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30th September Eight things I don't get right now: Why have Apple so publicly attacked their most loyal customer base? It is one thing to try and prevent people hacking phones. It is one thing to void their warranties and not condone their interference. It is quite another to deliberately ruin the five hundred dollar phones of anyone who modified them. "Apple issued a statement in which it said many of the unauthorised iPhone unlocking programs caused "irreparable damage" to the device's software" - no, I think you'll find the modified phones worked fine until Apple worked the biggest heel turn since Andre the Giant ripped the crucifix from around the neck of Hulk Hogan and fried thousands of phones. It was bad enough that the iPhone was such a rip off (starting price - two thousand dollars for the phone and the cheapest contract) without them now destroying the property of anyone who modified it in any way. If the phones were free with the contract (and therefore the property of the phone company) they might have a leg to stand on but you can't in all conscience sell someone something and then remotely ruin it because the customer exercises their right to choose. Why do downstairs men (who say things like "The Bull is on Virgo and Mars and we'll have it running parallel with Jupiter by the end of the week") and upstairs men hate each other so much? And why are they both convinced the others don't know what they're doing? And why does no one ever put downstairs men and upstairs men in a room together and find a way for projects to be run as collaborative exercises rather than battles in a techno-civil war? Of course there is a guilty pleasure in sitting in meetings with upstairs men and hearing them slag off the downstairs men and sitting in meetings with downstairs men and hearing them slag off the upstairs men but, as Johnny Byrne once so nearly observed, there should be another way. Why it is a big story that an MP appeared in a Photoshopped picture? The photograph is a bunch of people standing on a building site. It's hardly shaking hands with Kylie or laughing at someone who has fallen out of their wheel chair. But we're in a weird phase where everything has to be "real" (so can we expect cum-shots in Eastenders now?) so the public aren't "misled". Which is all fine and pathetic but I saw this self same MP brought onto BBC news to chat about the subject and what did I see? He was interviewed against a CSO backdrop and everyone was fine with that. Why are people so angry about "noddy shots"? Charlie Brooker rightly pointed out in the excellent Screen Wipe that they are a necessary editing device and they make the interview shorter, smoother and tighter. They are also deceiving no one. How exactly is it possible for a one-camera OB shoot to record one-shots of both the interviewer and interviewee? Anyone who thinks about it for a moment must realise that it is impossible. Would it be better if the interviews were edited without "noddy shots"? That would require either a jerky-headed interview or some kind of onscreen edit effect. It would be more honest in the sense that people would know the interview was edited but people already know they are edited so what is the point? To have the print media attacking the broadcast media for editing interviews is off the scale absurdity. Even the most edited broadcast interview - think Chris Morris's splicing together Nicholas Parsons so he talks about elephants with trunks up their backsides - still has more authenticity than a tabloid "quote" which accurately represents what someone says but with different words, a different tone, a different context and a different meaning. Why would someone be so eager to get to the gym that they would nearly kill me en route? The gym is third exit off the roundabout, a right turn in anyone's book. I was in the right lane, going off the second exit when a car raced past me on the left side and cut right in front of me just as I was going straight on. If that wasn't bad enough, there was a second car - either chasing or following the first - who did exactly the same thing. It was all so much of a blur that I was sure the second one was going to hit me and I've no idea how it didn't. Roundabouts are really simple things and I'll never understand why people either can't or don't use them properly. But this was beyond simple stupidity - this was ridiculously dangerous and ridiculously pointless as if they'd been in my lane (which was the less busy lane anyway) it would all have been fine. Luckily, it was all fine. I hope some weights fell on them in the gym or that they fell under the influence of a sadistic gym instructor and felt as stiff as boards on Saturday morning. How does the American political system work? Does it indeed work? I'm half way through the second season of the West Wing and they seem to have one messy system. Our own dear parliamentary democracy is riddled with things that don't quite make sense having evolved over eight hundred years but at least it makes some sense. America has a President who has no direct involvement with either voting chamber, two houses of more or less equal power but with very different membership and elected at different times. So the three arms of government are locked in a more or less perpetual stalemate. And everything is beholden to a document written hundreds of years ago by a bunch of guys who were doing what was in their interests at that moment in history. It's only slightly less absurd than basic your society on a book written two thousand years ago. The West Wing is a good series and it doesn't spoon-feed its plots, issues or dialogue but it does seem to assume you have a working knowledge of their offices and institutions and, despite Wiki'ing them, I still don't get it. And where exactly does the Queen fit into it all? She's barely had a mention so far. Why is Gordon Brown considering an early general election? Whatever popularity he may currently be enjoying after the public realised he wasn't Tony Blair any more would evaporate because everyone hates general elections. They're like local elections only a billion times worse. The Tories have a more electable leader than they have since the 1980s and the best Brown could hope for is a Major-sized majority and four years of struggle. Either that or he loses and becomes the shortest reigning PM in who knows how long. And, on the same subject, why do people say that everyone should vote? That is their duty to vote, that people died so they could vote. If half the people are too apathetic to want to vote, how with their apathetic votes make anything better? On a local level, people should only vote if they understand and care about local issues. It doesn't do anyone any good if local elections have a higher turn out but that the new voters just use it as a popularity poll for Westminster. Whether people like David Cameron's hair or Gordon Brown's suits isn't a great basis for deciding whether the old people's centre should be turned into a car park or if the primary school should ban smoking in the playground. I haven't voted in years. The last election I cared about was the American one in 2004 but I apparently "don't qualify" to vote because I'm not technically an American citizen. If we do have an election this autumn I don't imagine I'll bother.
26th September I tried my very best William Squire impression... "The Keeey to Tiiiiimmmmmme is miiiinnnnnee... mwah hah hah hah hah" ...but it was rubbish. The boxed set on the other hand looks fantastic. I don't remember the key to time actually being pink but it certainly stands out. I'm number 847 by the way. I've finally listened to the first couple of BBC7 8th Doctor stories. I didn't bother with the radio, didn't get the CDs until now and was generally not interested in this little sideline. I was partly put off by the new companion - Lucie - because they seemed to be pulling every cliché they could out of the hat. A Northern Rose Tyler clone who was described in every article and interview as "ballsy". A word I hate because it implies the only thing which can give a female character any depth or integrity is trying to convince us that they have testicles. It is lazy and it is annoying. So anyway, Blood of the Daleks is pretty good. It is 50% stock dystopia and 50% Dalek genetic mutation but it works. As the first example of Classic Doctor Who made for a New Doctor Who audience it works for both. I wish they'd made Blood of the Daleks on TV instead of that wretched New York Dalek tale - the one where the ultimate evolution of the universe's greatest scourge is to have porn star penises dangling from their faces and a swollen head which is going to make it impossible ever to wear a hat with any dignity. Speaking of the fringes of Doctor Who, I have absolutely no interest in the Sarah Jane Adventures. Or rather I didn't have any interest in TSJA until I read a preview of it and saw that she has a "sonic lipstick". Now I have less than absolutely no interest in TSJA. I know I'm not the target demographic but neither is most of OG and there are still three hundred and thirty three threads in their Sarah Jane Adventures forum and the first episode was only on on Monday afternoon. Facebook keeps popping up at the moment. At first I dismissed it as just another MySpace (a place I loathe with a passion for the millions of offensively ugly webpages it has spawned and for the music apps which start playing when the page has loaded rather than waiting for you to press the play button and for the way it indulges moronic and utterly illiterate young people who spread their mystifying messages to all and sundry (especially sundry) and for lots of other reasons too). But having seen a few Facebook profiles I do now get what it is for. It's for all those things that I either can't or won't do - it's for catching up with old friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Its for arranging get togethers and reunions. Its for sharing your life with people you like. I went to a high flying school so I don't want to find anyone I went to school with because they'll have flown high. I went to a great university so ditto. I already know how much of a failure I am - I don't need case studies and pie charts. Of all my ex-colleagues from the old place there is Funky Dave (who I do hear from occasionally and whose details I lose every time I have one of my annual computer disasters) and the Amazing Chan (who I remember every time I hear David Kuo on the radio) but that's it. The rest are just people I met during a more or less entirely unhappy three and a half years. And the reverse is also undoubtedly true - if there was a path to my door it would not be well travelled. No, I fear Facebook and I will never be friends.
23rd September In the end I was brave. I went ahead with the Northern Rock shares. I can only control the date of purchase not the time so I ended up buying them at £2.16 and by the close of play they were down to around £1.85. They rallied on Friday which is nice but they are still below £2. Still, sometimes you just have to take risks and hope they pay off. I read this on a message board.
The author of the thread is a well known twat but he's entitled to his opinions on what he calls "pirated" DVDs. I'm less happy with the idea that there are self-important people like himself who spend their evenings on eBay looking for people to report. He goes on to make this remark which wound me up far more.
So his moral position is that gangs selling thousands of copies of commercially available blockbusters are fine but someone selling one or two copies of an unavailable rarity are scum. Surely it is the other way around. Yes, there are people with rare material who charge a lot of money for it. And yes they don't have the right to sell it. But to make out that they are somehow worse than professional pirates who make their living selling knock-offs on eBay and market stalls is an absurd position to take. Might the self righteous be afraid to report the serial pirates? Do they fear retribution which might be more serious than from a geek flogging Cities of Gold from his bedroom in the suburbs? Or is their concern motivated primarily by a desire to keep rarities out of the hands of the masses? You'll find collectors of curios are the most vocal at stamping out pirates. They themselves have given and received material from within their secret circles. There are private torrent clubs which exchange unavailable materials - I know because I was fortunate enough to get membership to one. I'm fairly sure the writer of the above quotes is a member of the same site. Such places and practices are every bit as illegal as selling bootleg DVDs on eBay but so often those taking the moral high ground draw their own line. Which is fine - I have my own line and I'm sure you have yours too - but I at least say it is a grey area. The self-righteous do not. They pick their bad guys for selfish reasons and then go on witch hunts to try and stamp them out. Even though they know they aren't the real bad guys. Speaking of bad guys, this affair of phone voting irregularities is back in the news. Now its the Blue Peter cat and the British Comedy Awards which are in trouble. The former saw Blue Peter ignore the results of a poll to name their new kitten. Oh who cares? If it was a free online poll then it doesn't matter if they faked the result because online polls don't mean anything anyway. If it was a poll which cost money then what the hell are Blue Peter doing charging their viewers for voting? While ITV are dropping the Comedy Awards because the phone-voting was dodgy in 2005. One award is voted for by the public. Why not just drop that particular award? The Comedy Awards are shite anyway as they have far too many awards and give them away either to the wrong people or, whenever humanly possible, to the one programme they decide each year will get all the prizes. So ordinarily I'd be delighted to see the awards canned. But to do so for this reason is knee-jerk and pathetic. It exposes that ITV are only interested in the money made by gullible and stupid people paying premium rates to vote. Oh, and anyone who pays a pound per minute to enter a moronic competition deserves to get ripped off. It's time we stopped wasting time and money protecting the dumbest members of society. And if we're really going to make a big deal out of this, simply ban premium rate phone competitions. They're illegal anyway as the questions make them lotteries and lotteries have to be licensed. So stop trying to make these things sound - they exist so the greedy can make lots of money from the stupid. You can build all the safeguards you like into it but it will still be a cynical and squalid practice and getting rid of it will make television a slightly less sleazy place. The binary season is finally over as United beat Chelsea 2-0. There were plenty of "talking points" (television carny for "we won't show you any more replays until you've sat through lots more adverts") but nothing I think which was too outrageous. The goal coming two and a half minutes into added time was perfectly fine - the announcement is "there will be a minimum of two minutes of added time" not "there will be two minutes of added time". The corner was taken, the attack was still on until the goal went in. Had Chelsea cleared the ball or the ball gone out of play it would've been half time. There is nothing controversial about it - you'll see referees play on until the attack is over all the time. The sending off could've gone either way. Obi Mikel is a contemptible little shit, that much we know, and he did go in two-footed at ankle height. Personally, I think people should only be sent off if they do something which either endangers the game or endangers another player. Sending people off for throwing the ball away or a couple of non-dangerous fouls is stupid. But that isn't how football is right now and nine times out of ten he would've been yellow carded. That said, Joe Cole later committed a foul on Ronaldo which could easily have been a red card and with the referee they had, probably would've been a red had he not already got one in his book. The penalty was a penalty much as one regrets its kind. There was contact, the player went down. That is what a penalty is these days. You can't argue there was no contact just as you can't argue it was enough contact to actually bring him down. But any referee in the Premiership with that foul and that view would give a penalty. Would I prefer players to stay on their feet? Of course I would. But they don't and there is nothing controversial about giving that penalty in 2007. The better team on the day won the game, the Tevez goal was a magnificent one and it was by far the best 90 minutes of football between Manchester United and Chelsea in many years.
19th September Another meeting with the Downstairs Men today. They are migrating from a thing to another thing and need us to help them migrate their thing to the other thing. Being Downstairs Men they have undisguised contempt for the Upstairs Men (ITguy and his PHP Massive) because the Upstairs Men want to move everything from mainframe platforms to Oracle databases sitting on UNIX boxes. The Downstairs Men scoff at such things and believe that mainframes are the best platforms to use and if they were to migrate them elsewhere - which they wouldn't - they would use Linux boxes. We are also left in no doubt that the migration of the thing to another thing is a bad, purely cost-driven decision which will come back to bite several asses. Hence the project manager naming the project after the goddess of divine retribution. No one ever said Downstairs Men lack a sense of humour. I don't know who is right and who is wrong. But the meeting was fun. For no immediately obvious reason - other than to see whether I could - I decided I might as well master "King Caractacus" by Rolf Harris. Danny Baker played it on one of his shows last week and boasted to Amy that he could do it but few others could. I think I've got it now. It is of no use. Speaking of Danny Baker, I mentioned a few weeks ago that the reason I like him is that he never annoys me. Well, the absence of the ADBS is starting to annoy me. He's made a couple of cryptic remarks about it but there is no information coming through. Having paying subscribers - as he does in the thousand already - he at least owes a duty to let people know what is going on. I was in Tesco today and, amidst the chaos of a store in what seems like perpetual regeneration (literally the only thing my local Tesco has in common with Mawdryn Undead), there was an old man in front of me in the queue. Today was the coldest day of the year. It has been cold, grey, miserable and a little bit drizzly all day. The man was wearing SHORTS~! An old man in shorts is never a pretty sight but on a day like this it was just strange. And he did the socks-rolled-up-to-the-knee thing. There was a girl at work wearing shorts too. She at least had tights on. And a rather excessive blouse. "Has she come as a new romantic?" asked TheArtist. If she had, it would only be because she'd heard about them from her parents. The price of Northern Rock shares is a bit strange. Having fallen like a pop starlet's pantie when the FHM call arrives, they bounced back after the panic was ended by the Chancellor. Then, today, they fell again. They are now lower than they were at the absolute nadir of the crisis. I don't know if this is good or bad. The way my share account works is that it buys only on certain dates. One of which is tomorrow and I'm due to buy a bunch of Northern Rock shares. The lower the better - in theory - but today has made it a more courageous decision than it was supposed to be. They should go up. Of course they should. But they went down when everything else went up. That can't be good. Still, nothing v nothing g as the poet once said. And United's binary season continues with a 1-0 win in Lisbon. My wacky theory is that they are missing Gary Neville. No no - hear me out for this is not a joke. They have no leadership on the pitch without Neville, G. Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes have tremendous respect from all and sundry (especially sundry) but they aren't leaders. Nor is Rio Ferdinand even though he thinks he is. Carrick is too quiet, Hargreaves isn't settled yet and the rest are a mix of newbies, foreigners and the shy. Eventually they will find their feet and the gears will click into place (do gears click?) but until then we have to hope they can at least get by with 1-0s and the distant memories of editorial praise for their performances.
16th September I had a renewal notice from DWAS in the post last week. Don't ask why I joined DWAS - I have no idea. It seemed like a good idea one night in the past. I had vaguely fond memories of Celestial Toyroom being a decent enough little magazine. That was years ago - now it is an A5 fanzine which seems to have gone backwards in every respect since the mid 90s. Anyway, having received two issues in my six month subscription they have the gall to write and ask me to re-sub. Shouldn't that notice come with your fifth or sixth issue? Rather than blindly assuming that someone who subscribed five months ago has had five months worth of membership? I'm sure the people behind DWAS do their best but, aside from taking PayPal, it is as if the twenty first century hasn't happened to them yet. If they can't offer anything worthwhile, why offer anything at all? Look how DWM has evolved over the last fifteen years - in exactly the opposite direction to DWAS. Imagine a child who loves the New Series and finds there is an official Doctor Who fan club. He joins and gets an A5 fanzine with perhaps one splash of colour on every sixth cover. He isn't going to be massively happy. I can appreciate they may be targeting a different audience (otherwise why interview David J Howe?) but that isn't an excuse to try and recapture the product and service standards of 80s fandom. I watched "The Man with the Golden Gun" the other night. Blah had a "Gold" themed boxed set with the 2-disc versions of Goldfinger, Golden Gun and Goldeneye for £6.99 and, since the 2-disc sets have been replaced in shops with 1-disc versions which look the same and cost the same despite only being half the package, decided to get it. The picture is remarkably good (though I haven't seen the "Special editon" so can't compare and contrast. The sound has been remixed - at times it was astonishing (the bubbling of champaign) but at others it was muffled and tinny. I wasn't putting it through 5.1 (just faux-5.1) but it would've been nice if the original audio had been an option. I hope they re-release the 2-disc Ultimate Editions (not that I hold out much hope - James Bond is seldom released on DVD) because I want more Bond now and don't want to buy what I know to be incomplete packages. It has also meant that TheArtist and self have the Golden Gun theme tune etched into our collective brains at the moment. Not that I'm alone in being irrational. The Northern Rock debacle for one shows how people can be morons. They hear that Northern Rock is in trouble. From whom we don't know since they don't seem to believe any of the sources saying it is fine. No doubt an equally dense friend of theirs has heard from someone else that Northern Rock is going bust. So, despite assurances from the Bank of England, the Chancellor, the BBC's financial experts and numerous others, they panic and queue for days to withdraw their money. Thereby causing the sort of instability which justifies their actions. But if they bothered to try and understand what is happening, they would realise that there is no risk. Northern Rock needed a temporary loan. Usually this would come from a central pool shared amongst all the banks but because the financial sector is squeezed at the moment, there isn't enough there. So the Bank of England steps in to lend them the money they need on a short term basis. Yes, it is a little out of the ordinary but it isn't anything to worry about. It certainly doesn't mean Northern Rock is going bust. But the panic withdrawals have caused the share price to crash, doing far more damage to the business than either the loan or what caused them to need the loan in the first place. You have cretins complaining because the website doesn't work properly. Of course it doesn't - thousands of witless dolts are bombarding it with traffic. There is no conspiracy despite what knuckle draggers on the news would have you believe. It is just the way the internet works. Too much traffic equals poor performance. The end result will either be someone buying Northern Rock for a (relative) pittance because the share price has fallen so much or speculators will buy Northern Rock shares for next to nothing and, when the business recovers, they will make a fortune. Either way, some people will make a fortune. And all because people panic. Why don't they spend a fraction of the time they spent queuing outside their branch or pressing Refresh and getting time-out errors reading about what is actually happening? The entire banking sector relies on confidence. If it falls, it won't be because of blips or loans or Bank of England intervention. It will be because of sensationalist headlines, headless chickens and basic ignorance. As for me, I'm not brave enough to buy Northern Rock shares but I think I'll take advantage of the general fall in banking sector prices. What did you do on Friday night? I spent three hours recovering Danny Baker MP3s. Excitement. I accidentally deleting something I shouldn't have deleted when a copying operation went awry. Luckily, giveawayoftheday.com had given away a data recovery program a few weeks ago. Normally I have little faith in such things (after a 50 hour scan failed to find anything salvageable) but this time it worked. Yes, I hadn't formatted the drive so it was just finding deleted items, but it was still effective. So now I have a more or less complete run from October 2005 to the present. He dropped a hint last week that he might be getting the breakfast show back. He also dropped a hint that all was not well with the podcast. He didn't give any further details so speculation has been rife. Is it a money issue? A technical issue? A falling out with Wippit? A falling out with the BBC? Whatever it is, it has meant a week with no shows and a lot of pissed off subscribers. Surely any issues could've been predicted before they launched. The shows are great but a professional product needs a professional service. Issues - technical, financial or contractual - should've been sorted out beforehand. And, before I go away, I want to apologise for the quality of the new serial teaser trailer. I couldn't get the DVD to rip properly. So the picture is slightly jerky (which sometimes matches the rhythm of the song and I could've claimed it was stylish if this were always the case). I considered not using the trailer but then I would only have had two things in the update and that would've looked even worse. At least it has finally got me to set up the serials section. I'd wanted them all in one place for a while. What started as a quick and cheap gag has developed into something that can run and run. At least while the few of you that like them continue to. I've got lots of good/bad ones to come - including the forgotten spider-based superhero, more from Larry "Buster" Crabbe and the return of a familiar rocket suit.
12th September On Saturday I decided I would go somewhere on Monday. I'd pick some attraction or other in Manchester and jolly well go to it. For want of a better starting point I Googled "museums manchester" and got a list on a site left over from the Commonwealth Games. The first one to take my fancy was the Museum of Science and Industry. I even knew where it was (when I saw a map with a big arrow on it). So I decided I'd go there. It was easy to get to, easy to get from and seemed to have some bits and bobs that were worth seeing. On Sunday, as I tried desperately not to talk myself out of going, I went to their website and, amidst the promises of this and that (sadly none of the other. That's a joke for anyone who used to watch UKGold before it went crap) there was a graphic promoting "Doctor Who Up Close". Then I remembered hearing about it a while ago. It was what I expected. I went to the Llangollen exhibition a few years ago and, apart from thinking how small Kate O'Mara must be, I wasn't massively impressed. There is only so much you can do with props and costumes. The main feature was the big spider thing from last year's abysmal Christmas special.
Forgive the quality of the pictures - they were taken on a phone in very low lighting. I've teased as much detail as I can in Photoshop but they aren't great. The thing about the Queen was that most people (m'self included) assumed it was CGI. They swore blindly on the commentary that they actually built the thing and now I believe them. Seeing it from the front is all fine and dandy but seeing it from behind...
...shows the mechanism they used to make the body move. It didn't move very much - just slowly up and down - but it let a little light in upon magic. The other big prop was the telescope from "Doctor Who and the Werewolf". It was surrounded by too much stuff and there wasn't enough space to get close to it or walk round it so the effect is somewhat lessened. It should've appeared as a marvel of sci fi Victoriana but comes across as just this big thing in the background.
I think my favourite display item was the Big Ben tower as smashed by the spaceship in "Doctor Who and the First Rubbish One of the New Series". It revolved so you could see all four sides. Complete with a note about why there were two plywood faces (just in case there were stupid people in the building).
I stood watching it for several slow rotations. I may have been in the way by the end. The Face of Boe was smaller than I was expecting. He kept schtum so obviously there isn't a message for me from the end of time. Not even a little one.
"You... are... alone" But you don't need to be a billion year old being to know that. The Cybermen were in an alcove. For some reason there was a video screen built into the floor. There was a small child jumping on it. There were also those plastic sheet hangy downy things to push through to get in. I don't know why. I don't like them - I always feel I'm going to go through them the wrong way and end up tangled in plastic sheet hangy downy things which don't have a proper name.
I liked the model of the outside of Rose's flats. You don't imagine them still making models of things - not real ones. They do everything on computers these days. No they don't - they even use real tiny tinsel.
Awww. There were boxes of random stuff from the BBC Props Department.
There were costumes on headless mannequins.
And even a space where an Ood should've been but wasn't because they had taken it away to be used in season 4.
Overall, it is a good exhibition and one that is worth seeing if it comes your way. But it can be comfortably done in half an hour and felt a little on the slight side. Perhaps there being two exhibitions being run in different places at any one time means the stuff is spread too thinly. On the one hand that gives confidence that you're seeing the real thing rather than copies but if one place has Tennant's coat and the other has Eccleston's jacket, you don't really feel you're getting the full show. The rest of the museum is worth a look too. I passed a couple of hours skimming through part of it and will definitely go back for a look at the rest. I didn't even go in the Air and Space Hall and that sounds like the best bit. And I want to find "the Baby" - it wasn't where I thought it was. I'm glad I went - it was that or waste another day doing nothing. And I've done that enough, haven't I?
"Affirmative".
9th September My first proper journey with added satellite navigation went well. It isn't brilliant on complicated roundabouts - you are told which exit to take but not which lane you need to be in to get off at that exit. But that aside, it worked well. I arrived dead on the ETA both times and it was very useful near the end when I would've cocked up. There are apparently two exits for the M53 and, since I was told to go off at the second, I assume the first would've been disastrous. The car park had that extremely annoying thing where cars are stopped, waiting for other people to leave their spaces, even though a casual glance tells us that there are hundreds of spaces a few yards away. I will never understand why some people are so lazy that they will drive round and even queue just for a space that is ten yards from the shops instead of twenty. My philosophy (and it is a philosophy and anyone who disagrees should defend to the death my right to call it a philosophy) is that an easy space with no hassle that is a bit further away is always better than a stressful and awkward space that little bit nearer to the store. Weirdly, I looked around to get my bearings and realised I'd parked in pretty much exactly the same place I parked on my only other trip here some four summers ago. The weird part is that I also spotted a car a few feet away which was almost identical to the one I was driving those four summers ago. It was a nice enough day out - not the most exciting place in the world but a pleasant wander. There were about two hundred American girls wandering around in large obstructing groups. Which was terrible, obviously. You wouldn't want to be stuck behind a large group of American girls. One person I was pleased to have been stuck near was a woman looking at a large book in Borders. She said to her companion,
And then I went home. Arriving back just as the battery warning on my TomTom was getting quite insistent. I had a very pleasant afternoon with Banana yesterday. She's finally taken a liking to teddy bears after months of tossing them aside with complete indifference. Ok, so her liking includes putting her favourite ("Baby") in an ice cream tub and sealing him in. Then banging on the lid with both hands until letting him out. But it is still sweet to see her toddling around cuddling a bear. She's also very into scribbling with felt tip pens. They fit together, the base of one connecting to the cap of the next one, and we have sword fights. Once, she held a felt tip sword up over her head and shouted something which sounded like "Behold". I think she's destined to save the world. She's terribly bright too - if she finds something which her little fingers can't operate, she'll borrow one of mine. Though we must temper belief that she is already a genius with a reminder that at lunchtime today she picked up a cheese sandwich, pulled off the top slice of bread and went "wowww" when she found the cheese inside. She then ate the cheese, smeared butter-style-margarine-spread on her face and threw the bread at me. England were ok weren't they? Having some fringe players who actually wanted to play did the side no harm at all. Of those whose place in the starting XI is guaranteed under normal circumstances, only Rooney and Gerard (and perhaps John Terry and Owen Hargreaves these days) ever look as though they really really want to be there. Today we had a bunch of reserves in the team and they gave their all. Emile Heskey may not be the best footballer in the world but when he's got something to prove, he is worth having in your squad. Like Crouch he is something different from the instinct of Owen and the skill of Rooney. It's my usual analogy - 20 minutes to go and you need a goal. You're throwing someone on to change the game - do you want Emile Heskey who might just bulldoze his way through and score or the miscellaneous talents of Andy Johnson or Jermaine Defoe? UFC 75 - my first ever live UFC believe it or not - was a mixed show. To be honest, I was burned out by the main event. Henderson vs Jackson passed me by entirely. I watched every minute of the fight but none of it stuck. I guess the decision was the right one. Earlier, I swore at the television in disbelief at the decision rendered in the Bisping-Hamill fight. It was just wrong. The show aired on tape delay in the States and people seem to to agree for the most part. Some argue the judges got it wrong, others that the judging system is wrong because it allowed the wrong guy to win the fight without any incompetance or corruption. Either way, one guy was in control of the entire fight. And he lost. Cro Cop vs Kongo was pretty dull - the winner isn't going anywhere and the loser never really looked into the fight. Both Fedor and Brock Lesner were name-checked during the main event but neither appeared in any official capacity so we don't know if one, other or both have signed yet. Overall, not the best show but not the worst either. I've started season 2 of Battlestar Galactica. I won't say anything about the episodes but the case is incredible. It is the size of a normal single-disc DVD case but holds SIX DISCS. It baffles science. The region 2 version seems to be packaged normally. Only the R4 set comes in this dimensionally transcendental box. And to celebrate the return of Baker and Kelly, here's a list sent in by a listener. It started ten years ago when someone represented their team as items from their local Chinese takeaway using a menu and the player's squad number. Here is the first list of the Internet Era.
5th September We had a Disaster Recovery meeting this morning. Another hour and a bit downstairs with downstairs men. One of whom swears in meetings, not because he's angry but just because he can. "I should've copied you in on some of this shit" he'd say. We smiled. He also said "We rebuilt the bull in Barnsley a few weeks ago". And what's more, they did. The upshot of the meeting is that there is nothing to worry about. Nothing planned but nothing to worry about. If the building blew up tomorrow, everything would be fine. It's just that there is no budget to prove it. Which is fair enough. The ADBS in COLOR launched on Monday and we've had three excellent shows so far. They cost £2 per week or you can subscribe to Wippit for £4.99 per month and get all the shows (plus all the normal Wippit downloads). There were major technical problems on Monday and Tuesday - the site was fucked and even when it wasn't properly fucked it was giving download speeds of 10kps and most d/ls were failing like monkeys. They claim they were overwhelmed by demand - I don't really buy that as surely more people were downloading the free shows in the past than were downloading the paid-for shows this week. But they're doing something about it and that is good - things will always go wrong and it is how those things are dealt with that counts. People at work don't see it that way - they only notice when things go wrong and then moan about them no matter how quickly they're fixed. The shows this week have been superb by the way. Speaking of work, the hag - writer of last week's appalling paragraphs - finished a phone call yesterday and joyfully moaned to her colleague about the person she'd been speaking to. She then started cackling when she explained that he was ringing on behalf of his wife who has dementia and is now in a hospice. She thought it highly amusing. She is not a nice person.
I've finished season 3 of House. I've literally no idea
where they are going to take it from here. The new season starts at the
end of September in the States and I may have to tune in from a
distance. It isn't so much that they left it on a cliff hanger, more
that they may have radically shaken up the cast. Which I'm fine with -
you need Hugh Laurie, you need I'll leave you with a bit of the superb...
2nd September The good news is that my GPS came on Friday so I was able to go out and play with it yesterday. Before then I had to do the various software installations and updates which it recommends (without screwing everything up as some Amazon customers reported). The "Home" software is pretty good - it leans a bit towards selling you extra services but as a means of managing your device it is perfectly adequate. It took a few goes before it would let me redeem my "free safety camera" coupon (an interesting choice of term - "safety camera" - because they mean speed cameras but want to sound responsible and not as if they're aiding and abetting people who drive too quickly when they know they won't get caught. But since we know speed cameras are not installed for reasons of safety but for revenue generation, neither side can claim any moral high ground). Amazingly - for such things never happen in the real world - it didn't need charging before use.
So come Saturday morning I went out with it stuck to my windscreen and Jane's dulcet tones telling me what to do. I decided not to actually go anywhere - that would be foolishly brave - but just to drive to somewhere I know and take detours as and when they presented themselves. My main concern was to know how it coped with deviations from its set route. Would it try and get me back on its preferred path? Would Jane tell me off for being a fool? Would it ask me if I wanted a new route? The answer - and its the answer I wanted - is none of the above. It simply and quietly recalculated the route. A yellow progress bar moved quickly across the screen and Jane - unphased - carried on her good work. There was one moment when she said to bear right but there was no bear right - just a right turn which I ignored because she didn't say to turn. There was another bit when I deliberately took a turn I knew she wouldn't be able to cope with (it was onto private land so there was no official through road) and she calmly told me to turn round as soon as possible and go back the way I'd come. The only map defect I found was when it ignored a mini-roundabout and treated the road as continuous (it didn't even treat it as a junction). But I would've known what to do by following the road on the screen so it's no big deal. The display is very clear without being distracting, the maps are crudely drawn but do exactly what you'd want and it picked up just about every satellite not currently being used to beam John Barrowman into peoples homes. I got home and had another look at the software. They have celebrity voices for sale. John Cleese is £7 but only because he's the real thing. The rest of them were poor quality impersonations costing £4. The internet being the internet I was able to find sites with voices for download. I am going to try KITT from Knightrider next time. I don't really see the point of novelty voices as this is a serious tool rather than a humorous ring tone but it obviously keeps some people amused. Most male voices end up sounding like Stephen Hawking so maybe I'll stick with females. Anyway, it's a good new gadget and I think it will help overcome my utter inability to go anywhere. For the last few weeks there has been this thing doing to the rounds of message boards. Cheap iTunes vouchers - worth £100 and costing only £21 - which everyone initially dismissed as a scam. Then people started finding out that they worked. They were apparently legit promotional codes which some enterprising person bought wholesale and was selling very successfully. After weeks of good sailing I finally bought one - I wanted some of the classic serials they had available and this seemed as good a way as any to get them. Literally the day after I ordered it there was a sudden flurry of activity. The thing was a scam after all. The vouchers were bought with stolen credit cards and once the credit card companies press Apple for their money back, Apple will bill all the people who have used the vouchers for the full value of their purchases. My voucher came through but was rejected by iTunes for being already redeemed. No reply from the seller when I queried it and that would appear to be that. No voucher but no terminated iTunes account (which could lock up my previously purchased tracks) or bill either. Then the next twist was that the owner of the forum which first carried the voucher sales did some digging and reports that the thing isn't a scam after all - the guy selling the vouchers is legitimate but himself got scammed when he bought a bunch of stolen vouchers. He's now working through a back log to ensure everyone gets a proper voucher code and isn't going to be screwed. If it's a scam, the scammer held his nerve for a long time and hasn't disappeared the moment the whistle appeared to be blown. I've no idea if it's straight or not - I just know my timing was quite absurdly bad. You don't get this aggravation with torrents. No - you get Danny Baker with torrents. I'm 10% away from having a full run of his BBC London shows from October 2005 to now. I've also worked out why I like his stuff so much - it never annoys me. Most things will, pretty regularly, annoy the heck out of me. But his shows never do. The news bulletins which intersperse his shows annoy me - it is five years until the Olympics so why does every news story have to be about "twenty twelve"? - but since the torrent versions cut those out I'm in gravy. I worked out not that long ago that I hadn't heard him for nearly seven years before discovering his nascent podcast in March of this year. He left Virgin in 2000 and didn't do anything outside London between then and the ADBS podcast. So I'm really just making up for lost time. Tomorrow is the debut of the "All Day Breakfast Show : IN COLOR" - here is a story of a resourceful man in need of a dentist...
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