Here are Rob's Blog entries for November 2003.
Blog entries for other months can be found in the main blog index.
I've just been offered a jazz mag.
I have to admit to being a bit disappointed as i was thinking it was something else...
One worrying thing in the news the past few days has been the arrest of six north africans in my home town of Eastbourne under the Terrorism Act.
Police have recovered items from the flat in Langney Road that they raided, but have not revealed what the items actually are.
I've always thought of Eastbourne as a very safe place, but like so many things these days, it may be time to rethink my views.
The Cheeky Girls popped into the office in the week and Shirley on reception remembered the Cheeky Girls incident at the Emap Performance Awards 2003 earlier this year, so she asked them for a Cheeky Christmas badge to pass on to me.
However, it appears I may have one of the last badges as the Cheeky Girls were mugged on Oxford Street shortly after leaving the building.
User Friendly had a great cartoon to celebrate Doctor Who's 40th Anniversary.
Last month, when moaning about rail contractors, I said I had sympathy with the RMT Union striking over safety.
I now take this back after reading about their plans. In a very spiteful move, they have ordered a 25mph speed limit on all lines on the 8th and 9th of December. This coincides with the England rugby squads victory parade in central London.
If the move was really about safety, the drivers would drive permenantly slow. It's not, it's about what the union can do to disrupt the public and blackmail London Underground. They are also talking about 24 hour strikes on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve.
They've lost the moral high ground, and everyone's respect with this action.
Metro are on the ball today. Steph Condron has a story about pranksters tricking airport announcers into reading out crude names.
However, the website with the crude airport annoucements hasn't been updated since October 2001, so it's not really new news.
On the plus side, the sound clips may be old, but they are still very amusing.
Doctor Who is 40 years old today!
A few weeks ago I questioned what good service on the tube really meant.
Well the London Evening Standard now has a section called Protest, that lets people write in with their transport woes.
A letter from John Edwards of Worcester Park, Surrey explains the difference between "good" and "normal" service on the London Underground as told to him by the group manager (of LU I assume).
In response to your question on the difference between "normal" and "good" service, it was agreed by the company that "normal" service would refer to when all trains are running and there are no disruptions on a particular line, and that "good" service would refer to when there are some train cancellations, but generally a good service is available.
I don't know how true that is, but it's an interesting use of the words "good" and "normal".
An excellent article has been posted on retooling Slashdot with web standards.
The article takes the current Slashdot site, an HTML 3.2 design classic, and converts it across to XHTML.
The process involves removing all the nested tables used for the layout and replacing them with clean XHTML blocks that are positioned using CSS.
The resulting page is small, search engine friendly, and is able to render sensibly in far more browsers.
Lots of food for thought!
Month Python fans who have always wondered "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?", "What do you mean? An African or a European swallow?" (sounds from Intriguing.com) can rest easily at least.
Jonathon Corum has just put up a page entitled, Estimating the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow.
Lets just hope he doesn't demand a shrubbery for the work.
I feel a bit like Alan Partridge saying this, but I've just seen Bill Oddie.
I was in the nature section of Borders bookshop in Oxford Street, London, when Bill came up, humming along to the instore music and starting browsing next to me.
Does he own any clothes apart from green country gear I wonder? Great when your out in the country, not very good for blending in with the crowds on Oxford Street.
It seems that everyone is blogging these days.
The latest blog doing the rounds is Belle de Jour, the diary of a London call girl.
It certainly makes a change from the usual rubbish people (including myself) blog about.
I just hope that she doesn't find herself in the situtation where her Mum finds and reads the blog.
This glass contains one of the most potent weapons known to mankind. It may look innocent enough, but it is lethal.
It holds a new sweet strawberry shot called Xuxu. This doesn't taste at all alcoholic, but just like liquid strawberries.
It's due for a UK launch early in 2004, but I was able to try one of the preview glasses tonight.
Roll on 2004!
From the shock of discovering a pure white hair earlier after having a shower, I started to wonder why hair goes grey.
It turns out that this is because pigment cells at the base of the hair start to die off as we get older. As this happens, the hair's natural colour of white shows through as the hair isn't being coloured as it grows.
One thing I've noticed the past few weeks is that London Underground keep referring to the service as "Good".
I have a feeling that this may be Newspeak for "Normal" as the Victoria line between Oxford Circus and Victoria has been far from good.
The stations regularly close due to overcrowding, and it really is a case of having to hold your breath to squeeze into a packed tube train. All of this while having a jolly announcement informing us all that a "Good Service" is running at present.
I wonder what a "Bad" service is like if this is "Good"?
Last month we had the news that beer bellies are an urban myth, this month we have the new that Guinness really is good for you!
The BBC is reporting that a pint of Guiness a day can prevent heart clots, thus reducing the risks of having a heart attack.
Hard working scientists at Wisconsin University compared Guinness with lager, by giving it to dogs with furred up arteries. They found that those given Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, compared to those that were just given lager. It's time to volunteer for the human trials when they start!
In Ireland blood donors and post-operative patients are given Guinness because of its high iron content. Unfortunately the practice has stopped in England, but it would be great to get a pint a day of the black stuff on the NHS.
I've just installed VNC software on my home machines, and I have to say, it rocks!
I can now remove the bulky old monitor, keyboard and mouse belonging to my Windows 98 box, and just access the computer directly from my laptop.
The box also runs Linux on dual boot, so the next task is to get this running on VNC.
Shame the lilo prompt can't be intercepted.
One of the stranger stories to come out today was that the EU has had to climb down in its efforts to reclassify the kilt as womenswear.
Apparently tailors were told to fill in how many kilts they had sold in the space provided for women's skirts in a questionnaire, with the threat of a hefty fine if the form wasn't filled in correctly.
After the Scottish First Minister stepped in, the EU's statistical agency, Eurostat, had to climb down and issue a new form with the kilt classified as menswear.
I went to the amazing British Museum today.
Going meant I achieved one of my ambitions, and saw an original Easter Island statue.
Shame it wasn't actually on Easter Island, however, there is always next time.
Fresh from the news that the BBC are to produce a new series of Doctor Who, comes news that the BBC are to produce a new radio series of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.
The original series spawned the very successful series of books, and this new series will incorporate the final 3 books, Life, The Universe And Everything, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish and Mostly Harmless.
The series will have the original cast, and will start to be broadcast in the Spring of 2004. The late Douglas Adams himself will be appearing, thanks to audio book recordings made before his death.
The BBC has an interesting article online called Dog doubts over Tasmanian tiger.
Conventional theory says that the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) died out when Dingos reached Austrailia.
The new theory says that as well as Dingos, changes in Aboriginal land use, population size and technology taking place at the same time would also have affected numbers.