Someone in my office had a visit from the ergonomics police earlier this afternoon. I'd been feeling fine, but having half-overheard their conversation I've been getting all sorts of psychosomatic twinges in my back and wrists.
October 2003 Archives
Steve Bell on top form (as always) today.
And a useful link to an archive of Steve Bell cartoons.
MPs have voted to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug. The changes in the law will come into effect early next year.
I'm contemplating a cinema overload on Saturday. I reckon that with a bit of planning I can see Holes, LXG and Kill Bill all at the Streatham Odeon one after the other.
Of course, with it being Nov 1st I should be working on my NaNoWriMo novel, but I can just postpone starting on it by 24 hours.
Oh, and last night I saw the recent remake of The Time Machine. It was the worst thing I've seen for months. Almost certainly that won't still be true after I've seen LXG.
As the Tories argue amongst themselves about which of them is best suited to lead the party into oblivion, I can't help remembering what I wrote last December.
I crossed a picket line this morning and I feel really guilty about it.
I had a couple of postal packages to pick up to I went down to the sorting office at 8am to find that it was closed due to industrial action. As I walked back I passed the picket line and one of the posties saw the cards in my hand and suggested that I should go in the back door where management were dealing with the post. Without thinking I followed his instructions and went in. I found a manager who said he couldn't help me. It was only as I was walking home that I realised what I'd done.
It reminded me of a discussion we had about unions last week on the London Perl mongers mailing list. I wasn't surprised to find that a large number of people were anti-union. That's pretty much a given following the media coverage that unions have had in the UK for the last 25 years.
I remember a time when unions were respected in the UK. Leaders like Joe Gormley were on the TV as much as politicians and the TUC conference got as much coverage as any of the political parties' conferences. That's all gone now. One of the lasting legacies of Thatcherism is a deep distrust of the unions by "middle England". And I don't understand why that's so. Unions should be as essential today as they have ever been. Maybe even more so.
There seemed to be two major points raised by the anti-union camp in last weeks discussion. Firstly they objected to union leaders who used their power to further their personal political careers. Of course this happens, but I don't see the same people complaining when people like Michael Heseltine or Iain Duncan Smith doing the same thing from the opposite end.
The other objection was more interesting. There seemed to be a feeling that there was nothing a union could do for them that they couldn't do better for themselves. The argument is that if you have a problem with something in your company than you have more chance of fixing it by talking to the management individually than by getting the union involved. This is a good example of another of Thatcher's legacies, the idea that greed is good, you should get everything you can for yourself rather than fighting for the best solution for everyone. Call me an old fashioned socialist (and I'd be forced to agree) but it breaks my heart when I see how divisive a workplace can become when ideas like that take root.
Dave wanders off singing There is Power in a Union
Over the weekend I installed Webalizer on my web server so I can get pretty pictures of the stats on all of my web sites.
Looking at the results, it seems that one of my sites (and it's a site dedicated to genealogy) has had some very interesting visitors.
There was a predictably negative story about the congestion charge in yesterday's Evening Standard. For something a bit more upbeat see the same story in today's Guardian.
The actual press release from TfL is here.
I've just got Nigerian spam that claims to come from Barclays in Lombard St, London.
I suspect that postmaster@barclays.co.uk might be interested in this.
According to a report in the Guardian, Capital Radio is no longer London's most popular commercial radio station having been overtaken by Heart.
Me, I'd never go near either of them. I still pine for the good old days of GLR.
Some news about Cult TV shows which might be interesting if you have the same dodgy tastes as me.
The BBC is repeating Threads on BBC4 next Wednesday (29th Oct at 22:40). This is the story of what might happen after a nuclear attack on the UK. Might look a bit dated now (it was made in 1984) but worth a look anyway.
The final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer finally starts on BBC2 next Tuesday. There will be three episodes a week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 18:45. Unfortunately there is no plan for a late night uncut repeat. This means that a number of episodes won't make much sense as they'll be cut to shreds for transmission at that time. Complaints to info@bbc.co.uk.
Amazon UK is selling the X-Files DVD sets cheaply. A single season is £45 (the RRP is £90). At that price it's rude not to buy them. I thought I might be able to recoup some of the cost of this exercise buy selling off my X-Files videos on Ebay, but it seems they are currently going for about £1 each.
And finally, Survivors season one has been released on DVD. This was one of my favourite shows when it was first on in the late 70s. It tells the story of a group of people trying to rebuild society after 95% of the world population was wiped out by a plague. It's a bit like what happened afteer the end of The Day of the Triffids. If you haven't seen it then I strongly recommend you take a look. If it sells well then they might release the other seasons.
We played Perudo last night for the first time for years. We used to play it a lot but somehow we got out of the habit.
I'd forgotten how much I enjoy playing it. I may, of course, be slightly biased because I won the three games that we played.
Hope we play it again soon.
Every day as I walk to work I go past a telescope shop. When I was younger I was fascinated by astronomy, so this brings back many memories.
It's almost tempting to buy a huge telescope but, of course, one of the few disadvantages of living in London is the complete lack of anything resembling a night sky - so it would be a bit of a waste of money.
Apparently Diana knew ten months in advance that she was going to have an "accidental" car crash.
I love conspiracy theories.
Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards is essential reading for any web designer.
(via Casey)
Verisign have produced "proof" that their SiteFinder service "improved the Internet". Their evidence seems to rest on a few clueless users who thought that SiteFinder stopped them getting 404 errors.
I'm not convinced that in cases like this we should take the word of someone who obviously doesn't know what a 404 error is over the opinions of the tech-savvy internet community who almost without exception hated siteFinder.
The Guardian is looking for the Best of British Bloggers (again).
A few days ago I signed up for NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month in English). The idea is that during the month of November you produce a 50,000 word novel.
I've been meaning to have a go at writing fiction for a while now. I'm planning to flesh out an idea that I first had over two years ago. I'll put the work in progress up on my site somewhere once I get started.
I suspect that this will all get very embarassing.
My new book Perl Template Toolkit[1] recently appeared on O'Reilly's web site. This is one of my favourite parts of the publication process as it proves to the outside world that the book is real. The other parts I really like are when I first get my hands on a copy of the book and when I first see the book in a bookshop.
Things I'm sure I'd enjoy even more, but have never seen are someone browsing my book in a book shop and (even better) someone buying it.
[1] I say "my new book", but it's important to point out that I'm only one of three co-authors.
I've just found another load of spam that had been added as random comments to entries on my blog. I'm sure no-one that reads this really thought that I wanted to promote pre-teen porn sites, but it's still very annoying.
Of course Moveable Type has an IP banning feature and I've now banned all of the IP addresses that these comments came from but that's far too reactive. I'm sure that the next lot will come from a different IP address.
Any suggestions on beating this (short of removing comments from the blog) would be appreciated.
A couple of things that have made me wince in the last day or so.
Yesterday at Farringdon tube station there was a hand-written sign proudly declaring that "Kings Cross station is re-open".
Then this morning on the TV news I heard someone talking about the England vs Turkey football match which is apparently taking place this weekend. They described the match as "crucial". I'm not sure I can see how any sporting event could ever be accurately described as crucial. Maybe this is a example of the "language inflation" that David McKie was talking about in the Guardian yesterday.
I love it when I get intelligent comments like this left on the site. It makes it all feel worthwhile.
Why don't Americans[1] write down times in the same broken order that they use for dates? You say "ten past eleven", so why isn't that 10:11?
[1] And that raises another question - why isn't there a noun that means "people from the USA?"
My stepdaughter needs to travel from home (zone 3) to college (zone 1) every day. As she's 16 she is too old to get child rate fares on London Underground. Therefore we've bought her a monthly travelcard[1] which cost just under £90.
Then last week she comes home with a form from London Transport which will enable her to apply for a "young person's photocard". This entitles people of 16 and 17 to get unspecified discounts on travel in London.
So I've done some research and found out what these discounts are. She can get a "Youth LT Card" which is apparently 30% cheaper than the equivalent travelcard. Now bear in mind that a travelcard gives you unlimited travel on all London's tubes, buses and trains. The LT Card was an experimental system from a few years ago that was just like a travelcard but excludes train travel. The LT Card now only exists as a Youth LT Card and a couple of other exotic variations.
Let's look at those figures again. You get 30% off the price of the ticket, but you lose a third of the benefits. Can you see a flaw in that plan?
In our case we'll probably go ahead with it as she rarely uses the train, but all in all it's a good example of a good deal which really isn't as good as it's made out to be.
[1] Actually an Oystercard.
I seem to be building up quite a good working relationship with someone called Ken in BMG's copy control customer support centre. I think he's grateful that someone is actually giving them intelligent feedback rather than simply swearing at them :)
I wrote to them last week pointing out that I was planning on buying the new Dido album until I found that it was copy controlled and therefore it wouldn't work on my Linux computer. Ken seems to think that Linux is a brand of computer and he's very concerned that my Kings of Leon CD didn't work on my computer. He tells me that copy control system on the Dido CD is an improved version of the one on The KoL CD and has offered to send me a copy so I can try it out.
And their copy control system seems to have been broken anyway. The Kings of Leon CD is all over the file-swapping networks. Well, so my friends tell me :)
A month ago I heard that Beth Orton[1] was releasing a compilation CD called Pass in Time and I pre-ordered it from Play.com. When the CD appeared in the shops I saw that it was copy-controlled, so I went back to Play to cancel the order. Unfortunately I left it too late and the order was already being processed. Play are based in the Channel Islands and they source their CDs from all over the world. I was therefore very pleased to see that when the CD arrived this morning it was a non-copy controlled version.
[1] I'd link to her web site but it's very out of date and opens in a full-screen window.
Michael Moore's new book Dude, Where's My Country is launched on Tuesday. Here's the text of an email that Moore sent to his mailing list about the book.
Amazon UK is currently showing it as number 2 in its best-sellers list.
On Anna in Wonderland last night, Anna Nolan investigated groups of people in the UK who like to think they are vampires. It was all rather sad.
There was Lucius (and I'm betting that's not what her parents called her) who proudly showed off her filed teeth and her coffin. "So you sleep in that do you?" asked Anna. "Well sometimes," replied Lucius, "but it can get a bit hot in there."
Saddest of all was Jason. A 32 year old who still lives with his father in Wellingborough. From possibly the most unhygenic bedroom ever seen on TV he runs the "National Vampire Association". He has a web site, but Google doesn't seem to know about it. From this centre of operations he tracks down disaffected goth teenagers and persuades them that they are vampires. If they are female he'll offer to let them drink his blood, presumably in the hope of getting sexual favours in return.
Anna was appalled by what she saw. "I don't think you should be telling these young people that they are vampires," she said, "They aren't vampires, they're just confused." "I really wish it was that simple," replied Jason, "Being a vampire isn't easy."
"So you think they'll always be vampires?" asked Anna. To which Jason replied, "They'll be vampires until they die".
I thought the point about vampires was that they were already dead.
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