not often in

9 out of 10

2010-04-24T12:47:00.001+01:00

We’re sitting here trying to work out what to watch at the cinema. On one tab of firefox various listings from nearby cinemas, on another tab IMDB as we try and work out whether films are any good.

Makes you wonder how people used to survive when they had no real idea whether a film was going to be any good or not before they saw it. No mark out of 10, just a word of mouth recommendation if you were lucky.

Reducing experiences to a number out of ten has always been fraught with danger. But hell, we do it so much why stop now. It’s not a great system, but it works a lot of the time. I’d give the ‘out of 10’ system, a 9.

il neige, (mal)heureusement

2007-01-24T16:43:00.000+00:00

it was quite a surprise this morning when i woke to find london covered in a reasonable amount of snow..of course our transport systems handled it with their usual grace - ie terribly. my planned 80 min trundle to luton airport via tube, train and bus turned into a just-over 2 hour hike with me ultimately losing my nerve and jumping in a cab at st albans as time ran down. of course i should never have bothered - plane delayed by the snow! delayed by 90mins they thought, though when pressed admitted that the plane was still stuck in geneva. ho hum. there goes my bus connection to val d'isere...
i settled down to contemplate my likely day of 'airport lounge appreciation'.
and then suddenly, we were.at the gate. sure, some time had passed but here we were, getting onto a plane only 45 mins after we should have left. hope for my bus connection.yet then - but it would be tight...
i stand, itching to get off. it is 2.55. we have just landed. the stairs have not yet appeared. come on! 3.30 will still be tight - there's getting off, airport corridor walking, passport control, baggage collection, ticket pick-up and then finding the bus stand - if i am even in time. this list feels like a black hole sucking up my time as i stride purposefully to passports. it takes seconds. i'm at baggage but the carousel hasn't started. nature calls - damn i hadn't factored that one in!
still no carousel action. 10 mins to go. i try to spy the ticket collection point through the glass wall of Arrivals. no luck. ah - finally the carousel judders into life. 8 mins to go.
baggage-fates, i am in your hands.
i see my bag and go, rushing but trying not to look like a manic terrorist or nutcase as i approach the green channel. emerging, a total result awaits me - accueil france is opposite me, here be bus tickets. 4 mins to go. but there's a queue.
a very british dilemma befalls.me - do i assume everyone is getting the same bus as me and so are equally hurried.. or do i politely barge past and try to get my ticket before the bus goes? in the end i do a little of both but am reassurred that everyone else is in the same boat and anyway one of the people at the counter is the ticket inspector so noone is going anywhere yet. i relax. i arrive at the bus, ticket in hand, at 3.28pm. fantastic.

so - a crazy day of wrestling problems caused by the snow i ultimately seek. outside the bus windows - the serene white mountains beckon. time to board...

i actually mean it

2006-12-24T16:34:00.000+00:00

I've been meaning to post for a few days about my shiny new Sony Ericsson W950i walkman (smart) phone. It totally rocks. I'm going to keep it short, but here are my top threes....

As a music lover I think,

sound quality is great (apparently even better with the HBH-DS970 bluetooth headset)
the player can be toggled (with a single button press) with the app you are working with, which avoids the annoyance factor I have seen with previous SE phones (P910)
4Gb of storage - the same as a nano... the iPod is in danger...

And as a smartphone user I think,

the legendary symbian 90-second start-up time is still there :( not a good start...
3G means my POP3 emails download a damn sight faster.... good stuff...
An in-built RSS reader ! finally... (and it's good!)
Google Mobile Maps for Java MIDP2.0 is incredible (browse to http://www.google.com/gmm from the inbuilt Opera 8 web browser to install - the google mail java client is not bad either)
The "Messaging" SMS and email client has been integrated with Opera (finally!) - no more groaning when you realised the P900 was trying to render an email with the appalling built-in UIQ2 browser
T9 and handwriting recognition together - start writing then click on the completion. Sweet!

confession time: I wanted to rave about my w950i but I also wanted to try out google adsense. I decided to make them coincide because my average post doesn't tend to lend itself to adsense :)

But i really really do think the w950i rocks :)

truth or dare

2006-12-20T00:29:00.000+00:00

Check this out
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6190739.stm

To all those who believe in content over delivery, function over form, substance over style. Hear this: we have lost

the resident evil is here - the vacous walk the earth

stamford hill, tottenham, edmonton green

2006-12-20T00:21:00.000+00:00

there's an eerie fog i can see as I zoom along; I stare into the void
sinking lower as I watch them closing in, dark red shapes on the horizon
I feel their watchful gaze, a collective stare as they draw closer and hover around me
Cowering silently.

I am surrounded suddenly - one is in front, another two behind. Is it time to run?
What are they, these stalking red beacons that pursue me?
Is it I they pursue or the one I bear. The one

four nine

climate crisis

2006-10-03T01:26:00.000+01:00

watch this: An Inconvenient Truth
go here: www.climatecrisis.net

do the things you can do
- ask your employer why the computers are left on all night
- ask your energy company whether you can buy green energy from them
- ask your political representatives to make progress on carbon emissions

action is needed

schizophrenia

2006-04-15T17:42:00.000+01:00

i struggle with this blog. I want it to be so many things, but my demons have set up their own version of Fight Club on my shoulder and it has been going some time now. Today one of them must be winning, because i am typing something new at last.

So far I have identified five of them:

random thought (an orange, friendly looking thing)
injustice (a red, angry ball of fire)
speakers corner (bright yellow, loud, demanding)
vivre (yellow, happy)
the poet (purple, brooding)

I wonder who will win in the end...

i, robot

2006-04-15T17:15:00.000+01:00

the thing about thw word disease is that it seeps. the very sound of the word is odious and portentous. a pus-filled word - it is almost too appropriate for its designated meaning.

Let's not dwell though - I want to talk about another word. Influenza. Seems to be on everybody's lips at the moment, although not literally. At least not for now.

A strange word though, don't you think. Influenza. Influence...a? I wondered why it was called something that seemed a little jarring, out of place. Ok, so you get sick and feverish. From a very technical perspective I suppose it has influenced you. A bit. Maybe. But really, is this an appropriate name to have used up already?

In cyberspace, viruses are self-replicating programs that transmit themselves from computer to computer. Sometimes this is an exercise in ego by the author; just as often they desire power. If you command a great 'bot network' of infected machines, you can direct them to spam, attack or number crunch.

Machine code and DNA are not so different. One day, maybe sooner than you think, another self-replicating program will transmit itself between machines. But the machines are biological; the network social. Without even knowing my foe, I am conquerered.

I have influenza. I am a bot.

zero sum game

2005-12-20T00:28:00.000+00:00

Of all the things to be doing when slicing a pizza this evening, I was
pondering was week's giant oil repository fire last week close to Luton.

My initial reaction last week was quite naturally shock at the scale of
the fire. And to worry about what the effect of the massive cloud of
oily soot might be on London.

Afterwards I remember thinking how it was horrific that in the space of
a few days vast amounts of CO2 would enter the atmosphere further
accelerating global warming. Forget 'march of the penguins', the
penguins will be lucky if they have any ice sheets left to march on soon
enough.

But the penny dropped tonight. It's not like I often think about oil
repositories whilst slicing pizza; sometimes things just pop into your
head. And so it was. I realised that actually nothing had really
changed; the oil had burnt... as it had always been destined to do - in
our cars and in our planes. All that was different was the when and where.

A rampaging oil fire burns on our motorways and runways, many times over.

what a twat

2005-09-09T00:01:00.000+01:00

i don't post abuse often. read the history if you doubt it. this blog is about originality of thought and perspective. as much as i can i blog my left-field thoughts. thinking outside of the box, and especially outside of what you are told to think is important. very. in that context, please read this.

george bush: what a twat. this is the theme of this post. It's not by any means a novel thought, but ... man.. "Bush declares Katrina prayer day"... I just read this healdine on bbc news..

all i have to say is WTF!!!!?!!!

ok, so let's give the man the benefit of the doubt. or at least as much as i feel like i should ever give a warmongering arse that. The benefit is that he could not have know what was going to happen. So there were federal budget cuts. Fair enough. If the local populous feels like it's a good idea to live below sea level, let them pay taxes to pay for the sea defences. Common sense, it's their choice after all.

But to try to make bush-style political capital out of this is despicable. And there is no doubt in my mind that to have a "prayer day" rather than a 2 minutes silence is totally that. Let's appeal to the moronic blindly-evangelical-and-fundamentalist christian section of the popoulation. the power base. let's make them feel happy about my religious leadership as I try to recover any semblance of looking competent.

it's desperation stuff.

abortion
terrorism
religion

these are the most irrelevant issues of the day. that dominate politial thinking it seems. and every day more evidence is discovered that the world is right as we speak in a circle of warming, feeding off itself, that will accelerate out of control whilst we all drive our cars and watch our idiot leaders make after dinner speeches about their pitiful presidencies.

shoot the f**king lot of them. that's what my kids would say. think about it. the kids will judge all of us by our leaders actions and inactions.

chicken coma

2005-08-29T20:23:00.000+01:00

a while ago i read about a research project. to cure us of the need to
sleep. i liked the idea. not of what they were proposing - heaven forbid
a world without sleep - but of the question that must have come first:
why do we sleep anyway? why indeed. good question. personally, i have no idea :)

thinking alone the same lines: why do we dream? some people like to think it's the brain processing the events of the day, misinterpreted by the always-on consciousness. others like to ascribe more mystical properties to them: maybe they show the future, or hint as some aspect of your life that will change soon. both of these ideas agree that they are essentially functionless: a kind of tv to watch while you rest.

me? i think they have a function: intestinal control

ok, right now you're probably thinking what? he can't possibly mean... yep, thats right. I think dreams are an integral part of what I like to call 'poo processing' (we'll call it PP for short from now on, hey?). let me explain where this thought came from:

we went out for a meal. we ate a lot. the next morning I recalled that I'd had a particularly volatile dream. I was informed I had stolen the duvet more than normal and been more restless. I mulled this over - and decided that maybe it wasn't surprising; after all, I had a significant amount of food sitting in my system. what was the body to do? it needed to (ahem) P the P, right?

lying prone, the stuff really wasn't going to go anywhere. but moving around would nudge it down, bit by bit. and the best way to get me to do that? an active dream, a nightmare, something physical.

Anyway, there's a more general (and more generally accepted) point here:
to keep many functions working, body needs to move around: the existence of Deep Vein Thrombosis demonstrates nicely that blood circulation falls in this category. we wiggle to stay healthy :)

I sleep, I dream, I am... in need of the toilet?

the spider in the bath

2005-06-27T22:20:00.000+01:00

there's a spider in my bath. it's quite big by overall footprint, but it's no tarantula. it's been there for about 5 days.

I'm beginning to feel a bit sorry for it. Ever since I first noticed it, I've been kind of assuming it will find it's own way out. But not so far.

Most of the time, it barely moves. It sits there, right by the plug hole. Almost as though it's plucking up the courage to do what must be done.

It reminds me of Touching the Void. The injured, bereft, starving mountaineer decides that he cannot ever hope to climb out of the deep snow cravass with his broken leg. The cravass air does not seem stale. Maybe further down in the cravass he will find his miracle: another way out.

You see, I always thought that spiders liked drains anyway. Then I realised this for what it was: indoctrination

inspiration

2005-06-14T22:30:00.000+01:00

its funny the things that can inspire you. at different times and places, these things are completely different. such as:

being alone on a mountain on a blue-skied spring morning
opening your eyes high above rio strapped to a kite
writing some neat code that works first time
lemon meringue pie

but right at this moment? Silence (DJ Tiesto mix) - Delerium Feat. Sarah McLachlan, disc2track10 on paul oakenfold's travelling :)

hello, old friend

2005-06-13T23:21:00.000+01:00

its misty in here.
lost in a cloud
and a little bit wet

i've never been here before
lost in a cloud
i think i want to get out

do you swim or what
when you're lost in a cloud
a little butterfly amongst the droplets

shit this must be the edge
man that sun is bright
what do i do now?

inferiority

2005-04-14T15:56:00.000+01:00

the dung beetles march on the dung, surrounding it. drawn by its irresistable lure, they pick at it's flesh until nothing useful is left. there are a few futile moments, where they pick at it but the good stuff is gone. then it is time to go in search of more dung; later, with luck, they will find their way to another dropping a few tens of metres across the grass. if not, no matter, there is always more.

the humans crawl on the earth, surrounding it. they pick at it's flesh, tearing into it with their tools and sucking it dry. then the good stuff is gone and they scramble in futility to find more. they would go in search of another earth but they cannot find one or cannot reach it. adrift on their ravaged host, the parasites wither and die.

the beetles pick at their pungent carcasses. there will always be more dung.

cauliflower computer

2005-04-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

on the subject of strange ideas i had in gothenburg, here's another one (there must have been something in the water)

a modern processor alone consumes 100W of power. Add the rest of a typical computer and you're looking at around 250-300W on average. Ok, so it's only a few light bulbs but computers (like light bulbs) add up. For the sake of argumnet, if we all did without one, we could shut several power stations.

But I'm not suggesting that we do without them. I'm just highlighting that a personal computer implies personal energy consumption. My suggestion is that we also personalise energy production.

Anyone who has had a curry will vouch for it's qualities in accelerating methane production (stop reading now if you don't want to hear any more of this, it's going to get worse...). Methane is a greenhouse gas, but only if you don't use it and let it float away. What I'm saying is, our doo-doo is potent shit man (sorry, bad joke). We've been using horse manure as fertiliser for centuries. We flush our energy down the toilet. What a waste.

So fast forward 10 years. I'm sitting on my Toto. It beeps at me. A red light is flashing: the power pod is ready. Enough of my output has been compressed and mixed in the right volume ratios with chemicals. I detach the pod, a battery powered by the remains of yesterday's Sausage and Mash I had for lunch. I fit a new empty pod, and wander into the living room. I connect my pod to my computer's power frame. I decide to write a new blog entry.

Powered by Blogger? Nah. Powered by my logs :)

urban warfare

2005-04-12T15:57:00.000+01:00

When I was in Gothenburg at christmas time I had an idea. It's taken a while for this idea to make it to the blog, but hey I've been busy.

Let's recap. Some women (and some men) treat pushchairs (strollers for non-brits) as bulldozers (see my first post on the subject here) and it winds me up. Then I found out it's not just me.

Anyway, I was in this shopping centre in Gothenburg. It being christmas, it was absolutely packed with people and it was pretty hard to get to where you wanted to be. Everywhere you turned the way was blocked by a tide of swedes. And it was at this moment that a business idea formed in my mind.

Avis-Buggies

It goes like this. You enter the too-busy shopping centre and realise that today is not going to be pleasant. You need a weapon of mass diversion, to clear your path through the throng. A pushchair buggy and a child. Avis-Buggies rents you this (with fake child) and you can drop it off to any of the depots near the shopping centre doors and car parks when you leave. In between time, you are armed. By the cultural acceptability of piercing the crowd, wielding your child like a weapon. No-one will say anything, just wear the harrassed-mum's glare and you'll be fine (avis buggies will supply an easy 1-2-3 guide to this frown if you find it difficult). You can get your christmas shopping done in double time and with half the stress.

Child upgrades would be available so you can choose the appropriate realism level for your budget. From your basic plastic doll, right through to the realistic skin and hair. The deluxe model even craps it's pants after a random timeout, enabling you to push aggressively through the crowds going 'sorry, sorry, little william needs his nappy changing, i must get to the bathrooms...'

patent pending :)

so this is how beckham must feel...

2005-04-07T01:17:00.000+01:00

i think i signed my name in excess of 40 times today. by that measure i must be a minor celebrity :)

boringly, this was only really because today I had to sign my tenancy agreement and my employment contract.

clearly this called for a celebration. so i went to nando's with a mate :) never let it be said that us northern boys don't know how to celebrate :)

word of the day: limerence

2005-04-04T14:31:00.000+01:00

sometimes you find things you're not really expecting on a random blog. NetNewsWire (RSS reader for MacOS X) installed a subscription to Aaron Swartz's blog (he's the author of the RSS 1.0 spec) by default. I haven't uninstalled it.

but it made me read it. and i'm supposed to be at foxtons sorting out a flat. sigh.

guest blog

2005-04-02T18:33:00.000+01:00

i asked arcoiris if she would write something for me about poland's reaction to what appear to be the pope's final few hours. everything else in this post are her words.

for a few minutes I have been sitting in front of the screen wondering what and how shall I write you, about Papa and the reaction of polish people for his illness..
As I have written in the sms: there is so much to say...but words do not come eaisilly to describe it...
people seem to be lost in thoughts,sad, quite and serious....but there is no despair as one could think...maybe becouse we are still waiting, he is still alive...
being catolics we should not call it an end, but there is a feeling in the air that something is ending...people have candles in the windows...
churches are full of people, praying in silence, in every church, but most of all in those places that Papa have visited,lived or liked....
there is this town: Wadowice, that Pope was born in, and during his last trip to Poland (or one before that..) visited...it was amaizing: he would not lead the schedule of the visit at all then, but was simply talking to the crowd of people, remembering things from the time that he lived there...laughed...;) so now, yesterday, today in Wadowice: everyone is on the street, or in church praying for him... everyone is wondering how shell we pray now and what for... for his helth?? seems sensless becouse he is dying....
There is something very mistycal in the air... you can see this reflection in people's faces, some of them are crying...but calm...
Now I see that the problem is not the lack of space in the sms...;)
it is just very difficlt to expres....anyway...
Pope is probably one of the most important persons in polish history( if not the most important...) he made us belive that we are a society, he made us belive in a solidarity, which started the fight with communism...He is a symbol, an icon, not only of faith for belivers, but of humanity for everybody...
Religion is only one aspect of his activity: he was the great fighter for human rights and humanity...he is a poet, a preacher, a politic, a Father...does it sound exaggerated? ;)
with all certainity: there is no other person in Poland, now, or including the history,that would cause such a response among people...
Nobody speaks of the other thing...time has stopped....
Of course there is the other side of that, I am wondering if it is not a kind of hypocrisy, superficiality.. Now, then we fear, we go to church, pray and love him.... why haven't we for the past 27 years? But then I realize: we might not love the church, me maight even avoid it: but we always loved the Pope...becouse he is so real and honest, his faith is his life, he preaches but he lives in the same way..
About hipocrisy: same thing with me: I do not go to church, althougt I belive... since yesterday, I spent there a few hours thinking, praying...not for him: but for me...I realized that I probably have lost a lot of his wisdom...I am thinking about all of Pope's messages and I wanna be better....somehow I feel that most of people thinks so....that is what I ment telling you about the sense of the soap opera about dying Pope...
I hope this feeling is not superficial and will not disappear...
Anyway...the things that are taking place all over the world now have different roots: in some cases this is faith, religion, in other : respect and the admiration for this charismatic fighter for peace...
So, no matter what reasons we have to cry out for his illness, and most probably- death...as soon as it cause something good in ourselves, let it be global...
I should not speak for others, I know what these days caused in my mind... It seems like weeks to tell the truth..( and I guess this was your point...;))
Of course I could not agree with every Pope's principles as I do not agree with all churche's rules....but as a whole he is the last authority I think...
He would not expect us to become saints, he only wants us to live the best life we can and not to renounce ourselves....and I totaly agree with that....
uppps, have you managed to get through this filosophic mess till the end?? :-) I guess it is kind of my confession...;)
I probably have not finished the subject....have I? ;)
Arcoiris

over-accessorize

2005-04-02T16:09:00.000+01:00

it could be an april fool, i guess. what next? the iVibrator?

hmm

*rushes off to file patent* :)

it rises to the north

2005-04-01T16:44:00.000+01:00

very strange dream this morning, in between waking up at 9 then drifting off to sleep again and waking up thinking 'fuck, what time is it' (it was 11.45) 'i'm supposed to be meeting gary' ...at 12.30, in borough :(

i don't remember too much about it now. but i remember a grassy hill crisscrossed by paths. my mum was moaning that the grass was wet and she would have to wander the long way around the path to get to where she wanted to go. that was the only time my mum was part of the dream. it all seemed completely normal. in the distance, forboding - in a mordor-lies-to-the-south sense full of dread and darkness - was a huge weird structure which was like a futuristic checkpoint charlie. oddly it looked like arsenal's new stadium near drayton park (perhaps not so odd given that i am staying near there at the moment). anyway the checkpoint - get within a mile of it and certain death awaited (presumably you'd be shot, but in the dream this was never clearly defined...). of course there was an overwhelming desire to find out what was on the other side.

that's about all i remember. i also have a recollection of running and running but i can't remember where or why. but i least i might have lost some weight :)

therapyX

2005-04-01T14:38:00.000+01:00

i want to excuse myself before i even start my confession. it's the first one i've bought in 5 years. for a self-confessed gadget freak this is an impressive statistic. well i think so anyway.

I'm typing this blog entry on my (oh so) shiny new 12" powermac g4 which I have kitted out with a snarling 1.25Gb. Yep, I went shopping. I was supposed to be flat-hunting but had a hangover; memory gets hazy at this point but I think it must have been a classic impulse purchase. I have to say I do love Mac OSX. Slick windowing and unix shells in a way that Linux has never quite managed.

Anyway, I thought I would make use of my photoblog account at buzznet so here's a photo of this post being written in starbucks.

ok i admit it i am avoiding going flat-hunting. just found some good ski deals though :)

the test of time

2005-03-31T13:41:00.001+01:00

the interviewer asked me, 'can you describe a plan or a programme that you have put in place and executed that has added business value'. i didn't have an answer ready; none of my prepared scenarios quite fitted. plans and programmes aren't really what i do in my job. so i shoehorned something that didn't quite fit into an answer. hit the notes: what was the problem. what did you do. what was the outcome.

of course, everything can be seen as a plan if you look at it the right way. perhaps even what i am doing now.

richard bach meets ronina stevens

the outcome is unknown

renewal

2005-03-29T17:02:00.000+01:00

i just read an article about Dorothy Stang, the campaigner against the destruction of the brasilian rainforest. she's dead, shot by a local ranch owner, who presumably wanted her out of the way so he could carry on logging.
the brasilian rainforest represents 40 percent of the world's tropical rainforest. rainforest soaks up co2 and generates one fifth of the oxygen we need to survive. it's critical to us all, but seemingly not so critical as our SUVs and burgers.

anyway, this article sent me into a daydream of depression about the end of the world. these words may have no human left to read them in a hundred years, depending on how bad global warming gets.

some people think that advanced, intelligent life has been here before on earth and died out. that even if we destroy ourselves with runaway positive-feedback global warming, eventually time passes and the environmental equilibria settle down and life begins again. a couple of million years of evolution later and with a fair wind, hey presto another advanced race ready to kill itself through its own greed all over again.

what if i wanted to send a message to this next generation? paper is no good and blogger might just have gone down the pan too.

how about cave drawings. sheltered from the weather, indelible inks on rock of ages. that's certainly one of the places i would go for. with limestone around to remove the water vapour and preserve the images.

do we ever look at these drawings for what they may be: a letter addressed to us. not by cavemen at all - but by us from last time around. saying "don't fuck up like we did".

if so we didn't get the message.