I just received this email:

DEAR FRIEND,
 
IT IS TRUE THAT THIS LETTER MAY COME TO YOU AS A SUPRISE SINCE WE HAVE NOT MET OURSELVES PHYSICALLY.BUT BEFORE I PROCEED,I WOULD WANT TO INTRODUCE MYSELF TO YOU. MY NAME IS BELLO NUMAN ,I AM THE FIRST SON OF LATE OKOH NUMAN .MY FATHER WAS A VERY WEALTHY MAN BEFORE HIS DEATH FOUR YEARS AGO.
 
HE MARRIED TWO WIVES OF WHICH MY MOTHER WAS THE FIRST,BUT SHE DIED THREE YEARS AFTER MY BIRTH AND THAT WAS THE REASON WHY MY FATHER TOOK A SECOND WIFE.SINCE THE DEATH OF MY FATHER, MY STEP MOTHER HAS BEEN NEGLECTING MY RIGHT AS THE FIRST SON AND DOES NOT WANT ME TO HAVE ANY SHARE IN MY FATHER'S BUSINESS EMPIRE.ALL HER CONCERN IS ABOUT HER PERSONAL CHILDREN AND BECAUSE OF THAT NO ATTENTION IS BEING GIVEN TO ME.
 
BUT BEFORE THE DEATH  OF MY FATHER,AS HIS FIRST SON,HE SERECTLY DISCLOSED TO  ME THAT HE DEPOSITED THE SUM OF {$10.5M} IN A SECURITY COMPANY WHICH IS  BASED IN ACCRA,GHANA AND ALSO KEPT UNDER MY CARE THE(DEPOSIT CERTIFICATE).DUE TOTHE CONDITION OF OUR  FAMILY,AND AS I DO NOT WANT ANY MEMBER OF OUR FAMILY TO BE AWARE OF THE DEVELOPMENT, I CANNOT CLAIM THE MONEY MYSELF.
 
IN VIEW OF THIS,I WANT YOU TO PRESENT YOURSELF AS MY FATHER'S FOREIGN PARTNER SO THAT THE FUND WOULD BE RELEASED TO YOU AFTER WHICH I WOULD COME OVER TO YOUR COUNTRY FOR THE SHARING OF THE FUND.YOU ARE ENTILED TO  RECEIVE 30% OF THE TOTAL SUM AFTER THE FINAL CONCLUSION OF THE TRANSACTION.
 
BEAR IN MIND THAT HONESTY AND SINCERITY SHALL BE OUR WATCH WORD IN  THE COURSE OF THIS TRANSACTION.AS SOON AS YOU INDICATE YOUR WILLINGNESS TO HELP ME OUT,I SHALL LET YOU  KNOW THE NEXT STEP WE SHALL TAKE.
 
HAVE MY BEST REGARDS AND GOD BLESS YOU.
 
BELLO NUMAN.

Get in there! Some Ghanaian bloke I've never met wants to give me $3,150,000! And there was me thinking that today was a total write-off.

Hmmm. His name is Bello Numan. I wonder if he's related to Gary Numan. That would be the sub-zero icing on the cool cake.

Picture by aresauburn.

The other evening, Jason asked me what my top ten albums of all time would be. I failed this test completely by managing to come up with a mere three, then saying "but there are just soooo many good albums" and running out of inspiration.

Anyway, since this incident, I have been considering the matter. Music is so important to me, and I've been enthused by so many albums at various points in time that it is really tricky to compile a top ten. However, I still feel I should have a go – it seems disrespectful to my music collection not to.

So, with the benefit of my CD collection close at hand, here is my second attempt. I have not ranked these albums in any order of preference or worthiness – that would be impossible. All of the following albums share roughly equal levels of accolade.

• Radiohead: The Bends. Such a go-to album. It's full of tracks that seem to be incapable of growing old. Possibly the most listened-to CD in my collection.
• Pink Floyd: The Dark Side Of The Moon. No explanation needed, surely?
• Ben Folds Five: Ben Folds Five. A toss-up between this and their subsequent album, Whatever And Ever Amen. All of my friends thought I had lost my mind when I bought, and then raved about, this album. But I'll still stand by it. Melodic, lyrical, unpretentious. It pains me that Ben Folds Five later became dull and then disbanded.
• Michael Jackson: Thriller. Let's get this straight – this was always going to be in my top ten, regardless of recent news. No bandwagon here. I have inflicted this album on many sceptical visitors, and none have complained. Coolest, funkiest pop album ever.
• U2: Achtung Baby. As with all U2 albums, this does have a couple of 'fillers' which can easily be skipped. But it represents something of a zeitgeist for me – the band's controversial (at the time) reinvention seemed to fit nicely into my first term at university. It was also the prelude to my first U2 concert on the groundbreakingly excessive first leg of the Zoo TV tour.
• Leftfield: Leftism. Too loud, dark and poundy for many. Not me. I love the African influences and the vaguely futuristic production. One of those albums that 'raises the bar'.
• Deacon Blue: Raintown. Yeah yeah, take the piss if you want. But this was the soundtrack to many happy teenage memories, so you can fuck off. Some anthemic tunes here.
• Thom Yorke: The Eraser. This is probably the most controversial album on the list. Most Radiohead fans seem to be pretty sniffy about this solo effort. But... I have to confess that I like this album marginally more than any Radiohead release. There, I said it. Sure, it's very electronic, but that's never been a problem for me, and the synths and beats support the songs rather than dominating them. Dark and wintery, but not depressing. Soulful.
• The Prodigy: Music For The Jilted Generation. A mere half-step away from its Ravey-Davey-Gravey predecessor (Experience), but a big shift in theme. I always get the feeling that Liam Howlett must have been thinking "fuck all that smiley-face shite, let's make something a little bit nasty" when he was putting this together. It has aged rather well.
• Sigur Ros: Takk... Achingly beautiful music, voiced in a made-up language. Everyone must own at least one Sigur Ros album.

I feel like the bloke from High Fidelity. I should probably make a mix-tape and give it to a girl now*.

So we're in the middle of another tube strike. In a way, it evokes nostalgia from a couple of years ago, when there seemed to be a strike every week throughout the summer (especially on sunny days, or days when England were playing in the Roastball World Cup). However, it's obviously not a good feeling.

One thing that is perplexing me about the strike right now is the complete contrast of information being given by the two different sides in this dispute. I thought I'd try to summarise this, from reported statements by both the RMT and TfL:

No matter how you look at this, it's logically impossible that both sides are being truthful here. So who's lying?

If we were to take this dispute in isolation, with no knowledge of recent RMT-led strikes, then it would be hard to know which side to believe. It's just the RMT's word against TfL's. However, this isn't an isolated incident. The RMT has a history of calling strikes for spurious, confused and transparently contradictory or illegitimate reasons*, so I certainly know who I believe.

If the RMT ever wants to be taken seriously again, they'll need to shed their 'boy who cried wolf' image, instead of reinforcing everyone's opinion that they are a bunch of lazy, greedy, duplicitous, pugnacious cunts.

1. The one where the RMT threatened to strike because City Hall was "rubbishing" their leader in the press.
2. The one where the RMT called a strike on New Year's Eve 2005, which was completely unsupported by the tube workers, leading to them call a subsequent strike nine days later over "safety issues" caused by the original failed strike.
3. The one where, during the aforementioned RMT-led strike on "safety" grounds, there was a simultaneous "wildcat strike" demanding the reinstatement of a driver who had fallen asleep on the job, and driven his train straight through a platform at London Bridge (and a red signal) at almost six times the speed limit. Safety, eh?
   
4. The one where the RMT couldn't seem to make up their mind about the reason for a strike, and strike supporters claimed that it was about: (a) safety; (b) pay; (c) jealousy over some TfL salaries; (d) the war in Iraq; (e) the fact that not all workers at King's Cross received medals for their good work in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 bombings.

Picture by DesheBoard.

But right now, Royal Mail are really trying their hardest to piss me off. Reasons:

1. They drive their massive articulated lorries up and down the road outside my flat, seemingly all night long. Actually, 'drive' is not the correct word. Hmmm... maybe 'hurtle' would be more accurate? Anyway, this high-speed movement of heavy goods vehicles over speed-bumps makes my flat shudder, vibrate and generally wobble. Sure, I have become acclimatised to this, but it's still annoying to be woken up by the sound of the roof falling in*.
2. They drove one of their massive articulated lorries into the side of my parked car a few weeks ago, then buggered off without leaving any details. As well as constituting a criminal offence, this has left me hundreds of pounds out of pocket (at least until my insurance company can persuade them to admit liability).
3. They have recently started leaving those "Sorry, you were out" red cards in my mailbox. This would be fair enough if I actually was out when they called. But I wasn't. On the last few occasions I was actually waiting in for the delivery – the stupid lazy dickwits obviously just couldn't be bothered to ring the bell. Now I have to go to the sorting office to collect the parcel myself (dodging the lorries on the way).

And that's that.

* OK, so the roof hasn't actually fallen in yet. But sometimes it really does sound like it's about to, which is a pretty irksome way to be awoken.

For me, the most interesting part of this story is the speech that Mr Griffin delivered outside the Houses of Parliament to explain his decision. One part in particular, which I have transcribed from the TV footage of his speech, must be a strong contender for the least coherent couple of sentences ever uttered by a British politician:

"We thought long and hard about this and particularly with the way in which the intellectual elite in parliament are trying to use their own corruption as an excuse to revoli… revolutionise the place behind us to take out the pomp and the circumstance and the British tradition, we don’t want to give them the opportunity to use us in the British National Party to further their ends particularly by potentially embarrassing the Queen and the institution of the monarchy. Our institutions are in enough trouble as they are at present."

Even if you disregard the dodgy sentence structure and grammar, it seems to me that the entire point of this part of his speech is at best based around a glaring non-sequitur, or is at worst utterly meaningless.

Paradoxically, I would have thought that Mr Griffin would have been amongst the first to insist that British politicians should have a basic grasp of the English language, given his previously offered views on such matters. Still, I can imagine that he will soon be doing his bit to reduce unemployment figures by advertising for the services of a speechwriter.

8:04pm. Removed the most obvious spurious packaging and laid out the pieces nicely. Tempted to count all the pieces to see if I've got everything that the instruction booklet says I should, but surely half the fun of these types of endeavour is to get half way through the assembly before being frustrated by the vital missing part.

8:12pm. Gathered the tools mandated by the instruction booklet: cross-head screwdriver, suitable adjustable spanner (I assume this is the same thing as a 'wrench'?*). Opted to add a few extra tools based on my own judgement: unsuitably large wrench (in case I want to properly fuck up any of the nuts), power drill with screwdriver attachment (in case I want to mash any of the screw heads), Guinness in a Hoegaarden glass, Radio 6 (not pictured).

8:45pm. Assembly step 1 (of 18) completed. These are by no means the worst self-assembly instructions I have had to follow, but they still serve as a reminder of how good Ikea instructions really are. Perspective, eh? Guinness supply dangerously low.

8:56pm. Guinness finished; being replenished. Completed step 2, only to discover that I got step 1 wrong. Redoing step 1.

9:27pm. Step 1 did not readily lend itself to being redone. Apparently machine screws only like being screwed into metal once, and fuck around incessantly if you ever try to make them do it again. Hungry now. Will commence some sort of cooking operation (sadly not al-fresco) and crack on with step 3.

10:08pm. Just had to use the oversized wrench (in step 5). Normal wrench was not big enough to attach the nut to the back of the push-button jobbie behind the control panel. Dinner nearly ready.

10:25pm. Step 6 turned out to be deceptively fiddly – one of those moments when you need an extra hand or two. Managed it eventually with the help of both my thighs and some swearing. Food is ready.

11:11pm. Step 8 being a bitch. Things not lining up. Having to loosen screws in the hope that everything will start playing nicely. Last Action Hero on the TV. What the hell is a Venturi Tube anyway?

11:30pm. Over-tightened a screw in step 9 and stripped the tread a bit. The electrode is now a bit loose on the burner. Does this matter? Hmmm.

Midnight. The barbecue is starting to look a bit like a barbecue. Step 11.

12:30am. Ah, the old use-your-head-plus-one-foot-to-support-the-shelf-you-are-attaching-with-both-hands technique. I'm getting quite fed up with this now.

12:50am. Finally, the basic assembly (steps 1 to 17) is done. Reassuringly, the golden rule of self-assembly has been observed – I have 5 washers left over. The ominous-sounding leak testing is next, but that's going to have to wait until daylight.

11:03am. Hmmm. Leak testing would appear to have to take place outdoors, on the patio. ("WARNING: OUTDOOR USE ONLY!") But it's been pissing down with rain all morning. I will wait.

12:55pm. Stopped raining long enough for me to lug the thing outside, connect it to the gas bottle, and commence the leak testing. Instructions say that I should smear everything with soapy water and look for bubbles to indicate a gas leak. Great, but isn't soapy water full of bubbles anyway? Still, looks OK to me. Final test, FIRE IT UP!

1:07pm. Success! The Beast fired up without incident. Only two attempts at ignition required, although I was surprised that the flame is almost colourless, the sound and heat of a working barbecue is unmistakeable. All I have to do now is sort out the mess that is my patio so that I have somewhere sensible to position it.

Let the meat-fest begin.

Yes, as part of the lengthy foreplay before I get to pop my patio cherry, I have just purchased my first ever barbecue. And what a mighty beast it is.

Well, by 'mighty', I mean cheap. And in this context 'beast' == 'gas-powered appliance'**. But still, I'm excited. Although I think my excitement might soon be tempered by a handful of forthcoming frustrations.

Potential Frustration #1: Assembly

Despite the apparent simplicity of The Mighty Beast once assembled, it would appear to be composed of an alarmingly large number of pieces. Look:

And in case that picture does not fully demonstrate the full extent of the catalogue of components required for assembly, here is some more quantitative proof:

Yes, that comes to 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 20 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 4 + 10 + 8 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 4 + 22. No less than 147 separate pieces.

Who wants to bet that the end result of my assembly efforts turns out something like Homer's efforts?

Potential Frustration #2: Gas

I actually have some 'patio gas'. I inherited it from my flat's previous owners, with the defunct*** patio heater. Research tells me that it's also the correct type of gas (more luck than judgement there).

Of course, I didn't know how much gas I had inherited. Fortunately, I was able to use SCIENCE and BATHROOM SCALES to calculate that I have 10kg of gas left – about 20 hours of hard-core barbecuing. Obviously my calculations are foolproof, and there's no chance of me running out of gas within the first three minutes of hosting a barbecue-related gathering. Oh no.

I'm more worried about the safety of said gas. According to various warning labels, I'm going to have to connect this old inherited gas cylinder to the thingy, and then "leak test all connections". If I do not, then I could apparently be risking "serious injury, or damage to the barbecue". I also know from experience that burning hair smells horrible, and to be honest I don't have that much hair to spare.

Potential Frustration #3: Suitably Manly Foodstuffs

Right now, the most barbecueable foodstuff I have to hand is some mushrooms. And not the interesting type either. Still I imagine that, based on the previous two frustration-points I doubt I'll be in any position to actually try cooking on the thing this evening anyway. Oh well.

Wish me luck...

…Allow The Making And Receiving Of Phone Calls.

If a phone cannot manage this, then it no longer qualifies as a phone, in my book.

Based on that reasoning, I would now propose that my piece-of-shit LG Viewty is only about 50% phone*. Not only is it spectacularly poor at making and receiving phone calls, it manages to parade its mediocrity in this regard via this particularly vexing ‘error’ message:

The thing that irks me the most about this message is that the phone seems to use it as a one-size-fits-all solution to inform the user that “there is no call going on right now”. I see this message in a variety of situations:

1. When a call has ended normally

This is the sole ‘acceptable use’ of the “Call ended” message. In this circumstance, it means that one of the participants of the call has chosen to end it. Fair enough.

2. When the phone is too shit to place the call successfully

I get this with about 50% of all outgoing calls I try to make. The phone does a load of fuck-all while it fails to place the call, then flashes up the “Call ended” message before returning to its home screen (the Viewty equivalent of sauntering away, whistling nonchalantly).

This annoys me because: (a) the call did not fucking “end” – it never began in the first place, dipshit; (b) the phone should be more successful at making the call in the first place – it’s got a nice strong signal and every other phone works fine on the same network; (c) it should give some audible hint of its abject failure to place the call, rather than just remaining silent and waiting for me to remove the thing from my ear every few seconds to check whether it’s fucked up yet.

3. When the phone just gets bored and randomly hangs up in the middle of a call for no discernible reason

From time to time (and, hilariously, all the time during one week a couple of months ago), the phone will just drop an ongoing call. OK, so this can happen with mobile phones. Of course, my phone does it much more than all other phones, regardless of signal strength and such, but hey.

But, unlike any other phone that I have ever owned, it doesn’t bother telling me that the call has ended unexpectedly. Oh no. It just ends the call silently, and saunters away with me still jabbering away into a silent, inoperative phone clamped to my ear. It just sounds like the person on the other end has gone quiet – there is no audible indication that the call has ended.

I find this to be particularly good fun when leaving a message on someone’s voicemail, as I can rabbit away through the entire message, and only find out that the phone had decided to drop the call at some undisclosed point in history once I have finished. This leaves me with a tricky conundrum – do I assume that I managed to get most of my message across, or do I leave another voicemail with the same message just to be safe? This is a catch-22 situation. If I assume that the message got through fine, I will invariably be wrong, and will at some point be disrespected for leaving a voicemail composed solely of “Hi, it’s Dave”. However if I elect to leave the message again, I get to look like a dribbling retard/stalker for leaving the same message twice (or, more usually, three or four times when the fucking phone pulls the same trick again).

I hate it so much.

I don't watch much telly.

Actually, I should eleborate on that. I actually use my nice new telly quite a lot, but I don't watch a great breadth of TV programmes. In fact, my telly usage seems to mostly boil down to glancing at the BBC News, giggling at Top Gear repeats on Dave when I'm having lunch, and watching DVDs or other recorded filmic media.

Nonetheless, a couple of weeks ago I was alerted that something that I quite wanted to watch would be broadcast on BBC Two on a Sunday evening (I think). It was, again, a Top Gear episode, but one of the newer ones, and it looked quite interesting. "I must remember to watch that" I said to myself.

But of course, as someone who never actually makes an 'appointment' with the telly, I forgot about it and missed it. This was mildly irksome – the one occasion that I actually wanted to watch a TV programme, I managed to cock it up. But then I had a thought – why not just watch it on this BBC iPlayer thing that everyone has been going on about?

Now I had used BBC iPlayer a couple of years ago, as a 'beta tester', and I had concluded that it was a clunky unreliable piece of shit, and subsequently ignored it. But more recently it seemed that loads of people were using it with great success, and I had been reliably informed that the current implementation was vastly superior to the crappy beta version and that it was really rather good these days. Well, why not give it another go? I could even install it on my 'Windows XP Media Centre' laptop (which is a whole separate post on shitty-things-that-don't-work-properly in the making) and thus watch it through my nice big telly.

So here is the story of my attempt to get BBC iPlayer to work...

I went to the BBC iPlayer website and found the Top Gear episode that I had missed. I decided that, due to my erratic (i.e. slow) broadband connection, I should opt to download the program for 'offline' viewing rather than attempting to watch it streamed in realtime. So I clicked on the nice helpful 'Download' button, to be told that I needed to install the BBC iPlayer Download Manager. Fair enough.So I downloaded and installed the Download manager, and restarted Firefox for good measure. Then I went back to the website, found the Top Gear episode again and clicked on 'Download'.

This time I was told that I needed to install the latest version of Windows Media Player. Hmmmph. Time to have a look at my Windows Media Player installation. It was version 11. Microsoft's website told me that this was indeed the latest version, but I decided to download and re-install it again, just in case. This took some time, and involved an unamusing diversion where I had to argue with the 'Windows Genuine Advantage' spyware validation in order to be permitted to download what I already had installed.

Following the inevitable reboot, I returned to the BBC iPlayer website (again), found the Top Gear episode (again) and clicked on 'Download' (again). And, again, I was told that I needed to install the latest version of Windows Media Player. I said some very bad words indeed at this point.

Once I had stopped grinding my teeth, I resolved to find out what iPlayer's fucking problem was. As as always with such things, I started by asking Google. Google didn't have much to tell me, other than the fact that lots of clueless n00bz** don't even bother trying to read the text of an error message before they (metaphorically) throw their stupid podgy hands in the air and run around wailing that "it dosnt werk"***. So, in true RTFM spirit, I tried looking at the help/support pages on the BBC iPlayer website, which initially pointed me towards some nonsense about clearing DRM caches or somesuch idiocy that only applies to Vista, before slyly mentioning that the download manager is not compatible with PCs running Windows XP Media Centre. WTF? How can it be that the BBC have developed a media application that works with practically every PC in the UK, apart from those that are explicitly designed to work with media?

Deep breath. There might be another way. In my various trawlings around the BBC iPlayer website I had stumbled across something named 'iPlayer Desktop', which (as the name would suggest) is a desktop application version of iPlayer, being made available as a 'labs' (i.e. beta) application. The advantage of this, from my perspective, was that it offered another mechanism for downloading programmes, seemingly not encumbered by the stupidity of the main BBC iPlayer infrastructure. All I needed to do was to sign up to iPlayer 'labs', download the app, and hey presto. And, of course, it would definitely be that straightforward...

So I signed up to 'labs', and read the help text like a good boy. It told me that I was now a 'labs' tester, and that the 'labs' application would automatically install itself when I first tried to download a programme from the iPlayer website. Excellent. So I went to the iPlayer website (again), found the Top Gear episode (again) and clicked on... nothing. There were now no fucking download links at all. Time for a beer.

Beer normally makes everything better. But when I returned to my personal iPlayer hell, I discovered that even the magical problem-solving properties of beer were struggling with the situation. Back in the help/support pages on the website, I found some well-hidden information regarding how I needed to have something known as 'Adobe Air' installed. Much as I hate client-side bloatware, which this did appear to be, I was now emotionally committed to this war of attrition, and so I located, downloaded and installed what seemed to be some horrible application-management browser plugin. Urgh.

Restarted Firefox (again). Went to the iPlayer website (again). Found the Top Gear episode (again). STILL NO FUCKING 'DOWNLOAD' OPTION. Back to the help/support pages again, to be told (in small writing on a well-hidden page) that "not all iPlayer programmes are available for download with iPlayer desktop".

At this point I did what I should have done in the first place, and used 'other' means to download and watch a video of the Top Gear episode. Is it any wonder that people use 'unapproved' methods to download content when the 'approved' methods are so patently painful?

I'm sure that my experience of BBC iPlayer must be quite atypical. It's reported that iPlayer is hugely popular in the UK, which would imply that lots of people are using it without too much difficulty. But nonetheless, if someone with a degree in 'computer science' (albeit a rather shitty one) and a baker's dozen of years' experience of working in coding can experience this many challenges getting a widely touted end-user application to work properly, I would suggest that the iPlayer team still have a lot of work to do on their 'corner cases'.

...

Well, that wasn't very interesting, was it? After four weeks of bloggy silence, is this the best I can come up with? Maybe not, but I feel better for having got it off my chest anyway.

Apart from a basic adequacy with a paint roller, my DIY skills have repeatedly proved themselves to be practically non-existent.

Sure, I've not yet had to call in a professional to fix my many cock-ups, but I have still made extremely heavy work of the various botches I have employed around the flat (past and present) over the last dozen years or so. My finest moments have included: discovering why it's a bad idea to saw MDF in the living room (entire room, including brand new TV, ends up coated in sawdust), determining how not to remove a toilet seat (hacksaw), spending 4 months tiling one bathroom wall with the wrong colour tiles, and attempting (and failing) to spray-paint polka dots on my living room wall.

Along the way, I have accrued an extensive collection of tools – most of them used only once. Of the many useless, never-to-be-used-again tools that I own, I would say that my favourites are the blow-torch (used to unsuccessfully loosen a stuck tap) and the Dremel rotary power tool thingy (used to obliterate the limescale from my old kitchen taps, along with most of the taps' surface).

My DIY annoyances are not, however, just limited to the frustation of making a mess of things, or the storage challenges of accumulating a load of redundant tools. Oh no. There is a third aspect to DIY displeasure, forming a fundamental part of the unholy trinity of (un-)handyman humiliation. And it is...

Not Knowing The Correct Terminology To Explain What You Are Trying To Do When Talking To The Bloke Who Sells The Stuff To You (a.k.a. 'looking like a clueless amateur')

A big part of this problem is one of vocabulary. How am I supposed to know that the wooden/metal things that plasterboard is attached to are called 'studs'? Who explains the differences between particleboard, chipboard, MDF, plywood, hardboard and wood? Is WD40 a 'penetrating oil', or is that something else? How can there possibly be so many different types of screw, when all I want is a 'big one' (yes, yes)? Why is there no such thing as a 'micro-crowbar'? There really should be a website that explains all this stuff, with pictures and a massive glossary. But there isn't. So I invariably end up having to search the online catalogues of various retailers until I see something that looks (from the shitty accompanying picture) like the sort of thing that I need. It's either that or the gauntlet of eye-rolling and ritual embarrassment at the local hardware shop.

My latest quest for equipment came when I realised that I needed to make a big circular hole in a piece of wood. I knew you could get these attachments for power drills that do that. But I didn't know what they were called. And so the Googling commenced. 'Big drill bit'? Nope. 'Drill bore'? Denied. 'Hole bore'? No. 'Hole cutter'? Not that either. And so the Googling continued, until I eventually stumbled across the correct term: 'hole saw'. Pfft.

And so, armed with the knowledge of exactly what I wanted, I trotted off to the local hardware store, and started scanning the shelves for a 54mm hole saw. And I looked. And looked. And looked some more. I found lots of drill-bits for most eventualities (wood, metal, tiles, masonry), but no big-hole-making hole saws. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that hole saws must be exotically rare speciality items, and that this modestly-sized shop did not sell them. But then a crazy thought came into my head... I could just ask, couldn't I?

And so, wary of impending patronisation (is that even a real word?), I approached the bloke at the till. He stared at me. But I was not afraid – I was emboldened by my knowledge of the correct vocabulary. Deep breath.

"Do you have any hole saws? I can't see them anywhere."

A pause. He looked at me as if I was a half-wit. My resolve faltered. What had I done wrong? Was a 'hole saw' not what I thought it was? Was it practical joke terminology (like sending someone out for a 'long weight' or a set of 'skyhooks'*)? And then, I saw the problem.

On the wall, behind the till, and directly behind the bloke who was 'serving' me, was what must have been...

THE BIGGEST AND MOST BLATANTLY OBVIOUS DISPLAY OF HOLE SAWS IN EUROPE

Oh well. At least I got one.

• The concept of a "short-cut through the Barbican" is an oxymoron.
• Things don't always work out as planned, no matter how well-prepared your 'system' is.
• The deepest recesses of my lungs don't like being disturbed. 
• The Thameslink First Capital Connect service on a Sunday often travels slower than a geriatric walking pace.
• Sometimes parking tickets are actually my own fault.
• Rye whisky is not easily found in central London.

That is all.

I've just experienced a quite considerable pang of anxiety for the welfare of Jeremy. Who? The big stupid annoying plant that I abandoned several months ago.

Despite the fact that I hated him and wanted him to die, it's just dawned on me that he could actually be dead by now. I moved out of the flat that I ejected him from in October, and I haven't been back since. He's been sitting in the communal hallway for 5 months now, quite possibly with no-one looking after him.

I hated him because he took up too much space in my little old flat, and resisted all attempts to limit his 'physical footprint'. But I have a bigger flat now, with a balcony and everything, so maybe he wouldn't be so hateful any more.

I might go and see him tomorrow. I hope he's OK. I feel quite peculiar about it.

Reminds me of the fluorescent condom scene in that shitty 80s film 'Skin Deep'.

Surprisingly, the recipe doesn't look too bad either. Apart from the inclusion of spam, of course.

It's recently sprung up around the trunk of the tree-like thing that lives on my balcony. I don't think it's directly related to the tree-like thing.

Anyone?

However, after years of putting it off, I decided that the time had come. (Spurred on, no doubt, by the occasion when I was exchanging phone numbers with a girl I had met on a night out, only to have her laugh in my face when she saw the antiquated state of my equipment.)

While I was at it, I thought I might as well be bold, break the habit of a lifetime, and get a phone that was not a Nokia. Having used Nokia phones since 1995, this felt like rather an adventurous move. And so, after much investigation, I decided on an LG KU990 (a.k.a. 'Viewty').

To cut a long story short, this was a big mistake. I hate the LG Viewty. It is, without any doubt, the worst phone I have ever owned (and I'm including the prehistoric brick that I used in 1995). Sure, it's a pretty touch-screen phone with a 5MP camera and all the bells and whistles that you would expect from a modern phone. But it is also deeply flawed, and really hard to use compared to legendarily usable Nokia phones. I am quite literally counting the days until my contract will allow me to upgrade again, at which point I will run to get another Nokia (or, failing that, anything other than this piece of shit).

In the meantime, in an attempt to offset the psychologically harmful effects that my phone is having on me, I intend to conduct some elementary cathartic therapy by describing the many faults with the LG Viewty, one by one. I get the feeling that this series of posts could run and run.

...

So, one of the things that I hate about my phone is its internet connectivity. I have made occasional (but regular) use of WAP, GPRS and the like for several years now, not least because my network operator (Orange) foolishly put me onto an unlimited data bandwidth plan many years ago, and now cannot contractually remove me from it. Heh. I never used it much, but it was useful when out and about to be able to check TFL travel news, DLR train times, or occasionally my Gmail account. And on all of the previous phones that I've owned since 2000 or so, I have been able to do so with no problem, apart from the occasional bit of slowness.

The LG Viewty should really excel here. Not only is it a 3G phone (a technology that was mastered by most phones several years ago*), it also supports HSDPA (a.k.a. 3G+), which allows 'bastard-fast' internet access. Couple this with its decent resolution colour screen and built-in web browser, and internet access with the Viewty promises to be a liberating experience.

Does it fuck.

A representative summary of the internet access experience on the Viewty looks a bit like this:

This doesn't quite do justice to the experience. If I could somehow make you wait several minutes, with no indication of what the hell (if anything) is happening, before seeing this picture, you might get a better idea of how annoying this is. Now imagine this long-pause-followed-by-error scenario occuring for a random 30% of all web pages that you try to view. Annoying, no?

And before you ask: No, it's not a lack of signal strength – this happens regardless of whether the phone is indicating a full four bars or a mere one. No, it's not just 3G – this happens with equal frequency on Edge and GPRS. No, it's not the fault of my network provider – loathe as I am to defend Orange and their general shittyness, all this stuff worked fine on phones other than the Viewty.

LG Viewty internet access? My. Hairy. Arse.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a significant catalogue of gripes about my experience of the LG Viewty, and I'm looking forward to sharing it. More to follow in due couse...

Out of annoyance at the prospect of wasting the entire day, I have resolved to do something useful or worthwhile with the rest of it. And so, after a quick look at LOTC for inspiration, I have decided to go to this:

Looks interesting, not least because you apparently get to take stuff home. I'm currently entertaining a slightly optimistic fantasy that one of these pieces of 'art' might look good on one of the many bare walls in my flat.

So, in reality, what do you think might actually occur this afternoon?

1. I continue to sit around in my pants and waste the entire afternoon.
2. I make it out of the flat, get as far as the pub and no further.
3. I fail to locate the gallery.
4. I locate the gallery and find it's unexpectedly closed.
5. I get there and find that it's rammed full of people. My aversion to teeming humanity precludes me from entering.
6. It turns out to be shit.
7. It becomes apparent that all the good stuff was already taken yesterday.
8. I like some of the stuff, but I'm too embarrassed to ask to take anything home.
9. The only stuff I like turns out to be far too big to carry home on the bus.
10. I take something that I like, but break it on the way home.
11. I get something that I like back to my flat, but it looks shit when I have another look at it.
12. I get something super-cool, and it looks great in my flat, and I manage to fix it to a wall without too much drama, and it looks OK.

Whaddya reckon?

A few things:

• At the time of writing, all Google-able occurences of the exact phrase "satan's gaping anus" are attributable to Jason. (Not for long now, though.)
• If you loosen the criteria (and punctuation) slightly, it seems that the phrase "satans gaping anus" was also once used online in August 2001 by a Dublin chap who went by the moniker 'Eyeliner Boy'. He was referring to his school – the young scallywag. But who first came up with this phrase – did both Jason and Eyeliner Boy experience independent inspiration, or were they merely aping something that came before?
• Based on my limited understanding of SEO, the number of references to Satan's gaping anus in this here blog post should theoretically ensure that, over time, it should steal (or at least borrow) Jason's grubby crown for the most Google-able page containing the phrase "Satan's gaping anus". Whether or not this makes him happy remains to be seen.

Hmmm. While I'm pissing about with SEO, I might as well toss in a couple of other interesting phrases... Golden Showers! Free! Hardcore Quadbike Abseiling Porn! Reamed Up The Cake! Etc.

Update, May 2009: I must say, I'm really enjoying all these insightful comments. Keep it up.

So Siany's blog alerted me to the album cover meme, which basically involves the construction of a fake album cover based on random text from Wikipedia and a quotations website, and a random image from Flickr. It looked like fun, so I had a go, closely following the rules.

I think it worked out quite well. Not sure that I would buy the album though.

THE GOOD: The city is beautiful. Seriously.

There are too many great views of San Francisco and the whole bay area to do it justice in just one photo. So here's another:

But still, you'll have to take my word for it.

THE BAD: On Saturday night we left a gig at a fun club on Russian Hill at about 1:30am, as they were closing. Still eager to carry on with the drinking and merriment, we resolved to find another venue to carry on drinking. The appallingly named mega-club Ruby Skye was suggested as a good option. So we all piled into a taxi which proceeded to deliver us neatly* to the club.

Eeek. It looks like a caricature of every shitty club in Leicester Square, doesn't it?

Anyway, we spoke to one of the doormen to check that they were still open for us to grab a drink. He confirmed that yes, they were open until 4am, but that it would be $20 to get in. Hmmm. A bit steep, but hey we're on holiday, right? $22 later (including $2 coat-check), we were in what must be the loudest dance club ever, waiting at the bar. And then the bombshell...

"Sorry, we've stopped serving alcohol for the night."

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck**. So that was $22 well spent then. Fuck.

THE UGLY: The view from my hotel room window.

Didn't really matter, but still quite grim nonetheless. Otherwise, the hotel wasn't too bad, although it was a bit... let's say... 'avant-garde':

Sadly, the hotel didn't provide that last aspect as one of their standard amenities***.

Cracking holiday.

UPDATE: Finally got round to uploading 221 of the best (!!) of my many stupid photos from the holiday to Flickr.