Rob's Blog - August 2003

Power Cuts In London

Huge power cuts yesterday knocked out the Tube and trains across London and the South East. Thankfully I was on one of the last services to get out of the capital before the network was shut down, so got home safely, unlike thousands.

The National Grid is starting to appear more and more flakey. We had power cuts in the office a few weeks ago, and don't forget the same company also owns the grid system that knocked out New York and the surrounding areas a few weeks ago. Are we going to see a Railtrack situation where the owner of an essential infrastructure has to be effectively nationalised to keep the system running? Water companies need more money to maintain their grid system, and are threatening higher bills to pay for it, if the regulator lets them. Are we seeing the downside of privatisation now? After years of minimum investment and maximum return for shareholders, essential national systems are starting to crumble.

Time to buy shares in maintenance companies!

La Tomatina Festival

Remind me never to book a holiday to Bunol in Spain. They have an annual tomato throwing contest there called La Tomatina, involving 120 tonnes of the foul little red things.

The BBC has pictures of the La Tomatina festival.

Alastair Campbells Email Address Published By Hutton Inquiry

The offical website of the Hutton Inquiry has some very interesting information it. They are publishing all of the evidence submitted online, among all this, are emails from the partys involved. These have not been censored. Take for example this email exchange between Alastair Campbell and Philip Webster. We now have the email address of Alastair Campbell, ACampbell@no10.x.gsi.gov.uk, the notorious spin doctor at Number 10. I wonder how long this email address will remain valid?

This comes at a time when the BBC is reporting that Tony Blair is to get a public email address. Who needs this if the Hutton Inquiry will give us a better genuine one actually read by Mr Blair?

In Bath

The journey to Bath was not as nice as i hoped, hundreds packed into a two coach train from London. At least i reserved a seat in advance, unlike lots of the others onboard who had to stand for hours.

The hotel is really nice. I have fantastic views over the valley below. The picture is taken from the window seat in my room. I've been round the jogging trail and the woods already. It's certainly a very romantic place and somewhere to bring someone special.

Back From Bath

I had a lovely weekend in Bath. Leo and Kerrie's wedding reception was really good, they chose a great place to have it. They also have a great bunch of friends, including Leon who did a disappearing act after the reception. Hopefully he's OK as he should be having a Notting Hill Carnival party today.

We all had a trip down the Kennet and Avon Canal on Sunday. The weather was ideal and the views were spectacular. Very relaxing, and somewhere I'd like to go back to.

I'm sure you're all wondering about the train trip there and back. Well getting there was bad, but thankfully I had a reserved seat. Lots of people were having to stand from London to and past Bath. The way back was lovely, a direct train to Brighton and an easy connecting service to Eastbourne.

Off To Bath For The Weekend

I'm off to Bath this weekend for Leo's wedding. I'll be staying at the very posh looking Combe Grove Manor where the reception is being held.

The journey there looks bad, but the one coming back on Sunday looks to be even worse, and I'm worried that I may not even make it home relying on the trains. The BBC is reporting already on the August Bank Holiday travel chaos taking place. The root of the problem is that Network Rail are closing lots of the main lines for essential engineering work.

Expect to see an MMS photo phone blog entry Sunday complaining about it all.

ACME Can Supply Your Every Need

ACME is well known as being to provide any product to anyone (providing you're a toon), where ever they may be.

There is a now, for the first time, a complete catalogue of ACME products available online.

Next time you need an atom re-arranger or straight-jacket ejecting bazooka, you know where to go!

Todays Nightmare Journey Home By Train

It's a nightmare trying to get back to Eastbourne from London tonight. Due to a fire on the track at Selhurst hardly any trains are running. The crowds at Victoria were a massive.

When a delayed train to Eastbourne arrived the crush was very unpleasant. I got shoved by some crazy woman who was obviously a day tripper and seperated from her friends or family, and was trying to reach them. No reason to take it out on others by trying to force a way through, so i just quietly seethed and now nurse the bruise on my arm from her.

I'm on that Eastbourne train at present and it's very overcrowded, with people standing whereever there is a spare few inches to accomodate them. I've actually got a seat, but it's on a cattle truck so i have some womans nails digging into my elbow as she is sitting with her arms folded.

How i love travelling by train!

Relaxed After A Massage

We're lucky enough to have Heidi Taylor from Dream Therapies come and give massages in the office. Before you come to any smutty conclusions, it's not those sort of massages.

I'm feeling particularly relaxed after an excellent shoulder massage, followed by an indian head massage. It was a shame to have to get back to work afterwards as I could have happily of gone to sleep.

Heidi also specialises in reflexology and has had the pleasure of my stinky tootsies before.

If you get the chance, I recommend trying one of her treatments.

Could The Record Industry Be Lying To Us?

Hardly a day goes past without us being told that thieves and pirates are destroying the music industry through illegal copying of CDs or downloading tracks via the internet.

However, the industry has just announced record sales of CD's in the UK.

So on one hand we're told that no one is buying music anymore, yet at the same time we're buying more CD's than ever before. So what's the truth? Personally I think the sales figures speak for themselves.

Rob Goes Wi-Fi

I now have my Wi-Fi network up at running at home. My ADSL modem has a 4 port ethernet switch and wireless hub built into it, I've just never got round to getting a wireless card for my laptop. I corrected that today after feeling flushed with success at getting the MMS blog working.

A quick trip to Maplin Electronics on Tottenham Court Road at lunch time resulted in the purchase of a 34.99 Wireless Network Card from Sitecom.

After a bit of fiddling about setting encryption up, it's now up and running. Indeed, this very text has been wi-fi'd to this site.

Now, I just need the weather to hold so I can surf from the garden in the coming weeks.

Tasmanian Tigers Still Alive?

The Evening Standard and News 24 have articles saying about Tasmanian Tiger sightings on the Australian mainland, close to Melbourne.

The tiger, or Thylacine as it is also known, was a marsupial wolf with distinctive tiger like stripes, and was last thought to have lived on the mainland 2,000 years ago. After that it held on in Tasmania until the 1930's when the last one died in Hobart Zoo. Because of the 50 year rule, as no other tigers have been found, the species is officially extinct.

If you want more information on the tiger, I suggest a copy of The Last Tasmanian Tiger by Robert Paddle. There is a also a stuffed tiger on display at the Natural History Museum in London.

I wish the reports were true, but sadly I think they are a case of mistaken identity.

I Can Change Your Life

Can I really change your life? Well Internet Magazine seem to think so.

They have recently released a list of 100 site that will change your life, and Aloud.com that I built, and still currently work on, is in that list. For those of you who don't know Aloud.com, it's an online ticket shop, and we sold all the tickets for this years Glastonbury Festival from it. There are some real heavyweight sites on the list so I'm really pleased to have made it on.

Shame Tubeplanner.com didn't make it on as well.

MMS Photo Blog Now Working

As you can see from the last few stories, I now have my MMS photo blog working. I'll be posting up fuller details of how it works later.

Basically, it's written in perl. It's linked into a mail server, so when a certain email address recieves the emailed MMS message from my phone, it parses it, extracts the picture and text and inserts it into my blog, regenerating the relevant pages on the way.

I've only tested it with my Nokia 7250 phone, on the Orange network, but as you can see, it works! Orange always put some advertising bumpf in the MMS message, so the extractor has to detect and remove that.

The only downside is it could work out damn expensive. Orange charge 40p per MMS message.

The Fireworks Are Over

The fireworks off the pier were excellent as always!

Waiting For Fireworks

5 of us are on the beach waiting for the end of airbourne fireworks to start. I've just sat eating some rather good chinese dumplings listening to chesney hawkes being pumped out of the speakers.

Eastbourne Pier is looking really good, but i don't think the camera phone does it justice.

First MMS Photo Blog Entry

I think i finally have the mms photo blog working. This is the first post so hopefully it will work ok.

The resolution of the image may not be fantastic, but it means i can get stuff to the website really quickly. The mms message gives me 1000 characters to write copy with, so I should be able to happily rant away on the move. It all ties back to my existing blogging system so it's easy to edit these messages if i want to.

Now i just need something interesting to take a picture of and write about...

John Kettley Is From Eastbourne

OK, well John Kettley isn't really from Eastbourne. However, someone called Stephen is, and he was in a band called Tribe of Toffs who had a hit with the song John Kettley Is A Weatherman back in 1988.

I was having a look for this song online as it suddenly came into my head for some reason. A quick search found the Tribe of Toffs page, but greater surprise was that one of them was now living in the same town as me.

Anyway, the offical Tribe of Toffs site had a copy of the song to download so I was happy hearing it again.

Debbie and Stephen have quite a nice site, and I am now inspired to look at photo blogging from my Nokia 7250 camera phone like they do.

Time to search CPAN to see what's available to parse MMS emails...

Cadbury Dairy Milk Crispie Bar

A few months ago I wondered why Cadbury Nut 'n' Crisp wasn't generally available. It appears it's been relaunched, without the nuts, as Cadburys Dairy Milk Crispies.

It tastes the same, so I'm happy again.

The Rather Big Statue

This image is of a sculpture has been causing a bit of backlash in Jamaica.

The sculpture, called Redemption Song, after a Bob Marley song, has been unveiled in Kingston's new Emancipation Park.

Critics have accused the sculptor of perpetuating myths about blank men, as they claim the male is too well endowed. The sculptor, Laura Facey Cooper, obviously a fan of the male form, insisted she based the offending item on models and that it is in proportion to the rest of body. "Just because European classical statues have small penises does not mean that Jamaica should follow suit", she says.

Personally I think it appears a normal size, but then again Jules always did say that "you're very lucky and should be proud of that asset".

Star Wars Toys Sell For 10,000 Pounds

The BBC has a story about a pensioner who bought a spare set of Star Wars toys for her grandson incase he lost any. She has just sold the complete set of Star Wars toys for 10,000 pounds As the toys were all in the original packaging the value was dramatically increased.

I wish I'd kept all mine so well, but at least I had fun with them at the time.

UK Temperature Record Set

The UK record for the hottest temperature was recorded yesterday (Sunday, August 10th 2003) in Gravesend at 38.1 degrees centigrade (100.6 Farenheit).

I was on Eastbourne beach most the day and it was very refreshing to be able to dip in and out of the water.

Camera Phones On Cockeyed.com

I notice that Rob Cockerham has put up his article on camera phones at his excellent Cockeyed.com.

Yours truely supplied the images for the Nokia 7250i, so look carefully and you'll see my ugly mug grinning out at you from the page.

Pepsi Go Vanilla

I currently really like Vanilla Coke, but I noticed that there will soon be a Vanilla Pepsi out in the US.

I wonder when this will come to the UK so I can try some.

The Great British Beer Festival

I attended the Great British Beer Festival, organised by CAMRA at Kensington Olympia today.

I've been to the festival for the past five years, and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone. It's not just large men with beards who go, though there are quite a few of those in attendance.

At the Shepherd Neame stall, i put 4 quid in the charity box and got myself a VCD of the latest Spitfire ads and a selection of previous Spitfire advertisting posters.

No Fokker Comes Close!

Nightmare Rail Journey

I may complain about how terrible the trains are, and how bad my journeys may have been, however it seems things are not as bad as they could be.

A very unlucky bunch of people found their usual hour journey from Southhampton to London took over 9 hours. One person even ended up smashing an emergency exit to get some air into the train after the driver refused to open the automatic doors after being stuck for 3 hours.

The old slam door trains I catch may be old, filthy and battered, but at least they have windows and doors that can be opened.

Travelling In The Current Hot Weather

The past few days have been turning into a real nightmare because of the gloriously hot weather.

Network Rail, who run the rail infrastructure in the UK, have had to impose speed restrictions because the hot weather is causing the tracks to buckle. Indeed, a buckled rail was found on my line home the other day at Gatwick Airport. However, it makes me wonder how warmer countries are able to run high speed services, while our system grinds to a halt when it gets hot, cold, wet or dry. The answer is probably because we just don't invest in checking the track and maintaining it to a sufficent standard.

South Central, the train company whose trains I take, has been particularly badly affected it seems. Apart from badly delayed services, they have taken to cancelling some of the services before mine. This means my train is very overcrowded at present. So what have they done about it? The answer is they are running it with only 8 coaches instead of the usual 12. Pure brilliance!

I also can't believe the language schools are still trying to pack hundreds of students into these trains as well. Travel at peak times should be priced higher to avoid this, but South Central has no evening restrictions like other rail companies seem to have.

On the plus side, everyone is listening to the warnings about not travelling by Tube, so it's been empty in the mornings and evenings. Great!

Lego Star Destroyer

Lego have produced a kit of an Imperial Star Destroyer from the film Star Wars.

The kit costs 249.99 (pounds) and contains an incredible 3104 pieces. They claim it to be the biggest lego kit ever, and at 37 by 23 inches, they are probably right.

I want one!!!

Beware Of eBayUpdate.net

I've just recieved a clever spam, claiming to be from eBay informing me of a billing problem with my account and to re-enter all my details.

The site actually bounces to ebayupdate.net, a fake site designed to capture personal details. Don't enter anything on this site. It's very well done, and looks quite genuine, so could well fool inexperienced users.

A quick whois on ebayupdate.net reveals the following information, but I expect most of it is faked.

[whois.joker.com]
domain:       ebayupdate.net
status:       production
organization: og triple triple
owner:        Donald Stienberg
email:        hitemuppinga@aol.com
address:      64 Chrissy Court
city:         staten island
state:        new york
postal-code:  10316
country:      US
admin-c:      hitemuppinga@aol.com#0
tech-c:       hitemuppinga@aol.com#0
billing-c:    hitemuppinga@aol.com#0
nserver:      ns1.sauri.org
nserver:      ns2.sauri.org
registrar:    JORE-1
created:      2003-07-17 00:41:10 UTC JORE-1
modified:     2003-07-17 06:10:22 UTC JORE-1
expires:      2004-07-16 20:40:49 UTC
source:       joker.com

The New Lisa Jewell Book

I bought a copy of the new novel by Lisa Jewell, A Friend Of The Family yesterday.

I really liked all her previous work so I can't wait to get my teeth sunk into this one this weekend.

The only annoyance is that it's printed in a different size to her previous three, so it's going to look a bit out of place on my shelf next to the others.

Unfortunate URL

How do you read the URL www.therapistfinder.com?

It's actually Therapist Finder, and not The Rapist Finder.

I wonder how speaking browsers interpret it?