MIA

Fearsomely painful RSI and a workload from hell preclude more than this at the moment. Please check out my fellow bloggers in the sidebar Star Chamber for stuff almost as good as mine.

Blogging at your command

Cantwell Carson has developed a most unusual interface for his Terminal Island blog - you need to type
commands at the prompt to access the various sections. Simply type 'help' and you'll get a menu of what is on offer.

via evhead.

Webmonkey has not left the building

Lurking at the bottom of the wired.comside bar, I noticed this good news for all those missing the definitive web development how-to guides:

"Webmonkey Returns : We heard from a lot of you after Webmonkey stopped publishing earlier this year. So, by popular demand, Webmonkey, the pioneering how-to guide for Web developers, is back. Wired News editors will work with Webmonkey writers to publish two articles a month. As before, these will include tutorials, software reviews and commentary by people who know their stuff. In the near future, Webmonkey will be more closely tied to Wired News, so readers can expect to see the latest on design, engineering, security and culture. -- The Editors"

Intellisunc

You'd think I'd know better, wouldn't you? Last night, fuelled by boredom and a little too much Adnams, I decide to see if Pumatech's Intellisync for Yahoo was any less flaky than when I last tried it. Given that it is heavily promoted in the new lean, mean Yahoo mail service, I thought they may have ironed out the well-known bugs but it seems that, for some folks (like those on XP?) at least, the old HotSync incompatibilities are still there. If, like me, you are tempted to give it a try again and then want to uninstall, you may find that the Intellisync conduits refuse to relinguish their grip, crippling the normal HotSync process. Should this be the case, you should be able to restore normality by following the process below. As always, if you are not familiar with back up procedures or monkeying around with your PC's Registry files, DO NOT proceed - go read about backing up Palm files on your Palm & your PC and how to backup, ddit, and restore the Registry in Windows.

1. Back up your Datebook/Calendar, AddressBook/Contacts, MemoPad/Memos, ToDoList/Tasks in your preferred fashion.
2. Exit Hotsync Manager by right-clicking on the Hotsync icon in the Sys Tray and clicking 'Exit'.
3. Uninstall Intellisync by going to Start | Control Panel | Add or Remove Programs, locating the Intellisync program and then clicking the Chnage/Remove button.
4. Clean up the mess left in your Registry files.

a) Go to the Windows Registry by clicking Start | Run then typing 'regedit' and ckicking 'OK'.
b) Expand hkey_current_user | software | us robotics | pilot desktop.
c) Look for ApplicationIntellisyncAddressBook and press 'delete'. Repeat for all the Intellisync entries.
d) Click on Hotsync Manager - it should be several entries below. Look in the right hand pane and find a Notifier entry - towards the bottom - that contains 'yahoo/intell...' and delete the entry.
e) Exit Windows Registry. Reboot the computer. Proceed as below.

5) Restart Hotsync Manager. Go to Start | Programs | Palm Desktop (or Palm) | Hotsync Manager.5) You should now be able to Hotsync your Palm. Double check that all the conduits are working with a few test entries.

After all that, I would recommend that you write yourself a stiff warning to never bother trying Intellisync again - at least until the next time.

Inspiration via jeffyen-ga @ Google Answers

Gmail Bookmarklets

Michael Sippey has cooked up a couple of small but lovingly crafted bookmarklets for Gmail users.

Once dragged or saved to your browser's toolbar, these will give you the capability to i) fire up a blank gmail without the need to click onto the Gmail site and ii) do the same, but linking to the webpage your currently browsing. Sippey say they work fine in IE6; however, for the IEphobics who tend towards Mozilla browsers I can confirm that I have had no problems with them in Firefox.

via evhead

Cancerous colon comedy

Today's moral dilemma: does having terminal cancer excuse Cass coming up with a pun like this?:

TO ALL COLON CANCER GROUPS
I think we need an anthem. It could be sung to the Sting tune and goes
Don't stand so..
Don't stand so..
Don't stand so.. colostomy

If you have never read Cass' CancerGiggles weblog, you'll not know that it's just fine to laugh in the face of death.

P.S. Cass, now I've covered mine in tea reading your blog, please leave me your keyboard.

Question

'Face' by Sprog 4 (Foodstuffs on acrylic; 2004)

Is it lunch or is it art?

Smoking is bad for you

My recently retired pundit's story of self harm through smoking without inhaling reminds me of the time I was almost responsible for the death of a friend, his girlfriend and myself.

We were en route to a superb Ian Dury and The Blockheads concert at the Hammersmith Apollo. At the time, my friend was a roving Mr Fix-It for a posh kitchen company, so whilst he and the object of his affections rode in the front of his van, I travelled to the gig lying on top of a pile of kitchen worktops in the back of the van. Despite this and the fact that the other two were non-smokers, I decided that I couldn't last the journey without a smoke. So, whilst tearing along the M25 (London's infamous orbital motorway), I lay back and puffed away. Amidst stage coughs and muttered complaints, my friend opened the driver's window to allow the fug to escape. Once I smoked the cigarette down to the butt, I rolled over and, with a deft much practised one-handed movement, flicked the butt out of the window. However, rather than being sucked into the racing vortex of air passing by the van and disappearing into the distance, the glowing stub simply 'bounced' of the slipstream outside the window and neatly dropped between my friend's legs. With burning embers threatening his crown jewels, he instinctively tried to remove them from their vicinity by raising himself off the seat. In order to do this, he unthinkingly moved his weight onto his shoulder blades against the seat back and his feet against the pedals. The van shot forward, lurching and revving wildly whilst friend and squeeze both tried to sweep the butt to the floor. They eventually managed to do this and he brought the van to a screeching halt on the hard shoulder. For some reason, I was held to blame for this incident despite the quite obvious contribution of the prevailing environmental conditions at the time. Pulse rates back to normal, we resumed the journey and enjoyed an absolutely brilliant gig - one of the best I have been to - during which my friend even spoke to me once or twice. The evening was also notable for another reason in that I had a stand-up row at the bar with the (piss) artist Peter Blake, the inspiration for Dury's Peter The Painter on the 1984 4,000 Weeks Holiday album, who was holding court at the bar in the interval. He and his entourage were more than a little sniffy about having to rub shoulders with us proles so I saw it as my duty to tell him where to get off, as you do.

You'll not be surprised to learn that I went home on the Tube, which one could smoke on in those days.

Metroblogging goes live in London

The London Metblog is open for business and a cross-section of London bloggers, including yours truly, are posting. It's early days for the London site but the metblog concept is becoming hot - the LA metblog has been making big news since late last year and the Chicago metblog just made Feed Of the Day at Feedster.

A million emails can't be wrong

'A big disappointment'

So says Michael Owen. I'm sure Andy will blog the last hour's events better than I. Sad.

Good grief

SWMBO and the sprogs like to watch Who Wants to be a Millionaire, whilst I'd rather crawl over broken glass. Having recently grabbed the Who Wants to be a Millionaire Junior board game second hand off the net, they sat down to play it this evening. I made myself scarce and jumped on the PC to read mail, blogs and newsgroups, whilst answering a few calls on my mobile phone. I grabbed the fourth call in an hour - and heard sprog number three say "Hi, it's Chris Tarrant here from Who Wants to be a Millionaire....". Yes, that's right. SWMBO was using me as her 'Phone-A-Friend'...from the house phone...in the living room 15 feet away. Is it any wonder all you folks out there are my best friends?

for geek and non-geek friends...

If anyone one of my regular correspondents is interested in a certain popular beta doing the rounds, let me know.

A personal thank you to Bill Bryson

I have always liked Bill Bryson's books, enjoying his easy style and ready wit, and often suspected that I'd like the man in person should I ever bump into him. Whilst that remains highly unlikely, I am more convinced than ever that I'd like him. As the parent of a child who continues to undergo testing and treatment at Great Ormond Street Hospital, my eye was caught by today's announcement that Bryson has donated a recent £10,000 science writing award to the charity which helps the hospital and it's research facility, the Institute of Child Health. Bryson won the Aventis award for his popular science book A Short History Of Nearly Everything. Upon hearing of Bryson's intentions, Aventis matched his donation and the money will now go towards a new gene therapy unit at the IoCH. Our family continue to benefit from the efforts of the doctors, nurses, researchers and staff at GOSH and the IoCH to push the boundaries of child medicine and increase the understanding of genetic disorders. For helping continue that work, my thanks to Bill Bryson and Aventis.

England 4 - Croatia spanked

Reading the teleprinter (remember World Of Sport?) on last night's match, my resident pundit Andy writes:

"OK, we knew what the result had to be after the national anthems. The only anthem more dirge-like than our own.

A commendable performance. However once again there were weak moments and performances.

The first Croatian goal? Set-piece, cough. A decent keeper would have been on top of that and would have held it. The second Croatian goal? More or less a set-piece. I hate to have to agree with Peter Reid on account of his being a scouser and all, but that back post was more open than a Off License in Keighley. Michael Owen was his usual self though. Good to know that our prized striker is always a yard shorter than the previous time. I had visions of him being sat in the crowd by the end of the game. Which is where he should be.

I was more impressed with the Croatian keeper than James which is going some seeing he let in four goals.

Rooney though? Rooney? Say it with me now. ROONEY. You knew both his were going in. The man may be a scouser but Jesus H son of a Biscuit Christ, there is hope in this life.

I'd have personally prefered Greece (cough, Ronaldo, cough) but Portugal will do.

One last bit of punditry. Nice shades Posh."

I have family in Keighley.

Gmail Tips

It seems that Gmail has brought out the creative streak in a good few beta users, with a rash of handy tips being posted in the forums and on websites. I have got with the program way too late to be amongst those posting but many revolve around clever use of Gmail's label and filter features to 'enhance' functionality. A couple that I have found useful so far are below along with links to some others.

How to save a draft email for later use
1. Create a label called Draft.
2. Create a filter that labels an incoming email as 'Draft' when it reads both the From and To addresses as having my gmail address. By checking the 'Skip The Inbox' (Archive mail) option, your drafts will not show up in you Inbox but simply await use in the archive.
3. Now you can write your drafts and, when you wish to save them for later use, simply send the message to your own gmail address. When it arrives, it will be labelled as "Draft".
4. To access a draft previously saved in this way, simply click on the 'Draft' label in the lefthand pane of the main view (or elsewhere) to see all your draft mails.
c/o enbguy - Gmails forum

How to keep notes/records in Gmail
1. Create a contact called 'Notes' with the email address of username+notes@gmail.com
2. Create a label called Notes.
3. Create a filter that adds the 'Notes' label to any incoming email addressed to username+notes@gmail.com. Again, by checking the 'Skip The Inbox' (Archive mail) option, your 'Notes' mails will not show up in you Inbox but simply await use in the archive.
4. To file a note from another email account (or have a friend do so), simply send the information in a mail to username+notes@gmail.com with a suitable subject title to help recall.
5. To file a note from your own gmail account, simply compose the note with a suitable subject title to help recall and select the Notes contact with the username+notes@gmail.com created in step 1 before sending to yourself.
6. To access a note mail previously saved in this way, simply click on the 'Notes' label in the lefthand pane of the main view (or elsewhere) to see all your Notes.

More on filtering with the plus (+) command can be found on the Gmail Gems blog linked below.

c/o Jim - Jim's Tips

More of the same can be found at BLADAM and the very sorted Gmail Gems which has an Atom RSS feed as well.

Metblog is coming to town

After successful launches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, Metroblogging is heading across the Atlantic and up the Thames to London.

Metroblogging is a collaborative blogging venture launched by Sean Bonner and Jason Defillippo and based on the successful formula used at blogging.la. The stated aim of each city-based metblog that comes online is to cover everything from 'event listings to general rants, photos to reviews' offering both local and remote readers a 'hyper-local look at what's going on in the city' and where a 'group of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life. Less calendar listing, more friendly advice'. Sean and Jason are seasoned veterans of online projects and are responsible for some of the more notable successes amongst the plethora of dot com disasters. European bloggers might be more familiar with some of the company these guys keep, like Chris Pirillo of LockerGnome fame and the actor-turned-blogger-turned-writer Wil Wheaton.

Why am I mentioning all this? It might have a little something to do with the fact that Sean rather rashly signed me up to write for the London edition - I'll post when it goes live.

England's National Dish...

...is curry, according to some sources. I have just rustled up and eaten a cracker of a fish curry to prepare for the match and Andy's punditry, so I thought I would share it with the world. It tasted really good despite the fact that most of the ingredients were scrag ends which I found lurking at the back of the fridge and freezer. As I used the cheapest own brand frozen cod fillets and a chuck of haddock of indeterminate age, I can only assume that it would taste better with fresh ingredients.

Ingredients for two
2 tablespoons any old cooking oil
1 medium onion finely chopped
½ red pepper finely chopped
½ green pepper finely chopped
1 tsp chili pepper finely chopped/paste
2 tablespoons curry powder (Rajah Mild Madras used)
200g tub creme fraiche
3/4lb cod fillets, cut into 1 inch cubes*
1 clove of garlic finely chopped/paste
salt and pepper to taste
dried dill and coriander to taste

Recipe
Heat oil in a frying pan or saucepan over medium heat.
Cook onion, red chili and peppers and stir until tender - about 5 minutes.
Mix in curry powder and continue to cook and stir 2 to 5 minutes.
Blend creme fraiche and herbs into the mixture and simmer until thickened.
Mix in cod cooking 3 to 5 minutes, until cooked.
Season with garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

Serve on a bed of plain basmati rice sprinkled with hot paprika powder and fresh green herb of choice. Nice with Guinness.

The Gmail privacy issue - my €0.02

Given the plethora of opinions on the subject - like those of the broadly welcoming Tim O'Reilly and the largely naive 'gmail-is-too-creepy' folks over at Public Information Research Inc. I will keep this brief.

If you have major privacy issues, you perhaps shouldn't be using email. At all. Ever. Or the internet. Or a debit card. Or a library. Or a health service.

Common or garden email is by definition insecure, not particularly private and leaves bits of your life all over the place. Just run a traceroute to your mail server and count the hops to get there. What makes me hoot is that the PIR Inc. folks above have thrown up a whole anti-scary advertising-supported web-based email site with the obligatory 'About Us' page...with a Yahoo email address! That's Yahoo. Who've just increased their mailbox size to compete with Gmail. And also scan email. And also target advertising on their Group emails. And display this message:


I rest my case.

As for me, I think it looks nicer than many GUIs, has some good features which I'll use and some I probably won't. More than likely, I'll use it for maillist/forum stuff and the like as does my friend Pocket Goddess, who has written a fair and balanced appraisal of the service here.

The antidote to Henry James

Both SWMBO and I read a great deal, most often in bed at the end of the day - read into that what you will - and last night was no exception. As usual, whilst she read Alexander McCall Smith's The Full Cupboard of Life, SWMBO had flung her bookmark somewhere on the duvet where it would scratch my arm annoyingly as I turned the pages of my own tome which I now realise, spookily enough, is The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by the same author. Grabbing said bookmark, I glanced at what was written thereon:

"Summer afternoon - the two most beautiful words in the English language". ~
Henry James

To which I can only reply:

"Well, you have never been struck down with streaming eyes and constant sneezing that accompanied the worst hayfever attack of your bloody life after brief visit to Hampstead Heath, matey".

Seriously, can anyone out there enlighten me as to why I can be completely unaffected by hayfever one year and absolutely hammered by it the next?

Not hitting the road

At this very moment, I should be about ¼ of the way through the Chris Brasher Memorial 10K run which is taking place in Richmond Park. As I related in an earlier post, this event has been the target I have been aiming for since I have begun running again. Sadly, I overdid the training two weeks ago and have been regretting it ever since, limping about and muttering under my breath. After lots of ice packs and ibuprofen, it is improving but not quickly enough for me to run 10k today - a tentative test run on Tuesday lasted all of 5 minutes. Although I am disappointed I can't run today, I know that doing so would mean further problems so, for once, I will do the sensible thing and bide my time - especially as I am looking forward to some nice training runs whilst in on holiday in Cornwall in a month or so.

Stormy weather over London

Storm Front



Tree and Sky


A windless therefore fruitless kite flying expedition provided a nice opportunity to photograph the gathering storm cloud front that moved in over Hampstead Heath above London this afternoon - for all four shots, go to my photoblog.

To Do Lists

JojoLinkyBob has prompted an informative discussion thread over at Slashdot. Entitled Best To-Do List Software?, it doesn't just encompass software but folk's methods and systems too. Interesting reading for those so inclined.

My Mum's half Swedish so...

It was as I was reading my Euro 2004 pundit's latest comment -

"I will take this opportunity to say that Sven needs his bumps felt. He's talking about starting with the same line-up for the match against Croatia. How many times do I have to say that Michael Owen couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo."

- that I cheered Ibrahimovic's Keystone Kops-style backheel goal take Italy to a 1-1 draw. The phrase 'goalmouth scramble' was never more appropriate.

Weekend timewaster

Acno's Energizer is a fun way to kill some time...and sports a catchy drum n bass music track.

via Melissa

And your commentator for the game is...

Andy Yates, whom I have decided to adopt as the Euro 2004 football pundit for bignoseduglyguy.com. Even though he's a zillion timezones away in Minneapolis where the games cost him $20 on pay-per-view, his devotion to the English game and unflinching reportage make him the obvious choice.

To encourage some click-throughs, here's a small sample of his style:

England v France
Heskey came on and couldn't remain upright or for that matter keep anyone else upright (cough, free kick, cough.) David James is a bloody donkey although he did have some moments where he looked like he had seen a football before....So how did it end 2-1? Three names for you: James, Heskey and Owen. Leave them all out for the next game Sven or I'll send Ulrika round to pick up her CDs.

England v Switzerland
"I'm starting to wonder if David James ever moves for set-pieces. Once again he stood there like a deer in the headlights...And what the hell was that [single] Owen shot? My eighteen month old son has a better right foot than that...Thank God Heskey didn't grace us with his presence."

And now back to the studio - Gary?

Shedding light on old news

Ask any ultralight (no pun intended) hiker or extreme mountain biker worth their salt and they'll tell you that this is one of the oldest tricks in the book, whether they be Photons or their homemade equivalents. I have made various pieces of hiking gear over the years and most are still in use, like the Pepsi Can stove I made like this one - mmm, maybe I'll redesign and update my old ultralight hiking pages.

Think you work hard?

Ray Charles, who will be buried today in California, played over 10,000 concerts during his 58-year career. If one allows just a couple of weeks off work each year, that means he pretty much played a gig every other day for each of those 58 years. Flippin' Nora.

You've got (G)mail

I had a small but pleasant surprise awaiting me this evening when I open my email to find Paul Boutin had kindly forwarded me details to obtain a Gmail beta account. Which was nice. The cherry on the cake was his three word comment "Big noses rule". Let it be known I won't hear a word against him :-)

Please feel free to mail me at bignoseduglyguy@SAFETYPINgmail.com removing the safety pin to do so. I know there issues surrounding the privacy questions raised by Google's scraping for target advertising but hey, you don't entrust really private or confidential stuff to your email service...do you?

Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer

As someone who did so some time ago, I was interested to read Daniel Miessler's 'Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer' article over at Lockergnome. I have to say that he makes a fair and cogent argument, highlighting the issues that continue to bug folks about the world's most used browser. Likewise, there are many good points made in the online discussions and forums that have taken up the story, like those in the thread over at Ecademy, pointing up the necessity of using IE to action Windows Updates (clever thinking, MS though one can configure auto-updates via Control Panel unless I am much mistaken) and to view those sites code-biased to it's own non-standard display. In making this last point, one person commented that IE is pretty much essential for online banking sites. I beg to differ, as I regularly use The Cooperative Bank's online banking service via the excellent Firefox browser without a hitch.

For fellow Palm users

Mind the gap...

Given my recent posts on the lot of corporate managers and their longsuffering employees, Squonk's Mind the gap... post doesn't really make me feel any better. Meanwhile, I'm off to MOT the the department's pool car - ah, the glamour of middle management.

Just a cog in the machine

As I mentioned below, Madeleine Bunting's Guardian Weekend piece ''Sweet smiles, hard labour' (from her forthcoming book, with it's frank and unblinking look at the emotional investment demanded by employers these days, struck a chord with me.

Today's follow-up extract is equally incisive, detailing how the prevailing cultures of overwork and consumerism are altering our attitudes to work. Bunting explores what she describes as "the emergence of a new form of elitism in the labour market: work as vocation and work as pleasure. In a society that places a high premium on self-expression and fulfilment, to have a lot of interesting work is a status symbol. It's not just that you have a job that pays decently; you have a job which is so satisfying and fulfilling that you don't want to stop working." I don't believe many of those involved in corporate life could deny the truth lying behind the observation of Kristen Lippincott, director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich: "We've become enamoured with deadlines. We want to feel an adrenaline rush. We believe that if we're always chasing the next deadline, we must be important. A lot of our busyness is a way for us to avoid thinking about what is most important. There's a difference between being busy and being productive."

I used to work 5 minutes' walk from home and yet I regularly stayed late in the office working on the 'latest important thing', missing never-to-be-repeated family moments, all because I knew that I could be home in 5 minutes...but never quite tearing myself away to do so. A good few years on, having worked out that such behaviour doesn't actually change anything and garners little thanks from the Board, I have focused on working more efficiently in order to be more productive in less time. However, as I am now faced with a four hour round trip to the office and back, I have plenty of time to rue all those hours I wasted trying to feel important and make an impression. Rob Parsons - of Care For The Family and The Sixty Minute Father reknown - and many others, have often written that no-one ever lay on their deathbed and uttered the words 'I wish I'd spent more time in the office'. How true.

36 - 3

Woodward: "It was a tough day at the office...I was disappointed with the 30 points they scored in the first half."
Dallaglio: "In most areas, we came second best...this is very disappointing for all of us."

Of all teams, it had to be against the All Blacks. Juffs, if you read this, Umaga's boys did great, you have permission to gloat.

A step towards another life

We live in London, a mere drunken banker's stagger from Canary Wharf and the new financial heart of London. We are lucky enough to have a ground floor flat with a small south-facing garden. In this garden, we can enjoy good weather by eating and loafing in the garden, admiring SWMBO's flowers and shrubs. For this, it has to be said, is her domain. Were such matters within my remit, all the garden bar the patio and the shed, would be be given over to cultivating vegetables with, perhaps, the odd decorative planting here and there.

As a child, I grew up in a home where in the back garden, my Dad grew a fair proportion of the vegetables we ate. Although this was done partly by choice, it also helped to supplement the far from stellar incomes of a self-employed engineer and nurse. Although we were far from self-sufficient, I now realise that we were living an mild approximation of the lifestyle later portrayed to great comic effect in 'The Good Life'. Although I don't remember playing a very active part in the actual market gardening, I do remember being captivated by John Seymour's seminal book, The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency. Seymour's plain economic yet evocative prose made the backbreaking and often thankless life of a smallholder seem simple, achievable but most of all, enviable. Not that this spurred me into action at the time, I simply did as little as possible to help and grew up eating good food that was well prepared with ingredients whose provenance was, for the most part, known. In the intervening years, my awareness of issues environmental has quietly grown and I have long held the desire to have a less frenetic and immediate life, hoping instead to 'downshift', as it is now called. Recently, SWMBO and I have discussed a variety of ways in which we can bring this about - ultimately, to find a way in which can spend far less time in traditional work environment (nine to five, stressful work, long commute, little family time*), enabling us to spend more time together working in, around and maybe from the home. Over the years and months, various bouts of online research and reading have brought us to the point where we are now seriously looking at a number of ways in which we can make this idea a reality, whether at home or abroad. Although I am by nature a serendipitous optimist, I am no wearer of rose tinted specs and I am realistic enough to know that a corporate salary will be a necessary evil for a while yet if we are to affect such a change. Having said that, I recently came across the Down The Lane website and I have to say that the lifestyle Richard Cannon is creating for himself is probably the most realistic work/life balance I have seen and close to that which I believe I would be happy with. One of the key factors in wanting to find a smallholding or, failing that, a house with a large garden in a more rural setting is our determination to have greater control over the food we eat. We try and shop wisely and we try to ensure that we eat healthily - or at least we thought we did until we read the Chemical World investigation supplements recently published by The Guardian. If you are not disposed to read it, I won't cover the same ground here, save to say that I have not bought prepacked washed & ready-to-eat salads since. Although farmer's markets and organic box deliveries are a boon for those seeking safer organic alternatives, they are a tad too strong for our budget and still keep us at some remove from the source of the food. Likewise, the exceptional quality of the produce of Rick Stein's food heroes - whilst quite rightly lauded and championed - comes at a price that puts it into the occasional treat category for us. I suspect that in approach if not execution - I don't have a Channel Four production budget to play with - we are more inclined towards the path trod by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. In essence, we would like to be able to grow a fair proportion of the food we eat and make informed decisions on the produce we buy in. In the last year or so, I have taken to carting the sprogs off to the Borough Market to show them what meat looks like before it is skinned and butchered, how a large fish is filleted in seconds by an experienced hand and to buy vegetables with dirt on that they can handle, smell and taste before buying.

All of which is a very roundabout way of getting to the point of this post-with-pictures. Earlier today, I and three of the sprogs had great fun setting up a couple of organic growbags on our south-facing patio today and planting them out. Anything which involves mucky hands, full watering cans and sharp knives is a winner with kids so a good time was had by all. Ranging across the two bags, we have gone for old favourites like tomatoes (plum for sauces, ordinary for salads) and cucumbers and the less ordinary aubergines and chillis.


Click to enlarge

As all these like a deal of warmth and sun, we decided a little husbandry was called for. With no budget or inclination for shop bought stuff, the eldest and I decided to scrabble around the garden and shed for the wherewithall to build a 'greenhouse'. An hour later, we had fashioned a detachable and re-usable leanto affair from transparent rubble sacks, canes, scrap fence wood and tapes both parcel and duct. As you can see from this rather iffy shot, the result is an exercise in frugality, recycling and craftsmanship.


Click to enlarge

Whilst I have done this sort of thing before, it is a first for the kids so I will attempt to diligently report on their progress as super-smallholders in the weeks to follow.

*Strangely enough, whilst taking a breather after losing the first draft of this post, I read Madeleine Bunting's Guardian Weekend piece ''Sweet smiles, hard labour' which contains a damningly accurate summation of what it is like to work in my industry sector at the moment. Is it any wonder that folks at all levels of corporate life want out? I hinted to SWMBO that she might read it to better understand why I can be less than communicative upon returning from work on a Friday.

Footnote: Now the peed-offness has subsided, I can releate that I lost a version of this post after writing for an hour or so earlier today. I was particularly annoyed as I nearly always hardcode my posts in EditPad Lite or HTML-Kit, saving frequently as I go. I didn't on this occasion as I was bracketing the pictures with text so I thought I would try Blogger's Preview function as a handy way of seeing how things were looking. Suffice to say, I shall be sticking to tried and tested methods in the future.

The people have spoken

Ken Livingstone has just been returned as the Mayor of London for a second term after a close run contest with Steve Norris.

City and East, which is our local constituency in the London elections, are just reported as having returned Labour - though the BBC result page has yet to update - they must be busy!

A pedal down memory lane

Reading Roger's post on his new Trek bike reminded me that I have an old neglected Trek 900 in the shed. It's not that I don't want to ride it, it is just hard to fit rides in along with work, family, running and everything else. It is hard to believe that I used to clock 100+ miles a week as a cycle courier way back in the early eighties. In weather like we're having, I often think back to the freedom and the companionship that that the job offered - the quick snatches of conversation in Soho Square between jobs, the chocolate pudding and custard in the Court Cafe, hanging out of the office window watching the world - and the film industry girls* - go by, changing the gas bottles for the prostitute downstairs and refusing the freebie offered in return. When I started, there were only a handful of cycle courier outfits in London and it was still something of a novelty. Nowadays, it is a full-blown industry with associations, federations, international gatherings and competitions.

Sadly, one of the things that hasn't changed a great deal is the lack of a decent integrated transport policy for London, despite the best efforts of the likes of the London Cycling Campaign and the London Bicycle Messenger Association. The fact that major cities around the world seem incapable of developing coordinated transport schemes means that the more vulnerable users like pedestrians and cyclists are perpetually at risk from other road users. In all my 20 years of cycling in London, quick wits, defensive riding and treating all others as homicidal maniacs means that I have thankfully only had a handful of bad spills requiring hospital treatment. Some, however, are not so lucky as the list of names at Messenger Memeorial shows. Unknowingly until today, I happened upon the scene of Sebastian Lukomski's accident minutes after it occured and was in the area when London cyclists staged a Critical Mass protest later and distinctly recall thinking how easily that could have been me.

On a lighter note, all this is quite pertinent because Bike Week 2004 starts tomorrow in the UK - so join me in digging out the bike, pumping up the tyres and heading off to a local event near you - like these run by Tower Hamlets Wheelers.

* One of whom later became SWMBO.

Heavy news and light relief

Enjoying an afternoon of baking (as you do) whilst listening to Kath Melandri and Eddie Nestor presenting a Mayoral Election special on BBC London 94.9. Whilst I am waiting for the dough to rise, I am online with my friend emma the sys ad and she has just pointed me towards a hilarious collection of overheard conversations on b3ta.com. Off to knead me buns...

Feed fix

Many thanks to m'learned friend Jason who just pointed out that my Atom XML feed was not updating. This advanced form of literary self-critisism was brought about by careless path editing when moving the whole shebang over from MT.

I wonder who's missing you now...

Just heard that Ray Charles has died.



Little did he know it at the time but Ray played a key role in the courtship of SWMBO and myself many moons ago. Not long after we started seeing each other, I was very keen to get hold of a copy of Ray Charles' version of the classic 'I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now'. SWMBO had never heard it so, as we walked through Covent Garden heading for the then new Tower Records megastore at Piccadilly Circus, I sang it to her in my own inimitable style. To this day, she refers to the occasion during which, in an eclectic set, I also busked my way through several numbers from Sinatra's Songs For Swinging Lovers. Whilst I heard every soaring note of Nelson Riddle's orchestration of the Capitol Records classic, I suspect the theatregoer's in St. Martins Lane thought someone was strangling cats. For younger readers who are not familiar with Ray Charles, he's the blind music store guy who does a great musical cameo in John Landis' movie, 'The Blues Brothers'. If you haven't heard of The Blues Brothers, you won't get much else on this blog.

Three lines on the brain

I'm not the biggest football fan going. In fact, as a staunch rugby fan, it is safe to say that I am unable to name more than two or three players in England's Euro 2004 squad. Having said that, my daughters play football and frequently watch 'Bend It Like Beckham' so we do sit down to watch big internationals as a family occasionally. What we don't do is festoon our windows with 'England' flags and play the old and wearisome 'Three Lions On A Shirt' supporter's song by Baddiel and Skinner. Loudly. Very, very loudly. Seventeen bloody times. Like our upstairs neighbour did this evening, like he always does when England play an international. With breaks for getting beer from the fridge, flag adjusting and sofa trampolining, he managed to string this homage out to over an hour and a half. All this rather marred the bucolic charm and rustic serenity of tonight's episode of the excellent Britain Goes Wild, the BBC's fortnight of live and recorded programming on our indigenous wildlife. The educational and entertainment value was rubber-stamped when my Dad, a dalesman by upbringin and former county council countryside officer, called to check the kids were watching and stated that even he had learned something new watching the shows. Believe me, admissions like that are as rare as osprey sighting in London.

English as tuppence, changing yet changless...

As I have mentioned in the previous incarnation of this blog, I took up running a month or two back and have been building up to participating in the Chris Brasher Memorial 10k run. On Sunday, and by way of a change from pounding the roads of the Isle Of Dogs, I chose to run circuits of Victoria Park instead. As I ran, I took in the sights and sound in this most English of settings and as I did, I found myself pondering on the changing essence of England and Englishness, now that we are a part of an internet-connected global village. Thinking this a great idea for a blog piece, I made my way home only to discover (whilst leafing through the The Guardian's Review section in the smallest room) that this very topic is covered in Timothy Garton Ash's new book Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time. In the extract in the paper, Garton Ash describes an England that sits in a limbo between four competing elements, Island, World, Europe and America. I see the push and pull of these elements every day where Starbucks sits awkwardly alongside Ye Olde C15th Coaching Inn. I see it in the youths outside my window who measure their credibility in term of the latest footwear worn by their South Central counterparts but manufactured by less fortunate peers elsewhere in the world. I see it when we happily scrabble for authentic Mediterranean peppers that have been blast-chilled and flown in overnight but turn our noses up at a locally grown Cox's Pippin because it has a slight blemish. As I see it, in our rush to embrace the easy, the convenient, the new and the bland into our daily lives, we seem only too happy to ignore or discard the cherishable, the unique, the valuable and the worthwhile. As Garton Ash relates, 'there has been an England, and a people who have called themselves the English, continuously since at least 937' and yet we seem more than happy to abandon this heritage to assimilate the worst the world has to offer rather than the best. The piece continues with the observation that 'the historical connection between "world" and "island" is direct and simple. The world has now come to the island because the island first went to the world'. As the world flocks to England's shores in forms many and varied, we seem to readily embrace the very worst excesses of globalisation and uniformity that the multinationals have to sell, whilst we fear and shy away from the cultural diversity, shared experience and new horizons that individual migrants can offer.

As the Guardian article points out, England was the cradle from which the modern notion and model of 'human rights' grew through the centuries. It is for this reason particularly that I, and a good many others it would seem, find it abhorant that the traditional notion of English and Englishness are under constant threat of misappropriation. This misappropriation is being stealthily but steadily carried out by those who use terms like English and Englishness to describe a country and a state of being that excludes others who do not fit a prescribed racial blueprint. I suspect many flying the flag of Saint George from their windows or mini flagstaffs on their cars around these parts, see the Euro 2004 competition as ideal cover for overblown statements of national pride and anti-elsewhere behaviour. Sadly, I witnessed just such an expression a short while ago, when I broke from writing this to collect the kids from school. I was in a line of parents exiting the school building, walking behind a tall shaveheaded white man in the now seemingly ubiquitous uniform of the masses, the England football strip, trainer socks and expensive white trainers. When the Bengali mother ahead of him failed to hold the door long enough to allow him to barge his way through, he rammed the closing door hard with the buggy he was pushing, presumably to cause it to hit her. When he failed to accomplish this, he swore, tore the door open and set off to pursue the unwitting woman across the playground. Upon catching her up, he rammed her heels extremely hard with the buggy and loomed over her, thrusting his beflagged chest and tattooed arms towards her and leering as if to challenge her to complain. Sensibly, but sadly, she turned and quickly moved away. Just as when some of those round these parts used the well-worn but hollow 'protest vote' argument to defend their voting in a BNP councillor in 1993, the cross of Saint George seems to be a flag of convenience, with it's symbolism open to interpretation, depending on the circumstances.

Billy Bragg talked on the subject of 'the England flag' on Radio 4 earlier this week, in programme looking at the concern over possible football hooliganism in Portugal during Euro 2004. He recently participated in a march in Malmesbury where there was a single racist marching in opposition, waving a flag of Saint George. Bragg said that he wished that he and his fellow marchers had had the foresight to also carry and wave flags of Saint George, as this once simple action would have helped reclaim the flag from those who seek to use it as a symbol for their own ends. Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with this and think the idea has genuine merit, I will not be flying the flag at home or in the car. The thought of someone seeing the flag, looking at my close-cropped hair and assuming the worst is just too awful to contemplate.

Title from Vivian Stanshall's Sir Henry At Rawlinson End.

Little crosses everywhere

Today, for the first time in ages, I exercised my democratic right and cast a full five votes in three separate elections;

the vote for the London Mayor
the vote for the London Assembly
and the vote for London's MEPs

For postal voters like me, this was no easy task but londonelects.org.uk provided a handy 18-step guide to help me put crosses in boxes, fold ballot papers and seal envelopes. Elsewhere on the londonelects.org.uk, there are interesting presentations like At The Polling Station and The Lifecycle Of A Vote.

Before making my mark, I reviewed a wide range of material in order to ensure that I was aware of all the issues. Of all the information I devoured, I have a particular soft spot for the
Pointless Pledges that Danny Baker's listeners would propose, were they in the running for Mayor Of London. These some real crackers include filling up the new Swiss Re building in the City with liquid and turn it into a giant lava lamp and breeding a giant hamster to run inside the London Eye.

Meanwhile, SWMBO mentioned the 'pay it forward' principle earlier this evening (more of which later if I can bear it) and this reminded me of a recent phone call from my Dad. He rang a few weeks back to ask which way we'd like him to vote. Confused, I asked him what he was on about. He said that he wanted us to advise him on how we were voting as he wished to vote the same way. When I asked him why he simply stated that, in the twilight of his years, he preferred to use his vote to benefit us and the children, trusting that we'd be voting sensibly for ourselves, our fellow wo/man and the planet. We don't always see eye to eye but his integrity and his concern for others always holds my respect.

The deed is done...properly this time

It is amazing what one can achieve when one has an hour or so to spare for, with a day off work, I have finally managed to properly migrate my blog back to Blogger. Having tried three or four of the off the shelf offerings, I am now moderately happy with the tweakings I have applied to the Minima template and the general look of the site. The look is very light and airy when compared to the some say funereal old site.

Subtle changes include:

• Old site content is still available via the Oct 2002 - May 2004 archive link.


• The Star Chamber features the blogs of good friends and/or favoured blogfolk - added due to recent flakiness over at blogrolling.com.


• RSS feed is now brought to you care of Atom.

The other key change is that I have decided to limit commenting to those who choose to register to do so. This decision was not taken lightly because I truly value all comments and have made new friends and contacts through them. However, eradicating comment spam was taking up too much time, even with MT Blacklist. I hope that folks will feel that registering is worth the effort and that they continue to do so.

Maybe now I can get back to posting more regularly rather than trying to decide which bloody blog tool to use.

The things we say

Sprog #4 (pointing to my chest): Your milkies don't work - Mummy's do!
Me (surrounded by SWMBO and female offspring): Um...yes.
Sprog #4 (pointing to her chest and those of her sisters): My milkies will work when I'm older...and hers...and hers...and hers!

The deed is done

After much humming and hahhing (or hemming and hawing for American readers), I have moved back to Blogger. Non-blog content will migrate to the new format slowly, as and when time and RSI permits, but for now stuff is all over the place so clicking through is even more of an adventure for my dear longsuffering readers.