Mongol Rally

So yesterday I went to see the launch of the Mongol Rally, an 8000 mile treck from London to Ulan Bator in Mongolia. With the twist being that you can't go in a car with an engine size in excess of 1 litre and should generally considered to be a bit crap. Here are some photos.







It was pretty fun as a bunch of crap cars lurched, hooting and spluttering, onto Park Lane causing traffic chaos.

And look, there's a whole bunch of other fun slash stupid quasi-organised adventures you can do too.

Heat Vision and Jack

I've been trying for months to find a copy of this (I should have known it would have been on YouTube). It stars Jack Black as the most intelligent man in the world and he goes around solving crimes on his talking motorbike which has the personality of his dead room mate. I can't believe they didn't make this into a full series (via). More info.

+1 afternoon

I went to lunch at work today not because I was hungry but because the fire alarm went off. When I got back from lunch the building was closed up and the power was out. And then everyone got sent home.

So we went down the pub.

Brilliant, there could not be a more fun time for the office to be closed down than on a Friday lunch time. And everyone was totally buzzing with having been given a free afternoon.

Rogue hole

A couple of weeks ago this hole appeared in the road outside my flat about 50 centimetres in width. Initially when I noticed it I ignored it as a normal hole in the road kind of thing. However a few days later as I was walking home from work I saw some kid regarding this hole and he stuck his leg in it. Not just his foot and part of his leg but his entire leg up to his thigh. This really gave me major flashbacks to Stephen Kings It when the kid sticks his arm down the drain and the scary clown thing grabs him and pulls him in.

Anyway I went over for a closer look and this hole was way deep. Seriously I couldn’t see the bottom. The thing is too that there were no paint markings round the hole or any warnings about it like you would expect with road works etc. especially when it is something quite so deep. It appeared randomly one day without any build up having previously been an unremarkable chunk of hardstanding.

Recently a metal plate and four funny little cones have appeared on and around it as if the Council has noticed it and decided it might be a nice idea eventually to do something about it.


Thing is, how did this hole get there? It wasn’t previously a patched up bit of road, just a normal bit of hardstanding which was actually in a decent condition. But now it has this funny narrow but super deep hole in it. So I am thinking how could it have got there and the only conclusion I could draw that it might have been a meteorite hit. Seriously how else could you account for a narrow but super deep rogue hole?

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is where people like stuff because it has human traits. If you think about it we apply anthropomorphism to a huge amount of things on all kinds of levels and we do it on a massive scale, often almost completely unconsciously.

We like fluffy bunnies and kittens because they have characteristics and features and behaviours which we can relate to like having a nose, eyes, a mouth and ears whereas insects and fish don’t receive the same treatment because they lack these characteristics.

And then we apply this to stuff we make too. Things like C3PO who has arms, legs, eyes, nose, mouth and ears. But he clearly isn’t human because he’s made of metal and painted gold.

And then we also apply this kind of thing to inanimate objects. One of my favourites is Eat Me dates. Ok, so its just a box with dates in it. But it has ‘eat me’ written on the front. The package is expressing to you that it is good to be eaten. What a bizarre thing to express. ‘Hi, I’m Nick, you should consume me because I taste yummy.’

Anyway, I came across the uncanny valley a while ago. This is chart that shows how amenable people are to things which have anthropomorphic tendencies. With things that have human traits but are clearly not human being delivering a positive emotional response and things that are very human also delivering a positive emotional response.

But then stuff that looks very nearly human but isn’t quite human delivers a negative emotional response. The uncanny valley. As illustrated in this graph which I stole off Wikipedia.

And its spot on. Think about it, things that we don’t like but have anthropomorphic tendencies deliver a negative emotional response. Things like, zombies, Darth Maul and (my particular favourite) the Sun Maid raisin lady.

Further reading.

Digger

Dig, dig, dig, dig. Fun little flash game I have been playing since, erm... half past six.

Hot desking

So two weeks ago I/we moved offices to our new ‘flexible working’ environment. Basically hot desking (albeit in rather smart new climate controlled offices).

I will admit that I was pretty nervous about how this was going to work and really feared that the whole thing would be nothing short of an abject disaster of unmitigated chaos and social strife.

However, whilst there have been some teething issues, for the most part I would class the whole thing as a broad success. It’s been funny watching and learning as people come in, pick a desk (a new one almost each day for me) and get on with work.

Mostly people sit with people they know and like or even don’t know but think they will like and then subtle shifts as other people who people generally don’t so much like the idea of move in and then move away or other people slowly gravitate to other areas. And a general theme seems to have developed of randomly having lunch with whoever you seem to have sat with, far too often in some nice café for longer than strictly necessary.

I know feedback from individuals who have been the sole hot-desker in an office has been relatively negative but when everyone is doing it, it seems to work really well and creates this hive of social frenzy and networking. Of course none of this is helping this situation.

And after only two weeks of this new arrangement I can’t imagine going back to having an assigned desk. I mean seriously, how dull is that? Wouldn’t you rather come in and choose to sit next to the hot girl in the office, or at the desk with the window seat, or at the desk which faces away from a close wall so you can surf the internet with impunity?

Ok, so there are drawbacks of having to unpack all your stuff onto your desk in the morning and clear your desk at the end of everyday but it keeps things tidy and enforces self organisation. And at it makes a pedestrian day at the office a little bit more fun.

Omg what is this atrocity

This, by a wide margin, is one of the most terrifyingly awful things I have ever seen.

Quick change

Uh, how do they do that?



And what's Piers Morgan doing there?

Want to feel small?

So this is you represented as a pixel in comparison to the population of the planet. And that planet is very small compared to some other stuff in the solar system and then you could fit the entire solar system into Antares.

Work/life

As you probably know I moved jobs earlier this year. The job I started was not the one I expected to be doing. As opposed to having a senior level, hands on position of dealing with major projects I have ended up in a quasi-team leader role, coordinating a variety of people on a large volume of minor projects.

This was not the job I signed up for but for some reason I seem to have ended up doing it.

Had I been told this is what I would be doing when I took the job I probably wouldn’t have taken it in the first place. However, I did and this is the situation I am now in and I am not too sure what to do about it.

On one hand I have a job I can do with my eyes closed, have a comfortable salary, pleasant commuting arrangements, a few interesting projects, flexible working and nice people to work with. Thing is I don’t find what I do particularly engaging. I know that at one time I found what I did at work engaging and have been struggling for a while to grasp at that again. Basically my current job supports, facilitates and indeed even forms part of a lifestyle I enjoy. However, career wise I don’t think it is taking me anywhere.

I can solve this quite easily by causing a fuss about my present position where I am at the moment or just ditching them for another employer (there are benefits of being in a massively undersubscribed professional field). However I don’t know if I should.

At the moment I am quite content. I turn up to work, complete some tasks, some interesting, some mundane, often have lunch at a café or restaurant, do some more work in the afternoon and then disappear off home at an entirely reasonable time with a mild buzz at having spent the day flirting with a selection of girls and feeling like the whole event was some kind of quasi-social, quasi-functional, quasi-academic exercise.

And that’s fine. But it’s not what I wanted when I applied for the job. I don’t know if it’s what I want now (well, except for the flirting thing which is cool).

I think my present job is a bit of an unintended dead end. But it’s a really comfortable dead end. Kind of like a cul-de-sac of air conditioned executive houses in the American mid-west. I don’t know if I should sit back and pull out my recliner of inane contentment or get out the Mustang and leave as fast as I possibly can in a smoke of rebellion against my comfortable existence.

Pyongyang effect

In case you didn't guess from this post, North Korea scares me a little. Especially now they are throwing missiles around.

Anyway, in a topical veign here's a nice website with all kinds of freaky photos of North Korea being generically scary (via).

The wedding

This weekend I had the honour of attending the wedding of my close friends Kate and Andrew or K8 and Bng as the internet would have you believe they are called. The whole day was excellent and brilliantly choreographed by all involved from the initial ceremony to the wedding breakfast, cutting the cake, the evening ceilidh and then slightly drunken deconstruction of the evening festivities.

Now a wedding is always going to be a great thing but this one had particular resonance for me as K8 and Bng are particularly close friends who I met at University some eight years ago now.

I met them both, as they met me, at around about the same time in my first year at University and followed their blossoming relationship from the very start when they ‘hooked up’ in the first year and went from then on. I have had the pleasure of living with both of them in several different places whilst I was at University and we got up to all kinds of activities including what I consider to be the singularly finest moment of taking our fourth year flat to red alert.

Anyway, so it was an absolute delight when I found out they were engaged and the wedding this weekend was pretty emotive for me and I know for a lot of other people too. I admit that I did nearly cry during the wedding ceremony but managed to control myself because of course guys don’t do that sort of thing.

So my congratulations to both Kate and Andrew on their wedding. I wish you all the best together.

So that you get the gist of what was going on here are a couple of photos from my cameraphone, not in the order of the highest quality of the photos taken that day by any stretch but I thought it would be nice to add a record on the blog.

Arrival of the bride.

Exchange of rings.

Signing the register.

The first dance.

A slightly later dance.

On the Tube

If you are anything like me you can probably get to pretty much any destination in London without too much trouble on the Tube. Thanks in no part to the brilliantly conceived Tube map, the construction of which is so delightfully easy to read.

I can count on one hand the number of times I have driven into London partly because of traffic and parking issues but also because the Tube map makes it so easy to work out where I am going and how to get there.

However, years and years of doing this has left me with a massively distorted image of how big central London actually is. I mean it’s big, don’t get me wrong but it’s not as huge as the Tube map makes it look.

It’s only been fairly recently that I have learnt that you don’t have to use the Tube to get around London. You can walk around too and all those individual attractions I have been going to and insisting on going into the nearest Tube station you can actually walk between. Stuff like walking between Leicester Square and Oxford Street or Covent Garden to Soho or Baker Street to Marylebone.

That’s why I really liked the Tube Journey Planner which really doesn’t plan your journey but just shows the Tube map overlaid on a regular map of London.

It’s just a shame they can’t add all those other extra bits of information like the Circle Line being the slowest train line in the world ever, the Northern Line being the most crowded and uncomfortable and the southern section of the Jubilee Line being the smoothest.

The girl

So it looks like the Girl is publishing a book. I wonder if I could get away with reading that on the train? Its not exactly got the most discrete cover. Of course the chance that I could actaully bump in to the author (Londoner) (although invariably not know) whilst reading makes it all the more interesting.

New sofa

After four years of having either a 'temporary sofa' (recently depsoited in the local tip) or having no sofa at all I think I have settled on getting this one.

There is only one draw back. It either fits but doesn't face the tv or it fits and faces the tv but I don't have a dining table, which rather essentially also supports my computer monitor.

So erm... I am going to Homebase now to get a decent tape measure so I can make a plan of my living room and do some lateral thinking.

Who sits next to you?

So I have been doing this commuting into London on the train thing for about three months now. Various things have struck me and I have got used to them over the time I have been using public transport. When I first started doing it the noise from other people, the train announcing tanoy-robot-lady (I can now recount every single train announcement) and the hassle of having to put up with everyone else really irritated me but I have got used to all that and kinda switch off to it.

However as time has gone on one particular thing has started to catch my interest more. Where people sit or, more specifically, who other people sit next to. Now obviously I am principally thinking of who sits next to me.

In the morning the train gets way crowded. At Maidenhead I always get a seat to myself because it is one of the first stops. However by the time it gets to Southall sometimes there is not room on the train for some folks there to actually get on (usually accompanied by banging on the windows and shouts of move down the isle). Anyway I usually have someone sitting next to me by Langley or West Drayton.

This is where it gets a bit odd.

This is totally unscientific but I would guess that by the time I get off the train at Ealing Broadway the demographics of the train population are around about 60% white, 30% Indian-Asian (although this is massively skewed by the Southall effect) and the remaining 10% being oriental or black. It’s around a 50:50 male to female ratio. The boarding of the various different ethnic origins is generally pretty consistent in terms of where they get on too with the exception of Southall (which is very busy and pretty much 100% Indian-Asian) So it’s a wide mix.

However, around about two to three days a week I end up having an oriental girl sitting next to me. And not the same one either, lots of different oriental girls, although I think a few times the same girl has sat next to me (but I am not sure as I usually stick my head in my book and keep it there). Now given the train demographics the chances of this happening at random so often are pretty slim. I mean like generally there is only one oriental girl per section of the train I am in and they are almost always sitting next to me. Furthermore, white guys never sit next to me but girls of all races do and Asian, black and oriental guys do.

So why do I end up with oriental girls next to me so often? When I get on the train on the way home I generally stand until a pair of seats become available that I can have to myself but if I had to pick someone to sit next to I would apply three tests as to whether I would sit next to them; in this order:

1. Is the person in question a hot girl? If so I would sit next to them.
2. Does the person look clean, quiet, normal, not fat and unlikely to invade my personal space. If so I would sit next to them.
3. Does the person look like they are going to get off at the next stop. If so I might sit next to them but probably wouldn't because that kind of thing is really difficult to thin-slice.

If neither of these options are available I would stand. So running my own thought processes on the oriental girls I must either look hot to oriental girls or look clean, quiet, normal, not fat and unlikely to invade personal space. Neither of which I consider to be bad things. But I really don’t know if this is their motivation. Perhaps my fellow passengers are all more unappealing to sit next to than me for other reasons. Perhaps, like me, oriental girls favour the south side of the train (for the morning sun) and forward travelling airline style seats like I do (but I would be surprised if many people had thought about train seating positions quite as much as I have).

My ego isn’t sufficiently big (but it’s a close thing) so as to be convinced that all oriental girls think I am hot. Nevertheless I can’t think of any other reasonably explicable reason why this situation occurs so often.

Regardless, the oriental girl sitting next to me phenomenon is not so objectionable. They are almost always quiet and don't invade my personal space which is about as good as I can reasonably ask of a seating partner.

Extortr

Like Flickr but with extortion. Extortr.

The staggering

This weekend I was on Bongo's stag weekend 'the staggering' in blackpool. Here's the photo of the T-shirt I have to prove it.

Here's Kieron, Dave and Owain Doug (oops) and a girl with bunny ears. We theorised that girls grow these if they go to too many slaggy nighclubs so they can hear better over the loud music.

No booze was consumed at all. Oh, ok maybe a bit.

Who's that weird short guy in background?

The hotel bar and Dave's tongue.

Saturday morning. Andrew and Chris sporting the requisite T-shirts.

Bongo considering jumping?

This was our curry house for Saturday evening. Around about an hour before the Police and (presumably) someone from the Council closed them down. That was reasuring seeing as we had finished our meal by that point.

Erm, a nightclub. Its not a very good photo because the UV lights were making Bongo glow but the statue in the back corner might hint at what sort of club it was.

This was my only photo from in the club (on account of it being sagely suggested to me that the management might not take so kindly to me taking photos of erm, some stuff). Well, except for this one. 'Strictley no touching.'

I told the bathroom attendant (where I took this) that they'd spelt it wrongly. He said they spelt it like that in Blackpool. I think I told him he was an idiot.

(And big kudos to Dave for sorting it all out).

Idiot builders

My flat development is presently getting an upgrade care of the management company. General repairs and repainting of external walls and windows etc. Anyhow the idiot builders doing the upgrade left signs like this on most of the front entrances recently:


Now, I have seen a lot of dumb signs but this has to be the most dumb sign of all time.

'Can all residents leave there doors and windows open on Monday.'

Yeah sure, I'll leave all my windows and doors open for a bunch of builders while I am at work. Having a giant advert to all and sundry that my doors and windows are going to be open all day really makes me want to join in even more.

It gets dumber (setting aside the 'there' and 'their' troubles they were clearly having). The photo above isn't of my entrance door because it fell off. Why? Because they stuck it on freshly painted and rather unadhesive door stain. I mean honestly.

Literature II

My train commuting lifestyle at the moment means that I am ploughing through literature at a rate of around about one book a fortnight. Here is some of the stuff that I have read recently and some thoughts about it without giving away too much about plot details:

Merde actually by Stephen Clarke. This is a book for the guys I think but that’s not to say that the girls won’t like it too. It’s a delightfully randy (without being literary porn) and a highly entertaining little jaunt around France. I thought it was great because the lead character ended up doing what I was screaming in my mind for him to do around a chapter later. This is my favourite recent read by quite a long way, not least because I could totally relate to the lead character. (You also might like to think of reading the prequel, A year in the merde before this though but as I read Merde actually without realising there was a prequel until after I had finished it I wouldn't say it was a definate prerequisite).

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka is not about tractors and isn’t set in the Ukraine. It’s a good book but unlike Merde actually I totally failed to relate to any of the characters making it slightly lacklustre, at least for me.

Past mortem by Ben Elton delivered the usual Ben Elton style fairly obvious plot developments but this time coupled with stomach wrenchingly gory scenes. I don’t recommend reading this on a fast train as the combination of blood, guts and gore and the slightly bumpy non-stop section between Hayes and Slough made me feel a little queasy at times. It was still a good read mind.

And yes ok, so I read the Da Vinci code. Yes it’s a bit trashy and the plot developments are pretty obvious and designed to make you feel smarter than the supposed experts that the book is about (sometimes they are way dumb though). But you need to read it before going to see the film and the conspiracy theories are quite engaging.

Blink by Malcom Gladwell isn’t a novel and it’s not a self help book. It’s about ‘thin-slicing,’ using your instincts as opposed to your ‘brain’ to work stuff out. A book about one of my favourite things, teaching you stuff you already know but didn’t realise you did.

I am presently reading Long way down by Nick Hornby which is shaping up to be an engagingly structured piece, albeit a little morbid.

Reblog

Right, it looks like after a little two week hiatus that the blog is back up and running again. So, why the break I have been asked.

Well, when I started this blog I made a commitment to myself to produce five posts a week. The reasons for this were two-fold. Firstly it was so that every weekday morning you visit the site and there would be new content. Secondly it was so I had a schedule to stick to so I would actually make consistent posts. This commitment I made to myself has resulted in posts of varying quality because of my self imposed rules. Rules that, for the most part, I have stuck to except when on holiday or disconnected.

A consequence of this was that every morning or evening I had stick something up. Now I like doing the blog but my self imposed rules were becoming difficult for me to manage. Up until around about March I operated the blog with a ‘buffer’ of around about five generic posts that I constructed in my spare moments. This was generally fairly non-time constrained stuff unrelated to me and gave you such highlights as LED throwies and the thing about how crazy those Japanese people are.

However, with new job, new flat, new lifestyle and generally being busier and having more on my plate these buffer posts started to dissolve and I used them up and ended up blogging on the fly. Occasionally this meant I was coming home from work on the train and thinking ‘omg I have to do a blog post now too in addition to… etc.’ which was really turning it a bit sour for me and hence the break.

But, that’s not to say that I don’t still like doing the blog. I am just amending the terms on which I do it.

I started thinking about how I can change stuff to suit me and experimented a bit with Nick102 but decided not to pursue that because, well, I didn’t like it really, it didn’t feel right. So after that bit of messing around I thought I would kill the blog all together but I can’t do that either. I couldn’t get through a day without thinking ‘hey that would be good in a blog post’ before realising that I wasn’t doing it any more.

Anyway the up-shot of all this is that I am re-opening the blog. Its up and running again but here’s the clinch. I am no longer making any commitment to five days a week posting. I don’t have the time to be consistent like that anymore. So some times you will get lots of posts, sometimes none, you’ll have to live with that, its all dependent on mood and time now.

Hiatus

I’ve been doing this blog thing for the past nine months or so with five posts a week pretty much consistently the entire time except when I have been on holiday or moved home.

Since I started it I have moved jobs, moved flats, changed a lot of other little things, made new friends and (nearly) learnt how to use public transport.

However I haven’t had a break from the blog in spite of all these other changes. So I am taking a break from doing it for a little while. I don’t know if this is the closing stages of the blog or just a brief break from it. I need to see how I feel about not doing it.

Boycott

Here are the things I want to know nothing about for the next month or so. I refuse to enter into any conversation about these things unless it is one that involves how mind numbingly dull and pointless they are:

Big Brother
The World Cup

Right I am off on holiday now so the next post will probably be the middle of next week.

Even more firefoxy

Look, portable firefox. You can install it on a USB flash drive and run it from any machine. Also you can install it on work computers where the .exe function has been disabled by the IT dictators (or at least I could).

I can now browse the web using firefox at work, following some tweaking of the proxy settings, which is way better than the clunky old version of IE I was forced to use up until I found this.

10 reasons why its great to be Nick

He lives in a really great town in south east England
He works in London (which is way cool)
He has a great flat (notwithstanding a few little issues)
He can eat whatever he likes and stays stick thin regardless
He knows that he is a bit of nerd and is cool with that
He knows that a genuine smile can devastate anyone (and needs to learn to use this tool more often)
He earns way more money than he thinks he deserves
He knows that everyone else is the most important thing in the whole world (but sometimes forgets this)
He thinks he has terrible taste in music but doesn’t care
He has loads of really great friends who read his blog (if you are reading this you are one of them)

Phone dump III

Like phone dump and phone dump II, more photos captured on my cameraphone over the last few months or so with some commentary.

Ooo, look, a portable bus stop. That’s got to come in handy right?

Nice extension. This has an enforcement notice attached to it. I mean, seriously who thought this was a good idea?

Ealing Broadway station late at night. Quite arty I thought (probably wrongly).

This is my new yellow t-shirt. Girls stare at my chest when I wear this which is funny.

This is one of my shots of the fire on Ealing Broadway that I thought I deleted by accident. I might as well have deleted it as it has all the drama of an episode of As Time Goes By.

These are my new little JBL Creature speakers. This is the right one.

This is the left one.

And this is the big-ass daddy sub-woofer. These are very good little speakers if you want a recommendation. They do not go super loud (but when do you want your pc to go super loud?) but are really high quality.

This is the Southall Gurdwara, the largest Gurdwara outside of India.

It is very impressive and very smart (although a little chavy with the gold lettering and those railings).

It is the Seek place of worship. I think this place is great, not least for its provision of wholesome, free, hot food to anyone. Yes, anyone, you don’t have to be a Seek (not like some homeless soup kitchen, its a social focus). And they give this with the only proviso that you respect their customs within its walls.

Camping

So I am going camping in Newquay next weekend. I haven’t been camping since circa 1994 and am a little unsure how I have ended up going camping again now. I am hoping that it has improved since I last went and am approaching it with as open a mind as I can possibly muster. Here is a list of questions I have about camping in the 21st century:

Where do I plug in my mobile phone charger?
Where do I plug in my internet cable?
Or is it all wifi enabled?
Where is the fridge kept?
How does the shower function work?
Where do I hang up my clothes?
Can you plug the kettle in the same place you plug the phone charger?
Do I not need to worry about the kettle because they bring coffee to you like in London?

I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer to all these questions is ‘no.’

New offices

In one months time I move offices. Up until now I have worked in a shabby 1960s relic which is wholly unfit for modern purposes. The building is ear marked for demolition at the end of this year so it (quite reasonably) has not been maintained recently. The result is a building with spalling concrete, failing lifts, boarded up broken windows, shabby carpets and a general demeanour of a building on its way out. The movers have been slowly emptying the place of furniture for the past month or so already.

The new building I am moving into is a very smart, high-tech, ultra-modern edifice replete with white stone internal corridors, brushed steel surrounds, dramatic expanses of glazing and cooling wall colours which change depending on whereabouts you are in the building. All of this is completely new, I slash we will be the first occupants of our area in this building. There are also a range of working arrangement options featuring quiet rooms, informal working spaces and lounge sitting areas complete with plasma screen TVs hung on the wall. And you don’t just go to the toilet here. You have a high-tech lavatorial experience.

So I am pretty excited about working somewhere which is really quite so blatantly cool.

However there is a drawback.

I don’t get my own desk. In fact nobody gets a desk. I get a wheelie cart and cupboard to keep my stuff in but my desk is whatever workstation I choose or can find in the morning. I am honestly not sure how this is going to work and am a little apprehensive about it. Time shall tell I guess.

Flow

Engaging little flash game. I keep burning my dinner because of this.

Urban village

So today I visited Grand Union Village. A sustainable urban village built at a high density along the waterfront to the canal. It features eco-homes, home-zone layouts, car sharing scheme, on site community facilities and all the other environmentally friendly inclusive buzz words you care to think of. I even got the reflective snappy arm bands to prove it (to promote safe walking and cycling).


It was pretty smart though, just a shame it's on the edge of Hayes, the most horrible place in the world.

Update:

So apparently the above photo is far too camp (thanks Mark). And given that I didn't exactly capture the fun snappyness of the arm bands and also caught some of my laundry in the photo here is a better one:

Induction

So today I was in day one of three of my corporate induction. Yes, that’s right, three days. Three days of ‘essential’ information three months into my commencement of employment.

Anyhow, it was more than a little dull so I kept myself entertained with a little bit of impromptu creativity. Here are some of my finer works.

Pie chart of Nick also featuring the time/dismay curve and the time/attention curve:


Introducing the Anthropomorphic-robo-enviro-crime-bot which features a rear mounted gatling gun, missle launcher and pooper scooper (inspired by one of the presentations on ‘enviro-crime’ whatever that may be):

Cyberman shopping list (will probably make more sense if you saw Dr Who this weekend):


Laxative
Self actualisation classes
Battlestar Galactica DVD box set
Slippers
Inflatable ‘water wings’ arm bands
Metal polisher and scouring pads
Moisturiser
Haribo Tang-tastics
Double glazing
Metropolis DVD
Leg warmers
Traditional hand crafted jewellery

On location

So last week I finally got access to the pool cars at work so on Friday I took one out for a spin. Having now been signed up for the scheme I find out that there are actually a selection of electric and regular vehicles available, not just electric cars like I previously thought.

Of the vehicles available to me are a 2005 Renault Clio, a 2004 Renault Clio and a 2005 Toyota Yaris in addition to the electric cars. Rather than mess around in some glorified milk-float I booked myself in for a session on the 2004 Clio (because it was available) and headed out into the world, having some fun trying out a new car.

To tease you a bit here is a picture of its tyre. Not too sure how I managed to both take and store this picture on my cameraphone without realising:

And here is a picture of the car in full glory:

And here is a picture of me (looking a little sunburnt, its tough having a job where you get to go hang out in the sun in shorts and a t-shirt) with the car:

For information the last two pictures were taken here:

This is a small flat development on the edge of the Haymills Estate, a 1920s and 30s housing area of a mixture of Arts and Crafts and Art Deco housing and flats just off the North Circular. It’s a pretty cool place as opposed to much of the rest of the areas I work in which can be anything from a bit scruffy to steaming turd holes. It is the second nicest place I get to go whilst at work.

This is the nicest:


This is Haven Green, just off The Broadway (and the car was stopped at traffic lights when I took this, says he to the ever growing 'don't drive and take pictures' lobby).

It’s a large, beautifully maintained green with mature trees and attractive buildings surrounding it. I get to walk across it every morning and always think something along the lines of ditching work for half an hour and going and getting a coffee and reading my book on the green, but never do. Its great, there’s loads of stuff going on around it but the central sections are sufficiently secluded to be peaceful but also open enough to be able to keep an eye on what is going on with the rest of the world. I sometimes come here at lunch.

Anyhow, the 2004 Clio performed pretty well. It was great catching the train to work, driving around using a new (to me) car I don’t have to pay for, then going down to the pub after work and having a few drinks before catching the train home. I think I will have to try out the other Clio and the Yaris at some point. I might even go so far as to have a go in one of those electric thingies.

Internet dependency

So are you addicted to the internet? (Via).

Q. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts of the internet?

A. Erm, sorry? What?

Q. How often do you fear that life without the internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?

A. All the time! What would I do at work?

My score was 34 by the way.

Lightningfield

I stumbled across Lightningfield about a month ago and it almost instantly made it to the links section on the blog and my own RSS feed (and that does not happen very often at all). If you haven’t explored its basically a photo blog of varying images caught by the author. Not very interesting you may think.

However the quality and composition of the photos is absolutely staggering. Perhaps some or all of them are photoshopped but that doesn’t really matter. The shots capture the moment so well and are so well constructed it rarely fails to have an impact. The photos generally aren’t of anything in particular, just regular everyday stuff which is what makes it all the more engaging. Have a look, and I would say take some time to actually look, don’t just scroll through.

Flying for flyings sake

So Bng’s getting married soon. And of course there is the obligatory stag do, ‘the staggering’ as I have termed it, that happens a few weekends beforehand. The staggering is being held in somewhere called Blackpool. This apparently is a fair trek from my south eastern-centric domain along the London-Maidenhead parallax as it appears that this Blackpool is located on the north west coast above somewhere called Wales.

I am not relishing the idea of driving up to Blackpool especially seeing as I recon it will take about 4-5 hours I estimate given that I will be going up on a Friday and having to battle through the M42 round Birmingham and returning on Sunday, after invariable excesses, driving is probably going to be about the last thing I am going to want to do. So I thinks to myself, what are my alternatives.

Fly was my first thought. Blackpool apparently has an airport (not sure quite why mind). I am about a 30 minute train journey from Heathrow so if flights run from there to Blackpool that would be spot on. Sadly, Heathrow is far too important to fly to anywhere as yocal as Blackpool. Oh well, but I can fly from Stanstead. However despite being touted as ‘London’ Stanstead it is actually more like Chelmsford airport being stuck in the middle of Essex so thats hardly convinient. In any case it only has two flights a day, one way early in the morning (0700ish) and the other way late at night (2200ish) in both directions which doesn’t fit with my schedule.

So I thought about the train instead. As I have to go through London and invariably being there already (at work) can shave 30 minutes off my journey time. However querying the fares reveals its going to cost between £65 and £345 return (ok so that last one is a first class open return) which is totally beyond the pail given that its like £20 to fly from Stanstead.

So I started playing about with flights again. I could fly from London Gatwick to Dublin, connect at Dublin to a flight to Blackpool. Cost £33 there, £23 back (+taxes) for both flights. The connection times stack up too (just barely). This is ridiculous. I could fly to Blackpool, via Dublin for less than the cost of the train. It’s faster too, although this does not factor in check-in time and getting from Maidenhead to Gatwick. Even so this is somewhat crazy. I am almost tempted to do it just because the whole thing is so delightfully daft.

Can you imagine; ‘so Nick what did do you at the weekend?’ Well I flew out to Dublin and then got on another plane and flew back to the UK into Blackpool. It looks like I might also be able to do this via Amsterdam too.

Ok, so in fairness when you add airport taxes, travel costs to and from the airport and factor in check in time and actually getting to the airport it is more expensive and takes longer but even so I think this a somewhat damning expose on the state of the country’s rail network.

Or I could just charter a turbo-prop aircraft from Biggin Hill to Blackpool for the sum of circa two grand.

Back in the real world, it looks like I am driving then.

Erm, guys, erm...

Erm, does anyone else think that there is something a little bit wrong about this? (Via) (in case you were wondering). I would love to see the sales pitch for this one.

Chavshire

I have a theory. It’s a theory about chavs. I think they come from or are attracted to Heathrow Airport. Here, look at my technical diagram (click to enlarge):


See, draw a circle round Heathrow Airport and you hit almost all the chav hot spots in one go. There’s Slough, Windsor, Hanwell, Feltham, Isleworth, Hounslow, Hayes, West Drayton and of course, Staines. All meccas of chav with their large Council estates, second hand BMW garages, street traders selling knock-off rolexes and branches of JJB sports and Matalan aplenty. Chavshire.

I wonder what it is about Heathrow Airport that draws the chavs to this region. Perhaps its so they can be in close proximity to the airport to be able to go away for weekends in Benidorm, or perhaps it’s the pretty colours of the aeroplanes that they can marvel at from their elevated flats in tower blocks, or maybe they like the aircraft noise to drown out the sound of their own children whinging about the playstation.

Now you will see that immediately around Chavshire are a selection of nice places without too many chavs infesting them. Places like Richmond, Kingston, Esher, Kensington, Chelsea, Ascot, Harrow and oh, look at that, Maidenhead. However there are a few holes around the edges, principally at Ruislip, Greenford and Bracknell which are all pretty chavy.

So I conclude they must be escaping to the rest of the country along these routes. Again I have drawn a diagram to illustrate my point:


So in order to keep them in Chavshire what we need to do is put in some anti-chav measures at these weak points. We need to open up some National Trust parks, build some libraries and education centres and install some branches of John Lewis and Waitrose around the perimeter. Chav-repellents.

Then we open up a few new branches of Chicagos (the chav church) around Heathrow Airport and they will all go there to flee from their fear of the chav-repellents around the borders and they will stay there and we will have them nicely parcelled away and contained in Chavshire. I think it sounds like an excellent plan, perhaps I will start a petition.

Casual Friday Thursday

For the past four years nearly I have gone to work wearing a suit, shirt, tie and smart shoes, without exception. My previous employer was fairly strict on looking smart and presenting a professional image to members of the public which I must say I do agree with.

However, my new employer has a different approach. Seemingly being that if you turn up to work that is a good thing. If you are reasonably competent and are smartly presented for members of the public they seem to be way happy. So last Friday, having no meetings or any chance of contact with members of the public (no meetings or site visits), I rolled into work wearing jeans, a T-shirt and my favourite new hoody. And nobody at work blinked an eye-lid.

I thought that I would feel odd and unprofessional in this attire but not actually seeing anyone I had to impress face-to-face totally discounted this and my initial weirdness of being at work in ‘comfy’ clothes rapidly dissolved in, well, a matter of seconds as I answered the phone and issued the same high quality planning advice that I always do (he says modestly).

I would like to say that my own personal attention to detail means that I won’t be turning up in casuals too often but I have to say being at work in comfortable clothes and being with people I don’t need to impress (aside from ‘the management’) makes me want to reconsider this.

As a result, today, with accurate forecasts of the hottest day of the year so far and knowing I had to do a number of (unaccompanied) site visits on foot I rolled into work wearing my skinny yellow T-shirt and blue shorts which caused a bit of a stir. So perhaps there are limits to what I can wear at work. Virtually nothing and in bright colours perhaps being one of those limits.

However, casual day does seem to offer a solution to the dry cleaning conundrum.

This is not a good situation

I got home this evening to find a hand delivered letter pushed under my front door, not with regular mail, marked ‘Important Notice.’ It was direct from my landlord and to paraphrase stated the following:

‘… Long story short, the management company have gone bust. Your rent payments are not coming to me as they should and your deposit is at risk. Please do not pay this months rent to them. If you have set up a bank transfer or have written cheques I suggest you cancel them… We can work out further arrangements to protect you and myself from further losses at this time over the next week or so.’

Now I am not about to take some supposedly important letter at face value so checked my contract and the names on the contract and this letter tally. Additionally a visit to the management company’s offices on the High Street reveal that they are abandoned with only a few tables and chairs left and a pile of post in the doorway with a helpful sign from the folks next door posted on the door saying you can ask them about the company’s demise (although they were closed when I visited). The situation therefore appears to stack up as per the letter.

I have cancelled my rental payment and sent a brief and noncommittal email to my landlord to confirm receipt of his letter and that I have cancelled rental payments through the management company. However, what has happened to my deposit? I paid out in the excess of a grand on that and I am not about to let that just slide.

I got home at about six and have only just stopped shaking probably thanks in no small part to a very large glass of wine.

Fish bowl of stupidity

So I see that that chuffing idiot David Blane is doing something pointless again. Namely sitting in a fish bowl for a week, or something like that. I am sure in the USA this entirely redundant exercise will be met with awe and wonder. Personally I felt the situation when he was in London in 2003 in that glass box thingy was much better. Especially when people starting throwing hamburgers and bacon sandwiches at him. That little spectacle also contributed to him being voted as 2003s biggest looser.

Anyhow, I digress, so what is the point of this fish bowl he’s sitting in? He gets air (unfortunately) and food through a tube and the water is kept at a nice warm temperature so what is the challenge or spectacle of this? He’s basically just sitting in a bath for a week. As far as I can see the biggest challenge is going to be where to take a crap.

So here is a list of things that I think would make this a more interesting challenge:

Add some of that chemical to the water that turns purple when you pee
Put a jellyfish in the tank
Add a giant tea bag and some milk
Empty the tank of water, put it in the middle of the pacific ocean, leave
Get everyone in the whole world to just totally ignore him

The London effect

Working in London I come across a lot of people trying to get money out of me. This ranges from beggars sitting outside shop windows with cardboard box cut out signs displaying ‘homeless, hungry, please help,’ people asking for a quid to get the bus home (you should have thought about the return fare when you went out) to people from a variety of charities asking for a donation to people invasively trying to sell mobile phones, sandwiches, the big issue, stolen season tickets and tattoos (yeah, because I am likely to want to stop and get an impromptu tattoo from some guy on the street).

I have to put up with this crap on a daily basis and have found the best way to deal with this is to totally ignore all these people. No eye contact. No conversation. No acknowledgement that they even exist. Walk straight past. This may sound a little harsh but bear in mind that multiple combinations of these can try to get me from around two to twelve times a day and they rarely take no for an answer and follow you down the street which is pretty rude and so I have managed to justify being rude back. Pre-emptive rudeness if you like.

However, I need to remember that I am not always in London.

This weekend I went shopping at the Oracle Centre in Reading (which for those of you that aren’t up on southern England geography isn’t in London). It was very busy, the ring road was jammed with queuing cars trying to get into car parks. The car parks had queues to find spaces and queues to just get out. I managed to sneak into a less busy car park that my brother showed me a while ago without encountering too much traffic but even so it was a fair hassle.

I found one of the few remaining parking spaces on the top floor of the multi-storey and having parked the car proceeded to get my ‘display in window’ ticket.

At the ticket meter was a young girl. As I went for the ticket machine she asked me ‘please can you spare some change I have come out without any?’ I was in London mode with all the traffic and people and hassle so I totally ignored her. I don’t just mean I looked at her and didn’t respond or said sorry I haven’t got any change (although this would have been a little weak seeing as I had a hand full of change for feeding into the meter). The request for money triggered an instinct reaction to disregard that person entirely. I looked through her and carried on as if she wasn’t even there. Literally, it was as if that what she said failed to register as any kind of input or stimulus. I stuck my change in the meter (although now feeling her eyes on my back) got my ticket and started to walk away.

I walked past the girl. She was standing in exactly the same position she was in when I had walked ‘through’ her. Two other people had started to queue at the ticket machine whilst I was getting mine but she wasn’t accosting them for change. She was stony quiet and rigid in the same position I had more than ignored her in, staring at me and looking more than a little jilted.

Of course it took my brain a few more steps to put all this together and by then I had walked past the girl. She was genuinely short of change, she had, like me, fought past the ring road, found a parking space, gone to the meter to pay for her ticket and realised she had no change. Rather than go through the busy ring road and parking ticket hassle she had tried to fall upon a stranger for some gentle assistance…. me. And I acted like she didn’t exist. It wasn’t so much as I was just rude, that would imply that I acknowledged she was there at all. I disregarded her entirely. And from the expression on her face as I left the ticket machine I think really messed with her day.

I know I can be abrupt at many times but having to battle past people trying to force money out of me on a near daily basis has clearly added an extra layer of generic cynicism. Three months ago I may well have said no to this girl’s request for money but I probably would have tempered that with a bit of sympathy and common courtesy.

So, sorry to girl at ticket machine near the Oracle Centre, Reading at circa 2pm on Saturday, I thought I was in London and I do feel pretty awful about it.

The view from space

Google maps orbital photography is pretty cool. Especially when you find images of pac-man on the ground, or perhaps a giant I-pod, a sinister looking face embedded in rock stratta, rude words, peoples names (seriously, check out the scale of this one) and even UFOs.

Chernobyl

On 26 April 1986 Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded scattering radioactive material across a wide area. This is a dramatic photo essay of the effects of this disaster twenty years on. Caution, this is not comfortable viewing (sound required).

Commuting arrangements

When I moved jobs I resigned myself to having to take public transport to work. Something that, at the time, I wasn’t entirely happy about. However, since then and my initial parking issues at work I have managed to wrangle me a car parking pass so I can park at work.

This has put my initial plan of catching the train into work into a bit of a tailspin. Predominantly I have been catching the train into work and had bought a monthly railcard which has since expired. For the last week and a bit I have been alternating between driving in and catching the train on a day return ticket and having now done both from my new address am in a total quandary as to which is the preferable mode of transportation.

Here are the pros and cons for each:

Driving

Journey time: 45 minutes to 1 hour 45 minutes
Reliability (traffic): Low
Cost: Circa £7 return (fuel only)
Advantages: Can use car for site visits, don’t have to sit next to fat people

Train

Journey time: 50 minutes
Reliability (trains running on time): High
Cost: £9 (monthly season ticket), £12 (day return)
Advantages: Can enjoy leisure time (which with a good book I actually quite enjoy), simplicity, can go down pub after work and have a few beers, easy to stop off at shops in Ealing and pick up groceries, no concerns about traffic

On balance I would say that they weigh up in favour of the train which is nice and easy but more expensive. However having the usefulness of the car at work is a real bonus and makes site visits much faster so I have to spend much less (albeit paid) time there.

The crux of it comes down to time and cost. The price of a day return is pretty awful at £12 so I can rarely justify commuting in on this one off arrangement very often. The £9 monthly season ticket is just about acceptable (and decreases the longer the period of time I subscribe to) but I am not about to pay for a season ticket and drive at the same time as the combined cost of about £16 makes it ridiculous to do this and in effect pay twice. Whilst the car can be faster than the train it can also be much, much longer with traffic. Conversely, whilst some trains invariably run late for the most part they are near to time. In any case, with the frequency of services, if one is late you can just catch the next (or earlier) one.

Anyhow, my present thinking is that I will catch the train in on a monthly season ticket and for gaps at either end I will drive and catch up on (hopefully most) site visits. I don’t know if this is the best solution but hopefully if I ever get access to work’s electric pool car it may solve itself.