July 2005 Archives
Looking around the interweb last night and feeling in a bit of an egotistical mood, I thought I'd check to see how many other people linked to me. And the answer was.... well, not many. Do I care? Yes, a little, if I'm being honest!
But one of the links did interest me. Apparently my site is listed on Blogshares, and what's more, a couple of people had bought shares in me. I'd seen blogshares before, a few months ago, but it was about two o'clock in the morning and I wasn't really in the mood to see what it was all about. So I promptly forgot all about it. But seeing that I'm now being traded on a virtual stock market I thought I'd now pay a bit more attention.
So if you scroll down the page a bit (the main index page, that is) you'll see a new link section for BlogShares. I've claimed my blog, bought some shares in Annie's blog, and am making a grovelling request for anyone who feels like linking to me to do so, because as well as making me feel more wanted, it will also increase the value of my blog! Also, there are 250 unclaimed shares in my blog up for grabs, so get 'em while they're good.
I've no idea how much I'll play on the virtual blog stock market, but hey, it's something to keep an eye on :-)
Well, I've certainly had an interesting week. It started, as weeks so often do, on Sunday evening when I saw a programme on television called Secrets of the Sexes. This particular edition was all about attraction, and whether science can predict whether two people who have never met before might be attracted to each other. The scientists analysed people's faces, bodies, psychological profiles and social profiles to try and determine if they'd hit it off on a speed date. The results, however, were predictable. Science has absolutely nothing to do with attraction whatsoever!
Anyway, the programme gave me an idea. Yep, you guessed it, I decided to go speed dating. Normally, I'm pretty useless at meeting people. If I don't know anyone in a pub, club or party I find it very difficult to go up to someone and start a conversation. Ok, actually starting a conversation may not be too bad, but keeping one going can be tricky sometimes, and trying to get out of a conversation with someone you shouldn't really have started talking to in the first place can be an absolute nightmare. I checked out the speed dating web site and discovered there was an event in town on Wednesday. What's more, it said there were still places available. I didn't do anything about it on Sunday night, but on Tuesday I had another look and saw that there were only 5 places for men available. What the heck, I thought, so I got the credit card out and booked myself a night out.
This is the best way to do things for me. What with only booking the event last thing on Tuesday and being at work all day Wednesday, I didn't have much time to worry about how I was going to come across, what I was going to wear, or what I was going to say. I reckon that anyone who might want to meet up with me afterwards is going to find out what I'm like sooner or later, so what's the point in giving a false impression?
Wednesday night came around far too quickly, and before I knew it I found myself at home after work with a dozen rejected shirts on the floor. A quick wash and brush up, a goatee trim, a packet of mints and (what I hoped was) a trendy shirt that gave the impression I was a nice guy later, I headed into town. It took a few minutes of wandering around to find the bar, and once I'd registered at the event I found myself getting a bit hot and nervous. Calm down Dan, the worst that can happen is that 20 people think you're a tosser. What can possibly go wrong? Well, having a huge forehead full of sweat wasn't going to help. I headed down to the bar to get myself a drink (three pounds for a bottle of Budweiser! Jeez, no wonder I can't afford to go out too often). I went to the toilet to mop my feverish-looking brow. I took a deep breath. Stay cool mate.
I wandered back upstairs and stood by a table where a guy and two girls were chatting and laughing. Blimey, I thought, he's not nervous at all. Here I am almost quaking in my boots, with droplets of sweat once more appearing on my head, and there he is laughing and chatting like he knows these people. It was getting close to the appointed start time, I was nearly out of booze and I was dripping again. Time to make a last-minute trip to the toilet for a final brush-up and check in the mirror.
Well, as I thought would happen, the event started while I was telling myself to "be cool", Vincent Vega-style, in the bathroom mirror. I walked in last and had to interrupt the hostess to ask where my table was. I sat down in an impossibly deep armchair and smiled nervously at the lady sitting opposite me. She smiled nervously back. We listened to the end of the hostess' introduction and then the bell rang. We were off!
I smiled at her, she smiled at me, we wrote each other's names and badge numbers in our score cards, then I took a deep breath and started. "Well," I said, "I don't know about you but I'm nervous as hell! This is my first time here, how about yourself?"
And from that moment on, it was brilliant. Fantastic fun, and far far easier than I thought it would be. I volunteered some information about myself (just the basics, divorced, work in IT, have a little boy, he's nearly 6 and I see him at the weekends, sometimes I told them my age, sometimes I didn't). I asked a few questions I'd mentally prepared earlier (what would you normally be doing if you weren't here? What do you do for a living? Are you a swinger? What sort of films do you like? [note - one of these questions never actually got asked])
When I smiled at them and they smiled back at me all my fears about my weight, my receding hairline and my lack of political opinion vanished into thin air. I just chatted with the ladies. Sometimes I did a bit more talking than they did, sometimes I did a bit more listening. However, in every single case, the three-minute bell rang all too quickly and it was time to move on to the next person.
There were 21 women there and 16 men. So at any one time there were 5 women staring into space for three minutes. Well, at least it gave them time to think about the people they'd been chatting with. Us blokes didn't get a moment's respite! It was a constant round of "ding ding" - move on to the next table - hi - how are you - having a good time - tell me a little bit about yourself - what about me? well... - ding ding, on to the next table again. I had about ten seconds to jot down a word or two about the girl I'd just been chatting with and decide whether to tick them as a date, a friend or a psycho before moving on to the next table.
After 9 dates it was time for the first break. Time for another bottle of bud, a cigarette, and a few minutes to gather my thoughts. I had to ask around for an ashtray, and then I realised I was the only person smoking. Tough shit, I thought, I'm not going to quit for anyone, if they don't want to go out with a guy who smokes I'm not going to argue. After the break I was well into it, thoroughly enjoying every minute. I wasn't nervous at all about talking to the stunningly beautiful tall slim blonde I'd noticed during the break, in fact I was rather looking forward to it, ha ha.
By about the 17th or 18th date I'd had three beers or so, was nicley relaxed, and noticed that my brow was still dry. It's all going rather well, I thought. I found out that a lot of the girls had gone to the event with friends (even on a singles night they still hunt in packs!) and realised that the guy who'd been chatting with the girls outside like he knew them probably did know them.
Before I knew it, my three minutes with my last date was up. What to do? Do I just say "Thanks, I'm off?" Nah, I thought I'd stay and chat with her for a few more minutes, since three minutes is nowhere near long enough (for me anyway, I don't know about anyone else). Then the hostess came round to say that the upstairs bar was closing and we'd all have to move elsewhere. Oh. I went to the loo again (this time coz I needed it!) and thought about going into the "lounge bar" which had a bit of a disco going on. I decided against that because I know I'm awful at maintaining a conversation with loud music in the background (sheesh, I must be getting old) so I headed back downstairs for another drink. There were a handful of speed daters in the downstairs bar, so I joined a group and chatted with them about how the evening went. There were only about 10 speed daters in the bar, so where the other 17 went I have no idea. I foind out that one of the men had upped and left at the first break - none of us could figure out why though. I stayed till just about closing time, told everyone it was great meeting them and wished them all luck.
Thursday evening I logged back on to the web site and entered my ticks from the score card. According to the site, 80% of speed daters get at least one tick from someone else. Would I be in the other 20%? Time to find out. I entered my ticks..... friend.... no..... date.... and looked at the results. I had a match! Whoo! Now for the big question - could I remember who she was? I must admit it took me a minute or two but I was able to put a face to the name in the end! I checked back a couple of hours later and found I had another match! Blimey, two results out of 21, that's not a bad success rate for someone who only 48 hours earlier thought he was rubbish at talking to people.
Not everyone who went has entered their results yet, so there's still an outside chance I may get another tick (look at me, Mr Ego) and I've sent "flirt" messages to the two girls I matched with. One of the girls I'd matched as a date and she'd matched me as a friend, and the other one I'd matched as a friend and she'd matched me as a date. Whether anything will happen with either of these ladies is still in the lap of the gods, but at least I know I'm better at talking to people than I thought I was, so in that respect it was a hugely successful evening.
Remember the stunningly beautiful tall slim blonde I mentioned? I didn't match with her in the end, but hey, it didn't matter.
Would I do it again? Of course I would, although I might take a hip-flask with me next time. Those drinks were expensive!
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise
For ev'ry bear that ever there was,
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the Black Knights have their Bike Show!
Yes folks, it's that time of year again, time for revving up and heading out to the playing field (ok, not the woods) of Radcliffe, for the Black Knights annual bike show.
I was invited along as photographer and videographer, on account of the fact that my brother is one of the founding members of the club. And also the fact that I had a digital camera and camcorder and wasn't doing anything else on Sunday.
I'm not a biker myself, although I don't really know why. I'm not mad keen on bikes, but if the opportunity presented itself for me to buy a chop or a trike I wouldn't say no. The fact that I've never ridden a (motorised) bike in my life shouldn't put me off, should it? Maybe when I'm in my mid-to-late-40's I'll suddenly get the urge to buy a cruiser and go all over Europe on it. That would be cool.
In the meantime I will settle for ogling other people's bikes on what you can see is a typical British Summer day, overcase and breezy. It rained later on, too, although that didn't put anyone off in the slightest.
Feel free to wander over to Flickr and have a look at the photos, but I can't tell you anything about the people (well, not much) or the bikes (not anything). I present them here purely for your enjoyment :-)
I've not disappeared off the face of the planet, I'm still here :-) It's been an eventful week, that's for sure. On Monday I learned that my great aunt Ann had passed away at the age of 79. I didn't know her that well as she'd lived in Bouremouth on the south coast for most of her life, moving back to Manchester after her husband passed away a couple of years ago. Although I didn't get to go to the funeral, I went to the evening "shiva" (prayer meeting) to offer my condolences to the family, and catch up with various cousins I hadn't seen for years and years.
=========================
I had a call from my ex on Tuesday evening to say that she didn't think there'd be a lot for our son to do in Edinburgh, so she was thinking of taking him to Legoland in Windsor instead. She suggested that we spent two days in Legoland, and one day in London taking in some of the sights there. She wants to take him onto the London Eye, and also to the Natural History Museum (he's very much into dinosaurs!) and maybe the Planetarium as well. I'm sure that we can fill a day out in London without any problem. All that sounded pretty good to me, as I wouldn't mind visiting all these places as well. I called her back on Thursday to find out if the new bomb scare in London had put her off going there with the lad, and she said "God, no." So she's booked the hotel (two rooms, of course) and I've booked Legoland and the London Eye. I'm really looking forward to it (surprisingly enough!)
=========================
In addition to this site, I have another domain which I have hosted somewhere else. I use this other domain for testing out databases, scripts, online shopping carts, bulletin boards and so on. Just so I'm familiar with the concepts of how to set up and administer them, really. Anyway, looking at the stats for the blog last week I noticed that quite a few were being referred from www.drupal.org, and I thought "what's this then?" I took a peek and found out it was a content management system you can download and install. "Cool," I thought. "I'll have a play around with that, it might be useful for work." So I set it up during my lunch break one day and had a quick look around. The plan was to spend some time in the evening and at the weekend learning how it was put together and whether it would actually do what I wanted it to do. That evening I tried to access it from home, but all I got was a "document returned no data" error message. I got the same thing when I tried to access the web hosting company's main page. I could ping the sites, I could trace the route to the sites, I just couldn't call them up in my browser. This happened from Firefox and IE6 in Windows, and also when I tried to use the Konqueror browser from my linux partition. Taking my firewall out of the equation didn't make any difference, either.
My cousin and my brother could access the sites from their machines, and I could access them from work, but that didn't do me a lot of good when I wanted to get to them from my home PC. So then I thought, stuff this for a game of soldiers, my brother has a hosting reseller account, I'll give him some money and he can host the site for me (I insisted on paying him for the hosting, he spent money getting the reseller account and all he's doing is hosting sites for friends at vastly reduced rates, and not getting his investment back. The least I could do is throw some money his way instead of to two other hosting companies on the other side of the Atlantic.)
I called him, he set it all up and within the hour I was uploading my blog to the new web host. It took a little bit of tweaking to get it all set up and working again, and I've also set up this drupal system to have a play with that. I'm extremely impressed with how quickly everything got set up, although remembering at the last minute to download a backup of my site was rather fortunate - I'd have been stuffed if I'd decided to wait another 10 minutes before backing it all up!
I guess the thought of being taken back to the shop and/or traded in for a newer model scared my camera into working again. Blasted thing, making me worry like that. Don't do that to me again! My heart can't take it any more!
Anyway, to celebrate, here's a shot of my little lad sitting on the stairs at my parents house. Don't you just love that cheeky grin?
This is a photo I took today with my Canon PowerShot A70 digital camera. I have done no post-processing to it, applied no special effects to it, and used no snazzy techniques taking it.
This marvellously abstract picture means that after 16 months, and nearly 1700 photographs, my camera is well and truly broken. The display on the back works fine, the zoom works, and the first photo I took today came out perfectly. I was using the movie mode on the camera to shoot a clip of my son leaping about the house dressed as Spider-Man, and 30 seconds into the clip the display went like this. The beginning of the clip plays back fine, but the last 5 seconds are indecipherable.
Tomorrow I'm going to take a trip to the camera shop to find out just how broken it is. It's really frustrating as at the moment I can't really afford to replace it. Ah well, I'll see what happens tomorrow.
My new boss brings chocolate chip cookies into the office, which he likes to share. This makes me like him a lot, but doesn't really help my diet and fitness (non-)campaign. Maybe he's just really really scared of me leaving....
--------------------------------------
I just received a text message from my ex saying that she wants to go to Edinburgh for a few days with our son while he's on his summer holiday from school. Nothing out of the ordinary about this, until I read the last sentence on her text, which said "Do you want to come?"
Even though we're divorced, I'm very very tempted to say yes. This is actually a pretty major step forward for her, since it means she's prepared to spend a few days in my company, and that hasn't always been the case in the last few years! Mind you, we have had a couple of successful days out this year as a "family unit". I'll call her later and find out more about what she's got in mind, but for now, this is looking hopeful.
I thought I'd post a little more about web stats in general, and also about the results of yesterday's blog maintenance. In case any of you have the capability of looking at your own web stats and don't know what it is you're looking at, here's a line from mine which I'll talk you through. As I did yesterday, I've edited the URL in question.
81.240.255.226 - - [12/Jul/2005:15:16:20 -0400] "GET /cgi-bin/mt-bdcc.cgi?entry_id=174 HTTP/1.1" 200 2827 "http://zzz.hawaiiansurvey.org/online-casinos.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; AIRF)"
Taking this bit by bit we have:
81.240.255.226 - this is the IP address where the request originated
[12/Jul/2005:15:16:20 -0400] - this is the date and time my web host served the file
"GET /cgi-bin/mt-bdcc.cgi?entry_id=174 HTTP/1.1" - this is the name of the file requested. mt-bdcc.cgi is (was) the name of my comments script, and this particular request would have returned the comments for entry number 174 on my blog (which actually doesn't have any comments, so that proves that they're just looking at random)
200 - this is the success code returned by the web server, saying that it has sent the requested page to the person that requested it. Other codes are 404 (file not found), 403 (forbidden), 304 (partial content)
2827 - this is the size of the file in bytes.
"http://zzz.hawaiiansurvey.org/online-casinos.html" - this is the referring web page
"Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0; AIRF)" - this is the identification string for the browser the surfer was using.
When you're scanning down the log file and you see dozens, if not hundreds, of consecutive requests for the same file, from the same referrer, it leaps out at you. From what I can see these requests started on 15 June, although why they started and what led them to my site I've no idea.
Here's another one:
67.28.112.46 - - [14/Jul/2005:20:14:16 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 48898 "http://zzz.bestfreedirectory.com/" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)"
What's noticeable about this is that the page requested ("GET / HTTP/1.1") is the root (index) page, indicated by the single slash in the middle there. My index page at the time was 48K in size. This is not so bad on its own, but since July 10 they have requested my index page 610 times. 580 of those requests were yesterday alone. So they've gone very quickly indeed into my ban list. In fact, since I renamed my comments script and started adding IP addresses into the ban list, I've had 1115 requests for a page that no longer exists, and 503 requests from people who have been banned. And I still don't know exactly what they're after.
I may well be, in the long term, fighting a losing battle, but for now I think I'm mounting a half-decent defence.
I decided the other day, out of sheer boredom and a strong desire to end it all, to take a look at my web stats. See if I could work out where my visitors were coming from, that sort of thing. I can't remember the last time I looked at my stats, but what I found was quite an eye-opener.
My top 20 referrers were all online poker sites. This is odd, I thought, so I downloaded the raw log file to examine it in more detail. I discovered that these web pages (a typical, slightly modifed, example being http://xxx.poker-4all.com/online-poker.html) were all accessing my comments page, from different IP addresses. I can only guess that there are people out there loading pages on a cash-for-clicks basis, or perhaps running a trojan behind the scenes which loads pages and scans them for email addresses for spamming at a later date. This annoyed the hell out of me for two reasons. One, they're skewing my web stats out of all recognition, and two, they're using up my bandwidth. The swines. It also annoyed me because I'd already renamed my comments script once, and the bots were loading pages via the renamed script. So it wasn't some script blindly searching for mt-comments.cgi - this script knew what I'd renamed it to.
First things first, I renamed the script again. This only takes a couple of minutes, and after rebuilding the first page of the site again everything was working normally, and visitors can leave comments again. From now on the bots would be getting a 404 page not found error. At least until they discovered the new name of the comments script, which actually isn't all that difficult to find since it's in plain view for all to see in the page source of any entry with comments on. It looks like I might be renaming the script on a regular basis from now on.
I looked at the IP addresses of the offending visitors. There were lots of different ones, of course, but some seemed to come up more than others. I had noticed on my web host's control panel that I can block access from certain named IP addresses or URL's, so I thought I'd give this a go. I may be swimming against the tide here, but I thought I had nothing to lose by trying anyway! I made a list of the worst culprits, and added them to my IP ban list. Nothing to do now but wait.
A few hours later, I went back to look at my stats. Sure enough, there were still lots of requests for random comments pages, still coming from poker and casino sites. But they were all getting 404's now. That was still using up some bandwidth (the 404 error page was loading up each time) but now I saw something else. The IP addresses I'd banned were still coming back, but at least now they were getting a "403 forbidden access" error. A small victory, heheh.
I'll keep an eye on this over the next few weeks. There is one small consolation for those of you who have commented on my site. Your email addresses are not shown in the page source of the comments page. However your own url's are visible, and if the bot follows these links and gets your email address off your own page, well, there's not a lot I can do about that. That's the way the internet works, I'm afraid. Then again, anyone who puts an email address on a web page can expect spam sooner or later. gMail seems to be pretty good at filtering it all out, which is why I use my gMail address on my own site and also when I leave comments on other sites.
Hopefully after a few days (weeks, months?) my web stats will tidy up a bit and I'll get a more accurate picture of where my visitors are coming from.
Now, was that the most boring post in the world or not?
... that I've just been out on the bike and cycled 8 miles. Before breakfast.
It's a shame I have to go to work on a day like today!
This has apparently been doing the rounds for a few days now but I only heard about it on the radio on the way home this evening. The East Anglian Ambulance service has launched a nationwide campaign to encourage people to highlight the friends and relatives in their mobile phone contact lists that they'd like medics to contact in case of an emergency by simply putting the letters ICE (which of course stands for In Case of Emergency) in front of the name.
This is a simple, straighforward and sensible idea which will take just a few seconds to set up. And if you're ever in an accident and the police, paramedics or whoever need to contact someone to tell them what's happened, now they know exactly who they can call.
The chap being interviewed on the radio (sorry, don't remember his name, I was busy driving!) suggested putting more than one ICE contact number in your phone. Number them in order of importance to you and also put the name and maybe relationship there as well. So for example you could have "ICE 1 Wife Jane", "ICE 2 Dad John" and so on.
My own addition to this is that it might also be a good idea to put in "ICE 0 Me" followed by your own name, just in case you don't have any other identification on you at the time.
I can't remember how I stumbled across Michele's site, but I'm sure glad I did. She has a wonderful way of making me forget all about my day-to-day life and start thinking about utterly trivial (and sometimes not-so-utterly-trivial) things. And of course there's the weekend meet-and-greet, without which I'm sure this blog would be read by about three people, all of whom I'm related to.
I'm also grateful for the comments I receive, and I check out all of your sites. And it is from Cheryl's site that I found Dog Eat Doug, which is fan-bloody-tastic. And from the Dog Eat Doug site I found Doug TenNapel's site. He's one of the authors of my all-time favourite game (and the first game I ever bought for the PC, way back in 199-whatever-it-was), the Neverhood. No-one else I've mentioned this game to has ever heard of it, which is a shame in my opinion, coz it's witty, inventive and fun. I'm glad I found someone who knows of someone who knows of the original author. Six degrees of separation and all that. The Neverhood is also my son's all-time favourite game, in fact I played the Neverhood with him again from start to finish a couple of weekends ago. He's also keen on the Myst games, and the Monkey Island games as well.
Anyway, cheers :-)
Well, did we have a gret day out yesterday or what? The weather was perfect, the kids were well-behaved, the rides were fun, and the ice cream was much appreciated. We took the kids to Gullivers Theme Park, which isn't one of the country's major attractions like Alton Towers or Chessington, so it was nowhere near as busy as I thought it might have been. On the way there we stopped to buy food for a picnic, and my ex was well prepared with bottles of cold water, wipes, sun tan lotion etc. Strangely for a theme park in the middle of summer it was only open from 10:30am till 5pm..... so I thought we'd better get there ASAP. The last thing I wanted to do was drag two screaming kids out of there at closing time with them shouting "but I wanted to do this ride" and "I wanted to go on that"
As it turned out, the kids went on all the rides they wanted to, sometimes up to five times (!). My ex and I got on well during the day, which is as good as can be expected really. We only had a minor disagreement at the end of the day when my son had a bit of a hissy fit about going home. She thought he was being bad tempered and naughty, I said no he isn't, he's just tired. (actually, I had promised him at the start of the day that if he was good I'd buy him a toy on the way home, and then on the way home I forgot. He didn't forget though. Oops. He found a pound coin in my pocket and I told him he could buy himeself something with it tomorrow.) Anyway, although that cast a little cloud over the day, we managed to get over it without it turning into a huge argument. We were all tired by that point though!
Any yes, my wallet did take a bit of a hit, but my ex paid her share. She didn't actually give me any money, she told me I could take her share of expenses out of the weekly child support money, but I suppose it still counts. My sister-in-law has also offered to pay my niece's entrance money, so maybe I can afford to feed myself next week after all!
The photos from the day out can be seen here.
Dear Wallet,
I love you, and you know I'd never do anything to really hurt you. However, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. My ex phoned me up this morning and said "It's a nice day today, why don't we take the little one to a theme park, and why don't we bring his cousins along as well as it's been a while since he's seen them."
Well, I could hardly refuse, could I? So I'd like to apologise to you in advance, dear wallet, for the battering you're going to take today.
Dan
Wow, it's been a hell of a week for London, hasn't it? Last weekend there was the flagship Live8 show in Hyde Park and the finals of the tennis at Wimbledon. On Wednesday it is announced that London will host the 2012 Olympics. And then on Thursday morning the terrorist bombings. I live 200 miles north of London, and the nearest big city to me was bombed by the IRA in 1996 (funnily enough, I was living near London at the time), so I can't speak from experience about how I would react if I had been near one of the attacks. I just received the following in an email, the sender says he found it on a livejournal post (although he doesn't say which one). I present it here as an overall view of the British reaction to the attacks yesterday. I've no idea how genuine these quotes are, but a lot of them do seem to echo my views on the matter, and some of them are far more eloquent and to the point that I could ever be. At the end, I've put a link to the a BBC news page showing photographs taken by people caught in the blasts. Read the quotes first, then look at the photos. You'll see what we're talking about.
---------
Coping with emergencies the British way: The nearest branch of Pret has sold out of chocolate cake.
---------
Photo of the statue of Edith Cavell, British nurse who was killed in the first world war:
"Patriotism is not enough: I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone".
---------
These terrorists are rubbish.
They'll be caught next week, having successfully demonstrated that the British react to terrorism with indifference. We grew up with it, you see. What with this being a civilised country, they will not receive the death penalty, but be locked up for the rest of their lives, to be regularly sodomised by other inmates while they slowly realise that their interpretation of their religion is a pile of old hokum. Whoops. Meanwhile, I'll be out in London, partying.
---------
On days like this, the music radio stations play sad music - if they play any music at all. I turned on the radio in the bathroom when I was taking my shower just now, and they were playing One by U2.
HAVEN'T WE SUFFERED ENOUGH?
---------
I'm watching the news, I do it occasionally, it seems like a good time to do so. And I'm seeing a guy who was blown off his feet by a bus going up, but basically he's okay and being interviewed. And, shock allowed, he's pretty much laughing it off. Another interview, a woman who was on the tube, just the same response but maybe a little more detailed. I love the UK sometimes, I really do. What happened is horrible, I don't diminish it and I hope those responsible are suitably punished, possibly with chainsaws ... but if they wanted terror well, they probably shouldn't have gone to London. Not because Londoners are particularly braver than anyone else (although they might be, have you seen the prices there?) but because they've walked through a helluva lot worse than that.
Nice try, no cigar.
---------
Was at Tavistock Square - close enough to get a nose-bleed, but not close enough to get showered by debris, which really did travel up high, and also, far enough to be otherwise absolutely fine. A bit shaken but feeling lucky.
---------
I called in sick with a migraine today. My psychic powers are awesome! [(I told him my girlfriend also called in sick).] She and I should form a psychic taskforce! Anywhere we don't want to go,
THERE BE BOMBS!
---------
All these explosions are rather scary. Don't suppose the French are that sore at losing the Olympics, are they?
---------
This doesn't look good, does it?
---------
People saying 'I've lived in London for four years, I'm sort of prepared for this sort of thing.'
---------
"Speaking on behalf of the people of Essex, we are standing by you the peoples of Londonia in these trying times. Mainly because Suffolk won't swap places with us."
---------
Gosh.
Probably not going up to Angel today then.
---------
God, I wish I'd brought my decent camera.
---------
Got back from a meeting to find 9 missed calls and 12 emails. Thanks for the concern :)
I'm fine, luckily I get the tube (through liverpool street) at about 7.10am...
Tavistock square is GODDAMN CLOSE TO MY HOUSE, dammit.
---------
As lithium_doll pointed out, the witnesses on the news seem to be very calm. Most of the Londoners are more concerned with how they're getting to work tomorrow, and act as though it's all a rather distateful inconvenience.
HURRAH!
The great British Spirit triumphs once again! Take that, Al Quaeda. You tried to spread panic with your terrorist ways, but you hadn't counted on a nation of repressed, stiff-upper-lip Brits who refuse to show unseemly emotion in public!
People are generally spooked, but quickly contacting their friends and making plans to deal with the disruption. Good on you!
Of course, as someone pointed out already, we're used to this sort of thing - we had the IRA going at London (and Brighton when I was there) for a while now. The novelty is gone for anyone over a certain age. (I have to be careful about saying "oh, we're used to terrorist scum being murderous bastards, we had the IRA do it" on the international political LJ's, it tends to offend some folks. Folks who can fuck off, clearly). And as someone else on my flist said (approximately): "Blimey, I didn't think the French would be THAT upset..."
UPDATE: stu_n just provided this, which is completely brilliant.
BBC Parliament internal email: NEWSFLASH:
There has been a widespread outbreak of grumbling and tutting today in London, along with a large number of people going home instead of to work, with a certain amount of guilty pleasure.
Sorry, bad guys. We've been bombed before, and we just adjust our day to account for it. This is London calling.
-------
"No, really, we're not scared. You can try and kill as many people as you want, you're still going to lose because we're just that damn British. Also? Notice those docks and airports? Still open to the freedom loving folk. Suck it, bitch."
-------
It was just announced that the queen is deeply shocked and that it has been decided that the Congestion charge (a toll to use a car in London) will not be in place today - how I love the British.
-------
"I'd like to congratulate today's terrorists for achieving nothing but instilling a fierce patriotism back into the British Isles, creating a rather wide-spread rash of Blitz Spirit, and giving me a day off work. I'm a bit pissed off that you nearly blew up some of my friends, but at the end of the day - you failed. We're still here, we're not scared of you."
-------
From the BBC website: statement from Al Qaeda:
"Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters".
Erm really... where? I think you will find that's a reaction to the winning the Olympics bid or perhaps just the effect Bush has on us when he visits?!
-------
The people of London have responded to all this exactly the way I always imagined we would; with humour, strength and defiance. I've never been more proud to be British, and never more proud to be a Londoner. Pip pip.
-------
During the second statement by Blair, he was surrounded by the various heads of state and representatives to the G-8 gathering. And there stood ol' W, with the usual confused look on this face - likely wondering who had his copy of "My Pet Goat".
-------
God I love the British...
Nobody does pissed off disdain like 'em...
This *rules*
--------
Over the last few days thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of words have been written about Live 8, about G8, about Madonna and Pink Floyd and Blair and Chirac and all the rest of it. People have said it's a noble effort, people have said it's a waste of time, people have criticised the fact that some of the richest people in the world today are standing on a stage and saying "we want you to do something about poverty". We'll know in the next few days (and the next few decades) whether Geldof's efforts have really "changed the world".
Anyway, it's time I jumped on the bandwagon (no pun intended), so for what it's worth here's what I think was good and bad about Live 8
1. It was a fantastic feat of organisation. I heard an interview with some band or other on the radio and they said they were asked if they could "keep July 2nd free" about 6 months ago, so all those people who think Geldof et al have organised the whole thing from start to finish in 6 weeks flat are mistaken, I'm afraid. They did a lot of work behind the scenes and only announced it to the public 6 weeks beforehand. The stage in London looked bloody great, though.
2. Has he trivialised the whole issue? I must admit that what I know about the way the global economy works you can write on a small scrap of paper after it's already been used for an extensive shopping list, but then again he's not proposing detailed solutions to the problem. All he's saying to the G8 leaders is: "You know what the problems are. You know what to do to sort them out. I'm just making sure as many people as possible are going to listen to what you have to say when you come out, so you'd better do the right thing."
3. Why another big pop concert? Because pop stars are just about the only group of people these days that can speak to the sort of mass audience that doesn't want to listen to politicians. Blair and Bush etc have their audience, and that's not the same demographic as Pete Doherty's audience (I'm pretty sure there's not a lot of crossover, anyway). There were people in the crowds who supported the cause, there were people in the crowds who were just there for the day out, and I'm sure there were people who avoided the whole thing because they thought it was a pretentious waste of time.
4. I'm glad some of the artists are donating profits from extra record sales to charity. These people have already decided they have enough money. David Gilmour sold a townhouse in London a couple of years ago for about 4.5million quid, and gave the lot to a charity for the homeless. He's also pledged his proceeds from extra Pink Floyd sales (although the other members of the band haven't spoken up yet!). But Live 8 wasn't about raising money, it was never about raising money, so applaud those who want to give to charity and don't condemn those who don't.
Look at it this way: someone in Manchester gets allocated a ticket to the London concert and decide to travel to the show on public transport. They buy a train ticket, pay taxi fare, consume fast food (both inside and outside the venue), maybe stay at a bed and breakfast before calling in to Tower Records on the way home and buying the greatest hits album of one of the bands they saw the previous day. All of a sudden the newspapers are in uproar because that band don't want to donate the profits from that sale to charity. What about the profits from the train company, taxis, fast food vendors and guest house proprietor? I'm sure they all made a bit of extra money by having the concert in their town, but they're all allowed to keep their profits without having the world criticise them for doing so. Like I said, each to their own. If someone wants to give money to charity, let them. If they want to keep their own money for themselves, that's their choice as well.
5. It will be interesting to see how well Blair and Chirac get on at the conference now that the result of the Olympic bid has been announced.
6. For a more intellectual view of whether or not Live 8 will achieve
anything in the long run, please read these two posts. This chap certainly knows a lot more about global politics than I will ever claim to know!
7. Brian Wilson wasn't as good as he was at Glastonbury
8. Personally I can't see how anyone can argue with what Live 8 is trying to achieve. What can be so wrong about pointing out to the public that thousands of people die needlessly every year, and then pointing at the politicians and saying "we want you to do something to stop people dying". Well, if you disagree with Live 8 then start your own campaign. Get yourself on public access television, get some booklets printed, get a megaphone and shout from the rooftops, just do something to try to raise awareness for your own cause. It is possible to get your message out to without having to be a rock star, you know. Don't just sit on your arse and type words into a blog. Yeah yeah, I know I'm just sitting on my arse typing words in to a blog, but I'm not criticising Live 8, am I?
What to write? I just realised I haven't made a post on here all week. Why do I suddenly have nothing I want to get off my chest? Why am I suddenly happy to go several days without wanting to connect with the outside world?
I think one reason would be the new IT Manager at work, Paul. He's definately hit the ground running, has taken control of the situation, and knows what we need to do to drag the company kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He's appraised the situation with our hardware, our software and our connectivity, and has been busy on the phone all week to various people and putting together a proposal for the board as to where we want to go.
The first thing he's going to sort out is the internet connections in the shops and at head office. Apparently we're signed up to a standard home broadband account at the head office, something which I wasn't aware of. (I knew we had broadband of course! I just didn't know it was a home account and not a business one). He's talking about upgrading it to a leased line with a box at each end which would let the shops connect quickly and securely with the server at head office. He also wants to bring the email and ftp functionality into head office rather than farming it out to a third party company which is what we do at the moment. He wants to standardise on hardware, kick the Win98 PC's into touch, get in extra servers to handle emails and share the load on the main server, and many many other things besides.
We've been through the new shop system with a fine-tooth comb and identified about 50 outstanding issues which need to be looked at. Most of these are not new to me, and a lot of them I'd already highlighted to the development company, but as yet they haven't fixed these issues. He comes across as being a man who knows what he wants to achieve and knows how he's going to achieve it. And he's done all this without stepping on my toes or making me feel like my contribution to everything over the last few years has been worthless. As it stands at the moment, I'm very impressed with him (and also, I must admit, a little in awe of the guy. He's 8 years yougner than me and so much more sure of himself than I ever was, without coming across as being big-headed or arrogant). It will be interesting to see how many of his proposals the board will accept, and how much money they are prepared to spend, although they are aware of the company's need to move forward. I'm sure his head is spinning as much as mine is at the moment!
I've been getting home in the evenings completely mentally exhausted. Unfortunately I haven't been out on the bike all week, something wchich I hope to rectify over the weekend. I could do with a couple of days to recover from the intensity of the last two weeks...
I saw my son again last Wednesday. He's coping well with the television ban because the side-effect of not being able to sit him in front of the box for a couple of hours means that us adults have to pay him more attention. Not that he's exactly starved of attention to begin with. I had a text message from the ex on Wednesday urging me to get him to read me a book, as his reading skills are coming on in leaps and bounds. Unfortunately (for me) when my mother picked him up from school she took him to see my aunt and he read the book for her instead. Consequently, he wasn't much in the mood for reading by the time I got to see him. I did, however, make him promise to read for me this weekend.
The eBay auction my parents are running at the moment can be found here, unfortunately no-one's yet seen fit to make a bid. There's still time, though, you've got until Sunday night to put in an offer. I'll try to convince them that putting one auction up and not attracting any bids isn't the end of the world (at least you don't owe eBay anything if no-one bids) and we might put something else up at the weekend. See how it goes.
Well, for someone who didn't have a lot to say, I certainly managed to fill this screen without any problems, didn't I?
