Hello, by the way, to anyone who’s here from The Register. Hope you enjoy…
UPDATE: My website stats for March 2004 make rather interesting viewing. I had over 22000 hits on Wednesday March 31. Bloody hell! No threatening email from my lovely service provider…. yet!
The “leaking” of the headliners for this year’s Glastonbury does not bode well for a pleasant Thursday evening.
This latest announcement seems to be something of an odd move. This information must surely have come from someone close to the festival, and considering the extensive measures the organisers have tried to take to restrict ticket sales this year, I’m not sure what good it does to leak the lineup details. Surely this is just going to create a surge of interest (because if you didn’t remember that tickets go on sale in two days time, then you do now), overloading the inevitably ill-equipped hardware at aloud.com (which actually won’t even be selling you the tickets, given that their sales are all handled by way ahead).
Then again, the “official” announcement does appear on the NME’s website, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they were hoping for disaster over at rivals EMAP/Q (XFM are distinctly sniffy about the whole thing here, only saying that “various websites [are] claiming news of the official headliners”, and going on to list people who might be appearing based on “rumours, hearsay culled from band websites, fansites and some bloke off the street”).
Ah well, roll on Thursday evening then.
Neither of us could quite understand why we struggled to muster the energy to leave the house yesterday, scuppering our overoptimistic plans to attempt to watch the boat race live (if I couldn’t get to see the thing when I lived just up the road from it, or even when I worked at the RiverSoft office next to the Chiswick bridge in Mortlake, and therefore drank regularly at The Ship, the pub next to the finish line, then I was hardly likely to go and see it now I live on the other side of town, was I?) It was only towards the end of the day that I realised that it must have been jetlag, rather than any kind of inherent laziness on our part.
I’ve never quite understood why we change our clocks twice a year (sure, it’s great for one Sunday in the Autumn, when you get a whole precious extra hour of sleep, but then the bastards go and take it back in March). I seem to remember being told when I was little that it’s something to do with farmers in Scotland, but that never really made any sense to me–why can’t the farmers just get up an hour earlier or later? It’s not like you actually magically get some extra daylight: there’s still the same number of daylight hours each day. And if you just want to have your daylight in the evening, why do things by halves? Let’s switch to Moscow time (GMT + 3 hours) during an arbitrary period between March and September. It might be a bit dark in the morning, but think of those long, balmy, summer evenings.
We had another stab at the pub quiz at our local last night. Despite having to split up into two teams because the pub was so crowded, we still put in a respectable mid-table performance (and somehow Sal, Jim and I beat Rob, Claire and Martin by a couple of points in spite of their having apparently answered all the same questions correctly as us). Still, I think we’ll have to do some brushing up if we’re going to end up troubling the leading teams, not least in the team name department (Gadafi Duck and the Adnams Family were my two favourites out of the names used by other teams last night). But we’ll be back: consider my thinking cap well and truly on.
What’s twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?
I had a very interesting chat with a chirpy chap from my bank the other day. I actually think it might be the first time I have ever spoken to someone at my own branch, given that it was my dad who opened the account for me (when I was about 7) at the branch in Liverpool near where he worked at the time, and in these days of Internet banking and all that, I try to avoid any contact with them (especially as the staff usually turn out to be a bunch of idiots when I do need to talk to them).
Anyway, so this affable scouser phones me up out of the blue, and basically tries to sell me some money. Oh, I could have a graduate loan if I like, and a graduate mortgage, would I like one of those? I wasn’t particularly interested in buying any of their expensive money at the moment, but I was rather shocked at just how much they’d be prepared to lend me (but not as shocked as he said he was when I told him how much rent we have to pay in London). Gone are the days, it seems, when your mortgage was based on a multiple of your salary. Instead, my bank would apparently quite happily lend me over seven times my salary, on the basis of my ability to make the monthly payments. The initial monthly payments. On a variable rate mortgage. Funnily enough, when I asked whether that might not be just a tad short-sighted (interest rates being at an all-time historic low, and fairly certain to rise over the next few years), he didn’t really answer the question.
On my way to work this morning I noticed one of those new anti-terrorism posters on the tube. Unfortunately, I’m a little bit confused about the mixed message conveyed by the poster, which consists of a picture of a person on a tube looking at an unattended bag, and has the following text:
“Who owns this bag? Don’t touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff, or call 999”
So, if I’ve got this right, they don’t want us to do anything?
Why not? Why shouldn’t we check with other passengers? Wouldn’t calling 999 be a good idea (although admittedly difficult to do on most of the underground network)?
Or is this just a case of some idiot’s appalling grammar conveying the exact opposite of what was intended?
Sal and I watched 21 Grams on DVD last night. It’s quite good, actually (if you can get over the daftness of its central premise about 21 grams being “the weight of the soul”, which is, er, complete nonsense). Naomi Watts, as usual, is excellent, doing that believable emotional range thing she does in Mulholland Drive again, but Benicio Del Toro and Sean Penn also put in impressive performances. I give 21 Grams 18 grams of pseudo-scientific nonsense out of 21 grams of pseudo-scientific nonsense.
Well, it may have taken just over a month, but I was overjoyed to discover (thanks to Pete) last night that our efforts have paid off. At least until Google updates their index again, there can be no doubt what is the rudest pub in Islington:
http://www.google.com/search?q=rudest+pub+in+islington
(even better, it’s also http://www.google.com/search?q=rudest+pub)
As fantastic as this is, though, it doesn’t give me the greatest confidence in the future of everyone’s favourite search engine. As far as I know, there are only 3 websites googlebombing the website of the rudest pub in Islington. Surely it shouldn’t be that easy, should it? Just as Groucho Marx once famously stated that he didn’t want to join a club that would have him as a member, I’m not sure I want to trust the veracity of the search results generated by a search engine that can be manipulated so easily by me…
UPDATE: Ha! The Register reckons that Googlebombing a site using only 5 domains might be a record. Nothing of the sort. Clearly 3 websites is the figure to beat…
I suppose that some of you (hello Pete) might be wondering why the level of bloggage around these parts has dropped off a bit recently (and given that I still haven’t got around to setting up one of them thar RSS feeds, you’re probably getting increasingly frustratingly trigger-happy with the Refresh button).
So why the recent lack of new posts? I’m not sure, actually. I suppose it’s partly because I realised that a lot of my recent posts have been a bit on the ranting, negative side, and I had sort of resolved that I wouldn’t post again until I had something positive to talk about. Perhaps that explains why I haven’t posted anything for over a week. I could tell you all about my various battles with the incompetence of Islington council, who apparently aren’t very interested in helping us recycle, our landlord, who apparently isn’t very interested in doing anything, and the utility companies, who apparently aren’t very interested in charging us to receive their supplies.
But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll only talk about nice things. Well, for starters I went on a free holiday to Switzerland last weekend, our “company outing”, which was great. In a couple of weeks I’m going on a free day trip to Paris, also paid for by work.
Oh, and Spring seems to finally be on its way, judging by the appearance of a round shiny thing in the sky on my way to work, and my not really needing my coat.
Also, Glastonbury tickets go onsale the week after next, although in a bid to outwit ebay scammers, they’re apparently only available to nice people, who can send two character references via carrier pigeon to an address in Shepton and pay in coins (exact money only). Either that or it’s something to do with debit cards, cheques, and providing names for ticket holders. One or the other, I’m sure.
And, as if that’s not all, in a stroke of genius, the random play on my MP3 player just gave me the Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch, which segued rather wonderfully into Kevin Carter by The Manics, neatly followed up by There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths. And what could be happier than that?
My delight on Friday afternoon at receiving my Region 1 copies of Lost In Translation and Infernal Affairs, both of which are still in the cinema in the cultural backwater that is the UK, but out to buy elsewhere in the world, was slightly tempered by the discovery that the producers of both discs think they know best how their customers will want to watch their films. When I stick Lost In Translation into my DVD player, it isn’t Bill Murray’s sad, wrinkly face, Scarlett Johansson’s bottom, or in fact any part of Sofia Coppola’s picture-postcard-borderline-racist take on Japan that greets me, but SIX MINUTES of previews that you can’t skip. Well done, Focus pictures, because that’s just what I’ll want to watch every time I put the film on, isn’t it? Worse still, the oh-no-you-can’t-use-the-next-button-to-skip-this-sorry section on Infernal Affairs includes an advert for Sony (after much hassle, I discovered that you can actually get round this “feature” on both discs, by stopping them and pressing the menu button). But seriously, which film company idiot thought this would be a good idea?
The film’s quite good though: I give Lost In Translation 4 minutes of DVD-designated-must-watch content out of 6 minutes of DVD-designated-must-watch content (after Internet’s Diary).
