9 out of 10

We’re sitting here trying to work out what to watch at the cinema. On one tab of firefox various listings from nearby cinemas, on another tab IMDB as we try and work out whether films are any good.

Makes you wonder how people used to survive when they had no real idea whether a film was going to be any good or not before they saw it. No mark out of 10, just a word of mouth recommendation if you were lucky.

Reducing experiences to a number out of ten has always been fraught with danger. But hell, we do it so much why stop now. It’s not a great system, but it works a lot of the time. I’d give the ‘out of 10’ system, a 9.

il neige, (mal)heureusement

it was quite a surprise this morning when i woke to find london covered in a reasonable amount of snow..of course our transport systems handled it with their usual grace - ie terribly. my planned 80 min trundle to luton airport via tube, train and bus turned into a just-over 2 hour hike with me ultimately losing my nerve and jumping in a cab at st albans as time ran down. of course i should never have bothered - plane delayed by the snow! delayed by 90mins they thought, though when pressed admitted that the plane was still stuck in geneva. ho hum. there goes my bus connection to val d'isere...
i settled down to contemplate my likely day of 'airport lounge appreciation'.
and then suddenly, we were.at the gate. sure, some time had passed but here we were, getting onto a plane only 45 mins after we should have left. hope for my bus connection.yet then - but it would be tight...
i stand, itching to get off. it is 2.55. we have just landed. the stairs have not yet appeared. come on! 3.30 will still be tight - there's getting off, airport corridor walking, passport control, baggage collection, ticket pick-up and then finding the bus stand - if i am even in time. this list feels like a black hole sucking up my time as i stride purposefully to passports. it takes seconds. i'm at baggage but the carousel hasn't started. nature calls - damn i hadn't factored that one in!
still no carousel action. 10 mins to go. i try to spy the ticket collection point through the glass wall of Arrivals. no luck. ah - finally the carousel judders into life. 8 mins to go.
baggage-fates, i am in your hands.
i see my bag and go, rushing but trying not to look like a manic terrorist or nutcase as i approach the green channel. emerging, a total result awaits me - accueil france is opposite me, here be bus tickets. 4 mins to go. but there's a queue.
a very british dilemma befalls.me - do i assume everyone is getting the same bus as me and so are equally hurried.. or do i politely barge past and try to get my ticket before the bus goes? in the end i do a little of both but am reassurred that everyone else is in the same boat and anyway one of the people at the counter is the ticket inspector so noone is going anywhere yet. i relax. i arrive at the bus, ticket in hand, at 3.28pm. fantastic.

so - a crazy day of wrestling problems caused by the snow i ultimately seek. outside the bus windows - the serene white mountains beckon. time to board...

i actually mean it

I've been meaning to post for a few days about my shiny new Sony Ericsson W950i walkman (smart) phone. It totally rocks. I'm going to keep it short, but here are my top threes....

As a music lover I think,

• sound quality is great (apparently even better with the HBH-DS970 bluetooth headset)
• the player can be toggled (with a single button press) with the app you are working with, which avoids the annoyance factor I have seen with previous SE phones (P910)
  
• 4Gb of storage - the same as a nano... the iPod is in danger...

And as a smartphone user I think,

• the legendary symbian 90-second start-up time is still there :( not a good start...
• 3G means my POP3 emails download a damn sight faster.... good stuff...
  
• An in-built RSS reader ! finally... (and it's good!)
• Google Mobile Maps for Java MIDP2.0 is incredible (browse to http://www.google.com/gmm from the inbuilt Opera 8 web browser to install - the google mail java client is not bad either)
  
• The "Messaging" SMS and email client has been integrated with Opera (finally!) - no more groaning when you realised the P900 was trying to render an email with the appalling built-in UIQ2 browser
• T9 and handwriting recognition together - start writing then click on the completion. Sweet!
  

confession time: I wanted to rave about my w950i but I also wanted to try out google adsense. I decided to make them coincide because my average post doesn't tend to lend itself to adsense :)

But i really really do think the w950i rocks :)

truth or dare

Check this out
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6190739.stm

To all those who believe in content over delivery, function over form, substance over style. Hear this: we have lost

the resident evil is here - the vacous walk the earth

stamford hill, tottenham, edmonton green

there's an eerie fog i can see as I zoom along; I stare into the void
sinking lower as I watch them closing in, dark red shapes on the horizon
I feel their watchful gaze, a collective stare as they draw closer and hover around me
Cowering silently.

I am surrounded suddenly - one is in front, another two behind. Is it time to run?
What are they, these stalking red beacons that pursue me?
Is it I they pursue or the one I bear. The one

four nine

climate crisis

watch this: An Inconvenient Truth
go here: www.climatecrisis.net

do the things you can do
- ask your employer why the computers are left on all night
- ask your energy company whether you can buy green energy from them
- ask your political representatives to make progress on carbon emissions

action is needed

schizophrenia

i struggle with this blog. I want it to be so many things, but my demons have set up their own version of Fight Club on my shoulder and it has been going some time now. Today one of them must be winning, because i am typing something new at last.

So far I have identified five of them:

random thought (an orange, friendly looking thing)
injustice (a red, angry ball of fire)
speakers corner (bright yellow, loud, demanding)
vivre (yellow, happy)
the poet (purple, brooding)

I wonder who will win in the end...

i, robot

the thing about thw word disease is that it seeps. the very sound of the word is odious and portentous. a pus-filled word - it is almost too appropriate for its designated meaning.

Let's not dwell though - I want to talk about another word. Influenza. Seems to be on everybody's lips at the moment, although not literally. At least not for now.

A strange word though, don't you think. Influenza. Influence...a? I wondered why it was called something that seemed a little jarring, out of place. Ok, so you get sick and feverish. From a very technical perspective I suppose it has influenced you. A bit. Maybe. But really, is this an appropriate name to have used up already?

In cyberspace, viruses are self-replicating programs that transmit themselves from computer to computer. Sometimes this is an exercise in ego by the author; just as often they desire power. If you command a great 'bot network' of infected machines, you can direct them to spam, attack or number crunch.

Machine code and DNA are not so different. One day, maybe sooner than you think, another self-replicating program will transmit itself between machines. But the machines are biological; the network social. Without even knowing my foe, I am conquerered.

I have influenza. I am a bot.

zero sum game

Of all the things to be doing when slicing a pizza this evening, I was
pondering was week's giant oil repository fire last week close to Luton.

My initial reaction last week was quite naturally shock at the scale of
the fire. And to worry about what the effect of the massive cloud of
oily soot might be on London.

Afterwards I remember thinking how it was horrific that in the space of
a few days vast amounts of CO2 would enter the atmosphere further
accelerating global warming. Forget 'march of the penguins', the
penguins will be lucky if they have any ice sheets left to march on soon
enough.

But the penny dropped tonight. It's not like I often think about oil
repositories whilst slicing pizza; sometimes things just pop into your
head. And so it was. I realised that actually nothing had really
changed; the oil had burnt... as it had always been destined to do - in
our cars and in our planes. All that was different was the when and where.

A rampaging oil fire burns on our motorways and runways, many times over.