Three Minute Boy

Monday again. How glum. This weekend was spent amongst other things at the greyhound racing. I felt like Robbie Box from big deal. I just needed the camel hair jacket and I was there. We all clubbed in to put £75 on a tip we had for the last race. Disaster. It got clipped by one of the other dogs on the first bend and finished last. Should have seen it coming really.

I’m off to York tomorrow to speak at a conference. I’m more than slightly gutted that the venue is outside of the actual city. Due to train times, conference length and other such inconveniences, I am unlikely to have time to explore the beautiful city centre. York is one of my favourite cities in the world. Forget New York, the old one is a hundred times better. Whilst working out my routes to the venue, I had the opportunity to explore the city using Windows Live ‘birds eye’ view. As close as I’m going to get to seeing the tourist sights for the immediate future.

I may manage to convince the taxi driver to go via Micklegate Bar (thats a medieval gate, not a pub) though. Which would be nice.

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The weekend is nearly upon us and my plans for the weekend couldn’t be more diverse. Out for a couple of beers and a Chinese meal tonight. Tomorrow then consists of a 1st birthday party in the afternoon and then a stag do in Glasgow in the evening. We are going to the dogs. Literally. Shawfield greyhound racing to be precise.

Just before I go for the weekend, I am quite enjoying how the First Minister is calling everyone out for what happened to HBOS. Still loving that “spivs and speculators” vibe he’s giving out.

Fight. Fight. Fight. My money’s on the bloke with the thumbs.

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I’m very tired today. Last night was one of those nights where you mean to go to bed at 10pm but end up sitting up chatting. I eventually retired with a copy of Stephen King’s “It” at 11.40 and didn’t turn over to go to sleep until quarter past midnight.

I was given a very rude awakening this morning after I forgot to hit the big red switch before jumping in the shower. Needless to say, 3 seconds of cold water all over me and I jumped back out fairly sharpish. Just one of those bleary eyed, not paying attention moments.

I see that Lloyds TSB has merged with (for that read taken over) HBOS group and that there are fears that the name “Bank of Scotland”, which is Scotlands oldest bank, will cease to exist. Such a shame. I can’t help but feel lucky to have left that company when I did as 24,000 job losses across Scotland are speculatively predicted in todays Herald.

You’ve got to love it though when the First Minister uses the term “spiv” in Parliament.

Given that the country is once again beginning to feel like it did under Tory rule in the late eighties/early nineties, I really did feel like it was 1990 again when I saw a massive ‘Fido Dido’ on the side of a bus this morning, advertising 7 Up.

What next, a “Cool Spot” video game for the XBOX? A new EMF album?

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I’m all shiny today. All suited and booted. I have a presentation to deliver to a client. It’s been years since I’ve had to regularly wear a suit to work as both my current and my previous jobs have been fairly relaxed about what you wear. I mean, I’ve not pushed my luck and come in dressed as a pantomime horse or anything but they are flexible enough.

Smart work wear adds a series of complications to my working day. Crush avoidance for one. Travelling for 5 minutes on a 22 bus can easily negate an entire evenings careful ironing. My current addiction to beans on toast at lunchtime is another hazard. I can safely predict that I’ll be sitting at my desk at lunch with a napkin tucked into the collar of my shirt like Del Boy or some demented uncle at a wedding.

Perhaps the biggest issue I encountered this morning though was ‘pocket unfamiliarity’. Which pocket do I put my iPod in? Never mind the credit crunch, issues like that can make or break a man’s day.

Incidentally, that’s not me in the photo. I’m more clean shaven and as mentioned before, my suit is more crushed. It’s purely for the benefit of one particular reader who has an irrational phobia of chimps in human clothing…….

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I love the NFL. I spent the whole of Sunday night watching the weekends games. 6 hours of high definition streaming gridiron courtesy of the NFL.

Now, whilst watching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game, I couldn’t help but notice that there is actually a section of the stadium built to resemble a pirate ship, complete with cannons which fire when the Bucs score. All nice and fluffy and not in the slightest bit menacing. Good clean fun.

Being a Scottish football fan (of the soccer variety obviously) however, I find that I struggle to comprehend that there is a sport on this earth where bile, hatred, bigotry and spitting are not an essential part. I don’t mean on the field. I mean in the crowd. It doesn’t even have to be violence per se. Something as innocent as pissing down a rolled up newspaper on to the shoes of a fan in front is surely synonymous with sport worldwide. No?

Well, apparently not. It seems that there are some sports fans who don’t feel the need to stab each other to death after big derby games, or sing songs about Irish famine victims.

I think the Scottish way would take the NFL by storm. I can imagine thousands of bamboozled Americans in Giants Stadium staring wide-eyed at a bunch of knuckle dragging, stripped to the waist neanderthals with T-shirt suntans wearing Union Jacks knotted around their waists. I can even imagine the perplexed conversation in the American end of the ground.

“What’s a chicken supper?”

“Who’s Bobby Sands?”

“Up to their knees in what?”

I think I’ll off and write to Rangers, Celtic and the NFL commissioner and suggest a cultural exchange programme.

Just to make sure you know, this post was brought to you with my tongue firmly in my cheek…….

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What is it about bus drivers (and I am well aware that Blakey was a bus inspector) which make them so miserable? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been running for a bus and I know that the bastard can see me in his wing mirror and yet he still pulls away leaving me calling him all the expletives of the day.

It’s a power trip for these guys. This power trip is summed up by Lothian Buses latest ruling of forcing mothers to fold up buggies before getting on the bus, even though there is a space available on the bus specifically for the purpose of storing buggies and wheelchairs. Luckily I’ve never travelled with my son on my own on a bus unless he has been in a baby sling but from experience of folding up a buggy, this is not something which would be easy to do one handed with an 11 month old in the other arm.

Anyway, I digress. I got the number 22 bus to work today. As usual, the drivers see the need to pack the bus like sardines and you end up with some sweaty lads arse jammed against your face for the 1.5 mile journey. Not nice. Now, I can almost accept the need to fill the bus so full. I’ll take one for the team if it means that as many people as possible can get to work on time.

What I won’t accept however, is fighting my way to the front of the bus as my stop approaches only to be told by the driver, in irate fashion, to move back a bit as I am blocking his view.

Excuse me mate, where do you expect me to go? Less than one pace behind me is a seething mass of humanity which resembles a cross between M&S office wear section and the black hole of Calcutta.

Next week I’m walking to work.

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For days now, I’ve been browsing this LEGO site, purely from a humour perspective. I discovered it after I was sent a link of a LEGO Stephen Hawking which was so authentic it was unbelievable. Many other LEGO creations on this site are worth looking at. Some are absolutely bizarre, not least the fact that LEGO obviously created a range of A-Team figurines.

I always liked LEGO as a kid. For some reason though, I only ever built rickety looking multi-coloured houses or spaceships. My spaceships were always red as well. Mainly because I needed to use the red roof tile pieces to make the slopey bits on the spaceship. I mean, all spaceships have slopey bits. Right?

It was always LEGO for me. Meccano. Pish.

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OK. So I succumbed to downloading all of “Happiness is the Road”. It’s impossible to put something that good in front of me and not expect me to devour it whole. The great thing about this piece of downloading is that it’s guilt free. I paid my £30 for the deluxe version of the album before it was even recorded as did thousands of others. We helped fund what we are now being given the opportunity to listen to before it’s sent out. And it rocks.

The other thing I’ve succumbed to is placing Adsense ads at the foot of posts. Servers cost money, especially this one so hopefully some clickthroughs from visitors will generate some much needed funding for the server. I get so many random visitors on this site - yesterdays web stats revealed that someone had found this site whilst searching for “gay urethra play”. Might as well get some money from them as they pass through.

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If you are reading this post, then it’s safe to say that you have arrived at the new version of the site, hosted on my shiny advanced server. I had some hellish problems exporting my old posts from the previous server, with Wordpress only exporting posts up until September 2007.

Some hasty backend SQL work saw me managing to copy all of my posts directly from database to database though and it’s looking fine. Given that I’ve had some DNS issues in the past, please post me a comment just to let me know you’ve arrived at this new incarnation.

As part of shifting over, I’ve installed a new design. I hope you like it. I found the old design a bit too minimalist for me and whilst this design is still fairly low key, I just think it looks a wee bit smarter. All thoughts welcome. There’s still a wee bit of work to be done though and I’ll continue as and when I get a chance.

And now for my last temptation. Last night I received an email from Marillion. I pre-ordered the new album about a year ago (or so it seems) and it is due for release at the start of next month. Basically they sent a link to download a non-CD quality (but still very high quality) copy of the album as referenced in this BBC article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7606029.stm

Now, I’ve been all Leeds United about hearing this album for God knows how long but I find temptation like that unbearable. There’s something about receiving the final item, unwrapping it and popping it into the CD player. Let’s be honest, this new album is going to be an awesome experience both visually and aurally for those of us who pre-ordered. By all accounts the packaging will be awesome (the album will come as two hardback books in a presentation case).

Thing is, once you know you can listen to it, the temptation is overwhelming and I’ve already downloaded and listened to about 4 tracks. It’s like the box of chocolates in the fridge where you tell yourself you’ll only have one more and then find that you’ve eaten the whole box.

From what I’ve heard up to now though, it’s magnificent. Glorious, in fact.

As Mr H says, “One Love”.

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This site will be moving. Not to a new web address but merely to a new server. Hopefully the move will be transparent to you the reader, but if you do get some kind of wacky error then that may be why.

This is due to me getting the ‘waggy finger’ (see picture) from my reseller host due to this site and another one I run eating up slightly too much bandwidth for their ‘budget reseller’ package. Fair enough.

I’ve been wondering for a while now why I was having so much trouble adding posts, having in some cases to submit posts 3 or 4 times before I achieved success. Now I know. The waggy finger man or Dave (probably) as he is known to his family and friends has made it clear. I am a big, bad bandwidth hog.

I am considering myself ‘told’.

Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting that my host or any of their support staff are Soviet Political Commissars. Google just seems to be short of images for “waggy finger”. They are located in America and I’m sure they are all God-fearing, law abiding citizens who love Mom’s apple pie. Russians are proper commie scum baddies now again according to the news. Somebody phone Chuck Norris.

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