Crazy people

I spotted an interesting article on the BBC's web page today.

An American Airlines pilot asked Christians on his flight to raise their hands to identify themselves, prior to calling all non-Christians crazy. He also suggested that the non-Christians should speak to the Christians about their faith. Needless to say reports are that passengers were terrified.

The full story is here on the BBC's news site.

This, of course, does raise the question as to who actually is the crazy person here.

Woohoo

Somebody likes me. I just got an invite to orkut.

Ice Cold in Omsk

It's nice to know where the Russian army have their priorities, and if this story is anything to go by it's more in having a good time that in fighting wars.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3414593.stm

"Six divers, 10 men with electric saws and a tank pulled the beer kegs - but not the truck - to safety."

That's dedication to a cause.

Tis the season to be... erm... tortured?

Trawling the web as you do when you are supposed to be getting on with lots of work. I found this little story. Well okay I didn't find it but one of the guys in the chat room I hang out in found it.

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,8060210^13762,00.html


Enjoy

I'm currently working my behind off on the end of course project, on top of that I'm running around like a maniac doing things for the wedding, and I'm studying for the CIW Foundations exam. Not to mention the Gutenburg project that I'm heading up. I really need to have each day in the order of 40 hours long to be able to get everything done.

Any donations of spare time, extra strength caffeine, etc would be gratefully accepted. :-)

How do you deal with a person who will not listen to anyone's opinions and seems to get their self esteem from belittling, patronising and ignoring other people, or by riding roughshod over any ideas that aren't their's? Especially when you are supposed to be working in a team with said person?

BTW, punching them in the face is not an option.

Update
This person and I have had a blazing row due in part to the wasting of time by redoing work that I had already done. Of course, they were doing this in front of someone who does have the chance to write references and reviews. I just asked why the work as being redone, and the answer was correct in as much as it is information that the team needs. So I pointed out that I had done it and emailed the team with the results and some questions that we need to ask our client. The response... "Oh I haven't read your emails".

Needless to say everything got worse over the day so the first thing the following morning I went into the management team and said that I cannot work with this person. I told them everything that had bugged me over the entire project cycle so far. The telling me time and time again that I am not able to do this, that or the other without this person's help, the constant undermining of the work that I am doing and so on.

Not sure what happened after that, if someone had words or what, but things seem to have settled down, so I am able to get on with the things I should be doing without hindrance. The question is for how long?

Happy News

I'm getting married. The boy wonder and I are tying the knot on 24th July 2004 at the Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh.

The frightening thing is that despite having eight months or so to go, we have almost everything arranged or at the very least in hand.

All we need to think about doing is getting the rings, the gifts for bestman and bridesmaids, and the bridal favours. We can't move ahead with the catering until we get the prices for the different altered menus back from the hotel. This, of course, holds up paying the deposit to the hotel, which in turn holds up getting the form for booking the Registrar, but everyone is aware of the sequence and the time scale and so there are no worries.

Well some of you will have already been told this news and I excpect many others will have heard it on the grapevine. After what must be the longest engagement in living memory (11 years in February) the darling boy and I are getting married. Plans are already being put into place so the details are as follows:

Date: 24th July 2004
Wedding Ceremony: Carlton Highland Hotel (Sutherland Suite) all welcome.
Wedding Breakfast: Carlton Highland Hotel (Highland Suite) Family and close friends only.
Evening Reception: Carlton Highland Hotel (Highland Suite) Everyone else we know that we remember to invite.

What is really frightening is how organised we are. All that needs to be done now is sort out the dress and we have to choose/buy wedding rings and the gifts for best man and bridesmaids. I need to ask one friend if she will be a bridesmaid and we need to speak to someone about the evening entertainment but that is in hand. I even have the wedding cake and favours sorted out.

I'm just having a moment of panic wondering what I have missed and what will go wrong.

Well blogging has been somewhat slow. The main reason is that I am currently on a web development course, which is rather intense.

It's even less likely that I will be doing updates before Christmas because not only am I studying for the CIW Foundations exam we are in the project phase of the course.

The project itself is really interesting. I am working with a guy whose back ground is graphic design (the team designer) and a woman who has experience of running a web company (the team's project manager) to redesign from scratch the web pages for Deadhead Comics in Edinburgh. The ideas are really flying around and we already have some good ideas that we can put to our client. This is a really exciting project with lots of potential for fun so we are all working our collective butts off.

Maybe I should try to keep updating this to let you all know how we are getting on.

Is that the time?

I can't believe that it has been two weeks since I last did an update. Time has been flying to the point that I don't have enough hours in the day. I don't know what I will do when I get a job, but I have been in this situation before and I know that it will all work out in the end. Actually most of the workload is from a Training for Work scheme so if I do get a job that will end, and that will remove a large chunk of the stuff that is keeping me busy. Web design project work on very tight deadlines in not conducive to having a social life, and I passed the assessment test to get onto the CIW Foundations course, so that has put another load of study work onto my shoulders. Do I hear the words stressed being muttered somewhere?

As if all the stress from that isn't enough I'm having to start running around and fix dates and venues. Most people will have heard already but my other half and I had decided that 11 years is long enough to be engaged and we will be getting married next year.

Final details are to be confirmed but at the moment it is looking as though it will be at the end of July at the Carlton Highland Hotel. I just need to get the date confirmed with the Registrars Office.

All I need now is the groom to follow tradition and let me get on with deciding what I want.

Colour madness.

I have a few little pleasures in life. One of them is the regular mailing from Hermes. I bought a scarf at their store in Manchester not long after it opened and as a result ended up on their preferred customer list, so I get invites to special showing of new collections, exhibitions and stuff like that. Not to mention the quarterly magazine, full of wonderful images (I'm sure Sandy would appreciate the photos). Anyway I've just received the latest bundle including a catalogue of this season's ties, which are separated by colour associations. So there's a section that describes orange as "...surreptitiously, with the slyness of genetic mutation and the power of an incoming tide, yellow swerves towards red." Pale pink is "... reserved for babies, more often than not those of the female sex. Can one conceive of it ornamenting beard and muscle?" As for purple, apparently "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman who wears only mauve is to be mistrusted."

Perhaps it is a French foible that colour should be described in such living, breathing terminology, as though the colours themselves we independent, sentient beings. Or is it perhaps that exclusive fashion houses describe things with such artistic ways? Whichever it is, I like it.

Guns and Roses

Not much of an update I'm afraid. I'm just too busy at the moment doing studying and other such stuff. However, I came across this web site. It's an old project but I thought it was pretty neat.

The Cult of Father Darwin

It would seem that a local teenager decided that he should Darwinate himself.

Edinburgh Evening News Story here

Whilst it is sad that that the young idiot lost his life at least we can all sleep safely in the knowledge that yet another strain of the stupidity gene has been exterminated prior to reproducing itself.

Life is beginning to settle down again so hopefully I will be blogging a bit more regularly.

Keep looking, you never know when I might get inspiration.

Long time no blog

Well there has been a huge amount going on in my life including my mother dying so if you don't like it that I haven't updated since February - tough!

Couple of news points. I have a Live Journal account here. I have also started a web design course
so have web space here though as yet there is nothing to see. Keep checking though as things will change. There were problems with my ISP mangling all my html into frontpage-ese so the webpage in the links section is currently dead. At some point I will fix the links section, but like I said I'm busy so it might take a while to get a round tuit.

Also, Edinburgh has been a nightmare this year during the festival, so if you are a festival tourist, here is a frustrated local's message to you.

FUCK OFF HOME!

It's not that I have anything against the tourists and the revenue that they bring to the city, I just wish they wouldn't block entire pavements so that those of us with only one hour for lunch can't get anywhere. Just remember that although YOU are on holiday here, there are some people that aren't and they are trying to live their lives as normally as possible.

Hello....

      ...(goodbye)

Well not really. For the people that have emailed asking where I am, I am still around but I'm feeling intermittently depressed and/or anti-social. If you've mailed and I've not answered, I haven't fallen out with you and I'm not ignoring you because you've upset me. It's just I can't be bothered and besides I don't feel like talking/mailing anyone. If you've missed me at the pub (or wherever) I was too depressed/upset/antisocial (delete as applicable) to be arsed. Nothing personal, it's not you, it's just something I'm going through. It will pass. Time will heal. Etc.....

Anyway, as I finally motivated myself to update this I thought I would pass on the two little snippets that I have found recently.

Firstly, if you are into having trendy Chinese or Japanese words tattooed across your body make sure you have a trustworthy Chinese/Japanese speaking friend with you. Otherwise the results may not be what you expect. Story here

Also, in light of the current SCO mess any Linux geeks watching might be interested in here.

Normal service will be resumed... Eventually... Sometime... Maybe... Well probably. Though what is normal and does anybody ever achieve normality anyway?

Bad day at the track

Some people will know that I used to be a motor racing marshal until an unfortunate incident in a gravel trap left me with a badly injured knee, making track side work impossible. I still like motor racing and watch races whenever I get the opportunity and I keep as up to date as possible with the rule changes, etc.

So today I was watching Formula One on TV. It was the British Grand Prix, which I have only done spectator marshalling at (directing traffic to car parks and stopping people from lighting barbecues next to wooden grandstands). Silverstone is a lovely circuit, which was greatly improved about 10 years ago went the track layout was altered to facilitate the building of new run off areas for the race cars and grandstands for the spectators. It's still a power circuit with a sequence of fast corners leading to the main straight which terminates into the "new" complex of slower corners that were designed to increase over taking. Cars exiting the fast complex will be doing about 130 mph, accelerating up the straight to 200+ mph before breaking hard. It's the fastest part of the circuit and compares with the Parabolica at Monza or the old Tamburello at Imola - where Ayrton Senna was killed in a high speed accident in 1994. So imagine, the shock it was to see what could only described as a lunatic with a death wish (click on the image to get an enlargement) calmly jogging along this straight down toward the fast complex of corners at Becketts. The yellow Jordon that can be seen exiting the corner is doing about 140 mph and about two seconds after the picture had passed the nutter. Added to which the guy was trying to wave protest placards in front of the cars, on only one occasion did he try to get out of the way, in most cases actually moving toward the racing line of the cars. It was only the skill of the drivers in avoiding him that prevented his death, though had one of the cars hit him it would likely have killed the driver too. By the nature of that part of the circuit no marshals were sent to retrieve him until the safety car had been deployed and being in the early stages of the race with the cars were still fairly bunched up a safe gap was quickly forthcoming for the marshals to deal with him, and knowing the mentality of the marshals they wouldn't have been gentle with him, I know if I was dealing with him I would managed at least one surreptitious kick with my steel toe-capped boots. The worst thing is, this guy is only going to be charged with aggravated trespass, which his lawyers may be able to argue around by virtue of him having a ticket, but why not add on attempted murder. After all there is already evidence that a formula one car hitting a person at speed will cause the death of the driver, as Tom Pryce was killed in 1977 when he struck a marshal who was crossing the track, and F1 cars are much faster now that they were 26 years ago, plus this whole issue was discussed in 2000 after a disgruntled Frenchman breached security to make a track side protest again Mercedes-Benz.

The timing of this couldn't have been worse. The whole future of the British Grand Prix is in question, and an incident like this could be all it takes to have one of the great sporting institutions of the summer erased permanently from the calender.

Bargins galore

I had an interesting afternoon in HMV (West End today). Went up into the Classical section where I had a nice chat with the chap who works there. Despite not seeing him for over 12 months he not only remembered me also the sort of classical stuff I like, and the CD's he'd recommended to me. (wow! HMV give this guy a pay rise now.) Anyway to cut a long story sort he pointed me to some stuff that they have in from the Marco Polo label which are all being sold at £2.99, so I came away with the following;

Witold Lutoslawski - Symphonies Nos 3 and 4

Frederic Devreese - Soundtrack (Dances, Divertimenti and Preludes)

Tage Nielsen, Erik Norby, Vagn Holmboe & Herman D Koppel - Songs

Rued Langgaard - String Quartets (Double CD)

Laszlo Lajtha - Symphonies Nos 8 and 9

And as if that wasn't good enough on the bargain front I got two Permin cross stitch kits at about half the price I've seen them being sold for elsewhere. They are about 8"x 20", stitched on 20 hole to the inch count fabric and are gorgeous. All other stitching projects are on hold till these are done.

INTERCAL Game

A suggestion has just been put to me for a new variation to that old favourite Scrabble.

What if the pieces are INTERCAL keywords and you have to produce valid statements instead of valid words. Your score would depend on which keywords you use. There is no bonus for elegance.

For a final twist on scrabble you can use a dictionary to check a word while in this game you would have to explain what it does before scoring.

Maybe it should be a computer game so you can compile your statements to verify validity.

Hmm!

It's sort of weird but flattering when people you don't know add you to their LJ friends list. But it's even weirder when they remove you. What is it about your journal that makes them want to add you in the first place? What changes to make them no longer want to read you entries? Have you changed in the interim?

I know that with a few exception most of my stuff has been self indulgent "why me?" whinging, but since January that's more or less the process that my mind has been going through. Finding out that my mother had cancer in some ways made me more critical of friends and I have cut a lot of people out of my life. Lets face it when you trying to come to terms with the fact that a parental unit is dying a horrible death, having a self obsessed troll dismissing your feelings as unimportant, whilst making out that their desicion of whether to go to an Indian or Thai restaurant is of life or death importance, makes you realise that said troll isn't worth knowing. When they then say that it was "an attempt to cheer you up" is insulting to the intelligence. One acquaintenship that broke down was regrettable because it could possibly have been avoided if I hadn't made the choice to say enough is enough. However, given the instability of the other person, that would have only put off the inevitable, so perhaps everything worked out for the best anyway.

LJ is interesting in that you can voice all your worries, concerns, woes, etc knowing that you do have an audience, who may be supportive, though conversely they may just be saying "Oh gawd not again" and skimming over your entry. But the audience is there and by virtue of the friends page, is also available to a wider selection of people any of whom could decide that they want a front seat in our rants and wibbles. That a stranger added me to his list for some arbitrary reason and then just as suddenly decided that I wasn't interesting enough raises questions in my mind, like did this person just want to watch the increasingly depressed muttering of someone who is going through their own private hell and re-adjusting their relationships on the basis of new values? Are the postings not full of juicy enough details of debautched sex and familial arguments? But isn't this what we all want to see? Given the popularity of soap operas with convoluted relationships (Dynasty/The Colbys), improbable disasters/scenarios (Emmerdale, Dallas) and on to the later craze of "reality tv", isn't this what we all want - a chance to look into someone elses life and make judgement? But in turn with LJ (and weblogs in general) are we not holding ourselves up for judgement in the same way as the occupants of the Big Brother House? So does it really matter that someone who I have never (to my knowledge) met added and subtracted me from their friends list? Truthfully, the answer is that it doesn't matter at all, however it does generate a feeling of disappointment, i.e. if I cannot hold a strangers interest then what chance do I have of making new friends? though this isn't something that has been a problem in the past, so why should it be a problem in the future? And can the actions of one stranger be used as a weather vane as to how people in general view me?
Furthermore, does questioning the motives of a stranger, and analysing my response to their actions make me nuts? Or am I just noticing a trend of behaviour in people that is always there just so entrenched that we take it for granted?