Category: Miscellany 2004

So, this was the scene yesterday morning. It’s proved to be a lot harder work than we imagined and I can hardly walk. Still, they bring the new fence tomorrow (which will look something like the old one really) and it’s starting to make he place look better. We had an enjoyable barbecue with the neighbours for an hour yesterday afternoon which gave us a break and – probably – saved PY and I from arguing too much about the laying of the paving slabs.

Thank goodness the weather has been great this weekend – although it has made the work a little harder. This past week has had two torrential downpours which have brought parts of the transport system to a halt. A little like on this day in 2002.

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.

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

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 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 that 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.

In case you’re searching for an update on this: well, OK, so the extra storage is great. The fact that they haven’t replied to any of my messages sucks. I am a paying customer 😉

Oh, and I didn’t get to see the England game in a pub as I was on public transport. The trains were empty. It was very strange.

And finally, proof that digital downloads can be good for the music industry.

Second, going digital broadens your musical taste, he says. “With iTunes [Music Store], you can sample loads of stuff. A lot of people have said it has opened their ears to new music they wouldn’t have otherwise listened to,” he says.

BBC News has an article on camera phones and a backlash against them. I read it, and the main thing that stood out to me was that I have both of the phones pictured, and I don’t think either of them is good at taking photos. Sad, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, they also have an excellent article on the use of weblogging tools as learning aids for schoolchildren, which I think raises some very interesting ideas for the use of software in education.

Meanwhile, MediaPost links to an article suggesting that bloggers are “older and wealthier than what’s portrayed by their stereotype” [source]. I think we all wish we were wealthier, but to be told I am older than other people is alarming!

It doesn’t feel like last week since I wrote anything here, but it is. Given that May was possibly the most prolific month on Listen To Musak, I think I am subconsciously giving myself a day or two off. The weather has been wonderful for the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been extra busy in the office, so there has been little time to get into the writing spirit.

Interestingly, the vote is in for the Mayor (Ken is back) and the local council elections. The results of the European elections were announced last night, and it seems the new countries didn’t see a very high turnout, which seems odd given their recent arrival in the community. It also seems that a good number of people in the UK wanted to get the message across that they are not happy with plans to take us further into Europe. I think this is sad and wonder if it’s only a shot across Blair’s bow in the mid-term or a sign of something more powerful. The two main parties all lost, and I watch with interest what their reactions to the recent votes will be. Turnout in the UK was up, which was certainly one good thing to come out of last Thursday’s poll.

Of course, the main news pushing Europe to the middle pages is last night’s football defeat at the hands of France, when it looked so certain that we had the game in the bag. Even I could tell there were some silly mistakes in injury time. And then, I woke up this morning to see Ralf Schumacher was disqualified from yesterday’s Canadian Grand Prix, resulting in a podium place for Jenson Button. And then we beat New Zealand at Cricket. I could almost be interested in a summer of sport.

Just re-read yesterday’s post about The Day After Tomorrow and the link to Ian Holm’s page at IMDb. I see he was born on the same day (admittedly, in a different year) as I was. Which, in turn, made me look at who else they say was born on that day. Turns out it also lists those who died on 12th September, which is quite a depressing way to start a new week.

So, today is both Memorial Day in the US and the Whitsun bank holiday in the UK. Apparently, Whit Sunday commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of flames to the disciples (source). I see the cheese rollers of Gloucestershire have been at it again. That must really rank as one of the oddest of the British customs. Honestly, people roll cheese down a hill in the name of sport.

I am having a quiet bank holiday before returning to work tomorrow.