Year: 2003

Fun with maps: I found this exercise to be a very illuminating experience. Well worth a go.

Last year at Glastonbury I went to see the band Elbow perform. At one point they had the crowd sing something from one of the songs for their new album (just one line: “we still believe in love, so f*ck you”).

I was there.
I was singing as loud as I could (of course!)
I’ve just been to the Elbow website to register my name so that I can be credited on the sleeve…
I will be buying the album and scouring the small print for my name.

Marketing gimmick? Well, yes, probably, but I can live with it. (Er, yes, of course I’ll be buying the album…)

Announcement on the GNER train service returning to London Kings Cross at around 9pm last night (the train had been packed for the entire journey, with people standing in the vestibules at least from Newcastle):

“[Having apologise for the delay…] we’d also like to take this opportunity to apologise for the overcrowding to this service. This has been mainly due to there being too many passengers and not enough seats.”

Cue widespread laughter in the carriage.

And so it is finally here. After 2 1/4 years, almost to the day, my last day at work has finally arrived. It’s certainly been an eventful couple of years. [Hmm, well let’s see, there’s been the 5 rounds of redundancies that I somehow scraped through while holding onto my job (May 2001, August 2001, March 2002, August 2002 and December 2002); the acquisition of the company; the move from Richmond to Putney; oh, and of course a lot of beer.]

In all honesty, though, I can’t say that I’m sad to be going. It’s all very different working here now than it was when I joined. Sure, I arrived just as the party was winding down, so to speak, at the end of the boom, but there was still the occasional outbreak of optimism, a prevailing sense of fun about the place and a bit of cash floating around, for a while at least.

Now I really can’t wait to get going on my new work thing next week, after the obligatory session in the pub (or hopefully out the back of the pub if the weather keeps up) this evening and a nice quiet weekend away…

I don’t know what it is I like most about pub conversations. Maybe it’s the belligerence that sets in around the fourth pint and makes you convinced you are right, and makes you begin to formulate wild assertions with little in the way of fact to support your argument. Last night, I somehow got sucked into an ultimately pointless extended “discussion” with an Australian bloke in the pub about, of all things, copyright law. [Yes I know, but we did talk about football as well, though, so it’s ok.] He said you could claim copyright on an idea. I said that that’s rubbish; you can only copyright the expression of an idea (the book you have written, not the idea for the book you were thinking about writing). Turns out I was right after all (not that I would necessarily be writing about this incident if I hadn’t been, mind), but as I was basing my argument on something I read once, and only half remembered, and as I am not exactly a legal expert, I felt compelled to back down and let it pass around the point that the argument deteriorated to the level of:

Him: “Yes you can.”
Me: “No you can’t, that’s rubbish.”
Him: “Yes you can. Einstein copyrighted E=mc2 and that made him a lot of money. I have a Philosophy PhD; I know all about ideas.” [I am not making this up; he did actually say that.]

You see, it’s so much easier to settle an argument when you have the Internet to hand. If we’d been in the office I could have pointed to any one of a number of sites that explain the UK legal position on this (in particular, that link includes a bit that says: “You should also note that copyright does not protect ideas.”), or the Berne convention and it would have all been settled.

But then, things involving rational thought are much easier when you’re not pissed, aren’t they. Not that I’m bitter, you understand…

Nice implementation of the old George Bush speech creator thing. Sure, it’s been done before, but still entertaining…

Art, meet life. “US promises to take over control… of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk…”.

Why don’t you get your war on. There’s nothing more for me to say, really.

[Apart, perhaps, than to link to this article by Julian Barnes in the Guardian.]

Very interesting article from the Guardian about the whole ticket touts/ebay situation.

Getting into the festival mood this last weekend, I finally got round to looking at the videos from last year’s festivals (cheers Pete!). Managed to spot myself in the crowd on the BBC coverage a couple of times.

This is during The Doves’ “There Goes The Fear”. Fringe benefit of being tall, I guess (oh, and being able to see over other people’s heads is handy too).

Chaos on the trains this morning, for the first time in a while. I didn’t mind, of course, as it’s not like I had anywhere important to get to(!), and it was rather pleasant sitting out on the platform in the sun.

When I arrived at the station, the backlog of trains that had built up was causing the announcement system to go into overdrive. South West Trains introduced their Customer Information System about a year ago across my bit of the network. You know the sort of thing, those electronic boards that tell you when the next train is due, and an automated recorded announcement conveying the same information over the loudspeaker in a comforting generic English accent.

The system works fine when the trains are on time. Unfortunately, it’s not very good at predicting accurate delays when they aren’t. It gives out helpful information, like telling you that your train is expected 5 minutes ago. Also, and I think this is my favourite, when a train comes through your station but isn’t going to stop, the automated announcement over the speakers that you should “please stand clear [as] the next train is not due to stop at this station” quite often occurs after that train has passed through the station at high speed. I’ve often wondered if “South West Trains – Even The Announcements Are Late” might not be a good slogan for their advertising literature.

The other thing that always makes me smile is the fact that this computer system apologies to you when the trains are late. [“I am sorry to announce that the 07:30 service to London Waterloo is delayed by approximately 15 minutes. I am very sorry for the delay to your service.”] I mean, I’ve long suspected that all that “we’re very sorry for the delay to your service” stuff was a bit of a token gesture when it’s made by a human being, but when it’s a computer speaking, it is rather lacking as a gesture on the part of the train company (and, frankly, rather patronising. I’m an hour late for work? Well, the computer apologised to me, so that’s ok then…).

This morning, as I arrived at the station, I was greeted by continual automated loudspeaker announcements about the backlog of delayed trains. The recorded computer announcement was “extremely sorry for the severe delay” to one, but only “very sorry for the delay” to another. And the train I had been due to catch? Well, it was only “sorry for the delay” to that one. Somehow, I feel cheated. I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter, you know…

I suspect that Rob’s latest post is some kind of ironic joke in response to my post below… Then again, maybe he just hasn’t read this.