Author: richard

On Saturday night we cycled down to Preston Park to catch
Groupe F’s A Little More Light firework show. These are the people who did the fireworks around the Eiffel Tower for New Year’s eve 2000. It was impressive (but short) and I’ve not seen so many people for a long, long time. 15,000? No idea.

Actually, going cycling on a Saturday night felt like one of the nerdiest thing I’ve done for ages. But it was top fun.. especially having to twist and turn through so many cars and people on foot on their way to/from the fireworks.

This was at the end of the day, after having been caught up in the events of the North Laine. Jane’s put together the pictures.

My hatred of spammers increases by the day. The latest trick I’ve seen hitting my mailbox is spam that looks just like message failure reports. Messages from “Mail delivery subsystem” with a subject of “Returned mail: see transcript for details”. This is so annoying. Or would be, but luckily I use SpamAssassin to clean my mailbox for me. Every so often I check the “spam” folder to see what it’s caught, and that’s why I’ve seen all these “Returned mail:” spam. SpamAssassin works; but how long before the spammers get the upper hand…?

I’ve just finished reading The Salmon of Doubt. I’m not much interested in unfinished novels, but it was great to read some Douglas Adams one more time — and actually, the bulk of the book is a collection of magazine articles, newspaper articles and interviews.

”

The annoying thing is there’s not going to be any more, what with him being dead and all. I’m so glad I saw him speak. I thought it was at the
Turing 1990 Colloquium, April 6 1990, held at the University of Sussex campus (which I went to and got the t-shirt). But I think it was more likely to have been the
Computers And Writing conference, also held on campus on March 23, 1991. I don’t think I would have gone to that conference, but I guess I would have found a way to get in to see Douglas Adams talk. From what I remember Adams was supposed to talk about user interfaces, but twisted it into something from Last Chance to See. And yes it was very entertaining.

Brighton Festival kicks off about… now. So many things on, but we’ve only just started to get tickets. That’s because the festival web site is horrid. It’s not just the usability of the site and the missing features (let me get this straight: I can’t book on-line? Hellllooo?), but it’s that it doesn’t have all the information that the printed guide has. So we waited until the printed guide came out, and we’re using that. Shame.

Since ITVDigital‘s shutdown in the last couple of days, we’ve lost quite a few TV channels. It may be coincidence, but TiVO has gone mad and has started recording all sorts of rubbish, such as Richard and Judy, Newsround Lite (ok, not rubbish, but not something we need recording), and various other day-time TV junk. Poor thing must be desperate for things to record for us. Bless.

…is that it should be a surprise, but not a shock. We had fun at Jane’s Surprise 30th Birthday Party, but for the first couple of hours Jane was still shaking. This is the kind of “surprise” you have when you’ve been in a car accident. So, for anyone organizing these things for anyone else: consider dropping them a few clues — or be prepared to warm up the defibrillator.

Lately with been to the Tin Drum, Kemptown (lovely starters, but dissapointing otherwise), The Bayleaf (perfect Indian) and Moshi Moshi (it’s a conveyor Sushi chain, but a good one).

Technology. Progress. I’m told that if I press the red button on my digital TV handset and then select “option 5” I can watch and rewatch the funeral of the Queen Mother. Hmm.

We buy quite a lot of stuff online these days. You still have to be careful. Here are two recent experiences…

One. For some years we’ve been buying travel insurance on-line from Worldcover direct. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s easy enough: fill in a form, get a quote, hand over your credit card details, print out a confirmation that you’re insured and also a few weeks later stuff arrives in the post. For our trip to Malta, we renewed our annual insurance as usual. A few months after the trip, Jane noticed that we’d not received anything through the post. Odd. Our credit card had been charged, so I emailed Worldcover and discovered that they had no record of our policy. Sure they were polite and helpful on the phone, but it did take a fist full of emails, and three or four calls over two or three weeks to get to the bottom of it. In the end I had to send them a photocopy of our credit card statement (they’d found records of all our previous policies, so they knew we’re loyal customers, but still wanted proof). It later turned out that “some files hadn’t been transferred from their web site” (or something like that). So… what would have happened if we needed some help while we were in Malta? Don’t know, but it probably would have been long and messy. Will I ever use this company again? Maybe if they half their prices.

And in contrast…

Two. A while ago we ordered a stack of DVDs from Splash DVD. One of the items, Moulin Rouge!, wasn’t out yet, so they shipped it a couple of months later and only then charged us. Checking the credit card statement, we spotted that they’d charged us twice. So, oh no, another email battle… I emailed Splash DVD asking them to sort this out. Less than 24 hours later I got this reply: “I have checked our records and you are correct. Apologies for the error. I have refunded your card £14.49 today and this should appear back on your statement within 2 working days.”. Now, that kind of mistake I can accept, and I’ve got no hesitation in shopping with them again.

We were listening to Radio 5 last night when
we heard that the Queen Mother had died. “And of course, due to the death of the Queen Mother, football matches with be…” was how we learned the news. So we went off and caught up with the news on BBC News 24.

Reece, who visited us today, told us that he’d
heard that the Queen Mother died because
she was eaten by a donkey. Kids, eh?