get asked for ID – and not allowed to purchase the products if you didn’t have ID.
Now they appear to be even twitchier about it, and the “ask for ID” limit is 25 – and that’s if you look 25, not whether you are or not. So a whole seven years more of being asked for ID.
And the really stupid bit? The entire thing is voluntary – which means it’s perfectly legal for the only-just 18 till-person to sell the (for example) beer, but ask ID of someone who looks up to seven years older before they can sell it.
Totally barmy.
Pick Your Own
Posted: Sun 5 July, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Norfolk 1 Comment »Today, we went to one of the local pick-your-own farms, spent about an hour there, and collected enough raspberries and strawberries to make up more than 12lb of jam, for the princely amount of £15.
Yes, the fruit in our own patch will cost even less, but that won’t mature ’til next year, I suspect. It’s getting there, and we’ve got some small fruits on the stuff there, but these things take time. The PYO place was fantastically stocked, and you can be sure we’ll be going back there for more this year.
We’ve still got some fruit spare as well, so that’s going in some puds for the week. Can’t be bad.
Howler Sirens
Posted: Sat 4 July, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »While I think the idea of the new “Howler” sirens on emergency vehicles is a good idea, I can’t help but think they won’t actually work to get people out of the way.
After all, if someone is so much of a cock on the roads that a) they can’t hear sirens because their music is too loud and b) not looking in their mirrors, then they’re not going to notice and shift if they feel the car vibrating. In fact, if the music is that loud inside the car, the odds are that the bloody car will be vibrating already.
And if the driver is that much of a cock and they do feel their car vibrating, I’m pretty sure they’re actually more likely to panic, wonder what’s wrong with the car, and probably stall it right in the way of the emergency vehicles.
So it’s a nice idea, but I suspect it’ll fail against the wall of human nature.
Too Much Free Time?
Posted: Fri 3 July, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism Leave a comment »Definitely filed under “Too much time on their hands” comes this – 50 examples of ‘coffee’ art.
Although on a more cynical note, I can’t help wondering if some of those designs have been brought into being through the wonder of Photoshop…
Two More Years
Posted: Fri 3 July, 2009 Filed under: D4D™ 3 Comments »Gobsmackingly, this D4D domain name is now six years old – which means D4D has been going for seven years. (we had a year at destruction-for-dummies before Wiley’s tried sueing me for using it)
Lord only knows how long I’ll keep on writing this rubbish – I know it’s taken a bit of a dive of late, there’s still a post in drafts about that – but I’ve just renewed this domain name for another two years, so we’ll see what happens.
Still, I’m sure people will be pleased to know that this rot is here ’til 2011 at least. *cough*
Transformers 2
Posted: Thu 2 July, 2009 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »Last night we finally got round to going to see Transformers 2 (sorry, “Revenge of the Fallen”)
We weren’t expecting much from it, having heard lots of negative – or at best ambivalent – reviews of it being too long, too complex, too this, too that. But all fours of us came out deciding that we’d actually enjoyed it far more than we’d expected to.
Yes, it’s utterly ridiculous – just read the questions and answers here to get some idea of the awesome plot holes and stupidity of the film – but so long as you don’t go in expecting anything other than a hyper-fast stupid film with lots of transforming robots, you’ll do OK.
I do wonder if I’m getting old, though – about two thirds of the way through the film, my poor brain was just wanting the director to slow down a bit, just to let the braincells regroup a bit. Sure, you’re just along for the ride really, (and wow, is it a ridiculous ride in *so* many places) and I guess it does need to be that fast just so you don’t sit back and ask just some of the questions in that Q and A post linked to above, but it would still be good to slow things down a tad on occasion.
As expected, the final half-hour or so is just ridiculously bad, with a bundle of tacked-on sentimentality in case you felt you’d missed it.
So it’s fun – but really, please don’t take your brain into the cinema. If you do, you’ll be badly disappointed – and distracted by those epic plot holes.
NCFE Photography – The Result
Posted: Wed 1 July, 2009 Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), NCFE Course, Photography, Resolutions Leave a comment »So, ten months after starting the course – three terms of ten weeks each, plus breaks for half-term and between terms – I’ve now passed my NCFE Level 2 Photography certificate.
I’ve written about the course on odd occasions over the last year, and it’s been a pretty good course all told. I wouldn’t say I’ve learned masses, but that wasn’t necessarily my goal for the course – it was more about getting more motivation for going out and taking photos, which was more what I needed – and in that way, it’s been pretty successful.
There’s a fair number of the final portfolio images in this set on my Flickr pages although I haven’t added all of them yet.
All told, I’m pleased to have successfully completed the course, and to have built up the portfolio project, and it’s another thing to add to the CV. All the people on the course have decided we’ll continue to meet up on a regular basis, and keep our motivation going in that way, creating in effect our own photography club, so we’ll see how that goes.
And for further further education? I don’t know yet – Norfolk’s Adult Education has apparently been hit hard by budget cuts, so there are nowhere near as many courses for 2009/10, and even more annoyingly it looks like the NCFE have also stopped doing the Level 3 certificate completely. So we’ll just have to see what I decide to do on that score.
For now, I’m going to enjoy a summer off, and take some time to think about what comes next.
Blue or Green
Posted: Wed 1 July, 2009 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »I love optical illusions, and seeing the way the brain works (and in some cases doesn’t) on these things
But this particular one still makes my head hurt…
Bitten
Posted: Tue 30 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weather 2 Comments »Great – it’s that time of year where the horseflies come out again, which means I get a couple of viciously nasty bug bites.
I don’t know what the hell is in a horsefly’s bite (injection, whatever) but my body reacts badly to it – not an allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock, or anything like that – but the site of the bite swells significantly. It also itches like an absolute motherfucker, which doesn’t help.
Generally the swelling stays for about 48-72 hours, and there’s nothing I’ve yet found that’ll do anything at all to it – piriton, witch hazel, cold compress, anti-histamines in general, all has no effect whatsoever. It’s incredibly annoying.
At the moment I’ve got two of these bites, which have lasted from Sunday. They should be easing off by now – or at least by the end of today – just in time to get some more this coming weekend, I’m sure.
All told it’s just another reason to get a bit more annoyed by summer.
Century and a Half
Posted: Mon 29 June, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Blimey, Bernie Madoff has been given a jail term of 150 years for his fraudulent investor schemes etc.
That’s one hell of a sentence – the kind of jail time you can’t even really imagine.
Organised Parking Procedures
Posted: Mon 29 June, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Travel, Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »In a direct contrast to Wembley, the O2 have recently made their parking even easier.
The last couple of times we’ve been organising to go to the O2, the parking booking has had to be done via Ticketmaster – and most of the time, it couldn’t be done online for some fuckforsaken reason, so you ended up having to call the tosspots.
Now, though, the O2 deals with booking parking on their own site through a simple two-page form. (There may be more pages if you’re doing multiple bookings, or your address is different to the cardholders, but it took me two pages) And that’s it. Confirmation comes through to the email address, and it’s all done. No fucking about with Ticketmaster’s horrific system, no “you’ve got two minutes to fill in this form”, no godawful captchas to try and interpret, just a simple form.
So my parking’s booked for seeing Nine Inch Nails/Jane’s Addiction in just over two week’s time.
Again, I’ll be knackered by the time I get home – but it’ll be worth it.
AC/DC, Wembley Stadium
Posted: Sun 28 June, 2009 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish), Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »Other than the aforementioned parking nightmare at Wembley Stadium, the rest of the AC/DC gig on Friday was utterly fantastic. Bearing in mind we were about as far as it’s possible to get from the stage…
The view from our seats
So AC/DC themselves were about 1cm high. There were videoscreens either side, which made the viewing experience something akin to watching on a small TV from across the room, but that’s still OK. After all, it’s the sound you’re going for, not the vision – and the sound was storming. Mind you, some people were obviously expected to be just there for the beer…
Carlsberg trailer behind beer tent at floor level
The two-and-a-quarter hours of AC/DC just rocked the place. Interestingly, they only played about five tracks from the latest album, Black Ice, and the rest came from all over the last thirty-odd years. And all of it was ace. Several firm favourites got played, including Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Back in Black, Hells Bells and (of course) For Those About To Rock as a finale, along with cannon blasts.
It wasn’t a show in the same way as the one Pink did recently, but it was still a show – the lighting was spectacular (and improved through the night, as the sun went down) and everyone seemed to have a fantastic time. Personally I felt the ten-plus minutes of Angus’ guitar soloing was a move too far, and could’ve had a couple more tracks instead. But that’s just me.
The AC/DC lightshow
All told, a seriously good gig – I’d go and see them again no worries.
Complaint to Wembley Stadium’s Parking people
Posted: Sat 27 June, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Driving, Wembley Stadium Parking 7 Comments »Ah, I do love writing letters of complaint. In this case, it’s about the car parking at Wembley Stadium, and the exit nightmare…
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to you to complain in the strongest possible terms about the farcical car-parking situation at Wembley Stadium. I understand that it is primarily a “public transport” venue – however, National Express don’t do coaches to anywhere within 40 miles of my location, so driving was the only way to come to Wembley Stadium.
Last night, after the AC/DC concert, we left the Stadium by 11pm, and didn’t get to leave the car-park ’til 12.15am. 75 minutes to get out of a car-park (we were in Green Car Park, on Level 4, so there was only one ramp to go down in order to exit the venue) is simply not an acceptable time. The O2 manages to get people out within ten minutes, mainly because they have parking attendants guiding and managing the traffic.
In a venue like Wembley Stadium, where so much thought has been given to managing the flow of people out of the stadium, it’s deeply bizarre to then have absolutely no thought or management of the car parking. Getting away from the Stadium is, by necessity, the last thing one remembers: it is the freshest memory, and colours the judgement of the entire event. In this case, while the concert itself was fantastic, the parking and exit strategy is going to be enough to make me severely reluctant to visit Wembley Stadium again. I would rather go to a venue like the O2 where the exit policy is smooth, organised and rapid than go to Wembley Stadium where it is nothing short of farcical and shambolic. Paying £25 for the privilege of being stuck for an hour and a quarter is just adding insult to injury, I’m afraid.
I look forward to hearing your response to this complaint.
Sincerely
Lyle
See, and not a swearword in place! I wonder what the response will be?
Knackered
Posted: Sat 27 June, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Reviews(ish), Travel, Wembley Stadium Parking Leave a comment »So, yesterday was the AC/DC “Black Ice Tour” concert at Wembley Stadium – and right now I’m utterly knackered.
I left the house at 2.15 to go and collect the other person (the almost-brother-in-law) I was going with from Dereham before starting off for London at about 3.30 to go thrashing down to Wembley. We got there about 6pm – not too bad, although we could’ve done better if the satnav hadn’t decided to mis-direct us on the North Circular. Still, got there in plenty of time.
Wembley is bloody impressive – and effing huge. We were right up at the top, which meant that the band were about a centimetre high – although the big video screens either side of the stage meant they were much bigger – ooh, almost like watching a video of them live.
Anyway, two hours of standing, watching the gig – which was ace, and for which another post is due to be written (along with manky cameraphone pictures) – before heading home.
And that was where it all went a bit tits-up. You see, Wembley Stadium may be dead easy to get out of, but the car-parks really aren’t. Considering you’ve paid £25 – yes, twenty-fucking-five quid – to CS Parking (also known as City and Suburban parking) in order to park, I’d expect at least a couple of people out there guiding drivers and managing the traffic flow. But no. The parking situation when you’re coming out of Wembley Stadium is a total, complete and utter fuck-up. So we waited for half an hour, then decided to move, and all told it took an hour and a quarter to get out of Wembley Stadium’s car parking.
Once we’d done that, it was plain sailing – straight round the M40, M25, M11 and A11. Easy. I was back in Dereham at 2:45 and home at about 3:15.
But dear God I’m tired today – and my feet fucking hurt, too. There’s a learning experience in that – possibly “lose some weight you fat bastard”. We’ll see.
Late
Posted: Fri 26 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Travel Leave a comment »Why is it that when you know you’ve got a really long day and/or late night the next day, you end up having a really shitty night, and are thus even more knackered?
Yes, it’s what happened to me last night – tonight I’m seeing AC/DC at Wembley Stadium, which means I’m going to be travelling down to London today, seeing the gig, and then driving back – I reckon we’ll be home for about 2am, give or take.
Which of course meant that last night Hound was a total pain, it was horridly warm, and I think I slept properly for about three hours at best.
Should make today a long day – fun, but a long day…
Nigerian Gas/Oil
Posted: Thu 25 June, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Weirdness Leave a comment »Will someone please tell me that the new company name in this story is a joke? That the story was perhaps meant to be released on April 1st?
I find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously come up with the business name Nigaz for a Nigerian Gas/Oil company…
NCFE Completion
Posted: Tue 23 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, NCFE Course, Photography 2 Comments »Tonight, I get to hand in my final printed portfolio for my NCFE Photography course. And that’ll be it, I’ll be done except for finding out how I did.
In a way I’m glad it’ll be over – I’ve had to get out more to take photographs for the course, but at the same time my time has been horrendously crunched and I’ve had significant levels more added pressure while doing it, which I could’ve done without.
As it is, I’m just pretty pleased that I’ve completed the course – I’ve doubted I would several times, where there just didn’t seem like enough time to get things done, and particularly when I got let down on not one but two project/portfolio ideas before finally settling on the one I’ve done.
As for next academic year, I don’t know if I’m going to do any courses or not yet. We’ll see.
New Speaker
Posted: Mon 22 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I notice in the hustings for the new Speaker for the House of Commons, Ann Widdecombe said
the next Speaker had to be “known” to voters, and had to be someone ‘trusted’ by the public
So – not a politician, then?
Getting Shorter
Posted: Mon 22 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts Leave a comment »So bloody hell, after yesterday’s Summer Solstice, the days are getting shorter again.
I must be getting old, this year seems to be racing past again.
Bad Organisation
Posted: Sun 21 June, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Today, there’s a World Superbikes race at our local racetrack, Snetterton, which means that there’s an absolute shedload of bikers and cars all around the area, and coming off the A11 at Snetterton.
So I have to ask, what kind of fuckwit would organise a cycling time-trial along the same stretch of the A11 on the same day?
I had to drive up to Snetterton this morning to get rid of a carload of stuff at the tip, and saw three near-misses – two of them on the slip-road up to Snetterton, with cyclists going over it while idiot drivers were going too fast and trying to get onto the sliproad itself.
I get that dual-carriageway A-roads are (in theory at least) a good environment for cycle races – but not on busy days, and particularly not on a route where far more people than usual are going to be trying to use the sliproads to get through to other events.
Norfolk Safety
Posted: Thu 18 June, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Photography, Weirdness 1 Comment »I saw this a while ago, and completely forgot I’d taken a photo of it until I went through the photos on my phone today.
Yes, use a forklift as one support for a ladder
Well, it’s one way to do it, I suppose…
Airport “Security”
Posted: Thu 18 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Security, Stupidity, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »I’ve always been fascinated by the entire “security theatre” thing since 11/9 (Sorry, 9/11) and this article goes some way to showing some of why I find it so interesting.
What’s security theatre? It’s the farcical measures that’ve been thrown up – particularly in airports – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They’re not about security, they’re about making people think they’re secure – and it’s all pretty farcical when you think about it.
Bruce Schneier has been a critic of airport security and the security hype for a long time now – he’s a security and cryptography expert, who’s written some very cool stuff over the years, and knows what he’s talking/writing about. He’s quoted throughout the article, and makes far more sense than anything that the TSA and associated agencies can come up with.
All told, it’s a well-written piece, and well worth reading.
Return of the Quiz
Posted: Wed 17 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic Leave a comment »Tonight, yet again we’re off to a village quiz. This time it’s the one where we came second last year so we’ll just have to see how we do this time.
If nothing else, it should be a laugh.
Title Problem
Posted: Tue 16 June, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Is it just me that thinks there’s a slight problem with the headline for this story about the funeral of the last person who’d been on the Titanic?
Image of BBC News title for story - just in case they change it
After all, if she’s still the last survivor, what’re they doing having a funeral for her?
Hail
Posted: Tue 16 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weather Leave a comment »When I said we had epic hail yesterday, I really wasn’t kidding.
This was what remained around some of our flower pots two hours after it’d fallen – most of it stayed on the ground right through ’til at least half ten at night (having fallen at four or so in the afternoon) although it was gone this morning
Hailstones
Pretty impressive, really.
Of course, they hail has beaten the shit out of most of the plants outside – all the broad bean plants are bent over and have been beaten up, as have the strawberries, french beans, courgettes and pumpkins as well as the bamboo and lilac trees/bushes that we bought recently. But all of that should heal over time, so it could be a lot worse.
Meltdown
Posted: Mon 15 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weather Leave a comment »There are some times where I really do feel sorry for Hound. And today is one of those days.
As I’ve said before, Hound’s mental state really doesn’t hold up well when it comes to thunderstorms (or fireworks, the noise of jumbo jets, gales, and many other things – it’s a long list) and today has had one of the biggest/longest thunderstorms I’ve ever seen.
In this case, the thunder started rumbling at around 1pm – fortunately I was working at home – and Hound straight away came into the office to lie under the desk on my feet. She hasn’t really moved since then ’til now (it’s currently nearly 7pm, and there’s still the odd rumble of thunder going on) except for one mad fifteen minutes just before the Main Act of the storm some three and a half hours in, when I was dying for the loo and had to move. Cue utter meltdown.
The bit where the poor nutbag really lost it though was in the Main Act, where we had pretty much constant thunder/lightning, and an incredible dollop of hail that left ice on the ground maybe half an inch deep. During that time, Hound tried (as usual) to burrow out through the wall – she still hasn’t figured out that if she actually succeeded in burrowing out through the wall, she’d be outside, in the environment that so terrifies her. I know, she panics, and isn’t really capable of that kind of logic, but all the same you’d at least hope she’d figure that one out.
So we’ve got some gouges in the walls under the desk where she’s tried her burrow for freedom, and she’s now still sleeping (or at least lying) on my feet, so I can’t go anywhere.
So while she drives me potty, on occasion I do have some sympathy for the poor cow.
Still, at least we haven’t had floods etc., like some of the nearby towns/villages – it looks like our bit of Norfolk has been the worst hit by all this.
NCFE Completion
Posted: Sat 13 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, NCFE Course, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment »As regular readers know, over the last year (well, nine months or so) I’ve been doing an NCFE Level 2 course in Digital Photography + Photoshop. It’s been OK – I’ve learnt a few things, although nowhere near as much as I hoped to – but it has meant I’ve been getting out and taking more photos, which really was the prime reason for taking the course.
There’s a larger piece being written about me, motivation and other issues, so I won’t go into them too much here, but suffice to say that my motivation has been distinctly lacking over the last year or so, so I’ve been working along the way to do things that get me doing more. And the NCFE course was one of those things.
Anyway, it’s coming to a close, and the main thrust for this term has been the assemblage of a final portfolio, which needs to be done by the 23rd June. We’ve all known about needing to do this portfolio, and in truth I’m actually on the third iteration of it – the first two project ideas fell through due to a lack of available opportunities and/or time (in fact the idea for the first one still wouldn’t have been available for me to do ’til next week, which is cutting it just a little bit fine…) so I’ve ended up with one that I’m happy with, but that’s completely in my comfort-zone, which isn’t the ideal for this course. But there we go, them’s the breaks.
But it’s now completely done, with everything being printed and assembled by Photobox. In some ways it’s a relief to have it all done and out the way, but in others it’s more a case of “OK, so what’s next?”
Yuck 2
Posted: Fri 12 June, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »In other news, Panasonic have released a very strange (and really quite creepy) prototype for a new remote control unit.
This conceptual gel remote from Panasonic lays limp when not in use, pulsating with a soft light. But when its sensors detect a hand coming, it stiffens, ready for action!
Thankfully, it’s a prototype and not released yet – otherwise I’d have thought twice about buying the new Panasonic DVD-Player/Speakers I’ve just got…
Yuck
Posted: Fri 12 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Weirdness Leave a comment »(via Scalzi)
I’d never even heard of this before, and thankfully it’s not around any more.
But just the concept of Raspberry-flavoured Coke makes me shudder…
Low-Flying
Posted: Thu 11 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Cynicism, Domestic Leave a comment »Over the last couple of weeks (and for the next six or so) we’ve had lots of low-flying aircraft over the house, and it’s down to this – the Stanford Training Area (known locally as STANTA) has converted a portion of its land into an Afghan village for training soldiers and there’s a lopping great training exercise on at the moment.
In general I don’t mind too much about the aircraft etc. – although Hound has a real issue when they do the artillery fire, as it sounds like thunder, which sends her into a total tailspin – although on occasion I do get to the point (normally around 9,9.30 in the evening) when I think they might just be taking the piss a bit.
Still, it’s interesting to see what it’s being used for, and the way things have changed now, from the “Eastern European village” scenario for training to the “Afghan village/set-up”.
And it rather makes you wonder just how long the Armed Forces and/or Government think the War on Drugs Oil Terror might actually go on for, doesn’t it?
2.8
Posted: Thu 11 June, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, WordPress Leave a comment »The new version (release 2.8) of WordPress came out today – and it’s already been installed here at D4D™.
I have to say, since I updated D4D with the redesign and brought the WordPress install up to date as well, one of the things that has impressed me the most (despite some of its potential security issues) is the ability to update WordPress or the installed plugins directly from the site. It makes life a hell of a lot easier.
In this case, even updating the core files for WordPress was a matter of a couple of clicks, letting the file download, then a final click when everything was completed.
All told, it’s a pretty impressive way of doing things.
As for the use of 2.8? Well, there’s certainly been some changes, but I still have to explore most of them, so I’ll write more about it sometime in the next few days.
Still Dead
Posted: Tue 9 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Technology 1 Comment »Following on from last week’s post about the death of the DVD player and Blue Witch’s comment therein, I decided to get a DVD head-cleaning disk, (disc, whatever) just to see whether it would have any effect.
It wasn’t much of an investment, only £6.50 from Amazon, so it’s no biggie.
Anyway, we tried it out last night, to absolutely no effect whatsoever. In fact, the player won’t even acknowledge there’s a disk in the machine. It spins, but can’t identify a disk at all.
So it looks like the DVD player is now completely kaput fucked, and we’ll need to get a replacement set-up.
Bugger.
Interest
Posted: Mon 8 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Isn’t it a pity that we can’t have a flexible sentencing thing for people like this loan-shark who charged an 8,000,000% interest.
That way, his eight-month sentence could be added to in the same way that his loans were added to – just keep on adding time to it until he was there for life, as a living example of what that kind of interest does to people…
In Absentia
Posted: Mon 8 June, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Travel 2 Comments »Yet again, for whatever reason, the weekend resulted in no updates on D4D. Shocking, I know.
There’s no particular reason for not updating – well, there is, yet again I’m playing catch-up on a bout of depression that’s been hanging around for a few days/weeks/months/years (depending on how you look at it) which is probably the subject of another post I keep writing and re-writing in my head at the moment.
Anyway, Friday was primarily spent away from electronic devices, which kind of negated the entire “posting on D4D” thing. I was involved in looking after various animals of the family – several of aforementioned family had gone off to attend a funeral, so I was on “letting them out for dumps” duty. Yes, the morning was still my own, but was still not overly connected to t’Internet, so there we go.
Saturday was just downtime, in several senses of the word, and resulted in no written output at all.
Sunday was primarily spent Out, as we decided to take Hound to the beach (in this case Walcott, and then (briefly) Cromer) and also brought in a visit to a craft place along the way.
And that was the weekend. So it goes.
UKIP Voters Can’t Unfold Paper
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 3 Comments »You just couldn’t make it up…
According to this post, a number of people wanting to vote for UKIP haven’t been able to because they haven’t fully unfolded their ballot papers.
So ridiculous it’s unreal.
Terminator Salvation
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »Last night we went to see the new Terminator film, Salvation. And bloody good it is, too. Well, assuming you’ve liked the other Terminator films – and we’ll eliminate T3 from the equation, because that was unutterable shit.
It’s not a continuation from the other films – it’s being called a “reboot”, which I would also say isn’t strictly true. It’s different, in the same kind of way that “Aliens” is completely different to “Alien” – the basics are the same, but also things have changed – as they say in the film, “This isn’t the future I was told about”. Which of course is at least half the fun with films involving time travel in the way the Terminator ones do. (And can you believe it’s 25 years since the original Terminator film?)
The main change in this though is that it doesn’t involve any time travel. Instead, it’s all taking place in the future, with an adult John Connor. They’ve taken the time to look at how the machines would work/evolve, including bringing in a couple of new types of machine which make sense, and look fantastic.
The film’s slightly let down by the last ten minutes or so, which descend into American morality and predictability – but other than that, it’s a pretty stunning ride. Even better, it actually makes sense for the most part – there are fairly large holes in a couple of the concepts, but you’re willing to suspend that for a while, at least.
All told, it’s well worth seeing (again, based on the assumption that Terminator movies are your thing) and makes for an entertaining- and intense – couple of hours. Far better than Wolverine, that’s for sure…
Local Elections
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »The BBC has a piece on “All you need to know about today’s Elections“.
In fairness, I’d say that the main pointer should be “Just don’t vote for the BNP. Ever.”
Other than that, just make sure you vote. Don’t waste it by not bothering, make the effort and put your vote in.
Don’t know what each party’s policies are? Take a look here.
Crop Circles
Posted: Wed 3 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, News Leave a comment »Ah, it must be summer – we’re starting to get the stories about crop circles again.
In fairness though, I love this crop circle in a jellyfish shape – that shows some real creativity.
Audio-Visual
Posted: Wed 3 June, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Thoughts 2 Comments »Not content with the bed breaking last week, it looks like our DVD player is also on the way out. For some reason the discs aren’t playing at all, and we’re getting told “No Disc” when there patently bloody well is one.
Normally, a replacement DVD player wouldn’t be an issue. Thirty quid (at most) and job done.
However, we’re in a similar situation to when my DVD player died years ago – it’s not just a stand-alone DVD player, it’s a multiple disc thing that also deals with all the surround sound, Dolby® etc., so it’s pretty much DVD plus the full stereo etc. Which means that ideally I’m looking for a DVD player with the Dolby 5.1 outputs, so I can plug the speakers into it and job done.
Only of course, they’re hard to find – if they exist at all. The players are rarely sold on their own, instead coming with all the speakers as a completely new bit of kit.
All told, it all becomes a bit of a pain. I’d rather just get the player, so we don’t have to get new speakers etc. too – but that doesn’t seem to be a possibility.
Ross Kemp
Posted: Tue 2 June, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Charm School, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I notice on Sky that they’re doing a programme/series called “Ross Kemp in Search of Pirates“.
Now, can we just get “Ross Kemp held to Ransom”, make it a public appeal (in the vein of JustGiving or whatever) and see just how many people actually want to see the tosspot get released.
Mind you, I suspect more people would pay to see the twat tied up and in fear of his life than would pay to see him freed and/or on TV again.
Shallow Buyers
Posted: Tue 2 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »Recently, I’ve been doing a fair amount of working from home, which also means I get to see some daytime TV – particularly the BBC morning stuff, as I’m still nowhere near chavvy enough to want to watch Jeremy Sodding Shitbag Kyle (to give him his full name) which seems to still have an unhealthy preoccupation with property.
One of these programmes, “The Unsellables” focusses on (as you may have already guessed) properties that aren’t selling. None of what they do is overly surprising – clean/tidy up, get rid of clutter, tart the place up, blah blah blah. And I understand all those things – up to a point.
But the points they make in this programme (and I’m sure in many others) are that people won’t buy a place if they don’t like the wall colour, or clutter, or – god help us – the furniture. Now I’ve repeated been accused over the years of being too harsh on people etc., but are people really that dumb/unimaginative that they can’t picture their own stuff in a house, or see that it won’t take much to change a place from scruff-tip to decent place?
I don’t know – maybe it’s to the advantage of others. I know that when we looked at the house we’re now in, it hadn’t been popular because it was so seventies, and there were a number of things that really needed doing to it. And maybe it was also because we were prepared to do that work, even though we knew it’d take time. (Admittedly, we didn’t expect it to take the 2+ years it’s taken, but there we go) But that work has left us with a place we actually like, and that has added significant value to the place – plus (I hope) making it far more sellable as and when we do decide to move on. Not that we’re planning to, you understand – but it’s still something to think about.
So for us it was worth looking past the seventies tat, the horrific ornaments, the vile carpets, the monolithic fireplace and the awkward bits of layout – and I suspect that now if we were to look at buying this place in the state it’s now in, we’d be looking at spending a significant amount more than we’ve actually put in to the place.
All of which brings me back to wondering what the hell these buyers on “The Unsellables” et al are really thinking (or not, as the case may be) when they see these properties and not liking them. After all, if the sellers are so desperate to sell, why not put in an offer that’s well under the asking price? Do some work – hell, even just some basic painting, cleaning, and moving stuff about, and the place would be back up to scratch for selling at the full price.
I must be missing something on this, but I really don’t know what…
Garden Work – Again
Posted: Mon 1 June, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Another quiet weekend here at D4D although that doesn’t mean it was quiet all told.
As we had Saturday available again as a result of Depeche Mode postponing their concert at the O2, we did some work in the house and garden instead – including trolling off to one of the local garden centres, and buying some new plants (a bamboo and a spectacular lilac for the bit round the pond) as well as various other odds and sods.
In addition, our nice gardener man came round on the Saturday morning to finally fill in the potholes and craters left behind by compressing earth in the part that had been dug out to replace the water pipe (which we had expected to happen, and had plenty of spare earth to use for it) and then recovered the entire driveway with some two tons of grit.
On the Sunday, the mower came out with a vengeance (yet again – it’s a regular occurrence) as well as lots of planting going on, taking stuff from out of the greenhouse and getting it potted up properly. Oh, and getting rid of a poxy big honeysuckle plant that’d died off, and has now been burned in the garden incinerator.
Lots of progress all told – culminating in the first barbecue of the year.
Not a bad weekend at all, allbeit one that didn’t result in many updates here on D4d.
Bedding Down
Posted: Sat 30 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work, Thoughts Leave a comment »On Friday, I managed to break our bed. (No, nothing dirty – get your minds out the gutter!)
The main support in the middle of the bed (going end to end) is/was a piece of box-frame steel, and that piece of steel buckled, which then resulted in four of the wooden slats going across the bed to break.
We bought the bed less than two years ago, so I went back to the place we bought it, to see whether we could get a replacement bar and slats, or whatever was necessary – seeing as the bed was completely unusable ’til repair/replacement.
Anyway, it turns out we’re not the first people that this has happened to, and it’s a known issue. In fairness, our was only the third or fourth one it had happened to, but it meant that the store is aware of the issue, and it’s not a problem to replace the bar.
So I was able to pick up the replacement bar and slats from their warehouse (still in Norwich) and less than an hour after going to the store, I’d got the replacement bits in the car and driving home – along with some extra advice from one of their warehouse guys, who had also had it happen to him.
As a result, we now have the bed back together, with a couple of extra supports under the metal bar, just to help spread the load a bit more – and the supports were even made by me. Sure, they’re nothing special – just a couple of bits of wood under the bar, but they needed measuring, and cutting straight ( normally my primary problem when it comes to DIY) but they got done traight off, without even the need for a re-measure or a re-cut.
All told, I’m sadly chuffed at having sorted the bed out so quickly, including the extra bits necessary. And who knows, it may also provide just a little bit more motivation on that “needing to lose weight” thing. We’ll see.
!Depeche Mode
Posted: Fri 29 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Music, Thoughts Leave a comment »Tomorrow, we were supposed to be going down to The O2 to see Depeche Mode in concert.
Yesterday, we got told that it’s been postponed to “an as-yet undecided date”, due to Dave Gahan having a cancerous tumour removed – and I suppose that’s a pretty good reason to postpone the gigs/tour, all things considered.
Still, it’s a pain in the bum – even if it does give us back a Saturday. Bet we spend it in the garden…
Blocking Spammers
Posted: Thu 28 May, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky 1 Comment »Yesterday, D4D came under attack from a spammer using the name “Ebay Sniper”. They hit D4D with about 200 spam comments overnight, and they kept on trickling through during the day.
For whatever reason, Akismet was stopping them from displaying, but not blocking them completely. In addition, despite adding them to the discussion blacklist in the settings, the comments were still getting through.
So anyway, eventually I’d had enough of the crap, and ended up going to the big guns – blocking it by IP at source. So the server now blocks everything from the IP address where all the spam was coming from (and it wasn’t an IP used by any of my normal readers, thankfully) and redirects it to www.fuck-off-spammer.com . I don’t know if that site exists – but if it doesn’t, it should.
Funnily enough, since I put the block in place I’ve had no spam comments at all. Go figure.
More Research Required
Posted: Wed 27 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve just received one of the funnier spam emails of late…
I am Todd Williams, I am a staff of Natwest Bank Plc,U.K.i have a veryUrgent Business proposal of (£18,500,000.00 Million Pounds)for you to handle more details of this transaction,Please reply: im-a-fuckwit-spammer@emailaddress.info Kind Regards, Todd Williams(Mr.)ACCOUNTS OFFICER
That’s it in it’s entirety – and the only change I’ve made to it is the email address. Other than that, it’s exactly how it was received – piss-poor punctuation, grammar etc. all intact.
But the best bit of it (in my opinion) is the idea that in the current economic climate, some muppet in Nat West bank would have £18.5million to play with at all.
And seriously, what kind of fucking moron would you have to be to respond to a spam like that?
The Motorbike “Swerve Test”
Posted: Wed 27 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »One of the stories in the news yesterday was about the new motorbike driving test, and in particular the “Swerve test”. According to some instructors/examiners, this new module is dangerous – particularly in the wet.
During the test, learners have to reach 50km/h (31.2mph), then perform a swerve, on special test centre tracks.
But some instructors say that if riders brake and swerve at the same time they are likely to come off, particularly in the wet.
Now while I agree (to some degree) with the comment from the story “A motorcyclist’s competency can be best judged in the dry. Wet conditions introduce a chance element that should not be part of the test”, I also can’t help but feel that “real world” conditions are the best thing when it comes to taking a test – be it motorbike or car driving tests. I know I had driving lessons in some bloody horrible conditions (although admittedly not tests) including hail, driving snow, and plenty of night-time driving.
And if a rider can’t do this swerve at 30mph – and it’s a basic safety manoeuvre for getting out the way of incidents – then they damn well shouldn’t pass their tests. If they fall off and/or damage themselves as a result of this, surely that’s a learning experience in itself?
Even if that lesson is either a) “Don’t fall off the fucking bike” or just b) “Learn to ride properly, and deal with ‘real world’ situations”.
But then, I’m obviously completely unrealistic on these things. After all, I didn’t pass my driving test ’til I’d managed to avoid the really stupid ‘real-world’ mistakes, like stalling the car at junctions.
Tag Team
Posted: Tue 26 May, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »If I didn’t know better, I’d swear our animals are in league against us. It’s a fucking plot, I tell you.
Over the last few nights, Hound has been a restless pain in the arse – up at regular intervals during the night, drinking, mooching about, scratching the floor while she tries to get back to sleep. Sometimes it can be fixed by putting her in her cage (where she seems to relax, for some godforsaken reason) but sometimes the only thing that actually works is for one of us to give in and go to sleep in the spare room, accompanied by Hound in her basket.
It’s a pain – and I’m quite sure that certain uninformed people will come up with the normal “Hound needs more discipline” shit in the comments (to which I’ll just say now – We’ve lived with this, it’s not behavioural, it’s related to her megaoesophagus and OCD issues) – but sometimes it happens anyway.
So we’d had a couple of nights of this, which is always wearing.
Last night though, Hound was fine. It was Psycho Cat instead who took up the “wake the two-legs up every few hours” challenge – this time by puking his guts up in the bedroom. Twice. Followed by yelling and scratching for water.
Hound, on the other hand, woke up and got up each time to check what Psycho Cat was doing, and once the cat-puke (still-warm) had been cleaned up, she went straight back to bed. On each bloody occasion.
I don’t know what the hell I’ve done in previous lives to deserve this current set of animals. But whatever it was, I’m pretty sure I’ve made amends for it now. Haven’t I?
Persistent
Posted: Sat 23 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »And now, a question :
The scenario : You’re dropping off something (letter, bill, leaflet, whatever) at a house, and your child insists on putting it through the letter box. From inside the house, you can hear a dog going completely nutty, barking and barking at the people the other side of the door. (i.e. barking at you and your child) But your child is – for whatever reason – having real issues with getting the envelope through the letterbox.
So – the question…
Bearing in mind that the dog is going mental, and sounds really aggressive, would you keep on letting your child try to post the envelope, or would you take over, get the job done, and bugger off so that a) the dog could calm down and b) your child didn’t get their fingers nipped if they put them through the letterbox?
Mower RIP
Posted: Fri 22 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Green Garden Leave a comment »Longer-term readers may recall that back in August last year, we bought a second-hand ride-on mower from the friend of a friend. At the time this was A Good Thing, as it meant that a) we didn’t need to have the nice man mowing the lawn again this year (as in 2009) and b) that I wouldn’t have to slog my arse off mowing the entire bloody garden with the petrol-driven mower.
Over the winter, we got it serviced (supposedly- that’s a post for another day, I think) and the engine electrics repaired from where I knackered it when the battery fell off the back of the cunting thing, pulling various bits of connected enginery with it.
This year we tried starting it – nothing. The battery was flat, so that got charged up, having borrowed a battery charger from the out-laws. Once that was done, it ran. For about twenty minutes. It then went bang, chucked out a cloud of smoke, and wouldn’t start again.
Today, we got a different person to come out and have a look. Turns out the starter motor was fucked sticking , so he cleaned it out and lo, it started.
So I ran it round the garden again. Put it in gear to start mowing. And it went bang, chucked out a shitload of evil-smelling grey smoke, stopped, and wouldn’t start again.
So all told, I give up. The poxy thing’s knackered, and showing no signs of recovery. I think we’re just going to write it off as a total lemon, and one day get a new ride-on with a long fucking guarantee.
In the meantime, it’s back to the petrol-mower again. We spent £100 on that three years ago, and it’s never given us any serious hassle. Sure, it’s a pig to start the first time each year, but after that it runs just fine.
I’ve come to realise that I truly fucking hate garden machinery.
Forecaster
Posted: Thu 21 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Sweary Leave a comment »(via Sevitz)
Now this is how a weather forecast should be done.
When can we get the BBC weather to be like this?
Working From Home – Downside
Posted: Wed 20 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related 2 Comments »One of the downsides of working from home at the moment is things like this…
Problem exists between keyboard and computer
This is standard practice – although at least this time he wasn’t sleeping on the keyboard itself
The Shield – Finale
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2009 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »I’ve been watching the TV series The Shield since the first episode, and it’s always been stunning. It’s a lot darker than most TV series, and a lot more morally grey, based around the life of a corrupt police squad in a district of LA. The prime character, Vic Mackey, has throughout been juggling gangs and drug dealers with the needs of the police – including robbing the Albanian Mafia of $2m for the needs of his team and their families. You can begin to see what I mean about morally grey…
Anyway, this week was the final episode – it’s been going for seven seasons, and the writers decided to bring it to a proper close, rather than leaving things open to fate and falling viewing statistics.
And it was the right thing to do – the finale was just as stunning as the first episode, with everything being brought to a close. Mackey continued to be a scheming swine, and all the other stories came to a pretty satisfactory close too.
All told, yeah, I’m dead impressed. Might even consider getting the full seven-series box-set (once it’s come down in price a bit, anyway)
Wayfarer Software – Refund
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »Following on from the farce at the start of the month where I needed to use the Wayfarer navigation software on my phone, I’ve been working on getting a refund out of Wayfarer for it, as I’ve no plans on ever using the poxy thing again.
Initially I’d emailed telling them why the Wayfarer Navigator software was so bad in the case of my phone (the consistent 400′ out in position being a pretty significant issue) and got a response telling me to check the GPS on the phone was on, and had located the satellites. (I managed to not send a rude response to that one, patronising thought it was) They also tried telling me to update the software – regardless of the fact I was already on the latest version. (and had said so in the initial emails)
They’ve tried getting out of it by claiming I should’ve asked for a refund within 14 days of buying the full version of the software. Considering I hadn’t used it at all ’til after the 14-day “deadline” had passed, I wasn’t going to stand for that one, and brought up the wonderful phrase “selling goods that are unfit for purpose”.
Another refusal to refund followed, which resulted in the invocation of the Great Old Ones: “Trading Standards” and (my favourite) “Goods of Unmerchantable Quality”
And Lo, today they’ve confirmed a full refund. Charitable of them, n’est ce pas?
More Garden Guff
Posted: Mon 18 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden, House Work Leave a comment »Yesterday was emphatically not a day of rest – primarily because we spent most of it in the garden. Again.
The first surprise came when I went up to let the chickens out in the morning – and found three peacocks (OK, technically one peacock and two peahens) in the chicken run. They quickly fluttered up on to the fence, and then next door, but returned a couple of times more before finally being scared off by Hound. There’s a colony of peacocks over by the church (probably half a mile from us) so it wasn’t a complete “Where the hell did they come from” moment, but it’s still the first time we’ve had them in our garden since we moved here.
From there we got a bundle of work done, including finishing filling the remaining three raised beds on the veg plot (using the best part of another ton of earth) and finally planting stuff in the bloody things. So we now have raised beds containing :
- Broad Beans
- Peas
- Strawberries
- Pumpkins
- Courgettes
In addition, scattered round the rest of the veg patch we’ve got :
- Raspberries (18 canes’ worth)
- Gooseberries (4 bushes)
- Blackberry (1 plant)
- Rhubarb (4 plants)
- Garlic (2 rows)
- Onions (3 rows – although they’re not doing much)
- Beetroot (1 row of white, 1 of red)
- Potatoes (3 buckets, two of which have so far been successful)
- Various herbs and odds-n-sods
Bear in mind, this is actually a reduced list from last year, due to us not actually managing much garden-wise last year. *ahem*
Anyway, with that little lot sorted, Herself also planted a bundle of stuff round the new pond (Hound was being a pain in the arse by this time, and got dragged indoors by Yours Truly) including foxgloves, lambs ears (it’s a plant, we’re not that cruel!), salvias, and other stuff I now can’t remember the name of.
Along the way there was also other bits and bobs, but it was a pretty busy day all told.
And that’s why I didn’t update yesterday…
Pond Life
Posted: Sat 16 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden 1 Comment »This morning, our lovely garden maintenance man came round, and we now have a small pond in the garden.
It’s been part of the plan for a while, but we hadn’t got round to getting it done. And now it is.
It’s not really planned to be a decorative/ornamental pond, more of a wild-life one, so we’ve had to think about the best ways to make it work. As it is, it’s got railway sleepers round the edges (which we’ll then probably cover with wire in order to stop Hound getting into it) with gaps so that animals can find their way in/out without too much hassle.
The main things we expect to use it will be the copious numbers of frogs and toads we’ve got in the area – I’d be very happy to have it get populated with frogspawn every year, but have no idea how long that may take – and possibly the odd hedgehog or whatever. That’s the plan, anyway.
Of course, now we also need to buy some plants to put in it – again, nothing massive, but enough to keep it oxygenated and clean. I don’t know whether we’ll bother with fish in it – we might, we might not.
But all the same, we now have a pond. That’s quite cool by any estimation.
Rain
Posted: Fri 15 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Green, Green Garden Leave a comment »Out of interest, am I the only person who’s been pleased that it’s rained this week?
There’s a reason for this, rather than me just being a grumpy anti-sun person – it’s that our water-butts were beginning to run low on water. I’ve written before about our collection of water butts – enough to hold about 1,850 litres (roughly 400 gallons) of water all told – but the levels were getting pretty low all round, due to not having had any rain in a while.
So yes, I’m generally happy to have had a couple of days of rain – all the water-butts connected to proper drainpipes had completely refilled, although the ones linked to the greenhouse didn’t do so well. We obviously still need to work on that a bit.
Anyway, with the water-butts happily full again, I spent some time this evening moving water up to the butts by the greenhouse, two watering-cans at a time. It means that the larger butts are back to being about half empty again, but if /when we get more rain (which is the current prediction) then the larger ones attached to drainpipes will fill up again a lot ore easily.
But still, yes, I’m happy that it’s been raining. Go figure.
The Next 30 Years
Posted: Thu 14 May, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Geeky, Technology, Thoughts, Writing Leave a comment »Charlie Stross is one of my favourite current sci-fi authors, and this post goes some way to explaining why.
It’s the text of his keynote speech for LOGIN 2009, a conference for online games developers, and the speech is about the changes he sees coming in gaming over the next thirty years. He’s already written a novel based around some of these ideas (“Halting State“) and is currently writing the sequel to it, so I think it’s fair to say he’s done a fair amount of research and thinking about this subject already.
All told, it’s an interesting and entertaining read – and I’m sure it would’ve been even better to see him make the speech in person.
Shark vs. Octopus
Posted: Wed 13 May, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »(via Chris)
An early contender for “Shittest Film of 2009” (No, not Wolverine) – “MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus”
The trailer, mind you, does have to be seen to be (dis)believed…
Unshattered
Posted: Wed 13 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »So, that’s the rear window on the car now fixed, and I can drive again. Happy Day. So now all I need to do is go down to the place where it got broked, and sort out repayment of the excess with them.
And if anyone cares, I used AutoGlass, who are the recommended people when using Tesco Car Insurance. We’ve used them before (when Herself had her back window stolen while we lived in Bracknell, and for one other broken window incident) and they’ve always been impressively efficient.
In this case it took longer than expected (i.e. fixed today instead of yesterday) because the window that broke had to be ordered- it’s not a common one to break, apparently. So it got ordered from their central depot thingy when I called yesterday at about 3pm, was delivered to Norwich first thing this morning, and fitted here by half twelve.
I’d say that’s going to be pretty impressive by anyone’s standards, to be honest.
Shattering
Posted: Tue 12 May, 2009 Filed under: General Leave a comment »Another dollop of my luck with the car occurred this afternoon.
Coming home, I went past a field where a tractor was towing a grass-mowing implement.
Something (I assume a stone) must have flicked up from the grass-mowing thing, and shattered one of the back side windows completely.
Luckily, I went straight in to the place that owned the field/tractor, and they’ll pay the excess that I’ve got to pay for the replacement glass.
So it could be worse – but it would be better if it hadn’t happened at all.
No-Fly
Posted: Tue 12 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Creativity Leave a comment »How to break a jet engine in creative ways – Lesson 1
Suck a metal luggage cart into it
I can just see the conversation at “lost luggage” now.
Well, we know where it is.
Yes, it might be a little bit damaged…
X-Men Origins : Wolverine
Posted: Mon 11 May, 2009 Filed under: Reviews(ish), Thoughts 2 Comments »On Friday, we finally got round to seeing X-Men Origins : Wolverine. I’ve liked the previous three X-Men films (Yes, even the third, although it was nowhere near as good as the first two) and the trailers looked stunning.
The entire film can be pretty much summed up in the following :
OK, so there’s this guy who’s pretty much indestructible. Let’s complement that with an impregnable metal skeleton.
Oh fuck, he’s gone rogue. Kill him.
Um. How?
All told, it’s an OK film – but not a great one. Gordon commented about some of the ropy CGI effects but I’ve got to say, I thought there were a number of other times where the CGI looked seriously ropy, and in ways that detracted from the film.
As mindless entertainment, it’s OK – nothing earth-shattering, but not abysmal either – just don’t go thinking into it too much.
Was it worth seeing? Yes.
Would I bother seeing X-Men Origins : Magneto, or even Wolverine 2 ? No, not ’til it comes out on DVD, I expect.
Mileage – Part 3
Posted: Sat 9 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving Leave a comment »Another day of heavy driving today – this time to collect Hound from Berkshire, and come back to Norfolk.
I must be bloody potty…
Light Bed
Posted: Fri 8 May, 2009 Filed under: Depression, Domestic, Health, Technology 1 Comment »Recently, we’ve been trying out a weird alarm clock that also replicates the rising of the sun, so it’s “full daylight” when the alarm sounds. It doesn’t do much (if anything) for me, but Herself is finding it pretty useful for the way her body works.
And in related items, today I came across the LOMME bed which is pretty much the same concept writ large. The LOMME (Light Over Matter Mind Evolution) is a pod-bed, and has a built in light-box alarm as well as making use of other light colours etc.
It’s pretty cool – in a “What the fuck?” kind of way – but I’m pretty sure it would be massive overkill for us…
Meerkat / Dog
Posted: Thu 7 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it just me, or does the image of the world’s oldest dog on the BBC look very like Alexander, the meerkat from CompareTheMeerkat.com ?
Houndless
Posted: Thu 7 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Driving, Travel Leave a comment »This week, the house is remarkably quiet – primarily because Hound is down at her kennels/respite care place. It’s made sense, because of the work we did over the weekend, and the ongoing painting etc. that Herself’s been doing – but it still means the house is strangely quiet.
Of course it’s also lovely – it’s meant uninterrupted sleep at night, for example – and I’m sure that our neighbours are finding it equally odd/pleasant without Hound, and without inane/insane barking whenever we’re out in the garden, or going up to see the chickens, for example.
Psycho Cat is surprisingly unhappy about it too – he’s already attacked both of us for no good reason. He definitely misses Hound when she’s not around, much as he’d never admit it. (if the fuzzy bastard could talk, anyway) And when you take into account that he hates change too, it’s not surprising that he’s being a little grumpy fucker.
Of course, normality will resume on Saturday evening, once I’ve driven down to Wokingham, collected Hound, and driven back. (Another six hours on the road, and a 300ish mile round trip)
But for now, well, I’m just going to enjoy the peace for the next few days.
Geeky Tattoos
Posted: Wed 6 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness 3 Comments »Really, you’ve just got to worry about some of the people shown on the Geeky Tattoos site.
I mean OK, I can understand (kind of) getting a tattoo of your favourite game characters or whatever – but the text of a 90s geeky meme that wasn’t funny at the time? Not the smartest of moves for later life, I’d suggest.
And as for a tattoo of Wolverine riding My Little Pony – let’s just leave it at “Oh. My. God.”, shall we?
Pink at the O2 – 1st May
Posted: Tue 5 May, 2009 Filed under: Music, Reviews(ish) 3 Comments »I’ve seen Pink in concert before – but it was many moons ago, back at the Manchester Apollo. In fact, having checked back, it was pre-D4D that I went, which gives a fine range on how long ago it was.
Anyway, at that point it was small venue and her first tour in the UK. She was fantastic then, but the stage was pretty minimal.
What a contrast to this tour. The Funhouse tour is – to say the least – spectacular, and a world away from that first tour. Right from the start, as Pink comes out of a magic box, you know it’s going to be something special.
I won’t give away the surprises in the show – suffice it say there’s a couple of superb covers of tracks I honestly never thought I’d say that about – but it’s a spectacular in every sense of the word. The really impressive part is where Pink also goes up on a trapeze – while singing “Sober” – and does so perfectly, even while doing the drops etc. It’s a truly impressive sight.
In fact, the entire show is stunning, from the lights to the multi-video-screen backdrop, the runway out into the audience, the trapeze and ropework, the entire stage set – it’s just stunning.
Well worth going to see if you get the chance.
Sanding / No connection
Posted: Tue 5 May, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work Leave a comment »Yesterday was spent with absolutely no internet connection at home. For once this was a choice thing, rather than some esoteric Bank Holiday Fuckup by BT, Tiscali or anyone else.
Basically, the main phone point is in the hallway, and over the weekend the hallway got cleared out so we could sand/seal/varnish the teak parquet floor.
Yes, Herself was back trusting me with power tools. Go figure.
So yesterday was the day the actual sanding took place. And all went amazingly well.
The floor was (it turned out) amazingly dirty – the parquet looked more like mahogany than teak. Then the industrial floor sanders came out, and now it’s all teaky and beautiful again. I’m not perfect with the sanders, but the job has come up looking fantastic.
It’s all been sealed/varnished again as well, using Ronseal’s “Diamond Hard” clear floor varnish – a product which certainly lives up to it’s description, but also makes the floor look even better.
There’s a couple more marks/dents/lines in the floor than there used to be, but they’re not horrendous – I’m sure we’ll stop noticing them soon. I bloody hope so anyway, because it’s now going to be a complete bastard to go back down through the new varnish if we did decide to sand them out completely.
But it’s all done now. There’s a lot more work to be done in the hallway – woodwork and walls to be (re)painted etc., and so on, but the final big job in the house is now complete.
Wayfarer Software
Posted: Mon 4 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Sweary, Technology Leave a comment »The (far nicer than I could have been) email I’ve just sent to Wayfarer Software’s customer services/support team…
I would like a refund on my Navigator software – purchase no [whatever] . I had to use it properly for the first time on Friday while driving in London, and it’s the most abysmal heap of junk known to man.
The calibration is consistently 400 ft out, which leads to regularly being told to turn onto the road you’ve just passed – particularly in London. In addition, the navigator was trying to send me in completely the wrong direction (northbound round the M25 to get to Greenwich in south London).
I plan to buy a TomTom instead of ever using the Wayfarer software again.
Please let me know what I need to do in order to get a refund on my Wayfarer license, as in my experience it is utterly unfit for purpose.
Sincerely
Lyle
What I should have written would’ve been something like…
Dear Fuckbricks,
Refund my licence for the Wayfarer software now, because it sucks the bollocks of dead porcupines. The fucking thing couldn’t find it’s own arse, let alone find it’s way round London.
Your developers have wasted years of their lives writing this piece of shit. It’s not worth the fucking memory card it’s stored on.
Lyle.
Mileage (Part Two)
Posted: Sat 2 May, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Reviews(ish), Sweary, Travel Leave a comment »So, yesterday – all told it involved 310 miles, 8 hours of driving, and one exceptionally knackered Lyle.
The drive down to Wokingham from home was OK, not too painful (even on the M25, which was slow but not abysmal) and I did it in 2.5 hours all told. Drop off Hound at her place of residence for the next week, have some lunch, and it’s half three. So I decide I’ll head over to Greenwich and the O2.
It’s at that point that I realise I haven’t got the normal sat-nav in the car. I had it the day before for the drive to Welwyn Garden City, then Herself used it in the evening, and I’d forgotten to make sure I got it back. Oh bollocks.
So instead I had to trust the POS sat-nav thing on my phone – a heap of crap called Wayfinder. And Jesus H Christ on a warped pine crutch, it really is a piece of shit. First of all it took no less than fifteen minutes to find where the fuck it was – although that may be a fault of the phone’s GPS rather than Wayfinder. However, the fact that it was consistently 400 ft out was entirely the fault of Wayfinder, and meant that it had a nasty habit of saying “Oh, you wanted to turn left back there“. Now I’m sure that’s fine out in the arse of beyond where 400 ft doesn’t mean a thing – but in central London, 400 ft is the equivalent of about six roads.
Wayfinder also wanted me to go some deeply surreal routes. My original idea had been to go southbound (anticlockwise) round the M25 from the M4, get to the junction for (probably) the A2, and belt straight up to Greenwich – probably the longer and (in theory) quicker route. Only (as usual for the M25 on a Friday) it was jammed solid for about six junctions. Fuck that, thinketh I. (And bear in mind here, Wayfinder was trying to tell me to go northbound on the M25 instead)
So – straight along the M4, into the city, through. Only that was buggered too. (And Wayfinder kept planning on taking me back north of the river for some fuckforsaken reason)
So – round the infamous South Circular Road. I know a bit of it, but not all of it, so I might have to rely on satnav a bit. And there laid my biggest mistake of all. Because Wayfinder didn’t want me to take the simple South Circular (A205) route round to the A2. It wanted to take me the tourist way (and also possibly to get up to the M40 and go through from there). Every fucking time. And be 400 ft out in its estimations. All the fucking way round.
Eventually I gave up on it, once it tried taking me through Elephant and Castle.
From there, and pretty epically lost – I knew very roughly where I was, where I needed to be, and roughly the roads I needed to take – I finally found myself, got back on the road I wanted, and once I’d done that it was a 30 minute run through to the O2 itself. I should have been able to do the route in 90 minutes, give or take – maybe 2 hours in shitty rush-hour traffic.
Instead, because of the cuntbrick piece of shit satnav software, it took me three and a half bollocking hours to do fifty miles. Yeah, go on and laugh, fuckers.
By contrast, the drive home was two hours door-to-door, and belted past. We got home at 1:15.
I’ll write more about the Pink concert itself later or tomorrow – but for now let’s just say it was fan-bloody-tastic. Well impressed all round.
Mileage
Posted: Thu 30 April, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, House Work 1 Comment »Today and tomorrow are going to be primarily spent in the car, I feel.
Today I’ve had an interview for a contract role down in Welwyn Garden City – checking out the lie of the land, and whether I can do the drive as a daily commute for a couple of weeks before knocking that back by working from home for a while (I can – the “2 hours+” listed by AA and TomTom rapidly descended to around the 90 minute mark, with just the A505 being a slow-moving piece of shit road)
Tomorrow is the longer (much, much longer) day – because of the planned work for next week, I’m taking Hound down to her old kennels/staying place in Wokingham. From there, I’ll be driving to the O2 arena (ex Millennium Dome) where we’ll be seeing Pink in concert – Herself plus Herself’s Sister and Husband will be driving down separately, and we’ll meet up at t’O2 – and then I’ll be driving home with Herself once the gig’s finished.
Saturday is going to involve a trip to Norwich to pick up the floor sanders, and over the next week we’ll finally be sanding down and re-sealing/varnishing the parquet floor in the hallway, which is the last of the big house jobs. Yay!
So don’t expect much in the way of updates tomorrow – although I might write a couple today if I can be arsed and/or think up stuff to write…
Swine ‘Flu – Guff
Posted: Wed 29 April, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Health, Thoughts Leave a comment »Seeing all the media guff currently about the swine flu outbreak- and seeing some of the ridiculous “Have Your Say” comments about it- just leaves me cold.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing we can do about these outbreaks. They’ll either happen or they won’t. Sure, we might be able to take some preventive measures – but it’s undetermined whether they’ll work or not.
So what’s the point of worrying about something we have no control over?
Children’s behaviour ‘linked to sleep’
Posted: Tue 28 April, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Health, News Leave a comment »Who’d have thought – children’s behaviour can be linked to sleep, or lack thereof.
Shocker.
Low Interest
Posted: Tue 28 April, 2009 Filed under: Animals, D4D™, Domestic, Writing Leave a comment »I know, a couple of quiet days here at D4D™ – for some reason my writing mojo has disappeared recently.
It’s annoying, because I’ve actually got a few things on my mind that could do with being splurged out onto paper (Hello, Google) or screen, just to get them out of my head. But the writing bug just isn’t there, so it’s all still just sat up there, taking up space and not doing much.
In other news, Hound was at the vets this morning – and most unimpressed about it – for some tests, including blood tests and shit tests. (Which has also meant Herself collecting bits of Hound shit in little plastic bottles over the weekend – we needed three days worth!) We’ll find out the results in about a week, but it’s another thing that’s been on the mind, for obvious reasons.
Ah well, I’m sure normal service will be resumed shortly.