Take off your pyjamas

I did make cauliflower cheese, using raw materials, and it was nice, but it wasn't like a shared dinner. Anyway, I'm fed I should get my computer back this weekend, which is good because I'm feed up with dragging my laptop backwards and forwards to work. The man in the computer shop actually called me today because he's fed up with waiting for me to show up with the money I think. Anyway, a Devon visit is scheduled for Saturday. That said, more snow is apparently forecast, so I'm hoping it isn't going to be an issue.

I'm utterly fed up with being on my own. You know, every time the dragon takes the boy away to Taiwan, I look forward to a bit of time on my own. I think to myself, I can watch tv in my underwear, drinking beer and farting. But that feeling only lasts about 24 hours. After that I wish they were home. TheCurrently worst thing is dinner. We always eat dinner together at the table. I have to eat on my own. And it's not worth cooking anything just for oneself. Actually, last night up and I want my family back.

I should point out that Adel-a-drie forecast this some time ago in a note. By the way Adel, I've been paid so I didn't resort to prostituting myself on the street, though as you rightly point out, it would have been the ideal time since I was on my own.

Did you see Lord Goldsmith talking cobblers yesterday at the Iraq inquiry? I must say I thought he would take much more of an Alastair Campbell approach and tell us in no uncertain terms that he stood by everything he said. But he didn't. He was really quite meek. He admitted that until the eve of the war he was uncertain about its legality. He didn't even claim that it was an open and shut case now. He says it can be looked at in different ways.

Tomorrow Tony Blair the bastard is going to be grilled. I'm expecting an anti-climax, but who knows.

How come Pete Doherty has escaped jail again? He actually managed to drop a wrap of heroin in court while appearing for another offence.

HE ACTUALLY WALKED INTO COURT WITH A POCKET FULL OF CLASS-A DRUGS!

He seems to have escaped with a fine. There's something wrong here when Doherty escapes with a fine, and the guy who slugged an armed burglar with a cricket bat after his family was tied up, terrorised and humiliated by him, was sent to jail!

These people are pond-slime from the shallow end of the gene pool! What can you do?

Anyway, Doherty seems to be in the news again today because a friend of his has managed to kill herself with a drugs overdose in another of his friends' home. Astounding isn't it that the guy can't stay away from drugs even when his whole life is turning to crap because of them.

The interesting quirky story of the day is that a Tesco supermarket in Cardiff has requested that customers refrain from shopping in pyjamas and without footwear. I can't understand why this is news. I don't ever remember seeing anyone walking round a supermarket in pyjamas. It has been popping up all day in the news however and it's an issue that really appears to be dividing the community. My own thoughts, I don't care whether people shop in pyjamas, day wear, wet suits, or completely naked. In fact naked might be fun.

I broke the teapot and I want to be an astronaut

I get irritated by academics that talk tripe. Lord Rees, chief astronomer, is in the news today for making the following earth-shattering comments:

"The chance of discovering life on other worlds is greater than ever."
Not really surprising sine we get better and more experienced at astronomy every day.

"such a discovery would be a moment which would change humanity."
Err, yes it would.

"It would change our view of ourselves and our place in the cosmos."
Profound.

"I suspect there could be life and intelligence out there in forms that we can't conceive."
How did he get to be chief astronaut?

"And there could, of course, be forms of intelligence beyond human capacity, beyond as much as we are beyond a chimpanzee"

You haven't made a single intelligent comment in this whole article. How much are you paid out of the public purse? I want to be chief astronomer.

It seems that the youth of London will be offered ID cards from next month. Apparently the cards can be used in place of passports when travelling in Europe and can be used as proof of identity when buying age-restricted goods. Odd that they chose to describe these benefits in their marketing spiel. I thought ID cards were essential in the fight against terrorism and identity fraud. ID cards were rolled out in Manchester and the north west late last year. The government hoped that they would be popular but we haven't heard much about it. That's because they have not been popular. So far, around 2,700 have been issued. Greater Manchester alone has a population of around 2.5 million. So, that would be around 0.1% take up then, awesome.

I'm broke, due to huge levels of expenditure in the last two months. I still have to find money to get my PC back and pay car tax. I do however get paid today, so prostituting myself on the streets of Swindon has been averted for another month.

In other news, I dropped the lid of the teapot on the kitchen floor and broke it yesterday. But on a more positive note, I got around to installing an extractor fan in the bathroom. I was super-clever about it because I ran the flue up the old kitchen chimney. No need to knock a hole in anything! Sadly, it currently only works when the light is turned off, which I admit is not ideal. I'll fix that though.

People make better music when they do it for love

Last night I made some delicious sandwiches to bring to work today. Today I am at work and the sandwiches are in the fridge, being delicious. I hate when that happens. I even made them out of nice bread that I sliced myself with a bread knife. I need looking after. I miss my wife.

Tomorrow I'm being visited by the plasterer. See how close to completion the new bedroom in the sky is. Still no stairs. I'm hoping that will happen next week. No door either actually, but there is a window now so we can look in on the little boy sleeping without going in. How cool is that? It was my idea.

I'm going to rant about the music industry:

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), online piracy "destroys local music". A case in point is apparently Spain. Spain "does not have laws in place to prevent illegal downloads", we are told. That's an odd phrase isn't it. Surely if they have no "laws in place to prevent illegal downloads", then downloads aren't "illegal". That is perhaps a matter of semantics. The point the IFPI is trying to make is that there is nothing to stop file sharing, and as a result local album sales have gone down 65% in five years.

Music sales are of course notoriously changeable, always have been. Also, file sharing didn't just spring up five years ago. It's been around much longer and it's not as popular now as it was five years ago. Music has always been shared anyway. When I was at collage we shared our music on cassette tape and played it on our walkmans. I found my Sony walkman when I was clearing out the loft recently. And, call me cynical, but why do they only mention "album" sales by "local artists". I don't suppose you have conveniently omitted to mention that other music hasn't suffered a fall in sales have you?

All this is beside the point anyway. The part I'm really interested in is this idea that music sharing "destroys local music". I'm not sure exactly what "local" means here, but lets ignore that for the moment and analyse their rhetoric. The IFPI has said that countries like Spain run the risk of becoming a "cultural desert". Hang on a minute, is the entertainment industry actually suggesting that it is responsible for our cultural sustainability? Think about it for a moment, the industry that manufactured such cultural giants as the Spice Girls, Boyzone, Girls Aloud, and Brittany Spears, are claiming we will lose these icons of modern art. Oh how awful! Don't get me wrong, these performers have a place, but cultural landmarks on the road to artistic excellence they are not.

Of course the industry will argue that they are talking about, not cultural giants like Brittany, but traditional music. I however find it difficult to imagine people downloading "Bouzouki Island Favourites" and "Castanet Party Classics" on their X-Box. It couldn't be that castanets and bouzouki classics sales are dipping due to them falling out of fashion could it?

Of course, the real point here is much simpler. It doesn't matter what the entertainment industry believes or tells us, music will never stop being produced. One could argue that less money will be made from selling music if people are allowed to share it freely. That is of course the only real concern the music industry has. Despite claims to the contrary, they really don't care whether Spain becomes a "cultural desert" or not. They only care how much money they can squeeze out of that desert.

The fact is people will always make music, even if no one wants to pay them for it. That's the thing about music you see, people do it for fun because, well because it's fun. And the really important point is this; people who make music because they want to make music, and not because they want to be rich or famous, make better music.

Tallulah Gosh

My office is trying to ban recreational web surfing. I can understand it, but I think they're going to start blocking sites, which is going to be a severe pain in my arse. Nothing I can do about it. Well, I suppose I could look for another job. Doesn't seem very sensible though does it.

I went to Devon for the weekend. I'm still alone, so I managed to get out of the house by 9am, drive there in under two hours, and listen to Elmore James and John Lee Hooker on the way. The journey back was just as efficient, but I listened to Tallulah Gosh instead. I found the CD in the cabinet. I'd almost forgotten about Tallulah Gosh. Great band from my student days. I think I'll choose a Tallulah Gosh track when I get invited onto Desert Island Disks.

My great achievement over this weekend was making mother's PC work better. I added an ADSL filter, and removed Norton Security centre, or whatever the hell it's called; result, the thing runs about 100% better. I replaced Norton with Avast, which not only appears to work very well, it's free. Even managed a video call to the boy and the dragon on the other side of the world. They're fine by the way.

I dropped my own PC off with the PC repair man on Saturday. It's been sick for a long time with a hardware fault. I thought it was a video card problem, but it turns out my diagnosis was utterly wrong. It was freezing and not booting up properly for months. Then last week it began failing half way through boot-up every time. Turns out the power supply is knackered. That should have been obvious really shouldn't it. Funny that I managed to dramatically improve one PC this weekend, and completely miss the problem with another. I'm not a techie, I'm an artist dammit. Anyway, it looks like another trip to Devon at the weekend to pick the old PC up.

It's been snowing again this week. It hasn't settled and the forecast is for warmer weather at the end of the week. About bloody time.

The new bedroom in the sky is nearing completion. We now have a window and all the plaster boarding is just about complete. The plasterer is coming at the weekend. I'm quite looking forward to it. There are still no stairs, but the electrics work. There are lights and everything. I'm hoping it will be all done by the time we get back from Taiwan. It will be good to have a spare bedroom. It will be extremely good to be able to put away all the crap we have spread around the house that was previously dumped in the loft.

You know, there is almost nothing interesting to me in the news currently. I did see something about Air France charging fat people for two seats if their arse doesn't fit into a single one. I think it's got to be done. You can't have arses hanging out into the walkways, it's dangerous.

Also there is that YouTube video of the bob-sleigh woman bursting out of her suit, which is obviously quite fun, and vaguely erotic.

All in all however, I can't find much to ridicule in the world of current affairs. So here I will leave it until tomorrow.

EVA Air are the worst run airline in the world

It's been a stressful couple of days. The Dargon was booked on an EVA Air flight out of London on Tuesday evening to go to Taiwan. I worked from home that day so that I could drive her to the airport in the evening. However, by lunchtime on Tuesday we discovered that EVA had overbooked the flight and she couldn't get on it. It was lucky that I called them to confirm that she would need a child's meal for the boy. They told me they couldn't find her on the passenger list, so we went straight over to the travel shop to find out what was going on. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth before it was confirmed that EVA Air is indeed the worst run airline in the known world and is staffed by complete bastards.

Luckily our man at Flightlinker is nothing short of a hero. He found an alternative flight with Cathay the following morning at no extra cost. He even delivered the tickets to the door at 7pm, checked them in, and supplied sweets for the journey for the boy. Thanks buddy, you are the best.

However, at 6am yesterday we awoke to find a fresh 10cm of snow. I wasn't sure I could get them there by car. I wasn't sure the flight would leave, and since it was still snowing, I wasn't sure I would be able to get home. I figured however that a string of bad luck can't last forever and decided to give it a go.

I was wrong about the string of bad luck. As I was loading up the car I managed to drop my keys in the snow and lose them. Ten minutes searching in the half light did not turn them up, so I made a management decision; leave the keys where they are, look for them when I get back and use the dragon's set for now. I reasoned that nobody else was likely to find them if I couldn't. It was still snowing after all.

So, after a particularly frightening drive into London that took about twice as long as usual, I got them to the airport, confirmed that the plane would take off, checked their bags back in, said my goodbyes, and got the hell out of Dodge in the hope that I could still get back.

My original idea was to go to the office rather than return home. But the missing keys and the continuing snow conspired to force a change in my plan. So I arrived home, still relatively early and, you'll be pleased to know, after about ten minutes logical searching with a dustpan and brush, I recovered my buried keys from the road - hoorah! I then settled down to a manic day of work from home.

So, long one short, I'm on my own in England, and the Dragon and the Boy are in Taipei.

Sex Robots and Self Defence

I have two things I want to talk about today; sex robots and self defence. I think we'll go with the sex robot first shall we:

According to the Daily Telegraph, the world's first sex robot has been developed and was unveiled at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas at the weekend. Almost every line of this article is hysterical, but I think I'm going to pick a few of my favourites to comment on and then sum up at the end:

"The dark-haired, negligee-clad, life-size robotic girlfriend comes complete with artificial intelligence and flesh-like synthetic skin."
I'm concerned about the "flesh-like" synthetic skin. Presumably the negligee is removable.

"Aspiring partners can customise her features, including race, hair colour and breast size."
So it comes with spray paint, wigs, and a foot pump?

"Coming with a laptop, the doll, priced between US$7,000 (£4,350) to US$9,000 (£5,993)."
Look, I'm not advocating the use of ladies of the night, but £5k will buy you a lot of time with the street walkers in my town, and you wouldn't need to pump their tits up first.

I think the most startling thing about this product is the attitude of the inventor, one Douglas Hines. The robot is apparently equipped with five personalities and is able to converse about football. Hines explains that, "She can't vacuum, she can't cook but she can do almost anything else if you know what I mean,” Gives you an insight into the personality of Mr Hines doesn't it.

I'm still thinking about this. I think I'm going to be coming back to this one in the next few posts. Read the whole article. It's worth it, really.

OK, self defence:

It seems that Myleene Klass has been admonished by the police for waving a kitchen knife at youths who were trying to break into her garden shed.

I think I need to mention here that I have a thing for Myleene. I mean, I wouldn't be unfaithful, don't get me wrong, but if she came rushing towards me naked, waving her knickers in the air yelling, "take me big boy , I'm yours", I would have to think about it for a moment or two. Chances are probably slim however. What was I saying? Oh yeah...

It seems that she saw some thugs breaking into her shed through the kitchen window, grabbed a knife and banged the window. So lets be quite clear about this, there was a sheet of glass between Myleene and the thugs. The police however apparently advised that carrying an "offensive weapon" – even in her own home – was illegal. I'll have to remember that next time I am chopping vegetables. Incidentally, what is an "offensive weapon" exactly? I could kill someone with a piano if I dropped it on them.

Another example of how the British police are more interested in criminals' rights than victims'. To be fair, the police are now saying that they never gave any official warnings or advice to Myleene over the incident. Makes you wonder why Myleene thinks they did though doesn't it?

OK, on to mundane things. Can everyone please say a quiet prayer to whichever god they bow to in an effort to prevent any more snow falling between now and 9pm tomorrow (UK time) because I have to drive the boy and the dragon to Heathrow and their flight is scheduled to leave at 9.30 or something. It would be very inconvenient if the flight was delayed or cancelled.

Here's to you Mrs Robinson

I decided to drive to the office today despite the sonw. I don't know why because there appears to be only one other person here. We do make an awful fuss about snow in this country. It's really not that bad. The only problem was the carpark. It was untreated and covered in about 20cm of snow. Brakes didn't work very well. I still managed to get parked up though. There was no risk of hitting anyone, since everyone had decided to stay at home.

I was somewhat startled by an alien light on the dashboard when I started the car this morning. It glowed yellow and said "LO". Yellow lights are of course less frightening than red ones in general, and I was fairly confident that the car wasn't about to explode or anything, but I pulled over and had a flick through the manual anyway. I was expecting to find that I was low on water, oil, window washing fluid, or something. I even wondered whether it was objecting to the low temperature. It was none of those things however. I had the low ratio gearbox engaged - doh! I had been experimenting with with it yesterday in the snow and forgot to put the lever back to 'Normal'. Felt a bit silly. Probably best not to attempt motorway driving in low ratio made anyway.

The boy is all set to get his pig flu vaccination this afternoon. He's going away to Taiwan next week. I mentioned this already didn't I.

Above was written yesterday and never finished. You'll be pleased to know that the boy had his pig flu vaccination and didn't make a fuss about the needle - that's my boy! He was worried about going to the doctor when we told him, but it turned out he remembered me having the knee surgery a couple of months ago and thought he would have a big bandage on hius leg and a walking stick.

I made it to work again to day, but I'm beginning to wonder if it was a good idea since the snow is coming down again. We were intending to go down to Devon this weekend to see mother, but I just spoke to her on the phone and she says no one can get to her without a tractor, and we don't have a tractor. They had about a foot of snow in the west country this week.

I heard this morning on tv a climate scientist desperately trying to explain that climate and weather are different, therefore a cold winter still means global warming. What he was trying to say was that you can't claim a trend is interrupted when one incident makes it look wrong. I agree, but ironically I've been saying this for years every time I hear a climate scientist try and justify global warming with claims about the hot summers.

Harriet Harmen has pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention. She was fined £350 plus costs. It was claimed that she was driving while using a mobile phone, hit another car, and left the scene without giving her details. Somehow she seems to have escaped being charged with the mobile phone offence, or leaving the scene of an accident.

Why is Jonathan Ross newsworthy?

I see that there is new scientific evidence to suggest that mobile phone use can help alzheimers sufferers. Research carried out on mice with alzheimers seems to suggest that exposure to mobile phone radiation can protect against the condition and even reverse the effects. I love the idea of scientists working with senile mice. I have visions of them waiting by mouse holes for a mouse to emerge and then look like he forgot what he came out for. Sadly however the mice were actually genetically altered to give them the condition, which is much less amusing.

I see that the wife of the Northern Ireland First Minister is in all sorts of trouble after admitting an affair, and some irregular financial dealings. The story is incredibly dull and I really don't care, except that this 59 year old woman was having an affair with a 19 year old man, and she's called Mrs Robinson. That should have been a gift for every headline writer in the world. Why has no one picked it up? Also, on balance, despite the fact that she seems to have done some pretty shady things, she still has some credibility as far as I'm concerned because she was sleeping with someone 40 years her junior, yeah go Mrs Robinson.

Dead Hardware

Happy new year to everyone. I haven't written here since before Christmas due to a full schedule that involved trips to Cambridgeshire (it was knee deep in snow), and Devon (it was Christmas). Also our primary computer has finally passed away after a long illness. I'm currently investigating what to do about a replacement, but until such time as I get around to actually doing something about it, we're working on laptop power.

Christmas was pretty good for us, though busy. We journeyed down to Devon on Christmas eve and rendezvoused with Mother and my brother. I'd upload some pictures, but I have no ftp software on this laptop and honestly, it's probably better if I keep personal pictures off my work machine anyway. I think the Dragon may upload a few videos to her YouTube channel. It's in Chinese, but who needs to be able to translate to see a few movies. I think I may have gained a little weight over the festive season. I really have to do something this year about getting into shape. I'm not making a resolution, I'm just saying. I look like a walrus. I don't smell of fish though.

I've decided to make a few predictions for 2010. If psychics can do it then so can I. I wonder if I thought about doing this last year. I should check back and have a look. Anyway, here are my predictions for 2010. The plan is to revisit in 2011 and see how well I did.:

Deaths:
Amy Winehouse
Pete Doherty
Nick Griffin (I hope)
Duke of Edinburgh

Politics:
General election in UK on 25th March or 6th May. Conservatives win with a landslide. Brown retires from politics and goes into teaching.

Science:
Major physics breakthrough mid 2010.
Further doubt cast over global warming data not fitting the publicly accepted conclusions.

Natural disasters:
Typhoon in Taiwan in summer months.
Earthquakes in Japan.

There's more, I just haven't thought of it yet.

The world's tallest building has just opened in Dubai and it's 800m tall. Sorry, but that is just taking the piss. It takes about 5 minutes just to walk 800m in a straight line! That's about 300m taller than the previous record holder in Taipei. That's a Taipei 101 with an Eiffel tower on top of it. I'm all for impressive architecture, but that is just too tall. It can't be safe. I wonder how far down it goes under the ground.

Talking of ridiculous, how's this for you; I called my doctor last week because the dragon is going to take the boy to Taiwan for a month and we wanted to get him immunised against swine flu before he goes. The receptionist told me that they weren't taking appointments yet and to ring back the following week. So I rang back yesterday, the first day of the following week, explained the situation again and was told, "there are no appointments available, you left it too late". I had one of those moments where I put the phone down and then wished I'd shouted at the dozy cow.

The whole absurdity of the situation hit me like a wrecking ball about 10 seconds after the conversation ended, "they told me last week it was too early to make an appointment and they told me this week that I'd left it too late!" Angry doesn't come very naturally to me, but I realised I should be, so I called them straight back and demanded to speak to the practice manager. Rather disappointingly she was not available, but I took a name and resolved to call her the following day and be angry with her. Again, rather disappointingly, after working myself up for a fight, she was very apologetic today when I spoke to her and in fact offered me an appointment on Thursday. So the boy is getting stabbed with a needle on Wednesday.

So, from mid January I will be left alone as my wife takes the boy to Taiwan. That means I can eat things that they don't like. Yesterday I bought two packs of diced game to put in the freezer. It was on offer at Tesco. The dragon actually liked it until she found out that game could include rabbits and deer. Anyway, I have two weeks to eat this stuff before I go out there to join them.

I wonder whether they will have full body scanning machines at the airport by the time I fly. They have already confirmed that they are going to install them at Heathrow. As a right-thinking libertarian I am of course appalled by the prospect of these machines invading my privacy and assaulting my civil liberties. As a fun loving exhibitionist I can't wait to give them a go. Apparently they can see body piercing, which gives me the opportunity to remove it, or leave it in and see what happens. I'll let you know how that goes.

It's cold here in Blighty. It's hardly made it above freezing point for the last few days and there is snow on the ground in Swindon. More snow is promised today. I'm not a big fan of snow. The dragon likes it because it's a novelty for her. The boy likes it because he can chuck snowballs around. I see it simply as an accident waiting to happen.

My office has fresh fruit delivered every Monday and it's free to us headcounts. Today I have eaten two bananas already. I'm thinking about going for a satsuma. I'm still eating leftovers from Christmas for lunch. I had stilton and crackers today. We've finished the mince pies and cake now. I think we still have biscuits and chocolate left.

Going to leave it here because it's snowing and I want to go home.