What the Hell is going on with our nation?

The Royal Mail thing is annoying me enough as it is. More later maybe. but right now i have just seen BT trying to get rid of Phone boxes Privitisation may be good for allowing competition. but there are some things that cannot be privatised. Privatisation that allows cherry picking by the private sector just means that universal services like Phone Boxes, or Post Offcies, or Rural Deliveries get lost.

There are somethings the state should take care of. Private business, or any business that is meant to turn a profit, will not provide services like these. You cannot expect them to.

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No Free Lunch for me

I recieved my latest order from Scan yesterday (well, i spent one and a half hours making the hundred mile or so round trip to grantham) containing a wireless router, and a wireless net card.

The router is not yet plugged into the net, as my broadband does not go live until monday. but, I thought I would do some initial systems checking first…. The only router to appear however was my own one. This means that either 1) everyone else locally is bright enough to set up WEP (BT actually give the instructions in their quick start guide for their router) or 2) No one else has broadband within range. Now, whihc one it is is really open to interpretation…..

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Call Us Old fashioned. But…

Whilst reading an article on Wired about Solar Towers to produce electricity I found the following comment

"There’s nothing like taking policy makers and investors to see something like that and kick the tires"

Adn that just struck me as a key part of modern engineering. Sure, you can give me as many glossy brochures, and piles of data as you like (and even those can be hard to get out of some vendors) but at the end of the day I want to know that your product works.

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Its just not fun any more…

Yesterday I had been wondering about if i could cycle to work today. I want to do that once or twice a week, its really a habit I need to pick back up. At the time, the only other factor was a desire to head to Grantham tonight to go and pick up some parcels.

When I got to work, it looked like i wouldnt be getting those parcels, but later I discovered that actually my goods had been despatched, just their system had not updated its displays. A phone call to City Link confirmed they still had the parcels in their depot. so its off to get them straight after work.

And here is the problem with snow. A little snow and the "World Will End"(tm) and it really suits me to go pick up my stuff tonight, and not take too long over it of course. Helpfully it seesm to have mostly melted so far. So assuming the gritters have been out today, I dont think I will have too much trouble in the next hour or so.

This all leads to me being able to spend the evening reconfiguring my networks stuff. Then any PC can be on or off indipendantly, and yet it should all work. He thinks….

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Home on the Move

SOme of you will be aware of the unhappiness with my floors. So that the HouseBuilder can sort it all out, I have had to move all my stuff from bedrooms 1 and 2 in my flat. This means I am now living in the Lounge/Dining room. Amazingly almst everythig fitted. The outstanding items were my bed (typical…) and the wardrobe from my room. So i am now sleeping on the sofa (but its neaer to a bed than a sofa) and everythign is packed into one Argos wardrobe.

So what i am currently living in is really a studio flat then? Certainly feels more like student accomodation than the livign I have grown familier with of late (the nicest bit of which is seperating living and sleeping spaces)

To liven things up i have signed up for broadband, and placed an order tody with scan for a wireless router. Fun Fun.

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Preventitive Maintenance

I really need to buy some oil to use on my bicycle chain. I really should have oiled it. Having used it in the wet, the chain is now all locking up, which led to a very short lived attempt to cycle to work this morning. Rather disappointing as i had woken especially early as I was really intent on cycling in.

Guess I had better go home via Halfords tonight then. And then maybe i can cycle to work tomorrow.

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That’s the way to do it

The following is extracted from The Times Style Guide

London University the constituent colleges are: Birkbeck College; Courtauld Institute of Art; Goldsmiths College (no apostrophe); Heythrop College; Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (Imperial College, London acceptable shortened form); Institute of Education; King’s College London (no comma); London Business School; London School of Economics and Political Science (London School of Economics or LSE acceptable shortened forms); London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Queen Mary (NB, no College attached); Royal Academy of Music; Royal Holloway (NB, no College attached); Royal Veterinary College; St George’s Hospital Medical School; School of Oriental and African Studies; School of Pharmacy; University College London (no comma)

See, the comma is quite acceptable. Looks like college has a lot more trouble harrasing the press when it cannot use the "I’ll discipline you, I will" card.

Actually that stylebook makes amusing reading, more so if you ignore the content, but isnted imagine what caused specific entries

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Rubbish Success

Kind of worrying when I note with pride that I rememebred to put my bins out. Almost disturbing, isnt it…. But I do, that I have.

In the Hamptons, our beloved council serves our waste disposal needs by issuing us with two wheely bins (which really should have been thought about when they designed the place, but that is another gripe) one black and one green. Into the green one goes those things we are allowed to recycle via the green bin, and into the black goes, well, anything.

My Bin day is a Tuesday, however each bin is only collected every other week. This means that those who dont pack there rubbish very well, or succeed in classing enough as recyclable, have overflowing bins. Nice. This is not helped by people forgetting the bin day, and thus having to wait another two weeks to try again…. The real test will, i think, be in the summer.

I only have a small bin located in the cupboard under the sink. So, if i start putting all my paper and card and plastic in there, then i would soon run out of space. Helpfully space in my dining room is something I do have, so only food waste goes under the sink, there is a box for recycling in the dinign room, and dry rubbish goes into the dining room bin. This way I preduce very little rubbish that really needs to be stored in the wheely bin, the dry stuff can be stored indoors until collection.

One thing we are not allowed to dispose of via recycling is glass, so these tend to pile up around the house until i get round to taking them to the bottle bank (which adds quite a bit to my shopping trip actually, seeing as i walk to Tesco)

In all, the hardest part is rememebring to get the bins out on the day, the second hardest part is getting back home once the bin men unhelpfully block our driveway with bins….

The annoying part however is probably that I pay my council tax, and get less benefits from it, although of course at somepoint Peterborough City Council will endevour to cancel every other rubish collection (currently the ret of Peterborough has weekly blackbin collection and fortnightly green bin.)

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Another feed emerges

Those of you who use my rss feed may be interested to hear that Ant has an rss feed too but Gary should be aware that at the time of posting, it does not validate as rss

Some of you therefore should direct your complaints to Ant, and not to me.

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The Joy of PowerPoint

Many people say that PowerPoint is Evil. And they have good reasons, I have seen truely aweful presentations full of whizzes and bangs. Why not go for the whole deal, and have a huge "son et lumiere" with a choir of thousands a philarmonic orchestra (or two) and enough explosives to keep several world leaders amused for at least a couple of hours?

But it does have its plus points. I have about 3 hours to produce a presentation. Now, I have a plan that includes 10 lines of writing - 4 lines of whihc are single words - so all I have to do is make up some slides, and copy some pictures from other documents, and voila, I should get some thanks for my time….

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