Category
Rants
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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 ...
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12.11.06Stop me from throwing my iMac out the window, someone, pleaseWith the caveat that this post is written in the middle of a frustrating session in which it feels like I'm trying to wade through treacle, let us continue: While I love the way my iMac a) looks b) handles music/movie files c) is whisper-quiet and d) takes up a fraction of the deskspace my old PC used to I must confess that at this moment in time I'm on the verge of flinging it against a wall, HARD. You see, I'm big into photography. I take loads. You may have spotted them over there on the right, in my ever-growing Flickr stream. For years, on my ...
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09.25.06Another week, another stamp in the passport…At the risk of turning this into a travel blog, I'm on the move again, this time over in Virginia, US, for a few days. Was on the plane with Ming the merciless, which was interesting - see the flunkies! See how they run! Look at them scurry! It's almost as if they thought he was important or something! Of course, he may well be, at some point, but his problem at the moment is that he's just some old bloke. Barely recognised him, to be honest. Watched two films - Richard E Grant's Wah-Wah and Over the Hedge. This is mostly ...
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08.24.06The Pillow Problem: an updateJust as a follow-up to last week's post about the uselessness of hotel pillows... Last night I spent another night in a hotel in Germany: another pillow debacle which left me fuming and sleepless with a marshmallow engulfing my head. Proof, as if proof were needed:
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08.15.06The Pillow ProblemI travel fairly frequently on business. I stay in a lot of hotels, in various European and North American locations. Most of them are pretty nice. They have: huge bathrooms and double kingsize beds in the room (why do they do that? I will never understand) and shoeshine services and concierges who call you ma'am and airconditioning which you can adjust yourself and whisper-quiet sound insulation and fluffy robes and powerful multi-nozzle showers (in case, presumably, your bum needs a shower all of its own) in wetrooms and decent shower gel and TV with 900 channels and spa pools and proper tea and doors which don't clunk shut and giant bathtubs and superfast in-room broadband. So, ...
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04.21.05The Art of ApproximationI've noticed a growing trend in everyday communication. We're gradually losing our precision, so that every shouted half of a mobile phone conversation I am subjected to overhear on the bus on the way to and from work is studded with a new word: sord’v (or its estuary cousin, sor'uv; or for those in Geordieland, soart'v). This lends the whole communication an air of approximation and uncertainty. Recent eavesdropped examples (not exagerated at all for effect): "I mean it's sord’v dumb that he should sord’v be all sord’v annoyed with her because she sord’v had a sord’v night out with the ...
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10.07.04DiddumsI realise that I'm writing about things in totally the wrong order, and I'll get around to writing about our holiday in Spain soon, but first, there's something more pressing on the agenda. Babies. Not mine, don't get all excited. Just babies in general - and some babies in particular. The thing is, I've just become an aunt. Although I technically became an aunt when P and I got married, my brother and sister-in-law just had a baby, which makes me a *real* aunt, and I'm very excited indeed. So yesterday lunchtime, after going mad in Mothercare (buying little socks and strange vibrating rabbits ...
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09.01.04SeetheToday, I spat out the word "...wanker" under my breath and/or in my head, in the direction of fourteen people. Several were on public transport. At least three were inside a building. One was on the end of a phone line. A couple were in the vicinity of cash registers (one in front, one behind). I also cried once: a dozen hot, silent, frustrated tears, into cupped hands in front of my face. I think this is my subconscious' way of telling me I need a holiday. Luckily, there's one just around the corner, in the form of a five day break ...
recent posts
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