Administrative Notice - Comments

The comments options have been updated. It is now possible to comment on any post without being a member of Blogger.com. Simply click on the link at the end of the post.

And my licence fee goes on this...?

I used to run a computer with the operating system Windows Millenium Edition. Don't worry about what that means if you're not sure (although for those of you are thinking "so do I!", you have my condolences). Windows ME had one major distinguishing feature. No, not System Restore. And not the slightly modified icons from Windows '98. Not at all.

In fact, the major thing that distinguished Windows ME from all previous versions of Windows (and most of the subsequent ones) was its ability to struggle like anything if asked to perform any simple task. No, seriously, it could, and usually did, crash when you turned the computer on. Or off. Or, if you by chance managed to get the machine up and running, when you tried to open a programme - even one that came with it, like Internet Explorer. Like all sulky teenagers, ME had an attitude problem. It simply didn't do what you wanted it to. Pleading, threats and even physical violence had no effect. It was, pure and simple, awful.

The main thing that used to haunt my waking thoughts was why? I mean, how did the conversation go?

"Have you tested the new operating system, Bob?"

"Yes, sir, Mr Gates, sir."

"And...?"

"Um... well, sir, I say tested, but in the end I had to be restrained by my colleagues to stop me throwing my machine out of the window. And you know we're on the 8th floor up here..."

"Excellent. Release it next week."

Actually, that may be dangerously close to the truth. But you get my point.

It's the same with so many things. Just becuase you can doesn't mean you should. And nothing exemplifies my point quite so well as BBC1's primetime offering from 7 'till 8 pm. Robin Hood. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...

To say the script was bad would be to slight Australian soap operas of all time.

"What do you mean, Darleen - Jason didn't get killed by Darren, and he's now with Melissa? And Jody's going to have his child, except he thinks that she's with Micky?"

Genius, pure genius. Compared, that is, with the utter drivel spouted by M. Hood, Little John et al. And for sublety, it makes Ali G look like Jane Austen. Did you know that there were parallels to be drawn between an 12th century bloke in a forest and a 21st century war against suicide bombers? I didn't.

Oh, and before I forget, clocks which go "tick tock tick tock" didn't exist in the 12th century. They really didn't. It's like watching the Sheriff arrive in a Ford Mustang.

Please, please, BBC, stop wasting our licence fees on men in tights. Speed on the return of Top Gear, and let's all sit down and watch some caravans getting trashed. What could be better family entertainment than that?

On Straightness and Slugs...

There are many things in life that I find frustrating. I dislike mess, and things that aren't straight (pictures, table mats, etc etc). There is a natural order to things that, it seems to me, revolves, as it were, around the right angle. Similarly, things should be symmetrical, and centralised. This is why I choose to type using the justified paragraph alignment option selected, even though it does occasionally produce lines where the words are spaced a long way apart. It seems only natural to me that, for example when placing a settee against a wall, the gap on the left should be exactly the same size as the gap on the right. Otherwise, it's not, well, right. To quote Edward Monkton, "Those who do not believe in the Law of Straightness WILL NOT BE SAVED!" OK, I accept that it's unlikely to ever form the basis of my theological understanding, but the sentiment is one I approve of.

I think I would have made a good Roman. Never mind going around the hill, not when you have 100,000 men with stong muscles and nothing to do - go straight through it! Bring it on! Straight is good. If the quickest point is between two straight lines, then it follows that not only is building roads the Roman way good from the "time is money" point of view, but it also makes sense ecologically. The more direct the route, the shorter the resulting road, and consequently the less of our green and pleasant land becomes covered with tarmac, buses and Little Chefs. Which can only be a good thing.

Being ecologically considerate and caring about the environment is important to me. Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes things have to happen, and you can't necessarily rationally prevent ALL disruption to the countryside, but in general, I like it green and leafy. I buy free-range and am starting to think about organic (although to be honest, if the cow has a cold I might rather it was treated with antibiotics rather than honey and lemon and a Vicks VapourRub). But again, as a principle, environmentally friendly is good.

Which brings me to the most amazing invention I've read about today.* I'm not much of a gardener at the moment (it comes of living in a flat) but I like plants. And, also liking things straight and organised, I suspect that what I'm really going to want when I'm the proud owner of my very own piece of England, is something to ensure that nothing is going to decrease the symmetry of my planting scheme. Creepy-crawlies are, I understand, not respectors of modern design, which is why I shall be investing in a SlugBot. This wonderful machine uses a combination of GPS, InfraRed and UltraSound to locate slugs, a long arm to grab them, and a bio-fuel cell to convert slug into useful electricity, which in turn powers its on-board battery. It's green, sustainable, and will help me not to lose my precious plants to the slimy rascals. What can be better?

=====
* OK, it's not got a huge amount of competition, but it sounds more impressive than saying "the only invention I've read about today."

You wait for ages, and then two turn up at once...

There can be few frustrations in life to compete with it. It's enough to make grown men burst into tears and to make small children yell abuse at those around them. Or should that be the other way around?

I refer, of course, to that phenomenon known as Waiting For Buses. Now, I'm not exactly a true petrol-head, and if you were to ask me which I'd rather have out of the Vauxhall Something TDi or the Peugeot SomethingElse LX, I really couldn't tell you. I could, of course, express a preference between, say, a brand new Aston Martin DB-9 and my seven year-old Skoda Felicia. However hard we owners of such vehicles protest that, despite years of mocking, the Skoda is now a serious option as a car (rather than as a car-shaped lump of metal sitting on the drive), how the input of VW's engineering expertise has turned a farce into one of the best value for money cars out there, and how in recent years they've ranked highly in terms of reliability, improved in terms of style, and retained their low insurance group, we still find ourselves longing for slightly more than 47 bhp. It's not that it's insufficient for anything in particular, it's just that having, say, 325 bhp might be somewhat more fun.

However, I do know that, when faced with the choice between getting on a bus and getting into a car, I'd far rather take the car. I'd far rather take a bike, to be quite honest. I think it's something about public transport, and I've come to the conclusion that it's, well, the public. Now, don't get me wrong. In some places (preferably far away) buses may serve some useful purpose. They may be cheap, and cost less than the car (it's a novel idea, I know). They may not be smelly, and may be driven by someone who knows which side of the road the rest of the population will be on. They may stop and wait for you when you're three meters down the road in a thunderstorm, and they may not be populated by teenagers whose IQs are, even at their tender ages, outweighed by their shoe sizes. In this Utopia, such buses may exist. All I know is that it's not here.

But surely one of the cruelest torments about buses is the invention known as the timetable. Timetables are devices which serve two purposes. They force one to rush manically to reach the bus stop before the time at which the bus is due, and then force one to wait in ever increasing despondency as the minutes tick past after this time until the bus actually does turn up.

However, one thing about buses that you can rely upon is their ability to arrive in pairs. Like adolescent girls, they seem unwilling to travel alone, and prefer instead the companionship of another bus. And, of course, to prevent loneliness, both buses will be "serving" (note the irony) the same route.

So this is why buses are like spiders. Particularly three-inch wide black spiders with horribly hairy, well, things (I don't know - antennae?). I've lived in my flat for a year now, and despite having to face many creepy-crawlies of varying species, I've managed to stear clear of the arachnids. Until yesterday, when in the morning there was one in the bath, followed by, in the evening, one in the corner of my room.

Why? Don't they have timetables?

Gosh, it's amazing how you two connect...

Wires.

I read recently that the combined length of the wires used in the manufacture of the new Airbus (the double-decker monster that makes a 757 look like a child's plaything) reached a grand total of something in the order of 500 thousand miles. Now, even accounting for the mass of circuitry that must be needed to let the captain know if the wing's about to fall off, and that needed to power the TV screens, that's a heck of a lot of wiring.

Which led me to thinking about connections. Train connections, even (please noooo...) bus connections, connections between people, connections between wires. In the same way that just one failure in the connections in the mass of wiring in the Airbus could have catastrophic consequences (Business Class could miss out on freshly ground coffee again), connections play a vital role in our day-to-day lives. Which, I suppose, is why we moan and gripe so much when they fail. That day the bus gets held up in a traffic jam, meaning we miss our next bus and arrive at work late for the meeting. When the trains all curl up and die because somewhere near Putney a small leaf has had the temerity to fall within 100 miles of the track, causing us to miss our best friend's wedding.

So imagine, dear reader, my frustration having spent the last six hours trying to persuade four differently colour-coded wires to connect to their opposite numbers, in a game called "Set Up The Equipment To Do A Day-Long Experiment." You'd have thought it would be simple, but through admitting this, you reveal yourself to be anything but an experimental scientist. For our equipment is notoriously unreliable.

Let's hope the Airbus is somewhat less temperamental.

When 150 characters just isn't enough...

Annoying, isn't it, when something you've spent time, love and energy on is rejected. When old friends meet you in the street with the warm greeting "oh, it's... well, anyway, how are you?" When your other half welcomes you back home from an arduous day at work with the words "the washing machine's broken." And when, after extensive training with catnip and the Rolled Up Newspaper of Retribution, your feline friend still belives that soft leather sofas make just the best scratching posts.

Imagine my frustration, therefore, to find that the extensive answer to the question posed when updating my profile for this blog was too long, and had to be cut to a mere 150 characters. I was really rather pleased with it. So I've decided to post it here.

The question was: Your aunt has just sent you a maple syrup dispenser shaped like a rooster as a birthday gift. Write a thankyou note to her.

So here goes...


Dear Auntie Mabel

Thank you so much for the kind gift you sent me for my birthday. It really reminded me of how much you mean to me, and ensures that, although birthdays may come and go, this present will always remain in my memory.

So, thank you again for the kind thought. And that reminds me, how is your eyesight? You were having trouble the last time I saw you - would I be right in thinking that you're no better? Do let me know how you're doing.

You'll be pleased to hear that the rooster can join the other menagerie of animal-shaped kitchen novelties you've sent me over the years. As you are aware, my flat is really rather minimalist, and the new chrome and marble kitchen I had installed last week was crying out for something to lift the monochrome.

Your loving nephew,

The Major

PS I completely forgot - it must be your birthday in just a few weeks now. I wonder what I should get for you? I must keep my eyes open - I'm sure I can find something even more individual than you did!

It's simply H2O...

"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink..."

So cries the Ancient Mariner (possibly... I never was any good at English: science is more my thing). And it's a cry that's being echoed across the wild, and currently parched, plains of Oxford after a building contractor accidently drove a crane through the mains water pipe into my building. Or something. Given this is Britain, and it's currently summertime, it could be that we have the wrong sort of water. Whatever.

For the point is, dear readers, that we have no water. None to drink, none to use in the bathrooms, and none for our experiments. Which is how I come to be writing this, as I wait for my water circulator (a device that, well, circulates water) to slowly warm up from 2 to 25 degrees centigrade. I would normally simply empty out a few litres of cold water and replace them with a similar volume of hot. Unable to do this, I could be here a while.

Which got me thinking just how much water we must use. Apparently the daily volume consumed by every single person in the UK is, on average, 160 litres: that's really rather a lot.

So I propose a solution to this problem, and the current climate-change-influenced shortages we're either currently experiencing, or which in the near future are guaranteed to turn England's green and pleasant land into something resembling the Sahara desert (although possibly without the camals). To paraphrase from that attributed to Marie Antoinette*, "Let them drink wine."

=====

* As mentioned, I'm not an English student and, unsurprisingly, one would be correct in assuming that, despite a decent grade at GCSE, I'm not much of a historian either. Consequently, I had to Google to discover who made this infamous comment. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find out (from the font of all knowledge that is Yahoo!) that in all likelihood, Ms. Antoinette was in fact completely innocent of this heinous crime, a far more likely culprit being French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in early 1766! The things you learn when you start wasting time...

Hmmm...

Now I have a blog, I feel that really I should be publishing in it.

There's a part of me that suggests that this is maybe simply an excuse to do anything that avoids work. There's another part of me that feels that writing may be cathartic, or at least more amusing than endlessly browsing through BBC News online, the latest Yahoo! office attachments (they really are rather good, actually, and always worth a glance when one has a spare half hour or so over a tea break), and eBay.

So... what shall I talk about? I could go like my other half has done, and write stories to publish here. Only thing is, I don't have the imagination. I'm a scientist - I do numbers, and equations, and I sit in an office or a lab and spend most of my day prodding computers into something resembling submission. I've found that threats work well - proof positive, should it be required, that computers are more animate than many of the people using them.

Alternatively, I could use this space to try to be amusing, and to offer a brief word of clarity and humour into the humdrum existence of the everyday. Sort of "Thought for the Day" but without the "wouldn't the world be nice if we were all nice" aspect. Only thing is, there're people far better qualified than me to do this, and also I think that I, not to mention you, dear reader, would become bored with impressive speed. In the world 100 metres "lost all sense of interest in this topic", I think I'd be a stong contender.

So, I think I'll opt for the rant. No surprise really - I've been listening to Jeremy Clarkson, Marcus Brigstock and [reading] Bill Bryson for the last... well, many - years now, and it's beginning to rub off on me. Rather like wet paint - you don't notice it until someone else points it out and then it's impossible to remove.

Hello

So... a blog...

There must be a reason as to why I, like so many other people, feel compelled to get one.

I'm just not sure what it is.

However...

This is my blog. Will you enjoy it? Possibly. Will you be enlightened? Probably not. Will it drive you to abandon that crossword, head over to your PC and create your own? Could well be - however this seems to be true of all blogs so nothing unusual there...