Category
Rants
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05.13.08Lovely ideaI wasn't going to comment on the election of that "tallest-dwarf" smug-faced buffoon into public office while I was in the US, except that now the deed is done, I am roundly looking forward to him being exposed for the zero-content publicity-seeking toffo timewaster that he probably is, and all his bold initiatives being exposed as the rather underthought and populist reactionary twaddle that they no doubt will reveal themselves to be in due course. No-one comes here to read my whinging about politics, and the internet doesn't need another blog pretending that London is Where It's At, so I ...
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03.12.08Malapostrophication, crap marketing agencies, and why its they’re fault you’re business look’s dumbSome of you who keep up with my Flickr stream will be aware that one of the things which crops up with alarming regularity in my camphone snaps is the misuse of apostrophes. I am an apostrophe dullard: it's true. I can't help spotting them when they're misused, and let me tell you it nearly killed me to write that headline up there. Seriously. I keep looking at it and wincing. I classify public apostrophe abuse into three buckets: 1. Permissible Error This usually means that the sign is handwritten, chalked or otherwise home-produced, and is generally an indication that the writer was in ...
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03.07.08When is a fix not a fix?For some reason, my phone suddenly decided to stop sending text messages this morning. It seems to have forgotten the Orange Message Centre number. So I pop over to the orange site to find the number, and attempt to use the "fixing basic problems" menu to resolve it. It asks a series of questions, and after each provides two choices: Yes this has resolved the issue, or No it hasn't. Are you roaming? Do you have Line2 selected? Do you have enough signal strength? To each I answer "no, this hasn't resolved my issue" until I get to one which reads Have you checked the message centre ...
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02.27.08The Seven Deadly Sins of TwitterOR a list of social faux pas that are likely to get you removed from my follow list (From my perspective: you may disagree. In fact, you probably will. Life's rich tapestry and all that...) Using Twitter instead of (or as well as) an RSS feed. Most web publishing services these days have RSS built in as standard. If you've got an RSS feed and I want to know when you've updated, I've already subscribed to it. If I haven't, then I don't, and you endlessly publishing links to your most recent blog output - constantly pushing your links at me - looks ...
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12.02.07At the risk of turning this into a rantblog, a pet hateIt's late and dark and chilly, and I'm waiting on the street for a vacant cab to come along. The pub doors open and a small, jovial huddle pours out onto the street, and assumes a position on the kerb, half a block downstream of me. They similarly scour the oncoming traffic for an orange light. After a minute or so of unsuccessfully flagging occupied cabs and seeing nothing of use, one of the group spots me, whispers to the others and then, en masse, the shuffle past me, nonchalantly, to casually take a kerbside position a respectable distance - ...
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10.28.07When I am queen of the world, all of these things will be punishable by a spell in the stocks, where I and many others will throw rocks and possibly also fecal matter. I’m just saying.I've been madly busy the las few weeks, and while I'm percolating some posts about community and socialness and the like, I'm taking the time while Sunday dinner is cooking (mmm, roast lamb, and it smells FANTASTIC) to scribble a note on a current obsession of mine. I don't want to whinge, here, but in recent months I've noticed a growing number of people doing things that I had not realised were social norms, but apparently are completely fine, not only because the behaviour goes unchallenged, but because the perpetrations increase in frequency and obviousness as the days slide by. Worse ...
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10.17.07Things I don’t want to see you doing on the tubeClipping your nails (biting is just about bearable, but any activity which results in bits which were previously attached to your body suddenly arcing through the air towards me is a no-no) Picking your nose (especially if you subsequently eat/flick/wipe your boogers - see (1), above) Scratching your noggin (most especially when it causes a scurfy blizzard to erupt, which then settles in drifts on my clothing and alights on my nose and eyelashes) Picking your feet (including and especially if they're on the seat next to you and/or you're wearing flip-flops. There is never a right time to debride yourself in public.) Scratching ...
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03.12.07Future of Web Copyright?Now, I don't mean to whinge, really I don't, but I recently got a broadcast list mail from those nice people at FoWA, thanking me (and everyone else) for attending the recent conference in London. At the bottom of the mail was a little montage of pictures of the event, which I've screengrabbed and reproduced below: I couldn't help but notice that the montage contained an image which I took - the one in the bottom right hand corner, which can also be seen on my Flickr stream, here: When I uploaded the image to Flickr, I tagged it (as requested) with the ...
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02.02.07Memos to fellow travellersTo the two PR bints in the row behind me on the flight to Dublin: I had no idea that it was possible to have a forty minute conversation about the layout and furniture of your new office, but you have demonstrated ably that it is. Congratulations. To the woman with the loud and irritating voice on the flight from Dublin on Wenesday: You know how you were saying to your friend that you need quiet and you can't concentrate if it's too noisy? Well, me too. Shut up. To the businessman in the shiny suit and smeary specs on the flight ...
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01.17.07On Rampant TosspottageThese rules & laws of the road do not apply to you, because apparently you are somehow exempt, or have exempted yourself: Parking in only one parking bayYou have a giant car. We know. You are probably also a bad driver, because having an SUV or other 4x4 in London is usually a sign that you are hoping bulk and power will compensate for your nerves and deficiencies behind the wheel. Perhaps you also thought it was a status-symbol. Perhaps you thought your massive truck would demonstrate how much you want to protect your little posh-named offspring. But still, wantonly parking ...
recent posts
- Lovely idea
- Things I might write about at some point, but not now
- Back from over there
- A Life in Pictures
- The sound of silence
- Here it goes again
- As You Like It
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