How much??

As I write this I’m in my room at the Marriott hotel in Leeds, killing ten minutes before I inevitably decide to go and sit in the bar and have a nice cold pint. There’s a box on my desk that I can plug my laptop in to in order to access the internet at broadband speed.

I thought this was marvellous, just plug an Ethernet cable in to the PC and the box and surf away, all will be grand. Until I decided to log on that is. In order to use the service you have to pay a charge, which I was prepared for. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that the minimum amount of time you can buy is 24 hours, which costs £15.

I’ll be posting this entry to my blog when I get back to the office.

Harpoons for recreational purposes

Ever had one of those days where you just want to buy a harpoon and shoot people? Today was one of those days, so I decided to see just how easy it would be to get me a harpoon…..

It’s actually fairly easy. After a quick search for harpoons using Google I realised what I actually needed to pin people to walls was a spear gun. A quick search later and I’d found a supplier of spear guns offering some fearsome looking weaponry for less than £200.

I saw a lovely model (shown above) which was 1.2m long and looked like it could take down a whale. I’m looking forward to seeing the face of the guy who works in the post room downstairs when it gets delivered to my office.

Cat and Chips

First off, a quick update. You may remember I mentioned in an earlier post the large cat that’s apparently been spotted in the local area. For the last few weeks there’s been a debate raging in the local rag as to whether it exists or not (really, some people have nothing better to do – you’re reading this aren’t you?) and in this weeks edition they’ve printed a photo of the thing. Hopefully now people will accept there’s a fucking big cat roaming the area, but somehow I suspect the debate will continue for some time to come.

Right, that’s beast watch over. Let’s move on to something else that’s been in the news this week, albeit on a different scale, chip and PIN cards. According to one national newspaper the country is about to be thrown in to a state of confusion as shops start to insist on shoppers using their PIN instead of signing for their purchases. The paper in confusion actually said, and I kid you not, that the introduction of PINs has caused an “information overload”, and that because of this people can’t remember their codes. Now, I’m not being funny here, but I fail to see how having to remember a four digit number (which in a lot of cases is the same as the code these people use at the cash point) is information overload. Maybe peoples’ brains are getting smaller. I shall find out and report on my findings in a future post.

The worst thing (as far as I can see) about chip and PIN cards is that I’ll now be forced to listen to an increased number of morons asking me for my “PIN number”. Do people not know that PIN is an acronym for Personal Identification NUMBER? It’s a PIN, or at a push a PI number (which could lead to confusion unless your PIN happens to be 3.142).

A chilled beer

Some dude in east Asia (I think it was Japan but I can’t swear to that) has invented a self-cooling drinks can. Let that filter through your brain for a second. Chilled beer, anywhere, with no need for a fridge. Open can, wait 15 seconds, drink cold beer. Festivals will never be the same again, parties will be bereft of the usual arguments between man and woman about what fridges are supposed to hold, and you won’t have to suffer two warm cans when you get back from the supermarket with a new slab. It’s like somebody has invented Heaven and worked out how sell it in off licences.

The best thing is it costs all of about 1 cent more per can to produce than a standard can, so it’s not as if it’s unfeasible either.

I don’t know who the bloke who invented this marvellous device is, but he deserves a hug. Or possibly a Nobel Prize.

Valentine's Day

Meh! I hate Valentine's day, it's the most pointleess day of the year. I did do better than I predicted I would though. Here's the total:

Cards 0
Emails 1
Texts 1

Who says romance is dead?

Swamp thing

I’ve thought of something I’d like to add to my list of stuff to do before I die (I’ve changed it slightly from a list of things I want to do before I’m 30) – I want to go speeding through the Everglades on a swamp boat with a stereo blasting out the theme tune for ‘Gentle Ben’. I don’t know why, it just strikes me as something funny to do.

Online forms

I’m writing this entry from my death bed. I’ve got some sort of disease which makes me ache all over, has given me a headache and is making my nose generate untold amounts of gunk. I’m informed by a female friend that I have a cold, but there’s no way that can be true. At the very least I’ve got flu, although I suspect it’s bubonic plague, or maybe pneumonic plague, I never can remember which is which.

(Microsoft Word has just informed me that the ‘it’s’ in the previous sentence is grammatically incorrect and should be an ‘its’ – hmmm, I think not, I think I know how to construct a coherent sentence thank you very much).

Damn, I’ve (or should that be Ive) forgotten what the topic of this entry was meant to be now. Oh yeah, online forms.

We’ve all filled in online forms, and if it’s for something worthwhile the chances are you’ll be asked for your occupation, and given a long list of professions to choose from. Generally you get options such as IT professional, office worker, banker etc. Usually there’s nothing that resembles my actual job so I tend to choose something generic that sounds about right. I got thinking though, if I’m struggling to choose an occupation, what happens to people who have a really specific job. For example, I’ve never seen an option for Prime Minister. What the hell is Tony supposed to do?

Does he choose civil servant and think “that’s close enough” or does he think “I run the bloody country, the least I can do is boast about it a little”? After all, he may be the Prime Minister but he still needs car insurance and an Amex card…

I really do need to get out more…

The Brain

The brain’s a strange beast. Well, it’s not technically a beast, it’s more an organ, but you know where I’m coming from. But anyway, it’s weird the sort of things it remembers. For example, I know that at any point in time 0.7% of the worlds’ population are drunk, or that if you look at your reflection in the back of a spoon you will see Pete Townsend looking back at you. (It’s true, if you don’t believe me, go fetch a spoon). However, I can’t remember the capital of Vietnam, which is probably a far more useful thing to know (in as much as that I’ve never been asked what percentage of the worlds population are drunk right now, but I have been asked what the capital of Vietnam is).

I’m assuming that it’s not just my brain that does this, and that there are millions of people out there who can name all the different species of head lice, but don’t know the name of the plane that carried the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. So therefore, there must be a market for some sort of brain training school where you can learn to forget useless facts and remember useful ones instead. As there’s a market, I’m assuming it has therefore already been done. However, I won’t be going. Personally I don’t care what the capital of Vietnam is, but I do care that donkeys sink in quicksand but mules don’t.

Can you smell weed?

I read a story in the local paper today about a suspected cannabis factory that had burnt down in the area. Police found plants and weed-growing paraphernalia at the house once the fire had been put out so it’s a fair bet that the place was being used to grow puff. To be honest though, I’m surprised the police needed to find any evidence to know what had been going on in the house. I’d have thought the smell of all that burning weed and half the neighbourhood walking around eating mars bars would have given the game away….