Category: Uncategorized

To the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, last night, to see George’s cousin play live. You may be wondering how someone you’ve never heard of can sell out two nights at a 2,000 capacity venue, but he’s quite big in Australia, you see, and this is, after all, She Bu, the travellers’ enclave.

As we entered the venue, the woman in charge of giving the inside of each handbag the most cursory of glances was telling a young Aussie that, no, it was not possible for him to go outside for a smoke, or at least not if he wanted to get back in. It’s not normally “no smoking” in the Empire, and so as we pushed through to the bar to purchase a couple of pints of overpriced, watered down lager, we idly wondered if the man himself had made a special request. Sure enough, as we took up residence at a spot in the middle, we spotted the signs everywhere: “At the Artist’s Request, there is to be No Smoking tonight!”

“That’s Great!” said Sal, “I can wear these jeans again tomorrow!”

That said, most of the punters seemed to interpret this rule as applying only to cigarettes, and as Xavier took to the stage we were surrounded by a pleasing aroma of illicit substances.

The show was great, too. If they gave prizes out for being able to play several instruments at the same time, then Xav would be first in line: on most songs he seems to be playing about 5 different things at the same time, and it’s hard to believe that all those sounds are coming from just the one guy…

Photos, as always, are on Flickr:

Are there any scientists reading? Just wondering if anyone could clear up a bit of confusion on my part: what’s the official name for this bird flu thing?

The guy on the XFM breakfast news refers to it each morning as “the lethal H5N1 strain”, but I’ve noticed that the TV news last night and this morning’s indie went with “the deadly H5N1 strain”.

Which one’s right? Are these two different strains?

We need to be told.

Maybe it’s something in the water, but it’s not often you find yourself agreeing with both David Cameron and Gorgeous George in the same week.

I’m not sure why the whackos over at UKIP are bothered by Cameron’s statement. If I was them, I’d be putting that “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly” quote on the campaign posters, and it’s certainly given them a whole pile of unwarranted publicity just before the local elections. Apparently they are considering libel action, so presumably their case is going to be something along the lines of “look, we’re not a bunch of loony closet racists, we’re a bunch of crazy overt racists. Mr Cameron is clearly a fool who doesn’t understand politics (etc., etc.)”

[On the subject of racism, by the way, I noticed the other week that FIFA introduced a bunch of new anti-racism rules a couple of weeks ago, in a bid to get racism out of football: “Clubs now face being deducted three points for a first offence, six for a second and relegation for further offences.” Very honourable, and all, but hang on a minute, relegation for further offences? Isn’t that open to, well, abuse? Anyone up for hiring a bunch of skinheads and buying them tickets to a couple of games at Stamford Bridge? Wouldn’t it be funny if they spent all that money Roman stole off the people of Russia earned through legitimate business practices and ended up playing in the GM Vauxhall Conference…]

And well, yeah, we all knew that News International were committed to press freedom, but it’s nice to see them demonstrating it for us all. All of which leaves me in a difficult position. I know Galloway is this massive egotistical, self-aggrandising idiot, but just like ending up on the same side of an argument as Cameron, there’s something that feels so very wrong about supporting him. But, on the other hand, mmm, schadenfreude… it just feels so good.

And if you haven’t seen the picture of that cunning disguise, it’s here.
Celebrities: if this man starts asking you leading questions, don’t talk to him!

For a couple of weeks now we’ve been planning to go and watch this year’s boat race. I was rather excited about this prospect. Not because I have any particular interest in the outcome of the event–I’ve lived in London for over 5 years now, and I’ve never bothered to see it live before, even when I lived and worked in South West London (RiverSoft’s office in Mortlake was just down the road from the end of the course, and we’d often spend lunchtimes at The Old Ship, the pub by the finish line). No, I wanted to go simply because I thought it might mean I could do something about my pathetic lack of posting around these parts of late. In fact, I’d already mentally composed half a blog about being squeezed into an overcrowded riverside pub surrounded by horrible, braying toffs.

Sadly, thanks to a little overexuberance on Sal’s part last night, she’s been, ahem, slightly ill today, and we haven’t left the house. So, I’m left with something of a dilemma: do I (a) write the blog anyway, not mentioning that we never actually went, or (b) write about not being able to write about it, in a sub-Adaptation-stylee, demonstrating my own closed, pre-formed opinions in the process? Well, although I’m sure it doesn’t make for particularly enlightening reading, obviously I opted for (b).

We watched it on TV instead. I don’t think I saw the ITV coverage last year, so I was interested to see what they’ve done with it. Generally, their approach seems to be about throwing statistics at the problem, with the commentary alternating between inane statements of the obvious and utterly dull nuggets about past races, all the while accompanied by a selection of facts running across the bottom of the screen. Stats fans eager to keep up to date on stroke rates and the post war performance of teams passing Barnes Bridge would not have been disappointed.

And whichever bright spark at the production team decided that it would be a good idea to stick a microphone in the boat, I’m not sure what you thought the viewers would get out of it, but thank you for providing my personal highlight of the race, and single handedly justifying our decision to watch at home:

Commentator: …and let’s hear what the Oxford cox is saying to his rowers.
[Cut to audio and footage of Cox shouting out the stroke rate, and then…]
Cox: C’mon boys, let’s fucking do it.

Live TV. Classic.

As you may know, Sal and I take a lot of photos (in 2004, my folder of JPEGs tells me, we notched up about 1,000 shots–last year, it was somewhere closer to 2,000).

For a while now I’ve been uploading a selection on a fairly regular basis to my other webspace, but I’ve never been totally happy with this–I’ve only got 250MB to play with, for a start, so I could never put the original images up, always resized versions, and I found the gallery software to be a bit clunky, to say the least.

Anyway, to remedy this, I’ve been looking around for a new solution, and I’ve opted for Flickr. It’s not perfect, but it does most of the things I want it to do (including being another outlet for me to keep backups of my precious photos–or at least the important ones–in case my ageing laptop decides to stop working one of these days).

So, from now on, I’ll be posting photos to my new Flickr photo stream. There’s only photos back as far as the start of February at the moment, but I’ll gradually be uploading the last couple of years worth of photos over the next few weeks.

It’s got some nice little features:
– I quite like this calendar view, for example
– and you can subscribe to an RSS feed, if you like, to see new photos as I upload them
– of course it does slide shows

– and, best of all, it stores the full original images, so you can always click “All Sizes” above a picture, and then look at the “large” or “original” version.

…here’s some links to some things some other people wrote.

– In Pope/Catholic/bear/woods news, it turns out that Estate Agents (especially Foxtons Estate Agents) are lying, cheating, scumbags.

– Privacy-related bug in Firefox breaks up relationship.

– And you must surely have seen this by now. Would it be wrong of me to speculate whether this was ever actually genuinely posted on their site, or whether it’s just a clever bit of viral marketing?

I’ve been watching quite a bit of the Commonwealth Games. I mean, yeah, it’s slightly embarrassing to admit, because I know it’s a really pointless tournament, and most of the best athletes in the world aren’t actually taking part, but as it’s taking place in Sal’s home town, we’ve had the BBC coverage on quite a bit. Last night we watched a fair bit of the marathon, which had been designed to show off the city of Melbourne by winding its way through many of the parks, the city centre, and the likes of St Kilda, and the waterfront at South Melbourne, all of which I’d imagine is rather more interesting if you know the places (rather like I might watch the London marathon entirely for the minor joy of going “Oh Look! It’s Tooley Street! That’s Right By My Office!”).

At the end of the men’s race, the BBC commentators were anxiously awaiting the arrival into the MCG of the British runner, Dan Robinson, who was on course to finish in third place. They were rather surprised, then, to see another runner enter the stadium first, wearing the colours of Mauritius. Funnily enough, we’d noticed this chap too and wondered what he was doing. Perhaps he’d skipped a bit of the race?

Commentator: Er, I’m not quite sure what’s happening here. We’ve been watching this race from the start, and there’s no way that this guy can be in third place.
[Dan Robinson enters the stadium]
Commentator: And here is Dan Robinson…. And unless something has gone very wrong he’s on course for the bronze… We’re still trying to work out what’s happened…
[Pause. Cut back to footage Mauritian athlete.]

Commentator: Ah. That’s actually one of the women runners…

Sal I couldn’t stop laughing for about 5 minutes…

Being a responsible technical author type, who likes to keep up with the latest developments in the world of DocBook, the XML standard I use for my work, I subscribe to the DocBook mailing list.

According to the minutes of the most recent committee meeting, someone who sits in on the meetings is called “Sandi Castle”:

> —–Original Message—–
> From: Bob Stayton
> To: docbook@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: [docbook] DocBook Technical Committee Meeting Minutes: 15 March 2006
>
(snip)
>
> 1. Roll call
>
> Present: Steve Cogorno, Gary Cornelius, Paul Grosso, Mark Johnson, Dick Hamilton, Nancy Harrison, Scott Hudson, Gershon Joseph, Jirka Kosek, Larry Rowland, Bob Stayton, Norman Walsh
>
> Absent: Adam Di Carlo, Kay Ethier, Alex Povzner
>
> Observers: Sandi Castle

Fantastic…

We have a random switch in our flat.

It’s one of those switches with a red light on it, to indicate whether it’s on or off, as if it controls its own circuit, (like it’s something to do with the heating, or it turns an oven on or off, or something).

It’s by the door, but it doesn’t appear to control anything that is close to it, and if I switch it on and off it has no obvious immediate effect.

It’s been switched on since we moved in. Last night I switched it off, and I plan to leave it off until I work out what’s stopped working…

What can it be?

One of the more interesting events to occur during our brief stay in Melbourne took place on our final day there, when we went along to watch one of Sal’s good friends buying a house.

Generally the Aussies don’t go in for all that gazumping and gazundering nonsense that often happens when houses are bought and sold over here. Instead, they prefer to get the whole thing over with rather quickly–the majority of houses in Australia appear to be sold by public auction, which usually takes place out in the street just in front of the property. I’d seen this on Neighbours (and yes, Rob, you’re right, there is something worryingly fascinating about the “10 years ago today” bit on that website), but never in the flesh. So, when Sal’s friend Elise said that she was planning to take her first steps onto the property ladder courtesy of an apartment in leafy Ascot Vale, I was extremely excited about the prospect of going along to watch. (And try to resist the urge to scratch my nose / raise my hand / let my random number tourettes cause a scene in public).

It was a very sunny Saturday morning, and we turned up a few minutes earlier so we could have a look inside. Well, Sal and I did, at least–I’m not suggesting that Elise was planning to buy a property purely on the basis of a 5 minute viewing before the auction.

After we’d had a sufficient gawp, we headed back outside to take up a spot on the street under the shade of the trees, and watched as a chubby estate agent appeared and began ringing a big hand bell to announce the imminent event. Shortly afterwards, his younger, slicker, estate agent mate kicked things off with a few words to warm the crowd up, and a couple of gentle “one careful lady owner” style white lies about the property and its owners–he didn’t know that we knew that the girl who owned the place had been at the same school as Elise, making it rather unlikely that there was any truth at all to his claim that the vendor had lived there “for 10 years” and was “moving on to somewhere bigger” (we later found out that the actual reason for the sale was the fact that she had in fact split up with her boyfriend and they had to sell to pay off the mortgage; for some reason he didn’t mention that interesting snippet at any point during the auction).

But we were off. Well, the auction had started, at least, even if no one was ready to leap in with their bids just yet. (“Anyone want to start me off…? No, they never do, do they…”)

When the bids did come, the auctioneer did a sterling job of managing things, by making ever more ridiculous statements, implying that he was just about to sell and that this was your very “last chance” to get in with a new bid more times than I could count. He even went away with his mate “to talk to the vendor” at one point in a shameless attempt to drum up some tension.

But happily Sal’s friend managed to get her house in the end, thanks to some sterling bidding by her dad, who held off just long enough before putting in his first bid, and carried on strongly from that point onwards to make it look like they had all the room in the world in their budget, even though this wasn’t actually the case. Luckily, it was even less the case for one of the rival couples, who actually had to walk away before the end of the auction having clearly already gone beyond their limit, and not wanting to do something they might regret. After that, it looked like our friend might have it at just on her target, when right at the last second a guy at the back chipped in offering an extra $500–his sole bid of the day–and she had to go up again. Yeah, thanks for that mate, you just cost them $1500…