Al Khafji, Saudi Arabia … video of the year?

Hello everyone, I am currently in Al Khafji on the Gulf for a few days and this video shows the beach just outside my hotel room. It’s a beachside paradise without people. Lovely view and gorgeous weather.

Enjoy this snippet!

DW

Cookery Programme Slop

I was desperate so I watched the Local Hero Cookery programme on BBC Lifestyle this morning and here are some of the things they said.

someone was passionate ... they said this about 8 million times

look at that ... eg look at that [piece of meat] ... when one looked there was nothing unusual to see, in my opinion

wow! ... said by the interviewer when a cook taking part in a cookery programme in which locally sourced ingredients was vital said that he was using local ingredients in his restaurant

a dish had 'Lavender going through it' What? WHAT?

Someone who said that even though he's a television chef (I'd never seen him before so I took his word for that) 'It's not just about cooking ...' We know!!

'He's so on my wavelength'

amazing is slipping down the list as it was mentioned only about one million times

Finally, not the best or the worst but the last one I noticed: reshtaurant!

I will renew my offer to the BBC to teach its presenters how to COMMUNICATE.

DW

Cheat, cheat, cheat ...

It's Saturday, it's Chelsea, it's a penalty ... the Chelsea centre forward ran into the penalty area along with a defender, slight contact possibly but then we see the arched back and the collapsing in a heap. It's bad enough that Chelsea were awarded an unfair penalty but the defender was sent off. Not good that.

In the same way, Kenwyne Jones was sent off in the Sunderland match as a result of an opposing player collapsing in a heap after a push by Jones. However, the opposing player collapsed while holding his face as if he had been punched by Jones. The replay shows nothing of the kind: Jones did NOT punch anyone. Not good that.

DW

Burnley 2 v Hull City 0

While Burnley were winning the game against Hull City at Turf Moor the BBC web site was persistently showing that the match was being drawn 1 : 1. Even when they put up the full time score it still said 1 : 1 draw. Just checked their videprinter and it shows a 2 : 0 win for the Clarets. Get in!

Then again, as Fulham were winning 3 : 1 over Liverpool, the BBC site was showing a 2 : 1 lead for Liverpool.

DW

Still Hounded by HP

Let me be optimistic and say that the new Touchsmart tablet pc I got from HP recently is working well.

Today we bought four new HP printers and I set out to install one for myself. On my HP tablet all is well. As for the Acer Extensa laptop, pshaw! Not only would the printer not behave itself but when i uninstalled the software that came with the thing and then carried out a system restore, I found I had lost a LOT of vital data. For some reason, the files I have lost are, by and large, those that I had not backed up on other computers/hard disks.

It’s weird and driving me wild.

I am trying another route to sanity.

DW

Yet Another Cheating Premiership Player ... well, one of the Usual Suspects

I am working and keeping an eye on the Chelsea v Blackburn Rovers match on the telly.

I heard a call for a penalty and turned to the screen to see Didier Drogba in close up. Immediately I said to myself, he just dived. The replay shows the archetypical arched back collapse in a heap cheating dive that is the hallmark of English football these days. He dived.

The sad thing is that Chelsea were leading 3 : 0 at the time. There is just no need for cheating at that level of the game.

DW

What?

I have just prepared and published two posts here but clearly there is something wrong with Blogger at the moment as I cannot access this blog: I can access Duncan's Diacritical Discussion, my other Blogger based Blog.

This is what I saw when I opened this Blog ... no use to me at all so I have written to Blogger asking them why they assume I can use the language local to where I am simply because I am where I am. Clots!

DW

Do Tectonic Plates SLAM into each other?

I read a report this morning about an earthquake: not the BBC but a site whose name has already gone. Well, they said that earthquakes in the region under discussion have come as a result of one tectonic plate slamming into another one several million years ago.

Now really, can something moving at maybe one centimetre or even one metre a year really be said to have slammed into something?

DW

You're Having a Laugh Mr Gates!

I have fallen for this one AGAIN! I like the idea of booting up a computer and then, rather than cold booting after a break or at the start of a new day, warm booting via the snooze/hibernate button.

Well, it's a right laugh. You might be able to do that once. No, let me be kind and say twice. Then you will find that after it has been warm booted three times it cannot cope: addins stop working, even MS's own programmes stop responding and we get the blue spinning wheel of death for up to five minutes at a time, access to some apparently running programs freezes.

So, you have to restart the computer.

This comes 24 hours after the launch of Windows 7 and although I will buy Windows 7 and I have read and heard A LOT of marketing guff about the new system, I am not that confident that it will give me the kind of experience that I know the average Apple Mac user is experiencing. Don't know about Linux and other OS users but I'll bet there is a lot less frustration with other established OS than there is with most flavours of Windows.

Windows XP seemed good by comparison with what went before: I saw the BSOD very rarely, things seemed more reliable. Of course boot times are slow and they get slower and slower very quickly as you load and use your computer more and more. Against the grain, Vista impressed me by the way it did things in a better way and more efficiently too: even error reporting and recovery seemed more impressive than before. Now, this Vista driven laptop is coming up to one year old and a 5 minute cold boot is fast for it: I even gave the thing an 840Mb boost by letting Windows use a 1Gb micro drive to speed up my system. Pah! (See my post, Gatesed Again!) The blue spinning wheel of death is a more frequent visitor now.

These Windows people often promise that the launch of a new version of their products is a new build, relying on nothing from before: I think they have given the lie to that now. Moreover, things like menus that are used throughout MS products are not consistent: they can look and behave differently even within Office products let alone between Office and Window and so on.

What really irritates me is that I know from my work that even now only 25% or so of the Office population has upgraded from Office 2003 to 2007. I also know from my web stats that 90% or so of my visitors are using a Windows platform to do so.

Gates and his colleagues took the microcomputer world by storm and by aggression throughout the 80s and 90s and we are now suffering from the monopoly they have created. I wonder what will happen, what will MS do, if Windows 7 flops like Vista did and like Office 2007 did?

We need a knight in shining armour. Along those lines, take a look at the Apple iMac just announced: stunning if everything they say is true. Then look at the new mouse that comes with the system: it's called a Magic Mouse. This magic mouse seems to me to be the new iPod/iTouch: the free thinking development that makes anyone wearing a baseball cap say, Wow! Amazing! It IS an astonishing mouse that Gates and his team could never come up with. Start here and no, I am not working for Apple or anyone connected with them ... http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_mac/family/imac?cid=&cp=2712&sr=em

I have mentioned before that apart from Windows Live Writer, which is just one tiny application really, there is nothing about MS products that make me think that's amazing; and I mean amazing in its true an literal sense, not in the sense that is used by people of limited vocabulary who infest our screens and newspapers now.

Rant over!

DW

Gatesed AGAIN!

Why did I want to believe that Microsoft would keep a promise?

As with many people I accumulate odds and ends and one of these is a 1Gb micro memory card that I used to have in a phone until I bought an 8Gb card to replace it. I then put and kept that 1Gb card in this laptop to use it as and when necessary. Every time I switched the computer on I got a message announcing that it had found something new ... offering to let me look at the files on there or offering to use the card to help to speed up my system.

I fell for it and said, OK use the card to speed up my system. Windows told me it wanted at least 840 Mb of the 1,000 Mb on the card. Initially I thought that's just stupid because I can only use the remaining 160 Mb on the card for files and so forth. Anyway, I gave it a go and watched as the computer booted for the first time under this new and speedier regime.

Did I say speedier? I meant, under this new and completely unchanged regime. NO discernible change in performance at all that I can see. Maybe there are some hidden things happening that Microsoft is really proud of. As for me, I just feel more anti Gates frustration. I still keep wondering how the world fell for this chump so hard and for so long. Moreover, where is the competition to break the cycle of Microsoft domination to get rid of all of this Microsoft nonsense?

DW

Oxbridge and the Aristocracy

You may not have noticed the changes taking place in broadcasting and the media.

For centuries the aristocracy and Oxbridge graduates have dominated or les Fleet Street and then the BBC. You might not know that many comedians, cooks, actors and warblers are from the aristocracy and Oxbridge. Not just the obvious ones like the Monty Python team and the Goodies either. A LOT more than that.

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Look at that and more!

In addition to amazing and passion and basically I am adding 'look at that' to my list of words and phrases to be banned from the language when the revolution comes.

'Look at that' is uttered by just about everyone on the telly who even so much as lifts a pan or a skillet let alone prepares something reasonable.

The extreme case was when the least good of the Hairy Bikers said 'look at that' when he had put some uncooked rice grains in a pan with some butter. I thought, look at WHAT?

I should add that any programme that remotely hints at DIY or building face lifts stays unwatched as I cannot bear to see EVERYONE at the end of such programmes as they open their eyes and say, 100% guarantee of this, 'Oh my God!' I find that so unnecessary and offensive.

Just been reminded of yet another one: national treasure. Grossly over used and mis applied. There are very few national treasures as it is a highly reserved concept. Thora Hird is the last one I can think of. What these media types do is to confuse frequency with treasure trove. Simply seeing someone like Stephen Fry everywhere ALL of the time does not, NOT, make him a treasure.

DW


Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Don't Bathe your iPhone

Please be advised that I do NOT own or use an iPhone; but don't let that stop you from reading on.

If you feel you must use your iPhone whilst taking a bath, keep it OUT of the water. Unless, of course, you want it to stop working from time to time, to lose its signal from time to time, to drop calls frequently. If you are happy with that, drop it in the water.

DW

My new Home Office

I am now within a gnat’s nadger of finishing the complete refurbishment of my office at home and here’s the film to prove it. I chose Frank Sinatra singing the background song to reflect the fact that the office is very nearly finished (… and now, the end is near …), it’s a one off … unique in all respects!

DW

Come on Ireland

Watching Republic of Ireland v Italy and Ireland have just scored a belter. Keep it up lads.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

using the Tablet

This post has been written on my H P Tablet laptop. I am writing this by hand using a stylus: on the screen. No typing. All magically.

Except. I just typed that last full stop.

I hope now that this computer will give me long a faithful service.

Au revoir!

DW

CAPTCHA

Ever heard of CAPTCHA? I'll bet you have! It stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

Did you know that when you use a CAPTCHA, which is where you do what you do on a web site and then have to type in those numbers and letters that are shown in a box before you press enter or submit, you might actually being used to solve a problem?

Apparently, some of the words/phrases used in CAPTCHA boxes have been causing problems arising from scanning texts: so, if you get it right, you might have solved a particularly difficult transcription problem for someone.

I got this from this month's Harvard Business Review which says that this wheeze is helping to transcribe the equivalent of 150,000 books a year, labour that would otherwise require 37,500 full time workers. Don't take that too literally as I think the operative word there is helping.

I think this is such a good idea.

DW

My new office

I am building my new office along with my neighbour Malcolm. We have been enjoying learning how to measure and saw and paint ... the biggest learning event for me was learning how to saw a piece of wood perfectly squarely. How did I do that after decades of misshapes?

The answer is that I learned to use a try square and a saw at the same time: hold the try square right up against the saw and take it carefully and as if by magic both horizontal and vertical sawing actions seem to behave themselves.

The office is really coming on now and I have already tested out the built in desk and so on. By the end of the weekend everything should be finished. I will reveal all here don't worry!

DW

Is that the Piece Prize?

Is it time to step off the planet now? The Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama? Are they joking? So far Obama has proven himself a decent sort of a chap but how on earth can he be said to have done enough to warrant such recognition?

Then again, at least they didn't give it to Kissinger again. Now there was a travesty if ever there was one. Actually, probably the biggest travesty in the whole of human history.

DW

Windows Live Writer is good!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now that I have just received my replacement HP tablet pc and have just set up Windows Live Writer on it: Live Writer is very good, very impressive and I am writing this with it! I know, not that advanced but it set itself up and works with no bother.

DW