One lone voice in the background.

I've just listened to the 2-minute silence from Whitehall. As it began troy couples hear a small child crying. As the sound supervisor changed the mix on the effects mics to reduce the level of the child's sound another, clear, loud and strong adult voice became very noticeable.

All it said was three words repeated slowly and clearly:

"No more war!"

One person with the courage to sum up simply the sentiments of every person attending that service.

Am I missing something?

I spotted a newspaper board outside a newsagent on trip back from Watford this morning: "Britain's first sex-change Rabbi". With a headline like that I just had to hit Google.

http://yourjewishnews.com/11160.aspx

Awesome Water!

You have GOT to watch this. Better yet, watch it in HD with headphones on loud I know I have this thing for the sea, but this is fantastic. There's a sequence near the beginning of a gigantic breaker and only after a second or so you realise: My God There's a guy on a board coming out of that. The tubes are just awesome


PHANTOM WATER EDIT from Chris Bryan on Vimeo.

Product Placement - Not

I do wish the people who plan store layouts would think before they stock the shelves.

Serious Headaches

I have not had a good weekend. In between arguments with both my sons I've had to un-install four different anti virus programs from my youngest son's PC which he installed in the belief that more is better. It took about five hours to get back to just the one - most of the time being taken up with waiting for one av program to let go of the other long enough to un-install it.

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Sayings from my son.

My eldest son is acquiring an amazing turn of phrase these days. Two of his latest:
"As useful a reset switch on a landmine" when referring to gaming site.
"A worse noise than a jet engine full of squirrels!" when referring to his nine-year old brother's guitar playing.

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Goldfish not included.

 What happens when you don't seal the bag properly in a typical British summer.

This isn't just someone putting up an ad for a missing pet, this is a legally required planning notice put up by the local council - who whould know what they're doing considering the number of these they have to put up in  year.

You can just about read the top three paragraphs and that's it. It relates to a temporary road closure that happened 18 months ago!

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A wet Friday in London

The boss has brought us out for drink tonight, basically so we can drown our sorrowsas we're being sold again.

This is the third place we've been in and the first we can actually hear each other.

It seems TUPE is the modern spelling of slavery these days.

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We may have a problem here....

There's currently a radio ad running over here in the UK for a company that replaces windscreens (wind shieds, what-have-you) and they keep going on about chips developing into cracks, and how much it would cost you to have the glass replaced rather than having the chip filled.

Very laudable. Keep the punter happy and they'll come back to you next time they have a problem,.

I'm not worried about the company going on about this, after all they have a business to run, what does worry me is the fact that a chip can develop into a crack in the first place by just going over a bump in the road. To me, this points out what could possibly be a flaw in the way modern motor vehicles are constructed, especially in the way the glass is fitted.

The old way of doing this was to insert a rubber gasket into the frame of the vehicle and fix the glass into the gasket, using a sealant that lubricates the glass for insertion and then sets with time.

The current way to do this is with a polymer-based glue which sets rigid in a fairly short period after application. I know production costs are everything, but couldn't a different adhesive be used to give some flexibility in the installation? Surely that way people wouldn't be left with fairly hefty bills when the screen has to be replaced.

Just what we always thought!

I've just found a picture that sums up what I think of a certain well known fast food pusher's retailer's products.

Obviously I can't be the only one who thinks that McDiabetes fries and burgers aren't good for you.

The doctor is in.......

Happy New Year all!

It's almost two months since I wrote anything, mostly due to lack of time: if I haven't been working, I've been sleeping.

This weekend I've been holding a "laptop clinic" for the family. The result is one repaired and working keyboard, one cleaned and working DVD drive and one completely trashed BIOS - not caused by me I might add.

The keyboard - fairly simple. A liquid induced burn out fixed by an eBay purchase.
The BIOS - no solution really.The laptop is a geriatric Acer TravelMate with  a seriously screwed chip. Randomly set BIOS passwords and nothing past the time and date shown on the Basic Settings screen. It was to the point where it wouldn't even recognise any of the hardware properly. This will be cured again by eBay I suspect. I was able to salvage everything of importance of the hard disk so no real loss.

Now the DVD drive. If you have a family who like to grow their hair long, and you start getting problems with their computer and home entertainment kit, don't go looking for you nearest repair man first, go looking for the large hair ball (or similar) wrapped around the central spindle of the drive. It'll save you money!

Go careful out there people - it's a rough world.