The Popularity of Letters

I woke this morning with a feeling that I had an important public service that I needed to perform today. At first, I was unsure what it was. No mysterious instructions had appeared in tattoo form on my body overnight, and I had not received an email from God.

But as the day progressed, I slowly started to realise what I had to do. The final piece slipped into place when I looked at a sign (it was a Sign!) and saw that it was made of... letters. But some letters are not as good as other letters and I finally figured out that what I needed to do was rank the letters. Not just the letters in the sign, but all the letters, every single one. It was necessary for me to determine which letter of the alphabet is most popular, and which could do with a bit of a hug. And that's what I will do here and now, as a favour to the world.

I'll use the tried and tested method of Googling them, one by one, and ranking popularity by the number of hits. To give a sense of scale, a popular search like "Lint" gets 2,200,000 hits, whilst "Michael Jackson's Monkey" gets just 394 hits. Which means that I am officially more popular than Michael Jackson's Monkey! Result!

Anywards, on with the letters:

A: 4,480,000,000
B: 665,000,000
C: 1,030,000,000
D: 1,290,000,000
E: 2,330,000,000
F: 590,000,000
G: 443,000,000
H: 451,000,000
I: 2,090,000,000
J: 492,000,000
K: 458,000,000
L: 921,000,000
M: 960,000,000
N: 760,000,000
O: 839,000,000
P: 605,000,000
Q: 306,000,000
R: 339,000,000
S: 1,780,000,000
T: 1,560,000,000
U: 542,000,000
V: 280,000,000
W: 686,000,000
X: 639,000,000
Y: 372,000,000
Z: 330,000,000

If we then list the letters starting with most popular and ending with least popular, we get:

AEISTDCMLONWBXPFUJKHGYRZQV

I'm not sure how stable this sequence is over time. It's worth remembering it though, since it could come up in a pub quiz one day.

A good way to remember something like that is with an entertaining mnemonic. Feel free to create your own if you want - I'd share the one that I have just devised, but I don't want to. It's private and it's mine.

So the conclusion is that poor old V isn't well liked. So here's my effort to give V the big hug that it needs:

V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V V

That should help it to feel better liked.

Challenge #10: SOBER - Complete!

Well, almost by accident I find myself at the end of a seven day period where I have not imbibed any alcohol whatsover. It feels dirty and wrong.

The middle three days of last week were one of those middle of weeks where there just isn't much on. I nearly went out for a drink with a friend on Thursday but he had to go running instead. So I went home and ordered too much pizza which I then attempted to eat. This was a mistake as I then felt a bit ill the next day. I was also fairly busy at work on the Friday, and didn't really feel like going out in the evening. So I didn't.

And then the weekend again was fairly quiet. By this time I'd realised I had a good run at my seven day target and so avoided any alcohol. I didn't attempt to go out on Saturday night, I didn't open any bottles of wine and I even decided against having the nice bottle of ginger beer that was in my fridge.

So then that just left tonight, Monday night, normally a night for going down the Swan for some quiz. But tonight... no. I have stayed in and finished my (test batch of) marking. Good me.

So another challenge bites the dust, and for the first time I find myself having completed challenges at a faster rate than the year has been having months.

I'm not sure that this being sober thing is that great though. Sure, I maybe got up earlier on Saturday than I would have done, but I just ended up using the time to play computer games. My social life has pretty much been non-existent for the past week, and I've still felt tired, had the occasional headache and found no noticeable improvement in my concentrational abilities. I wonder how long you have to be sober to start feeling any better than normal?

On the plus side, I've... I've... I've still got a nice bottle of ginger beer to look forward to. It wouldn't be there if I'd drunk it at the weekend!

Random Song Links: A Rubbish Game

Right, I'm going to generate three random songs from iTunes and then work out what the link between them is. And if I can't think of one, I lose. Here we go - The three songs are:

1. Warning Bell - The Vessels
2. Serotonin - Mansun
3. Campfire Kansas - The Get Up Kids

Hmmm - not a fantastically selection musically but there must be a link. But I can't see it. Try again with three new songs and hope it's easier:

1. Life for Rent - Dido
2. Girls of Valour - The Delgados
3. Sapphire Bullets of Love - They Might Be Giants

Nope, nothing obvious springing to mind there (other than "Dido... Ugh!"). One final time. If this doesn't work I don't know what I'll do. Go:

1. Seven's a Secret - Ballroom
2. Eggs - The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
3. All Of My Thoughts - Spiritualized

And again, I draw a blank. Conclusion: I lose.

If you're expecting something here at the end to tie up all nine songs in a "Oooh aren't I clever, I had you going there thinking I had no links" kind of way, then sorry - that isn't going to happen. I really am unable to determine links.

This game was rubbish.

Doomed! We're all Doomed!

It was a pleasant surprise to see that the Xbox version of Doom 3 also comes with fully complete versions of the original Doom and Doom 2. Not spruced up or updated in any way, just the original versions circa 1964 or whenever it was they first came out. So far I've spent just over five minutes on Doom 3 and around four hours playing the first two games. Is this wrong?

It's not like I don't have other versions of them knocking around. The GameBoy version of Doom has wasted many, many hours of my life, and I also have a PS1 version somewhere (always a bit odd that one - the levels were kind of flattened a bit. Not always obviously, but it was really apparent on levels like "The Crusher"). And I also remember playing the original PC versions at uni. My home PC was too weedy to play them at the time, being only a 12Mhz 286, but at university my friends had 386s! And 486s! Woohoo!

"Eat My Shotgun" I'd shout. "No" my friends would reply, "Let's load up Doom instead".

I'm not sure what it is about Doom that I find so compulsive, even now. The fantastic level design? The hordes? The shotgun? The complete lack of stealth? The fact that I'm stuck in the past? The only other game I've owned and played on as many different systems is Bubble Bobble. That has much better music than Doom... I wonder if it's possible to get the BB music playing whilst I massacre the denizens of hell? That would be cool.

I feel that I should at least make an effort to play D3. Or at least play it to the point where I get to shoot something. All I have seen so far are some (alive) marines, some soft drink vending machines and some pen pushing military guys. Don't even have a gun yet.

Maybe I'll be able to enjoy it. Maybe.

Horse Racing Time

It's the Grand National Horse Race later today, a race generally run by horses that fall over a lot. Not stunt horses, paid to fall over safely to make the race look exciting. No, they are more like drunk horses, trying to jump over walls but failing to judge the distance right leading to them falling over and having to be shot later. It's a little known fact that every single horse that falls over in The National is shot - the Queen instigated this soon after her coronation in a bid to make the horses try harder. I personally would certainly try hard to not fall over if I knew that to do so would be the last thing I ever did. Stephen King later took this idea and used it in his story "The Long Walk", but he changed it a bit and got rid of the horses.

I have horse #3 in an office sweepstake. It's called Monty's Pass and if it wins I stand to win up to several pounds. But unfortunately my Grand National horses have historically not done very well, so apologies to anybody else lumbered with the same nag as me. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that although you have won no money, at least the bloody horse won't be ripping off any other punters in the future. You can't run races when you've been turned into glue and catfood.

Note to a Gentleman

A quick note to the gentleman I saw whilst walking to work this morning. Dark pinstriped suit and bright red wooly gloves is not a good look.

Nothing Important

I'd really hoped to be able to stay a bit late at work tonight to finish off some bits and free up some time tomorrow. Unfortunately the notwork crashed and there wasn't a lot of point in staying around so I went home.

My burglar alarm had its annual service today. It wasn't as exciting as last year's service, because last year the little man fiddled with some of my settings and made the alarm work better. This year it was the same little man and there wasn't a lot else he could do that he hadn't already done so he just checked it. Everything's fine.

Um... anything else? I've now got a little thing that lets me move photos straight from my camera to my iPod, effectively giving me many gigs of on the move storage space and freeing me from having to worry about filling memory sticks too often. I don't worry about this much, but it should potentially prove useful when out and about on holidays (but possibly not this year when rafting...).

Hello!

I may start exam marking over the weekend if I get any scripts tomorrow. That's always an entertaining way to spend time.

And the tourists keep on climbing

When I was holidaying in York, I climbed a high place because all tourist cities have a high place to climb. Copenhagen was no different. It has a tower, just up the road from the Erotic Museum:



This is not a normal tourist tower because it's a tower that you could quite literally drive a medium sized car up to the top of (*). I didn't have a car so I had to walk. The inside of the tower comprises almost entirely of a wide spiral ramp. There are no rooms, no offices, no coffee shops - just a ramp. There is a large exhibition room halfway up, but that's not in the tower itself. I'm not sure what exhibition was on because I didn't emter the room. It didn't look very exciting. The spiral ramp's pretty cool though.

From the top you could take one of those panorama type full 360 degree pictures by taking several photos and sticking them side by side. I didn't quite do that:



The city is quite flat, and it was hard to make out many landmarks since I was unfamiliar with the place. There are lots of churches, but one church tends to look much like another. Square building, pointy bit on top. That sort of thing.

Nice blue skies though.

(*) As long as you could get it through the turnstile at the bottom...

A Little Statue

I quite like this photo. She's not a real mermaid though. Just a statue in Copenhagen Harbour.

Under the sea, Under the sea, Darling it's better, Down where it's wetter, Take it from me!

Some thoughts on modern aviation

It's about two and a half years since I last travelled by plane, and a couple of (what to me were) innovations quite impressed me. It's quite possible that these have been around for a long time, but bear with me.

No. 1: The out-going plane had a little TV camera in its nose. This relayed pictures to the in-plane TV sets so you could see the plane taxiing to the runway and then taking off. Once in the air, it switches to a view from below the plane so you can see what you're flying over. This is pretty cool unless you get confused as to which view they're showing at a particular time and convince yourself that the plane is flying directly towards the ground. It then switches back to the front view for landing.

No. 2: I could check in using an electronic self-service terminal. No queues, no talking to people, just insert credit card and press a few buttons. Saves loads of time, especially if you don't have any baggage to check in. You can even choose your own seat! Admittedly, my seat ended up not being the one I chose because the actual plane was smaller than the one I chose from in the machine, but it's good in principle.

There's still too much waiting around in plane travel though. At least Copenhagen airport had a very pleasant quiet zone with some big recliners and a great view of the airfield.

Challenge #4: COUNTRY - Complete!

I've just got back from a weekend in Copenhagen. I took my passport and everything. Copenhagen is in Denmark, which is a country I have not visited before. Here I am by the Harbour, (at Ameliehaven):



It was quite sunny all the time, and also fairly warm later in the day - around 17 Celsius. I was able to take my scarf off.

This was the first time I've ever travelled abroad on my own (as in being on a trip without anyone else doing the same) so I was a bit unsure as to whether I'd enjoy it or not. Conclusion: Days are fine - I can just do what I want, when I want, for as long as I want. Nights are not as much fun. Dinner isn't too bad, and service tends to be fairly quick when you are on your own, but after that there isn't a great deal to do other than head back to the hotel for a drink in the bar with a book (I was reading Umberto Eco so I'd look clever). But it was only for a couple of nights.

Since I'm back to work tomorrow, I'm intending to head off to bed shortly, so the full excitement of the stories from Denmark will have to wait for another day (or days). I do, however, have some helpful travel advice for anyone (from the UK) heading to Europe in the near future.

If you have an E111 from last year (or before), then it is no longer valid. You need to get a new one. The new one is an interim arrangement until the EU issues "European health insurance cards" from the end of this year. I only found this out when I saw a poster in the Post Office half an hour before I was due to get my train. Luckily this was sufficient time to get a new form. I didn't expect to need to use it, but it's almost guaranteed that if I didn't have a valid E111, I'd end up in hospital somehow, somewhere. Because I got a new style (interim) form, I had no health problems whatsoever.

There, that's public service blogging, that was.

Posts I didn't write on Friday

Here is a short post that I thought about putting up on Friday, but didn't:

"I'm going to be going away today, to a better place. Or at least I hope it's going to be a better place. You can't always tell what it's going to be like until you get there. Anyway, I'll be leaving shortly. Maybe I'll see you around one day."

But that sounded like I was dying and about to be dead. So I then considered:

"I'm about to do something that one of my friends once tried to do, but failed. Unlike him, I have made proper preparations and am sure I have everything to need to succeed in my aim..." etc

But that sounded like I was about to commit suicide. So in the end, I didn't write anything. I suppose I could have gone with:

"Right, I'm off to Copenhagen for a few days."

But that would have been too obvious.

Whilst on the subject of suicide, which we almost were, is it any wonder that so many people throw themselves under moving trains when all the train stations have "Way Out" in large letters all over the place? To an impressionable mind...

Pope Selection

It strikes me that should The Pope not make it through his current health problems (at the time of writing, he's had the last rites. Again. Which part of "last" don't they get?) then the whole process of choosing the next one will be watched much more closely than normal, since the process was novelised by Dan Brown. If they are not planning a book or TV show comparing the fact and the fiction of this process, then they're missing a lucrative opportunity.

I would put myself forward to be nominated to be the next Pope, but popery isn't really my thing. I'd also put volunteer to put together a large selection of dried flowers for the ceremonies, but pot-pourris isn't really my thing either. **ahem**

Places to go and see in York #7

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have not visited before. It was also a place that involves a large mound, a castle and some history. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I visited Cifford's Tower. I walked to it, but it's also possible to get the bus.



Actually, that's as close as I got. Couldn't be arsed to go in. Hangover. Sorry.

Clifford's Tower
Time spent in attraction: n/a
Does it have a bar? No
Fun: ???
Suitable for a rainy day? Not sure

Note To Self

Hmmmm.... It's quite hard to win at late night Mario Kart when you fall asleep during each race. If that sounds like a poor excuse for losing? It is!

Places to go and see in York #6

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have not visited before. It was also a place that involves heights, churches and a man who lives at the top of some stairs. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I visited The Tower of York Minster, the entrance to which can be found just on the left as you go in through the main entrance of the Minster. One vital thing that any tourist oriented city needs is a tall thing to climb. Paris has an Eiffel Tower, Toronto has a CN Tower, New York has an Empire State Building, and (old) York has a York Minster.

To get to the top there are 275 fairly steep and narrow spiral stairs. They are narrow enough that you can't have people going up and coming down at the same time, which means you have to wait at the bottom for a bit until everyone that went up last time has come back down. There is no lift.

When you get to the top, this is what you see straight away:



It looks more like a prison than a church tower top. But at least there's little danger of accidentally falling to a quick and painful death (unlike the city walls which are highly dangerous). Also, there are some top of the range comfy chairs to sit on for a bit, should you be tired from the climb. A little man sits in a booth at the top of the stairs. His job is to answer the question "Can we go down yet, little man?" when people ask him. Based on what I saw today, this is roughly every 30 seconds. Eventually he starts saying yes and people start the descent.

You get some pretty decent views from up the tower. This isn't hugely surprising since it is the highest point for many miles around. And due to a strange local law, it will stay the highest point, since other buildings are not legally allowed to be higher.



The view (south? south-east?) above is interesting since on it you can see the point where I took a photo last week of the place where I took a photo from today. If that makes any sense. I reckon a decent computer could take the two photos and combine them to produce a full three dimensional model of York. And all its residents. I don't have time to do that myself and in any case I have easy access to the real York and so don't need a computer model of it.



This view is even more interesting since you can see my flat. Clearly I'm not at home, but I bet any prospective burglars had no idea I was spying on them.

Access to The Tower of York Minster is just three English Pounds, even if you have a special Minster Card (like I do) that lets you get into the main part of the building for free. It's not suitable for people in wheelchairs, people on crutches, babies or Blind People. I'd hoped that the day I went up would be a bit sunnier and hence give clearer views. But since York is in England, it is always hard to guarantee sun.

The Tower of York Minster
Time spent in attraction: 25 minutes
Does it have a bar? No
Fun: 6/10
Suitable for a rainy day? No

Tips on not eating fruit

I can't stand bananas. I've mentioned this before ("They smell nasty, they taste nasty, they look ridiculous"). But I'm not alone in this. And there are other fruits that other people dislike just as much, if not more. So in a gesture of goodwill to my fellow homo-sapiens I have put together some useful tips for how to live a better life if you hate certain fruits.

A tip for someone who hates...

Kiwi Fruits: Avoid the no. 13 at the Juice Bar in The Shambles.

Pears: Try not to suck on Pear Drops or drink Perry.

Apples: Don't eat apples. Not even Cox's Orange Pippin.

Oranges: Go and see a psychiatrist. You're mental. Oranges, satsumas, clementines and their ilk are all gorgeous. You're a freak.

Raspberries: Don't eat raspberries.

Strawberries: Don't go to Wimbledon.

Pomegranates: Well, I can hardly blame you - they can be quite fiddly. But perservere. Go on. Try using one of those spiky things that you put in the end of corn-on-the-cob. See, easy! Nice!

Melons: Don't eat melons. Don't say melons. Don't dream about melons. Don't go to melon fairs. Don't go on melon-spotting trips to Cumbria. Don't marry a melon-farmer. Don't juggle small melons. Don't carve a face in a melon and pretend it's your best friend. Don't attempt to skim melons across a lake. Don't drop melons from a great height on to a hard floor. Don't advertise melons. And don't, under any circumstances, let an evil-hypnotist make you believe that you are a melon!

Bananas: JUST DON"T EAT BANANAS AND STOP F***ING MOANING CONSTANTLY ABOUT THEM. GROW UP, LOSER. IT'S JUST A FRUIT. MOVE ON.

I hope this is helpful.

Places to go and see in York #5

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have not visited before. It was also a place that involves old things, black monks and a shop at the end. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I visited The Yorkshire Museum, in Museum Gardens, York. Here it is:



In front of it, you can see some stone columns - a sure sign that what is within is worthy and good. You don't see columns outside Burger King or Megabowl. That's because those places are bad for you. There's no culture there. Just youths with bad clothes, bad hair and no prospects. Also outside the museum you can see the lower half of a white bust. I believe that this is part of a collection of sculptures that are currently scattered about the gardens. I assume that the lack of an upper head is a deliberate decision by the sculptor rather than vandalism caused by the youths from Burger King.

The Museum itself has various sections. The initial part contains fairly random things, including a skeleton of a Moa (extinct big flightless bird) and a child's bicycle (I'm not sure which child). After that, there's a lot of bits about the Romans, and York and Yorkshire. York was the second biggest city in the UK back then, except that we didn't have a United Kingdom at the time. Maybe it was just the second biggest in England. Or North England, or maybe it was just the second biggest city in York. I forget.

There are lots of big panels to read containing information and there are also artifacts and pictures. Kind of like most museums, I guess.

After Rome, we move on to the Vikings and then to a bit with William the Conqueror. Then there is a large section about St Mary's Abbey which used to be on the same site as the museum. The remaining parts of the abbey have fallen into a slight state of disrepair now...



It's seen better days. At one point it was the wealthiest Abbey in the North of England. The monks that lived there were Black Monks. I hoped at first that these might have been evil monks but it turns out they were just normal Benedictine Monks with a penchant for black robes. The Abbey was eventually closed in the 16th century when Henry VIII dissolved the monastaries. By the looks of it now, it seems he may have dissolved them with acid.

The main museum ends with a selection of aquatic dinosaurs. And you can go upstairs and look round a pottery exhibition if you have no life.

Outside the museum, you can see another old building which at one point formed part of the Abbey's Hospitium where pilgrims would hang out:



I went to a craft fair there once and bought some soap from a man who sold soap.

Perhaps the best thing about the whole experience was that I was finally able to obtain a discount by using my York Card. Outsiders would normally have to pay four English Pounds to get in but I paid absolutely nothing. Result.

The Yorkshire Museum
Time spent in attraction: 41 minutes
Does it have a bar? No
Fun: 5/10
Suitable for a rainy day? Yes

End of Easter

Another bank holiday today, so again I was exempt from being a York Tourist, and spent a large part of the day shooting zombies and other strange monsters. I'm hoping for a sunny day tomorrow though: I have plans!

With Easter now come to a close, I think this could be the first Easter weekend since I've been old enough to eat chocolate, that I have had no chocolate at all! I have got some in the fridge but I forgot to eat it. And I haven't had any Easter eggs.

Music to watch sausages by

I was in the sausage restuarant last night, and the music seemed to be much more eclectic than normal. Sometimes you go in and it's just Elvis all night. But songs I remember from yesterday include:

Ladykillers - Lush
Common People - William Shatner (excellent version!)
Spit it out - Brendan Benson (from the brand new album)
Radiation Vibe - Fountains of Wayne (haven't heard that for years!)
The Timewarp - Pinky & Perky (or at least it sounded like them)
Living on a Prayer - ??? (No idea who was singing, but it was a female vocalist in a Latin American Ballroom style)

There were others too. Some good and some less good. But I've failed to make the required mental notes in my head that would allow me to add them to the playlist above.

I don't get it

Two comedians go into a bar. One says "where's the punchline?". The other says "Yeah, it does, doesn't it?". Happy Easter everyone ;-)

Day Off

Since today is the Good Friday Bank Holiday, I haven't actually had to take any time off work in order to be able to not go there. This means I feel no need to go and do touristy things today. This is a good thing since everywhere is probably really busy. Everywhere will be full with those little shouting, screaming people. So it's best that I stay in where it's less busy. Just me on my own, all day. In fact, I haven't left the house. I haven't been outside, not even to go and see the bins. What I have done is shoot a truck-load of zombies. Hundreds of the buggers. And some evil monks for good measure. And a big chap who had his eyes sewn shut. He was nasty.

What may also be obvious, is that I seem to have had approximately zero interesting thoughts today. Oh well.

Places to go and see in York #4

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have visited before, but not in this year. It was also a place that involves water, seats and a man giving commentary. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I visited a Boat Trip On the River Ouse, courtesy of York Boat - purveyors of trips up, and indeed down, the River Ouse. For a mere £6.50, they will take one adult (today, this was me) for a one hour boat trip with a choice of entry and exit points. I joined the trip on Dame Judi Dench Walk by Lendal Bridge. A nice young lady took my money and invited me to step onto the boat. Also on the boat were:
- A party of French teenagers
- Some old people
- Some staff
- A driver man / commentator

There didn't seem to be any other young males who were doing touristy things on their own whilst having a holiday in York. Just me, as normal.

To begin, we went up the river as far as Clifton Bridge. Here's Clifton Bridge. It's not very nice and since it was built in the 60s, it is made of concrete.



At this bridge, the boat turns round and starts to head down river. By this point, I had made my way downstairs to purchase a bottle of Stella Artois. Finally, I had found a licensed tourist attraction, albeit one that is only allowed to sell alcohol whilst not docked.

There isn't actually that much to see along the river. I did find these people though. They are some council drainage men.



I'm pretty sure that at the time of this photo they are arguing about whether they should buy an ice cream or not (from the adjacent ice cream van which appears to be named "Roger"). Their main point of contention is the weather. Dave and Rod think that it's too cold for ice cream, whilst Jason and Kenny think that it's never too cold for ice cream. I'm unable to tell you how this turned out though, since when I later walked along the river bank the drainage men had all gone. Roger was still there though, but I did not taste his wares.

The journey continued downstream as far as the Millennium Bridge, some way out from the town centre. We saw Rowntree Park, the Bonding Warehouse, the Foss River Flood Preventer Thing and a teenage sk8er boi pulling a moony at the boat. I though this was very childish behaviour and I hope that later, he tragically fell off his skateboard and went under the wheels of a passing juggernaut.

Another exciting site we saw was York Beach:



This is an actual beach in the centre of York that you can take deckchairs and donkeys down to for a relaxing Summer day out. Since it is currently Spring, nobody had actually done this.

Finally, after a stop near Ouse Bridge to let off the French, we returned to the start where I alighted onto the riverside and begun my journey home.

The Boat Trip is a pleasant way to while away an afternoon. I'd particularly recommend it on a hot sunny day rather than the slightly cold day that today was. My hands were cold.

Boat Trip on the River Ouse
Time spent in attraction: 1 hour and 3 minutes
Does it have a bar? Yes!
Fun: 5/10
Suitable for a rainy day? Not really

You need take no action

Due to complex technical reasons that you wouldn't understand, I have had to change the URL that World of Lint is published at. The new address is lintworld.blogspot.com.

Now, because I love you all and don't want to cause you any problems, I have logged into the accounts of everyone that links to here and updated the link for you, erasing all trace of the old, now unusable, URL. If I've done it properly, the whole thing should be seamless and you should notice no difference at all. If you do have any problems, then let me know and I'll see what I can do to fix things.

All of us here at World of Lint would like to apologise sincerely for any worry that this may have caused you and your families.

Places to go and see in York #3

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have visited before, but not in its entirety. It was also a place that involves walking, heights and potential death. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I visited The City Walls of York. In days of yore, these would act a kind of "wall" between York and the rest of the world. They would keep out Scotsmen, Welshmen and Englishmen who weren't from York. I'm not sure what the policy on women was. Nowadays, large parts of the walls are still in existence, though some parts were heavily renovated in more recent times. You can walk along the top of the wall for around two thirds of the distance, in three distinct sections - as shown on the map below:



Starting from the south side of Lendal Bridge, you can head on to the first section - this is the only part you can access in a wheelchair since it is accessed by a gentle slope rather than steps. This also means it is the part that is least protected from old-style Daleks, so you have to be careful. There did not seem to be any Daleks, or indeed any aliens at all, out there today.

This leads to the highest part of the walls and you can get a decent view back over the city. Look - here's the Minster!



As you continue going round, you can visit two museums housed in two of the "bars" that form gates in the walls into the city. The first is at Micklegate Bar. I didn't go in. The second is the Richard III museum at Monkgate Bar. I didn't go in there either, despite it claiming to have the "The World's Smallest Prison Cell" and "Possibly The Only Working Portcullis In Britain".

Monkgate Bar does have the most exciting part of the walk, which is a fully enclosed, dark, low-ceilinged, stone staircase from street level back up onto the wall. It feels like going through a secret passage and I must confess, I was a little disappointed to find myself emerging still in York rather than some outlandish land of dreams.

After this you come to a bit of the walls which heads around the back of the Minster. Today, it smelt strongly of paint and was populated with many council workmen with paintbrushes. They were painting railings. Then you get to this bit:



Which is interesting by way of being the only bit where there are actual walls on both sides of the path, rather than railings or just nothing. I'm often surprised how many people fail to accidentally fall to their deaths from the walls each year on the more open sections. It can't be safe.

And shortly after that, my sojourn on the city walls came to an end. I had walked along all that there was to walk along. Admission costs were fairly reasonable at £0.00 (York Card not required!), and it was a pleasant day for a walk.

Although I was going around in an anti-clockwise direction, it is also possible to walk around the walls in a clockwise direction. I don't recommend this. I have my reasons.

The City Walls of York
Time spent in attraction: 1 hour and 10 minutes
Does it have a bar? No (*)
Fun: 4/10
Suitable for a rainy day? Not really

(*) Ok, there are actually several bars - Micklegate, Victoria, Walmgate and Monkgate for example. But they are not the right sort of bar, and you're not meant to drink in them.

Non-Random Thought

Re the iPod Shuffle advert: Why is it the same song playing every time?

Writing On Vans

Ambulances often have the word "ambulance" printed in mirror writing on the front of the ambulance so that people can see in their rear view mirrors that there is an ambulance behind them. I think this seems slightly unnecessary. It is normally quite easy to tell there's an ambulance behind you. The following three things are a dead giveaway:

1. You can see a ambulance in your mirror - no reading required
2. You can hear a loud siren - this will alert you long before reading is possible
3. Cars all around you start swerving off the road in a desperate attempt to get out of the way.

And so I don't see the point of having the mirror writing. In fact, the only people it probably helps are deaf people who can't recognise shapes, and I don't think they should really be driving in the first place.

Mr Tesco and Mr Sainsbury obviously agree with me because their vans just say "Tesco" or "Sainsburys" in normal writing on the front. And they don't even have a siren!

Thinking about this, maybe they should give the same right to supermarket delivery vans as they do to the emergency services. After all, there can be few people who would disagree that it is as important for me to receive timely deliveries of beer and frozen pizza as it is for some sick bloke (who will probably die shortly anyway!) to get to hospital quickly. If the politician people put together a law compelling delivery vans to bear sirens, then I for one would give them my vote. I expect you can get better healthcare from the supermarkets than from the NHS in any case.

Places to go and see in York #2

Today I visited one of York's premier tourist attractions. My destination was a place which I have never before visited. It was also a place that involves time travelling and odours. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I went to the Yorvik Viking Center. This is a place that quite literally takes you back to the time of the vikings and lets you experience their lives, loves and smells. After you've paid your £7.20 entrance fee to the little man who doesn't let you have a discount, even though you have a brand new York Card, because it's the "wrong time of year", you go down some stairs and enter the Time Machine. If I'm honest, it's not the best example of a time machine I've ever seen. But unlike the Tardis, it has plenty of seats and unlike Marty McFly's DeLorean, it has plenty of seats and unlike HG Wells' Time Machine it has plenty of seats.

Our trip back in time lasted only a few minutes, and we did experience a small amount of Time Turbulence. But apparently if you stand or sit at the side of the Time Machine, you don't experience this turbulence. Probably because there's a special damping field or something. As we passed back in time, we witnessed High Ousegate and its inhabitants moving back with us. This was a bit strange because the Time Machine wasn't on High Ousegate. I'm guessing that they must have achieved this effect with a complicated series of mirrors.

Anyway, eventually we made it back to Viking times, and we left the Time Machine and got into a new mode of transport which was to take us around Viking era York. This was rather like the cars on Nemesis at Alton Towers, but a bit slower and with less foot danglage. I was a little confused by this because the car appeared to be powered by electricity and I didn't think they had electricity in Viking era York. This clearly shows how badly educated I am! I can definitely state here and now, that having seen things with my own eyes, the Vikings did have electricity!

So the car took us on a little drive round the town centre, and I saw some blacksmithery and some cup-making and a man in a Viking-style toilet cubicle. We went up Coppergate, which in those days was a thriving shopping street. Much like it is now in fact except that they hadn't built The Coppergate Centre back then.

Eventually we found ourselves back in the present day. I'm not quite sure how this happened as we didn't get back in The Time Machine. Maybe I fell asleep for 1000 years or something. However it happened, I was home and relieved to have survived the experience relatively unscathed.

Overall, I found the experience slightly underwhelming, and slightly short at under 20 minutes (I will of course retract this comment if it turns out I was actually in there for 1000 years and twenty minutes). Possibly this is what happens when you've been waiting around 20 years to go somewhere. It's always going to be hard to meet the expectations that can build up over that length of time. But on the plus side, there were no queues.

Yorvik Viking Centre
Time spent in attraction: 18 minutes
Does it have a bar? No
Fun: 4/10
Suitable for a rainy day? Yes

Challenge #5: PROMOTE - Complete!

One of my challenges this year was to try and get promoted at work. I'd kind of hoped that this would be a pretty easy challenge that would just involve me waiting around until someone came along to me and said "Well done! It's time you were bumped up, my lad!". But there comes a time when you realise that that isn't going to happen. And so we reach a new era of Pro-Active Career Management. Making things happen rather than waiting for the world to happen to me.

A few weeks ago I found an internal job advert. It would be working for my old boss in an area that should be pretty interesting over the next couple of years. And it would be at a higher grade (which is the important bit for the purposes of this challenge). So after some thought I figured I might as well go for it. After all, the worst that could happen would be that I'd not get it and would end up doing my current job which I quite enjoy. And I'd at least get some interview experience.

On Thursday morning last week, I had an interview. It was entirely competency based, which I wasn't particularly pleased about. I really dislike competency based interviews (CBIs). I'll probably write a big long rant about them at some point. But anyway, somehow I got through it (Q: "How do I personally demonstrate the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour to people I work with?" A: BY SHOUTING AT THEM).

And then on Friday afternoon I was told that I had the job. I'm not sure when I start or indeed about many of the other details, but I am now officially going to be an Actuary rather than an Assistant Actuary. Pah! I spit on Assistant Actuaries. Losers. They can shine my big black boots. The Power Trip starts here.

Go me!

Places to go and see in York #1

Today I begun my tourist odyssey around York. My first destination was a place which I have never before visited. It was also a place that now I have visited it, I will get cheaper entry into some other places that I might visit. Can you guess where it is yet?

Today I went to York Library. And I joined it too! I haven't been in a library for many many years. I don't think I ever visited the one in Norwich when I lived there so it must be some seven or eight years since I was last in one. It was much as I remembered it. Not that I've ever been in this particular one before, but it pushed all the right library buttons in my head. Libraries seem to have a certain libraryness to them, and I think that should I be plucked up by aliens and then deposited in an unknown locale, I would instantly be able to determine if I was in a library or not. It's a talent I have.

There was no way that the little old lady on the front desk could have been anything other than a librarian. She had those special librarian glasses that have chains coming from the arms and going back around her neck. Librarians must be very prone to losing their glasses, because they all seem to have the little chains. I wasn't really sure how to go about joining the library. I had imagined I might have a conversation like:

Me: Hello Miss. I'd like to join your fine library please.
Lady: Shhhh!
Me: Sorry. Can I join the library please
Lady: Why? Can't you afford to buy books? Are you a PAUPER?
Me: Yes, er no, look I just want to get a library card please.
Lady: Have you WASHED your hands boy? We don't lend books to people with jam on their hands.
Me: I've washed my hands. Look. They're clean. No jam.
Lady: Good... Have you used a library before?
Me: Yes, but not for several years.
Lady: You weren't banned for HEAVY PETTING in the stacks, were you?
Me: No! Of course not.
Lady: That's.... gooooood. I'll need a three hundred pound cash deposit and then you can have your card.
Me: Fantastic!
Lady: Shhhh!

The reality was not quite like that. But I got my card and the old lady explained how things worked to me and used some words that old ladies don't normally use, like "online" and "PIN" and "DVD". It's not like it was when I was a whippersnapper. And being able to renew books online now... that's just wrong.

I ended up having a bit of a look around and even "borrowed" a couple of books. It felt bizarre, but I did it anyway. It seems wrong too that they let you do this for free. But this means that one day I will have to go back to return the books, and then I'll be tempted to borrow more for free and then I'll have been drawn into a addictive cycle of borrowing and returning books. It can only end badly, I fear.

I'm going to be rating York's Fine Tourist Attractions in a consistent manner:

York Central Public Library
Time spent in attraction: 16 minutes
Does it have a bar? No
Fun: 4/10
Suitable for a rainy day? Yes

It rhymes with ripe and type

Last night I my made my first ever VoIP call (using Skype). I found it to be a pretty impressive system, once I'd worked out the correct combination of microphones/headphones that I needed to plug in at my end. For info, the laptop's internal mike works fine, but headphones are useful for preventing an echo at the other end.

Several advantages were immediately apparent:
- It's free to call other Skype users
- The sound quality of the other person(s) is noticeably clearer than when using a standard phone
- I was able to speak to my sister and my brother-in-law at the same time
- You can do instant messaging at the same time

It's true that you can achieve most of these things using other methods and it does have a disadvantage in that it's not so easy to walk around the room at the same time as making the call, but I think it's worth it for the better sound quality.

We had a small discussion in the pub last night about how to pronounce Skype. I was right (though I suspect I may have been being wound up). I checked in their Support section :-)

Now all I need is to know more people that use it too...

Holiday Plans

I have two weeks off work starting tomorrow, and am planning to spend it here in York for the most part. That might sound rubbish and lazy, but it's not! No. Because York has many fine attractions d'touriste (as the French say) and I am intending to sample them. I may try and do one every day unless I am tired, hungover, tired and hungover, out of town, out of luck, out of cash, out of my mind, French, lost, ill, dying or dead. Oh, and I might not bother if it's raining either.

The Great Pop/Rock Cheese Mix

So in a freak accident, a load of pop stars accidentally merge with the contents of a cheese shop. Possibly using that machine from The Fly. This is what you get:

Edam and the Ants
Gwensleydale Steffani
Feta No More
Stiltonskin
Simply Red Leicester
The Brie-ders
Delta Gouda-rem

And at that point, the kerfuffle comes to an end, as I'm all out. Feel free to contribute more.

Sleep. Is. Now.

And a very busy week at work comes to a close. I'll have more to write soon, and may even catch up on writing some emails. But for now, what I intend to do is.... Sleep.

Sleep.... zzzzzzzz....zzzz....zzz..zz.z

Sage advice

The wise Chinese man, he say: "Make sure you put on your slippers before stepping on cold stone floor". He very wise.

I'd better go and find my "slippers".

Potential Pen Problem

That could have been worse... Upon opening my washing machine just now, I found that not only had I washed lots of clothes, but also a black Bic biro. If it had leaked, I could now have a lot of black clothes. But it seems to have held its ink. Good pen. I wonder if it still works?

Prelude to a Break

One unexpectedly humorous side effect of having requested quarterly bank statements rather than monthly ones, is that when my first one arrived today, it was so long that the bank had decided to send it in two separate envelopes. One envelope is clearly not a sufficient size for six sheets of paper! OK, so maybe it's not that humorous, but it's been a long day.

I love doing 12 hour days (only half as much as I love 24 hour days). Especially the ones where I come home and have things to do there too that can't be put off, albeit even if they are to some extent things that I have brought upon myself. But I only have two more days in work before embarking on a wonderful, lazy two weeks off. Maybe I'll think of something to actually do in those weeks at some point soon... At the moment, two weeks of sleep is sounding like a fine plan.

TPS

There's something that I've been meaning to do for a while, which I have now just done. I have finally got around to registering with the Telephone Preference Service. With a bit of luck, it will stop at least some of the many, many random telemarketing calls that I get.

I find junk telephone calls are much more irritating than junk mail or even spam - I think mainly because every time it happens, it involves the phone ringing which is quite distracting. And then I might have to speak to someone. Urggh. At least with junk mail you get the warm feeling that comes when you receive some post.

The numbers of these calls seem to have increased noticeably over the last six months or so, and they've also been coming at more inconvenient times - after nine at night, or before eight in the morning. I reckon I get at least two or three a day. I have now stopped answering the phone at all unless it displays a number. I had one just after I got home tonight and just swore at the phone rather than answering it. Maybe I should have answered it and sworn at the phoner instead. But that wouldn't have been very friendly.

Anyway, it'll take up to a month for it to take full effect, and I suspect that even then I'll still get calls from over the big pond where UK law is not so respected. But I won't answer the phone. No. I won't.

Coach Trip (around Europe)

Last year I went on a coach tour of Western Europe with strangers. Beforehand I had been thinking that this would be somewhat like Big Brother, but on a coach. One obvious difference was that on the coach tour, there wouldn't be evictions. Everyone would be able to finish the journey regardless of how odd they were (Even CCJ - little in-joke there for anyone who was there).

I think it's true that everything you can think will probably happen at some point, somewhere.

I found a show on Channel 4 this morning called "Coach Trip". You'll see where the name comes from in a minute... In it, a selction of maybe 10 couples go on a coach trip around Europe. Then, each evening, the couples vote for which couple should leave the trip and go home. Losing couples go home and are replaced with a brand new couple. This may go on forever - it wasn't clear.

It's a bit like people are reaching into my head, pulling out my thoughts and televising them. I hope that they don't make a habit of this.

When I saw the show this morning, they were in Munich. They watched the Glockenspiel. Just like in real life, it was rubbish.

College Dinner

Friday night was my old college's Annual Dinner in the North, held for the second year running at St William's College, York. Last year there were around six or so youngsters (under 30s) and I'd expected a similar number this year. However, there were not quite so many... The alumni officer claimed that they'd all "moved away" since last year.

After the drinks reception, we headed to dinner, and then had the usual fund raising spiel. They're currently in the midst of a massive building project, putting up new student rooms, an admin centre and also a new auditorium and associated bits. It should all look pretty good when it's finished, and based on the photographs they showed us, it looks to have developed a lot since last year. Though it still looks mainly like building site. There's a webcam which you can view progress on. And you can even watch time lapse movies of each day of building!

The Master recognised me from last year and said to the waitress: "Don't give this man any wine!" as she was pouring my wine. He was joking, of course, and she either realised this or was just delinquent, as she carried on pouring.

Over dinner I learnt some things about what's going on in the university (interesting), some things about the Japanese language (interesting) and some things about rowing (not interesting). The food was pie and I had second helpings. It was nice, and I was hungry.

The Master said that they may have it somewhere different next year - not in York. Possibly Durham, or somewhere on the west side of the north of the country. Not sure if I'll go if I have to travel and do hotels, but... never say never.

Spider Legs

I met up with my mum for lunch today.

Me: How many legs does a spider have?
Mum: I don't know. Six?
Me: No, a spider has eight legs. Eight.
Mum: Oh - I was getting confused with Henry the Eighth having six wives.
Me: ????!!!

Mysterious Delivery

It's Saturday morning and fairly early - not yet nine am at the current time. If I'm honest, I'd rather be in bed. But I have had to get up to wait for a delivery. The unusual thing is that I have absolutely zip idea what it is that will be delivered.

Now in case you are thinking that I have just got up on the off-chance that a random delivery might arrive, that is not the case. I have not felt my spidey sense start tingling or anything like that. Last Friday I received a cardboard card telling me that a delivery had been attempted. I hadn't been expecting anything, so I arranged to have it redelivered today to avoid me having to take any time off work.

It was clearly not something I needed quickly or urgently, since I did not know what the item was. Waiting an extra week would cause no problems at all.

But I can only imagine that I'll be disappointed with the thing when it arrives. Unless it's a plasma screen TV that I've won in a competition. Or maybe a car. It's probably not a car. They could have just left that outside in my parking space (unless they couldn't because I need to sign for it...)

Oh, the suspense.

----------------- Update 12:56 --------------

Right I know what it was now, since the little man has just been! Idlewild tickets. Not sure why they didn't come via standard Royal Mail recorded delivery. But at least now I can go out and get some lunch.

Not very red hair

Today is Comic Relief's Red Nose Day. Because of this I decided to dye my hair red. But you wouldn't have known it without looking at me quite closly, and even then you might just have thought I had a mild case of sunburn on my scalp. Red hair gel and dark brown hair don't combine to give red hair. They combine to give dark brown hair. I had suspected that this might be the case, but figured it didn't hurt to have a go.

I've washed it out now.

My Filing System

I often joke that the paper bin next to my desk is my filing system (Yes, I'm that funny), and it's true that it does act as a fine place to store documents, especially if they are not going to be needed in the near future. In general, if I have a piece of paper more than a day old, I'm likely to have forgotten what it was for in the first place so it may as well go to special filing.

But sometimes this system can work as an actual storage and retrieval system.

A couple of guys came over earlier to ask me about some figures I'd produced. I was aware that I had produced these, and was also aware that I'd passed them to special filing a few hours previously. Hence I was able to stand up, remove the lid from the bin and reach in to quickly retrieve the numbers they wanted. I could tell they were impressed. And slightly confused.

Afterwards I replaced the figures where they'd come from.

A review of a hotel what I stayed in last night

As I mentioned yesterday, I have just been to a sales conference in Birmingham - this involved me staying over in the hotel, since we had dinner and drinks afterwards. I was actually a good little boy and went to bed reasonably early (ie midnight-ish) rather than staying up late in the bar. The conference was at the Hilton Metropole which must rank as one of the ugliest hotels I've ever seen. There's definitely a good reason why they don't show a proper photo of the place on their website. It's hideous. And very brown. It is pretty decent inside though.

My room had a lovely view of some pipes:



Other than that though, it was fine. Pretty standard hotel room except for the following things:

1. It had electric curtains. Well, one electric curtain. Its partner was manually operated.

2. It had two showers. In the same cubicle. One fixed one and one on a hose (but also fixed on the wall). And you could only use one of them at a time because there was a lever that diverted the water either to one or the other of them. I still haven't worked out what the point of this was.

3. Since it was a conference, my luggage was taken up to the room by servants during the day time. And they hung my coat in the wardrobe for me. I was slightly disappointed that they hadn't completely unpacked all my things and done some ironing whilst they were at it.

4. There were no biscuits. This was a shame.

I'd mark it out of ten, but I'm too lazy.

Don't forget the CD, mate

I'm off to Birmingham for a conference today, where I hope to be running (or at least partly running) a business game for around 500 salesmen. The day is likely to be somewhat on the mad hectic side, but I do get a free black-tie dinner at the end of it all. It should all go ok, as long as I remember to pick up the VERY IMPORTANT CD that I burnt last night with final versions of models and presentations on it. I really should remember to take it.

I'm bound to forget to take it though.

Bed sounds

I had a reasonably long post to write. But I can't be arsed. It's late and I have a relatively early start tomorrow morning and I can hear the sound of my bed calling for me. It sounds like springs slowly contracting and then expanding before contracting once more. So the reasonably long post will appear another day. And I will get my well deserved sleep. But only after I've finished the lovely cold bottle of beer I've just opened. Chill. Yes.

Trip not suitable for vegetarians

I was reading the brochure for the rafting holiday that I'm going on in the summer, down America's Grand Canyon. There's a section about the food that they'll be giving us. It says:

"Lunches are a favorite for many with its variety of deli meats, fresh fruits and vegetables. Our menus are created from years of satisfied guests."

I wonder what they do with the unsatisfied ones?

Now, I'm not saying that company running the trip has cannibalistic tendencies, but frankly I find this slightly disturbing. It is disturbing because either:
a) They actually are cannibals
b) They have awful grammar
c) They are cannibals with awful grammar. The worst kind.

I will have to be careful.

Check out the checkouts

I'm not sure when the last time I visited my local Sainsburys was, but since that time they have installed some new checkouts, shinier and more metallic than the old ones. Whilst I like the shininess, I'm not so convinced by the reduced amount of room at the end where your shopping goes when it's been scanned. For me, this isn't a huge problem since I rarely buy more than one basket of items at a time. But if I was a family of four, the lack of room could be more problemmatic unless I was a really quick packer.

It does all feel a bit roomier and airier overall though.

And I did get some nice new teabags (wild cherry and cinammon). I like tea.

Curry Time

I've just come back from a curry. It's the 4th of March and I think this may have been my first curry of the year. This seems slightly wrong to me. It was good curry though.

Perhaps more importantly, the Curry House has the same tiles in its man bathroom as I do in my bathroom here in the flat. It's a relatively new curry place, so I can only conclude that they have copied me somehow. They must have sent round a secret curry spy when I was at work one day.

I wonder if they have the same wardrobes as me in their Curry House Bedrooms. And the same bottle opener in their Curry House Cupboard of Bottle Opening. And the same c... nah, that one has to just be me. If it ain't, I'm gonna sue.

Three Questions

Three pretty pointless questions I have never asked myself before, along with my answers:

Q1. If I was living in a box (living in a cardboard box), would I hang pictures on its wall to make it more homely?
A1: No.

Q2: If I had the power to make flowers wilt just by staring at them, would I use that power for good, or would I use it for evil?
A2: Definitely evil. Well, mild mischief at least.

Q3: If I had been the man who invented the pogo stick, would I have shared it with the world, or would I have kept it to myself? Would I have kept it to myself and laughed at all the people who walked by my window, all the pogo stick-less people, all the poor saps who didn't know what they were missing because I, the great me, the one who invented the pogo stick had refused to share my wonderful, wondrous invention with the rest of the world?
A3: I'd have shared. An invention like that could not be confined for long.

How about you?

Another bad day

It's strange how every bad day Jack Bauer has goes on for exactly 24 hours. Obviously that's how long most days go on for since a day here on Earth is 24 hours long, almost by definition. But Jack just seems to have bad shit happen to him for 24 hours in a row and then magically clear everything up.

I'm almost hoping that in series 4 everything will be sorted out after 22 hours, and the final two hours will involve Jack:
1. Having a short nap
2. Taking some time out to watch a popular American drama series
3. Smiling at some girls as they walk past his window

I suspect that in fact the last two hours will instead involve Jack:
1. Shouting
2. Shooting his gun
3. Shooting his gun and shouting at the same time

I haven't yet worked out how the terrorists are going to get the Moon to leave its normal orbit and head towards Los Angeles yet, but then I don't expect the script writers have worked it out yet either. Actually, I have no idea what the ultimate aim of the terrorists is at all this year. Maybe it is the Moon thing. It'll have to be the Moon thing one day.

da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da
Jack, Oooohhhh-oooooohhh
He saved every one of us

Or at least he probably will. Good luck fella.

Hey, what's that sound?

It would be nice to have a theme tune that played every time I entered a room. Everyone in Bod used to have one. Farmer Barleymow, Aunt Flo, the postman chap and Bod him/herself. I'd like to have my own. The big question is: should it have lyrics?

I may write more on this topic tomorrow.

**************

Update 02/03/05 08:23
It has been pointed out to me that Ally McBeal covered this whole theme tune thing fairly comprehensively in one episode. I have no idea what tune she decided on though, or indeed if she made a decisison. Or in fact whether there was a decision to be made...

Oscar Winners

Well done to all the Oscar winners. Here are my thoughts on the main winning films:

Million Dollar Baby: Looks dull.
Ray: Looks dull too.
The Aviator: Looks dull and overlong.
The Incredibles: Haven't seen it, but I think it's out on DVD soon.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Looks dull but is actually fantastic.

Ok, so the only one I've actually seen is ESOTSM, but they could at least make the trailers for the first three look interesting.

There's Something About London

There's definitely something about London that makes me more impatient than normal. Generally I tend to not bother checking train times before turning up to a train station - in general I can be happy that I won't have to wait more than half an hour to go to most of the places I regularly go to. And a half hour wait isn't too bad, especially if I have some tunes to listen to.

But when I turn up to a tube station, I get frustrated if I have to wait for even a small amount of time. If the electronic sign tells me that the next train is only three minutes away (eg Whitechapel: 3 mins) then I get really annoyed. It should be here now! I shouldn't have to wait. I know that three minutes isn't a long time. There are a lot of things that you can't do in three minutes (Hmmm that sounds like an idea for another post...) because it isn't long enough. But I don't want to have to wait for a stupid tube train!

Maybe it's just because of the extra level of crowding that you get on the underground. Perhaps a mild claustrophobia that means I want to spend as little time underground as possible. Or maybe I'm just impatient. Oh well, at least I don't have to live there.

Live Party Cam!

Well, this is quite exciting. Here's a live feed from the party I'm at tonight. Watch me have fun! Watch me have beer! Watch me fall over! Hours of fun for all!

>>Party Cam<<

Update: Party over, link gone.

A Temporary Absence

It's Saturday and soon I will be travelling down to Smelly London for a party in a friend's flat. It would be nice if my friend could rent a church hall or something up here in York, and have the party there instead - so much more convenient for me - but he selfishly has chosen to not do that. Git.

I don't think it's really too much to ask though. But because he isn't holding his party here, I have a four hundred mile round trip ahead of me. Which may make me tired. And though I can sleep on the train, I can't sleep as well as I could on my sofa. Git.

More W, Less L!

It's late and I have not yet written anything today. What are the odds of me thinking of something interesting in the next 30 seconds...? Yes, that's right, Nil! Oh, well, back to the telly.

A question of identity

You remember how when you were a kid, your mother used to sew your name into your pants and your trousers and your t-shirts on little pre printed cloth strips?

Some very minor debate went on after a recent post I made, between Jaq, Maine and Myself concerning whether I was in fact someone else, specifically, whether I was in fact, Maine. He had said I was "easily one of the world's five funniest men", and the others appeared to disagree. I disagree too. It is in no way easy to be one of the world's five funniest men. It is in fact, very hard. Maine should have therefore said that I was "hardly one of the world's five funniest men". Oh... wait...

Anyway, I was reasonably happy that Maine and Me are not the same person. We are different people. I thought I knew this. Then I looked down at my scarf and saw the following thing:



Now I am confused. Who am I?

The light of silence

Some good news: the buzzing light outside my flat has been silenced. Those of you who have been round here recently will be aware just how loud it was - roughly similar to the sound of a plane taking off. Well, now it is totally silent. Someone has either come round to fix it, or possibly it has just burnt itself out. Either way, I've had the quietest night's sleep for a couple of weeks. Result.

It's still not actually emitting any light though.

Master of the English Language

I'm quite pleased with myself because I just used the word "fungable" in conversation, in a natural way. Witness:

Staff: Can we use the money we get from XXXX for anything, or do we have to use it for a special purpose?
Me: Oooohh! Ooooh! I know this one!!! There's a word. Hang on... Fumble... Fangle.... Finulet.... Fungable!!!! That's it, Fungable!!! Yay, I'm great.
Staff: eh?
Me: We can use it for anything because money is fungable!!!
Staff: I do not know what you mean.
Me: Oh, look it up.

Never have I slipped one in more naturally than that.

Shopping that rhymes

At lunchtime today I bought

- a half-price pair of gloves
- and the new album by Doves.

I then decided that I'd only buy things that rhymed with gloves, but unfortunately the only other thing I wanted was a sandwich and I couldn't think of an appropriate filling. The best I could do was "Can I have a cajun chicken baguette, love" because that's how we talk here in Yorkshire. Except I didn't say the "love" part because it would have felt silly.

I thought it in my head though.

Walking 'round the room singing stormy weather

I wanna stay in bed. Outside it's been snowing. I think Chip may have brought it back from Canada with him. Git. If any Candadians could confirm whether or not there's a big hole where your snow used to be, that would be useful.

Currently I estimate the depth of the snow to be close to 9 metres, and it's falling at a rate of 4 inches per minute. And annoyingly, because I've used both metric and imperial units there, I am unable to work out how long it's been snowing for. Around six years I think. The only plus point is that it should all be reasonably crisp and not have become slippy yet. That will come later.

But it would be nice just to stay in my warm bed and wait for winter to depart once more.

Don't take these things out with you

Based on a conversation we had in the pub at lunchtime, here is a list of things that it is potentially not a good idea to take on a first date with a girl:

1. A duvet
2. Clean sheets
3. Your mum
4. Your girlfriend
5. A lingering odour
6. Surveillance photos
7. Your spare set of false teeth
8. A Ladyshave
9. The local under-17s rugby team
10. The Isle of Man
11. A ladder
12. Musical prophylactics
13. Handcuffs and/or manacles
14. The pickled body of a dead relative
15. Coroner's reports of your last four girlfriends
16. A detailed gynaecological map
17. Your parole officer
18. Herpes
19. Harpies
20. A platter of processed cheese

There are more, but I forget them. Any ideas?

Feeling a bit sick

I'm wishing that I hadn't just eaten a whole bag of Jelly Babies. This wish ain't going to come true :-(

The Other Me

I have had a slightly confusing email exchange today on Gmail. For the purposes of this, we'll pretend that my real name is Lintford Christie, and hope that it doesn't get too complicated (though I think it may have done already...)

Even though my full name is Lintford, my email address is lint.christie@gmail.com. The email I received today was from lintford.christie@gmail.com. It said:

"Are you a real member?"

I replied with

"A real member of what?"

Which seemed a valid response to me, since I am a real member of many things, including, but not limited to, my bank, Blogger and the human race.

It later transpired that poor Lintford (the other one, not me) had just joined Gmail and was annoyed (in a friendly, non-aggresive way) that he had to have the lintford.christie address rather than the lint.christie one that I already have.

I can only wonder if his initial question implies that he thinks there are a lot of fake fictional people set up on the system, purely for the purposes of annoying people like him. I kind of wish I'd replied with "No, I am not real. I am a product of your own mind, and you have multiple personality disorder. Have a nice day!". But I didn't say that.

To add to the confusion, my actual name on the Gmail (rather than email address) is Lintford, and his is Lint. I don't think I'll extend my communications with him further, since I would start to worry that I had multiple personality disorder myself. In fact, maybe I have. Who is writing this anyway?

Make me some good tunes...

It's been a while since a band came along to inspire real long term devotion - someone I can enjoy for years and years and years. Like The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian or The Tindersticks. Come on world, get your act together.

Light, converted to sound

Since the power cut on Sunday, there has been a problem. There is a light outside my front door, between my flat and the next flat. It's a ceiling light that used to emit sufficient light for me to do things like see where my lock is situated. After the powercut, this light... changed.

It used to emit light. Now it doesn't. It now emits a very loud buzzing noise. Loud to the extent that you can hear it in the bedroom. You can hear in in the living room. Last night I was in Norwich, and I kinda felt I could hear it there too. It is most annoying. Worst thing is that there is no Off Switch anywhere. The light seems to be hardwired into the National Grid.

If anyone can explain the physics behind this phenomenon to me, that would be grand. And if you have any ideas how to make the f***er shut up, that would be lovely too.

No!

No time to write anything here today! Lucky all of you!

How to make music REALLY small

Miniaturisation is a wonderful thing - a few years back I would have needed a small truck to carry around with me the amount of music that I regularly do. That's not because I take a lot of music around with me, it was more because I'm weak and lazy. But now I don't need a truck at all because within the last couple of years they have invented Hard Disks which store everything I want quite compactly, like an old vinyl record without the scratches.

And the way they've got round the problem of scratches is by keeping the disk in a box the whole time! Genius really - imagine how many scratched LPs could have been avoided in the 70s if we'd had a way to play them without removing them from the sleeves first! But I don't think things have gone small enough yet, so I was having a think earlier about how we can store more things in my iPod at once. It's all about compression.

Compression is all about squeezing something big until it becomes something small. You can do it with sleeping bags, and you can also do it with music if you know the tricks. The boffins know lots of tricks, but I've got some that they may not have considered...

Number One: In the majority of digital storage media, information is stored as a succession of ones and zeroes. Like this: 11100010100210001. The easiest way to store this in a smaller space is to write smaller! I know that it sounds too easy, too obvious, but really just imagine how much more information could be stored on a hard disk that used really small writing! I estimate that nearly 1.4 times as much tunage could be stored on current hard disks using just this method alone.

Number Two: The compression methods used have to be able to cope with a wide variety of noises: singing, trombones, pigeon noises, screams and several others. It’s not easy to encode all these types of noise since a different algorithm is needed for each one. And each of these algorithms takes up space and makes the whole thing less efficient. So my idea is to cut out the ability to encode the less used noises and hence make a more efficient (albeit slightly less comprehensive) algorithm. Possibly the best thing to cut out is French. No longer will unnecessary time and space be used up encoding and compressing a silly language that nobody wants to hear. It means that I won’t be able to listen to Je t’aime or Joe le taxi on the iPod anymore, but I think this is something I will learn to live with.

Number Three: The final method is so secret, so cunning and so plain brilliant that I can only write it here in a special code, at least until I am able to obtain the proper patents. It would be truly terrible were some industry bigwig from Sony to see this, steal my idea and rob me of my rightful royalties. Here it is:

XHG

It's quite a good code, so I doubt you'll be able to crack it.

And that concludes my selection of excellent ideas to make music really small. Yes, I am a genius.

Powerless

It's Sunday afternoon afternoon and we are having a power-cut. I have no power at all, except for things like the laptop and other mobile devices. So at least I can still type! I just won't be able to publish this until later. Hopefully not too much later.

It happened just literally 30 seconds after I'd started playing the new Star Wars KOTOR game on the Xbox. It had just got past the various Lucasfilm and other company logos and started the introduction, then zzzzziiiiiipppppp and it all went dark. A burglar alarm started off outside somewhere as I believe there is a legal requirement for at least one alarm to go off whenever the power goes.

It did occur to me soon after we lost power that this could be the result of a terrorist attack, or nuclear strike or Flash Gordon style Moon Crashing Into Earth scenario, and I'd never know the details because I have lost the internet (and am too lazy to plug in my dial-up connection), I have lost the radio (and have only just remembered I have a battery powered one in the bathroom) and I didn't buy a newspaper in the supermarket this morning. That might at least have had a warning in it. Since there doesn't seem to have been any blinding super hot flash of light come this way in the past few minutes, I think I'll rule out nuclear strike as an option.

So now I need to occupy myself without electricity (and without cups of tea!) for however long this takes. So far I have done the following things:
- Experimented with my own burglar alarm to see if it still works during a power cut. It does.
- Written a birthday card and its envelope.
- Written this.
- Paired a pile of socks and put them and some other bits of washing away.
- Tidied some wires by the television. Slightly.

The electricity's just come back on now. The outside burglar alarm had stopped a short while ago, but the sudden advent of power seems to have started it off again. Darn.

And now I'll have to spend the best part of a day resetting a million clocks around the flat. Darn again.

Boats and helicopters

My summer holiday is now semi-booked ie we've booked the main course, but not the flights and additional hotels etc. As I mentioned last week, myself and two friends are going to be heading over to America's Grand Canyon and sailing down it in a little rubber raft. Or something. Whilst boats and sleeping under the stars and rivers and all that are all well and good, the most exciting part will be right at the end. Because that's when we get to go in a helicopter!

I've never been in a helicopter before, but I've always thought that it'd be a pretty cool thing to do as long as it didn't crash like they always seem to do in films. I am aware of the basic safety tips that should be followed:

- Don't jump up and down whilst entering and leaving the helicopter (if possible, duck your head at all times)
- Don't touch the main rotator blades whilst they are in motion...
- ... or the little one at the back
- Don't tickle the helicopter driver
- Keep all bags out of the aisle so that the waitress can push her trolley along safely and easily
- No heavy petting

So if I follow those rules I should be ok.

I can't help thinking that we could save a lot of time by just getting a helicopter down to the far end in the first place, and not bothering with all this boat nonsense, where there is after all a fair chance that we'll get wet. But I guess as with life, it's all about the journey rather than the destination, which with life is always ultimately death. Cheery!

Not so much of a surprise

Sometimes when you go to work, you don't know what the day has in store. You don't know what will be on your desk.

Today, I know exactly what will be on my desk. The second half of a bottle of red wine.

But don't worry - there are some plastic glasses in my drawer.

Go to bed

Here's something that's worth realising: This post actually exists. Really. It's stored on some server and is made of little ones and zeroes. In total it is comprised of:

a) 56
b) 456
c) More than 456

ones and zeroes. There isn't a prize,

Correction

Rather embarassingly, I have just spotted that yesterday's post about VideoPlus codes was a week out of date. The author had been looking at the previous week's TV guide by mistake.

The management would like to apologise for this stupid mistake, and would assure all readers that the writer responsible for the piece has been taken outside and severley shot.

Short Code Day

Today looks to be a bit special. According to my TV guide, there are a number of programmes on this evening with a VideoPlus code that is only 1 digit long. Hollyoaks (1830-1900, Channel 4: OB goes on a blind date!) has a code of 8. The ITV Evening News (1830-1900, ITV: Including the weather!) has a code of 6. And the code for Massive Nature (1930-2000, BBC2: Featuring Flamingos being attacked by baboons!) is just 4.

But beating all of them is Eastenders (1930-2000, BBC1: It's Zoe's 21st birthday!) which is encoded with just 2.

To my mind it's quite impressive to be able to encode all that information in just 2 bits. I have never really known how VideoPlus codes work and have never attempted to find out. I had wondered how short they could be though. I guess 1 digit is a minimum.

Isn't this interesting?!

An arresting sight

I saw a criminal being arrested in town this lunchtime. It was around the back of that notorious evil vice den, Habitat. It's not surprising he was caught since he completely stereotypically looked like a criminal. I offer the following evidence of this:

1. He had very short hair - shaved all over.
2. He was surrounded by policemen - there were at least two of them.
3. He was being handcuffed - this one is always s dead giveaway when identifying criminals.
4. There was an evil air about him.

I don't know what his crime was - possibly he was one of those mass-murderer serial-killers that we read so much about. Or maybe he was a terrorist! They are everywhere! Or possibly he had been claiming unemployment benefit whilst working. It was hard to tell because I couldn't see his face to determine exactly how evil he was.

Well, whatever he had done, he clearly wasn't very good at it since he had been nabbed. Well done the York Police Force. You are making the street behind Habitat safer for all of us.

Five Pound Willy

Last night, I went to Fibbers to see Willy Mason. Since it was an acoustic gig, they were handing out little pieces of paper warning us to keep the noise down during the performance at the risk of being asked to leave. I'm guessing they were handing out pieces of paper rather than just telling us to be quiet, since it was quieter to do it that way. Do you still have to be quiet in libraries? Do Librarians still go "shhhh!" at every opportunity? I hope they do.

So what did we have... One young guy with a guitar. He's come all the way over here from the USA. I'm not sure whether he was sitting or standing because it was sold out and I was about halfway back, so I couldn't see his legs. See if you can decide:



I think he might be standing, but he could just have a stool. And he sounded pretty good. Played most of the album (maybe all?) and a few older songs too. Oxygen seemed to be a curiously slightly truncated version.

I think he's still really young (like under 20) and he really is very talented for someone of that ilk. Most of us in the audience were probably old enough to be his older brother.

Unfortunately I've nearly run out of time for further excellently descriptive and evocative writing as it's time to go to work shortly. The support guy, Nathan Burton, was also solo acoustic and very good too. Sounded a bit like Ben from Ben & Jason, apart from one song near the end where he went a little Kelly Jones.

The title of this post is a joke because if the gig had been free it would have been Free Willy. Like that film with the whale. But it wasn't free, it was five English pounds.

Challenge #3: DATE - Complete!

I had a semi-blind date last night (with a girl!). I say "semi" since I had spoken to her on the phone and via email several times over the last couple of weeks. But I hadn't actually seen her before. Meeting at the station was quite strange - I knew she'd recognise me easily enough from the photos on here, but all I really had to go on was a height. And girls are notoriously good at changing that by using heels.

Luckily, when her train arrived she spotted me straight away. And didn't run off. So that got the evening off to a good start.

We proceeded for a quick drink (or two) in a little pub - slightly strangely I chose one that I'd already been to this year so I wasn't able to increase my pub total. But since my chairs had arrived in the morning and I was currently on a date, I felt that sufficient Challenge progress was being made for one day.

I'd tried to book a nice restaurant like Burger King, but sadly it was fully booked. As was MacDonalds. So instead, we went to The Olive Tree, auspiciosuly situated in the shadow of Clifford's Tower. I think I promised to do a little research into the history of the tower, as I had forgotten what it was for. So here's the official website! However, just so that your mental picture of this evening is accurate, I used the phrase "in the shadow" there in a metaphorical way. It was night-time and dark and there was no sun to cast shadows upon a restuarant. I hope that's cleared that up.

Anyways, both the food and the company were excellent, and as we left later one of the waitresses was very very happy that we'd had a good time. I hope that this wasn't because everyone else that eats there normally has a miserable time and we were the first ever satisfied customers.

And by this time it was getting a bit late and it was time to head back to the train station.

Despite the failure to book Burger King, I had an excellent evening, and hopefully she enjoyed herself too. Hi there, you!

Dog eat dog

I looked out of my bedroom window earlier today to see quite a sight. There was a crowd of people (well, maybe six) over the other side of the road and they were doing a bit of shouting and arguing. It was this noise that initially caught my attention. On closer inspection, there were two dogs in the middle of the people. Both dogs were smallish, one looked niceish and one looked a bit mean. Initially I thought that the two dogs were making mad doggy love, right there out in the street. On even closer inspection, I realised that this was not what was happening.

Nasty Dog had bitten Nice Dog's tail, right the way down to the bottom and may have even had its teeth right in Nice Dog's rump. And he really didn't want to let go. Several people were trying to get him off, including a man in gardening gloves. But Nasty Dog wouldn't let go - I was watching for about a minute or so and eventually the dogs were separated.

A middle aged lady who I took to be Nice Dog's owner was crying and quickly came to pick up the injured dog. She then took him off somewhere. Hopefully to get medical attention. And then Nasty Dog was also led away, and I was able to hear phrases like "Killed another dog" and "put down".

I didn't like Nasty Dog.

And that's about as much of this story as I am able to relate. I don't know what started the fight. They were probably arguing over a bitch they both fancied or something. Note that I'm allowed to say "bitch" there since I'm talking about dogs, not people. You shouldn't call them bitches bad names.

Later, on the way back from the local shop, I passed the middle aged lady, and she had Nice Dog with her. It seemed to be walking ok, but she still looked quite upset. But at least the dog was alive. Unless it was in fact dead and she'd stuck castors on its feet, so it was like one of those fake dogs that you have when you're a child. Maybe it was one of those all along, and she was a child who had dressed up as a middle aged lady...

I don't know the fate of Nasty Dog. I like to imagine that later today, a group of dogs dressed as policemen came and arrested him, to take back to the doggy police station for questioning, all the while waving their little doggy truncheons. But I don't think we have a doggy police force in York any more. The bears scared them all away.

I've chaired up now

I'm sure that you will all be as happy as I am when you hear that I now have dining chairs. Four of them. John Lewis managed to find a van that was less high than a Redwood and hence were able to bring all the chairs to my door by half past nine this morning. Rather nicely, they even match my table - something it was hard to be sure of until I saw them.

For the novelty, I sat on one of them for a bit, but it was a bit cold from having been in warehouses and vans and whatnot. I'll maybe sit on it again later when it's had a chance to warm up a little.

Since the chairs do not have arms, it also means that I finally have something reasonably decent to sit and play the guitar on in a comfortable position. This can only be a source of inspiration. After all, weren't John Lennon's best songs written whilst sat on a new chair? Weren't they? Course they were.

Snip snip snippety snip

It's time for what some have called... Snippets.

- Today is Hat Day at work. Everyone wears a hat. I believe that there was a national hat day to raise money for old people (like they don't have enough already!) but ours has two key differences: It is quite localised (with no more than ten people who are aware of it) and it is designed to raise absolutely no money for charity at all. Not a sausage. Incidentally, it was not my idea, though it was inspired by something I said about Royal Ascot.

- Despite it being only early February, plans have started to be made for this year's summer holiday. This is very early for me, and the only explanation I can offer is that all the organisation and investigation so far is being done by a friend, and I just have to say "yes" or "no" occasionally. And then if all goes well, pass him a cheque at some point. We're thinking of rafting down America's Grand Canyon and then heading over to Vegas for a brief while. And then going home due to having run out of money - more from the overall cost than the ill-conceived gambling.

- When I saw Athlete play live last year, they weren't hugely impressive. The album was also not fantastic, though it did have one or two decent songs on it. Their latest single, Wires however, is on whole different level. Mournful yet optimistic, evocative with a great sing-along tune. Possibly the best song to ever be written about a hospital (though I haven't thought too hard about that). It could be this year's Run.

- Does anyone else hate it when people call something "This year's [Insert thing here]? It's lazy.

- I got the letter yesterday which officially appoints me to my new role following last year's work restructuring. My favourite phrase is: "This appointment has been made on the basis that your new role is essentially the same as your current role". A negative person might interpret that as "We don't think you are capable of learning new skills or doing new things, so it's probably best if you just stay where you are and keep your nose down." I don't think it was meant that way :-)

End of snippets.

Too many invitations...

I think Google might be getting ready to take Gmail out of Beta test. I say this on the basis that they have just given me another 44 invitations taking my total up to 50. I'm not sure what makes them think that I know 50 people, never mind 50 who want to join. Not that I mind, since it's a great service and far superior to any other web-email systems I've used. Even my mum uses it. But still... 50... Too many.

The band, not the Nicole Kidman film

There's a relatively new band that emerged last year called The Others. They seem to have a real buzz about them at the moment, great live reviews, lots of press and an album out this week. They have become known for the art of guerilla gigging - playing impromptu sets in unlikely and inappropriate places. Shops, lifts, the back of a Volkswagen, those kind of places. In a lot of ways they are reminding me of The Libertines when they first emerged, before they fell apart for the eighth time.

So I feel somewhat like a small boy pointing his finger at a naked old emperor when I say: Is it just me, or are The Others a bit... rubbish?

The taste of Britain

We seem to have started to do reasonably well at our regular Monday night pub quiz over the last few weeks. Last night, a second place led to me taking home another couple of cans of Carling Black Label. On the side of the can it says that Carling is "The taste of Britain". I think this may be true - if I was to go outside and lick the pavement, I'm sure it would taste of piss, just like the beer.

Only joking. It's a lovely brew.

Only joking again. It's not that nice really.

When I was a kid, myself and my sister both had a small orange glove puppet called Lambchop. I think my father picked them up from somewhere. At the time, I had a vague belief that this may have been a famous puppet from the telly, but I don't recall ever seeing it on telly, or who its human controller was. I think I must have had a vague inkling of the name of the puppeteer though, since when we had the question "What was the name of the puppet operated by Shari Lewis", I instantly wrote down Lambchop.

It's nice that a small silly looking glove puppet finally turned out to have given my life some small benefit. Even if it was only a single point in a pub quiz. Everything happens for a reason! Sometimes it just takes a lot of years to work out what that reason might be.