Jon Curnow's Digital Home
Greetings for Easter wherever you may be.
Happy Easter. I had a great day on Friday visiting some vineyards in Kent. Yesterday evening, this afternoon (and tomorrow evening) are all to be spent with good friends. On top of that I managed to start to clean up the garden and have ambitious plans to tidy up the tiny amount of loft space that we have so that we can load up even more junk!
Super-sized burgers are off the menu. We’re all going to buy two of them now, so what’s the point?
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 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 that 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 lot of calories in bitter.
Well, all I can say is that I nipped in 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 break down on 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 donuts!
Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan are off to
While on the subject of trival entertainment pieces [by which I mean this rant about radio], maybe it’s time for a gay ‘Richard and Judy’ equivalent.
Scots interior designers Colin McAllister and Justin Ryan have been signed on an exclusive two-year contract, and are being lined up to present a range of property, entertainment and lifestyle shows on Five [Source].
Honestly, I can’t wait (and I didn’t even watch a great deal of The Million Pound Property Experiment and I am not in the house for daytime lifestyle shows).
The whole saga of the upgrading of the west coast main line is outlined in today’s Guardian.
A very interesting item it today’s G2 about the on-going saga of the upgrading of the West Coast Main Line, one of the key railway routes in Britain:
One of the most disturbing facets of the west coast saga is the failure of democratic government that it represents. Not just of a particular party, but the whole system of government.
and later
And yet we cannot accuse our elected representatives of looking the other way. In mid-February and early March of 1995, after the consultants had delivered their report but while Railtrack and the government were still mulling over it, members of the House of Commons transport committee questioned Edmonds, Horton and the heads of some of the big signalling firms about the WCML project … Members of parliament had done what they were elected to do, conscientiously and thoroughly scrutinising a big plan by an unelected organisation with power over the lives and purses of the public. It had pointed out its weaknesses. And nobody paid any attention.
What the article does highlight is that, today, projects of national importance and public good like this one come second to short-term profit, power and – to some extent – ego. I wonder if we will ever see a situation where transport planning is for all our good rather than the few?
Now you can read Listen to Musak via Yahoo!
You will see, on the right hand side of the page, a new link added so that you can add the content of Listen To Musak to My Yahoo!
Yahoo! has always been my favourite portal and for many years My Yahoo! was my homepage. These days I tend to favour Bloglines so that I can read the content I am interested in. I think this is a great new feature for Yahoo! and it’s good to see them being inventive again.
As usual when big portals roll out features it seems that it’s only available to users of the my.yahoo.com domain rather than those of us who have correctly set our country to UK and are thus pointed to uk.my.yahoo.com. Still, removing the uk. portion of the URL allows you to see this feature.
One of my usability gripes about Yahoo! has always been the way the switch you between localised domains. You can read some content at news.yahoo.com and then suddenly be shunted to uk.news.yahoo.com with no obvious way back. It’s one thing they have needed to address for a long time. On the otherhand, I wait to see how good My Yahoo will become as a newsreader.
Anyway, add me. Thanks.
New research by one of the leading retail institutes, based at Caledonian University in Glasgow, shows men are beginning to get even with the queens of shopping.
I have never been one to consider myself well dressed, fit or particularly over-groomed. Clean and tidy (I hope) but I have never been one to peruse the fashion rails at Selfridges for the latest gear. Therefore, I don’t consider that I fit any gay stereotype. However, it appears I now don’t conform to the male stereotype:
We surveyed a group of guys in Birmingham and they said rather than meeting down in the pub, they would now meet in Selfridges for a drink and then go shopping [source]
That’s it. Time to ditch the M&S shirts at once.
A party in a hotel in Wolverhampton that turned into a fun day at the races.
Sometimes, things you would least expect are the most interesting things to happen to you. Yesterday, my parents celebrated their wedding anniversary by holding a party at a hotel in Wolverhampton. They invited friends and family to the hotel and avoiding mentioning that it was actually at Wolverhampton Race Course where a day at the races was planned for all. I’ve been to the races a few times and can never remember what on earth I am to do when it comes to placing a small bet. There are so many variants that I need a course in how to do it. But it was a thoroughly entertaining day seeing family and friends that I haven’t seen for several years. I think I ended slightly up on the day (in monetary terms) but only just. I hadn’t expected to be so enthusiastic about watching my horses win and fail. Let’s say nothing about the recent controversy about the sport.
Two recent posts are connected but I only noted it by reading them back.
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 more-or’ess twenty years insce the beginning of one of Britain’s most bitter industrial disputes.
While I am on the subject of anniversaries, Friday (5th March) was also the day in 1984 that it was announced Cortonwood pit near Barnsley was to close. The men walked out on strike – some would never go back and, those that did go back wouldn’t go back for a year. The miner’s strike was the moment when things changed for Britain’s workers.
My life in March 1984 was quite different. I would have been 13 years old and the pictures of striking miners, horses charging picket lines and Arthur Scargill’s statements seemed very far away. To a middle-class kid it was another world. Oddly, my granddad had worked for the collieries near Wigan but I have no recollection of his thoughts on the strike at all.
My own world was turned upside down that year. It was the year my father announced the family was all moving to the Midlands and for most of the year that was what pre-occupied me. The striking miners became just another news item.
Looking back, of course, it was much more than that. There were so many changes to the working lives of so many people. Our working lives in the UK today would be very different had the strike not happened.
Spam was ten year’s old yesterday and look how it’s grown.
If you’re into celebrations, you might be interested to know that yesterday was spam’s tenth birthday. Ten years ago a message was posted to Usenet and Usenet was never really the same again. I do remember a time when Usenet was rendered, almost, useless thanks to the spam but I am now finding some newsgroups useful – and much easier to manage than hundreds of emails.
The question right now revolves around the future of email. Will email go the way of Usenet? I suspect not. It’s too fixed in our social and working lives to be abolished. At one time, I thought Instant Messenger looked like it might become the de facto online communication method – but, with hindsight, I think that was wrong.
I am pleased to note that a number of my anti-spam measures have started to kick-in. Demon’s filtering seems to be pretty effective (100s of spam down to 10s). I note Phil Gyford is pleased with his Knowspam.net – I am not sure I want to go that far yet because I don’t think it would be widely accepted (although he is proving that theory wrong).
So, in a bizarre way, Happy Birthday Spam – you’re ten. It’s the next ten years – the teenage years – which are going to be your most difficult.
Yet again I have created a csv file to import the new Formual One racing season calendar into yuor Outlook calendar so you need never miss a race (unless I got my timings wrong).
Michael Schumacher, driving his Ferrari, won the 2003 Formula One championship on the final race. This weekend it all starts again with the Australian Grand Prix. It’s about the only sport I follow with anything like an interest but I won’t be up at 2am for the start of ITV’s coverage. I may, however, be around at 1.30pm for the repeat showing.
And once again this year I have trawled the net looking for a list of the year’s races in a format easily importable into Outlook. And once again I have been frustrated because I couldn’t find it anywhere. Many years ago, before I went Corporate and joined the merry band of worldwide Outlook users, I used Time and Chaos – an excellent organiser. They have a transportable record set ready for the 2004 Formula One season. Yahoo enables you to import the race list into your Yahoo calendar (although the race order on the Yahoo site is different from the official list on the FIA site). None of which is really any use to me.
So, once again, I have created a basic .csv file containing the data which can easily be imported into Outlook. After last year’s rant I said I would learn the vCal format but I didn’t so it’s a plain-old .csv file for you. If you want to import F1 races into your Outlook calendar, please feel free to use the file.
Once again I took the race order and timings from the Official FIA site. This year, hover, I have modified the times so that they reflect British Summer Time (GMT+1) where required. I can, therefore, use it. I have noted the time zone in the ‘description’ field in Outlook so you can change it locally if you wish. I couldn’t find any time zone field in the .csv format.
If you check different sources of the race calendar there are some slight variations in the timings. Don’t blame me if you miss it and, in my best continuity announcer’s voice, check local listings.
Also this year I have added information about the distance and laps in the location field.
I have provided the file as a .zip so you must first extract the .csv from that. Then, in Outlook, you will need to go to the File menu and Import the data (import from another program or file) and place it in the calendar. The file is provided as is and you use it at your own risk. I don’t know anyway you can remove it without deleting each entry individually. This year I have included a category name ‘Formula One’ so you can easily find all the entries this file creates. It should be easier to find them in Outlook and remove them if you need to. If you already have a Formula One category in your Outlook calendar you may want to edit the file before importing so you can change the category name. The file is fairly simple and you should be able to read it in any spreadsheet program (and even some text file readers will read it).
As always, your comments are welcome as are suggestions where an official version of this file can be found.
Wandsworth council clean up at a so-called graffiti shop in Clapham Junction.
My local council has just cleaned up what it calls a ‘graffiti shop’ at Clapham Junction. Without wanting to comment on the merit of graffiti as an art form or not, I think the shop covered in graffiti looks OK. Perhaps not the best thing ever but it’s not the worst. If you look closely you’ll see the nice neat edges to the graffiti so it doesn’t cross onto anybody else’s wall – which is a nice touch, don’t you think?
Plans are afoot to allow you to use your mobile underground. I hope it doesn’t happen.
Does the thought of being able to use your mobile ‘phone on the tube fill you with dread? Actually, that’s probably a little excessive but being underground has always been the one sanctuary from the calls (admittedly, you have to switch it on to be reached – which is something that I must learn). At least it’s only on the stations. The thought of people talking on a packed train in a morning really does fill me with horror. It’s bad enough on the overland trains.
Fewer posts at the end of February.
February started so well on this site and then I faded by the end of the month. I am not entirely sure what lead to this state. It’s a double-edged sword – or some such saying – as during the time I could have been writing here I have been the gym which is proving more enjoyable than you might imagine. For those of you that know me you’ll understand what a surprise that is to me. However, I do want recommendations for the perfect tracks to fill one hour in the gym to stick on my mp3 machine. Sky News can get quite depressing when you are on a treadmill.
I have managed to say very little about marriage in San Francisco – except to say congratulations to Jase – because, frankly, a lot of other people were saying it better than I was. I decided I want to go to Paris again, but instead booked a holiday to Orlando.
So, I’ll leave February by saying congratulations to Lord of The Rings on winning 11 Oscars. Not because I, for one moment, think anybody from that film will read this but because I enjoyed the trilogy very much indeed.
Anyway, I predict an interesting March. I hope it’s reflected here.
Should I make pancakes tomorrow?
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.