Category: Uncategorized

So to update. Voting was very political (as always). Terry was funny and James Fox did not disgrace us – although it was not the best song. There was a disproportionate amount of male singers and some, like the French, resorted to gimmicks (stilt woman) to try and draw attention to the song. I like the fact that all countries can now vote (even if they did not make it to the final) despite the fact that the voting process takes longer.

The apparent political dimension to the voting could pose interesting questions on the future for Europe but I think I just choose to find it amusing. Ukraine won (Ruslana was her name) which must have had something to do with the fact that it was visually stunning but I really do think that Sweden deserved to win.

This year we found a whole new dimension to the contest by watching the extra coverage on BBC Three although we did not get to watch the translated lyrics as subtitles – a feature I think just goes to prove that even the BBC don’t take it too seriously.

And what should I say to my Norwegian friends about another ‘nil points’?

And so it comes to pass that another year has passed and tonight is the Eurovision Song Contest. James Fox is our entry but I don’t hold much hope based on the fact that voting is so political these days. As I wasn’t aware of him on the television show that brought him to light (I think it was the BBC’s Fame Academy) but I got to hear him last November when he supported Liberty X at a charity concert I went to. He mainly performed cover versions (with a couple of original songs thrown in) which were fine but not fantastic but he had charisma and a small but very vocal fan base (they probably sounded loud because I was stood right next to them).

I haven’t heard his song for this year’s contest so it will be a first for me. As always I look forward to the event for it’s more ridiculous elements. I’m sure Terry Wogan will have plenty to be sarcastic about. I do wonder if I will watch it (if anybody will watch it) when he stops commentating. PY and I are visiting friends to watch it. I think I will end up over-eating and undoing all benefits of the gym.

Today has been a very strange day. I have been alone in the office; all of my colleagues are on the road or on holiday. Despite previous thoughts of working alone and/or from home I can categorically say that I like the stimulation of the office environment and I am pretty certain that I won’t be looking for employment from home in the future. I currently work in a small four-person office space and even that gets very difficult at times. Since early 2002 I have worked with three other people in two different jobs. I think next time I will be looking for something larger. If you work alone or from home, how do you manage it?

While sat alone this afternoon I started listening to Radio Four for a little bit of company and was reminded how good PM was as a news show. I don’t be live there was anything that stood out today – part from the obvious talents of Eddie Mair – but I can recommend it if you’re in need of company! Also, while I was working through my tasks earlier I got a call which means I will be attending a hastily organised meeting in Rome on Friday morning so I will be spending this evening trying to get as many of my belongings into the smallest possible bag that I can. It is at times like this that I wish my employer has purchased a lighter laptop for me.

Over the weekend I brought Man of the Moment into the new look. It was pretty easy so and, once again, I’m understanding the value of style sheets. I also changed the naming convention of the individual pages which was made very easy by Movable Type and a little harder when i decided to try lots of URL re-directing.

Reading through today’s web-reading I hear Blogger has also had a face-and-feature lift (here, here and here). It doesn’t interest me a great deal as I don’t use Blogger but then I went to the new site and found the my browser had a username already populated. Lo-and-behold I found an account I created in 2001. It does appear that the new blogger has some nice features but I’m going to sit and wait for Movable Type 3.

The main event of this last weekend was a visit to Olympia to look at the Urban Gardens show. As we were there early we managed to catch the first ‘celebrity’ presentation. It was Matt James on things to look out for when planting an urban garden. As it turned out he’s a good speaker and I found it really interesting – which is a little more than can be said for a lot of the rest of the show. It was full of stands offering a lot of hard landscaping, garden ornaments and furniture and very little about plants – although there were some fantastic ferns and Canadian Maples on display. Matt himself is very good-looking in the flesh so I imagine he was a very big draw to the show. We didn’t get the chance to see Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan on the Sunday but I guess that might have been fun.

All of this home-style probably explains why I spend part of Saturday afternoon glued to UKTV Bright Ideas (or whatever it’s called now) watching lame home shows. Still, Wild & Fresh (which seems to be a Canadian/UK co-production) has one of the most amusing title sequences of any show I have seen for a long time and a would-be Jamie Oliver in the form of chef Danny Boome. It was kind of fun but, as the Why Don’t You? used to say, I should have got up and done something less boring instead. Sadly, I started to watch the Coronation Street omnibus to catch up on the latest Todd and Karl storyline. Wish I hadn’t.

One of the sites I most visit is ‘Downing Street Says‘, an unofficial site recording the official opinions of Downing Street and, I assume, The Prime Minister. One of the real benefits of reading the transcripts of the briefings rather than a journalist’s interpretation is seeing how the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman tries not to express opinions. It’s no wonder people have a disregard for the political process in the country when you read,

Asked to explain why the Prime Minister was willing to express a view about the pictures relating to alleged US mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners when their investigations had not yet concluded either, the PMS pointed out that the Government’s view had been set out very clearly by General Sir Mike Jackson last Friday night when the pictures had first emerged. [source]

What I think most right-thinking people won’t understand (and I am sure the civil servants can explain it away very well) is why disgust can not be expressed every time the question is asked. If the British pictures are real then the such treatment should be strongly condemned. If the pictures are fake then the actions of those who made them should be discussed in the same terms. Why do they have to hide behind the diplomatic speak?

Really, there doesn’t seem to me much point in having a ‘Big Conversation‘ with the people if you don’t understand what one half of the room is saying.

I had a really relaxing holiday weekend. To the extent I don’t want to be back at work (but we all have to try to make a living and I didn’t want to be in front of a computer. So I haven’t written anything for a few days.

I had a nice email from somebody in Poland thanks to my entry welcoming the new countries to the ‘New Europe’ (can I trademark that?) which was welcoming and Marek, I will reply (reasons for not as above).

Just when I thought I had nothing to say but to moan about the rather strange weather we are having here in London I read ‘Booked in 60 seconds‘ from London’s Evening Standard newspaper (by way of thisislondon.co.uk) and became all irate with the AA staying that ‘There should be leeway’ when it comes to parking fines. It appears – and here’s where I go all Victor Meldrew – that I am the only soul in London who be lives that parking rules are here to serve us and should be enforced. If you’re time is up, it’s up. Give up the space you selfish moron. No leeway for parking. Rules are rules.

Anyway, I was going to compose a nice long rant about it but then I found Ab Mania and felt – instantly – better by laughing.

The moral of this tale is that laughing is good for you (and the weather is still very strange in London).

Welcome to Europe

At midnight ten new countries join the European Union. Welcome to Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

I don’t use branded web mail systems a great deal. All my mail is handled by my hosting provider who does provide a thoroughly adequate web-based mail service for times when I am not using an email client. Still, with all the web ramblings about Google’s Gmail service I thought I would review some of my web-based mail services and see what was in them and realised that most of the accounts have long since been removed or disabled due to lack of use.

To my mind, the premier web-based service is Fastmail which is a very well thought out and usable mail service. If you’re looking for a new mail provider you should seriously consider them and there’s no advertising!

The only other service active is Yahoo Mail – simply because I have had that for ages and it used to be my way of reading normal mail accounts in a browser. Some of my mailing service lists still go here. Today I logged on and reviewed some of the settings and cleared out some of the junk and I realised it is an excellent mail service. I really like their new feature AddressGuard which allows for disposable email addresses that can be removed is they revived too much spam.

So, will I sign up for a Gmail account to compare it? You bet I will.

I may have had Porche gadget envy earlier in the week but trust me, I missed neither the DVD nor the Jacuzzi in this one: DVD and jacuzzi in one [link] [via
ohlalaparis]

Bloglines makes reading other sites quick and easy – as long as those sites provide a full RSS feed. I use it daily. However, you do miss site redesigns. Jase has had a minor change which looks pretty good.

And just in case anybody is wondering about some of the design looking slightly strange here at Listen to Musak, well it’s because I am doing some re-design work and I’ve had to make some minor tweaks for the new design which has thrown some of this design. If I was better at CSS that that shouldn’t be a problem but I am not!

Of course I’ve also found a good number of problems as I have been going through the site which I am trying to fix as I go along so – hopefully – things will end up working better as well.

Thanks to the joys of SkyPlus, I caught up with a fascinating BBC programme that was originally aired a week or so ago.If … we don’t stop eating was part of a series that I wasn’t following, but I have to admit, I was attracted to this show thanks to a very large billboard advertising it (but, like everyone, advertising never works on me).

I hadn’t seen the others in the series, so I wasn’t prepared for the mix of talking-head, documentary footage and fiction.If .. we don’t stop eating, looked to 2020 in a Britain where obesity is the biggest killer in the country and is predicted to affect one in three people; there are no tested drug treatments, and any help from an over-worked NHS relies on your co-operation (failure to co-operate means that treatment is revoked).

It was very, very well done, thought-provoking, and, when it came to looking at what overeating does for us, it was a little unpleasant. And very worthwhile. It discussed medical and political solutions to this growing threat to Britain’s health. I particularly liked the analysis of the fat tax:

NARRATION:By the end of 2020 the Government’s efforts are rapidly going off-course. Consumers won’t be bullied, and the food industry plays on fears of an interfering nanny state. The idea of a fat tax is history.

And, helpfully, the BBC has a transcript online which allows me to tell you that it’s Tim Land, a Professor of Food Policy, who has one of the best lines in the programme, when responding to the suggestion that any fax tax will be played up as being the nanny state interfering in people’s lives:

TIM LANG: PROFESSOR OF FOOD POLICY: I say what’s wrong with nannies! Most of the people who criticise the nanny state have actually got nannies! Have you ever noticed that? Anyway, delete the word ‘nanny’ and call it ‘parent’ and we’re all suddenly in favour of it! Actually, I like guidance — what’s wrong with guidance? Let’s hear it for nannies!

Are those McDonald’s salads a sign of things to come?

A few weeks ago, I wrote this but didn’t ever get round to finishing what I was trying to write:

I am not sure what the point of the news that McDonald’s are to scrap ‘supersizing’ is, but it does seem somewhat silly when they don’t actually make the food healthier – we’ll just buy two portions now, won’t we? I am pleased to say that since my new gym routine started, I haven’t been anywhere near any type of fast food outlet. This, of course, makes me feel very virtuous when I shouldn’t. I haven’t stopped visiting the pub, and there are a lot of calories in bitter.

Well, all I can say is that I nipped into a branch of McDonald’s today (only for a cup of tea) as it was right outside a place where I had a meeting, and I had some time to kill. I was surprised to see a stack of leaflets with a nutritional breakdown of all their salads, which shows that some of them are no healthier than burgers, but some of them seem to be pretty good. I have no idea how they will persuade people to eat them, though, as, by the time you get to the counter, all you see is doughnuts!

It’s obvious that my previous posts about music and radio are connected. Music is more than just a personal space definer. It is, of course, a great mood-changer.

I noted the two radio breakfast programmes that I want to listen to. Chris Moyles and Terry Wogan are both great radio presenters, different in style, but no less entertaining. Having listened to Wogan for several years why did I switch? I think, ultimately, it came down to music choice. Wogan’s music has always been a little pedestrian and slow for my mornings. I don’t like it mad or frantic but I do like it upbeat. Now that there is an alternative breakfast presenter that I like, the choice has come down to the music. Chris Moyles plays upbeat music and I need that upbeat sound to get me going in the mornings. So my mornings are being re-defined for me.

It’s pancake day tomorrow. Now, my gym buddy and I are on a bit of a health kick. We want a body like Andrew Kinlochan or Philip Oliver, but that’s never going to happen. But, I would like to know if anybody has a recipe of a low fat version of the classic British pancake.

And if anybody’s interested. Gym Buddy and I have, so far, stuck to our routine so all is going well.