Monday, November 28, 2005

Fossils and Geology of Hopes Nose, Torquay. Fossil Collecting & Geological Guides

Looks worth a visit!

Friday, November 25, 2005

Murder Mystery Evening

Awesome night - doing a bit of acting and roleplay, pretending to be a judge. Didn't manage to guess the killer correctly, though it was a bit of a cheat, the killers name was Scarlet Kipper. I assumed that as she was called Scarlet Kipper, that she was a red herring...
Unfortunately, she wasn't!! Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Old Picture

Just found this photo, reminding me of old times... Posted by Picasa

Strange Dream

Very very unusual for me to remember a dream, but this one was so much fun I did for once...

Dreamt that I was very late for work \ some kind of meeting. Decided to take a short cut by trying to run down a mountain to a little coast path that lead to where I was going (this made perfect sense at the time). The path got steeper and steeper until I was just sliding down. At one point I thought it might end in a sheer cliff, but I didn't mind too much.
Of course, it did end up at a sheer drop and I was left hanging on to a ledge (just like in films). Then, luckily, someone from my agency and Colm turned up to give me a hand up. Unfortunately the person from agency over-reached and fell off the cliff. I remember not caring that they fell to their death, but I honestly can't remember which person from my agency it was...
Then Dan appeared and together Colm and Dan helped me up and took me to a car where they drove me to my appointment, which was when I woke up.

Talk about a dream teaching morals - don't rely on the people from work, trust your friends instead?!

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Public Enemy

Saw Public Enemy last night.
They weren't as good as I'd hoped they would be. It wasn't as Old Skool as I expected - there were people with guitars there and they had live drums rather than a good old drum machine. I admit that they were good at hyping up the crowd and managed to show their fans a good time.
You do have to think that there does come a point where it's time to stop! Twenty years in the business seems a little excessive - especially when you start to sound like the fun loving criminals... Posted by Picasa

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Paranoia

I'm not usually in the habit of taking photos of people on buses, but this woman was different.
There's currently lots int he news about this avian flu business, however I still haven't seen proof that it has made the leap from infecting birds to infecting humans. This person seems to think differently!
I wasn't living in London at the time of SARS, but that seemed to be another media fuelled scare story. By coincidence, I was reading an amusing story in the Guardian. It was making an extremely valid and relevant point about the BSE scares of the early and mid 1990s. There were predictions of seeing millions of people die from a disease that could cross the boundaries between Human physiology and Cow physiology.
So far, at least, this hasn't proven to be the case. When was the last time you heard of a new case of CJD being diagnosed?
I remember stories focusing on kids who used to eat beef every single day catching this horrific disease.
Mobile phones causing cancer is another of those scare stories, that is just beginning to fade. MMR vaccines is one of the few scare stories that actually got proven wrong during the 'scare cycle.'
The only real solution to this kind of nonsense is some kind of mandatory comparison of risks people have to take, some kind of benchmark risk. How about the likelihood of being run over for someone who lives in London and crosses the road twice each day.
It would be scary in itself to see the number of scare stories that don't succeed in being more deadly than that (I cross the road at least 10 times a day in my commute to work...) Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Pocket-lint.co.uk AOL to launch online TV service news story

Wasn't this the entire point of AOL mergin with Time Warner about five years ago?

All the papers are just reporting this as some kind of innovation for AOL. SUrely the quesiton should be what took them so long?

For the companies in question, it's the only way they're going to be able to make any significant money out of their old shows. THe fact that one of the 'channels' is going to be dedicated to shows that feature stars before they became famous is an indication of the quality of the programming.

At least it will be going ahead. I hope the BBC's service comes online soon and shows all these monkeys how it should be done!

Friday, November 11, 2005

Google Print and Copyright

Slightly crazy position for the authors to take - I don't fully understand the position they are taking.

From my experience, having seen one or two results popping up from Google Print, Google doesn't allow you to read the whole book. In fact, it doesn't allow you to read more than three or four pages.

What's the point of going off like this? I strongly suspect Google will \ already has put in links to Amazon or eBay so that you can buy a book immediately after reading the pages.

Once eBooks come of age (which is growing more and more likely with the rise of PSPs, better screens on mobiles and Video iPods) we would be able to buy the book immediately and receive it immediately.

If any author supports the idea of their work appearing in a public library I see no need to object to their work appearing in this. The fact that almost any book can be read for free merely by paying a visit to any of the 4,624 libraries in the UK yet book buying still remains popular is a strong indicator that demand for reading material is unlikely to be dampened by Google.

Go Google!

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Fantastic Weekend!

After a particularly hectic week at work, I managed to get some good quality time off.

Friday night I went to see Nick play at the End. None of the sets were amazingly outstanding, but it was a really good night. Nick played a brilliant set, he looks much more comfortable with having three hundred people looking on as he does his thing.

There were a good bunch of people there, I'm beginning to get used to this whole London scene. I spent last night with the London lot too. Went to see fireworks at Alexandra palace, which were pretty good though they were synced to music. More specifically to the beach boys and other gems selected by Capital FM. Ah well!
There was an extremely good turnout, though this disturbed Laura as she thought it wasn't managed very well - probably a fair point. I didn't manage to meet up with Colm et al until well after the fireworks had finished.

The rest of the night was spent drinking in the pub having fun. Today was spent not doing much, just watching TV, reading the papers and such like. It's always good to get a good bit of relaxation every now and then. Posted by Picasa