Saturday, May 31, 2003

The PC crashed this morning with a 'Windows Protection Error' and would only boot in Safe Mode. A step though the drivers pointed the guilty finger at memalloc.vxd. My mate Rob sensibly mentioned that it might be hardware problem more than likely a SIMM. I also had visions of upgrading the OS from ME to XP, I may come back to that another time. Rather than splash out on some new hardware to see if that cured the problem I created a Windows ME Startup Disk, yes I know I should have created one before but at least I have one now, and used it to revert to a copy of the registry from a few days ago. The gods of technology must have been smiling on me 'cos this fixed the issue. Not sure there's a moral to this tale but it would seem this backup/repair/startup disk stuff actually works.

Friday, May 30, 2003

Had enough of blogs, might be time for the Antibloggies.

Thursday, May 29, 2003

Donald Rumsfled now tells us that the Iraq may have destroyed it's so called weapons of mass destruction or WMDs before the invasion. I know Donald's grasp of grammar is somewhat flawed but did I hear that correctly? A country that was more heavily watched than a soap opera managed not only to destroy all it's biological, nuclear and chemical plants, mobile systems, materials and supples but also has managed to cover up any evidence of said programmes as well? Maybe these guys should be on our side...

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

With the demise of Concorde and in the unlikely event of seeing a Virgin Airways logo on it's tail, you have to wonder what happened to supersonic transport or SST? The reason I ask is that I'm sitting in my garden in West London watching all these subsonic buses make their final approach into Heathrow and I'm thinking why so slow? What ever happened to the promise of mass supersonic transport as opposed to one for the ultra wealthy only? If like me you have to travel economy/standard/DVT class you will also probably find it an odious experience at the best of times. It's not the act of flying that I have trouble with or the belief as a friend of me does that passenger planes are 'evil birds fashioned from steel'. Its the sardine (or is it pilchard as they're the same fish you know) approach to cramming as many people in as possible. So who wouldn't want to get to New York in three hours from Heathrow rather than the traditional six? And hey it's not as if we don't have the technology. Back in the sixties that was the plan. By 1967 15 airlines had placed orders for more than 70 Concordes. Two proposed American SST's had even more between them, the Boeing 2707 and Lockheed 2000 had 114 firm orders from 26 different airlines. Analysts predicted that by 1985 there could be up to 900 supersonic passenger planes in service. They failed however to predict the fuel crisis and growing environmental concerns, so when Concorde finally made an appearance in 1976 the dream was effectively over. Add to this the Russian TU144 'Koncordski' crash at the 1973 Paris Air Show and the withdrawal of the two American programmes it couldn't get any worse. Well it did actually as only 20 Concordes made it off the production line. So is there any future for supersonic or the even faster hypersonic aircraft for commercial purposes. Probably not. The development costs are just too high. Both the Americans and Japanese have hypersonic aircraft designs on the drawing board and that's probably where they'll stay, Boeing's proposed next generation SST has been shelved after their partner NASA had it's budget slashed by Congress. As for Concorde it's savior may come in the bearded form of one R Branson who wants BA's Concordes now they don't. Branson reckons the aircraft have 20 years left in them but BA say they are now a financial liability. Not surprisingly BA are not willing to sell or give it's seven planes to Virgin although they got them for free and you can see why, it would be a PR disaster to see Virgin logos all over the an aircraft that BA have used to create it's core image. But why not give them to Branson? It they are such a financial blackhole Concorde could achieve what BA have failed to do by both fair means and fowl and bury Virgin. Next time you fly remember that if the analysts had got it right (of course that would have been a first) your journey could have been completed in half the time or even less.

Saturday, May 24, 2003

Rather than post even more piccies on the blog of the Izzy you can find more here. She has settled in rather well and hopefully she'll sleep though the night. I think I have a little understanding of what having a new baby is like...

Tuesday, May 20, 2003

The garden is getting a good inspection. One thing we have found out is that she likes to eat plants, a particular favorite was the bed of Iris's (hope I spelt that correctly) which have looked better. Also you might notice that she has something rarely seen on a gundog - her tail. The breeder only docks if requested. Whats a tail for if not for wagging eh?!
As requested by my mate Daz I'll post a few more pics of Izzy so those of you who appreciate the finer points of dogdom will see what a little cracker she is. She does have a posh kennel name but we'll will have to wait to find out what is as the Kennel Club has yet to let the breeder know. As soon as I know so will you. In this picture madam is getting a hug from Karen, there is after all only so many things in the garden to sniff. The cat has so far ignored her and the feeling seems to be mutual. Better that than the feline/canine fisticuffs I was expecting.

Monday, May 19, 2003

Can't believe it's a week since I posted the first picture of Izzy, ah the calm before the storm. Well she's moved in now and as you can see has settled in rather well, only been in the house less than an hour and flakes out. My worry was that she would cry and grumble about being torn from the busom of her canine family but part from one or two tiny accidents it's all gone remarkably smoothly. I pray to the whatever gods are listening that this may continue!

Sunday, May 18, 2003

In a few weeks I must say a tearful goodbye to my PT Cruiser, the lease company want it back now that I'm changing jobs. So as part of the grieving process I thought I'd say a few words. The retro looks combined with estate car pragmatism makes for a great combination and you'd have to spend ten times the money to get a car that attracts so many comments, glances or starts so many conversations in car parks. It's boringly practical and despite the curvy shape they have managed to create a tardis like amount of interior space, oh and the wacky parcel shelf thingy is very useful to. I've really enjoyed having it but there's one or two things the boffins at Chrysler need to sort out. The 2 litre lump is too unrefined and gets noisy when pushed, a car that looks this cool really needs a larger and lazier motor and the service intervals are shorter than a politicans promise. 6500 miles might be OK in the US where servicing is cheap but here in the UK it's annoying and potentially wallet wobbling. Would I have another one? One day maybe...

Thursday, May 15, 2003

In a sea of media mediocrity I have once again say how excellent Radio 4 is, especially the news coverage. In an interview on the Today programme this morning James Naughtie spoke to John Reid, the Chairman of the Labour party about whether or not finding so called weapons of mass destruction is important now the war is over. Naughtie asked questions that were insightful and probing, Reed gave a staunch defense of the governments position. Great stuff that makes news reporting from commercial stations look feeble. Sony Radio Academy Awards Radio Station of the Year...no question.

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

With all this spare time on my hands, what with gardening leave and everything it's given me a chance to catch up on some of the as yet unwatched DVDs filling the space underneath the TV. These generally are the ones classified as 'series' or 'not movie' and ones the missus has an aversion to, Joe 90 for example. One of them is a relatively unknown comedy called The High Life and it's an absolute gem. When first shown in 1995 it was poorly promoted by the BBC and aired in the graveyard shift on BBC2, don't ask me why when they give us prime time tosh like My Hero but hey ho and for some odd reason the BBC only commissioned one series. "Oh dearie me!!" It starred Alan Cumming and Forbes Masson as two of Air Scotia's useless cabin crew. If you like comedy that's camp, packed with witty dialogue and has more double entendres than is healthy then it's well worth a purchase.

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Next week I'm expecting the patter of four tiny feet and no it's not twins but the rascal you see here. Her name is Izzy and she's a Hungarian Vizsla. In this picture she is seven weeks old and modesty means she refused to look at the camera when asked, one day she might actually do what she's told. She is coming to live with us next Monday. The cat is still living in ignorant bliss.
I heard the most ridiculous interview on Radio 4 this morning. It boiled down to the chairman of some angling society complaining that otters eat too many fish, or more specifically the fish they want to catch and be photoed with for the Angling Times. Er...hello, otters eat fish don't they? What next? Big game hunters moaning that lions eat too many zebras?
Even Jackie Chan is at it....blogging I mean. The master of Hong Kong cinema who famously does all his own stunts has just started keeping a daily dairy as he starts filming his new movie 'Around the World in Eighty Days'. Yes he's playing Passepartout and yes I know in the book he was French.

Thursday, May 08, 2003

If only I'd know I could have voted. Channel 4 on Saturday at 8:00pm is screening '100 Worse Britons', yet another of those endless 'list' programmes that have become a central part of C4's schedule. This will probably be more of the interesting ones, not because it will actually have the 100 Worse Britons in it but because it will be a snap shot of the our current opinion of the army of mindless z-list celebrity fodder paraded before us every day. Sadly I suspect it won't contain any actual 'Worse Britons' like feeble minded politicians and CEOs of large corporation who take fat bonus' whilst laying people off. The rules stipulate that the Worst Briton must be British (obviously) and alive (eh?) and not currently in prison or pending trial. Damn...no Jeffrey Archer.

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

Now with the shooting in Iraq officially over, although I can't speak for the unofficial kind, George W Bush's next objective is to get reelected in 2004. Keen to avoid the fate of his father who after winning the first gulf war lost the following election 21 months later, his first move is a $550 billion tax cut. This strikes as a little odd as the US economy that is already $252 billion in the red and will probably finish the year some $400 billion adrift. But with so much else wrong with the US economy George W doesn't have a lot of time for subtlety and tax cuts are a good a distraction as any, although for the 2 million Americans who have lost their jobs since GWB took office tax cuts seem probably too subtle. He's also being ruthless with his own party members who step out of line, Olympia Snowne and George Voinovich who oppose the tax cuts have had TV ads calling them "so called Republicans" who "stand in the way of tax cuts" and who like "so-called allies like France" stood in the way of the Iraq invasion. Ouch!! So anyone opposing Mr Bush is effectively French or a least a Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey. But no US president since 1945 has won an election whilst presiding over an increase in unemployment so he could come a cropper on the Clintonian maxim that US elections are always about the economy.

Thursday, May 01, 2003

I just want to say thanks to the kind comments from the lads at the UK Technology Group at Lotus, they mean a lot to me. I know for a few of you with a an even more religious approach to Lotus than me my move to Microsoft is an odd one but I lost my faith in IBM as an employer. When a company askes for loyality it should at least attempt to reciprocate. IBM has some great technology, mostly as it turns out to have a Lotus logo on the outside, but it isn't enough. When I go to work I want to feel that the it cares about me and the team I work with, it should not try and measure the meaning out of everything I do so my success or failure is judged by a few numbers on a spreadsheet. The team of people I worked with at Lotus are a talented bunch, yes you are guys and don't forget it, but they are wasted hamstrung by a system that neither cares nor wants to. I don't blame IBM per se, it's rather like the story of the scorpion and the fox. It's in the nature of the scorpion to sting the fox even though it was helping it cross the river and so it is the nature of IBM to waste talened people and drive them away. It's just easier to do than keep them. They forget however that there is a reason why Lotus has so many customers and creates as many religous zealots as Microsoft do. It's the people stupid.