stupid, stupid bastards...

After the recent few days of failed 'terrorist' actions in London and Glasgow I'm beginning to think the Darwin theory can be applied to terrorism.
In a time when suicide bombings are the favored method delivering carnage, success means removal from the gene pool; The knowledge of how to make something go bang dies with them. Great news for the rest of us who appreciate the sanctity of life.
Take the 7/7 bombers - sadly they succeeded in detonating all of the devices. However on 21/7 they failed as did the recent miserable efforts.
In 21/7 it seems they were using up left over material from 7/7 - an explosive that decays over a short amount of time - or just failed to follow the recipe.
Yesterday's pitiful effort proved just how little the would be mass murderers knew about making things go bang. Throwing together a load of flammable material does not make an explosive, you muppets. As the police pointed out, the device was 'potentially viable'. I.e. 'they didn't know what they were doing'.
Today they drove a burning vehicle into the front door to Glasgow airport - a building made mostly of steel, glass and concrete... not a material well known for its flammability.
Honestly, where do they find these idiots?
It seems that MI5 and improved social cohesion is making an impact.

Long may it last...

chuggers and paper touts

I've been heading into the city office quite a lot recently and it's becoming a bit of slalom - chuggers in the morning and paper touts in the afternoon. I don't know which annoy me the most...
As if running late in the morning isn't enough, but you get into the office feeling like a mean sod for not helping out the latest cause célèbre - Feed the Welsh or some such. And then in the afternoon, not only do you have to weave your way through the throngs piling out of offices and onto the buses, but you have to dodge arms thrusting free papers into your face. I counted it the other day - there were 10 paper touts along the 200 meters or so from the office to the tube station. Worse still, they cluster - you dodge the London Lite only to run into The LondonPaper and so it repeats. Surely the fact that I've waved away the four prior touts is indicative of my general feeling - I DON'T WANT A BLOODY PAPER - but no, the fifth paper monkey seems to think they are different and I'm bound to want his copy. NO DAMNIT I DON'T.
Oooh, I feel a rant coming on... I could bang on about the bloody tourists on the tube, or the idiot in my block of flats who thinks the best thing to do with his unwanted junkmail is to just throw it on the ground to blow around in the breeze and make the place look like a teenagers bedroom.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but really, some people have no consideration.

Happy Birthday me. ;)

online banking...

I've had an account with First Direct for a couple of years and I've been pretty pleased with how they've operated. Their telephone and online services have been superb, and setting up money transfers really easy.
However... They've just instigated a new online security procedure. This involves no fewer than four different passwords or questions! Unfortunately I couldn't seem to log in this morning - I must have gotten one of the answers wrong. Luckily their is a re-set feature - just enter four new passwords / answers and then phone up to activate. A doddle you would think.
So, I call up and now have to to go through the phone security procedures. I initially got the password wrong here too - either by remembering the incorrect password or telling them the wrong response to 'letters 3, 5 and 9 of your phone password'.
Their new security procedures means you only get one crack at it! So, I was transferred over to 'The idiots forgotten his password' department to be faced with another barrage of questions. After confirming name, address, date of birth etc, they then wanted to phone me back on my home phone line. This would all be fine if I'd updated my home line to my new London address... So, I've failed to log in online, I've failed the phone password and now I am at a different address to the one they have on the system! The guy on the end of the line, unsurprisingly, was getting more and more suspicious of me by the minute. Fortunately they employ a certain degree of joined up thinking at FD and could confirm my new address and phone number using the BT phone directory (good thing I'm not ex directory).
Once he'd phoned back we could then get onto the business of confirming my other 4 phone security questions. Oddly enough, I remembered these without any problems, however I had to re-set my phone password to another 'memorable' phrase.
In total I now have 9 security details to remember for getting access to my First Direct bank account... When I off-handedly remarked that I'd better write it all down the chap on the phone told me that FD don't recommend that users write down their security details!!! I pointed out that one needs to remember 9 separate and distinctly different pieces of information in order to identify yourself and that perhaps they'd taken security just a little bit too far! I don't think I was the first person to make that comment as he agreed heartily and said he'd add it to the rest of his feedback pile.

So, finally I could log on, except that the website was down...
The collective noun for bankers - a Wunch?

the horror that is talent show tv...

I normally have a severe reaction against tv talent shows and wannabe celebrity nonsense, but I came across this clip that utterly surprised me, and the judges too by all accounts. Not what anyone expected at all - Look out for Amanda Holden's reaction about half way through... what is going on?!

hair by Jupitus

I'm a regular go-er to radio 4 comedy recordings and last night I had tickets to a pilot show hosted by Marcus Brigstock. The premise is that he invites a guest to the show who he gets to experience/do things they've never done before. As they were trying out the format, there was rather a lot of material and the show went on for some 2 hours, but there were some very funny moments. The guest was Phil Jupitus - he of Buzzcocks fame.
The first 'experience' was food related and started with Findus Crispy Pancakes. He then moved on to Fois Gras, which as a lapsed vegetarian he was somewhat tentative about, but seemed to rather enjoy! There was then a probable world first of Fois Gras on Findus Crispy Pancakes, which apparently was delicious! The final taste sensation was roasted pigs trotters, again which went down very well. He then had his palm read, his shoes shined and a colonic irrigation! Fortunately that was not live - we just benefited from a recording of it... Nice.
Phil then tried a very large glass of Absinthe which he really didn't like, but like the consummate professional he is, he downed the lot. Which leads to the final 'experience' for the evening. It turns out that he'd always wanted to cut someone's hair using an electric razor. Volunteers were asked for from the audience, and my friend David was chosen as the suitable guinea pig... Considering the amount of Absinthe consumed, that it was his first time cutting hair, and that it was a grade 2, he didn't do a bad job!
So, despite the lack of leg-room and the 2 hr duration of the show we all had a good time. It will be interesting to see if it gets commissioned...

it's a hard life...

Today I had one of my more unusual assignments as a consultant. It involved taking photographs of sixth formers from an all girls catholic school....
Now, before the police are called and I get my name added to the sex offenders register I would like to clarify some points!
The company I work for are involved in Young Enterprise - a scheme aimed at giving sixth formers a chance to start up a small business in competition with other schools around the country. The group we are supporting have done extremely well and won their regional (South London) finals, so now move on to the wider London finals. To up 'their game' they wanted some 'professional' photographs of themselves and their product, which is where I came in.
Unfortunately I can't publish any of the pictures I took on Flickr, but I was pleased with how many of them came out and it gave me good practice in taking more portraits and group shots under natural light.

revenge of the sock fairy

I live alone, I put all my dirty clothes into a wash basket and when it's full (or just too stinky) I empty the contents into the washing machine. I wash at 40°c using environmentally friendly, bio degradable ecover washing liquid, and hang out on my foldable dryer in my hallway next to the airing cupboard. When dry, I put everything back into my chest of drawers, pairing socks as necessary.
Why is it then, that I can still lose socks? It's not like it's a complicated procedure from foot to drawer. There's noone else who's likely to mistake a sock as theirs and take it by mistake.
Where do they go? Does the sock fairy creep in and steal them away one by one?
In the last year I have gathered 4 lonely socks looking for a partner. And then suddenly, this morning, two socks appeared in the dry laundry I was putting away that matched up with two lonely socks!
What had happened to them over the previous few months? How did they escape from the clutches of the sock fairy, and more importantly, where are the two that are still missing...

a bit miffed...

I went for a quick 5km run this evening - I'm not a that keen on running, but feel it's an essential part of general fitness.
I headed out and immediately felt good - I'd had a horror of a run a few weeks back, so it was a relief. The pace was settled and I got into a good rhythm early on, so upped the pace. I'd been talking about improving my running with some friends who are training for a half iron man and they'd said that a good rule of thumb is that you will keep improving if you train at a reasonable level of respiratory discomfort! So, taking this on board, and with a nice long pace I was hoping to do a good time.
Anyway, the end of it is that I did it in exactly the time as the last five or so runs - 24 mins! Bloody annoying! It doesn't seem to matter if I saunter around barely puffing or push myself so that I'm hanging out, it's always 24 mins. Gaaah!
Perhaps I'll have to bite the bullet and start interval training :(

being ginger...

There's been a bit of controversy lately about ginger bashing.
Firstly, Conservative backbencher Patrick Mercer tried to dig himself out of a hole by comparing racist comments to comments pointed at gingers - actually, what he was trying to say was reasonably sensible, but the media - as always - spun it the wrong way. Then there's the family in Newcastle who had to move house for all the abuse they were getting - I question whether it was because they were ginger, or just complete gits? Surely they weren't the only red heads in the area? Finally BBC News has seen fit to write a magazine article on the rights and wrongs of gingerism.
Now, I've suffered my fair share of 'carrot top', 'duracel' and 'swan vesta' comments but had never thought to equate it to racism until recently. My question is, is there any real difference? Ultimately, both are an 'accident' of birth. In fact, more so in the case of the gingers as it's a gene mutation that gives rise to our rusty locks.
To differentiate against someone due to the colour of their skin is illegal. To make jokes at the colour of one's hair (and pasty skin and freckles...) is perfectly acceptable.
I find it rather strange in the age of celebutantes where children declare they 'want to be famous' when asked what they want to be when they grow up, that someone who genuinely stands out for being in that rare 5% of the population to be blessed with their fiery curls is mocked in the street.

Maybe it's just that the rest of you Hilton/Britney/Jordan Wannabes are just jealous that we are already unique and don't need to have a sex tape released just to be noticed!

a day at the races

It turns out the weather was fabulous on Friday. A little too warm even! So neither BBC or (nor?) Metcheck were right, but I guess Metcheck was 'Less Wrong'. However, weather is a tricky beast to predict, so I'll let them off.

Now, I'm not a gambler of any variety - I don't even play the lottery - so I didn't expect to do well on the horses. I limited myself to £3 a race and came away £80 richer! Beginners luck maybe.

Anyway, the day seemed to go pretty well - clients were happy, the Partners were happy (although we did run out of champagne and forgot the ice!) and there was a good atmosphere. As (un)official photographer I spent much of my day peering through a view finder and shot around 2GB of pictures. My 150mm lense is just long enough that I can stand far enough away from my subject that they aren't aware of the picture being taken. The flip side, however, is that I do have to stand a fair distance away meaning that there are a number of pictures with random people wandering across the foreground!

Talking of lenses, I will admit to a small case of 'Lense Envy'. There was a flock of photographers near the finishing post with some of the largest lenses I have ever seen. However, I do question the logic of such large lenses when you are track side - the animals will be passing at a distance of 2 metres, why have a lense best suited to 300-500 metres?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address...