Donkeys years ago, before I became the libertarian anarchist I am today, I used to live in a house numbered '103'. In 1990 my family left that house behind and moved into new domiciles. But the number '103' wasn't finished with us yet.
If you've seen the film '23' starring Jim Carrey, it's much the same story for me, only my face isn't quite as rubbery.
Do you ever look down at your feet while lying in bed and think "wow, that's how that's going to look on the gurney when I'm dead"?
Well, being a nervous flier, that's the gear my mind changes into a few days before blasting across the sky in a pressurised tube at 80% the speed of sound. This time, we were jetting to that city of ancient history, Rome! Or, 'Roma' as the locals call it. Poor sods, dyslexia must be rife on The Old Boot.
If I started a business offering, lets say, cabbages, all shapes and sizes, lovely cabbages, but whenever somebody ordered one of my splendid green cabbages from my wonderful and very expensive marketing literature I delivered to them a small wind-up penguin toy, I don't think my business would last for very long. And yet this is exactly what the British Government is doing every single day.
2010 came in with a whimper everywhere except in Australia. What has been coined as 'Y2K.1' struck a bank in the upside down land which caused thousands of chip 'n' pin machines to believe it was 2016... thus rendering the Castlemaine XXXX drinkers' cards useless as the system claimed they had expired.
Of course, as everybody knows, we're all going to die in 2012 anyway (John Cusack said so) so this is doubly stupid; of course that is if we assume that this is actually 2010. And the evidence suggests it isn't... My favourite lunchtime toilet fodder is El Reg, a science and technology news site, and they say it might actually be 2015. Or 2014. Or 2006...
I know without even looking that when I'm stuck in a long queue of traffic, that car whizzing down the empty outside lane with its indicator on, trying to push into my lane, will either be a BMW or a 1999 Vauxhall Astra in silver driven by a twenty-something bloke in a beanie hat.
Uhhhh, but you can keep the weird tinfoil boiler suit...
You will have noticed, as I have, that not even that source of all things engineeringly wonderful (Audi) have brought out something that takes you to work in the morning at 3,000 feet.
So if we want to get to work at 3,000 ft, we either have to be a Certified Flight Instructor, own a microlight (and, um, work somewhere with a half decent sized lawn), or drive a plane near the Hudson last February... although you'll not be at 3,000ft for long...
And some ill-disguised finger pointing at the Big Software Co's....
Software is something that was once the produce of people with collossal beards who lived in dark rooms, wore sandals, and looked down their glasses-adorned noses at the proles who didn't even know simple two's-complement binary arithmetic.
But now everybody's at it, and some are getting it completely wrong. Somebody needs to lay down the ground rules for software and it might as well be me.
Due to the incompetence of Freeola (our domain host), who don't feel the need to take backups of their web server, LostJohnnies.com will be temporarily offline while we rebuild the site from our own backups.
I was watching Transporter 3 the other day and drooling over the delicious V12 S8 in it when I was intrigued to know just how much it would cost to buy an Audi A8...
A quick visit to Auto Trader revealed the shocking answer that I could more-or-less swap my A4 for a year-older A8 with more kit than PC World on board. Gotta love recessions!
Having recently seen Zeitgeist (see my previous blog) and suddenly becoming wildly paranoid about everything, I have built up some theories about Air France flight 447 and why it's suddenly 'vanished'.
First, I am pretty certain the mystery of the disappearance will continue long after the black boxes are recovered, and I am certain that the French government are already planning how to convincingly 'lose' the black boxes before their contents are revealed to the public.
This week sees North Korea, henceforth Nork due to its similarity to a colloquial term for boobies, being exceptionally stupid and waving a giant intercontinental ballistic red flag at the nuclear superpowers.
Nork deemed it necessary to show off how big the brains are of its scientists and launch a satellite into space using a Taepodong-2 (I shit you not) long-range missile.
And the award for "couldn't provide worse customer service if they tried" goes to...
What a fucking farce.
How hard can it be? The process is this: Customer comes into your shop, they see a sofa (or set of sofas) that they like, they exchange money for a receipt, then at a subsequent date the sofas are taken off the back of a van and put inside the customer's house.
Now she can park in the disabled parking bays in heaven...
This morning Jade Goody has died after what the BBC are calling "a high profile battle with cancer".
Well I'm sorry, I know you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but I didn't like her. I haven't liked her at any point of knowing of her, so why should anything change now? My integrity is something I am proud of and here I am sticking to my guns.
Always one to look on the bright side of life *whistles*, I have tried to find the brighter side of this economic downturn that we all find ourselves in.
More specifically, lately I have been trying to find out why we might be experiencing this right now. Everything has a purpose, I find, and things always turn out for the best.
You should all know by now that I am a conspiracy-loving nut-job who takes great pleasure in casting a dubious eye over those overlords of our digital lives: Google and Microsoft. And damned right I am to do so.
Microsoft software is getting worse and worse. I bought Grand Theft Auto IV this weekend from Morrisons (a supermarket - err - 'mall' for our US readers) for the princely sum of £9.99. A saving of around £29 of it's RRP. What a deal!!
Word up bi'atches. I'm about to get serious on yo' asses.
Last week, Tuesday if memory serves, and it often fails to, a very important event occurred on the World Stage that will forever change global thinking.
As I write this I'm watching Californication with ex-X-Files ummm, and ex-XXX, 'star' David Doo-kuv-knee (spelled Duchovny apparently) and it's freaking awesome.
This should be on every teenager's must-watch list.
Knows when you're stressed before you do, apparently.
NASA, once the most advanced technology developer on Earth, has apparently abandoned space exploration in favour of becoming the world's first public-sponsored milliner.
Their latest hare-brained scheme involves the production of a hat that pilots wear that lets them know when they're getting "mentally overloaded".
Last week sometime, I was choosing from a selection of songs freshly ripped from some new albums I had just legitimately purchased (I had no idea that MP3s are actually silver discs when sold in retail outlets!), the tool I was using? Well, Ahead Nero 6 that I legitimately purchased back in '04 doesn't work with my legitimate Windows XP x64 install (the error message displayed says I need to go a purchase a new version for it to work with x64?!! WTF, go shag yourselves up the arse with a something girthy, blunt and rusty. Why not be decent codemonkeys and just make your product x64 and x86 compatible? Like every other company is doing?
Are the Germans just trying to polish a Czech turd?
Skoda is the brand of choice for taxi drivers and eastern Europeans. Neither are renouned for being particularly noteworthy on the world stage.
In fact, the best thing to come out of taxi drivers is a way of transporting you, and your obligatory kebab, home on a Friday night when your blood system is so full of hops and barley it's practically muesli, and Eastern Europe hasn't done anything for us except Milla Jovovich...
Patriotism at 900 metres per second is the best kind.
My alarm sounds at 6.45am and I leap out of bed and land in the shower. Moments later I am out, dried and dressed in my best non-issue Disruptive Pattern Material clothing (night urban).
I am an eager beaver this Saturday morning because I have a day of new experiences ahead of me.
OK. You may (or may not - I'm sure you have better things to do with your time) have noticed that this article falls into the category of 'Google Watch', a category that has been sitting under the 'categories' list on the left there for quite some time. I've been meaning to post this blog for a while because I have a dystopic outlook on life, and I can see some worrying trends occurring in front of our eyes that we're all ignoring.
OK. First things, a pet peeve of mine. Google is often stated as having the company motto of "Don't Be Evil". This isn't technically true. The media seem to have paraphrased their original slogan of "You don't have to be evil to make money", and for all I know the company may have adopted the shorter, more PR-friendly version internally by now, but that original one scares teh hell out of me. It's like Ford or General Motors saying "You don't have to drive a gas guzzling, environment destroying car everywhere"... It's true, but it's hardly the concrete foundations of their business principles. And yet we all seem to be watching Google make some startling forays into areas of great concern and sensitivity with our eyes wide shut.
Man wins serious argument with woman. Alchemy blamed.
Tonight, I was having a discussion with one of the guys at my Taekwondo club and a most startling revelation was... umm... revealed.
The chap is a loyal LJ reader (hi Steve!) so to protect his identity, I will call him Mr X. Mr X admitted to achieving something that us mere mortal men can only dream of; in fact it begs the question: just how bound are we to the "laws" of Physics?
Flights of fantasy and when Money Black Holes Collide
GooHoo!, then. If I said the "Goo" bit was Google, and the "Hoo!" bit was Yahoo!, you'd be most of the way there.
Microsoft have recently been bidding for Yahoo!'s search service (note, the exclamation! point! is! required!) prompting headlines of "Microhoo!" in the global geek, business and financial press. However, this week negotiations fell through, Yahoo! lost some of its stock price, and Microsoft have been left with their Windows applications and very little in the way of an Internet presence... step forward young thirty-something billionaires, Sergey Brin and Larry Page: founders and Presidents of Google, Inc. Yahoo! and Google have just signed a deal so Google will provide Yahoo! with advertising and search technology.
Ian doesn't get mentioned enough on LJ. In a positive way I mean.
But if you trawl through the history of blogs he is mentioned quite a alot as being a fellow combatant with the enviable task of having a bloody good laugh.
Hypothetically, lets say you have your first MOT coming up, it's a new executive German saloon car that you've just bought, and the shocking news that the MOT will be £300 before you even step in the door leaves your jaw hanging about ankle-height.
Reluctantly, you budget £300 from your monthly salt but have other ideas about what you'd like to spend that cash on... namely, a PS3 with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue... Stupid Germans... So you hatch a plan.
It's been a busy weekend here in Richville. Frankly, I needed it. For various family health reasons, I've been feeling a bit low of late and this weekend has provided much needed distraction.
A man asked a waiter to take a bottle of Merlot to an unusually attractive woman sitting alone at a table in a cozy little restaurant. The waiter took the Merlot to the woman and said, "This is from the gentleman who is seated over there." He indicated the sender with a nod of his head.
She stared at the wine cooly for a few seconds, not looking at the man, she decided to send a reply to him by note. The waiter, who was lingering nearby for a response, took the note from her and conveyed it to the gentleman.
Rich and G, a microphone, and some butchered music.
"Musical prodigies", "The next Gilbert and Sullivan" and "The bastard offspring of Freddy Mercury and Shirley Bassey" are just some of the amazingly complimentary words that haven't been used to describe the output of when G and I meet up for some musical goodness.
I don't know if you've noticed, but lately there's been quite a lot of wind around.
You must think the national grid are rubbing their mits together from all the free power the wind farms around the country are generating, as I did, but a bit of research this lunchtime reveals otherwise.
I was excellently impressed this afternoon when I read an old 24th September 2007 article about Hungary's measures to attract an income from the legal practice (there) of body sellage.
Prostitutes in Hungary can now apply for an "entrepreneurs permit", they give receipts and they pay taxes.
We all know Beckham can bend it like... himself, and if you want inch-perfect strikes from the halfway line then Gerrard or Rooney are your men.
But there is a lot of talent floating about the streets of Britain that doesn't get seen. But none of this compares to the talent obviously floating around the back streets of Brazil...
What's in store for the creme de la creme of the world's motorsports?
I'm typing this from my new mobile phone so apologies if it doesn't meet my usual standards of grammar/spelling Naziism... I do think this is testament to how fooking well we're doing as a species, when a fella can blog from anywhere in the world (provided, of course, you're within range of an unsecured wireless hotspot) at any time.
Yes, technology is moving on at phenomenal pace... but blogging isn't the only subject to be benefiting from boffins leveraging their latest toys and gadgets, my favourite subject in the whole world is also using the cutting edge tech to show off exactly what we, as a species, can do. That subject, unsurprisingly, is cars. And the part of the 'cars' genre that is at the very pinnacle of development is Formula 1.
Normally, for lunch, I nip along to our coffee shop here at work and purchase a pannini of some description, bacon and cheese, ham and cheese, cheese and cheese, for example; sometimes I go four a flour-tortilla wrap, tuna and sweetcorn being a current favourite.
Either option, though, is £2.20. Not really that bad.
2007's been a crazy year. We've seen the rapid growth of the Nintendo Wii as THE games console to have, Britney Spears has went from crazy messed-up bitch to something out of a Richard O'Brien film and Top Gear has went from entertaining car-themed television programme to a circus side-show of incredibly bad hair.
Audi have become a very popular brand lately and not without good reason. Their car build quality is without rival, the range of cars available is recognised throughout the industry as having the best interior of any vehicles on the road (with possible exception left to the Bugatti Veyron... but that's a special case as we all know...). And the bold design change in 2003 giving the range that gaping-mouth grille has been very well received.
But I'm an Audi fanatic, I drink, sleep and eat Audi. I annoy my family and friends with obscure knowledge of the Audi R10 Le Mans racer's turbo diesel engine. I leer wantonly as I pass the Audi dealership on the way into town. So naturally, I'm going to say their design direction is spot on, their cars are beyond compare, and their styling is impeccable... aren't I?
Tonight, I watched Airline on UKTV Discovery ITV +1 hour Sky Digital MTV Unnecessary Punctionation! Geographic. On Freeview (Sky TV being so expensive these days only people on the dole can afford it!). And I watched 30 minutes of emotive, edge-of-the-seat television. It was wonderful.
For starters, there was a woman, short, bleached hair, and her daughter (who was probably as unsure of her mother's sexuality as we were). She had arrived late for her plane, granted it was 5 minutes late, but she was late. Simple as that.
Today, three architects from 'the big M' turned up at work today and gave a stunning, enthralling five hour presentation (10am - 3pm) on their next generation of developer software and a peek into the world of some of their new technologies.
Warning: The following is extremely geeky. If you suddenly find the urge to hug your knees and rock back and forth, we highly recommend you try reading a blog about F1 instead... - Rich.
In a shocking turnaround from the race two weeks ago in Côt D'Azure, Monte Carlo, which was the most boring race ever to have been raced (and I once saw a snail race) the Canadian Grand Prix was easily the most eventful race in the past three years of Formula One. And what a grand finale.
"The most boring Monaco Grand Prix in history" - The Sun
The build-up was electric. Monaco is undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of the Formula One season and it was finally here.
Expectation was high for the new English rookie, Lewis Hamilton. He was leading the World Championship after four races leaving Finnish "Ice Man" Raikonnen, greasy Brazilian Massa and current title-holding Champion (his team-mate) Fernando Alonso in his 22-year-old dust. But Lewis was yet to win a race, hell he'd only had four of them so far, it was only his consistency that pulled him through to lead.
A guide to ActiveX for both experienced software developers and preschoolers alike.
One day last week, a chap on my team at work broke his computer with the effectiveness that only a veteran software engineer can do. Jokingly, I sent him a link to a "Computers for Beginners"-style book on Amazon. In return, he mailled me a link that forever changed the way I think about computers. And bunnies.
For some reason, my PC was going slow and the Amazon page he had linked me to refused to do anything but be a nice shade of white. The guy then asked my to search Google for a different retailer of the book. "Just search for Mr Bunny", he said.
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2007's been a crazy year. We've seen the rapid growth of the Nintendo Wii as THE games console to have, Britney Spears has went from crazy messed-up bitch to something out of a Richard O'Brien film and Top Gear has went from entertaining car-themed television programme to a circus side-show of incredibly bad hair.