Pink Floyd Rambling

 General  No Responses »
Oct 312008
 

I have just watched a documentary on Pink Floyd, which I had unfortunately messed up the audio and video synchronisation which made the viewing somewhat peculiar – perhaps somewhat appropriately.

To me it seems that Pink Floyd is one of those bands where everyone meets. Amongst friends who listen to music, they have widely varying tastes in music and everyone has their own list of favourite bands. Oddly enough that rarely includes Pink Floyd, but when asked the response is almost always “Yeah! Them too”. And usually they will have every studio album produced by Pink Floyd even if they do not have every studio album of their favourite band – I have every Pink Floyd album, but not every Black Sabbath album.

It is almost as though there is no need to mention Pink Floyd as a favourite because anyone with any serious interest in music of almost any kind will have Pink Floyd as a favourite. I do not spend a great deal of time thinking about what music to listen to on my iBox, but every few weeks I find myself listening to Pink Floyd.

In some ways, we all hunting for another band as good as Pink Floyd.

Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, and “That” Radio Show

 General, Media  No Responses »
Oct 292008
 

Over the last week or so, the news has been swamped with details of a certain radio show that involved Russell Brand (the host), and Jonathan Ross (the guest) phoning up Andrew Sachs and leaving “abusive” messages on his answerphone. I have not heard the show myself, but from the descriptions it goes well beyond what should be acceptable. But the right word is “silly” and not “malicious”.

But does it really deserve all this attention ? From what I can tell, there are plenty of other more serious problems that could be reported in the news. This is after all really just a couple of idiots on one radio show insulting another “showbiz” personality.

Russell has resigned, and the BBC has suspended Jonathan pending the outcome of an enquiry. There are some grounds for complaining about the BBC’s tardiness in dealing with this. Although this feels like a typical corporate tendency to keep quiet until everyone has huddled around and come up with an answer rather than responding immediately with “we’re investigating”.

Some of the criticisms around focus on the fact that the BBC is not a commercial organisation and there are claims that this sort of thing would not happen in a more commercial organisation. This is just classic anti-Beeb propoganda by those who believe that all broadcasters should be commercial. There are those who believe that free-market forces would ensure that such things never happened. I have no belief that the commercial sector is any better at dealing with such incidents, and those same free-market forces will ensure that broadcasters would be much less inclined to take risks.

There also seems to be some jealousy around the level of pay that these two celebreties get. I am not entirely sure why they are worth the amount of money they get, but criticisms of their pay should not be a consideration during this incident.

No Flash?

 Computing, General  No Responses »
Oct 212008
 

So I was trawling the web looking at chairs (one manufacturer in particular – it doesn’t matter who) available at various stockists, when I was suddenly brought up short by a little error message “Your browser does not support Flash files”.

Strangely enough the site I had just visited itself had an annoying Flash-based website … all presentation in full-screen window with non-standard navigation controls. So what was the error about ?

Well obviously my browser does support Flash, but the chances are the developers were checking for a particular version of Flash that does not exist for the operating system I use as yet. So “does not support Flash files”  is not quite appropriate, something more like “Nah! Nah! You aren’t as up to date as we are” would be more accutate.

Not really sensible however as I could have been looking to drop something like £1,000 on a chair (yes they really do cost in that region, and yes they probably are that good). Especially as the Flash site in question probably does not absolutely require all of the features of the latest version.

Ah well, I guess I won’t be buying a chair from that place then.

Street Furniture

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 152008
 

We all know that street furniture that clutters our streets … signposts, street lights, traffic lights, etc. The majority of this furniture is for providing information to motorists. So why is it all planted in the pavements where it gets in the way of pedestrians?

The obvious answer is that one or two signposts do not matter that much and avoiding the street reduces the risk of accidents. Well maybe that was true when it was just a few signposts, and on quiet pavements without much foot traffic.

But all too frequently that is not the case. Rather than plonk down the poles for that street furniture right in the middle of the pavement, why not put them right on the edge of the road ? Or perhaps reduce the amount of signage where it isn’t necessary.

What Is A Zonky?

 General  No Responses »
Sep 202008
 

Apparently one of the most popular search terms hitting my Blog is “what is a zonky”. I don’t think I actually say anywhere, so as a service to those who accidentally end up here looking for information on what one is, here is the explanation …

A zonkey is a cross between a zebra and a donkey. More information on that can be found on the wonderful Wikipedia. Those who are looking closely will notice I haven’t answered the question properly. Given the syntax of the search, I think I’m seeing people who mistakenly think that “zonkey” is the same as “zonky”.

Just for completeness, “zonky” itself means odd or weird, or a person in a “zonked” (high on drugs or exhausted) state.

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