Carnival

Now the timing of this post is directly (I alledge) as a consequence of the subject matter it is about. Namely Notting Hill Carnival.

At the moment I am presently recovering from several 'bouts' in the toilet over the course of this evening that have left me feeling ill and distinctly awake, waiting for the next random event, if you know what I mean, to present itself. However, being in the position where I can't really move to much for fear of inducing further trouble I am left with two options. 1. Go to bed but now not at all spleepy and 2. play on the internet. I blame this on the chicken jerk I had from a stall whilst there.

Anyway, my present unhappy circumstances aside, here are some photos from the Carnival with commentry as appropriate.

Elenor and Claire before it got too busy.

Look how many people were there, and this was only one of many streets.

Funky white costumes.

Funky pink ones.

The random guy who lay down next to us when we were relaxing in a slightly quieter spot who subsequently began snoring very loudly.

All good fun, just a little unpset about the jerk chicken.

Interactive architecture

If you liked the LED throwies then you probably (like me) also think that interactive architecture is pretty cool too.

Ice

I went here on Friday night. Where you get given a silver hooded poncho with gloves and then go into the minus five degree bar where everything is made of ice and drink vodka cocktails in big glasses made of ice. Was very cool in both senses of the word.

Bookcrossing

So yesterday lunch time I found this at the bus stop near Ealing Common Tube station. Now in my internet travels I was aware of the bookcrossing phenomenon and was delighted to find a book that had just been released.


Basically the premise of bookcrossing is that you leave a book in a special bookcrossing bag on a train, bus stop, coffee shop or even bus stop etc. for someone to pick it up. The collector can look the book up on-line, leave a journal entry, read it and then release back into the world for the next person.

Kind of like a benevolent, literary act of randomness.

Minus one

Yeah, they ditched Pluto after all.

The umbrella incident

So yesterday afternoon in London it rained. And it rained properly. Constant rain from about 4pm to 7pm.

Now this was around the time I went to go home and catch my train. Thankfully I had my umbrella so wasn’t going to get wet. I walked one of the girls at work to the bus stop because she didn’t have an umbrella as I was being nice and not letting her get wet. Then I walked to the train station and waited for my train.

The first train was really super busy and I didn’t actually manage to get on it as it was that full. So I waited for the next train and successfully boarded that. This was also busy and I had to stand in the isle for the first few stops.

Now on account of standing and walking around in the rain, my umbrella was wet, and I mean seriously wet, it was soaked and I wanted to stash it somewhere in my bag so it wasn’t in the way and I could read my book. So I didn't soak my bag I shook the umbrella gently in the same direction of the isle I was standing in and quite low down so I didn’t splash anyone sitting down. This clearly didn’t work as an oldish man in a stuffy tweed jacket scowled at me so mouthed a sorry, stopped shaking my umbrella and mused on what to do with it.

Anyhow, meanwhile, the train did its pre-moving engine roar so I turned around to hold on to the seat in front of me as I was facing backwards at this point. I turned round via the direction of the guy in the tweed jacket I had just lightly splashed and as I moved past him my umbrella for no apparent reason issued forth a little stream of water, a little unbroken spurt about a second long that made a perfect trail down this guys trousers. Totally randomly.

Now this was pretty funny. Not only had this guy visually chastised me already and I had said a quiet sorry, but this was like 20 times worse and the look he gave me was priceless. I mean where the hell had this little spurt of water come from? Anyhow I couldn’t face the guy, principally because I had a smirk on my face, so I turned around and looked down the train.

Now this is where it gets worse, the middle aged lady on the opposite side of the isle had watched this whole exchange and then caught my eye. She looked at me, smiled, I grinned back like an idiot and then we both burst into giggles in the middle of the train carriage, all of this made worse by the fact that we couldn’t let the guy with the wet pants catch us because he would be like so mad and also the rest of the train would think we were nuts too. Which made it all the funnier (this is known as commuter camaraderie and it doesn't happen very often).

And the moral of this post is that you can be a quiet menace on a crowded train to individuals because the consequences to you are minimal. But if the victim complained he would draw the most attention and thus embarrassment from the hundred or so other people in ear-shot and then he would be the troublemaker.

To P312 HBG

This guy pulled out in front of me and then proceeded to drive really slowly down Shoppenhangers Road earlier today. Thus being both rude for pulling out in front of me and then having the nerve to hold me (and others) up.

So I thought, I know, I will take a photo of this chump and put it on the internet so everyone from around the world (except maybe China) can know that this guy is an inconsiderate idiot who doesn't know how to drive.

Haha, take that P312 HBG man.

The curse of the blog

Over the past year nearly(!) that I have been doing this blog I have come across one particular thing that I call the blog curse. This is where I make a speculative post or a post about something I like and subsequently it all goes wrong.

Now let me show you what I am talking about.

I made this post about having got a new flat that I liked. I subsequently lost it and then ended up in this situation.

I made this post (which is by a wide margin the one most mentioned when I meet people) about oriental girls sitting next to me on the train and then oriental girls stopped getting on the train. Like literally, there are no oriental girls on the train any more.

I posted this about how my stats were improving and they subsequently fell through the floor.

I made this post about how traffic was getting on my nerves and then had to suffer commuting traffic which was even worse and have since been cursed on any car journey in excess of five miles by queues.

So now I am totally self conscious about posting stuff. I have a raft of draft posts about things that I want to go well, or about things I like but I am totally scared to publish them because of the blog curse. And that is like so dumb because I am generally about as superstitious as a vacuum cleaner.

Chez Bue

So, I like breaking the rules. Tonight I went to Chez Bue. Also known as She Bu. Also known as Shepherds Bush. See, its all about making it sound classy.

Dolphin game

This kept me entertained for around four minutes.

Plus three

So it looks like we are getting three extra planets. I was kinda hoping they would just ditch Pluto for being a bit pointless. I mean how are you going to explain to school kids how binary planets work? And where did Ceres come from? Its funny that this is such a hot issue, why does everyone seem to have an opinion on it (including me)?

A balanced and judiciously considered article debating the merits and dismerits of why all people on bikes are gaylords

Right, today I am moaning about bikes. All bikes, push bikes, pedal bikes, big, bikes, little bikes, mountain bikes, speed bikes, motor bikes, scooters, mopeds, harleys and choppers. They have one uniting theme. They get in the way and they are very irritating.

Walking down the road there are constant pedal bikes on the pavement swooshing past you or locked up to a lamppost. On the road there are pedal bikes in the road pootling along or motor bikes weaving through traffic making stupid loud noises. On the train there are bikes parked in the doors and getting in the way.

I hate bikes and I hate people who use bikes. Get out of the way.

Now I wouldn’t have a problem with bikes if it wasn’t for the people with the bikes without fail always being inconsiderate tossers. If you could just cycle it down the side of the road, not slowly and in the middle or on the pavement. Get a motor bike with a quiet engine and don’t insist on riding around like a cock and making a huge amount of noise at the weekend on your Kawasaki BJ5000 or whatever. And don’t rev your shitty little mini bike outside my flat, go and do that on your dirty Council estate, not in my nice tree lined cul-de-sac. And no you can’t put your bike on the train as equally as I don’t try to take a lawnmower on the train. Sure it would be nice to have it with me but its rather big and gets in everyones way. Trains are for people, you either cycle or catch the train, not both, if you don’t like that get a car. And next time you squeeze in front of me in traffic you know I might just not brake to avoid you as per usual and try and tip the bike from under you.

Right, rant over. And I don’t want any dirty pro-bike comments or anything that otherwise undermines me being 100% right about this.

How to drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway

So on my travels this weekend I got caught up in a massive queue (as I usually seem to whenever travelling more than five miles). The upgrade to the Handy Cross Roundabout junction with the A404 and M40 was causing massive queues which I entered just past the off ramp with Marlow.

Now it was pretty obvious this queue was huge and was not moving anywhere fast. I sat for about 90 seconds in the stationary traffic before a few cars ahead of me started doing U-turns on a dual carriageway. Yes that’s right, a U-turn on a dual carriageway and then started driving down the hard shoulder and driving the wrong way up the on ramp back into Marlow. Yes that’s right, up the ramp that has fast merging traffic coming down it onto the dual carriageway. My first thought was omg something is going to go very wrong here in a few short moments.

But then get this. I did it too.

Now why Nick did you think it was cool to drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway? Well some bright spark had noticed that the junction with Marlow was closed off. It had been coned off at the bottom and at the top. So there was no traffic coming down it and we could sneak out of a queue with impunity. Before I knew it everyone was doing it and filtering back onto local roads and around the queue. Genius. Saved me what I think would be about an hours worth of queuing judging by the slowness and size of the queue I saw today.

Also, advice for folks. Avoid the A404 on weekends for a while whilst they are upgrading the roundabout.

Rat man

Oh man this is funny. Like so funny. I mean a transgenic human-rat man, who comes up with this stuff?

The rules

1. That 'a quiet drink after work' is unlikely to remain quiet when it carries on to Soho
2. That flirting with lesbians is unlikely to get you anywhere
3. That the Circle Line sucks and you might as well have walked
4. That you should never run for (and subsequently board) the wrong express train home
5. That you should not do blog posts whilst still slightly drunk at 1am-ish

I have broken all these rules this evening.

Nick101 sponsored by YouTube

Like much of the rest of the internet, half of my outgoing links these days seem to be directed at YouTube and I am often disappointed if I am browsing through the front page Digg stories or Popular Del.icio.us if I don't get a video at some point.

I mean look, in addition to the video I stuck up on my previous post (about what? 30 minutes ago) I have found videos of some funny water trick thingy, how to take your clothes off in 7 seconds and the (supposedly) best card trick in the world and I have been making dinner and writing this blog post in that time too.

When did I slash the whole of the internet get so demanding with seeing video on the internet? I am sure it has only been the last month or so but now I almost feel I am getting short changed when I don't get video.

Picture kill

While I seem to be on the Israel versus Lebanon thing at the moment this is an interesting video of the story behind this massively photoshopped picture which made it into the mainstream media and was picked up upon by bloggers and small scale news agencies whilst the big boys seem to have tried to quietly brush it under the carpet upon realising the error.

And here is a link to a similar page with just pictures and commentary for those of you who can't look at videos because of slow connection or the IT dictators blocking YouTube.

Update: Ok the BBC have noted this but are making no denials or admisions as to using the footage.

Refugee camp

Oh man, those Israeli's have totally got their act together. An Israeli refugee camp (kinda via). There's also some other mildly interesting current photos of Israel on this photostream.

Unreported news

In case you hadn’t noticed Israel is bombing the crap out of Lebanon. I know I am repeating the obvious here but this came very recently after North Korea started throwing missiles into the Pacific and Iran started playing with nuclear weapons.

Now Iran and North Korea are known to have fairly strong links to each other and Hezbollah are known to have ties in Iran.

So I see it as no small coincidence that Hezbollah saw fit to cause a stir at an appropriate time and Israel was prompted to respond and media attention appears to have thus been diverted from the aforementioned Iran and North Korea.

Meanwhile what are Iran and North Korea up to? (I would like to stick a link to a news article here but I can't find one!)

And then the other day in London I was accosted by protesters against the Israeli assault on Lebanon who were, in effect, complaining about the British governments failure to intervene in the situation.

How come though, that these protestors failed to notice that nobody (including the UN) has intervened in the Ethiopians (albeit much milder) invasion of Somalia? Or that Somalia hasn’t had a government since 1992?

Demolition

Oooops. I don't think that was supposed to happen.

Ten dysfunctional modern styles of serving food and drink to be embraced by the modern world with varying levels of enthusiasm

Inspired by Bng's comments to this post, and done in the style of McSweeney's lists:

A bowl of coffee
A mug of curry
An urn of rice
A pipe of spaghetti
A plate of wine
A urinal of beer
A bottle of kebab meat chips and cheese
A towel of cranberry juice
A rotating helicopter blade of sushi
A deathstar of cucumber sandwiches

Stupid customer service

So my phone is on the blink and has started to cut out for no apparent reason. This seems to be because it has no charge left in it. Today it cut out at 2pm despite previously telling me it had a full charge and had been on the charger overnight and now it seems to be working again but who knows when it lies to me and bleeds a full battery into the sky?

So I rang the nice people at Orange and after pressing buttons on the (obviously not my mobile) phone for a robot lady for five minutes was asked for some reference number on the charger which I didn't have with me so had to end it and call back when I got home.

The robot lady again tells me that 'Orange are committed to excellent customer service' but you have to spend five minutes wading through the button pressing excercise to get in the queue to speak to a real person. I am then reminded that 'Orange are committed to providing excellent customer service but we're sorry that all our advisors our busy helping other customers at the moment however we expect to answer your call in *dzzt* 26 minutes' which I am paying for at mobile phone rates from my landline because my phone is broken.

Meanwhile the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead have, for the fourth time, sent me a letter saying that my bank has informed them that my direct debit instruction has failed and they were going to send me something called a payment book so I could go and pay my Council Tax on a Wednesday afternoon down at the post office at the same time I go to collect my pension (ok, so I made that last bit up). And the reason why the direct debit failed? Because they got the last two digits of my account number mixed up despite me sending it to them three times. Probably because some dyslexic, work shy, lazy, inept, work experience kid was too busy playing with solitaire to notice. So I sent them this email:

I have for the fourth time now received advice from you that my direct debit instruction has failed. This is because you mixed up the last two digits of my bank account number. All I am trying to do here is pay you my Council Tax (emphasis put into email).

And in the interim I have paid no Council Tax for the four and a half months I have lived here. What's to bet I get charged for the whole arrears in one go? They try that and Mr L G Ombudsman I am going to see.

And, if you think that's daft, a certain London Borough (without naming names, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) last month took two lots of Council Tax payments out of the entirity of the Borough's direct debit accounts. Naturally this was refunded pretty rapidly but that doesn't cover a large chunk of overdrawn and other punitave charges for residents.

Its all about the customer service you know.