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You’re in a mid life crisis
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Your ears aren’t what they once were and you have resorted to doing online hearing tests.
The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 12kHz |
| Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear! |
Bah. Time to buy a Ferrari. If I can hear it coming.
Madame Laudanum popped down to her local chemist, and found a tin of liquorice lozenges. Called Nigroids. Through a bit of Googling, we discover that the manufacturer of said Nigroid liquorice lozenges – Ernest Jackson & Co. Ltd – are apparently owned by Cadbury’s.
I’m still rather amazed they’re still called that. What possible reason would you have for calling liquorice lozengs Nigroids ?!
Mar 11
For the last three years, I’ve been comfortably able to figure out when Easter is, for one simple reason – Doctor Who usually starts on the Easter Saturday. At least it has since its relaunch way back in 2005.
However, it’s only suddenly dawned on me that this year’s Good Friday – and the chance for two days of rest! – is next Friday. And no Doctor Who in sight. And because there hasn’t been any pre-publicity or previews for Doctor Who, I haven’t noticed it’s nearly Easter and consequently, it’s a wee bit late to book a quick getaway holiday somewhere I can mostly sleep and avoid people.
Where is my Doctor Who? Have the production team been beavering away on it all year and decided not to show it? Did they not notice it was Easter? When is it coming ?!
Today, I decided that I really ought to buy a book on accessibility guidelines and web usability. Eschewing the Internet bookshop options, I thought I’d venture into Manchester Central and get the book from Waterstones. I called them, and they had it in stock, so fine. The website said they were open till 7pm, so fine. Unfortunately, the Gods would conspire against me on this.
First of all was the problem of heading into Manchester. I meandered down to the local Metrolink, bought my ticket, and waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, a tannoy announcement said that the line was closed but there was a railway replacement service instead. Unfortunately, it had just decided to leave when the announcement was made, and thus I had to wait a long time for the long one. Then it started to rain.
The replacement bus eventually arrived, we got on, got off at the station, waited in the rain at the station till the next tram arrived, then I got off that. And walked through the rain at Manchester city centre towards Waterstones.
To find it had been closed early for a stock-take — someone could have told me that. So I had to trudge home again, repeating my journey in the pouring rain. Having not bought anything at all. The whole trip took me three hours, all in all.
Feb 14
If only because it’s third (only to birthdays and Christmas) for fake sentimental emails from companies and shops trying to get you to buy lovey-dovey goods and pretending to be your friend by wishing you a happy Valentines Day.
I mean… the whole point of it is that it’s meant to be a heartfelt thing between you and the person that you love. Not an e-shop that you once put your email address down for. Grrrr.
For more anti-Valentine rants, check out the brilliant Charlie Brooker, the anti-Valentine cards or previous semi-rants about Valentines Day.
And I’ll leave you with this entirely unrelated comic that came from the superlative Secret Asian Man:
Time was I remember when Eddie Izzard was an up-and-coming name on London’s comedy circuit. Whispers of him and his genius abounded, and if you were lucky you might get to see him in an intimate setting.
Up till now, I’ve watched his meteroic ascension to stardom with a wry smile – who else could get away with offering downloads of him giving satnav directions (for a suitably high fee of course)? It was still so “him”, keeping to the brand, while still managing to feed the Izzard coffers.
But the latest offer sounds so daft, and ridiculously expensive. A flight for two to New York, three nights in a hotel and tickets to see Eddie in concert. And guess how much you’d have to pay for this privilege?
US$3200. Or about £1800.
I’m pretty sure that a flight for two to New York and three nights in a good hotel will cost about £1000. which basically means that people are paying £400 each for the privilege of seeing Eddie in concert in New York.
Sheesh.
Dec 28
A long time ago, thanks to my ex-workchums at BBC Wales (thanks guys!), I bought myself a Freecom Network Mediaplayer – basically a hard drive which you can connect to your TV. I gleefully set about downloading about 350 Gigabytes of ancient TV programmes from your local friendly non-official sources, looked forward to my digitally converged future, and pretty much left it sat underneath my TV set while I watched endless repeats of Top Gear instead.
Then last night, I rashly invited my neighbours to come and watch the recent Doctor Who 2007 Christmas special (the one with the Titanic) with me.
First problem – my Sky Plus had inconveniently forgotten to record any of the Christmas programmes I’d set it to record. So instead, I set about downloading it off the Internet, transferring it over to my Mediaplayer, and we could all watch it from there. After 20 minutes of frantically trying to get the laptop to see the hard drive (by mostly rebooting endlessly, and sticking the USB cable in and out), the file transferred over and I thought all was fine and dandy for the big show.
So the doorbell was rung, dinner was ready, wine was poured, and we all sat down to re-watch Doctor Who. Except about half an hour in, the hard drive started spluttering and freezing. Despite numerous reboots, the device refused to work, although the file itself was fine. Bah.
Thus it was that after a suitable soujourn into town for drinks, we all stumbled back into another neighbour’s house at 1am, to finish off watching Doctor Who. On her trusty ol’ VHS tape. Analogue 1, Digital 0.
Can you recommend any handy devices that’ll let me watch downloaded videos on my TV? Preferably ones that come with a DVD player that’ll upscale via HDMI, and ones that’ll also record off a digital TV signal on demand. Oh, and if it can connect directly to my sound system, that’d be great too.
When you hear the word induction, what do you think it means?
I thought it meant my work colleague was going through a corporate induction, and thought it was a trifle odd since he’d been working at the company for quite a while. But I made a joke about it anyway.
He thought I knew that it was referring to his forthcoming baby, who may well have to be induced. And he thought it was a trifle odd that I’d make a joke like that, and wondered if I was being wacky for the sake of being wacky, or I’d gotten the wrong end of the stick.
I’m already developing a reputation. Three weeks into the job. Oy vey. But it’s still a good fun place to be at!
These are posts categorised under Oy vey!
