Cow Cam

I love cows. But what’s it like to actually BE a cow? More than that, what’s it like to be a cow, getting an affectionate lick from another cow?

Museum of Animal Perspectives

Now you know.

Garnish Overkill At Bill’s

Pineapple, coconut and apricot juice. With half a watermelon for good luck.

Good Turns Never Pay

When I bought my laptop a couple of months ago, I was offered a free printer. I ummed and ahhed in the shop, because I love genuine free stuff and the printer was pretty good.

But on the other hand, I had a reasonable printer at home. I didn’t need a new one and didn’t really wish to add to the mountains of junk in the world. Plus I’d rather have had £60 off the computer.

As I stood there, another chap was looking at the very same printer to buy. So I gave him my free one. He was overjoyed and gave me £20 for it.

I felt really good about myself and he went home to Ireland very happy.

This weekend I wad looking to get new cartridges and set up my old printer again, when I discovered that it was so old (2004 – ancient in the computer world) that it wasn’t compatible with my computer. Which meant I’d need a new one.

I’ve ended up with the same model as the free one – although it was in special offer for £35.

My good turn has cost me £15.

Nando’s Rewards The Low Spenders

We went to Nando’s for some dirty chicken on Tuesday evening. It’s wrong, but so right.

They’ve introduced a reward card, where you get a stamp for spending over £5.80. After 10 stamps, you get a free chicken. There are other rewards on the way if you’d rather cash in before obesity kicks in.

We spent just over £20 for two of us. I asked for a second stamp, but the server refused. I then asked if we would have got two stamps on two cards had my wife come up separately to order and pay for her meal. The server said no.

Remarkably, then, it seems Nando’s is operating a reward scheme that encourages customers to spend as little over £5.80 as possible.

By dining alone, I could get a free chicken after 10 meals and £58.

By dining with my wife, I’d have to spend £200 for the same reward.

Brilliant. Well done, Nando’s – your reward scheme actively discourages me from visiting!

Choking On An Apple

The Brighton Apple Store opens in a sparkling explosion of fuckwittery:

Nye Wright, 35, the store’s American-born manager, motivated his staff with a cheering, clapping and hugging routine shortly before the doors opened at 10am.

Then staff ran out of the shop giving high fives to people in the queue which stretched around Churchill Square’s upper level.

Back inside the store they lined up clapping and high-fiving their customers again as they entered the store to receive their free T-shirts and to get their hands on the Apple products they had come to try.

Twats

Why I Loathe iTunes

I’ve just moved my media off an internal drive on the desktop onto a nice big NAS, and added all of Penny stuff that used to be separate. So naturally, that means rebuilding the libraries on the various media software, including three separate iTunes installations.

It’s all organised in a music folder: music/artist/album. Except, of course, you can’t just add or drag the music folder into iTunes. The prospect of adding 6000 tracks makes it go wobbly and fall over. I guess creating 60,000 line XML and library database files is just too much.

So, you have to select a couple of dozen folders to drag in at a time. This takes a couple of hours – yes HOURS! – per drag. It clicks through, ‘processing’ each track for a few seconds. Then, and only then, it starts ‘processing’ album art. Why? It’s right there in the folder and in the ID3 tag! So a few seconds more per album (274 in the last drag) before you can drag in another lot.

It took most of the afternoon to do this on my PC, slightly longer on Penny’s laptop and about four times as long on my new MacBook!

Appletards would say “let iTunes organise your music, just trust it”. But they are dickheads. It’s my machine, I’ll do what I damn well like with my files. One program that I only need for the iPhone should not be dictating how I run my machine. Not only that, but it would only help on one machine, not the other two.

I should point out that I directed WinAmp, MediaMonkey and Songbird at the new drive and all three had indexed the lot, ready for use and with album art in place, within 5 minutes.

iTunes slows itself with it’s bloody stupid library databases. They add nothing, except locking iTunes to your library, your library to one machine and your iPod to iTunes. Every other media player offers the same, and better, functionality without them. But no, Apple want complete control.

All other media players will keep watch on your drive. If you add some files from elsewhere, they’ll index them straight away.

iTunes won’t. You have to add them manually – rubbish for a shared media drive.

Other programs don’t care if you delete
something – after all, if you put it back they’ll quietly re-index it anyway.

iTunes goes mental. It gives a little ! for each missing track. But can you just say “remove all missing tracks”? Can you buggery. Yup, you have to select and delete them individually. You can’t even list all the missing tracks, you have to go looking for them.

I only use iTunes for my iPhone. That and there are no real alternatives for straight media playing on Mac because everything Jobs does is wonderful. Songbird is nearly there but not quite yet.

I wish I didn’t have to use it. And when Jobs’s shrivelled liver finally passes through his urethra, I will line up to piss on his grave for the days I’ve lost doing iTunes job for it and adding my own bloody files.

Almost Busy Weekend

Both the Loop festival and Brighton Carnival took place this weekend, bringing the city nowhere near to a standstill.

Did anyone notice these things were happening?!

Royal Mail Are Shit

I needed to send some important documents through the post, which I also needed safely returning to me.

So, I pre-paid a Recorded Delivery and put the envelope inside with my documents. When I asked for the tracking number of the return delivery, the lady looked at me blankly.

She can’t put it on the system now, she told me. They’ll have to bring the package in to be registered when they post it.

That’s no good to me. I’m sending it pre-paid so they won’t have the inconvenience of going to the post office. I want them to be able to pop it in the box, and I’ll have the tracking number ready. The system will know the postcode and tracking number already, and it can be scanned in at the sorting office as normal. The person returning my documents cannot and will not go to the post office for me.

But that’s not possible. Apparently.

So, I’ll have to trust first class post to deliver irreplacable documents to me. I have no other choice.

What does it matter if the package only enters the chain a day or two after the number was registered? The process is surely only triggered when the bar code is scanned anyway? It’s not like I was paying for a time-critical “by 1pm tomorrow” delivery that might bugger up their targets with a delay.

Any of the courier companies will issue a tracking number for a package being picked up in a few days time.

I used to believe wholeheartedly in a nationalised, public run postal service. But they’re shit.

Twitter Without The Witter

While the rest of us use Twitter to tell the world about a particularly excellent snack or impending toilet trip, some people are using it on another level entirely.

Follow @Change_for_Iran, @IranRiggedElect, @NextRevolution and @persiankiwi for real people in Tehran, risking their lives to post news and information.

Powerful, scary, moving. I hope they find the freedom they deserve.

Bad Lighting Design Part 2

It appears the cheap lighting under the Trafalgar Street underpass wasn’t finished when I blogged about it. The latest developments are:

1. A white spotlight pointing downwards above each archway on the north side. Not bad, but should’ve been in the struts pointing at an angle for a better effect.

2. Sequenced LEDs in the attractive niches on the south side. These just add to the overall lurid effect of the colour-changers. Again, these niches should’ve been picked out by gentle spots in the struts.

3. Another row of LEDs has been added at the top, where the road comes out. Because of the slope, these are much higher than the original two runs which were already at slightly different heights. So instead of a pleasing line, we have three strips of light at three different levels.

4. They’ve covered the LED casings and wiring with what appears to be half a drainpipe. However, it’s in two colours: brown on the bricks, and white at the top, adding to the disjointed look of them. Also a note to designers: when you put something on a wall, it doesn’t disappear if you cover it with a similar coloured plasting case. It would’ve been better to have a nice, contrasting casing that was at least consistent with itself. Perhaps painted to match the existing ironwork, making it look like part of the structure. Oh, and they could at least have made an effort to hide the screws that are at 6 inch intervals. Better still there shouldn’t be anything at all ruining a nice bit of Victorian brickwork.

There’s still a crane under there, so Brighton Council might not yet be done with their wacky design hell. I’ll report back if they suddenly install lasers or strobes (which wouldn’t be at all surprising).