Anyway, they’ve nagged me enough now, and made it seem worthwhile to upgrade – so I did (£12 for the Full Monty).

I have no idea whether it’ll be worthwhile (v9 worked ok for me), but I thought WTF; surely it’ll bring benefits!  Ok, so I’m gullible – but after a while at least!

Still, they wore me down – so fair enough!

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!

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)

I had a moment like that just now, and arrived at a YouTube video of Derek Jacobi playing Alan Turing in a BBC drama called ‘Breaking the Code’ – here’s the link.

I well remember seeing this when it first came out in 1996. It was great, won prizes, and was nominated for two BAFTAs – according to Wikipedia that is, and I found myself wondering why I hadn’t got this on DVD?

Now here’s the ‘what!’ – it’s not available!  How can the BBC not have something this good available!  How?

Actually, this is the second time in a few days that has seen me asking that same question; the first was when I went searching for another great programme, that Nigel Calder made for the BBC in 1979, it was called ‘Einstein’s Universe’.  Featuring the Wonderful Peter Ustinov, and near light-speed motor-cycles – it was just wonderful!  Alas, it’s also not available.  Actually, I did find it on Amazon.com, but why oh why isn’t it available *here*; from the BBC?

I’m now suffering from deja, vu as I’m sure I’ve travelled this road many a time now – great programmes, probably all or most coming from the BBC [paid for by me in other words] and yet gone and seemingly forgotten (care to jog my memory?)  What a drag.

What’s incorrect/wrong about using the term ‘Real mother’?

Actually, it’s even more interesting, that they’ve always [in everything I've heard] referred to the father as ‘the Father’, why not the ‘biological father’, ‘father by association’, ‘father by marriage’ and still they do seem preoccupied about all this ‘Birth Mother’ tree-hugging crap!

Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I can’t see why the woman who actually gave birth to a child cannot be the ‘real’ mother, and why the woman who now has care of the child can’t be a ‘Foster Mother’?

Surely ‘Mother’ should be the woman who gave birth – whether she deserves to have custody of the child or not – and likewise, the ‘Father’ – deserving or not – IS the the man whose DNA is inextricably linked to the child?!

I reckon this is the ‘pc’-state going madder than a box of frogs [no, not the French].  THEY feel they’re the ‘carers’, so therefore, THEY ARE the Mother/Father now [check the OED!]  Um, sorry, you’re wrong; laudable as it certainly is, you’re the Foster Parents!

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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!

Here’s a pdf of the first bit, and here’s a link to the edited version on Computer Weekly’s website.

And – wait for it …

Here’s a pdf of the second bit, and here’s a link to the edited version on Computer Weekly’s website.

Just in case you do compare the version, I should add that I did some minor edits after they were sent in.

Just mucking about with a little regular-expression stuff – interestingly [frighteningly!], it adds up to £908.66

I’ve noticed things like this before with Amazon and Superman/Carrefour, but I believe I should have ‘got’ this one somewhat earlier!

I think the i> bit is meant to look like a play button – yes [or am I wrong]?

P.S. Yet another one.  This is the logo for Errington-Smith estate agents.  Took me ages to see it as an ‘e’ in an ‘s’!

I can’t believe that for SP1 [Office 2007] that there are 322Mb of actual code changes – I mean the complete bloody product is only [only!] 532Mb to begin with!  [BTW, despite what the text says regarding Ultimate Extras, the chosen updates were *just* the Office 2007 SP1 updates]

So what we’re getting here is component updates as opposed to, for want of a better term,  code updates – it goes like this:

• Microsoft fixes a bug with a code change.
• The code is recompiled – the result being, of course, that the entire component changes [of which the fix is a tiny part].
• The entire component is then wrapped-up in a Microsoft update, and then the update is downloaded and installed by the consumer.

What *should* happen is:

• Microsoft fixes a bug with a code change.
• The code is recompiled – the result being, of course, that the entire component changes [of which the fix is a tiny part].
• The difference between the now out-of-date component and the ‘new’ is determined – this is called ‘a delta’.
• The delta is then wrapped-up in a Microsoft update, and then the update is downloaded and installed by the consumer.  The update is of course a little ‘smarter’ now – as the installer has to ‘patch’ the old component with just the changes – rather than replacing the complete thing.

Now I *know* that Microsoft can do this sort of thing, so why don’t they?  I’d certainly like to know how much extra energy and bandwidth would be saved if they did it the right way!