Pulling into St. Hilda’s; off of The Plain last week …
Here’s map of my route…
The Crucial bit is where I’m leaving the The Plain, passing the Iffley Road, but then heading into Cowley Place.
Now, I was always taught to indicate *only* when you were adjacent to the previous turning – which in my case, was Iffley Road. Whilst I realise that the distance between those two roads is ‘slight’, it’s A) better to obey the highway code in case of an accident, and B) if I were to have indicated opposite the Cowley Road, and then crash into something coming out of Iffley Road; well, it’d have been my fault.
So, there I was taking it very easy around the roundabout, and then signalling left as soon as I was able – opposite Iffley Road; and there he was too; a damn cyclist, evidently late for a lecture, or just ‘pumping peddles’ in training for a possible trip in an Oxford Eight. I saw him, and hit the brakes, and he saw me, and did the same. Now, four disk brakes at a speed deemed below their mildest interest vs. 2 times 4 wet rubber blocks against a wonky wheel made of tinfoil. Guess who won? Yes, I pulled up – having done nothing wrong; saving his life perhaps. Was I annoyed? No, Was I annoyed when he gave me a ‘you wanker’ look through the rear end! Yes!
So, I wound down the Window and shouted ‘What!?’, ‘What’s your problem?’
He replied, ‘You indicated too late!’
Now, let’s just recap a bit on the turning I wanted. Probably, coming down from the High Street, 50% of traffic goes on to the Cowley Road, and 49.9% goes onto the Iffley Road — um, very few cars turn into what is actually a dead-end street, but that happens to lead to an Oxford College. ‘I indicated too late? Rather than you never expect a car to go down this road, and don’t even bother to look 99.9% of the time! I’m a driver who sticks to limits; whilst you’re a young man who’s late and doesn’t usually encounter someone coming around that roundabout doing a 270. And, even in that 0.1%, you either beat them, or they beat you — yet you say ‘you didn’t indicate early enough’!’
So I described how I could have not have indicated any earlier, as the Iffley Road turning is quite stupidly close to the one I wanted. To be fair, given that most people never go this turn, it was a reasonable bet that I wouldn’t! Still, if it hadn’t have been good brakes – and my expecting an idiot to arrive at any moment, I would have ‘had him’ – but there he was giving me that ‘you wanker’ look. We exchange another few words about how he’d been lucky, and about he was a safe cyclist, and I just decided that there were too many witnesses to my killing him!
Ξ August 20th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Rant |
Cabling:
Looking around the snug streets where we live now, I can’t help but notice the decidedly non-snug state of the cabling in the area – whether it belongs to a satellite dish, a telephone, the internet, or a tv aerial. Ok, so it’s perhaps a bit odd that I notice things like this (is it?), so I’ll explain why I do.
Many years ago when I was an apprentice working for BT (it was called ‘Post Office Telephones’ back then) one of the things we had drummed into us was how to clip a cable to a wall, or along a skirting board – or along whatever the cable had to be run – and to make it look as pretty as a picture.
Back when I was taught how to do this the only way for a cable to change direction was for it to go through 90 degrees; with the precise curve and overall size of the bend itself being measured by instructors – and we were given a clip (no pun intended) around the ear if it wasn’t perfect.
To hold the cable in-place, the clips, which have a nail on one side, had to be positioned on the ‘right-side’ of the cable. For example, the right-side of a horizontal cable would normally see the nails, for obvious reasons hopefully, being positioned below the cable. At bends this right-side can vary – positioned so that any accidental tensioning of the cable would result in it being pulled into the nail side of each clip rather than the other, where it might ‘pop out’. Simple common sense really.
The clips also had to be spaced precisely – we had to take into account the length of the run; the number of clips necessary to keep it secure (spaced a precise hammer’s length apart); and then how best to position these so that the result looked neat when completed – it had to be ‘pleasing to the eye’, and often might have meant that we’d had to layout the clips alongside the run first – well, it did if it was along a skirting board, and not down a wall!
Cable runs could often to made more complex by having to line-up a new cable alongside an existing one; or perhaps you were having to run in two cables at once – one going off to an extension perhaps (indicating that you were working at a posh house back then!)
How about holes? Cables have to have them! From the outside, this needs to be angled upwards – otherwise water will run down the cable and into the house! And, the cable should ‘come up’ very slightly to the hole; in a sort of nicely squared off U shape; so that any water running down it will drop off the bottom of the U.
I could go on, but I won’t – enough history, now back to today.
There are two tv cables running down a wall of the house directly opposite our kitchen window – both of them breaking all of the rules, and therefore being truly offensive to the trained eye. They show every sign of being put in place at the same time – same clips, same cable etc. However, one diverges from the other bit by bit, with the overall effect looking like a long, thin, and half finished attempt to cable a very strange looking letter A onto the wall (and if that weren’t bad enough, it would also seem that who ever cabled this didn’t know how to drill holes in walls without blowing the render off in the process)! The coax-cable Internet-feed is similarly shoddy – lazy meandering bends as opposed to neat right angles. It all looks terrible.
As an aside, what does it say about the occupiers of this house? When whoever installed these things knocked at the door and said ‘There you go love, the job’s all done – thanks for tea’ did the occupants really come outside, take a look, and say ‘That’s just the job! Thanks!’?
It’s all I can do to prevent myself going out there with my stapling hammer and ladders!
It makes me sigh when I see stuff like this. Not only does it offend the eye (well, mine anyway) but it shows a distinct lack of skill and not the smallest modicum of care or of any pride in one’s work! It’s sadly a sign of the times I think; and I feel a Grumpy Old Man moment coming on right now.
Maybe this has been exacerbated by the book I’ve just finished reading – Bill Bryson’s ‘The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid’ (you should read it) – where he reminisces on his childhood, and, as I see it when reflecting on my own, how things were so much better back then – when everyone wore hats; young people looked smart, instead of threatening; people only wore tracksuit bottoms to, um, go for a run; folks bid each other good morning/afternoon/evening and knew their neighbours; and people took great pride in a job well done (well generally they seemed to). Yes, I know that there are probably many things that are better today, but my overall impression of our society now, and on stuff in general is that things are worse nowadays – a lot worse really. I can’t help but wonder what it’ll all be like in another 50 years. I’m glad I won’t be there to endure it that’s for sure.
Later: I’ve just noticed that the satellite dish on the back of our house is ‘cabled’ using plastic cable-ties – they’ve run the cable down the gutter’s downpipe! However, this now appears to be normal practice as I’ve also noticed a house a little further along the street that has a cable-run suspended from the gutter itself – it must be at least 40 feet long (so much quicker to use cable-ties rather than to do the job properly – grrrrrrr)
Having just ported our [www.numeracyintervention.net] to a Linux server; we have troubles with our database:
IPS Driver Error
There appears to be an error with the database.
You can try to refresh the page by clicking here
So, having paid good money for this, we ‘called’ Technical Support.
The reply was:
“I have reviewed your account and it appears that the tech support on your perpetual license has expired. You may renew your license by logging into your client center and click “Your Invoices” then select “Expired Invoices.” You will be able to submit payment for the license to renew it. Once payment has been submitted, please reply back to this ticket.”
Nakisha Thomas
Invision Power Services
Director of Customer Satisfaction
To which I replied:
I *know* that this is futile, but I cannot resist:
“perpetual license” — perpetual = ‘continuing or enduring forever; everlasting’.
And, as I know that there are more sites out there that have never paid for iPB – yet we have – and given that we’re a charity; well, I would have thought that you might of at least lent some sort of a hand here; rather than towing the ‘corporate line’. and telling us to basically ‘f off‘.
My recommendation?
Don’t ever buy a product from invisionpower.com.
I very much doubt that we’ll hear anything back from them … but I’ll let you know if we do!
I hate gaming/gamers! Probably because A) I can’t see the point [read a book, go for a walk, ...], and B) because two people I [thought I] knew very well are very sadly addicts – one for The Sims [or practically anything else that might distract them from normality/life], and the other for the World of Warcraft [where she's a kiss-ass Elf, or some such shite!]. Oh, and C), my twelve-year-old son also plays too much! Sad individuals indeed. I truly can’t see the point.
Anyway, rant over, my son received a one month’s free trial on XBox [Saddoes] Live – or some such thing – and asked me if I could get his XBox 360 to connect to the Internet. As he’s in a room where there’s no wired network point, this meant doing it via a wireless connection.
So, on checking out the various sockets on the back of the 360 box, I tried connecting the thing using a LinkSys USB wireless adapter I had laying around. It didn’t work, and upon further reading, I’m led to believe that one requires a special Microsoft adapter.
That’s the bad news.
Now for the good news … if you’ve a wireless laptop, that also has a wired network-interface, there’s a workaround:
1. Connect your laptop to the Internet, via its built-in wireless;
2. Connect your XBox to your laptop, via a standard network cable [one is supplied with an XBox 360];
3. Bridge the laptop’s wired and wireless connections.
So, here’s the steps I went through on my ThinkPad [with XP installed]:
1. Boot/connect the machine to the network, via its wireless;
2. Connect the XBox to the ThinkPad’s wired network interface using a standard network cable;
3. Open your laptop’s Network Connections [Start | Control Panel | Network Connections];
4. Select both the wireless and wired connections;
5. Right-click on the selected connections, and select Bridge
Here’s the result:
And that was it: son-networked, playing even more games … hmmmmm – did I do the right thing?
“Daily Scans are Pointless” – to the tune of “Every Sperm is Sacred”!
I’m a real fan of AVG’s anti-virus [AV], but for the life of me I can’t understand why, by default, it wants to do a daily scan.
“Please note that by default, the Whole Computer Scan is already scheduled to run every day.”
Actually, I should briefly ‘back up’ and say that until fairly recently, I actually rated most AV programs as next to useless, and that it’s the operating system that should ‘get more a grip’ on protecting its users! I wrote a piece on this for Computer Weekly back in 2002 – although I can’t remember if it was published [I was doing ‘Thought for the Day’ things for them back then]. Anyway, I’ll post that in another article and link to it here.
Back to ‘scanning’ then!
Any decent AV program hooks into the operating-system and scans a file for viruses, etc. whenever it’s accessed. Therefore, why do a scan? If a file is infected, but not being accessed, why worry about it?
Of course, it may be that you’ve got a virus in some file, and yet it’s only recently that your AV’s been trained to recognise it [see the other article], but again, what’s the problem there? I repeat: if an infected file’s not being accessed, why worry about it – when and if it is accessed, it’ll be caught.
Think about how many AVG installations there are in the world. Think about how many people go with the default ‘scan every day’ option. Think about how much energy that uses! Think about all of the other AV vendors that also do daily scans by default now!
Also, and anyway, scanning on any modern Windows machine could be greatly speeded up because the operating-system can keep a journal of exactly what’s changed on a drive – that’s over reboots too. This technology has been there since Windows 2000, so why scan everything anyway? Only scan what’s been changed/added if you want to find ‘new stuff’ – but again, why even bother with that? Wait until an infected file is accessed – and fix it then!
Having previously been a signee to the petition to have Jeremy Clarkson made Prime Minister – along with 49,446 others – I was a bit disappointed in the Government’s response – which I’ve just been emailed. It promised much, or so I hoped ["maybe they'd done it" I thought!] – “The Prime Minister’s Office has responded to that petition and you can view it here”. ”
Well, on that page, there’s a further message – “We thought long and hard about the request to make Jeremy Clarkson the Prime Minister and in the end we put our thoughts down in a short film on YouTube. You can take a look here”. Well, what a funky government [not].
Well, if, as promised, they’ve embedded ‘their thoughts’, they’re pretty rubbish; which is quite normal for our government!
The video’s main piece is an image of JC’s framed picture – supposedly hung in number 10 alongside all our other Prime Ministers [which of course it wasn’t. A shame that; they’d have shown more wit if they’d actually hung it there].
The video ends with a ‘But maybe not’ remark – I don’t know why; I’m pretty damn certain that JC would do a better job than most!
The Guardian – the rag of choice for middle-class tree-huggers and women who wear clogs and title themselves ‘Ms’, is running a piece today about a girl who, despite having just three GCSEs [I hate to think what these were in], got to go to university. Oh, and that’s one B and two Cs in case you were wondering.
My first observation would be that with GCSEs being as ‘tough’ as they are these days; this really isn’t a very good result: I mean surely, one can just turn up for the exam and get good marks these days? What did she do; spell her name wrong; turn up on the wrong day [both] – what!?
Yet, thanks to our government’s plan; to send any numpty to university, she got in [to Salford] after learning about something called The Aimhigher Scheme. A programme obviously designed with people like her in mind then. “I realised that anyone can go to university – no matter what their background. I’ve proved that anyone can go if they really want to.” Yep, you’re certainly right there – numpties included.
So, what’s she ‘studying’ [I bet you can already guess that it’s not Particle Physics]: a two-year foundation ‘degree’ in ‘Sport and Leisure Management’ that’s what … um, actually she’s ‘studying’ women’s football it seems. Brilliant, as we all know, there’s a big demand for degree-qualified women’s football specialists out there! Reminds me of a line from Clarkson’s article in yesterday’s Times: “a degree in environmental poetry from a fair-trade, organic peace-workshop in Hackney.” Give me strength.
Let’s face facts here – what’ll this ‘degree’ be worth when, and if, she finishes it? I mean it certainly won’t be worth the paper it’s written on! So, is it fair to raise someone’s expectations; which someone surely has in this case; that having a degree will somehow raise a person’s income-potential, or otherwise ‘better’ their life? And what will she feel when she finishes; and finds herself filling shelves at Tesco – albeit two years junior to her old school chums? Well, I doubt with three GCSEs and a ‘degree’ in women’s football that she will feel anything much – except wishing she wasn’t in debt.
Still, good luck to her – it’s better than most girls with one B and two Cs. From my observation their normal plan is to go on to get one A, one B and one C
A) get themselves up-the-duff, B) shack up with a plumber’s mate called ‘Dean’ [who gels his hair], and C), to: live off state benefits for the rest of their lives.
Ξ June 17th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Rant |
Not being able to find the remote, I watched the football last night – well, most of it [I found it eventually]. It was Germany vs. Austria – nicely charged that I would have thought.
Anyway, a couple of observations.
1. During the intros, and having watched Michael Schumacher romp to victory for far too long, I thought the German national anthem had been cut short … I mean what happened to that nice foot-tapping bit at the end – I was looking forward to that! Ah. I’m just so used to hearing the German and Italian anthems as the first and second movement of the same thing I guess.
2. I was [very] childishly amused by the player called ‘Fritz’. It’s some poor German sod’s real name – haha!!? But, maybe there should have been more – amusing names that is: “Fritz passes to Hans. A long ball to Crowt now. Back to Hans, a long ball to Knees. and a short pass to Whoopsadaisy” [Voopsadaisy?] Or “Macho, Gomez, Fuchs, Klose to Ballacks” [and yes, they were all playing last night - honest]
But seriously …
It was nice to see players on each side who shared the same passport-issuer for once – as in each national team were presumably fielding the best of their home grown players. I mean in the footie here [and everywhere now I guess] we’ve got sides that are named after towns/cities and yet contain nary a single player who’s natively from the same neck of the woods [or country even!]
What’s the point in supporting a team that imports all its players? I mean surely, in the good old days, one supported the local team because the players were, um, locals for goodness sake – one could identify with them [you’d also most likely find one of them mending your car - or building a house, or working a lathe, or serving in a shop i.e., they were local working-men who had made good].
And that’s the way it should be, shouldn’t it – realistic role-models for our home grown youth of today? Oh, and back then they were also gentlemen – who played the game fairly.
What have we got now then? Glad you asked – I’ll tell you:
A bunch of namby-pamby imports, that have silly haircuts, wear gloves and/or scarves when it’s cold [bless 'em], drive a Ferrari to/from ‘work’, can’t speak-a-da-lingo [even if they were born here], have no loyalty to ‘their’ fans or to ‘their’ town/city, and who, if anyone so much as touches them, will throw themselves to the ground holding on to their faces [like they’re afraid they’ll fall off]. What kind of role-model do these people afford?
Of course, if one of them does happen to score a goal, he’ll pull off his shirt, [optional: do a back-flip/cartwheel/knee-slide/robotic-dance] make a few ‘ave-some-of-that like gestures to the crowd, and get cuddled and/or kissed to death in some ritualistic group-orgy with his teammates.
What a pile of crap modern football is [it's not sport, it's just big-business now], and what a failure it has become regarding a once positive spectacle for any youngster to enjoy.
You know football is the most followed sport in the UK – and can’t you tell it must be so; just by walking down any High Street these days!
Less fun today for a Sunday: according to The Times, Clarkson is on holiday.
What with that, and the bloody clocks, my Sunday has only been slighted elevated by the rather nice weather [I hope it holds on into the evening so we can watch the ISS and its 5 ton robotic-shadow pass overhead from Cleeve Hill around 22.30. Hey, maybe a ‘roll’ down hill could be on the cards too!]
I love this time of year, especially this, the first day of Spring, when you just can’t but remark, out-loud, “how pleasantly light it is for seven o’clock!” But of course, only to be observed and then remarked upon if you’ve altered your clocks.
And that’s the bit I hate about today.
I’m especially displeased with my new Nokia 6500 Classic [bought very recently as a ‘Blue Tooth Buddy’ for my TomTom]. Why oh why is it that such a modern device can’t update its own fugging clock automatically!?
Ah, it can!
… it has an ‘Auto Update Time’ feature – that was switched off by default [why!]
… a while later…
Ah, it can’t!
03, Tele-O or T-For-Two, or whatever the name of the network is that I’m on, doesn’t appear to broadcast the time of day [or even the day]!
Now I just cannot bring myself to believe this; I mean you would surely think that knowing the time would be something a mobile-phone would, um, enjoy knowing – but T42 obviously think differently. Although, that said, mine would just continue to remind me to ‘Water the Plants’, one second past the stroke of midnight on a Friday evening – and always, always, when I’m having a rather erotic dream :- that I know I ‘had’, but then can’t quite recapture: thirty seconds past midnight! Bloody, sodding phone!
Thinking about how my mobile phone has failed me today – with a simple clock – I’m reminded of a rant I once had, all to myself, a while back when driving from Stow-on-the-Wold, back to Cheltenham. Now, a gorgeous road it might be – beautiful countryside, sweeping bends, decent cambers; even the odd straight! But, and this is normal for the Cotswolds, it’s a road that’s also prone to the odd ‘up and down’ – the “woldness”-‘downs’ of which killed my phone every sodding time!
However, losing the signal and ‘dropping out’ didn’t stress me: nope, it was the fact that I knew, just knew that T42 didn’t have a damn clue that, A) it had happened, and worse, B) *where* it DID happen, and I found myself once again going ‘hello, hello – are you still there …, HELLO?, … BOLLOCKS’. Actually, I don’t know this for a fact [not the BOLLOCKS bit - that happened], but given the technical-ineptitude that our mobile-phone network and operators display daily, I’d give anyone odds of 20:1 that I’m right!
How much better that they knew I hadn’t hung up [and could refund me for the call perhaps] – and, even better still – knew just *where* I happened to find that I was talking to myself [again]! Perhaps they’d see quite a few of their customers ‘drop-off’ the airwaves in the self-same location? And maybe, just perhaps, they’d consider improving reception in the many black-holes that are scattered about this green and pleasant land wold? Here’s an idea for all the phone operators – monitor this shit, and do the ‘right thing’!
Anyway, for now, back to the ‘time’ to finish.
Years ago I wrote to the Prime Minister [his Tony-ness I think it was] detailing how ridiculous all this jiggling about with clocks twice a year was. I mean, what’s it all for anyway – just so as some kilted, beardy-farmer in ‘Scawwtlund’ can find his sheep without a torch! I think they should all stay in bed myself – I do; and I bet the sheep don’t give a shit either way!
Ξ October 9th, 2007 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Rant |
My ex-wife plays too much World or Warcraft.
Whereas once she would have called anyone 'sad' for doing this, she has now become sad herself. Where once she would have 'turned in' around 9.30 and probably inhaled a whole book before turning off her light, she now games until around 1.00 am.
Still, playing with real people in a game like WoW is preferable to playing 'the machine' in games like The Sims IMHO. I once knew someone who'd be quite happy to sit in their dressing-gown all weekend and play this. Get a real life, nurture something real I say. My son too spends far too long IMHO on his XBox, PS/2 or other PC installed games.
Computer games really piss me off – I mean I just don't get the attraction. Ok, it's highly subjective – and it doesn't exactly hurt anyone does it [my own patience aside]? Although the BBC has this today!
Maybe I'm just a Grumpy Old Man now, but surely real life is preferable: go for a walk, read a book, watch a film even!
Truly, I find it terribly depressing, and 'sad'.
