Month: May 2002

Someone posted on BNM

Someone posted on BNM this morning about the new O’Reilly book “Essential Blogging”. This is due for release in August, but is currently available for technical review in PDF form. It’s aimed an novice bloggers and people who don’t have a blog at the moment and want one, and reviews the different options. I’ve had a read of the first chapter, and it seems to be pretty well written, and very readable.

Tonight we went to

Tonight we went to see The Two Terries (Terry Jones and Terry Pratchett) on stage at The Dome Concert Hall. We didn’t really know what to expect, and given that the Terries had never met before tonight, I guess they didn’t either.

For us, the worst thing it could have been was very very Literary — but it turned out to be mostly anecdote telling followed by questions at the end. There was a host to keep things moving, so all in all it was sort of like a chat show.
An entertaining chat show. For example: Terry Jones telling us about what life in the 14th century would have been like for a food taster to the Pope; or how the restaurant where the Mr Creosote scene from The Meaning of Life was being used the next day for a wedding; or how Terry Pratchett may or may not stumble around hotel rooms at 5am trying to avoid peeing in the wardrobe.

One of the stranger things: Terry Jones showed us the scar he acquired after being in hospital. Apparently the surgeon took a photo of Terry while they were working on or around his intestines…and then emailed him the photo (warning: that link not for the faint hearted or those eating).

The DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail sounds good at least for the subtitles for “people who don’t like the movie”, and we’ll have to go check out some of Terry Jones’ books. Jane already has pretty much all of the Pratchett books already.

Oh, brilliant moment: when it came round to time for questions, the first person stood up and said “This is a question for Terry” 🙂

What soup?

When we were planning our menu for our wedding dinner the other day, we were offered “Soup of our choice” as one of our starter choices. We can’t decide which soup to offer, so please help us out by voting.

ve just been listening

I’ve just been listening to the England v South Korea friendly on Radio 5. And didn’t we do well, not! We drew one all. Hmmm, not the start that we were hoping for I’m sure. It must be hard to bond a team together when you change 8 players between the interval and the end of the second half. Surely that makes it hard to play together as a team.

And how does this affect our chances in the World Cup, well it doesn’t really, except that there might be some negative press comments and that always seems to spur England on. The chances of us getting beyond the first round have to be slim, the climate doesn’t suit the Europeans very much, and Nigeria and Argentina are both pretty strong. And Argentina are one of our two bogey teams (fact: in the 5 most recent competitions we’ve been knocked out by only 2 teams – Argentina and Germany (or West Germany as it was before)).

was catching up on

I was catching up on the reportings of The Register this morning, and I noticed this article. Basically, it’s about 4 people who are “living” in Harrods shop window for the week to publicise some of LG Electronics new gadgets – a fridge freezer which has a built in MP3 player, LCD display, camera and full internet access, a microwave which can download recipes from the internet, a washing machine which you can turn on remotely via the internet and an air conditioner which you can adjust remotely via the internet. Interesting products, and a strange way of advertising them. I guess it is all part of the UKs current need for more “reality tv” type situations (the third series of Big Brother starts on Friday evening). If you’re interested, you can watch them or catch up on their news.

This did make me think about something we saw on Saturday at Fenwicks in York. As we left the shop clutching our wedding related purchases, we heard a voice coming over some speakers. I turned around and realised that it was a beauty consultant doing a facial on some poor lady in one of the main windows of the store. The lady was lying down whilst the consultant talked us all through what she was doing, and what particular problem areas this lady needed help with. Weird, very weird!

Radios should be more

Radios should be more like TVs. Dials? A limited number of stored stations labelled “1” or “2”? Why not have a bit of a screen, a few logos so I can select a channel and go there, rather than scanning for channels? Anyway…

I have a thing about needing a radio version of TiVo, and today Jane tempted me with a couple of URLs.

TiVo for radio’ set for UK launch is a story in the Guardian… but from 14 Feb 2001. Alas the company in the article, sounds like it’s sort of lost the way. Shame.

The second, Bitbop Tuner is TiVo For Radio is from Jul 27, 2001 sounded better, in that it’s a download for your PC. I go for the download button but the site has an important notice telling me that they’ve “discontinued distribution”.
(Amusing moment: The system requirements list “Minimum Ram: 64MB”, fine, “Processor: Absolutely Necessary” 🙂

So it seems people have tried to make better radios, but there’s no money in it.

After my accident on

After my accident on Thursday, I bought some Activheal plasters (supposedly help your wound to heal better – certainly worked pretty well, only my cut was in such an awkward place that it was hard to get a plaster to stick so I gave up after 2 days). On the back of the packet it says “Use once only”. Please tell me people don’t re-use plasters.

Whilst we were in

Whilst we were in Hull at the weekend we decided to buy a couple of spoken word tapes to amuse ourselves on the long drive back to Brighton (between 5 and 6 hours). We happened to be shopping in York and were in Waterstones, and so were limited to their selection. We chose a P G Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster story (The Inimitable Jeeves read by Simon Callow) and a 4 episode collection (Volume 5) of Just a Minute.

These really helped pass the time on the journey, and I am still in awe of the participants of Just a Minute. We’ve listened to 2 of the 4 episodes so far, and there were a good selection of participants – Clement Freud, Graham Norton, Linda Smith, Tony Hawkes, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry. There really is such a lot of skill involved (for those that don’t know, Just a Minute is a radio show where the contestants are given a subject to speak about for a minute during which they mustn’t hesitate, repeat themselves or deviate from the subject. It really is very hard, and the participants are very good at it (I’d have just failed for repetition of the word very there). I have high hopes for the other 2 episodes.

Jeeves and Wooster was an entertaining story and I enjoyed listening to it. It was very light, and didn’t need much concentration. It was kind of strange listening to Simon Callow reading it, as I always picture the Jeeves character as being Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie being Wooster following the TV series in which they both appeared.

15 reasons to serve alcohol at work

1. It’s an incentive to show up.
2. Reduces stress.
3. Leads to more honest communications.
4. Reduces complaints about low pay.
5. Cuts down on time off, because you can work with a hangover.
6. Helps save on heating costs in the winter.
7. Encourages carpooling.
8. Increases job satisfaction because if you have a bad job, you don’t care.
9. Eliminates vacations because people would rather come to work.
10. Makes fellow employees, of the opposite sex, look better.
11. Makes the cafeteria food taste better.
12. Bosses are more likely to hand out raises when they are wasted.
13. Employees work later since there’s no longer a need to relax at the bar.
14. Eliminates the need for employees to get drunk on their lunch break.
15. Babbling and mumbling incoherently will be common, not just restricted to the higher ups.

Thanks to Komal for brightening up my day with this 🙂