Category: just-plain-life

The portrait of a south london racist

Pissed fools

Miles paints a picture of a South London racist which it too good to miss.

A hazard of living in South London is racists in the neighbourhood. The recent press hysteria about new EU entrants and “Islamic fanatics” has given the racists license to start expressing their hateful prejudices in public once again. After years of public disapproval of racism, these scum have clearly been waiting for the opportunity to spout their worthless opinions – and our wonderful politicians and business leaders have just given them the green light…

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Foiled terrorist plot at Heathrow

Manchester airport

I first heard about foiled terror plot in my aggreagtor while heading to welling today (don't ask) but have been so busy, to read about it fully. Now sat on the train looking through the news and blogs, I'm getting much more detail. One of the most interesting is from Bruce Schneier.

The most interesting part is the ban on carry-ons. First up, I thought its about bloody time – I've seen people carry things as close to a suitcase as you can get, on board. But then I read the actual list of whats allowed.

  • Pocket size wallets and pocket size purses plus contents (for example money, credit cards, identity cards etc (not handbags);
  • Travel documents essential for the journey (for example passports and travel tickets);
  • Prescription medicines and medical items sufficient and essential for the flight (e.g. diabetic kit), except in liquid form unless verified as authentic;
  • Spectacles and sunglasses, without cases;
  • Contact lens holders, without bottles of solution;
  • For those traveling with an infant: baby food, milk (the contents of each bottle must be tasted by the accompanying passenger);
  • Sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight (nappies, wipes, creams and nappy disposal bags);
  • Female sanitary items sufficient and essential for the flight, if unboxed (e.g. tampons, pads, towels and wipes) tissues (unboxed) and/or handkerchiefs;
  • Keys (but no electrical key fobs)

What the heck! I have no idea whats caused this insane change in the rules but it must have been something pretty serious and maybe something to do with liquids? Either way, I'm in total agreement with the last sense from Bruce.

I'm sure glad I'm not flying anywhere this week.

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1 year on from July 7th 2005 in London

London Remembers

London seems to be under a grey cloud today. I can't work out if its simply a Friday thing or people remembering what happened last year in the heart of central London. I wrote this long entry about the events during the day. Today in less that 30mins, I'll stand outside in the Kingsway and maybe just film the 2mins silence which is meant to happen at 12 midday. I'm considering just uploading it to Archive.org as a very Free Creative Commons licence. I was condering going up to Russell Square where the Bus Bomb went off, but I don't honestly feel like it right now.

So back from outside and people did come out to respect the silence at midday but the traffic was still going, so it was generally quite noisy. At lot of buses stopped but Taxi drivers didn't. Anyhow, I filmed about 5mins worth of sitting on the steps of the BBC Bush House looking northwards thinking about the people who were caught up in the bombs of a year ago.

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When did police officers get machine guns in London?

Crazy!

I ride thought Bank in the City of London pretty everyday on the way to work. But today, while waiting at the lights a police women crossed the road. Nothing special there you say, and I would agree except she was carrying a sub machinegun. Ok when did the police get to carry sub machines guns around in normal use? Usually the police will radio in for the big guns once they know theres a risk or something, not just carry them around in everyday use. To be fair at the airport you do see them but not just walking around the streets. If I wasn't driving I so would have took a picture and uploaded it. Sarah was with me, so I got a witness. Scary stuff….

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On work and life balance

Me and Sarah

Its funny I was reading through Furrygoat the other day, I found this very interesting entry but now I can't actually find it on the live site. I can only assume, it was removed. But its honestly too good to not blog. If I'm asked to remove it, then fair enough but till then…He's the entry titled Work life Balance.

Or lack thereof. And the worst part is that I've come to the realization that I have absolutely no one to blame besides myself.
It sucks – almost every day I go in to the office at 6am and work until 5, then I'm back on email at 8:30 until I go to bed. I check email all weekend long (which, when driving really pisses the wife off) due to the 'convience' of a smartphone. And to top it off, due to my obessive nature, I've realized that in many ways my work defines me. I am no longer the adventurer who went to Everest or the diver that went to Belize to scuba in the barrier reefs, I'm just a software engineer.
Sure, we've been in a super hard push the last few weeks (which is always tiring), but I've been wondering what's it for? In the end, we basically put pixels on a screen. You write code today and in a few years it's gone (unless it's 'Notepad' – that code seems to stick around forever).
After this push, I think I'm going to go back to having 'regular' hours of 8-4. Perhaps I'll start hitting the gym again in the mornings and enforce a 'hard stop' at 4. No more email at night. Liz, Tyler and our new son deserve that. *I* deserve that.

Being married myself and look forward to a kid at some point within the next 5 years, I think about the balance of professional and personal life (i hate to seperate them like that, but it will work for now). Me and Sarah were watching a Panorama documentary about the right time for a baby. I'll say little more, but its all about women choosing to work longer and not have babies till very late, sometimes too late. Its all stuff we've heard before, the middle classes waiting long and having less babies, while the lower class are have lots of babies. Nothing new here but interesting anyway.

But back to now, that work life balance is hard to get right. I'm always readjusting depending on events and how happy Sarah is. Its important and I don't have a rule or any wisdom to give in this area except to say its damm important. Those who get it wrong really risk screwing up more that they can ever imagine.

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Signs of brand loyality, or sadness?

My Adidas A3's

You know things are turning sad when you end up buying one of every Cushion technology by one brand. I seem to own one of every Adidas a3 cushion technology to date. This is totally by chance, it just seems the last 3 lot of trainers I have bought, have all been Adidas and they have all included A3 cushioning but are each slightly different.

The first type were the A3 Strike type (2005), then the ugly twin strikes followed. End A3 era 1. Then the A3 Torsions were made which one'tt come in twins, end of era 2 but you can still pick these up all over the place. Then era 3, with the megarides and twins named ultraride. Which seems to be nothing more than very strong modled plastic in a round hoola-hoop shaped cylinder with a joiner in the middle to make sure they don't break. I kind of prefer them to the Nike Shox, but not these crazy megaride things. Geez, i must be sad, but its been one of those things in my head for a while now – *grin* Don't worry I never bought any crazy trainers like the one linked. Why did I write this post? Well someone was asking me about my new trainers and it got me thinking about the whole A3 thing compared to the Nike Shox. Ah I remember the days when we use to go around popping peoples air bags on there trainers… No longer possible with these range of trainers.

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Back from my Holiday in the midwest

Me and Birch geeking out

So I'm finally back from my holidays. You can tell your holiday is over when your back on the train going to work again. My Jetlag is pretty bad because I've been having really problems getting to sleep and staying a sleep. In my usual way, if I'm not able to sleep for a while, I will get up and do something. Do something last night was sorting out my Holiday photos on Flickr and locally on my network. Believe it or not I actually took over 800 photos and about 20 movies.

On the technology side, lots of the shots were done with my SPV M600 Cameraphone which actually kicks out some quite amazing quality pictures during the daytime. At night its not so good. My old Digital Camera the Nikon 3400 did a great job but I found it painful to pull it out of the case and select the right mode. My new purchase the Sanyo VPC-C6 starts up in a matter of seconds and delivered even better quality shots.

Yes I did finally buy the Sanyo VPC-C6 Camcorder/Camera. Its got a great 6meg pixel sensor but I've not quite worked out all the settings yet because i'm getting tons of blurry shots in low light. I also did buy the High Defination version of the camera but it doesn't quite work as expected. Its a long story…keeping it short. I bidded for the high def version on ebay.com and thought I was getting a great deal when I won an auction by circuit city returns (trading circuit) but 12 hours later found out it didn't actually record anything through this forum which linked to the one I won. Yeah you can imagine, I couldn't sleep without thinking about the nightmare which I had bought. I'm currently going through the process of getting my money back in return for the camera minus a restocking fee. This is my only ebay bad story to date however.

Some more highlights of my holiday include going clubbing in Minneapolis again. That place gets more and more european everytime I see it. The Trams are now working and people walk a lot when out and about. The No guns past this point signs are now gone from all the doors which is a good thing, and its honestly very green and beautiful during the summer. I also saw a different side of Milwaukee that I've seen before but I still don't like it as much as Minneapolis. Madison was also cool but I'm still not a big fan althought the people are super friendly compared to elsewhere. Being in De Forrest just outside of Madison was suprisingly nice and relaxing but I missed the inner city living which I'm use to very quickly. Chicago was cool and we hooked up with Sarahs Friend like most of the cities and towns we went to around the midwest. But I'm still not feeling Chicago compared to other cities. At first I thought it was its size and urban spawl but actually its something else because London is bigger. I think this picture maybe sums it up nicely. Another highlight was having icecream freshly made from Cold stone icecream in north Chicago. It was, I kid you not the best icecream I've ever had!

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Holiday time in the midwest

Minneapolis Skyline

Yes its that time again, time for me and Sarah to visit the in-laws, see old friends, sample mexican food and stock up on gadgets. I'll be spinning around Chicago, Madison, Racine, Minneapolis/St Paul, etc for the next few weeks. So my blogging will be low due to the cost of roaming GPRS/EDGE in America. But fear not, there will be lots of pictures on my Flickr stream when I get a Wireless connection. One of the best things about going to the midwest is going clubbing in Minneapolis, seriously its like clubbing in a more european city. Can't wait to try it out during a less cold season.

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Wanna buy a laptop mate, yours for 300 pounds

So I was walking for the train today because my scooter has a flat tyre. Walking down briskly, listening to a podcast as usual when these guys roll up in a slightly beaten up old style Vauxhall Caliver. The passenger rolls down his window and says, You wanna buy a laptop mate? At first I couldn't fully hear him but once he opened the laptop , a Sony Viao. It all quickly clicked into place.

So the first thing which goes through my mind is not to get too close to the car just in case they happen to have some weapon. But I do stop and lift up my sunglasses. The guy with a very strong Irish accent, almost sounded put on. Says just got it from PC World brand new with recepts, yours for 300 pounds. I look at the driver who seems more concerned about driving off quickly that the deal which was happening. So anyway, being the haggler that I am, I said sounds expensive for a knocked off Laptop, hows 100 pounds? And you know what he seriously considers it. By which I'm already reaching for my sunglasses and walking. These guys follow me down the road, showing off all the features of a standard XP install. Till I say 100 pounds or nothing. They disappear shouting its too low for them and they will easily find someone else in this area (woolwich).

To be fair I shouldn't have said anything, but I wanted to see how desperate they were to get rid of the laptop. It was a nice Sony Viao with motion eye camera and looked to be about a 2.4ghz Pentium 4. But I was never going to buy it. I was also thinking about all the angles of there deal. For example I carry a bag which looks like a laptop bag, so I was wondering if they were really after that. I mean it would make sense why they would ask me rather than any of the other people walking down the crowded street. And there were lots of people walking fast to catch the train to London.

Just thought I'd share this, as I have got older my brush with the blackmarket (why do they call it that?) has become less and less which is a good thing. I've not had this kind of a deal since I was living in Thornton Heath (south central London) funny stuff, eh?

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Been using Tesco shopping service for about 7 years now?

I just read Jen's Groceries on demand post

Ever since the delivery guys mistakenly pressed our buzzer instead of the flat they needed, I’ve been intrigued with the idea of having groceries delivered. I had always thought such services were the domain of the physically challenged or wealthy.
Not that I need to whittle away at my scant reasons to leave the flat already, but I felt compelled to give the service a whirl. I have a Tesco ClubCard; I have a bank card. Tomorrow, I’ll have a kitchen full of groceries carried up two flights of stairs by cheerful delivery folk.

To be honest I love Tesco's Delivery service. The day I moved out of my parents house, I was getting Tesco to deliver my monthly shopping. It made sense, because having a 125cc scooter and a hectic lifestyle (college during the day and work in the cinema at night) there was no way I could find time to act like a zombie for a couple of hours, walking up and down the supermarket shelves. Then drag all the crap home without falling off my bike. Trust me I tried. It was painful. When I lived in Bromley, I use to drive over to Elmers End's 24 Hour Tesco at about 1am and do my shopping. A couple of times I could not carry it all and ended up going back and forth to get everything home. I hated it! So I opted to get everything delivered and would only pop into Tesco to get quick bits and bobs.

Even when me and Sarah got married and moved into our own place, the Tesco Delivery contunies. Sarah did spend a little bit of time getting use to stuff from this country by wondering around the local Tesco supermarket but in the end also opted for there online delivery. However now and then she will want to go shopping, for some unknown reason.

Shopping for me is just one of those life zapping things I could do without. I don't mind so much going and picking up a couple of things but any more than 10 items and I feel like my head will cave in. I think the problem lies with me working in Tesco for over a year while studying. I worked in the Tesco Cafe till they realised I was alergic to the cleaning material and moved me to check outs. On checks out I quickly made the move to night shift to better fit with my college hours. I mean at the time almost 7 pounds a hour to work from 10pm to 6am seemed like a good idea. I only had to work 2 days a week and earned enough to do all the stuff I wanted to do. But on the downside I learned to quickly hate the supermarkets bright lighting and depressive decor. Maybe its put me off for life? Sarah will tell any of you, I turn from a nice friendly guy into a moaning pain when I'm in a supermarket. Thank goodness for Tesco delivery.

I still remember when my manager was telling me about the new online shopping service which our store (Tesco Eastville, Bristol) was going to trial. I thought it was such a good idea and hoped to be the person picking the goods for the delivery but it was not to be. I also hoped it would be a huge hit and less people would come into the store. That obviously never happened. But it would certainly seem things have changed alot. At the time (maybe 1998) only Tesco was doing online home delivery. I think Watrose and Iceland followed a year later then Sainsburys. And to tell the truth Tesco's online offerings and service went from ok to great within a few years. They even offered a website and pocketpc application early on which I could browse on my ipaq. So I could look in the kitchen and simply add stuff without being tied to my desktop machine (didn't have a laptop or wifi at the time, only ipaq and gprs). And even now Tesco are doing little things to make the whole process even easier and enjoyable.

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At long last me and Sarah are back online

Demon internet

Well at long last Demon have hooked us up. I'm crossing my fingers that it will still be up tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I only noticed when I got back in today and the ADSL light was not flashing any more. As before the 1meg connection was automaticly upgraded to 2meg and actually the upload speeds seem really good from Woolwich when compared to Beckenham.

I'm however waiting to see if Demon or BT will actually phone, email or even text me to say I can now finally use the broadband connection. Who wants to bet its going to be never…

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Project house moving almost complete but no ADSL

The project house moving is almost complete. Me and Sarah a little more decorating to do this week and next weekend and we should be pretty much done. However Demon or BT is not being very helpful about Broadband access. On the 15th November there was Broadband as Demon said there would be, then the next day it was gone! Now all I get is a ADSL sync error, indicating that there is no broadband at all. Yeah really sucky, and of course Demon blame BT and BT are not returning or answering any of my calls. So for a short period (hopefully) I have no Internet access at home.

However I just wanted to say, the Geekdinner this Thursday is still on. Nothing has changed, just because I dont reply to a email for a while does not mean I'm dead… Also my work place has started killing the process signtuare for GAIM, so I'm not on instant messenger much either right now. I have ways around it, but choose not to use them for now. Anyhow hope to see you all Thursday at the Hogs Head.

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Moving house at long last.

In less than 2 weeks, me and Sarah will have bought and moved into our first house. This has been one of the most stressful times I've ever experienced. But I still highly recommend Shared Ownership to first time buyers living and buying in England.

In total me and Sarah have spent roughly just over 2500 pounds in solicitors fees, house deposit, mortgage arrangements, etc to secure the house from viewing to exchanging contracts. Not bad if you consider stamp duty alone could have cost us 1500 pounds plus if the house was not in Woolwich. Our solicitors Barnes Morley were pretty good. There online transaction checker was good but slow to update, I dont think its really integrated into there way of working yet. But the emails back and forth were always answered quickly and fully at stupid times of the day (for me answering emails at 7-8am would be a nightmare come true). Even when we asked the most simple and basic questions, our solicitor totally understood and made it as clear as possible for us first time buyers.

So from Novemeber its goodbye leafy Beckenham and hello urban Woolwich. Some of the things to look forward to is the near future for Woolwich. The Woolwich Arsenal DLR which has started work already and is due to end in 2009 will provide a train link straight into Bank DLR/Tube station. Then we have the olympics in the east end of London in 2012 which will include the woolwich area. I think there's some river things planned for charlton and greewich which is the next areas along. And the last thing which is also going on is the Thames gateway scheme, which includes a bridge a little bit down the road in Thamesmead and a whole host of other projects.

So all together, theres quite a lot of things going on in the area and us buying a place there might have been a really good idea for the future.

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