I want an iPod. More specifically, I want an iPod photo 60gb. They currently stand at

We just saw a very old couple coming down the drive. A rather old man was pushing a woman in a wheelchair, who only stood up when they got to the front door. Dad answered, unsure if he was meant to know who they were, and the man said “Hello, sir, I’d like to talk to you about some of the shocking events that are happening in the world today”. Yep, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The manipulative little zealots. Yeah, it could be sheer chance that they use people one would feed badly about arguing with, but I rather doubt that. I’d probably have thought twice before disagreeing, but I imagine my sheer dislike of their particular brand of muppetry would have won over in the end. I have a humanist speech printed out somewhere around here, actually…Thankfully Dad told them we were rather busy and couldn’t spare the time.

I learnt this evening that a class at Arden School raised

UPDATE: Done.

Just in the middle of a fairly complex upgrade of the wiki. If you attempt to edit anything right now, the sky will fall upon your head.

According to CNet News, Yahoo have bought out Flickr. Hummm. I don’t like this paragraph very much:

Stevens said Flickr will remain a standalone site for now. The company’s employees, however, will relocate to Sunnyvale later this year.

I really hope they don’t integrate it with their existing site. Yahoo’s always been something of a mess.

UPDATE: Apparently I needn’t worry. I particularly like this:

Are you going to become Yahoo Photos?

No. Yahoo Photos will get a lot of Flickr features, and there are alot of other areas around Yahoo that will also be Flickrized where Flickrization would be good. Yahoo Photos and Flickr have different kinds of users with different needs, and will remain separate for the foreseeable future. Flickr would also suffer from a sudden deluge of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg! so we’re going to grow it carefully.

Nod and I met up with Simon and Ed:

at Baker Street, and it was such a pleasant day that we decided to wander around London for a while. We headed over to Trafalgar Square, where we found this:

which was, quite frankly, bizarre. I don’t know whether they’d been marching around London before, but they were circling the square for all the time we were watching. A large stage by Nelson’s Column held various speakers, who were somewhat vociferous regarding their subjects, which varied tremendously. If you look at the larger version of the above photo you’ll be able to see many different placards and banners. ‘No Nukes’ was my favourite. I’d also like to ban spiders, if it’s at all possible. There were also people from the ‘Respect’ party (really various Socialist Workers Partys under a general name) and, strangely the RMT. I even heard somebody on stage say, to a large roar from the crowd, that the railways should be deprivatized. Quite what that has to do with war I don’t know.

Speaking of which, what war? There’s a war on? The main thrust of this march was to bring the troops home. Remember, this is the same Stop the War collation who said:

The StWC reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends.

Like blowing people up, for example. Nice. Anyway, the whole thing was pretty silly. It annoys me that they don’t actually discuss any real issues at these things. People run around holding signs saying ‘Bush: World’s #1 Terrorist’, and ‘Stop the war in Iran’ (who’s talking about invading Iran? stop making up this crap) and the police have to do this:

They were blocking every exit, and Whitehall had at least ten vans full of officers. We even saw mounted police down one side street. Just think of all the good they could be doing around the rest of the city instead of babysitting these people. The only good thing was that traffic was blocked off for a good radius, so we could walk freely down Whitehall and around the square without worry.

Nod, Ed, Simon and I hung around making sarcastic comments for a while, then walked down Whitehall. Downing Street had extra protection at the gates, and armed officers. We walked past the houses of parliament, across the bridge and then down to the always impressive London Eye:

I always forget quite how cool it actually is Past the Eye were various street entertainers who danced, juggled or stood very still. I liked the man who, holding a long didgeridoo-like tube, had a sign saying ‘SEE THE AMAZONIAN MONKEY! LOOK IN TUBE’. So I did. As I looked in he started jabbering like a monkey with his mouth to the other end of the tube, and inside I did indeed see a monkey. There was a mirror which flipped the lower half of his face vertically, and he’d stuck two grey eyes onto his beard. It was exquisitely ridiculous, but rather amusing and I felt he deserved some money for sheer cheek These guys also made me laugh:

After sitting in a coffee shop for a while we headed to Leicester Square and saw Hostage, for

Nod and I set out on our London trip at 9:15 yesterday morning. First thing we came across in the train station was a man getting stroppy with the attendant. He was annoyed about his train being cancelled, and suggesting that a sign be put up outside the station. I’ve never really understood people who are ‘only trying to be helpful’ in a cross manner. They’re not at all, they just want to be cross. Anyway, we arrived in London perfectly on time and promptly headed over to Mile End for the UK Web Comix Thing 2005 (damned if I know how it’s meant to be written).

It was a busy little convention, as it turned out. 40 or so comics were in attendance, although I must admit to only having heard of Bunny, Little Gamers and Weeble and Bob (who, incidentally, were also behind Badger Badger), all of whom we met and chatted to. I’m not really up on the whole webcomics scene, but it was very interesting to see the people behind it all. They were just like you and me, really Except able to draw…I find Bunny the most entertaining and I was happy to find that Lem seemed to be a cool guy.

Nod bought various items, including half the Bunny stock, and came away happy I think. I ummed and aahhed over a signed Bunny booklet for a few minutes (dunno why, they were a bargainous 50p) then went back to find they were sold out! We live and learn.

There was a ‘24 minute comic’ competition while we were there, and it was very interesting to watch the various artists at work. Some did the entire comic themselves, but most that I saw had somebody to sketch the outline and another to actually line the drawings properly. Strange, that. I know that’s how ‘professional’ comic artists work too, so it’s obviously an effective method.

I found the comics on the whole to be fairly coarse, with a couple of notable exceptions. Bunny, LG and WB were definitely the most ‘mainstream’ of the comics there, which I think had a lot to do with quality of artwork, ability to spell and actually being amusing. There were a couple there that seemed to be based mainly around swearing and violence, and that alone. I don’t mind those two qualities providing they’re for a reason or for comedic intent, but I don’t find them entertaining on their own. But that could just be that I haven’t ‘got’ them yet, or just don’t have the right sense of humour! I bought one compilation (no need to mention The Goldfish Bowl specifically) which I read on the train home. Nod was rather amused at the series of ‘what the hell’s and ‘I don’t think this makes any sense’s that ensued. Still, it’s all interesting I probably just need educating.

After leaving the convention we headed into London, but that’s another post.

Just back from the station. Phew. That was what you could call a busy day I had an excellent time, hopefully I’ll have a chance to write it up in the morning. Glad to see my photo uploading worked!

Von Neumann machines? Otherwise known as replicators, and within a few years? Really really?

Parcelforce are annoying me. The last three times I’ve ordered anything from Amazon, it’s been too heavy for standard post so has shipped Parcelforce.

Parcel no. 1: Didn’t turn up for three days. Parcelforce website said that it had been delivered and signed for. And said signature was a squiggle. Bit weird. It finally turned up when a neighbour brought it round, it having been left in her porch. Not signed for in the slightest, then.

Parcel no. 2: This was a present for somebody in London, so I had it posted straight there. He lives in a flat, and despite being ill at home all week, managed to ‘miss’ the three attempted deliveries the Parcelforce website claimed to have attempted. There’s no way he missed all three! He looked and looked for a missed parcel note, but nothing was there. Finally he arranged to have it shipped to his local post office, which never happened as it disappeared en route (the parcel, not the PO). Eventually, three weeks after ordering, they found it and managed to deliver it.

Parcel no. 3: Ordered and shipped on Monday. Arrived at Parcelforce depot on Tuesday, and was sent out for delivery on Wednesday. Then it arrived back at the depot for no apparent reason. Nothing happened on Thursday, but happily today it was again sent out for delivery. Nothing’s arrived, though. It’s annoying, as there are four copies of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom meant to be arriving.

Entertainingly, the Parcelforce website currently says this:

The Parcelforce Worldwide website will be unavailable this weekend (Friday, March 18 to Sunday, March 20) while service improvements are carried out.

Well, yeah. I’m sure that Parcelforce aren’t entirely useless, but this is the third time in a row, to different addresses! It’s just aggravating. I emailed Amazon just to say that the delivery problems were making me less likely to order from them, although I could appreciate it’s not really their fault. I got a decent reply from them, actually:

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk with your comments about Parcelforce.

I am sorry to hear that you are not satisfied with the service that you have received from us.

In order to improve our service, we have implemented a revised dispatch method that allows for some of our packages to be traceable and to have guaranteed delivery. Currently, packages weighing a certain amount or over a certain value are automatically upgraded to Parcelforce. Some of our customers prefer to have this service as their packages are traceable and have no risk of being left outside.

We are committed to delivering your order from the moment it is placed. This is the reason why we have provisions in place should problems occur at any stage. We take full responsibility should any item become lost or damaged while being delivered and we are more than happy to replace these items at a cost to ourselves.

We find the service offered by Parcelforce to be excellent and this is primarily the reason why we are using their services. The vast majority of our orders are usually delivered well within the expected delivery time, however, occasionally a package may be damaged or delayed, perhaps even lost during the delivery process. This is not a common occurrence but when it does happen, we take full responsibility and will endeavour to find a solution.

In addition to our large selection of goods, one of the benefits we’d like to offer our customers is convenience, and I realise that we have not met that standard in this case. I hope that you will give us another opportunity to prove the quality of our service to you in the future.

At the moment, we are not able to promise you that your future orders will not be dispatched by this method. However, the issues that you have mentioned will be forwarded to the appropriate department for
consideration. We truly value this kind of feedback, as it helps us continue to improve our website and provide a better service to our customers.

That’s the kind of customer service that I like I’m glad my comments have been passed on; I’d imagine that Amazon have rather a lot of pull with Parcelforce, so if enough people complain something should get done. I hope my books turn up on Monday.

The observant will notice a couple of changes to the site today. Google AdSense adverts will now be on all individual post pages (once Google adds them to the search index), as well as a banner link on the sidebar to the right. Sorry to have to do it, but I get a fair few hits from search engines, and if even a few of them click-thru then I’ll earn some money, and it’d be great to pay the hosting bills. Please let me know if they annoy you in any way, as I’ll remove/change them if so. Google are pretty good at displaying appropriate adverts, but please let me know if you see anything linking to adult-content or anything similar. My liberal use of a certain four-letter word beginning with a ‘w’ and ending with a ‘k’ might produce some odd results in this regard

I’ve got mechanics to be getting on with, but I just wanted to point out this fascinating article on ‘13 Things that Don’t Make Sense’. Number four is almost guaranteed to annoy you, though.