Nasty soft drinks
Found this little gem on bash.org:
<babywafn> ew <babywafn> all they had was <babywafn> diet caffeine free pepsi twist <babywafn> which is basically pepsi's way of saying FUCK YOU
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Retro lift
Lift like TARDIS that only goes to the 70s
We’re moving offices at the moment as we’ve completely outgrown our small serviced offices and have signed a lease on an entire floor in the building literally across the road (so no wacky races with vans and things will be required). The building across the road is perfectly fine, but the landlord hasn’t quite finished refurbishing it yet and has a few things still to do, including the refurbishment of one of the two lifts. One lift is all modern with digital controls and voice floor announcements and all that jazz, but the other, although functional, is still as it was installed when the building was built in the 70s.
It’s totally retro, with big clunky buttons, wood paneling, an old fashioned floor indicator panel above the door (which doesn’t work) and inside the emergency phone cabinet is this fully functional dial telephone (pictured). It actually works too! It’s like going back in time 20 years.
I’ve also added a third monitor to my Mac Pro at work, because I’m greedy and I can. It was a spare monitor I had at my Dad’s house, liberated from the Rhydio office in 2006, and so I thought I’d put it to good use. Very soon I’ll wonder how I worked without it and be wanting a fourth one, which will be entirely possible since my Mac Pro has 4 monitor ports.
Because I am greedy
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Railair links
What is it about these “Railair links”. They are neither rail nor air; they’re frigging bus services, nothing more, stop trying to dress it up. Buses are shit and not a viable form of transport unless you’re poor, a murderer, or a combination thereof. Don’t make bus services out to be anything more glamourous than they actually are with poncy names like “Railair”, it’s not fooling anyone. It’s a bus; a cheap and inadequate substitute for proper public transport.
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Cloverfield
Watched Cloverfield in the cinema last night. A brilliant disaster movie which involves a mysterious monster attacking New York City, the origins nor fate of which are ever revealed. The film is shot entirely from the perspective of a small group of people who are recording events using a camcorder as they attempt to escape and survive the chaos around them.
Although sometimes very difficult to watch due to the jerky camera movements, the constraints that the film makers placed upon themselves by choosing this format have lead to a great deal of consistency with the film. There is no back story, you only get to know what the characters get to know, save perhaps for a few vague news reports from televisions in the background in a few scenes. Most disaster movies are plagued by implausible scientific and/or political back stories, plus equally implausible technology and military strategy, but there’s none of this with Cloverfield and it’s very refreshing. You’re left with many unanswered questions at the end of the film as a result, but that’s the point, you know no more than the protagonists.
I suppose you could describe it as Godzilla done right, although in all honesty I’ve never thought that Godzilla was an entirely terrible film, despite its widespread panning.
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Record £14m fine for rail company
BBC NEWS | UK | Record £14m fine for rail company – I’m sorry, but I must’ve missed something here. Are you actually trying to tell me that a government-funded agency has fined a government-funded firm £14 million quid? Where the fuck do they expect they will get the money from to pay it? Who funds the government that funds this government-funded company, in addition to paying a portion of their rail fares directly to this government-funded company? That’s right. Most people are at least one of taxpayer and rail passenger, many are both.
There will be no penalty that might actually mean something to those responsible. Network Rail directors will not only keep their jobs but they’ll likely keep their bonuses too, safe in the knowledge that someone else will clear up their mess and bail them out of their incompetence. The entire board should be fired. That would hit them where it hurts.
I also notice that no form of compensation has been awarded to the affected passengers, who now face a £14m fine for their trouble. It’s just pointless money recycling, with suitably inflated administrative fees being creamed off where it’s deemed appropriate. Stupidity and shortsightedness compounded on top of stupidity and shortsightedness. I’ve come to expect little else from 11 years of the New Labour regime, which seems to prioritise some sort of war on common sense. The scary thing is that it’s winning it, hands-down.
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Selfish smoker in cigarette projectile incident
When are smokers just going to fuck off? I was walking into the station this morning, following a woman that was smoking, which was unpleasant enough. But when she reached the door, after having taken a few desperate last puffs, she flicked her bastard cigarette, which was still lit, behind her and it hit me.
“Excuse me!” I exclaimed, “you threw a fag at me!“. I didn’t hear what she then said because I had my iPod turned up loud, but from the expression on her face, her hand gestures and her body language I surmised that she considered it to be my fault. I told her that she was selfish and careless before walking off, since to stick around and argue it further would have probably been fruitless and would have caused me to miss my train.
Seriously, when are smokers going to fucking realise that everyone fucking hates them, take all the fucking hints that are now being rammed down their throats, and give up their despicable, bastard habit? Smoking should be banned from ALL public places, restricted only to private residences. I won’t be happy until smoking is considered more taboo and reprehensible than pedophilia.
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The Queen
Watched The Queen this evening, something which I’ve had in my DVD “inbox” for a few weeks now. I’ve always heard good things about it, and now I know why. It’s a totally brilliant film, describing in great detail the tragedy of Princess Diana’s death from the perspective of the royal family and the Blair family through their interactions with each other. There’s even a bit of comedy thrown in here and there with Prince Philip and the Queen Mother.
However, what I like most about it is the portrayal of reprehensible Cherie Blair and the equally dreadful Alistair Campbell. The former is made out to be a total bitch whereas the latter is made out to be a sleazy, slimy reprobate; both highly accurate character portrayals in my opinion. Blair himself was portrayed as a “good guy”, which he was (at the time at least), as indeed was the Queen herself in the end. I don’t envy the position she was put in; all she knew was establishment protocol, even if said protocol didn’t quite fit into the modern world. You can’t blame her for the actions she initially took, or rather, didn’t take. Nothing like this had ever happened in the history of the monarchy.
I’ve no problem in admitting that the film brought a few tears to my eyes, not only because of the plight of the Queen, whom I’ve always admired, but also because it reminded me of the event itself. While I didn’t think much of Diana, she didn’t deserve her fate and the nation’s reaction to it was very moving. It certainly had my Mum in floods of tears and she totally hated her.
If you’re British then you really have to watch it, whether you’re a monarchist or not. I expect the Americans quite like it too.
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iPhone
My old mobile didn’t survive Federation at New Year. I pulled it out of my pocket at about 1.00am and it had gone bonkers; it was just flashing numbers up on the screen and the keypad wasn’t responding. Removing the battery and restarting it dealt with the crazy numbers, but didn’t do anything for the keypad. I don’t remember getting it wet or bumping it into anything, but nonetheless, it was fucked.
I’d been holding off getting an Apple iPhone until the New Year anyway and the death of my old phone combined with the death of my last iPod in October left few excuses not to then get one, so I did. I absolutely love it; principally because it combines an iPod and a phone into one single device that’s 100% compatible in every way with my Mac computers, rather than some sort of third party bodged compatibility as provided by other manufacturers. It’s a total dream to use and allows me not only to make phone calls, listen to music and send texts but also read and write e-mail in a way that’s actually easy and works properly, and also to surf the web using what’s stops very very short of being a proper web browser.
Of course, I’ve had derision from many people for buying it, whose complaints tend to be centred around the same few issues:
- You can’t send picture messages.
- You can’t text more than one person at the same time.
- It’s too expensive.
- You can’t record videos.
- It doesn’t have 3G.
- You have to use O2.
I’d like to officially submit the following responses to these points so that people can shut the fuck up about them once and for all:
- I’ve never sent a picture message in my entire fucking life.
- Incorrect. Firmware 1.1.3 allows multiple text recipients.
- I could have easily spent more on an iPod Touch and a separate phone of similar quality. I’d also have ended up with two devices in my pocket.
- Oh noes! How will I fill up YouTube with meaningless rubbish now?!
- It connects to your wireless network at home and the EDGE data connection is plenty fast enough for what you need it to do when you’re not at home.
- Frankly, anything’s better than the utter piece of shit that it’s T-Mobile’s awful cellular network. I can now make phone calls from inside my Dad’s house.
Any perceived compromises made are outweighed by its clear and irrefutable benefits. It’s great, for example, being able to listen to music and then have a phone call put through directly to your headphones without having to change devices or have a second device embarrassingly ring away in your pocket because you can’t fucking hear it. The iChat-style text messaging system is splendid, taking what Blackberrys do to a more logical conclusion. Google Maps works exactly how you would expect it to. It’s also frighteningly easy to download music off iTunes with it, although whether or not that’s a benefit is subjective of course.
If I had any complaints about it it would be that the camera isn’t particularly good and that they’ve been a bit slow in opening it up to third party developers. The former I can’t do anything about, but the latter will be resolved in February, apparently. I want an SSH client, an IRC client and an iChat client without having to use some sort of web application bodge. I expect my wishes will be granted relatively quickly.
So no, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but then nobody is being forced to buy it. Indeed, because of its price many people are being forced not to buy it, which I suspect is more of a motive to pick holes in it than people will admit to. It reminds me of those pricks who bray “oh yeah, well, I could have got a BMW but I got something much better instead“, whilst driving a fucking Passat or something.