Drug Gangs New Vehicle of Choice
According to The Sunday Times today, it’s the Motability scooter. No tax, no insurance and ideal for tranbsporting drugs.
Not the Best of Days
Yesterday, I went to the football at Ipswich.
Before I left, I checked on TfL’s excellent Countdown system to see how long I’d have to wait for a 21 or 141 bus and it said that there would be three within the next five minutes and then a ten minute wait. I just missed the last of the three and so I thought I’d text the bus stop to find out how long I’d have to wait. But of course, I now had my Blackberry, instead of my Nokia 6310i and I couldn’t send the simple message of just 5 digits. Another reason for chucking the sodding F*ckberry. So no information. The first 141 was obviously in a hurry and drove straight past, despite five of us flagging it down. I then walked to the next stop, where other buses for Liverpool Street also depart. In the end, I caught another 141 and the driver apologised for his colleague.
One of the pleasures of going to Portman Road by train, is that if you pick your trains right, you get a Norwich train, with comfortable Mk. 3 coaches and a real engine to push you all the way. But today, no trains were running to Norwich, so it was one of the old multiple units, with no tables or arm-rests.
So by the time I got to Ipswich my left arm was really giving me gip, as there was no place to rest it.
Ipswich did win a rather scrappy game by the only goal of the game, which was the highpoint of the day.
But going home was a repeat of the journey down in an old dirty train. I needed to go to the toilet and the conductor apologised before I went. It was one of the dirtiest I’d ever seen on a train.
At least, I got back to Liverpool Street on time and then I walkked through to Moorgate to get a 141 home. Because of Crossrail, the area is in total chaos and I had to walk a long way, as the normal bus stop was closed.
TfL should have thought out how they do the buses in that area better! The chaos will go on for years.
At least I was able to have a decent drink in the Northgate.
The first thing I did when I got home, was to put my Sim-card back into the Nokia 6310i
Are Blackberries the Cause of the World’s Ills?
I have said that to me, as a very experienced keyboard user, that the Blackberry is a piece of very bad design.
But it is loved by the great and good in politics and business, from Barack Obama downwards.
So if they choose such an obscure device can we trust them to make the proper decisions, that affect us all?
No Wonder Research in Motion is Doing Badly
Research in Mition, the maker of Blackberry phones is not doing well according to this on the BBC. Unless of course, you consider a $125million loss to be doing well.
But after trying one of their products for free, which O2 were kind enough to give me I can understand why sales are falling.
For a start the keyboard has been designed by someone, who gives the impression he’s never done any substantial typing on a proper computer. Good design always builds on what your customers expect. As an example, supposing a car manufacturer proved that left-hand-drive cars were safer and then said it wouldn’t make right hand drive ones for the UK. Would they sell any?
As an example here, I wanted to enter the @ sign, which is above the P. Which in itself, is a pretty strange place to put it! But then with a small keyboard that might have been the only place they have left.
So you’d think that you would use Shift followed by P to enter it! But no, it’s Alt followed by P. If that is logical to someone with forty-plus years experience of a computer and sixty years of typing starting on a sit-up-and-beg Imperial, then I’m a Chinaman. (By the way, is it allowed to use that phrase today from the past. It is only descriptive and I could have used the alternative form of Dutchman!)
If I taken the trouble to check that the keyboard was so strange, I wouldn’t have had one. No wonder they aren’t selling to well. Perhaps this keyboard means that new users aren’t impressed. I’m not!
In the day I used it, I never managed to send a text message, although I did receive a few and read them. On my Nokia 6310i, I just hit one button, choose Reply and I’m replying.
Others may like their Blackberries, but it is definitely not for me, so I’ll stick with the Nokia 6310i.
I know that doesn’t take pictures, but I have a little and battered Nikon Coolpix in my pocket to do that and also act as a visual aide-memoire.
I’ve Got Myself A Blackberry
Not a fruit, but one of those new-fangled phones.
Quite frankly I’m not impressed!
Typing With One Hand
I’ve now acquired a new Sony VAIO laptop with a wide 17.3 inch screen. I mainly bought it, as my old HP machine is getting rather tired and I was fimding I made the odd mistakes on the keyboard. As the keys were more widely spaced on the Sony, I thought this might improve my typing and a brief test showed that it appeared to be better.
I’ve now got the new Sony and this video shows me typing.
Not how I span with my right hand to work the shift and control keys.
It is my left arm and hand that is bad, as I said here. But the computer would probably work equally well with someone, who had right hand problems.
Allergic To Corned Beef
In the repeat of Dad’s Army this evening, Private Fraser.said that he got out of sevig in the vArmy, because he was allergic to corned beef.
This must be one of the first references to allergies in fiction.
I wonder why it was included
The Cartoonist’s Pen Is Mightier Than The Dictator’s Thugs
I’d never heard of the cartoonist, Ali Ferzat. until I read about him in The Times today. But he is lauded in their third leader as the Syrian cartoonist, who stood up to Assad and his thugs. There is more about him here on the BBC.
If I hsadn’t got emotional earlier, I certainly would be now!
Getting Emotional
I can sometimes get very emotional and start crying quietly. I did this morning in Carluccio’s in Islington. I’ve talked of this before. All I was doing as reading the colour magazine in The Times and especially the piece about some of the people who had won medals at the 1948 Games after suffering badly in the war.
The star of those Games was the Dutch female athlete, Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals. The Dutch presented her with a new bicycle.
One other competitor I’d heard of was the Hungarian marksman, Karoly Takacs, who after losing his right hand to a grenade accident, learned to shoot left handed and won gold. He also won gold four years later in Helsinki.
One amazing tale concerns Jim Halliday, who fought in the retreat from Dunkirk and later was captured by the Japanese in 1942. On release from the his POW camp, he weighed just 27 Kg. He then won silver or bronze, depending on the source, in the wrestling. Sadly he died in 2007, so won’t be able to present any medals. Perhaps, he has a son or daughter, who can be asked!
And people moan about, VAT on pies and pasties. They don’t know they’re alive.
To me though, the crying may also be about my eyes telling me that they have now wetted up and are not as bone dry as they have been in recent months. Two years ago, a nurse treated them and said they were the driest eyes she’d ever seen. She gave me some artificial tears, but I can’t put anything in my eyes.
It’s not as if this day is anything significant in my life, as my son died on the 23rd, not the 30th.
Perhaps, I’m just one of those people, who needs to cry!
Giles Coren In Today’s Times
I always read Giles Coren, as I find him funny and today in his piece in the Times he’s excelled himself on stockpiling. This is part of his piece on Gregg’s, which as I’m a coeliac, I find even funnier for some reason.
On a personal note — I have not eaten a Greggs pie in 15 years, and that was too recent. Everything Greggs sells is as grey, flabby and nutritionally otiose as a braised portion of George Galloway’s arse. The whole point of having a job and a few quid is so that you don’t have to eat at Greggs. It makes me sick to see politicians pretending they eat there. Greggs is survival rations for poor people and the homeless. Greggs is a major factor in working-class obesity. Twenty per cent VAT on its hot pies is not enough. It should be taxed to death for the sake of the NHS, which ploughs £5 billion a year into obesity-related illness.
I accept that as long as Greggs thrives, ignorant fat people will eat there three times a day, but it is cruel to put them in the spotlight as Labour has done. Some destitute people live on dog food, but do you want to see the Labour front bench kneeling over a bowl marked “Fido”, chowing on Pedigree Chum? Because they’d do it, you know. They’d do it like a shot.
I suppose it’s just the thought of eating a pie, that makes me want to get ready for the reaction my body would take.
If you haven’t bought your Saturday paper, it looks like Giles piece is well worth the cover price.
The Anonymous Widower 