The End of the World?

I keep seeing adverts for things which contain "good bacteria". Which is apparently better for you than "bad bacteria".  How did we get to this?

Meeting at Bacteria HQ:

Bacteria King : "We're in trouble. They keep inventing new ways to kill us. That new Domestos could be the end. Any ideas?"
Bacteria Scientist : "But sire, I have a plan"
Bacteria King : "Do tell.."
Bacteria Scientist : "We train up some of our strongest strains for a top secret operation. We teach them the arts of subterfuge, send them undercover and get them to convince the human scum that they are friendly. Once they are safely established in their yoghurts and health drinks..."
Bacteria King : "..we strike them down. "
(all join in evil laughter)

Remember, you read it here first.

Interesting Times

I seem to be living in interesting times. Today I bought a wonderful book (actually I got three - I'll tell you all about them tomorrow).

And I'm setting up some Webcasts which you really must listen to. Details to follow.

And you only have around 18 hours to buy my phone....

Well Groomed Hands

Whilst out for the day yesterday I had occasion to wash my hands in an unfamiliar bathroom. Having applied plenty of soap from a pump action dispenser thing I found that my hands did not get soapy in the expected manner. Further inspection revealed that I had in fact put fructose hair conditioner on my hands, which were now soft, manageable and tangle free.  Wonderful.

Racing Trim

On the way back from visiting number one daughter we went past a farm with a sign outside which said "For Sale: Pet food and accessories".

Unfortunately the place was shut, otherwise I would have dropped in and asked for some spoilers for the hamsters and a couple of go faster stripes for the guinea pigs.

Jabbed

I had my innoculations for the trip to India earlier today. Two injections, one in each arm. Just before she stuck the needles in the nurse asked "Now, which arm do you use the least?".  Talk about confidence building.

Fuzzy England

Some things you just get sucked into. Like watching your national football team play not very well against a country you've never heard of. Trinidad and Tobago? Sounds like a circus double act to me.  Or a follow up to "Lilo and Stitch". Anyhoo, I only watched the last ten minutes (which in this game was probably the best thing to do).  The thing that struck me,  after I'd got over the rather lacklustre display of the our sporting heroes, was the poor quality of the video signal.

Now I know the signal is coming all the way from Germany,  but I've seen much better quality than this.  It looked like it had been seriously compressed. When the players started running their legs turned into a blocky blurr and when the camera panned quickly the screen really looked rough. I'm pretty sure it is not my telly though, 'cos I've seen some lovely looking pictures in the past.

The cynic in me is wondering if "they" are trying to push us all towards High Definition TV by making the standard offering look bad. Surely not....

Happy Snaps

I had to get some more photos of me taken today. It is for my free trip to India in August, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Anyhoo, I sat scrunched down in the seat so that my face fitted the oval and was imortalised on film wearing an appropriately grim look.

As I was waiting for the pictures to come out of the slot I got chatting to a little old lady who was sat by the machine, and had watched me go into the booth. "You know", she said, "You can get them done a pound cheaper just over the road". Thanks for that.

Buggy Bug

I excitedly told Peter about my bug purchase at coffee today. "Whatever you do" he said "Don't put the latest version of the software on it". Guess what I had spent last night doing. I suppose I can always remove it, although it seems to work OK at the moment.

I mentioned that sometimes the signal drops and Peter said "Oh, just tie a bit of wire on the end of the aerial". Now if anybody else had said that I would have told them not to be silly and gone into a long discussion about wavelengths and radio waves and stuff and how this could never work, all based on the Physics that I did before I found out about computers.

But Peter is properly qualified and knows about wires and things and so, this lunchtime, I found a bit of spare cable and tied it on the end. And it works. Who says that qualifications are useless?

Cracking Up

If I have my time again I know what I want to be. I want to make car windscreens.  I want a job where the consequences of failure are minimal and customers pay for your mistakes. Today I went out to my shiny new car (not quite as shiny as it used to be - really must wash it) and found an enormous crack in the glass. This has appeared from nowhere, without me doing anything. I'm completely at a loss to explain it. The only thing of which I am absolutely certain is that I did not cause the crack, i.e. it is not my fault. I rang the garage and asked if such things were covered by warranty, since it was obviously faulty.

The chap on the other end snorted and said something along the lines of "Well, it is a windscreen. What do you expect?".  When I mentioned that I did not expect it to break of its own accord he then asked if there had been any rioting or other activity outside my house which might result in such damage. I said that I was pretty confident that nothing of that nature had happened,  I'm sure I would have noticed rampaging street gangs. As far as he was concerned it was not a matter for the manufacturer (i.e. the person who made the car and windows) but the owner (i.e. the person who bought a new car specifically to avoid having to pay for things that drop off it).

So you can make windscreens as duff as you like and if they break it is not your fault. Never. In fact it gets better, since when the screen breaks the poor sucker with the car has  to buy a new one. So you can generate new business simply by turning out screens which self destruct like mine has. 

The only good news is that it is covered by insurance, but it still means I have to mess around getting it fixed and stump up an excess. No fair.

Dinner with friends

 
They had nice flowers

Went out for dinner tonight. Of course I was my usual witty and urbane self. I just hope that they'll invite us back anyway.

Russian Reactor Dreams

I blame Sky One. I had a dream last night that I had been made in charge of a Russian nuclear reactor. They had given me a bright yellow survival suit outfit (like they wear in the movies). I was sitting at home in this thing (trying it out for comfort) and reading through some reports which were all written in Russian on bright yellow paper. They seemed to have the Russian for "Urgent" and "Danger of explosion" written all over them, although I'm not completely sure as I can't read the language.

I was just inspecting a datestamp on one of the more impressive looking warnings, and trying to find out if it was in the future or the past (not sure how Russians order their dates) when number one wife looked over my shoulder at the page.

"You ought to get one of those" she said, pointing at a picture of a complicated thing that looked like a reactor seal or something. "It only costs 25". I looked at the number and was about to explain that 25 could mean feet high, million Roubles (or kopecks or whatever) or years old when I heard an alarm in the distance....

Fortunately, at this point I woke up.

Decisions, Decisions...

In the TV guide in the paper today describing the Sky One program "10.5 Apocalypse":

Sam has a terrible decision to make when the fault line heads towards the United States' biggest nuclear reactors...

Yeah. Right. Like "Which are my best shoes for running away at great speed?".

And since when have fault lines wandered around the planet?

Uncontrolled Laughter

Not sure how to interpret this message.

Did a talk today for our ACE event, where we invite local students from local schools to take a look  at our university. It went very well, and the audience were great.  The Middleton Hall, where I gave the talk, has this really posh presenter control thing which I got to play with. And I used my new laser pointer. To point at things! Wow! (perhaps I am too easily impressed - even at my age). Anyhoo, we had a good time, and I'm doing it all over again next week.  Just hope that the dog behaves better next time.

Before the talk, the shadow of "the man".

The audience being wowed by Digby, again. Digby has his own group on my Flickr site if you want to see more pictues of him in inaction.

Spoiler Spoiler

Sans Spoiler...

Do you want a spoiler for your Bongo Friendee? Dave next door  does, but then there are other people out on the internet who do as well. With one minute left the item was priced at 51 quid. I was under instructions to go as far as 70 so, in the last minute of bidding with only seconds to go, I fired off my one and only bid.

And somebody else got the spoiler for 93.50.   Wah.

World Cup?

 

A football cup. Probably more than England will see this year.

Anyone who knows me will be aware of the level of regard in which I hold the game of football. Which makes my acquisition of the above mug actually a deeply ironic statement. (but it does hold a lot of tea and it was free).

Links to the past

I'm in the process of adding a links part to this site. This will include all my writings, going back deep into the past. I've even found some of my very old blog posts (as far back as 2003). No, they aren't very funny either. 

Instant Beans on Toast?

The press is all agog about how there are plans to make that old instant meal, beans on toast, even more instant. There were lots of anguished comment in the papers about how people are now getting so lazy that even opening a tin, emptying the contents into a pan,  heating the beans and then adding them to some toast is now beyond them.

So the plan is to make something you whack into the toaster and then just eat.  I'm not sure how they can stop the beans from all sliding off the bread into the innards of the toaster, but they must have some kind of super, techno, way that they are dealing with this.  I've a horrible feeling it will end up being like a Pop Tart but with beans in. Which is deeply scary.

Everybody seems to be taking a "galloping laziness" view on this one, but I think the truth is different. The thing about the new age beans on toast is that one person can cook enough for themselves,  at the time when they personally want to eat. 

When we had beans on toast it was as a family. Mum would come home from work and open the tin and make tea whilst dad sat next door reading the paper and making sure he was well versed in world events (the role of fathers everywhere it seemed to me). Then we would all pile into the kitchen and consume the bounty that mother nature and Heinz had provided for us. I would get told off for not wanting my beans actually on the toast (I prefer to eat it separately - OK?) and then mum and I would wash up whilst dad and sister sat next door watching TV and making sure they were well versed in events in Crossroads.

This new version of the food means that you can feed you, yourself, at any time you like. The individual portions mean that there is no need for everyone to sit around the table at the same time. Instead family members can scuttle down into the kitchen in a convenient commercial break, prepare the stuff and then zoom back to their own telly or computer screen.  This removes the need for conversations like:

"How was it at school today Rob?"
"Don't ask.."

.. and so on. Sometimes I fear for the future.

Building a better ToDo

I seem to have lots of things to do since I got back from MEDC.  For me personally, the standard method for dealing with things to do is to make a todo list.  The snag is that the list is getting rather long. It has occurred to me that it might be quicker to make a "not to do" list and then just do everything else. This is going rather well.

Rob Miles Not To Do List

• Appear on Big Brother
• Write another Visual Basic Program (unless the money is really good)
• Get a personalised number plate on my BMW
• Get a BMW
• Start buying water in bottles
• Start buying wine costing more than a fiver a bottle. No, make that four quid.
• Sign up for Sky Sports
• Watch Big Brother

And I can be absolutely sure that none of these is going to get done. Probably a bit like some of the things that are on my ToDo list.....

That rings a bell

I was sitting in my office today when the phone rang. So I picked it up and answered it. But it continued to ring. I pressed a few buttons on it and was mildly annoyed to hear the dialing tone. I seem to have an office phone which is both ringing and also giving me the dial tone. Most mysterious.

I was just trying to wrap my head around this concept when the ringing stopped. Thank goodness. I picked up my mobile phone and glanced at the display out of idle curiosity. I seemed to have missed a call recently. Interesting. I'm sure I would have heard it ring.......

I'm blaming jetlag for this. That and the fact I've got new mobile and office phones recently.

Re-arming

 
..but don't leave it loaded

I was most upset when my gun broke. I've hardly used it.  Instead of making a healthy "thwack" when I pull the trigger all I get now is a weedy "twang". Not right. I'm not really into guns. Unless they are five quid from Tesco and fire foam bullets you can use to shoot at Channel 4 presenters.  Of course I've taken the gun to bits. I found that a small part of the trigger locking had failed. The plastic had just given way. I put it down to my habit of leaving the gun loaded, ready for action, at all times. After all, you never know when Davina McCall is going to pop up next. Unfortunately this stresses the trigger and so after a while the gun breaks itself.

So today I got another gun. Same type, so I can reuse the ammo. This one is going to be left unloaded. If you arm the mechanism it becomes a bit like one of those Samurai swords which have to be blooded once you have taken them from their sheath.  Fortunately, with Big Brother on the horizon I'm not going to be short of targets.