Blog – Page 41 – Hello Curns

Saturday News

A coule of interesting stories from this morning’s Guardian newspaper.

I think perhaps I am now behind the times. Apparently, this should be a video site:

Mr Bouwman is the vanguard of the latest internet trend: video logging or vlogging. One step up from the now familiar internet blogger, vloggers upload personal video clips of everything from the US Democratic convention to what they had for their tea, via rants about tax rises and conspiracy theories. [The Guardian]

Luckily for you, I’m no good with movie cameras. However, if I was, perhaps I would head for Hull (you know that northern town famous for The Housemartins and the Deputy Prime Minister). Do I hear you ask, Why Hull? Well, apparently, some bright sparks want to make it the new gay capital as it, apparently, has the fastest growing gay scene in the whole of Europe’.

The city council has already consulted with its hoteliers to ensure that they will welcome all visitors, and next week it will host a weekend trip for journalists from the gay media. [The Guardian]

Now I wanted to joke about it, but I can’t really think of any reason to do so.

Doesn’t Time Fly?

Silent for a while.

I posted 35-or-so entries in May and have been going down hill since. It’s been a interesting couple of months and there are some things that I should have written about. This upcoming weekend I’ll be doing a lot of working the garden (I might start with some before and after pictures) so who knows if I will have time to write.

Failing to write here is only one of the things I have not done in the past few weeks. Failing to watch any Big Brother 2004 was the other – although I am not so upset by that. Tonight, however, Nadia won and I will be waiting to see if a tv career beckons.

Finally, a sobering thought, do we still think of today as Hiroshima Day

Bang Bang For Gately

Former Boyzone star Stephen Gately is set to show an evil streak as The Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

It’s a long time since I placed any comment on here about one of the Men of the Moment. I haven’t updated that section since Andrew Kinlochan and with all the spam comments the section gets I have thought about removing it. Still, I read Stephen Gately is to start in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which I saw and didn’t really rate). According to the article in The Scotsman,

Gately begins a four-month run on September 7, with former Neighbours star Jason Donovan playing Caractacus Potts. [source]

So it may be worth seeing just to see both Stephen and Jason in the same show!

It’s Getting Warm In London

Getting a little warm in London right now.

So I opened an account with Flickr for no real reason other than to see what it did. As a celebration of the London heat I took a photo of our office water cooler. There really wasn’t anything else to point the camera at – which is slightly sad, don’t you think?

Unrelated to water coolers but my entry from this day last year – listed under the On This Day Link below – is interesting to me as I’ve been trying to remember what I felt before we started battle in Iraq. I am often grateful that I wrote something here and, yet again, I have been surprised by what I do get round to writing about.

Administrative Apologies

Spam from one of my mailing addresess. wasn’t me, honestly.

Well it would appear that some malicious spammer is using a mailing address @musak.org to mail people. I know I’m not the only one affected at the moment but there’s very little I can do about it.

The Madness Of Business Travel

It’s taken hours and hours to get to Sardinia. I’m here for a two hour meeting tomorrow morning before I take the plane home. I am in a reasonably nice hotel but right now I really wish it had a pool as it’s so hot. There’s also some kind of concert that is taking place just outside my hotel window – you can see the stage on this picture. They are rehearsing right now and the walls are shaking. I am hoping that it doesn’t go on into the night.

UPDATE: 21 JULY – By the time I got back from the excellent meal with the customer and some other interesting folks the music had stopped.

My Data

I have a lot to say about PIMs and have decided to start to vent here. Oh dear.

At some point – I do not remember exactly when – I needed to start to organise my life. I was, no doubt, a typical teenager and needed to keep addresses and ‘phone numbers for friends in a book. Then I needed a diary to oragnise my life (in fact, I am fairly certain my first diary was about 1984). So, I started to keep an appointment diary. The addresses and telephone numbers were in the back. Of course, back in the dark ages, I didn’t need to keep track of email addresses and mobile numbers. Each Christmas as a new diary was purchased for the forthcoming year the addresses/phone numbers were cleaned up and entered into a new book. Life was easier.

When I went to University then my diary started to become more of a necessity as I needed a way to organise. Sometime after I started work it morphed into a Filofax which helped oragnise a little more but wighted considerably more. But still the pages with the telephone numbers kept getting cleaned up each year. When I lived in a flat I started to need to keep more names and numbers (you know, the people who you have to pay bills to, the man who fixed the leak in the roof etc.).

In 1997 (I have the exact date somewhere) I bought a one of the original generations of Palm Pilot (specifically the Palm Pilot Professional as it had more memory than the personal version) and life – at least when it came to diaries and personal data – changed forever. Seven years on I can conclude that the addition of a digital diary (or personal information manager as they are known) has both made life easier and more frustrating in equal measures. Now, with the addition of mobile telephony to the device, I yearn for a simpler way.

I will be writing more later and when I have done I hope that somebody who develops these devices will come across my words and think about ways to come good on the promise of making the management of our personal data banks easier.

The Day F1 Came To London

More pictures from the Formula One event in Regent Street, London

One thing is certain: the crowds arrived. There were thousands of people lining Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street. People were on the roof, balcony or hanging our of a window. People were climbing lamp posts and traffic lights. People perched on almost any structure that didn’t move and on top of many that were plainly unsafe. We waited until almost seven o’clock until the great roar of the F1 race cars was to be heard. Mansell, Button, Montoya, Coulthard and Brundle – to name but a few. The noise, the smell: it was fantastic F1. To be honest I eventually moved to the big screen on Piccadilly as they passed so quickly that you missed a great deal and I wasn’t at the front of a crowd. The atmosphere was pretty good humoured – apart from some lunatics climbing on top of a newspaper sellers wagon – and everybody seemed to enjoy it. After an hour it was, more-or-less, finished but the crowds seemed to hang around central London for a good while. Perhaps, one day, a race really will take place in London.

Formula One Comes To Regent Street

London-based fans of Formula 1 racing are in for a treat today as the Regent Street F1 parade takes to the streets at 6pm.

eddie jordan being interview on regent street

There is a real sense of excitement in the air around central London today. My office is at Piccadilly Circus and today is the day that Formula 1 comes to town! F1 cars will be parading (as there really is no racing) around the area (basically Regent Street and Lower Regent Street) from 6pm tonight. As I went to buy my lunch there were already people taking up their positions. The roads are being closed, the barriers put in place and the inevitable advertising signs going up. Jensen Button and David Coulthard are among the current F1 drivers taking part. Nigel Mansell is driving for Jordan and I saw team boss, Eddie Jordan, being interviewed (left) on Lower Regent Street while out walking. I just need to decide what time I am leaving to get a view.

Learning From Others

Tom’s great post on the URL structure on the Radio 3 web site deserves to be widely read. Of course, we need to do more than just read it we need to learn from it.

The story goes that cool URLs don’t change. Valid in theory and very hard in practice – somebody always has a better idea two years down the line. That’s why it’s very encouraging to read Tom’s article on the reasoning behind URL’s on the new BBC Radio Three site. I’m hoping they do something similar for the other radio brands for it would be very useful and is a great example to other web designers/developers and producers. I guess many people are not afforded the luxury of the time Tom and company spent thinking about this so his post should be committed to memory. Now if only rest of us could learn …

Olympic Dreams

Went to see Jonathan Edwards and the Olmpic torch today

This morning PY and I went into Wandsworth to watch the Olympic torch make its way across our part of south London. It had started the day at the Wimbledon tennis tournament with Tim Henman and Sir Roger Bannister. By the time it made its way to us, Jonathan Edwards was the bearer. The whole thing was actually over in a moment and it was somewhat sad to see that although there were plenty of people braving the rain to see the torch they were somewhat outnumbered by officials, police and media people – which made me think the whole thing was not really for the people but for the sponsors and the coverage. The torch itself made its was off by taxi (it seems to be being transported by all forms of London transport today – including the tube) but Jonathan Edwards stayed around to talk to people. Although the moment was brief, the weather damp and the steel band hidden under-cover it was still a great moment to see this part of the chain.

A couple more pictures from the day. Jonathan Edwards CBE stays around to talk to fans, the Olympic Torch relay is a fully sponsored media event and then the torch left by taxi for the next stop on the route to The Mall where a concert was held in the evening.

Why Would You Be Interested?

I’ve had a good day and feel compelled to mention it.

It’s been quite a bizarre day as I have churned out a ton of documents at work. I particularly hate writing proposals to customers, work-orders and other documents related to my work but today i have cleared a nice backlog which makes me happy. There is, of course, no reason to tell you any of this except I feel I am ending the week on a high.

In totally unrelated news I am still trying to work out what to do with my new gmail storage. However, I did read a fantastic idea over at Jeremy Zawodny’s blog: Google should make an instant messaging product but make it open so other people could connect to it. Finally I would have to stop updating Trillian every time Yahoo changed a protocol or two.

Entertainment Trivia

To take your mind off the football I present some useless entertainment trivia.

After last night’s disapointment on the football field regular readers will be pleased to hear the ITV is bringing back Popstars to make our lives better. This time, according to Digital Spy, the show will look to create the UK’s next musical male-female duet. To make it even more depressing the same source also reports that ITV are planning an ITV3 – presumably so we can have Popstarts on ITV1; Popstarts Xtra on ITV2 and an additional behind-the-scenes-of-the-behind-the-scenes show on ITV3.

While I was redaing the excellent Digital Spy I had cause to update the Man of the Moment entry for Colin and Matt.

We Wuz Robbed

I don’t think I have any nails left after that match.

What an entirely nail biting match that was and how very, very depressing. I imagine most of the country was watching as Michael Owen scored for us in two and a half minutes. I made the tube and the train which were – I am certain – much quieter than they normally would be at 7pm. I just made it into the house just in time for the start and for Owen’s goal and was watching all way through to Helder Postiga’s equaliser after 83 minutes for Portugal. So everything went to extra time and we all had to watch for another 30 minutes. Thank goodness for Frank Lampard who kept us in it at the end of the second half of extra-time but who on earth would want to sit and watch those penalties? [match summary]

Despite the result, it’s games like this that make me enjoy the game of football!

Come on Eng-er-land

An entry about sport. Me?

Well I guess that there’s not a lot to say. There is only one topic of conversation in London today and it all revolves around the football.

There have been football songs on the radio all day (it’s simply the worst music you can listen to) and there is an excitement outside. Everywhere you go there are English flags which is really quite pleasing to see. Now, all we have to do is win!

Thousands of England fans are gathering in Lisbon ahead of tonight’s crunch Euro 2004 quarter-final against hosts Portugal. [Sky News]

The only other thing of interest I can come up with is that, apparently, “Simon Le Bon himself has heaped praise on boyband Phixx’s cover version of the 1984 Duran Duran smash hit Wild Boys” [source]. And even I don’t think that’s interesting.

So I’ll leave it at that and go and watch the match.