This Week I Are Been Mostly Listenin' To.........

I like new music. I like things I haven't heard before.

The beautiful FMA and I often have conversations about the subject, she thinks I listen to the most horrendous rubbish, I like to think I have eclectic tastes.

Anyway, I heard a song on the radio when I was out in the car the other day - "Ray Charles" by Chiddy Bang. It was playing, the sun was shining and it put me in a great mood. What more could a chap ask for?

I listened to it on my iphone today - clearly this version is not the radio edit. It's a weird thing, I know what the swearwords are on the version that's broadcast friendly (the editing really does a laughably crap job of disguising the effing and jeffing), but at least they made the effort. Every time he swears on this version I wince.

Oh dear god. Seeing the benefits of a bit of censorship. 

Pass the Basildon Bond Marjory, I feel a stiffly-worded letter to his management team coming on.

Yours disgruntledly

Colonel Stanley Thrumpton-Smythe (retired).

Oooooh, Matron.

Last night, I was in the Trade Counter locking up at the end of the day. Super's phone buzzed, discreetly announcing the arrival of a text.

She picked it up. She read the text. She scowled.

I asked what was up.

Super has quite a few gay friends, including her best friend. The text was from him.

He wanted to know how you can find out the size of someone's ring without them knowing. Super asked if I might know.

After I stopped laughing I told her that if a gay man didn't know then it probably wasn't possible.

She gave me a withering look and explained that they were thinking of getting married. I think it's nice that they're saving themselves.

NDC

SOPA

Our friends over in The Land of the ████ and the Home of the Brave are currently looking at a bill that could infringe hugely on the internet and their ██████ of speech.

I know that the bill is initially concerned with protection of intellectual property rights, but there are a few sleeper clauses in there too, which could lead to some fairly major invasions of privacy.

From there, censorship is just a small hop, skip and a ████ away. Just ask Kim-Jong-██.

Imagine not being able to say on you blog that ████████ is a ████████, that ████████ slept with ████████████, or that the new ██████ is a load of steaming ████████.

I'm sorry to say it but I think the whole thing is a crock of ████ and the SOPA bill should be rolled up and stuck right up ████████'s ████.

There, I said it. I'll expect a call from The Thought Police in due course.

███

WTF? II

Sometimes, words are superfluous.

NDC

OK, OK, I'll Talk....

"Tony" came wandering in to the office today and asked to borrow some jumpleads.

I truly hope his car had a flat battery. He probably just wanted the disposable gloves so that he didn't get oil on his hands.

Right?

NDC

Sledghammer/Walnut

For a little while now, The Mum has been after a new PC. To be fair the one she had was getting on a bit and was mind-bendingly slow. She asked last year if I would go with her to help pick one, but things were a bit hectic up until Christmas so it wasn't until last week that we finally met up in the Mecca for vaguely bemused elderly middle-class folks that is the John Lewis IT department.

We had a discussion about what tasks the computer would be used for ("Sometimes going to the M&S website, sometimes booking theatre tickets online, a few emails and typing the odd letter"). We discussed portability (not important) and screen size (very important). Eventually after a bit of looking around we settled on a quite nice all-in-one PC. Nothing too outrageous but a good size screen, a seperate graphics card and a decent amount of RAM & disc space, all for a shade less than a laptop.

Happy that my not-buying-something-entirely-inappropriate work was done and with the office calling, I headed back to work.

The following day I got a phonecall;

"Hello, it's your Mum. What's the difference between a PC and a Mac?"

I struggled to answer the question in a context that would make sense. Eventually I settled on the the concept that it's like the difference between a Ford and a Jaguar. Both will get you reliably from A to B, but the Jag will do it a bit more stylishly (and cost you twice as much).

So now The Mum has a 21.5" iMac sitting in its box in her office, waiting for me to set it up. I will weep with envy and radiate covetousness as I unpack it. But I bet the M&S website will look ace on it.

NDC

A Life on the Ocean Wave

Yusef, the guy who runs the corner shop just up the road from my business, supplier of milk, baked beans, chocolate, the occasional free mango and cheerful bonhomie in the face of  pretty well everything, has been on holiday over Christmas with his wife.

It was my first morning back in the office today and he told me all about it when I wandered in for coffee at 8am. A three week cruise in the Caribbean, complete with  a helicopter ride over Aruba and a submarine trip to the sea bed.

Yusef doesn't like heights. Or water.

Yes, he was still very cheerful. I like to think I'm pretty "glass-half-full" kind of chap, but I am merely a Second Division ray of sunshine in comparison to the Premier League Superstar of Chirpiness that is Yusef. I suspect he would be cheerful whilst being mugged at gunpoint.

And the best bit? The whole lot was paid for by his two twentysomething sons. Now it makes sense.

Boy Wonder, take note. If you're reading this and the year is now 2026, Mrs Adventures and I have our bags packed and are awaiting your call. Of course we are more than happy to pay for the taxi to the airport/spaceport/teleportation pod.

NDC