Oh yes I can (can)

This is what happens when my work colleagues have a little too much time on their hands.

Greetings, gadget fans

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the greatest invention in the world. Ever.

Well, possibly. It's a DVD player, as the sharper amongst you may have noticed. But it's more than that. See that little grey flap on the right? Open that up, and underneath is a USB port. To which you can attach a USB flash drive or an external hard drive*. And then you can watch all of those movies and TV shows you've downloaded** off the net without having to go through the inconvenience of burning them to a CD or DVD. Isn't that clever?

Yes, it is. And check out the price. You'd be a fool not to.

* And maybe even an iPod, but I haven't tried that yet.
** Illegally, most likely. But I won't tell.

52 Weeks Later

Difficult as it might seem to believe, a whole year has passed since I returned to work. And I still haven't been fired, or even disciplined*. Which is fairly encouraging.

There have been a lot of changes over the last twelve months. The development team I originally joined is now a completely different team. My boss and I are the only ones who were on the team a year ago.

And then there's the takeover by Sage. Although that hasn't made much noticeable difference so far. But it's still early days.

Anyway, I'm still enjoying being back, despite having to deal with the occasional nightmare client. It's obviously not possible to start naming any of them here, of course. At this point I was going to drop some very heavy hints, but I chickened out. For now.

* At least, not in a work-related context.

The World Isn't Fair

Gee, Al - thanks for the scoop.

I bought myself an exercise bike last week. One of those things where you pedal furiously, but don't actually go anywhere. You know, just like life in general.

The exercise bike, I figured, was ideal for someone like me. I can place the bike directly in front of the computer, and watch my favourite TV shows while exercising. After all, there's no need to let a healthy lifestyle encroach on my primary leisure pursuit.

I felt quite proud of myself on the first day, when I worked up quite a sweat, and according to the electronic readout, burnt off 300 calories. I cycled - without moving an inch - over 4km. I have no idea what 4km is in miles, but it sounds quite good.

300 calories however, I later discovered, is equivalent to a packet of peanuts. That's right, a packet of peanuts. How in the purple fuck can a packet of peanuts contain 300 calories? That's ridiculous, surely? Peanuts are insignificant little things, hence the phrase "My name as Al, and I get paid peanuts".

Dammit. Time to get pedalling. It's a good thing Heroes and Prison Break are back in a couple of weeks. It'll make this exercise nonsense a little more bearable.

Fame at last

Went to see Ricky Gervais' Fame show at the SECC last night, and had a thoroughly good time. He's not one of the old school comedians, who can improvise or draw on a vast catalogue of gags - but with an hour's worth of meticulously scripted material, he's a fine comic performer.

His support act, Will Smith, was good too. No, not that one.

And the seats? In terms of location, couldn't have been much better. Front row, just slightly right of centre. Spectacularly uncomfortable, though. And the forty minute wait to get out of the car park after the show was a bit of a pisser too.

But all in all, a great night out. If you want a rough idea of the show's content, click here. Just don't expect great video or audio quality.

School's In

I feel sorry for the kids. You remember them, the little characters who go to school. Well, most of them. As if it's not bad enough that, living in this country, they get the shortest summer holidays in Europe, on top of that they have the weather to contend with. The weather which, this year, has properly screwed them over.

After a rather tight-fisted six weeks* of - at best mediocre, but on the whole.... shite - weather, they went back to school this week. And true to form, the minute they're back to being cooped up in the classroom, wouldn't you just know it, the sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip hooray. Today was the hottest day of the year** in some parts of Scotland, and it certainly felt like it to me while I was sitting in an aircon-free office, sweating like Gary Glitter watching Kindergarten Cop.

* Six weeks? I've had farts that have lasted longer than that.
** I know that's not saying much, but it was noticeable.

There and back again (by lunchtime)

Had a hospital appointment in Edinburgh today. That's a two-hour journey for what turned out to be a five-minute consultation which could have just as easily have been conducted by phone. It boiled down to this:

• How's the ankle been since last time?
• Much the same really, bit more movement. The hydrotherapy is helping.
• Any pain?
• No.
• Can you come back in six months?
• Yes.

On the plus side, the earliness and, er, shortness of the appointment meant that I was back home by 12:30pm, just in time to have lunch and do very little for the rest of the day.

I blame Ricky Gervais

I can't shift these Ricky Gervais tickets for Edinburgh Castle (which I bought before finding out that he was playing Glasgow the night before). They've been on eBay for two days, but not so much as a nibble so far. I wonder what's putting people off? Could it be anything to do with his less than spectacular performance at the Diana memorial concert....?

Worth the wait

At last. Went to see The Simpsons Movie today. I guess it was impossible for any film to stand up to such massive expectations, but it came very, very close. Actually, and I'm not proud of this, but I was laughing even before the movie started, at the sight of a kid in the audience who was almost the double of Üter. Fortunately the following 87 minutes frequently made me laugh even harder.

Just one thing... where was Sideshow Bob?

I blame Michael Fish

We never had these problems when he was in charge of the weather. Well, apart from the occasional unforseen hurricane.

I'm not impressed with the weather we've been having lately. I take 2 weeks off work, and the sun doesn't come out once. The second I go back to work, wouldn't you know, the sun is splitting the sky. Dirty fiery bastard of a thing.

And just to top it off, our head office is in Oxfordshire, in one of the towns particularly badly affected by the flooding. Which had a fairly negative impact on my ability to connect to the office network when working from home yesterday. Although nothing like as negative an impact as on all the people whose homes were flooded.

Unusual turnaround, really. At the weekend, while large areas of England disappeared under water, people in Scotland were sunbathing naked in their gardens. Er, some of them were. I'd imagine.

It's YouTube, you tube

I could be wrong - I have been before - but I am fairly certain that this is what the Internet was invented for.

Or, being more sensible, this is a real treat...

Or, gravitating back towards the stupid (as is my wont)...

I just wish they'd let Randy go on a little bit longer...

Quiz Night

I'm not long back from quiz night at the pub. Our team did rather well, scoring 84 out of 100 overall. Not bad considering that I had to do the first round on my own. 19 out of 20, since you ask. It's only my third week back at the quiz after a gap of almost 3 years and 4 months, so don't blame me if I'm a little rusty.

84 out of 100 is a pretty respectable score all the same, landing us second place this week. In the old days, that kind of score would have won it easily. But on this occasion, we were beaten by a team of students (pah!) who got 90.

We would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for those pesky kids.

Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse

I'm fairly certain that my image has been used on the internet without my consent.

Take a look at the top picture on this page - it loops through three different images. You're looking for the picture with a guy in a stripey shirt on the left. Got it? OK, over on the other side of the pic is a guy in a white shirt standing at the bar. He's a mate of mine. Now go left a bit - there's a guy sitting down, with his head partially obscured by the beer taps. That's me, I'm certain of it. I'd recognise the side of my own head anywhere... particularly when it spends so much time in that place.

Anyways, I don't recall giving my permission for my image to be used. Actually, I don't even recall the photo being taken. I do seem to become forgetful whenever I go over there, for some reason.

No reason for the title, other that it's the song I was listening to while typing.

An idea

Car manufacturers, gawd bless them, have come up with this great idea. It's basically a breathalyser* fitted to the vehicle. So, if you get behind the wheel reeking of alcohol, the whole thing just locks up and prevents you from driving it. Clever, or what?

Could we extend the same principle to computers? What if, before attempting to access eBay or Amazon you had to breathe into a little tube to prove your sobriety. So, if you'd just come home from the pub, pished out of your mental heid, you'd be barred from frittering away your hard-earned cash on frivolous nick-nacks. Imagine the amount of grief that could be prevented.

This is in no way related to the Mr Potato Head posts from a few days ago.

* That's with an 'S', not a 'Z'.

Huuuuh? Huuuuuuuuuuuh?

The world has officially gone mad. Insane in the membrane. Insane in the brain.

The proof is here.

Huh?

I don't understand how this has happened. When I first got hooked on this Internet malarkey, all those years ago, I signed up with CompuServe. And due to what I can only assume to be some massive oversight, my CompuServe homepage is still active - a good 6 or more years since I cancelled my account.

They must love me.

So excited

Christmas comes early... and I almost did too, when I saw this publicity shot for this year's Doctor Who Christmas special.

The Doctor and Kylie. It's almost too good to be true.

You know you want it

Admit it. You want this. You do. You know you do. You want it bad. I know I do.















And you can't have one without the other, right?

Seven

Next time the BBC presents coverage of a live music event of the like of Live Earth, they may want to consider using a slight delay on transmission. If nothing else, it would save Jonathan Ross from having to apologise every five minutes for bad language employed by the onstage talent. Particularly when that includes such notorious potty-mouths as Chris Rock and Ricky Gervais. And Madonna. And, er, Phil Collins.

I counted at least three of George Carlin's seven words you can never say on television, including arguably the worst one*, well before the 9pm watershed.

It's a fucking disgrace.

* You know, the Oedipal one.

It's not what you think...

...but would you feel comfortable asking for this magazine at your local newsagent's?

I found this whilst running a perfectly innocent search on Google Images. Perfectly innocent, I tell you.