Phriday Photo XXXIII

A change of tack this week. Less humour, more sentiment.

I caught this touching moment of an old fella sharing his ice cream with his faithful friend in a park in Harrogate. There was something very sincere and endearing about their interaction. I wondered if either of them were reminiscing about days of youth, or lost partners perhaps...

Fido always saves the chocolate flake till the end

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Downsizing

We said a sad farewell to the Somnambulistic Mothership last week. It had served us well, happily transporting us around Europe, up snowy Alp, along endless autobahn and down winding Cornish country lane on many occasions. But.. there's a credit crunch, the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and most importantly, people thought we were German.

So we've put the record straight on that by downsizing to something old and British. Not, unfortunately, a Supermarine Spitfire but a Land Rover Freelander. It makes funny noises, drinks engine coolant like a Glaswegian nightclub owner, shudders between 19 and 26 mph, and won't stop the sneers from the ecomentalcyclists. However, it should put a stop to people giving us straight-arm salutes with their fingers under their noses.

From mothership to lifeboat (only slower)

Phriday Photo XXXII

Some things are destined for the bonfire the moment they were conceived, and so it was with a certain item of furniture (plus a small collection of unwanted flotsam). Just before I dropped the match I noticed that the "Fire Resistant" label had still not been removed and decided to put this claim to the test and record the results. The following photo montage spans no more than four minutes and speaks for itself...

The hot seat.

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Artificial Albert

You've probably seen countless clips of robotic faces. They've got better over the years but to my mind have never quite shaken off that disappointing Disney World animatronics-style tackiness. Until I saw the clip on the link below.

At first it's just another unconvincing (if high-quality) rubber-faced bag of servos. But keep watching... something changes when Mr E is given a robot body that moves freely and independently. Perhaps it is because when there is more motion to occupy one's focus, the facial scrutiny is less intense and we look more at the whole.. err entity? Whatever, the effect for me is eerie and I couldn't suppress the notion that I was taking a glimpse into the future.

Click AE for the shape of physicists to come...

Stand Clear. For Your Own Safety.

On Saturday afternoon, despite being barely two months old, the main PC went into an irretrievable hibernation. I can only assume that this was some form of protest against the usual gripes: overwork and underpay. Despite 12 hours trying to coax it back out from underneath the duvet with every form of artificial resuscitation known to man, it was as dead as the proverbial plague victim.

That is, until I took it out for a drive. I talked to it in gentle tones, as you might your favourite pet on the last trip to the vet, soothing background music on the CD player. Down the country lanes we went, round the roundabouts, along the motorway, heading for the den of iniquity that is Chatham, from whence the idle box of circuitry had come.

Of course, once they plugged the little bugger in, Windows safe mode popped cheerily up on the screen without a second's thought. After half an hour of diagnostics while I listened to a string of irate customers' electronical woes, I then had to endure much polite condescension.

"When the power light flashes, that means it's gone into hibernation." Yes I know.

"Holding the power button for six to ten seconds will switch the power off completely." Yes, I know.

"Switching it back on again will launch windows safe..." Yes. I know. I wondered if Bill Gates gets those kind of raised eyebrow looks when his PC goes on the blink.

I left sheepishly, feeling the need for some of that soothing background music, but changed my mind and put AC/DC on instead. The audio system in the car immediately stopped working, and took my only other source of comfort, the friendly (everso slightly sultry) SatNav woman, with it. This is bad timing, since I'd only the day before agreed the sale price on the Somnambulist mothership and it's due to be picked up this week.

I stopped the car, switched off, waited, and tried again. Nothing. The only thing that brought it back to life was distance from my physical personage. Once I had got home and weeped into a large mug of coffee for ten minutes, Brian Johnson was back and making lewd suggestions to the SatNav girl.

These things come in threes. This morning, on my jog (stumble) around the orchards, my iPod packed up in the middle of Insomnia.

Boom-boom "..I can't get no.... " Oh, I've gone to sleep.

A polite word of warning for your own benefit. Don't bring precious electrical items to the Applehouse until I stop channelling gremlins.

Phriday Photo XXXI

Free time is scarce at the moment, hence the lack of posts. However, I hope to make partial amends with a Photo Phriday treat...or should that be Phideo Phriday? Nah.

Inspired by a great idea for Dennis (thanks Kevin!), I've fished out one of my all time favourite ads. Enjoy...

Who said romance is dead?

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Dennis Update II

Yesterday p-i-g orangepeel and I visited the largely underwhelming Social-networking World Forum in London Olympia (to be fair to the organisers we only went to the exhibition - I'm sure that the speeches and discussions were very interesting). There were a lot more suits and ties than I expected to see, as well as rather a lot of dubious products and business models. I'm not going to point any fingers but if you are demonstrating a new mobile phone application and the best new feature you have in development ("we hope to have this function live before too long") is a menu ("we think this will allow users to select options much more easily"), you might want to rethink your pitch. Or product. That being said, there were some noteworthy stands/pitches (we liked the guys from Omnifuse) and we were very pleased to meet up with Kevin Dixie from Fuelmyblog. Quick, fuel my blog. Down there, on the left. Go on, click it. ;-)

Following the exhibition we had a (long) meeting with the team at Simplicity, to review progress on Dennis. Last Friday we got our first look at the "preview site." This gives us the ability to surf around the user interface - the top of three 'layers.' As usual, we had a long list of amendments, which we went through in minute detail (Dennis the pedantic peasant) and they are being worked on as I type. In the meantime we continue to refine the algorithm and rules that will occupy the second ('business') layer, and prepare for testing the Alpha site once we go live. The bottom 'database' nuts-and-bolts layer is now largely complete, even if it's an empty, vacant skeleton.

There is an awful lot still to be done if we are to meet our go-live objective of end-March, but we are cracking on. Things are definitely taking shape, and there is a sense of momentum. Responses to the concept continue to be highly positive, and though nobody can predict precisely how things will pan out, we are definitely on to something. Perhaps even a whiff of a whale...

Phriday Photo XXX

I've only persevered with this phriday photo thing to see what kind of traffic I would attract when I got to photo XXX.

Anyway, I have a couple of pics for you today, with a particular nod to my old colleagues and associates... You need to be in a cave in outer Mongolia to be unaware that financial times are bad these days, but there is one long-suffering profession that has been in terminal decline for a lot longer than the current cycle of crunching credit: Spot Foreign Exchange voice broking.

Ravaged by the machines (that do a significantly better job of matching buyers and sellers), their numbers have dwindled to a mere smattering of the hard-nosed, hard-drinking, handfuls-of-cash-waving hordes that swarmed The City in the heady days of the ERM. I'm not sure I'll miss the hollow-friendship banter and bravado, but I will miss the playground nicknames: 'Scampi', 'Cheddar', 'Lurch', 'Screamer', and so many more I have forgotten. It was like living in a Bash Street Kids comic strip on a daily basis.

Extremely rare image of spot monkey reading a newspaper while commuting to work...

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Extremely rare image of monkey reading a newspaper after a hard day in the jungle...

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Glamoraks

Do you ever wonder what you were up to 30 years ago (70s teen need not answer)? Or, for the younger readers, what other people, like your parents, were up to? Well, I can't say I dwell on such matters normally but it's fascinating what you come across when sifting through a time-warp junk mountain (before I get any specific comments, I know not all of it was junk!)...

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In November 1979, when the UK was ironically struggling through severely adverse economic conditions, 15 of your English pences would buy you Britain's 'top selling' weekly for women, Woman's Own (I still, to this day, don't know what that title means: Woman's Own what? What woman?). Anyway, one glance at the cover can tell you that while in the desk-top publishing interweb age magazine's have come along visually somewhat, the content matter seems vaguely, if not very clearly, familiar.

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"The most important girl in Prince Charles' life-who is she?" A fine question indeed, and it's even more interesting to read inside quotes from the man himself explaining how important it is to be careful in selecting the future queen of England. Quite.

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"Exclusive What it's like to be rich- by the wife of Britain's first £1million footballer*" The numbers may be a little different but I'm thinking the WAGs of today probably would recognise a passing reflection.

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Make-up tips, win cars, holidays and cash, how to make your bedroom out of bamboo for £20 (IKEA forerunner)... Have we moved on? A look at the adverts is revealing: Discount food brands (same price as today, but offer subject to availability), State Express cigarettes (good riddance), New Blue Band ("eat natural - feel good" health kick mantra), The Bendix Rotary Ironer ("for people who can't stand ironing"), and my own favourite: "Germany. Maker of fine foods."

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Halifax (HBOS to the juniors) is a good one - "There are lots of ways you can save with the Halifax. For instance you can open a Paid-up Share Account with just £1.." which coincidentally is about what it would still be worth today. If you're lucky.

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Unfortunately "Glamoraks" - the newest, shiniest jackets around in '79 - didn't last the fashion course.

(p.s. why does that yellow jump-suit zipper start at the bottom?)

*I'll leave that obvious little bit of trivia open for the comments page :-)

Loving The Elbow Grease

In the last week of furious activity I have been reminded of a few things.

The first is how much I actually enjoy physically demanding work. After twenty years of sitting on an increasingly accomodating @rse, spending a week shifting heavy objects from one place to another (not-necessarily-more-appropriate) place has been thoroughly agreeable. Although not as agreeable as that most English of pastimes, building bonfires. It's quite extraordinary how quickly and furiously 1970s furniture and bric-a-brac combusts with only the slightest of encouragement.

I've remembered that wheelbarrows are a quite astonishingly good invention and pondered who came up with the idea and when.

After relocating the equivalent contents of a medium-sized bookshop across the farmyard and down the stairs to the cellar, my aching back and limbs have reminded me that books are heavy and generally designed to be handled one at a time.

Most of all, I've remembered the meaning of the word ambrosial, because after a long day up to my arms in elbow grease, that is how a gratifyingly cold beer tastes...