Neilly Done

Hustle Series Five

2009-02-23T14:55:00.002+01:00

TV last Thursday evening was a disappointment for me. No Hustle. How did that happen?

Usually, i'd be on top of a series that i'm enjoying. I knew where I was in the recent Spooks season for example. But then, as silly as it gets sometimes, Spooks follows a story arc. Kudos, the team behind both shows, may throw in all kinds of daft twists, false endings and cliffhangers along the way, but you'd always sense the big blow out ending coming up.

Hustle is different. It's like the magazine on the waiting room table. Something flash looking to entertain you until something more meaningful comes along. It's coffee table TV, right from the Oceans 11 style opening credits through to the walk into the sunset at the end.

The reason I don't know where I am with Hustle is that no episode is really any different from the last, or even from any episode in the previous four series. Yes, Kudos tried their best this time to chain some kind of thread together - by bringing back "marks" from an earlier show, ripe for a spot of revenge. But it all ended up the same way - the look on Micky's face before he spins round to reveal he was in control all along.

So why do I watch Hustle? Why hasn't it gone the way of Lost, Heroes or even the closest thing i've seen to a US equivalent in style over subtance - My Name is Earl? In all three cases i've enjoyed what i've seen (to a point - don't start telling me that Lost is beginning to make sense - I don't care anymore). I might even have bought the DVD (Earl).

I guess it's because Hustle is so vacuous. I can sit and watch an episode, smile at the pretty people, laugh a little, and occasionally (i'm slightly ashamed to say) get baffled by how the team will get out of their latest scrape. If I miss one, I don't have to trawl through Sky Plus in the right order for anything to make sense. In fact if I miss one, it really doesn't matter at all. There'll always be another one next week. And that's exactly why I was disappointed last Thursday.

Resolutions - Part Three - The other stuff

2009-01-09T12:10:00.000+01:00

There's a big risk completing a three-part resolutions series a week and a half into January - that you'll have failed your resolutions before they've even started. So let's pretend it's still December and call this a fresh start...

Get fitter - No surprises here. In 2009 I will take up some kind of exercise. And it won't involve a wireless controller of any kind.

Read more - Not just online. I have the monthly pain of a £220 train ticket, but with it the gift of an hour sitting looking out of the window every day. Consider copying Crazy Dave and blog what i've read (and thereby kill two birds with one stone)

Get organised - Another one from last year. One challenge of my current job is the number of different places that tasks can come from. I need to get better at prioritising, tracking and yes, completing them. Sub-resolution: Read 43 Folders more.

Spend less. Save more - Or maybe just "Spend Better". I can never be bothered with the hassle of looking for the right talkplan, or checking what I pay for electricity etc. I'm finally realising that I can spend lots of money on holidays, eating out and computer games, or I can be careless about the boring stuff that gets sucked out by direct debit every month. But I can't do both.

Smarten up - I'm 31. The number of years since I stopped being a student is in double figures, but I still dress like I got out of bed five minutes before the start of a Discrete Mathematics lecture. My job title includes the word "manager", and whilst I don't actually manage anyone, I feel a lot better respected when I look a bit sharper. Sub-resolution: Steer clear of being a suit that "dresses down" on Fridays.

Resolutions - Part Two - Internet Goals 2009

2008-12-30T18:21:00.005+01:00

Part two of my new year's resolutions, and a sly attempt to paint over the cracks on one of last year's failed goals in the process.

This post is inspired by Maclurio's Internet Goals for 2009, and will list my own web related aims for the year. The boy Maclure is moving on a completely different plane to me, but that's no reason not to shoot for the stars....

1. Blog revamp. A re-hash from last year. Neilly Done has got a daft name and no point. Make a decision, give the blog a theme and a name to match. If that means creating multiple blogs, so be it.

2. Blog more, Blog often. If i'm serious about writing I need to dramatically increase my output. So i'm going for 10,000 words next year (compared to just over 3000 in 2008). Based on averages, that will be about 40 of my normal short posts.

3. Read and Participate more in other blogs. My breadth of blog reading has increased in 2008, but a lot of it goes in one virtual ear and out the other. This goal is about adding comments, being critical, showing opinion. Basically, try to be part of a community rather than an observer on the outside.

4. Write something somewhere else. Nicked from Maclurio. Get something on someone else's blog/website.

Here's some things i'm not going to do:
- Worry about hits, because a) I don't really care at this stage, and b) hits will come as a result of achieving these goals anyway.
- Get sucked into the next big thing
- Twitter, because I still don't see the point.

Some non-internet resolutions coming up next.

Resolutions - Part One

2008-12-30T18:07:00.002+01:00

It's that time in December when disappointment at the achievements of the year gone by, hope for the year to come, and a few hours sitting round in a mostly empty office combine to form the perfect blogging storm. So here's the first of three posts on new year's resolutions.

First, the disappointment bit to get over and done with - How did I do with last year's resolutions?

Tidy up - Kind of. But maybe I just worry about it less now.
Blog with a point - Not even close. I've posted less than half as much as in 2007.
Be Less Fat - Nope, although I think my genes prevent me from developing a really impressive beer gut - it's more about general fitness. Or the lack of it. So this one might have to come back for 2009.
Write something - Again, not even close.
Make the most of a fresh start - This was about my new job. Well i'm still doing it, so something must be right. But all that stuff treating it like a new start... nope.

So, as usual, not very impressive. But then I could have boosted my blogpost count by one and told you that last February. So here's to 2009!

ARRRGG.... Boom!

2008-11-19T14:21:00.002+01:00

Two different naval approaches to dealing with the Somalian pirate menace:

The Western way -

"We're busy looking after Iraq. Leave us out of it."
"There's no legal process for dealing with pirates. Don't want to get involved".
"It's all Somalia's fault. If they had a proper government we wouldn't have this problem."
And then the secret reason - that's it all part of doing business, and any ransoms or longer trade route costs can get passed on to customers anyway.

The Indian way -

"Stop or we'll sink you"
BOOM!

Three cheers for taking matters into your own hands.

Apologies & Pirates

2008-11-13T13:54:00.002+01:00

Two thoughts from today's painful commute to work...

How can a recorded voice, pieced together from bits into a semi-useful sentence, be "Extremely sorry for the delays to my service?"?

The Navy have caught some pirates off the coast of Somalia. The Times reports "The Commandos found guns and other 'pirate paraphernalia'." Was that deliberately written to cheer up my journey?

They Kept That Quiet

2008-11-04T10:25:00.003+01:00

"An election? In the US? Well they kept that quiet."
- Matt, Daily Telegraph, 2nd November

I wonder if the Americans get as excited by our general elections? Of course they don't. For one thing, our electoral system works very differently. If I was at a polling booth in Bumsville, North Carolina today, i'd be picking a man. It's all about personality, or at least personal politics. In Welwyn, Herts. next time round, my cross will be next to a party. Which is all probably for the best, both for me and the US press, should they attempt some level of coverage. I've voted Liberal Democrat in the last two elections and i'm not sure I can name the party leader. So I shouldn't get too irked when CNN fail to unearth that kind of detail.

Although it's not just Obama and McCain who have hooked the British interest. Or Clinton, or even the moose lady. Don't tell me it's because the whole world will feel the impact of a change in the US presidency. We just like a bit razzmatazz to sweeten our politics - sharp-suited Etonians and the rebirth of Peter Mandelson are too bland. We want celebrity. We want fireworks. In fact, as I sit down with David Dimbleby to watch the drama unfold tonight, there are only three things stopping this short of perfection: Dale Winton, a pool of water and two suits of skin tight lycra.

Bring on the wall!

Protons, Shopping Bags and the UFWC

2008-09-10T09:47:00.005+01:00

Hurray! The Large Hadron Collider hasn't blown up the universe! So that's one silver lining on a £5bn cloud. Now perhaps those CERN guys can find a solution to the global economic crisis at the end of a beam of protons?

Update: Turns out ending the world was never supposed to happen today, and the doom-mongers can continue mongering their doom for a while longer. The Register explains all, together with snappy Ghostbusters references and some nice turns of phrase ("unprecedentedly puissant particle cannons", one for Crazy Dave's collection).

A sign that you're getting old. You go to see a band you first got into 13 years ago. In those days the merchandise stand sold cigarette lighters and badges alongside the obligatory t-shirts. In 2008, it's mugs and environmentally friendly shopping bags.

More football news - England play their second World Cup 2010 qualifying match tonight, against Croatia, and will probably lose. My suggestion for a quicker and easier way to global soccer glory? Take on Hungary for the Unofficial Football World Championship

Triple Decker

2008-09-02T09:10:00.002+01:00

My blogger account is overflowing with unfinished posts. I'm getting into a habit of starting long rambling pieces on topical issues (US election primaries, the Olympics and Batman being three recent efforts), then forgetting all about them for a while. I come back and the witty, razor-sharp commentary on the day's hot story has turned into something that smells like the fortnight-old milk in the back of the office fridge. A good journalist I would not make.

So here's three thoughts for today in bite size form. Hot little nuggets of wisdom. Or maybe just an excuse to start turning this blog into a lazy link dump....

The football world's gone transfer window deadline crazy and the nuttiest of them all, Manchester City, have jumped from the loopy Thai frying pan into the mad Arab fire (top four this season, champions next year apparently). At what point will Robinho start whining about missing Champions League football?

Ham Sandwich for VP - courtesy of the best named blog i've seen in ages (link seen first on For Your Entertainment

What's going with Facebook? I've had four spam wall-posts from friends encouraging me to find out who my secret admirer is in the space of two weeks. Wouldn't have surprised me coming from some of my less-techy chums (the ones that could get away with replacing their keyboards with a big SuperPoke button). But these phish victims are all work colleagues. That's work as in a software company, where geeks roam free. Coming soon to my Facebook status: Neil Arrowsmith has friends who should know better.

Spooks : Code 9

2008-08-12T22:07:00.003+01:00

Hands up when this starts ringing bells:

Take a long running popular TV drama
You know, the one with that the thespy bloke that's in everything, and who my wife fancies.
Make an edgy, sexy spin-off show, not for family viewing
Put some swearing in it
Locate it somewhere provincial
Put it on BCC3 where no-one will watch it

Stick an ex-Blue Peter presenter in "Spooks: Code 9" and the similarities are complete. Except that Torchwood had welsh alien catchers and gets by on its camp, over-the-top appeal. Code-9 does the over the top, but not the camp and sadly not the appeal. It's set in 2012, there's been a big bomb at the olympics and loads of Londoners have been wiped out (spot the topicality by the way - i'm sure there was talk of a Spooks by-product years ago. Kudos, the production company who normally know better, obviously saw a trick not to be missed). There's new rules. The gloves are off. Etc. etc.

To be honest I lost track of the plot around 10 minutes in. I think it was shortly after the nation's intelligence services were placed in the hands of a bunch of pretty teenagers that my disbelief stopped being suspended and flopped on to the floor. There was something about "the terrorists getting younger, and so are we", and "all the old hands have gone private sector for the money, blah blah blah". When the Americans suffered a massive terrorist atrocity (in the real world, where bad stuff isn't shoed in with no explanation 30 seconds before the credits roll), they passed some draconian laws, declared war on terror and laid waste to two large countries. What we do, apparently, is send in the cast of... oh what's the other programme I don't intend wasting my time watching again....

(Stop me when you've heard this before)

Lots of people live in the same house
They're unsubtly diverse. We've got a blonde police woman, a black ex-con, a doctor and a geeky northern mathematician
They're all very attractive, or at least would look nice airbrushed on the front cover of Heat
There's probably going to be lots of shagging later in the series when the viewing figures drop off
Hopefully, none of them will ever work again and there'll be an enormous crowd of chavs outside the studio when they leave, baying for blood.

I like Spooks. It's increasingly stupid, but has a teeny tiny connection with real life, which makes it good. Code-9 is just increasingly stupid, and this was just the first episode.

Life After People

2008-05-27T09:14:00.002+01:00

The Channel 4 website has this to say about last night's Life After People...

Using feature film quality visual effects and top experts in the fields of engineering, botany, ecology, biology, geology, climatology and archeology, Life After People provides an amazing visual journey to a world where plants and animals develop free from human intervention.

Lovely. Instead, what we got was Professor Doh from the School of the Bleeding Obvious, fading artily-fartily in and out in front of some schoolboy's homework. Over. And. Over. Again. Sure - watching the Golden Gate bridge collapse and the Eiffel Tower flop into the Seine was fancy stuff the first time, but by the tenth I was beginning to wish some kind of mass-extinction event on every Computer Graphics student in the land.

As for the substance cowering in the mossy overgrown wilderness of style... Well, the world will one day be ruled by flying cats and seagulls apparently.

That's one bank holiday evening i'm not getting back. Roll on August.

Here and Now

2008-05-19T17:41:00.006+01:00

Last Friday evening was one of the most surreal musical experiences of my life. A succession of double bookings and last minute changes dropped a ticket to 'Here and Now' at Wembley Arena into my lap. Twenty years of angst-ridden, po-faced, shoe-gazing indie were forgotten, and I was back in the warm eighties embrace of cheesy manufactured pop. Johnny Hates Jazz! Curiosity Killed the Cat! ABC! Paul Young! Bananarama! And the big headliner: Rick Astley!

First, my surroundings. I hate Wembley Arena. There would be more atmosphere if they did away with the overblown shed of a building, and just did shows on the platform at Wembley Park tube instead. Nothing is as dispiriting as marching up Wembley Way in awe of the new stadium arch, then turning off into what's basically a warehouse with seats and expensive beer on tap. Still, 10,000 screaming, jiggling thirty-something women at least provided some novelty value missing from my previous trips there to see Oasis and The Darkness.

From an era forever associated with the synthesiser and drum machine, it was nice to hear six acts (we missed Cutting Crew) backed by a live band, albeit heavily keyboard based (stand out synth moment - Paul Young: "Ladies & Gentlemen, the Trombone!". Er, sort of). And singing live - with hilarious results in the case of Curiosity Killed the Cat. Bananarama sounded appropriately like two drunken forty-year-old mothers on a hen night attacking "I Will Survive" on the Karaoke machine. Although i'm not too sure they didn't sound like that on record. You couldn't fault the slickness of the operation though. No half hour waits while Johnny the Roadie fiddles with his top end, and we all sit listening to Stock Aitken and Waterman's hits of yesteryear on the stereo. Instead, one act hurries off one side of the stage while the Compére shoves the next up on the other. A non stop conveyor belt of Pop's leftovers.

But the ladies were there for one man only. After 15 or so years hiding in a hole somewhere up North, occasionally popping out to croon some songs my Nan liked, the star of You-Tube was back. "Ladies. And. Gentlemen. Mister... Rick.... Astley!!!" Hurray.

Except he didn't really sound like he wanted to be there anymore than I did (although i'm being a teeny bit dishonest there. They may have sounded like my cats having a barney over the last fishy biscuit, but those Bananarama girls have aged well). Even while the crowed bounced around to Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick's heart was somewhere else. What he always wanted was to be a serious artist, not the precursor to Gareth Gates. From his countdown to home-time ("Only seven songs left so you'd better make the most of it"), to the weary introduction of the big hits ("Now for some more oom-chah music"), it was clear why he disappeared for so long in the first place. Unlike Mr.Curiosity, it wasn't lack of ability. When Rick took a break from the oom-chahs and whipped out the Nan-friendly soul, you could almost forget you were there for an extended girlie night out, sit back and listen to a guy with a voice that should be making decent music.

I suppose the fact that he shows up at all for these things now is some kind of redemption - in that he can turn it on for a night, take home the cheque and not feel dirty the next morning. But I still felt a teensy bit of sadness on his behalf - like every teen idol, he'll never escape his past, no matter how big his talent.

Twits

2008-05-13T09:45:00.003+01:00

I'm Web 2.0 crazy. I write here (sometimes), I read blogs, I run a wiki and my Face has its own Book. When I die I want my ashes scattered over Wikipedia, and my obituary sent out on RSS.

But even I don't get Twitter, or it's accompanying verb "To Twit", or the "Tweatosphere". Isn't it just an excuse to spam friends constantly with "Neil is on the train", "Neil is very bored", "Neil can't decide whether the second part of Waking The Dead will be any less stupid than the first part"? The FASTForward blog is full every week of how Twitter is the new way of breaking news round the world, or how it will soon be the enterprise tool of choice.

I don't see it, especially that last bit. We use Skype at work, and I can add a message for everyone to see on their contacts list. At the time of writing we've got song lyrics, "inspirational" quotes, lines from Star Wars and a small handful of useful statements of fact (and even then limited to: "I'm in country X", perhaps followed by "...and very busy, so %&$# off"). What would an all singing, all dancing Micro-Blogging solution add to the mix?

Wikihistory and a New Order of Magnitude

2008-03-19T14:39:00.002+01:00

A quick post to say two things:

This is the funniest thing i've ever read whilst eating my lunch at my desk

This blog's hit count currently sits at 998. A big, virtual, manly bear-hug for the person who puts me into three figures...

Another Blog Promise and Beyond Random

2008-02-25T14:48:00.002+01:00

My "Blogs I Read" box on the left has been neglected. There were blogs on there that have stopped posting, and loads missing that I do keep up with. Here's another, potentially empty promise for my readers - I will update it soon, if only so that you can get the same enjoyment from reading those bloggers' words that I do.

To kick it off, here's a plug for a recent addition to my Google reader subscriptions: Beyond Random, the latest blog from El Maclurio. Proof that, if you want to feature on my Blogroll it's helps if your name is Dave

America vs. Lost

2008-01-17T10:18:00.000+01:00

More news from my less-than-impressive hit stats, courtesy of Sitemeter. Seems the world's most powerful nation is turning against one of its own exports in a big way.

In five days i've had four hits from "I hate Lost" Google searches, three from the US. And it's not just a regional thing. As the longest election in history sweeps the nation (and more about this in an upcoming post I hope), so to does despisal of the poor saps on the wacky island. I've never been across the pond but I know from a map that New Jersey, Missouri and California are about as widespread as you can get in the US without needing to get your feet wet or speak French. Pay heed ABC, your nation has spoken.

I don't watch it, even though I can now, thanks to Virgin Media not "serving" my new home, but I still have the nagging feeling that i'm missing out. I guess this is a bit like giving up smoking. I know it might feel good at the time, but i'll wake up the next morning regretting it and smelling bad. As dizzy17 put in a comment on my I Hate Lost post, roll on 2010 when the show will be gone (if the writer's stop striking and start killing off some of the cast that is).

Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach

2008-01-10T22:59:00.000+01:00

Questions running through my head as I watched ITV's Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach this evening....

Would Moving Wallpaper have made me laugh even once had Ben Miller not been in it?
What was that writer guy in?
Why didn't I watch Buzzcocks?
Why is Jason Donovan talking with a ridiculous, slightly-posh, slightly-Australian accent?
Would I have thought the crying girl, the indian barmaid or the woman with the line were oh-so-clever and ironic had I not seen them coming from a mile off?
Why is Martine McCutcheon talking with a ridiculous, slightly-posh, slightly-cockney accent?
Just how much money did ITV blow on incidental music alone? (and Fratellis - put your name to one more advert or other form of televised pap and that long-awaited second album won't be long-awaited by me anymore. You're not Moby).
In fact, why is everyone speaking with a ridiculous, slightly-posh accent? Is this Cornwall or Henley-on-Thames?
Mrs McClusky!?!
Hang on. You were in a shop, in a town. You heard a shout. Now you're on a beach, by a cliff, in the middle of nowhere?
If this is Cornwall, where's the Rick Stein café, chippie, cookery school, bakers, gift shop, burger bar..? Jeez people, make it authentic or else the cornish will get upset.
Er, Mike Baldwin? Blimey, down in the world from Corrie. I'd give up mate.
You've nailed a sitcom on to a soap opera. Why stop there? You're filming in Watergate bay. Saint Jamie runs a restaurant round the corner. Tack on a cookery show and you can sew up my whole evening. Or put some of the partying kids in the cave on ITV2 and point a camera at them all night to see what happens too. Or park them in front of a record producer, wearing ice-skates, and make them dance the viennese waltz. You're missing a trick I tell you...
Wow that was rubbish. Can you make more please? This is great blog fodder.

My New Year Resolutions

2007-12-28T16:26:00.000+01:00

I firmly believe that accountability is the key to getting things done. So with that in mind, here are my new year's resolutions...

Tidy up - I'm horrifically bad at organising boring stuff like bills and finances properly. Things end up in big piles in several different places until something smelly hits a fan and a bit of paper needs finding urgently. This resolution is to make my nice new house nicer by being a bit more organised.
Blog with a point - These aimless ramblings have been going for nearly a year and half now with very little in the way of consistency, either in theme or regularity. I reckon that if I nail the first one, the second one will follow. (Incidentally, most of these resolutions are about the satisfcation of doing a job properly, inspired by a recent post on the Dilbert Blog).
Be Less Fat - An unimaginitive hope at this festive time of year perhaps, but i'm the wrong side of 30 now and look it. I live at the top of a hill, so just need to run or cycle up and down it occasionally. Tried the gym thing and it doesn't work for me.
Write something - The blog is a start, by I need to find the self-discipline to write something more expansive if i'm ever going to do the job I dream about. And by "write something" I really mean "write the end of something". There's too many "Once upon a times" in my notebook and not enough "happily ever afters".
Make the most of a fresh start - After eight and a half years doing the same job in the same company, i'm starting something new in January (albeit just something different in the same company). It would be too easy for me to take my old ideas and beefs into the new role and get bored very quickly. If i'm going to give myself career options, I need to treat the new job as if it was a complete new start, and get some enthusiasm back.

Five should do it I think - No-one wants to make a load of promises they can't keep. Plus five is an easy number of resolutions for anyone to make, so i'm going to start one of those silly tagging things. Dave, Dave, Gerv and Kiran - what are your new year's resolutions?

For Hire: International Football Supporter

2007-11-22T10:05:00.000+01:00

For a limited time, Neillydone.blogspot.com is offering one international football fan to any European country worthy of his support. Successful bidders will enjoy the devotion of said fan for three weeks in June 2008. Mild interest in any friendly matches prior to June is an optional extra.

Bidding nations are subject to eligibility criteria. All contenders must:

Have a manager/coach with at least some degree of intelligence, footballing imagination, or even just basic nouse.

Have players who give a crap and wont be distracted by multi-million-pound salaries, the Champions League or whether their mansion in Liverpool has been burgled.

Not be France, because that's one step too far for this fan. Or be Italy, who don't need any more support. Or be Germany, because that would just be wrong.

Be much fancied in Euro 2008, but ultimately likely to disappoint come the final stages of the tournament (This supporter is set in his ways from too many years of following his home team, and afraid of change). Offers from the Spanish team are welcome.

Applications can be made via the comments below.

Gourmets on Google and Heroes

2007-10-03T16:30:00.000+01:00

Last week, Dave inspired me to pay a bit more attention to my site hits and in particular those coming from Google. In a spectacular coincidence, my Wild Ghourmet post has unlocked a completely untapped goldmine of hits. I know, I know, i'm a bit slow off the mark but i've seen the future and it's called "Namechecking attractive ladies". At least a dozen hits in the last week from searches for "Tommi Miers", which is pretty big business for me. And while we're on it, sorry to disappoint the guy (presumably) who search for "tommi miers photo". I hope you found what you were looking for somewhere else.

Anyway, call me shameless but let's make hay while the sun shines - Hayden Panettiere. Let's watch the visitors roll in now!

I do kind of have a point though - Heroes. I've steered clear of most of the big US shows that have turned up on these shores since American TV went through a renaissance a few years back. 24, Prison Break, CSI etc. etc. have all pretty much passed me by. On the one hand they all come across as a little geeky but also because they demand too much commitment from me, a person who could happily watch repeats on UK Gold forever more. The two exceptions were The West Wing, which I loved but got bored of when Aaron Sorkin left and Lost, my despisal of which has been well documented here. When it comes to Heroes, it's Lost that's making me feel a bit uneasy still.

Of course Heroes is massively better than Lost, if only because the writers seem to have half a clue where they're going. I'll hold final judgement until I get to series two, but you can see there's a definite story arc and not a single wisp of mysterious black smoke anywhere.

I guess my real worry is TV politics. Heroes is showing on BBC2 here, and will continue there into the next season. But surely the Beeb can't afford to keep shelling out for a hit show like this, so then what happens? I'm a new Sky subscriber, in small part because of the Sky One and Lost farce back in March, and they're the big fish in the pond right now. Virgin 1 launched this week though, and I can smell revenge on the horizon. Wouldn't Virgin just love to acquire a whopping great trophy show, plonk it on their 1 channel, then pick a new fight with BSkyB?

So, Google visitors looking for cheerleader pictures, sorry again that I can't satisfy your needs but while you're here - post a comment. Am I setting myself up for a big TV disappointment again?

The Wild Gourmets

2007-09-26T13:38:00.000+01:00

I'm a big fan of food TV and celebrity cookbooks. Some might make the logical jump from here to a talent in the kitchen itself, but they would be sorely mistaken. I think I speak for a large percentage of the population when I say I like the pretty pictures, and am not about to launch my bid for Michelin stardom.

However, I like to root my food TV fantasies in at least a little bit of reality. I want to watch a chef knock up something nice and know that I could take a stab at it myself, if only I could be bothered. That's why Saint Jamie and Saucy Nigella are good - their stuff looks good but simple.

Last night our chubby friend Mr.Oliver sat alongside The Wild Gourmets in the schedules and never have the two sides of gastronomic programming been better demonstrated. The cheaky Essex boy did some tasty things with peppers (albeit with occasional none-too-subtle twists of his patented "Flavour Shaker"), and the posh Tommi Miers and Guy Grieve looked, well, posh.

Jamie might have a wood burning oven and a garden that covers most of the home counties, but there's something homely about this cooking. There is nothing homely about stalking pheasants with a shotgun, scraping slimey stuff off trees, or serving them alongside a pike and it's minced liver. Who watches this stuff? I'm sure it's not posh TV for posh people - i'll bet the landed gentry of this world enjoy bangers and mash as much as the next man. And what's with the hosts? Guy Grieve is an adventurer sort who knows his way round a twelve-bore but does little in this apart from stare lustfully at Tommi, a former Masterchef winner. It's like the last few thousand years never happened. Man catch meat, make fire. Woman cook meat, look pretty. Man get meat down quickly so he can get into woman's pants.

Give me Jamie any day, even with the soap-boxing and shameless product placement.

Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner

2007-09-17T22:20:00.000+01:00

My blog sub-title is about to become inaccurate again, or at least mis-leading. As of next week I will no longer be Neil, an average sort of guy from London but Neil, an average sort of guy from Hertfordshire. That's right - i'm moving out from the warm cosy embrace of the M25 into what my smog bound friends will describe as "The Arse End of Nowhere". So can I call myself a Londoner anymore?

Yes, the house prices and cost of just about anything else are sky-high and yes, the rest of the country think we're a bunch of trumped up southern softies. And some geographically challenged chums like to question if Enfield qualifies as being part of the nation's capital anyway, but i'm proud of being from North London. I'm only going to be half an hour up the A1, but am I running away from my roots?

Not that I care that much. Digswell has trees, grass and stuff like that you know. Plus i'll be able to sit back at my village pub and laugh at you shandy drinking wimps down South :-)

By the way, a small tache update at just past the halfway stage. Today was my first day back at work after a week of decorating, and nine days of bristle growing. My kind, supportive colleagues were suitably impressed by my progress. Enough to use the following descriptions anyway:

Dennis Hopper from Easy Rider
A porn star
A seventies policeman
Freddie Mercury
Fu Manchu
"A bit Blue Oyster"

They're just jealous. But my rules are staying the same - you can laugh all you want, as long as you sponsor me first!

Tacheback - The War Is On!

2007-09-06T13:34:00.000+01:00

Tache update time. Here's me on day 6, with slightly more defined face decoration.

I'm now signed up to Tachewars, so click away and rate me against fellow Tacheback soldiers. Let battle commence.

And there's still plenty of time to sponsor me.

Tacheback!

2007-09-02T19:59:00.000+01:00

A quick post to say Sponsor Me!!

During September I will be taking part in Tacheback, an annual event to raise funds for Everyman - the UK’s leading Male Cancer Campaign. The aim of the event is simple - grow a tache, raise cash!

This is a picture of me after one day's growth. I promise another picture when I have something more impressive to show off. To keep me going, please sponsor me by clicking this link.

Change History With Wikipedia

2007-08-16T08:55:00.000+01:00

My newspaper yesterday carried another Wikipedia scare-story. It's the same thing as reported by the BBC yesterday, but with a more corporate slant, and less of the CIA craziness. Bit bizarre that a Murdoch newspaper is reporting the facts and leaving it to our respected national broadcaster to sensationalize them, but never mind.

The real story is that big businesses are clearly aware of the impact of Wikipedia and are using it to their advantage, in a bad way. One of the examples that got my attention was with The Dow Chemical Company, owners of Union Carbide, the chemical company behind the Bhobal Disaster in 1984 (and yes, that was a Wikipedia hyperlink. Tread carefully) - I remember learning about this incident at school. Allegedly, employees have been editing the page about Dow, subtly removing any mention of Bhopal. For me this is frightening on two levels:

Education. Like it or not, teachers have to face the fact that their students will use Wikipedia for research. They can't help it. Search for just about anything on Google, and either Wikipedia itself, or content ripped from the same place will feature highly in your results. I don't believe this gives the people behind Wikipedia any reason to change what they do - this could be viewed as a "feature" of the anyone-can-edit policy after all, and sure enough this particular edit has been reversed quick-smart. But I really hope that kids are being educated on how to use online resources like this. Specifically - with an open mind and a healthy dose of analytical scepticism.

I manage a wiki knowledge base at my workplace, a software house. It really grates that there are people that will abuse collaboration tools like Wikipedia in this way. Should I expect to hit this problem too? Will I get to my desk one day soon to find that someone has removed a passage describing a known bug in our software, because that bug can be traced back to them? Our wiki runs on an entirely different set of rules to any global encylopedia, and I can't rely on a "collective brain" to suddenly leap into action and correct the entry.

I guess behind this is a lingering mistrust of Wikipedia's unwritten ethos that "things will all turn out OK in the end". That might be Ok when you're talking Doctor Who and Star Trek episodes. A lot less so when you're talking about changing history.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-07-30T22:30:00.000+01:00

This post is about the seventh and final Harry Potter book. If you're a fan and haven't read the book yet, stop reading this post now. Here be spoilers...

But not very big ones, because for me there weren't many surprises.

It's been a long journey, that I started out late on. I read the first three Harry Potter books back-to-back, and since then have been amongst the millions waiting for each next episode to arrive (although, i'm happy to say, not waiting in a long bookshop queue at midnight - i'm a geek, but not that much). Two weeks ago I joined many hundreds of other slightly embarassed looking commuters in reading The Deathly Hallows on the way to work. And now it's over. So here are my thoughts:

1) Actually i'm not embarassed at all. These are great books that tell a great story.

2) I'm a little disappointed There's been one hell of a build-up and I don't think JK Rowling quite pulled it off. Not that it's entirely her fault. The best things about every Harry Potter book are the twist at the end, and the question that hasn't been answered. The lack of full understanding on the part of both Potter and the reader. The jaw-dropping moment where everything becomes clear, but you still don't get the whole picture. By definition the last book couldn't do that. There had to be closure.

She could have done it differently though. Don't get me wrong - I loved this book as much as the others (OK, not as much the third one - but a lot more than the fifth and sixth). I just think JK got lazy. I'm no novelist, but I know that exposition is bad, and the last few chapters are full of it. We didn't need the long chat with Dumbledore, the whole pensieve thing got a bit boring two books ago, and when it came to the final showdown I wanted Harry to kick Voldemort's arse, not talk him to death. It started to feel a little like Rowling wrote for 17 years, then suddenly remembered she needed to end it somehow. She built up one hell of a back story, then run out of time to explain it all.

Ultimately, it should have all been different. I don't have a problem reading a children's book, but the ending was where Rowling should have left the kid's stuff behind and gone a bit more Tolkien. Dark lords returning from the dead, hidden treasures with untold powers, big spiders and goblins - there's enough Lord Of The Rings in there already that a bit more wouldn't have hurt. Harry should have died. Or at least done a Frodo, gone a bit wierd, and shafted the happy ending. Instead I got an epilogue I didn't need, and which was far too neat and tidy. I mean, how many school kids marry their first love, churn out loads of kids and still have the same friends 19 years later?

So it fell a bit flat at the end but, overall, a great series. I hope to have kids one day soon, and I love that JK's books have single-handedly put reading back on the map for children. And I love that i'll have such a good time re-reading them in a few years time.

St. Swithun's Day

2007-07-15T09:49:00.000+01:00

Today is Saint Swithun's Day.

According to legend, if it rains today then it will continue to rain for another 40 days and 40 nights.

Readers who have spent any of the last month in the UK will recognise the irony.

Bush/Blair Quote of the Week

2007-06-27T08:47:00.000+01:00

This was way too good not to post. President Bush has responded to Tony Blair's very imminent resignation as PM by doing an interview with The Sun (no, I don't know why either). Here's a quote for dog-lovers everywhere:

"I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that."

Cocker Spaniel anyone?

Headline of the week

2007-06-26T12:13:00.000+01:00

This has to be news headline of the week: Germany imposes ban on Tom Cruise

Facebook - Good Clean Fun?

2007-06-26T09:22:00.000+01:00

Facebook, my new favourite "social networking experiment"/"enormous waste of time" (delete where applicable) has been the subject of the last three posts at Regular Jen. I share some of Jen's concerns (not least because the very blog you are reading is pulled on to my profile via an RSS feed, and I don't want Facebook claiming owernship to it), but the video in the second post goes a little too far.

Searching in facebook sucks, true. The interface is useless, and the results are too heavily biased towards networks, which as far as I can see are just an arbitrary grouping with no real importance outside of US colleges. I don't like that you have to sign up to Facebook to be able to search at all. And the terms and conditions (which, like most people, I hadn't read) are frankly quite scary. But when the video starts suggesting shadowy links with the CIA and US Department of Defence, that's when I switch off. Even it were true that the Facebook founder worked for another company, who were funded by a different corporation, whose CEO once shared a cab with Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-files, why should I care? I'm on the liberal side of the political spectrum myself, but some of the things US left-wingers come out with makes me cringe.

Although just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you. I expect a Facebook poke from a mysterious man in a trenchcoat any day now.

The Last Day

2007-06-15T16:00:00.000+01:00

Today is the last day of my twenties. I'm not feeling particularly bothered by it, but everyone acts like I should be (mostly those who are already in their thirties. Hmmm, is there something nasty and unexpected in store for me?).

I'm sure there's supposed to be lots of things I should have done by now, so I did a quick google, and found 50 things to do before you're 30. Sure enough, i've done three of them. Fortunately not number 4, unfortunately not number 3.

So time for a new start, and three (i'm not very ambitious) things to do before i'm 40...

Make lots of money doing something I enjoy
Grow some impressive facial hair
Father a child

Britain Day

2007-06-05T09:41:00.001+01:00

Bank holidays have been a bit of a pet subject in these posts recently. The news today carries a story about a proposed "Britain Day". The idea is that we have an extra bank holiday where we all celebrate what it means to be British. The BBC also report that it would be designed to "prevent communities from becoming more divided".

Putting aside any observations on how "being British" might be celebrated (a day spent binge drinking and causing mass teenage pregnancies I expect), the idea of such a day being used to put aside our differences and embrace a multi-cultural society seems more than a tad naive on the part of our glorious leaders. Are the British National Party going to put their prejudices aside for 24 hours and dance round a maypole with their muslim neighbours? Or are they going to dust off their Unions Jacks, take to the streets and proceed to tell anyone listening what they think "Being British" means?

I admire the government's idea. God knows we need something to be done about the widening rifts in our society. I hate the way my nationality is appropriated into something so hateful by these people, but that association is here to stay. Say "British" and people think of racists. Despite my previous rants about Bank holidays, I hope this day gets to happen. But I also hope it loses the "British" tag. It carries too much baggage and is asking for trouble.

Strongly Worded

2007-05-28T11:22:00.000+01:00

After a brief period of relatively consistent, if still quite widespread blogging, i've gone into hibernation again, snuggled up in a dark hole clutching some nuts. With another bank holiday weekend here (grrr, don't get me started again...), I thought i'd spring to life, showering the blogsphere with far-reaching opinion and comment. Sadly not.

Instead, today, i've been directing my writings at a bank, penning what my father would describe as a "strongly worded letter". It started off a bit dry but halfway through I picked up a head of steam and have created what I now consider a masterpiece of formal complaint, tinged on the edges with a small amount of intelligent and wryly observed wit.

Perhaps i'll be able to apply my new enthusiasm for wordsmithery to a blogpost or two soon. Don't hold your breath.

Facebook

2007-05-18T11:18:00.000+01:00

As usual i've arrived at a Web 2.0 party a little late. But as Rob Lowe says in one of my favourite lines from The West Wing, let's embrace the fact that I showed up at all.

This time it's Facebook, otherwise known as "Yet Another Social Networking Site". I'm there because Emma talks about it a lot, and because apparently Prince William is on it somewhere. Both of which are good examples of how the internet is properly out of the hands of geeks like me, and into those of the masses (plus some over-privileged tax dodgers).

But I digress. Facebook is a less silly version of Myspace. Right up until the point where you see the "Poke Him/Her" link. I poke someone, they poke me back, and so on. Endless fun.

My public profile is here.

Adam Buxton Has Got News For You

2007-05-08T10:11:00.000+01:00

Quick post about Adam Buxton, a very funny comedian with a very funny blog. His most recent post covers his appearance on Have I Got News For You, one of my favourite TV programs. Must read for fans of the show - as well as being hilarious, it's also interesting hearing what goes on behind the scenes.

When Bank Holidays Attack

2007-05-04T19:29:00.000+01:00

Leaving work today was a bit like the last day of school. Lots of goodbyes, hugs and quick pints before going separate ways. All it needed was some flour and eggs thrown around.

All because this is not an average weekend. No! Because our days away from the wheels of industry this week number three!

However, my reasons to be less than cheerful at the prospect of fifty percent more time away from Excel spreadsheets also number three. First - the great British weather. After the hottest April on record, we're heading into 72 hours of rain and wind. Sod's law I guess. Any Barbecue plans can be shelved until the next bank holiday.

And that brings me to number two - the paucity of public holidays in this country. Now OK, the next one is only in three weeks time and yes, the last one was only three weeks back, but these are heady days in the UK calendar. After May, we're back to the grindstone for three months. And after that, we're waiting until Christmas! We are given a generous total of eight national days off a year by our beloved employers. Eight.

Now if you're reading this from the other side of the Atlantic you're probably chuckling wryly at how fortunate us poor limeys are. If you're reading this from somewhere in Europe, you'll be laughing for a whole other reason. We are flat bottom in the list of EU countries with the most public holidays, joint with our Dutch friends. To kick us while we're down, we're also bottom of the statuatory paid-holiday list too. I've got friends in Malta for whom a four day week would seem too much like hard work.

But here's number three on my grumble list. I don't know what to do this weekend. All of today was about what everyone was up to until Tuesday. I'm doing nothing. There's a small chance I may visit the pub at some point, but that's hardly an eight-time-a-year event.

There's a lot of talk of giving us more bank holidays. We want St.George's day off apparently, and a "Trafalgar Day", and "Waterloo day", and even something called "Europe Day" (although frankly, the French seem to have enough time off without us giving them more). I say we have less public days off, and all get given more paid holiday. While we're at it, we can ask the EU to standardise something useful for a change, and stop making our cucumbers shorter.

I can use my paid days when I want. And if it's just me off, there's less chance of Mr.Sod and his lawyers making it rain.

Lost Without Lost?

2007-04-29T12:06:00.000+01:00

Er, no actually.

On March 1st my digital TV provider, Virgin Media, fell out with Sky and dropped several channels including Sky One, which shows Lost. Regular readers here (there may be as many as two of you) will remember my love-hate relationship with this show. Much like other vices, Lost feels good at the time, but it makes your head ache and destroys relationships with family and friends.

So now I can't watch it even if I wanted to. Has this led to cold-turkey style deprivation sickness, crying myself to sleep every night clutching a picture of Sawyer? Well, no. And so Sky's bid to get me to switch provider has failed. But don't think Virgin have done well out of it either, because now I just watch less TV as a result.

What these companies don't seem to get is that average Joe Public (and I consider myself fairly average) doesn't base his life around their shows. Sure, some Virgin customers may now get their Lost fix (and 24, and the Simpsons, etc. etc.) from a Bit-torrent, but I guess a lot more just get on with their lives and "Go out and do something less boring instead". I can't believe this is good for either channel in the long run. In particular, if I was a prime-time advertiser on Sky, i'd be questioning the value of my investment right now.

But there's a small yet mercifully ignorable part of me guessing what's going on right now in Lost still. So in the name of idle speculation, i reckon that:

Some more passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 have turned up, possibly on a third island
The "Others" have been superseded by a more dangerous group of bad guys
Another original cast member has died, probably as a result of another character going bad or mad. My guess is Charlie.
Kate has had it off with someone else.
Locke has wandered off somewhere
The black smoke has turned out to be nothing but a metaphor for Hurley's love of cake.

And if any one of those things are true, i'll know i've not missed much.

Dave Up Somewhere High

2007-04-16T20:33:00.000+01:00

Quick plug for a mate's blog again.

(Note to self: find more friends' blogs. Dave and Kiran have had enough free publicity :-)

Dave's just come back from a climb up to Everest base camp, and has done 15 (count 'em!) blog posts describing the experience. All accompanied by photos as usual - in fact some of his best yet I reckon.

Start here and work forward, or end here and work back.

Jimmy Hill's Croissants

2007-04-15T11:44:00.000+01:00

It's Sunday morning and that means one of two things for me - playing guitar at church, or Jimmy Hill's Sunday Supplement. My rock fingers are having a rest this week so it's Jimmy and his croissants for me.

The format of the show, broadcast on Sky Sports 1, is Jimmy and three journalists sat round a breakfast table, supposedly in Jimmy's kitchen, munching over the football news of the week and some plastic looking food. Today the subjects were Christiano Ronaldo, Chelsea, Michael Owen and the teams who might get relegated from the Premiership. On any other week you can usually add a transfer scandal or two, the England team, and one sided debate on a manager who's fallen out with the press.

There's two reasons I love the Sunday Supplement:

I genuinely love sports journalism and it's ability to bring insight into topics which so many people find so important. Even though there's a bit of me wondering if they really know any more than the average fan on the street, but just have a fancier turn of phrase to express themselves.

Jimmy Hill makes me laugh, cringe, swear and cry, often all at the same time. The show is a slightly altered version of "Hold the Back Page", that aired at the same time years ago and featured another journalist in Jimmy's seat, and less danish pastries. I assume the name and format change came after Sky poached Jummy from the BBC, and then thought they'd better find something for him to do. So here we are now, with a sporting fossil holding forth, theoretically to add "real" footballing knowledge and experience to otherwise slightly fantastical debate. When that experience just results in constant soap-boxing on players' salaries and the number of foreigners in the premiership though, you wonder what the point is. But then the entertainment we get from watching the journalists sitting on their hands in an effort to stop punching him probably justitifies it.

For regular analysis on Jimmy's breakfast fare and the topics of the show, visit I Love Jimmy Hill's Sunday Supplement

Clouds. From a Plane

2007-04-11T19:37:00.000+01:00

Buying and selling property has knocked the wind out of my blog-posting sails recently. So here's a photo I took from my window seat, somewhere over the alps, on the way back from Malta last week. I was out there with my team leader hat on, and had an unusually enjoyable time, for an overseas work assignment. Something to do with not meeting any customers I suppose.

On the very rare occasions I do go away with work, I always have to temper my mother's excitement at her firstborn seeing the world. "I'm working mum. In an office. Not on the beach". But this time I actually got to see stuff, thanks to Marvin, a Maltese colleague out there at the same time.

If you're after proper photos, visit Dave or Kiran.

Wii or 3 - update

2007-03-24T10:25:00.000+01:00

The debate on whether to buy a Nintendo Wii or a Playstation 3 continues. Not that i'm still deciding which console I want - but because I can't actually buy it anywhere.

OK, it would be nice to have a PS3. Except that it costs 400 quid, turns out it won't really play all my PS2 games, plus looks like i'd have trouble getting it through my front door, let alone under the TV. The first and last reasons are deal breakers with my wife, and the second negates my whole justification for buying on in the first place. So I want a Wii (snigger. I know - get over it - i'm not 12 anymore...). Yet more than three months after release, I can't get one because the shop shelves are bare.

And as of this week the PS3 is available to buy in the UK. So time for a bit of role-play - if I was in charge of Nintendo Europe, would I really be happy with one of my two main competitors release their next-gen console, without having my reasonably priced, innovative offer in the same store - despite having a three month head start?

I understand the economics of supply and demand, and can easily believe that the scarcity of Wiis has made them more desirable but surely there's something wrong here. One, they're letting an enormous competitive opportunity go to waste, and two, they must be hurting the marketing of their own games too. Am I going to pay attention to the fanfare surrounding the release of a new Wii game if there's no point buying it?

But Nintendo aren't the only player in the making-them-wait game. At the time of writing it looks like I could stroll into my local high street and buy a PS3. Having waited and waited and waited for a PS2 several years ago, I can't see that lasting. I predict that within a week the next console famine will start.

Economics must be everyone's favourite subject, but do they teach common sense in Japan?

The Best Organic Chocolate Company

2007-03-12T09:52:00.000+01:00

Today's blog post is sponsored by The Best Organic Chocolate Company. I'm buying some truffles for Mother's Day, but Emma does wedding favours etc too.

"GET IN MY BELLY".

MySpace - The Geek Empire Strikes Back

2007-03-05T14:18:00.000+01:00

After a bit of nagging from my sister-in-law I finally cracked and got myself a MySpace profile. Blogs, apparently, are for geeks and losers. MySpace is where it's at. Oh the irony.

For the uninitiated (and that would normally mean my mum, except since the "What's Skpye and how can I use it to chat with my friend in Switzerland" conversation i'm not so sure anymore), MySpace is a site where you set up your own page, plaster it with pictures of yourself and a humorous song or video clop, then pester people to be your friend/special-someone (I don't understand the second pester option, but I assume that's why there's a "dating" option in the "What are you on MySpace for?" profile question).

So where's the geek irony? First, some background...

I remember a time at school when there were three groups of people - geeks, the in-crowd, and everyone else. The "everybody else" varied between people who were quite cool, could hang around with the in-crowd, but still had the time of day for the geeks. We'll call these people "nice". The other sort of "everybody else" would hang around with the geeks, and wish they were part of the in-crowd. They were neither one thing nor the other, and suffered for it. They had names like "Neil".

And it's geeks behind MySpace, so that's where they come in. The old in-crowd and lots of girls have MySpace pages. It's like Friends Reunited but with a bit more showing off. And like the school playground there's a lot of looking to see who's got the best clothes. Except we're not talking Nike Air Max trainers anymore, but stylesheets. But uless you know your HTML from your CSS, and can also figure out where in a bunch of different boxes to put the code, it is impossible to make your MySpace profile your own. So there are thousands of geeks out there offering their services to help you make pages pretty. The class nerd is no longer the sap you tread on to reach the next rung on the cool ladder - now you need his help.

As a semi-geek-wannabe, that leaves me in a wierd place. I want a MySpace page because, like my fellow geeks, I feel I should have a piece of every online bit of action. I wanted my page to simply be an advert for this blog, plus maybe have a look around for some old friends. But after spending three years at university to get a computer science degree, plus a further eight years working in IT, can I figure out how to "pimp" my page without resorting to the advice of some spotty kid who might well be exchanging his wisdom with the previously out-of-his-league girls for a bit of "dating" action for all I know? No. I can't.

So i've been left behind. I'm not cool. And now i'm not even geeky enough to buy friendship from the cool kids. Life, as well as MySpace, sucks.

Atlassian Feedback

2007-03-02T23:15:00.000+01:00

Hey! I'm famous!

Oh wait, that was supposed to be anonymous...

Eurovision Rocks

2007-03-01T13:42:00.000+01:00

Was going to post about Virgin Media and Sky today, after their big business bickering cost me a handful of TV channels late night. Maybe later.

Because the story (no, stories!) of today - Eurovision. Everyone's favourite Song/Frilly-Frock/Fellow-Former-Soviet-State-Backslapping contest is back and this year it will be better than ever.

First up - Justin Hawkins is vying for the UK entry, along with Brian Harvey from East 17 and some scouse-bird from Atomic Kitten. Forget burning out or fading away - Is this the new trend in music? Global Superstar, Rehab, Eurovision?

But topping that news is a story about Israel's entry. They clearly want to rock the world in a whole different kind of way - poking fun at Iran's nuclear capabilities.. Wogan grumbles every contest about the exchanging of votes between buddy countries (douze point for Cyprus from Greece again this time? Group lovin' from the Baltics once more?), but that's what makes it funny to watch. Is anyone really in it for the music?

Being serious though - do we really want to be tarring the fun with the religious fundementalism and global terrorism brushes? Terry had better wear a flak jacket.

Nine Eleven Nutbags

2007-02-19T16:56:00.000+01:00

9/11 : The Conspiracy Files - BBC2, Sunday 18th Feb

To fill that awkward Sunday evening gap between Top Gear and Lost last night we watched the latest Conspiracy Files episode on BBC2, which dealt with 9/11.

For me there's two kind of conspiracy shows - The cheapo cable TV kind (sitting between "Police Camera Action 12" and "When Stepladders Attack" in the schedules) and the BBC kind. One show revels in giving wackjob theories a soapbox to stand on, and the other does its best to rubbish the theorists, towing the official line and probably making itself the target of a crackpot or two in the process.

But I know who i'm siding with on this one. The BBC didn't need to present much of a decent counter-argument to these half-brained plots. Wreckage from United 93 found 7 miles from crashsite? Only if you go by road and not the 1 mile crow-flying distance. Same flight turns up in a different airport a while later, mysteriously hidden from prying eyes? Er, not according to one of the passengers on the mystery plane, belonging to a different airline.

I pick on two of the United 93 theories because I watched the movie of the same name over the weekend as well. A stunning bit of film-making that portrayed real people in a real situation, without attempting to push any kind of agenda or one-sided politics. Kind of puts the Nutbags shown last night in perspective.

So why do they do it? This was the focus of the last part of the show, and featured a Hollywood-type responsible for a TV show released six months prior to 9/11, that showed an eerily familiar plane-based incident.

The cynical view is that they want to get their faces in the media. And by all accounts the young filmmaker featured, Dylan Avery, has succeeded. Much of the theory stuff was presented using Avery's film, soon to be relaunched as a big budget feature. So good luck to the kid - but a kid is all he is. What's with the crowd of slightly nervous looking schoolmates? What's with the "office", with enormous desk, flat screen on the wall, but a not particularly well-hidden playstation underneath?

I think it's about power. Rail against the official "powers that be", and gain your own following of like minded numpties. The other main target of the BBC's silently sniggering director was Alex Jones, a radio host with the manner of a stereotypical TV evangelist. You even got to see him whip his congregation into a frenzy of Bush-bashing at a local rally. All it was missing was the laying on of hands and speaking in tongues.

These people get their power and kicks from having others believe them and their ideas. They're on to a winner because everyone wants to believe that there's something out there, that all isn't what it seems. And because no-one is going to sink to their level to prove that it was all just a deadly combination of psychotic fundamentalism and an incompetent government looking the wrong way.

Hats Off To The Buskers - The View

2007-02-12T16:17:00.001+01:00

First, i've got a conspiracy theory. Bands like The View have been designed by some evil rock impresario to make people feel old. Yes, it's music for "the kids", but they know it will be bought by 20/30-somethings (from a personal point of view the stroke in that depends on whether you read this post before or after June this year). And they know that cash rich demographic will all be wondering why they've wasted the last ten years sitting at a desk instead of making loud noises, pulling groupies and throwing things, or themselves, into swimming pools. Or maybe it's just me, but i'm not the only ex-student who bought a guitar when he was a teenager and still pulls it out to play Smells Like Teen Spirit once in a while. Curse you Arctic Monkeys, for making me feel a failure. And curse The View as well.

Now the review. I'm guessing there will have been a certain amount of comparison between The View and said Monkeys. They're young, they're northern, and they've both flown straight into the top end of the charts with albums that inspire that "wish it was me" daydream above. But the similarities stop there. Half an hour with the Arctic Monkeys, and you forget that they're little boys from Sheffield. There's something about their lyrics and their musicianship that makes them different from all the rest, and transcend any pigeonholes you might have put them in. Hats Off To The Buskers is a good guitar album, but that's all it is. Same Jeans is a great single, but that all it is. Plus, it's not desperately original stuff. Superstar Tradesmen is fantastic, but there's a lot of the Libertines in it, and a general feeling of having heard most of it somewhere else before.

Like a lot of what i've bought recently, it's a good album but apart from making me wish I was 17 again so I could write my own pop-rock that sounds like that of all my heroes, there's nothing to get excited about.

Not Born to Barter

2007-02-01T14:56:00.000+01:00

Jobs i'm glad I don't do #76: Anything that involves haggling.

I like prices on stickers, or something that says RRP underneath. And give me a blue peter badge if you want, but I don't like to trick, con, undermine or deceive.

Two different cases for me and da missus at the moment - selling a flat and buying a car. Why do we offer a bit less for the car and wait to see if the salesman bites? Why can't the price be the price and that be the end of it? And why have I made X phone calls, sent Y emails and posted Z letters in the past month to try to sell my flat at a reasonable price? Instead of designing home-buyers packs and making all estate agents swear an oath to the god of white socks and shiny suits, why don't the government tell everyone that a two bedroom flat in my street costs £500,000, and no-one's allowed to argue?

I know, I know - market economy and all that. So my next question is... what was so bad about Soviet Russia anyway?

PJ's Place

2007-01-16T14:54:00.000+01:00

Woo, it's another two-post-in-as-many-days moment. That's got the blogging out of my system for a while I guess. I'll see you in a month or two.

Anyway, pressed the "Next Blog" link a few times while I was eating lunch at my desk today, and found PJ's Place. She's funny, and clearly has issues .

Wii or 3?

2007-01-15T16:47:00.000+01:00

The quiet insertion of a Nintendo Wii on to my Christmas wish list went unnoticed, so i'm still Wii-less. I'm actually happy about it, because I watched Bravo TV's preview of the Playstation 3 at the weekend, and can now afford to make a sensible informed decision about which to buy. Wii or PS3?

Obviously, being British, i've only had a chance to play with the Nintendo so far. I had a half hour swing of the Wii-mote on Christmas day and enjoyed it immensely. The control system is genius and the Sports games is a lot of fun. Couldn't help thinking though, even as I steered a bowling ball down the alley with a surprisingly realistic touch of spin, is it just a gimmick? Can they make real games that use the little white stick well? Real games like those I saw on the PS3 preview. Racing games, fighting games, Shoot 'em Up games. Games like I have on my ageing PS2, but with HD support?

And that's the problem. Nearly every PS3 game i've seen video of or read about has a number at the end of the title. A number one higher than the similar game I own already. Do I really want to pay £350-plus to play the same game with knobs on?

The way I see it, the only real games coming out now are on Wii. Games are supposed to be about having fun, and a new console should be about having a new type of fun. Yes, my friend with the Xbox-360 might laugh at the cutesy graphics and the kid-friendly appeal, but i'll point at his copy of Halo 2,3,4 or whatever and laugh right back.

I'm not a teenager any more. I don't have time to play games like Metal Gear Solid with half hour cut-scenes, big guns and comic book action. I want fun and I want innovation. And being married with a larger extended family now, I want multi-player fun and innovation without needing to chat with insomniac american kids over a broadband connection. And I don't want to be paying £50 a pop to get the same experience as someone rummaging in the PS2 bargain bin.

So it's the Wii for me. Think the bank manager might be happier too. Not to mention the wife...

My Favourite Stuff of 2006

2006-12-27T11:27:00.000+01:00

These are the things i've liked the most on 2006 (although some of them have been around longer - i'm a bit slow off the mark sometimes)...

Music - The Fratellis

Film - Borat (partly because it's the only time i've been to the cinema this year)

TV - Lost, even though I hate it.

Book - The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Game - Half Life 2

Merry Winter Party

2006-12-20T10:44:00.000+01:00

I read this morning about a school in Bournemouth that has banned a children's Christmas party, and replaced it with a "Winter Party". The reason? To avoid offending someone.

Like most sensible people I find this fairly ridiculous. For a start, who are we offending? The same story mentioned a Muslim MP who has been applauded for sending a "Merry Christmas" card. I have Hindu friends at work who might not celebrate the birth of Christ itself, but certainly like an excuse for a party as much as the next man, and certainly wouldn't get upset by someone from another religion exercising their beliefs.

What really annoys me though is the hypocrisy of some of the people featured in these kinds of stories. To quote the article:

Local councillor Claire Smith said: "It's very easy to offend people's sensibilities but, as far as i'm concerned, this is a Christian country..."

Now Claire Smith might be the most pious, god-fearing believer on the south coast, and I won't question her own faith. I'm a Christian myself and will be in church next Monday. But since when has Christmas in this country been about the birth Jesus Christ?

I'm writing this sitting at my desk 25 floors above Oxford Street, London (shhh, don't tell my boss). Today there will be thousands of people down there handing over money for presents, to give to others who also don't understand what they're celebrating.

People (and tabloid newspapers for that matter) - don't preach what Christmas should be about when it may as well be called a "Winter Party" as far as you're concerned.

The Secret Millionaire

2006-11-30T21:27:00.000+01:00

Last night Channel 4 showed the first programme of "The Secret Millionaire", a new series where rich people give money to not-so-rich people, and we're all supposed to goo and say either "Bless, what a lovely man" or "What a prick". As I watched it though, I wondered if either are really the agenda here.

Media being what it is, you're always being guided in the direction the programme-maker wants. Usually it's fairly obvious which way that is. A show like Big Brother is, in the publicity at least, a social experiment where we observe real people in a confined environment. In reality it's an excuse to watch idiots perform for the camera for a few weeks. We know that, the broadcaster knows it, and they know we know it. Everyone's happy.

I didn't get The Secret Millionaire. This episode followed Ben Way, a self-made 20-something dot-com millionaire as he visited a Hackney youth club for a week. He played a bit of pool, hung around with some deprived kids and mused behind their backs about what a culture shock it all was. At the end of his time there he decided who to shell out 40-grand on, apparently keen to make a difference to someone's life. So while on the face of it this was about charity - the obvious alternative reaction is cynicism. Here's a guy worth X million quid, giving a deprived organisation and some of its members a measley bit of pocket money (as far as he's concerned), in a blatant attempt to pull at our heartstrings and make us believe that capitalism isn't all bad.

But I don't get it. If this is about laughing at the rich, there are bigger targets. I had vaguely heard of Ben Way, the hero/villain of the piece, but he's not exactly a household name. The whole "dyslexic boy whose teacher never thought he'd make it" thing might have been laid on a bit thick, and "giving something back" hardly seems appropriate from a guy with that kind of distinctly non-deprived accent, but he did at least seem in this for the right reasons. So why make fun of that?

Perhaps - and I hope it's true for this story and future episodes in the series - this was about showing who the real heroes are out there. It was genuinely moving when Way handed over £20,000 to the leader of the youth club. Not because of the posh guy in the suit, but the man who hadn't paid himself a penny for two years and who the kids next door would do anything for. AThe man who couldn't hold back the tears when told his club had a fighting change of surviving the next 12 months now.

So perhaps there was a point to the show after all.

Autumn arrives

2006-11-20T14:54:00.000+01:00

No, not pretty colours...

Three words: Slippery Rail Conditions

Stealth Train

2006-11-10T12:10:00.000+01:00

I'm sure there's a social dictionary somewhere with this definition in:
Too Much Time On Their Hands adj. Google Earth user *

But still, this is funny... Stealth Train on The Register

* - And yes readers, I appreciate the irony. It takes a special kind of blog reader/poster not to.

Wiki at Work

2006-11-08T15:10:00.000+01:00

I've just managed to get a wiki live at work, providing a company-wide knowledge base and replacement intranet. I'm going to write a blog post over the next few weeks saying what i've learnt. In the meantime, let's just say it's working, i'm extremely busy helping people use it, and that the engine behind it all is Atlassian Confluence, which is brilliant.

The Middle East

2006-11-08T15:06:00.000+01:00

I spotted an interesting link on Jonathan Nolen's Blog and thought i'd put it here. The animation below shows the Middle East over history, and is great at providing some background as to why that area has so many troubles.

The Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

2006-10-23T19:58:00.000+01:00

One of the many problems working at the end of the world's largest shopping street is the amount of money I spend on CDs. The (in)convenience of a Virgin Megastore, coupled with the iTunes account, has led to a bit of an explosion in Neil's music collection.

Because I secretly quite like "Welcome to the...", I brought "The Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance today. A few weeks ago I proudly went to the counter with DJ Yoda's CD, safe knowing that the assistant wouldn't be snickering at me when I left. Not so sure this time. I stopped paying attention to what NME recommended a long time ago (long before I started liking The Darkness and they stopped) - it's written by students, for students, and i'm sadly not one anymore. But MCR don't sit comfortably alongside the Fratellis and Arctic Monkeys of this world. It's rock, but not as a discerning 29-year old is supposed to know it.

Ahead of me were two goth girls, presumably buying the same CD I was hiding in the sleeve of my coat, and carrying a "Black Parade is Here" sign that they were probably going to march down Oxford Street waving at tourists. Perhaps they think they're "flipping one at the man" or something. I desperately wanted to remind them they were helping a very large US record label sell its wares, and not helping give a leg up to a struggling indie nobody. But more than that I was eager not to be tarred with the same brush by Virgin's staff.

Anyway, the CD. Possibly the wackiest bit of rock i've heard since the earlier-mentioned Hawkins brothers last effort. Never have I heard a band try so hard to be turned into a rock opera. A theme is not necessarily a bad thing, and this makes no secret of being a concept album, but Green Day have got a lot to answer for. American Idiot is the best CD i've bought in a long while - this is very much the black haired, black nailed and silly black booted version.

And it sounds like Queen, so that must make it "We Will Rock You". It's listenable enough, but you come out wondering what the point was, and hoping no-one sees you.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2006-10-19T22:12:00.000+01:00

This is probably going to be everywhere by now, but I had to post it anyway. Xfm played it this morning, and it's genius...

London Aquarium

2006-10-18T19:18:00.000+01:00

Me and the missus took a day off on Monday this week to do touristy things. We've both lived in London for nearly 30 years, but there's loads of things we haven't seen yet.

The verdict from the day is that St.Paul's Cathedral is expensive and hard on your legs, and that the London Aquarium is ace.

In true Dave and Kiran style i've posted a picture. Not as good as theirs, but mine has sharks in it. And it's taken with my mobile phone too.

Next time we're doing the proper open-top bus thing :-)

Dave's Blog

2006-10-09T19:27:00.000+01:00

Two posts in one day!

My friend Dave has got his own blog. His has a bit more of a point than mine, him being an excellent photographer and therefore have something to show off.

His first photo posted was of some sort of bug thing.

Edit: URL Changed.

DJ Yoda

2006-10-09T17:23:00.000+01:00

Bought DJ Yoda's new album last week. Bit of a departure from my usual music tastes (see Get Cape... post below), but I was at university with him so should lend my support. Not that he needs it.

I've got a photo of him and myself sitting on a sofa at our hall which I should post here. He said at the time that it would be very valuable when i'm the guitar player in a massive band and he's a world famous DJ.

Better find a band then...

Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly

2006-09-18T22:57:00.000+01:00

My lunch is usually spent at my desk. Working at the end of Oxford Street, i've developed a strong aversion to tourist shoppers and people who want me to join their English language school. But I like to visit my local Virgin Megastore to see what new music is out.

Today I got a nice surprise - a band playing, and for free at that. A cracking opportunity to make up for missing the Fratellis at the same venue last week (despite having blagged two wristbands). The band was Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. and they were excellent. The NME, in the way that the NME insists on doing, has labelled them "Emo-folk". The "folk" comes from the acoustic guitar I think, and the "Emo" seems odd, relating as it does to NME's current pet-hate-genre. Maybe the editors have seen the innovative use of punctuation in the name and lumped them together with Panic! At The Disco.

I bought the album straight away ("The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager"). They mix the aforementioned acoustic sound with lots of tinny electronic beats and noises. Which was a bit of a shame having seen them live. The laptop was there on stage providing something a bit different to your average three-piece, but it was the guy on the drumkit who caught my ear in the first place. It's gone straight on my iPod though.

More Free Papers

2006-09-15T09:08:00.000+01:00

Just came off the tube at Holborn and had a free copy of the Wall Street Journal thrust at me. Maybe it was the slight disorientation after ascending from the depths of the Piccadilly line, but I neglected to offer my usual response to people in London handing me stuff. So now I can break my record and get four free papers today.

I'm no environmental activist - the chances of this paper going in the recycle bin are slim - but I at least feel i'm doing the shrinking polar icecaps a disservice if I don't even read the paper before binning it. This one looks a bit boring though - there's a story on the front page about Turkish boat builders.

Maybe I do need all that celebrity gossip after all?

I Hate Lost

2006-09-14T18:28:00.000+01:00

I hate Lost.

I don't mean hate it in the way my wife does. She decided, quite justifiably, that the TV show was a bit too silly back in series one. I, in another example of not being the brains of the outfit, kept going with it. Now I hate Lost in a far deeper way.

I hate that last week I was on the verge of quitting for good. I'd stopped caring if the crazy man in the armoury was good or bad, my niggling irritation with Jack was turning into a full blown wish that he'd get caught by "the others" and fed to a polar bear, and people kept getting shot by accident. Then I watched it this week and they found another %$*£@#~ hatch. And watched another video. And now i'm going to watch next week aren't I?, because i'm addicted.

I don't care if it's all in Hurley's head, or it's an allegory of a metaphor of something I don't understand. I hate and I want it to go away.

Free Papers

2006-09-13T10:22:00.000+01:00

Every day for the last week i've come home with a bag full of newspaper. There might be no such thing as a free lunch, but London has gone mad for free papers. We've had Metro for years, but now there's two evening papers: London Lite and thelondonpaper. But i'm not sure either deserves to branded "News".

I'm all for having free stuff to read on the tube, but where did everyone get the idea that all commuters want to read about is Kate Moss, Pete Docherty and assorted Big Brother contestants? Or in the case of London Lite, which London borough houses cost the most in?

Metro gets the balance between news and celebrity news right in my opinion, and I especially enjoy their gossip section in Friday's edition, complete with column from Holy Moly. In today's world of news websites, what's the point of an evening paper anyway?

Having said that, it was worth putting up with the purple-clad army of "news" pushers to hear the cry of a traditional Evening Standard seller last week: "Come and get your real Standard, not that rubbish you wipe your arse with"

My First Blog Post

2006-09-13T09:07:00.000+01:00

I'm Neil and this is my first blog post. This is the product of being at work early and not having a lot to do.

Er, what do I do now?

I've talked about being a writer for a while, but never done anything about it. So I thought i'd set up one of these blog things, type in some rubbish and then call myself a published author.

So what will I write? Stuff i'm interested in, things I read about in the news, or perhaps just any old nonsense I can string two words together about.

But it's nine'o'clock now and I should be doing something more productive.

How do I post this then?