Otis Lives

Blog Closed

2008-09-15T21:46:00.001+01:00

That's it. Over. Finito.

At least on this blog...

Laff

2008-09-15T16:37:00.003+01:00

Laughs

2008-08-19T19:58:00.003+01:00

I've been following Channel4's Make Me A Christian and it's a brilliant blend of self-important reality TV stars and trashy ITV-style Binge Britain contestants. Great stuff.

On yesterday's show:

Attractive Female Virgin: It's painful being cheated on, I've been cheated on.
Shagabout Lad: Is that 'cos you didn't put out?

Classic.

Well would you believe it?

2008-08-16T14:42:00.001+01:00

This was bugging me for ages.....

Sometimes ice cubes made from the tap water, or the melted water from ice cubes contains white particles. What are these particles and where do they come from?

Ice cubes freeze from the outside in. Ice is formed from pure water (hydrogen and oxygen) therefore the minerals such as calcium and magnesium normally found in the water sometimes end up as visible particulates in the core of the ice cube. The white particles are not toxic.

No one likes a smart arse

2008-07-30T17:45:00.002+01:00

OMG

2008-07-09T12:07:00.002+01:00

I've found the holy grail. I shit you not. Finally Google have released an app that will synchronise your Outlook with your Google Calendar. I have 3 computers I regularly use, 2 personal and 1 work and oh-joy-of-joys I've managed to install this on my work machine. I've only set up the sync to go from Outlook to Google on this one, but I'm fully aware I'll probably get a kicking if someone finds out.

But it's fantastic to actually be able to see what meetings I've got coming up, without having to VPN in every time. And I can actually make proper use of Google Calendar now as the personal appointments I've put into my Outlook will get synched. I'll be able to check these offline as well as I have Outlook on my personal laptop, which I take on adventures with me. Fantastic.

Yummy

2008-07-07T18:54:00.000+01:00

Vote for the best Vietnamese ever -
Vote for Khoai Cafe on the London Food & Drink Awards

Film

2008-07-01T19:26:00.002+01:00

So I saw Atonement the other day. I think I understand why it didn't win any Oscars; it's shit. I haven't seen such a plodding, pretentious, wooden-acted snore-fest since Last Days. Ok it's got a great, if thoroughly depressing ending, but that doesn't make up for two hours of Keira "Would quite like to" Knightley and James BoringVoy wandering around with sticks up their arses spouting stilted dialogue to each other through a series of set pieces remeniscient of a play, with some pointless arty time-shift shenanigans thrown in.

And come on, how many people planning to study medicine don't know what septicaemia is? At least I've learnt never to read Ian McEwan.

You want to see an accurate portrayal of the upper class in the interwar period? Try Jeeves and Wooster.

Danger

2008-06-27T15:51:00.000+01:00

Should I be going out for drinks after work when my horoscope says this:

You are ready for nearly anything today that sounds like fun, but your eagerness can get you into mischief. Your charm and easygoing style can turn an uneventful meeting into a weekend-long party. Although this could be enjoyable, it's not advisable. Go ahead and be yourself, but set sensible limits and don't overstep them.

This was next door

2008-06-26T22:32:00.001+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7476095.stm

Crazy shit.

Camera Redux

2008-05-24T12:14:00.003+01:00

Yeah I think I made the right choice. After a weekend partying it's still in one piece, as are the pictures, ready for another weekend of partying. It's got a couple of scratches already but in a perverse way, the sooner something gets scratched, the less precious you are with it. Ultimately it's not what the camera looks like, but what pictures it produces. There's something about Canon compacts and their colour reproduction that I just love - check out this shot (click for full size).

I haven't got anywhere to upload some video I took, but it was pretty impressive. I'll stick a low res version up on Facebook for the hell of it.

So there you go, get a Canon IXUS 860 IS if you fancy a decent, no-fuss camera that produces pretty pictures.

New Camera

2008-05-15T12:48:00.002+01:00

What a palaver. After deliberating for a long time, reading tons of reviews and actually trying out a few in the shops I have settled on a surprising decision. I'm going to buy an out of date camera. Basically whilst i'm attracted to the Sigma DP1 and Canon G9 they're both too expensive and not perfect enough for what I want. If I'm going to be parting with that kind of cash then I expect everything to be spot on.

Maybe the G10 will be smaller, lighter and have a wider lens. Maybe the DP2 will have a zoom and a faster lens. But they're compromises I'm not willing to make yet. This effectively rules me out of getting a compact camera that shoots RAW (looked at some Ricohs but still not convinced) so with that in mind image quality is key. I KNOW the IXUS range take magnificent pictures. My 800 IS was fantastic in terms of picture quality (at low ISO of course) and reviews support this. I also know how big they are (not ultra-compact but I never had any problems carrying it around in my pocket). The only problem is that Canon haven't produced an IXUS with a wide lens since the middle of last year. All their new ones are 35/36mm - what are they playing at?

So, I considered a Panasonic Lumix, due to the excellent and fast Leica optics. The one I was really toying with was the FX500. A nice looking camera but retailing at £320. £320 for a carry around everywhere, point and shoot camera I'm not worried about dropping? I don't think so. Plus whilst the lens is great, apparently the electronics don't do it justice.

Which brings me thundering along to the conclusion that a) I want another IXUS and b) none of the new ones would suit me. So what I've done is order the Canon IXUS 860 IS. It's a good 9 months old, but has a 28mm lens and a lot of fans. So whilst someone may come up to me and say 'ergh, you've only got 8 megapixels, I've got 12!' I can laugh in their face and stay comfortable in the knowledge that pixels don't a good picture make. Neither, it has to be said, does the camera, which is the line I'll be sticking to if it turns out to be a dud.

Jobs

2008-05-14T22:21:00.001+01:00

May possibly write about this soon. Doesn't include me though, natch.

Reminiscing

2008-05-12T20:06:00.001+01:00

Ah, I forgot how great Fry & Laurie were. Anyone want to buy me the boxset?

Is that the Glastonbury line up or the contents of this month's Q magazine?

2008-04-29T13:36:00.000+01:00

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/festivals/article3835041.ece

Ahem

2008-04-28T22:18:00.001+01:00

WhatwouldNPHdo?

Wii Online Play

2008-04-27T22:33:00.006+01:00

Firstly let me say that Mario Kart for the Wii is truly fantastic and immensely enjoyable. However, it seems that the Wii doesn't play nicely with routers demonstrated by frequent 'You have been disconnected from the other players', Error 86420 and Error 91010 messages during online play, which roughly translate as 'Argghhh, Nintendo Wii not see internet. Other Wiis not see you either'.

It looks like a problem with negotiating UPnP but Nintendo's advice is to manually set up port-forwarding (of every port, grrrr) which is fine until someone releases a worm for the Wii and I don't know about you but my little Netgear RP614 won't allow additional mappings to other IP addresses after I create this rule.

It's a bit crap though because would your average Joe know what to do here? Or would they just get really frustrated with dropping out of multiplayer games, blame Nintendo and just give up? A quick Google for 'Error 86420' shows I'm not alone.

It can't be that hard to fix. Or at least tie the ports down to a manageable number instead of all of them.

Inspiration?

2008-04-22T17:54:00.002+01:00

Today was spent at a company-wide event in Earls Court, designed to give individuals a bit of insight into what the rest of the organisation does. As if it makes any difference to me working in IT - I already know that IT is roundly ignored by every business unit - but whatever, I'm out of the office and there was a seemingly endless supply of delicious, mini-lemon tarts.

The event began with a stunning visual and oratorical performance from our divisional head that would have made any Reichschancellor proud. He's a great speaker, but his image projected onto a 50 foot TV screen above his head was a slightly sinister touch. After that came the opportunity to network with various bits of the company - most of whom have no interest in talking to me because I can't pass any business their way, nor am I particularly interested in them, unless they can tell how much bandwidth I'll need to run Malaysia's email from Switzerland.

Anyway, I did the dutiful corporate citizen bit and had a wander around, observed and engaged, sat patiently through presentations and generally busied myself until the school bell rang. Have I learnt anything interesting about how all the different business units work? Well in a way I have, but perhaps my conclusions have been strongly influenced by becoming more jaded with corporate life in general. And my conclusion? We're not so different. All we're after is making money, and that's the only thing that counts around here. Whether you're talking about offshore structured investment vehicles, syndicated lending, retail banking or leasing cars, it's all about the green.

I don't think this should come as much of a shock to anyone, and I would wager that most big businesses are the same. Making money is number one above all else and I doubt this will ever change. Here I'm going to make a perhaps slightly unsuitable parallel to drug dealing and organised crime - did Tony Montana reduce his drive to make more money when he quite clearly had enough? No of course not, the more he had the more he wanted. As is the way with so much in life. Then he got a flash of social responsibility and was rewarded by being turned into a colander by angry Colombians.

Which takes me neatly onto a couple of interesting bits of the day. I had a good chat with our new 'green' team - tasked with promoting energy efficiency, reducing waste and other environmental initiatives. It's refreshing to hear that they're making progress, but their remit and team is small, so they can only deliver by 'selling' the green agenda to the business. A couple of years ago I made a suggestion via our staff suggestion scheme that perhaps we ought to consider carbon-offsetting our flights. All I got in return was some bumf on how good we are at corporate social responsibility and thanks for your idea but no thanks.

I also got a chance to meet with some representatives from Opportunity International, who are actually my own business unit's charitable partner. I didn't know a great deal before about what they do but essentially they provide banking services in regions and to individuals who otherwise wouldn't have access. So we're talking a £140 loan to set up a school in rural Africa, or just somewhere safe to keep their money. Now this is stuff that we should be doing as a company and I just don't see why we don't. Let's put back some of the billions of pounds we made last year into these kind of projects and we're not even talking about zero returns - these are loans and OI boasts a 98% repayment rate. Now that's an awful lot better than from some of the economies in which we invest.

So there we have it, some good news but I left generally feeling a bit depressed about the company I work for. That's why I've put my name down for skills-sharing in Malawi - just in case they need some IT expertise. It's a long shot, but I'm not going anywhere. Yet.

Compact Camera Considerations

2008-04-20T12:45:00.002+01:00

So I went to a friend's wedding last weekend and pretty good it was too. I took my little IXUS 800 and took something in the region of 200 pictures or the build up, the ceremony and the debauched celebrations afterwards before drunkenly leaving it in the hotel bar for some scally to walk off with. Gutted. Don't give a stuff about the camera itself (2 years old, worth about £50 now) but I'm quite sickened that even if someone fancies walking off with the camera they couldn't just take the memory card out and leave it somewhere. Buggers. Also I don't know how they propose charging it without the charger...

Anyways, I'm not going to dwell. What I need to do is get a new camera. Normally I'd just go and get a new Canon, one with a lot more flexibility and manual control, and the candidate for that is the Powershot G9. It's fairly ugly as cameras go, but has 6x zoom (35mm-210mm), 1/1.7" CCD sensor, can shoot in RAW, has all the creative modes common on SLRs and an aperture of F2.8-4.8. It comes with decent reviews, as you would expect of Canon, and the image quality is good, but as Digital Photography Review puts it "a small, noisy sensor is a small noisy sensor no matter what kind of tank you build around it or how many 'professional' features you build into the body."

There is another option, but it comes at a price, both in features and financially, and that's the new Sigma DP1. I've been interested in this camera since I heard Sigma were working on it. They took a few years to perfect it and bring it to market but by all accounts the results in terms of image quality are stunning. It uses a Foveon sensor, one of only 2 cameras (both Sigma) on the market to do so. I'm not going to go into the detail of Foveon versus Bayer sensors here, that's what Wikipedia is for, but Bayer filter sensors have long been known to have limitations compared to the way traditional film works. The Foveon sensor was designed to overcome this and I'll leave it up to you to decide whether they were successful. To my un-artschooled eye I reckon they did an awesome job because the images I've seen from the DP1 are out of this world. Take a look at this one from Carl Rytterfalk (a great photography blog that I'm going to keep up with):

Now what's the chances of getting a picture like this, with the shallow depth of field, nice bokeh, dramatic colours and dynamic range normally associated with a full size SLR using a standard compact Nikon and Canon camera? It's possible with the DP1 because it uses an SLR-sized sensor - 7 times bigger than the G9's. Browsing through DP1-tagged images on Flickr was also truely inspiring.

But here's the problem. Lens is good at 28mm effective focal length, aperture is ok at F4 - the DoF above is possible because of the larger sensor and I don't think would be possible even with the F2.8 of the Canon G9 - but there's no zoom, apparently it's rather slow (but this can be mitigated with a few settings) and at around £600 it's double the price of the G9. I imagine I'd be rather precious of it at this price and probably wouldn't be lending it to friends to run off and take a few snaps with.

However, the image quality is stunning and I would finally own a compact camera usable in low light (see here for some ISO 800 shots). I'm truly stuck as to which to go for. Ideally I'd go for both as it seems I've got two different uses for this - great quality shots from when I don't want to lug around an SLR and candid friends/events/holiday snaps. It's tricky. What do you reckon?

Get used to it

2008-04-19T20:59:00.001+01:00

Crave

2008-04-15T14:07:00.001+01:00

I know it's totally wrong as I have a Vaio TZ at home and this is made for kids, but I'm totally wanting one of these.

What's wrong with me?

I'm even comparing the Eee PC to my Vaio and thinking, "wow, it's lighter, got solid state disks, hmmm. want want want"

It works!

2008-04-11T15:00:00.000+01:00

Genius. Although I'd never actually watch this crap on it though....

Holy Shit

2008-04-11T12:19:00.001+01:00

This is fucking awesome. Take that Sony and Microsoft. First Mario Kart, now this. Can life get any better?

New TV

2008-04-08T22:59:00.002+01:00

Well the writers strike curtailed my viewing of Heroes season 2 which has now halted with only a dozen episodes so I've been looking for something interesting to have in its place. And I think I've found it with Underbelly, an Aussie crime drama based on the 95-05 Melbourne Gangland killings. Previous to this I've always been fairly unimpressed with Australian TV, but this far and away exceeds the quality of UK and US series. It's both addictive and well played by the actors, who include Drazic from Heartbreak High!?

Soon to be coming to the UK for those without the internet.

Water

2008-04-02T18:35:00.001+01:00

Did you know that if you live in a one bedroom flat and can't get a water meter fitted, Thames Water will cut your bill by about a third?

Ker-ching.

Random

2008-03-28T22:50:00.003Z

Back in the day of modems Usenet was used to piss people off, flame each other and generally commit acts of indecency no one would want to own up to in real life. Today they do it on 4chan and I'm getting strangely addicted to it.

It's basically an anonymous access image board so as NSFW as it could possibly be. You may not have heard of it but you'll certainly have heard of it's influence. Lolcats anyone? Although it's all about the longcats now...

They've also conjured up the caturday meme and instigated a hilarious raid on Habbo Hotel by hundreds of Afro-ed characters in a protest against supposed racism.

Take a look at /b/ if you dare. It's completely indecipherable at the beginning, but you'll get the hang of it.

Currently they're in the middle of a possibly illegal cyber-stalk attack on a couple of girls because according to one of the posts: "yesterday some kid posted a thread on how he wanted to fuck his sister and asked advice on how do get her to want to fuck him. the girl in that OP's image is jenny. we found her youtube account and myspace which led us to amber who is apparently jenny's bff. at first we were just spamming her youtube tell her her brother wants wincest but now we just want moar pictures of amber and jenny."

Of course they then blame it all on a different site to deflect blame. It would be (or perhaps is) really out of order, were it not so funny.

edit: They also got to Tom Green. haha.

Longcat moves swiftly and silently

2008-03-28T14:18:00.000Z

Look what I just pre-ordered

2008-03-28T13:21:00.001Z

Oh yeah.

Online play for the Wii at last.

Myspace leaving scam?

2008-03-28T13:09:00.002Z

Here's something strange - I just deleted my Myspace account (because I've never used it) and once I did suddenly I got 5 friend requests. Now, my friend list up to that point contained a lonely Tom so this sounds well suspect to me.

Are Myspace trying to convince people to reconsider removing their account?

Why are they spamming me after I've removed all my details, clearly indicating that I don't want to be contacted any more?

Hmm...

Repeat after me

2008-03-25T23:00:00.002Z

I am a fascinating, unique individual with mental strength and abilities you can only guess at. I am an asset to my work, my social circle and the world at large. I pity you if you cannot see this. I have the power to hold my head high when others are losing theirs. I am confident in what I am capable of and fear neither the future nor the unexpected. I do not need religion or anti-social behaviour posters on public transport to be my moral compass. Everything I do is to make the world a better place. I support the unfortunate and those without a voice. I am not afraid to smile at strangers. I do not need your approval. I AM the shit.

Now keep repeating until you feel able to take on the world on your own terms. Living less than 100% is not really living at all.

Spring

2008-03-09T21:48:00.002Z

Wandering around Ally Pally is good for a hangover (as is a sausage sandwich and cup cake proffered by a loved one) and I took the opportunity to take my lovely 40D along. Amongst the sights we saw were this squirrel which dropped bits of tree on us and this bizarre object, which seemed to serve no purpose other than to perplex passers-by.

I only took the 50mm lens with me so I couldn't do the view justice, but central London was looking magnificent in the sunshine, with the rest of town covered by grey clouds and rain. This is the best I could come up with:

The Best Game Ever - FREE

2008-03-06T13:48:00.000Z

http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/civilization-2.php

I hate this fucking country

2008-03-01T12:36:00.001Z

Arghhhhhh!

7 things

2008-03-01T11:30:00.002Z

I've been ordered to list 7 things I think are good, so I will duly oblige, in no particular order.

Music. Without music my life would be like a silent movie and consequently, like a silent movie, it would be shit.
Drinking tea in the the bath. The height of gentlemanly leisure.
My girlfriend. Ahh. And no, she's not sitting next to me.
Molton Brown, because even gentlemen need good skin.
Train travel, comfortable and green.
6Music. It's enlightening to listen to the radio and not hear the same songs over and over again.
Haribo. God bless you and all your gummi goodness.

You'll notice I've focused on things that are good for me. I support charity, for example, but I can't say it's ever done anything for me. Starving Africans can put Oxfam on their own list...

Now here are 7 things I just don't understand:

Why fridges have lights but freezers don't.
How much faith people put in 'experts' when what seems to qualify most people as an expert is only that they're the most vocal on a subject. This includes religion.
The popularity of cheese.
The success of Ryanair. Ugly planes, inconvenient destinations, surly staff and not even that cheap any more.
Why rail travel is so expensive in this country.
How to live a fulfilling life full of things I enjoy without sacrificing 5/7ths of it to earning a crust.
Death, the extinguishing of consciousness, the soul and the concept of nothingness to follow.

There you go. Sorry it ended on a bit of a downer. I'm not into the whole tagging thing as I don't have enough internet friends, but feel free to come up with your own.

I'm off to Liverpool now to get spectacularly plastered.

Follow up

2008-02-28T14:24:00.000Z

A leading psychiatrist says that depression is not a human defect at all, but a defence mechanism that in its mild and moderate forms can force a healthy reassessment of personal circumstances.

Completely agree.

From here.

erb

2008-02-26T21:15:00.001Z

Was literally laughing at this for ages...

Expensive Placebo

2008-02-26T17:26:00.001Z

Looks like it.

Though it's worth noting that the studies did show improvement in serious cases. This has been my opinion for a long time now, that for most cases of depression, drugs aren't the answer.

DNA Database

2008-02-23T17:06:00.002Z

As if the government hasn't already lost enough of our private information, a certain Det Supt Stuart Cundy thinks that they should implement a national DNA database. By an amazing strike of fortuitousness they've rejected these calls.

The argument given was that it took police 9 months to catch Mark Dixie, the killer of Sally Anne Bowman. Now, I'm sorry but this sounds like a serious buck-passing exercise. Maybe if more police resource was spent on this case, and less on searching bored teenagers, putting up speed cameras and paperwork they might have more to be proud about. You can't just say 'oh, it took us so long to catch him because no one confessed.' but that's essentially what they're saying.

There are a lot of problems with a DNA database, not just around the accuracy or confidentiality of the information contained within, but more fundamentally around the DNA profiling techniques in use today. No matter what you see on CSI they're not 100% accurate and should not be relied on as compelling evidence. DNA profiling is at best circumstantial evidence and it's interpretation very much open to the skills of the particular researcher.

The day we rely purely on DNA evidence to convict someone will be a very sad day indeed.

Stupid Stupid Stupid Boy

2008-02-19T16:58:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/music/newsid_7252000/7252803.stm

Re: Panorama

2008-02-18T20:38:00.001Z

If you don't like bottled water, don't drink it.

Don't spend my license fee gobbing on about it for half an hour on a Monday night.

Mohamed Al Fayed is a rambling, bitter, conspiracy theorist

2008-02-18T18:32:00.002Z

As if ten years of papers filled with grieving for 'The People's Princess' (although what the fuck she ever did for me, I don't know) hasn't been bad enough, just when it's all looking to be over he sticks his massive, expensive tat-selling oar in. Shut your face Harrods-boy! No one gives a shit that you think Dodi was actually the Queen's brother and should have been given the throne if it hadn't been for a plot concocted with the Household Cavalry, three aliens from Neptune and Max Clifford, which resulted in Princess Diana and him being teleported to a 3-bed semi deep in the burning heart of the sun.

It's sad when people die. It's sad when anyone dies. But sometimes you need to move on.

Equitable Power

2008-02-18T18:25:00.003Z

I know I mentioned this before, but I secretly thought there was some kind of catch to it but I've got my first bill and there isn't. That's why I'm imploring everyone to switch to Ebico ('The UK's only not for profit energy supplier') for gas and electricity - it's ethical and cheaper.

The gas price is 2.55p per kWh and electricity is 9.80p per kWh. Look on your bills to see how this compares to what you get.

Ah, I feel all nice and smug now.

Sunset

2008-02-18T18:21:00.001Z

Who saw the massively orange sky as the sun set tonight? Quite eerie wasn't it? I thought a nuclear bomb had gone off or something.

Quick one

2008-02-10T21:33:00.000Z

I just found this about Fårö, the island North of Gotland we visited. Had to post it now otherwise I'll forget.

Here are some spooky rocks from there:

State of the Kingdom

2008-02-10T19:04:00.000Z

Answer me this will you; how come I can cross Sweden and Denmark, covering a total of 700km with 2 trains and a bus when to travel the 130km from Harwich to Muswell Hill I have to take 3 trains, 2 tube trains and 2 buses?

This was the situation I was confronted with upon stepping off the ferry onto English soil earlier today. And then I remembered - this country is shit, of course nothing will work properly.

I enjoy travelling, I really do. The trains, the boats, negotiating public transport with no knowledge of the language. I think it's all fantastic. But any kind of travel in the UK is just a nightmare. But it's not just transport we can't get right. The Scandinavians have social housing indistinguishable from designer apartments, ours look like prison camps and are only good for breeding scummy oiks who secrete a form of saliva so foul that they are unable to swallow it, and are left with little choice but to spit it out onto our grey pavements, like chav llamas.

Everything in Scandinavia runs on time. Everything. It was actually kind of unsettling at first, being used to London time. But it's actually really nice to read a timetable and it not be a work of fiction.

We bitch and moan about things (ahem) but never try to improve things because some other English person would just come along and fuck it all up again. Look at the train companies, a natural monopoly cut up because it wasn't performing effectively under public sector control, given over to a hundred different companies staffed by the same useless fuckwits and the end result is the same level of service, but masses of confusion all round. Can you just imagine getting to Paris and trying to figure out which train company you had to use to get to Lille? Not that you wanted to go to Lille, but anyway. The only thing we're really good at in this country is humour, and that's because if we didn't laugh at ourselves, we'd surely cry.

Now, I know it's reasonable to expect to be a little disheartened upon returning home after a good break, but each time I do I find it harder and harder to justify why I'm here. I'm certainly not looking forward to work tomorrow. On the rail replacement bus from Chelmsford there were some absolute scummers, who'd possibly been out all night clubbing, but managed to pick up some stolen goods on the way and were discussing their court appearance tomorrow. And you just think, why are these people here? Why do they exist? What is it about this country that breeds people like this?

I know you get scum everywhere you go, and later on in the journey a drunk Pole started hassling another wideboy Essex lad, much to my amusement, but we do seem to produce more than our fair share.

Maybe it's that this country is still trying to live off past glories and consistently fails to look forwards, with progressive social policies, to start building a better future for it's inhabitants. But all we can be bothered with doing is building a massive sports complex in East London to distract the rest of the world from how shite we've become. Maybe we did stand on our own all those years ago, defiant against the onslaught of Nazi Germany as the rest of Europe buckled. But that was over 60 years ago! What good have we done recently?

Greetings from the Baltic

2008-02-06T10:06:00.000Z

Well we've finally made it to Visby which, I have just learnt, is where they filmed the Pippi Longstocking films! Copenhagen was great, but busy. I'll maybe give you all an update later - we've just got free internet in this hotel (fairly basic, holiday camp looking place, virtually empty but very friendly staff and I think we might be the only non-Swedes here). It's overcast, but not that cold. We'll have to see if that's good for photos or not. I'll tell you what, standing by the harbour in Copenhagen for an hour, in the dark, trying to get a decent picture of the new opera house was a chilling experience. I didn't even get any photos I was particularly happy with, but it's all a learning experience.

The sail across the Baltic was calm as a lake and ridiculously punctual - as is everything, down to the minute. We're just about to explore the town now, but we're going to take it easy today by exploring mostly cafés. We're also thinking about hiring a car (cycling really only seems like an option for summertime) and if we do maybe we can go to Faro, the little island to the north where Ingmar Bergman lived until his recent death. Apparently they have some really otherworldly limestone rock formations.

Anyway, here's a couple of Copenhagen photos to keep you happy:

Pretty Houses

The Little Mermaid. Meh.

The Opera House

Weather

2008-01-31T12:55:00.000Z

In case you hadn't noticed there's a little bit of wind going around today. This'll make Tim laugh but the result of this is that I will not be on a comfortable ferry with free minibar and inclusive breakfast tomorrow, instead I will be in a large, bright orange-coloured cylinder in the sky.

Oh well. At least we get an extra day in Copenhagen.

Snip

2008-01-30T18:36:00.000Z

I've been hassling our network provider today because of problems in our Dubai office. Looks like it's a bigger issue than I realised - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7218008.stm

Apparently it was caused by a ship's anchor. It's funny though, a great deal of effort goes into contingency arrangements for network outages and making sure your network is secure against outside threats, but one thing that most people don't realise is that all networks go through a few of these huge, international cables. There aren't many of them but if one fails an entire region is completely fucked. I remember something similar happening recently to a cable in Asia, which effectively cut off Australia from the rest of the world!

Maybe countries should start investing in a national satellite network infrastructure, as an emergency backup.

Rats

2008-01-29T20:09:00.000Z

This was this scene this evening at the bus stop by Ally Pally station. Yes, that large rodent like object is a large rodent. There were a family of them just hanging about, dashing across the pavement to get to the bin.

Do I hear a 'Ewwwwww!'.

New Toy

2008-01-28T00:40:00.000Z

So I bought a new camera, a magnificent Canon 40D. I've spent today playing with it, finding my way around the functions and I'm pretty pleased so far. It feels fantastic as well, chunky and metal it oozes quality. Let's see how it stands up to the Danish winter next week...

RIP EOS 300D

2008-01-24T22:54:00.000Z

I think my camera has died. Not totally, but more as in it's terminally ill. I've been sorting all my kit out for the epic Scandinavian adventure next week and was just messing around with a few long exposures when I noticed a bunch of hot pixels. It seems to be on everything over 1sec, which clearly is not going to work for me.

Take a look at this, at 100%, I think:

Fuck.

I posted a question on the Canon Flickr forums and they came back affirmative. It's not user fixable, but I could possibly send to Canon for them to do something with the sensor. But that might cost lots.

So I either a) travel with a camera that won't let me take a wide selection of photos b) rent one for the trip and buy a 450D when I get back or c) splash out on a 40D now.

Hmmm. The 40D is ahead at the moment being more of a step up than the 450D and only an extra £100 from Amazon. I really don't need this right now though. I can afford it but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a good while.

Fuck.

Children of men

2008-01-23T17:08:00.000Z

It's funny, I watch a film like this and I think there's no way British society can break down so much whilst current facets of civilisation like government, police, etc. are still in existence. Then I go down Archway and see that it already has.

HDR

2008-01-22T15:29:00.000Z

Oh yeah, I kinda forgot about this. Ok, they're not computer generated. Not technically anyway. They're high dynamic range (HDR) images and the idea is that they provide a more realistic interpretation of a scene as it would be seen by the human eye. The human eye having a much greater dynamic range than a camera.

There's a couple of ways of creating them, either by bracketing exposures (taking under, over and normally exposed pictures) or, the way I've done here, by capturing an image in RAW format and processing them (ie. developing) with the 3 different exposure settings. You then merge the 3 images using specialist software. I think Photoshop probably does this, as does Photomatix.

You can up the saturation and contrast settings during this last phase to create quite dramatic looking pictures (see below). I wouldn't call them photos though. I think you can create some stunning pictures, just take a look at Flickr for some, but I think that's it for me with HDR, at least for now. I'd rather focus on creating great pictures that are interesting without resorting to digital processing techniques.

Qotd

2008-01-21T16:43:00.000Z

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Damn the Royal Mail

2008-01-19T15:53:00.000Z

Further to this post I'm now in the middle of a compensation claim for Royal Mail's thievery. I was absolutely fuming this morning when I received a letter from them for a couple of reasons.

Firstly they said because it had been a while now that they 'must' consider compensation. Well I would say that they should consider compensation because they employ a bunch of thieving scallys who stole my post. The least they can do is compensate for the price of this item.

But the absolute cheek of it is that they require me to sign and return a slip of paper they sent with the letter, even though I'd filled in the required claim form already. And, get this, if they don't receive it within 5 days they'll consider my case closed! What a fucking liberty. Of course, this being Royal Mail they posted that letter on the 16th and I only got it today! If they close my case I will be absolutely fucking livid.

Oh yeah, and a couple of days ago I received an interesting item in the post. It was an empty envelope with the Royal Mail's sincerest apologies wrapped around it and a letter explaining "I am sorry that the enclosed mail has been found in this condition after being withheld from delivery by a Royal Mail employee." Can you believe it?! Twice in a month.

Problem is I have no idea what this item was so I can't even make a claim. Hopefully it was just some junk mail or something. All it had was a return postcode, EN5 2UA, which is in Barnet I guess.

Fucking Royal Mail. Absolutely fucking useless shitehawks.

Stupid shares

2008-01-17T13:40:00.000Z

Evil consumerism

2008-01-17T13:27:00.000Z

Interesting article.

No bueno Vista

2008-01-12T10:54:00.000Z

After months of annoyance I finally found this guide on how to correct the excruciatingly annoying auto-customisations that Vista applies to folders. I don't get Vista, I really don't. All I've seen so over XP so far is unwanted UI changes. There's not one thing in it that's an improvement on XP, and most things are worse. I'm just pissed off that it was pre-installed so I'm stuck with it.

And here's how to turn it off entirely! Hurrah. Having to do a registry change to correct display setting is absolutely taking the piss though.

Check up

2008-01-11T21:38:00.000Z

When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health.
J P Donleavy

I've always thought it rather perverse that we have regular dental checkups, but not health ones. Why would we consider our teeth more important than, say, our hearts? And surely the more effort is spent on preventative health care the better we'd all be in the long run? Anyway, I just got the detailed results of a private medical I had and it's quite reassuring in a lot of aspects. My cholesterol is 4.5 (good). My platelet count is 252 (good). My mean corpuscular hemoglobin count is 33.7 (elevated but not significant). Cool. My 10 year risk of heart disease is 3% - exactly the average for my age group.

There are a couple of things I need to follow up, but hopefully it's nothing to be concerned about. I get paranoid sometimes about my health, with actually no tangible reason to. I think the quote above rings true. Anyway, I heartily recommend it for anyone with any niggling health worries. Be warned though, they're very thorough...

Quite amusing

2008-01-07T16:27:00.000Z

A fuss about nothing?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

2007-12-24T16:05:00.000Z

Ok, so here are my ups and downs of the year. Let's start with the bad and finish with the good, the way I like to eat meals.

Messy break up and domestic situation with the ex. Though it has taught me to trust my instincts more.
Having to go to Dubai for 4 days and hating every minute. I think my mind at the time, my role in being there and the environment really disagreed with each other.
Mice in the kitchen.
The realisation that I haven't really moved forward in my life in any meaningful way this year, even though I started it with grand ideas.
Err...having to sleep in a minging couchette with a couple of fragrant Italians on the way to Greece? No I don't think that counts. It's actually not been a bad year at all.

The good stuff:

Meeting the current girlfriend. I'm deliriously happy. And I've learnt a simple truth about love - that if it's real they want you as you are.
Dog-sledding under the Northern Lights in Norway. A real once in a lifetime memory. Awesome.
I'm going to put my recent promotion in here even though I might get a bit of stick (work isn't everything after all) because a) I like getting more money (company car anyone?) and b) I'm not entirely sure what it means yet and where I fit into the new world at work. So the new year will start on a positive note, with new opportunities. I've already been invited to have a look around one of our offices - just to familiarise myself with the set up.
My break away from life, the universe and everything on a remote Greek island. If you want your head sorting out, I can heartily recommend it.
Realising that I actually like myself. I may be a bit lumpy in places, I don't have eight degrees and I'm as useless with money as I am with knowing when to say 'no' in the pub - but I've decided that I'm allll-right. None of this superflous stuff matters. If you're happy with yourself and have friends and loved ones that agree, then I reckon you've mastered the meaning of life. Everything else is just window-dressing.

It took me a long time to figure that last one out. Ohhh, approximately 28 years or thereabouts. I'm not a subscriber to the theory of depression being chemically induced and it was with professional help that I finally, positively accepted who I am. And I feel fantastic for it. Of course I'm still going to have my ups and downs, everyone does, but life seems so much more filled with joy and opportunity than it did at any other point in my life.

So this year, whilst I haven't moved on tangibly with my situation, I have greatly sorted myself out emotionally. What this means is that I'm in a much better frame of mind to start living a bit more next year, to take some more risks. I now recognise what is important to me and as long as I have that I can't really fail can I? Hopefully next year I'll have a long list - even if they're all downers, at least it'll be because I tried.

Why Internet shopping is about to land flat on it's arse

2007-12-24T11:44:00.000Z

As I sit in my office on the day before Christmas reflecting on the reality of what a 'delivery estimate' of the 24th Dec actually means I feel a little sad inside. Not because this package was going to 'make' Christmas - it's an inconvenience easily solved - but because internet shopping was supposed to be the opposite of the way it's become. It was supposed to be the convenient way to shop - no crowds, low prices, delivered wherever you wanted. But it hasn't quite worked out that way.

First off, last week I bought a very nice gift that I thought would be perfect for my special someone - only to have it stolen in the post by someone from the Royal Mail. You'd expect Special Delivery to have some meaning to it, but seems the only meaning is that it gets stolen before 9am the next day.

I've had endless problems with courier companies not able to deliver the goods, so to speak. And today I'm waiting for an order that I placed in plenty of time and kicking myself for being a cheapskate and opting for free delivery.

Last year I managed to buy just about everything online, and I had no problems whatsoever. This year I've been far less ambitious and everything's been screwed up. I think the difference this year is that everyone else is trying to do the same.

The thing is, if a shop is too busy you leave and go to a different one. But online retailers have no such problem - from their point of view. If Amazon's website is getting too busy just ramp up the bandwidth or stick in some more servers. What's often forgotten is that behind that web front there are actual people picking up and sorting actual boxes of actual stuff, and we're relying on crap couriers to take this stuff to our doors. They can only go so fast but there is no way of telling from the website how busy they are. Apparently I'm not the only one to notice this degradation in service.

This is what I'm angry about. It could have been so good - no more being ripped off because your local music shop is HMV, no more paying John Lewis prices for electronics, no more being hassled to take out insurance by Dixons. But instead consumers are getting burnt by online shopping and will be more reluctant to try again. I know this is just the Christmas rush but would you be willing to take the same risk for a birthday present? I know I won't.

What's wrong with these pictures?

2007-12-18T22:37:00.000Z

This last one's a bit of a giveaway...

No prizes on offer except a smug feeling of satisfaction. I will reveal all in a couple of days and my thoughts on this, bet you can't wait!

Busiquette

2007-12-14T19:18:00.000Z

Sometimes I am astounded by the malaciously inconsiderate nature of Britain's on public transport. You tend to think buses are far more civilised than the tube, and they are, but here are some tips to make my life easier. Feel free to add your own.

1. A bus has two floors for a reason. Go upstairs and sit down instead of loitering by the stairwell so the driver thinks it's full.
2. Sitting in the aisle seat does not mean the empty window seat becomes invisible. I will want to seat there if you don't, so quit bitching when I thrust my arse in your face to get past.
3. Your handbag is not entitled to a seat. Not even if it's the size of a small cow.
4. Mobile phones are for talking on, quietly. They are not a vehicle to demonstrate how atrocious your musical taste is.
5. The back of the W3 is not considered a suitable place to smoke crack. I don't care if it does take you all the way home to Wood Green.

Holiday. Celebrate.

2007-12-14T16:01:00.000Z

Planning has now started for what's fast becoming a February tradition - freezing my arse off in Scandinavia. This time I'm going here:

Doesn't it look fantastic? They're the city walls surrounding the Hanseatic town of Visby, a UNESCO world heritage site on Gotland - an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. I like islands. This one will be a trifle colder than the last. Historic home of the Goths! Cool.

I laugh in the face of a rough North Sea crossing so will be making this intrepid journey across land again, with a few days in Copenhagen. Ah, holidays. Our only respite from the pointless monotony of work.

I just switched to hippy power

2007-12-12T14:20:00.000Z

It's cheaper too, a lot cheaper. Go here.

NBC can suck my balls

2007-12-11T21:48:00.000Z

That's right, they're conspiring against me too. Just when I think I've found a TV series that can rival Heroes for my attention I discover that it's already been cancelled. Motherfuckers.

Courier companies can suck my balls

2007-12-11T20:33:00.000Z

Not only do they lose a lot of stuff, courier companies seem intent on personally antagonising me. Really, how difficult is it to get an item from a to b?

Let's start with Secure Mail Services, as employed by Seetickets to carry out the incredibly difficult task of taking a small envelope of low value tickets from the Seetickets building to my own. Of course they don't bother to attempt delivery until the day before the concert, and then send me a text (?) saying they'd done so. Naturally they'll maintain that they tried to deliver on a number of occasions beforehand, but as they never left a card I have no choice but to assume they're lying. When I spoke to someone at Seetickets she actually said they were constantly having problems with SMS, and I'm not surprised at all as I've had the misfortune to be on the receiving end (puntastic!) of their woeful service many a time. It seems like a lot of banks are using them to deliver new cards - there's nothing more secure than not getting your mail at all!

I find Seetickets equally responsible for ruining my night (when I was supposed to be at Iron & Wine) but it looks like they've just passed my complaint onto SMS to deal with. This is quite clearly bullshit though, as my contract is with Seetickets. If they can't uphold their end of the bargain, i.e. by getting tickets to me, then that's entirely their responsibility. I'll see what happens but I'm not letting this lie dammit.

Next up we have DHL. Well at least they managed to leave me a card when they missed me, I'll give them that. When I called up to arrange re-delivery I wasn't too surprised to find I had to negotiate a labyrinthine IVR system, and dutifully rearranged for the Monday I had off work. What did surprise me, however, was that it would have been as much use shouting the delivery instructions out of my window in the hope that someone from DHL might hear.

After yesterday's no-show I called back and it literally took all my cunning and patience to find the option that allowed you to speak to a human being. And I use that term lightly. This was a shell of a human being, clearly at the end of a long shift apologising to people for DHL's crap systems. Apparently my mistake was to hang up the phone after the automated system had confirmed my delivery date. I should have held on for longer until it started with a 'You hang up, No you hang up, No you, No you!....' routine.

Unfortunately I can't change the delivery address without asking the supplier to write a letter on gold-leafed paper, sealed with wax, enclosing pictures of mine and their testicles painted a lovely amber hue. I've got the address of the place so maybe I'll just have to go up to bloody Enfield and pick it up. It's only a £20 router ffs, is it worth the hassle?

It's funny really, it's only the good ol-fashioned Royal Mail chaps that have got it right. Not intentionally of course - if they did what they were supposed to they'd be in the same boat as the rest of them. But by leaving my parcels outside the flat when I'm not in, and opening my Amazon packages to post the individual items through the letterbox they show genuine ingenuity and initiative. God bless 'em.

Best Lego ever?

2007-12-09T15:46:00.000Z

I think so.

Buddhist thought for the day

2007-11-29T23:19:00.000Z

One for Jamie:

Is repetitive action virtuous action? If behaviour and conduct are merely repetitive processes then all human relationships actually cease. If I behave mechanically every day, - repeating a certain code of conduct which I have learnt, which I find profitable, or which is pleasant, repeating that over and over again, - my relationship with you ceases, completely - I have become a machine. - J. Krishnamurti

Barnét

2007-11-24T16:08:00.000Z

It's so easy to fall into the trap of only blogging about the shit that life throws at you. Often it's the only thing the really motivates you to write, happiness has never created great art. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. But life is not just an endless succession of annoyances and impositions put upon you by the actions of others. Sometimes we all need to stop for a moment and reflect on the endless potential and wealth of experiences that life can offer. Even just to think about how amazing being alive actually is.

I woke up this morning with a killer hangover but blissfully happy. I was out after work, and then back to my old stomping ground in Barnet. It's easy to forget how much joy can be had from something as simple as hanging out with friends. I have a love/hate relationship with Barnet. I couldn't wait to get out on my own but it always makes me feel warm and welcome when I return. It grounds me I think, and difficulties elsewhere in my life don't seem so important. I think it's vital to surround yourself with people who have known you a long time. Even more so as we grow older and take on more of life responsibilities. New relationships keep life fresh, old ones keep life real.

I have a dream

2007-11-20T17:31:00.001Z

I think about the shopkeeper who sets his own rules and answers to no one but himself. I think about the carpenter who turns down a job because he's got some reading to catch up on. I think about the gardener who spends his days in the fresh air listening to the tranquil sounds of nature. I think about the publican who spends all day hogging his own jukebox. I think about the writer, sheltering in the warmth of home with nothing but a cup of tea and a stack of blank paper offering unlimited creative potential. I think about the naturalist exploring unknown lands and about the archaeologist exploring unknown times. I think about the fisherman, calm, peaceful and entirely without pressure. I think about the farmer facing his most important decision of the day - butter or cheese? I think about the actor who gets paid for what he loves doing. I think about the musician who creates a piece of art that will be remembered long after he himself passes into the abyss. I think about the man who makes garden gnomes and the endless possible humorous scenarios he can dream up. I think about the photographer who shows us what the world can look like, if only we were to open our eyes.

I think about all of this and I hate myself, because I have nothing better to do than travel an hour and a quarter every day to sit in a gray office and stare at a fucking computer screen.

HMRC

2007-11-20T17:27:00.000Z

Would you trust this man with your personal details?

Cor-rect.

Still, this could never happen with ID cards though could it?

The first big nail in the coffin?

2007-11-07T13:55:00.000Z

For the Facebook utopia?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/07/facebook_socialads/

As soon as they start censoring the wall posts the whole concept of 'connecting with things you are passionate about.' will be shown up for the sham that it is.

Facebook official communique here.

Organics

2007-11-05T21:22:00.000Z

As if the last post hasn't annoyed Jamie enough, I've decided to try an organic fruit and veg box company. Abel & Cole only deliver on Wednesdays so I reckon I'll give Riverford Organic a try instead. They're in Muswell Hill on Saturdays so I guess the only choice is weekly of fortnightly. Seeing as I seem to be constantly out at the moment, and the party season is coming, I'll stick with the fortnightly option. I feel bad with the amount of food I throw out as it is. Oh to have a garden and a composter...

Dispatches

2007-11-05T20:23:00.000Z

This show really pisses me off with it's constant scaremongering. It's gone the way of Pananory. Today's is all about property prices and being a first time buyer. I understand that I'm speaking from a privileged position but seriously, there are more important things in the world than being on the property ladder. It's not even as if first time buyer's will own their home - they'll just end up with a massive loan over their heads.

There's a lady on the show who has £35 a week left to live on after mortgage and bills. Seriously, what the fuck was she thinking buying somewhere knowing full well how much money she'd be left with?

This ridiculous situation is going to continue until we get rid of the fixation in this country with property ownership. I would say the only long term solution is to invest more in social welfare (i.e. pensions) to break the connection of homes as an investment vehicle. In the short term just rent. If enough people are renting, prices will fall. But while people keep going to extremes to get on the ladder, they'll keep going up.

Oh yes, and I don't think it surprises anyone that shared ownership is not the answer. A mortgage and rent? What a fucking brilliant idea.

Anyway, here's an interesting table. Note how all the poorer EU countries have high property ownership, and this level generally falls with economic prosperity and quality of social welfare provisions (read Scandanavia...).

This game is so gonna be mine

2007-11-05T13:50:00.000Z

But I might wait until Christmas, hint hint.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/clip/resident-evil-umbrella-chronicles-weapons-trailer-318623.php

Partay

2007-11-04T14:36:00.000Z

For non-Facebook weirdos...

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=616290722&k=YYLT2ZT2Q6XMY1BISKYXU

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=616290722&k=S4AZ55WXSZTA4DMBXD2X

Will has shared a photo album with you. To view the photo album, follow the link.

Are you smarter than a 10 year old?

2007-11-02T20:16:00.000Z

From what I've seen from the show, yes. Yes, I am smarter than a 10 year old. Not only that but I would expect everyone over the age of say, ten, to possess similar cranial capacities. What gets me is that we're rewarding these people with their 15 minutes of fame and a few thousand pounds when what we should be doing is removing their ability to vote for being such dipshits. I really like the word 'dipshit', I should use it more often.

Have you heard the one about the exploding comet?

2007-10-29T22:36:00.000Z

http://starbulletin.com/2007/10/27/news/story04.html

Addicted to Facebook scrabble

2007-10-23T21:45:00.000+01:00

Kudos go to Ed Vald for 'lesbian'.

Kulture

2007-10-17T15:38:00.000+01:00

I hate buying theatre tickets, there's just far too much choice in terms of where you're going to sit; stalls, dress circle, upper circle, balcony, obscured views (why the fuck would you want one of them?), boxes and so on. With a gig it's simple - standing or sitting. In my old age I have taken to sitting at some recent gigs, where standing would not really add anything to the experience. Here the rule is as follows - if you want a good seat, get there early. Easy. With theatre tickets you have to look up bloody seating plans to figure out where you might be, and it could look fantastic on paper but in reality you're 3 football field lengths from the stage. You'd think that opting for the most expensive tickets would always yield the best seats, but not in my experience. And don't even get me started on booking fees again - the ones payable for gigs seem charitable by comparison.

Does Opera get government funding? I'm not sure but I don't think they should, not with ticket prices in the hundreds of pounds for a single seat.

And what's with all these shows based on films? I quite want to see Swimming with Sharks but wouldn't it just be easier to rent the movie? Are people just too lazy to come up with new ideas? You're not telling me that there aren't thousands of eager writers out there producing at least a few scripts worthy of performance. Maybe I'll just wait for the book of the play of the film to come out instead.

Jetsetting

2007-10-08T11:49:00.000+01:00

Last week Dubai (I'm so over this Desert Disneyland by the way), this week Geneva, Ireland at the weekend and Brussels week after next. It's all go at the moment so that's why I'm a little quiet. I just was not that happy being in Dubai last week, it was frustrating work coupled with a soulless atmosphere and Ramadan dullness. Really looking forward to Geneva today though, it may have a reputation for being pretty boring but I have a real fondness for it and my colleagues who work there.

And so, bonne journée!

Britain Blues

2007-09-26T19:24:00.000+01:00

This country is pretty shit. Come on, let's admit it. The only reason we're all still here is because we were born here, our friends are here and our shitty education system failed in teaching us different languages. Our British stoicism and sense of humour in the face of constant assaults of bad service, bad behaviour and bad weather are all that keep us from complete social breakdown.

To add insult to injury we get the unpleasant results of quality of life polls that give our neighbours even more of a reason to laugh at us. Yesterday's was from the Economist which placed Ireland as the best country in the world to live in. I've never been there so can't really comment, but Britain was placed as 29th. Does it really deserve the prefix of 'Great' these days?

All but one in the top ten were European countries, though not all from the EU, but this got me thinking. We clearly are unable to run our health service in an efficient, useful or even clean manner. Our schools are now just long exam revision classes. Our police spend all their time doing paperwork whilst gun-toting youths rampage through inner city estates (©Daily Mail). Our transport infrastructure is the worst I've seen in Western Europe. And no one trusts any of our politicians or anyone senior in charge of anything to do with public sector services.

So, with all this hubbub about the EU Constitution taking away autonomy over such things (and yes, I know it doesn't really do that, but maybe could lead to more control from Brussels, yadda yadda yadda) why don't we just let the EU have a go at running our public services? Can they really fuck it up any worse than we have?

Hold the front page

2007-09-26T19:12:00.000+01:00

This just in, we've obtained exclusive photos from Jane Buttersworth of Huddersfield that do not show the missing Madeleine McCann. This follows hot on the heels of earlier photos from Clive Jones of Bournemouth who, whilst holidaying in Tenerife, also took a photo without her in it. Reports that a pensioner took a photo that did not show the Loch Ness Monster cannot be substantiated at this time.

Seriously newspapers, get a new(s) story already.

Rock and Roll

2007-09-17T22:44:00.000+01:00

Well it looks like all the Northern Rock depositors are having their savings underwritten by the government, which is nice, although I wasn't terribly worried about my £170 in an old ISA. Not so much joy for the shareholders though as the stock has plummeted quite impressively over the last few days. But that's what you get for investing in a risky company. Or is it?

I'm going to put my neck out here and say that very soon would be a good time to invest in Northern Rock again. There's nothing like picking up a bargain. Just ask Warren Buffet.

Now I know there are a few differences in the business models but there is also quite striking similarities between the Wells Fargo near-collapse and today's Northern Rock panic. The problem is fundamentally a lack of availability of short-term credit to Northern Rock, which it would normally obtain from other banks but which are now too nervous to lend. Yes, this is indirectly linked to the sub-prime problems in the US, but Northern Rock's lending has not been reckless. Mortgage arrears on their £100bn book are less than half the industry average, and over a third funded by deposits (of which only 8% has been withdrawn by scared Northern pensioners - see, I watch the news sometimes....).

Northern Rock will either be bought out, or wound down. It's asset book is worth about 180p per share according to some sources and this is the worst case scenario. If it's bought the price would likely go up again. So, if I had some money lying around to invest, I reckon I'd be waiting for the share price to hit this figure (probably some time tomorrow) and start buying.

Only time will tell if I'm right. Maybe I just like to invest in the same way I play poker - for the thrill rather than the gain?

Of course all bets are off if B&B, A&L and HBOS continue to plummet. These all share the same wholesale funding model which could see savers running to the traditional big banks and no one trusting anyone any more. Still, good news for us with debts though isn't it?

The Mighty Boosh

2007-09-12T00:04:00.000+01:00

Look, I just don't find it funny ok. Get over it.

Curious

2007-09-08T11:37:00.000+01:00

When did Saturday morning TV go from over-enthusiastic kids' shows to over-enthusiastic cookery shows?

Geek post

2007-09-05T17:28:00.000+01:00

It's my blog and I can post what I want, so ha. This made me laugh extremely hard whilst at work today.

It's not easy to pretend not to laugh and pretend not to work at the same time.

Happy Birthday to me!

2007-09-05T14:25:00.000+01:00

This blog is now 2 years old. Who'd have thought my attention span could last that long?
Here's a great old post filled with the joys of Kingsbury Rock Circus.

Enjoy!

O2 2 go

2007-09-05T14:21:00.001+01:00

Do you want to get out of your O2 contract? Now's the time.

Although based on a recent straw poll following an unfortunate mobile phone-wetting incident I don't think anyone in the world uses O2.

Facebook privacy

2007-09-05T14:15:00.000+01:00

If you haven't played with your Facebook privacy settings to make sure non-friends can't see what you're getting up to, I would say now is a good time to do it.

I got this alert up when I logged in today, telling me that oh joy, soon someone will be able to find me from Google, Yahoo, etc. It's not something I'm keen on so thankfully you can opt out of this as well, which I've already done.

Last thing I want is for a prospective employer to see what I get up to in Cambridge of a night out.

The death of summer

2007-08-30T00:19:00.000+01:00

Have you ever been stabbed? No neither have I. However, recent events have got me thinking a lot about what it must be like. There's a lot that keeps me awake at night, nothing of which I would feel comfortable divulging on something as public as a blog, but getting stabbed, shot, randomly attacked, etc. are not things that enter my head in the twilight hours. But apparently it does happen, and probably I'm more likely to become a victim of that than most things I worry about.

Let me tell you a little story, if I may. I was recently lucky enough to spend a bit of time in Western Australia, and if you think that travelling to Orpington is like being at the end of the Earth you would have a heart attack just considering the complete isolation that's a way of life in WA. In fact, that quality is what completely endeared the place to me. It was like the Wild West without lawlessness, or people. Fantastic.

We were driving down the (1) highway to Perth (the only real city in the 1m sq miles of land, and a small one at that) when yours truly needed to relieve himself. So off I trot, in my flip flops (or 'thongs' in Aussie parlance) to the side of the road. Bushes above small marsupial height were in scarce supply but seeing as we'd seen a total of zero cars since we left the last roadhouse 10km up the road I wasn't too bothered.

Having done the deed I headed back to the car but managed to step on something that can only be described as 'spiky' on the way back. That's the only way I can describe it because at the time I thought nothing of it. Soft-English-boy-skin-targeting flora and fauna is de rigeur round these parts.

So into the car I got. And then my brain went to work.

I knew about all the terrible creatures that exist in the Australian wilderness that can cut your life unexpectedly short, but I couldn't correlate that with what I'd trodden on. Nevertheless, within a few minutes I felt my heart rate surge, I felt hotter than the 45C outside heat would account for. I felt decidedly faint, colour was draining from my body and my vision. I knew I was about to pass into unconsciousness. I did all I could to stay conscious and the good lady I was with turned the car around and headed back to the last roadhouse.

I was absolutely terrified. My mind was racing at a million miles an hour calculating what I could have potentially trodden on, what their effects might be and how long it would take until my body was totally overwhelmed by whatever poison it was that they'd introduced into my system.

I did nearly pass out in that car. I'm still amazed to this day that I didn't. It was the most scared that I'd been in my entire life.

We got back to the roadhouse where a lovely lady didn't think me an idiot tourist or any of that kinda crap and reassured me, looked at the contact point (I had removed something black and white and 'spiky' from it in the car) and generally made me feel pretty content that the reaper had moved on to easier catches, before we set off down the road again.

For days and weeks later I felt remarkably silly for what I'd been through, but the fact is, it unsettled me for a long time. When we got to the next roadhouse 200km away I was still feeling uneasy, even though I was provided with one of the most delicious chicken sandwiches I'd ever had in my life - and I couldn't eat the whole thing. The only thing that was really helping me through all this was my love of Coca Cola. I can hear you laugh now. But seriously, that is what I had at the first roadhouse and I kept sipping Coke all the way back to Geraldton. So there we go, Coke saved my life.

I never found out what it was that stabbed me in the foot, but frankly it could have been anything. What sticks with me is the inescapable feeling of total fear that life will be over. Now I know that we are all going to die, though I know it's not a popular thing to bring it up, but with all the stabbings and shootings going on right now I can't help thinking that some people just really don't get it.

I was prompted to write this post because of the recent stabbing of a chap in Northamptonshire who was looking out for a friend of his. I don't know all the details and I'm not going to quote a newspaper because I doubt they do either. But one thing he apparently said really stuck with me:

'Everything is going black and white'

That's what it's like before you pass out. But unfortunately he never came around again. Now how does this correlate with my ramblings earlier you might ask? Well, rather tenuously I might say. But I know that everyone is probably already trying to find out how his parents/the media/social services/the government/etc. have failed the perpetrator but there's only one thing I want to know. And this goes for all the other recent (mostly teen) murderers:

Knowing that a highly possibly outcome of their actions is the death of someone, the end of existence of an individual, why do they do it and how can they live with themselves for it?

Sign up to Lovefilm

2007-08-24T19:53:00.000+01:00

And net me a digital photo frame.

Link.

They are quite good though, in all fairness.

Have you heard?

2007-08-21T13:51:00.000+01:00

They're bringing back Wispas...

Mound

2007-08-20T14:40:00.000+01:00

I went to Richmond Park at the weekend and I must say I'm quite impressed by it. If the deer, the nice views and scones with clotted cream weren't enough to win me over then King Henry VIII's Mound certainly did. It's basically a hill with an unrestricted view to St Pauls some 10 miles away. It's rather impressive and one of only a handful of protected views in the country.

I've been generally quite happy with what Ken's done as Mayor, but turns out he's managed to narrow the restricted area around it. What an arse.

Voter Registration

2007-08-16T13:33:00.000+01:00

What's that, the website set up by the Government for voter registration online doesn't work? Surely not.

Oh right. Think I've already had my say on how the words 'Government' and 'IT' should never be put into the same sentence.

Basic Instructions

2007-08-15T14:03:00.001+01:00

Ok this guy is an unknown but clearly has talent - Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has taken him under his wing to provide him with guidance on getting published. But literally check this out.

A great post about social networking

2007-08-15T11:26:00.000+01:00

Behind the marketing hype what their actual use is for. Although the author seems a little confused about networking vs. social networking. I'm going to write more about this very soon...

This is what I got

2007-08-08T13:15:00.000+01:00

And it's magnificent.

Well it is since I switched it for one without any dead pixels...