metal mickey

Steve Potter has the strangest lab rat around. It's body is a virtual one, running around inside a computer generated world. And it's brain is an amorphous mass of brain cells from a real rat, living in a shallow glass dish and wired up to the computer. Potter wants to see if the "rat" can learn it's way around. Cool but not as cool as ninjas.

If I had a dog, he'd be called Doug. Doug the dog.

Have you guys heard about this? - a class action lawsuit on behalf of black Americans descended from slaves seeking reparations from firms which profited from slavery? The complaint did not contain a monetary damage figure, but did estimate the current value of slaves' unpaid labor as $1.4 trillion. If they win, the lawyer'll get a quarter of that...

Bring back MacGyver

Not just because I enjoyed it, but because MACGYVER SAVES LIVES. There were many neat tricks on MacGyver that could prevent serious accidents and injury. For example, just last night an American friend of mine managed to get chewing gum stuck in her boyfriend's copious chesthair. Don't ask me how, don't ask me why, but she did - and twas a terrible sight to behold.

I'm sure that had MacGvyer still been showing, they would have known that peanut butter could have saved the day. Luckily, the aforementioned American remained calm and relaxed (chiefly due to alcohol) and approached her beau with a large frozen chicken, to "freeze the m*therf**ker off". However, he politely declined.

So if you ever see a man with a large piece of hair missing from his chest; remember that Macgyver could have saved him...

Down-time

Apologies for the site being down for a few days. This was the result of confusion with my hosting ISP, who only sent me the email to say my contract was about to run out 3 days before this was due to happen. I didn't see the email among all the other messages, due to being busy, so they cut me off. It's all sorted now.

The fact that the site could not be viewed was not due to an upgrade/redesign that was incomptible with certain browsers, as banderama suspected might be the case. I wouldn't do that to you guys.

Bandy posted something about this on the site. I've taken the post off because it doesn't apply any more, but I thought he neatly encapsulated the principle of bearing backwards compatibility in mind when upgrading:

“Upgrade by all means, but please allow the downtown man to have a pop at the uptown girl as well”

Double bill - how to make a fortune and the answer to the meaning of life

How to make a fortune?

Set up an estate agency in London which isn't absolute total and complete bollocks. Taking my recent flat purchase for example, the sellers paid their solicitor about £450 for doing the conveyancing - quite a lot of work, done reasonably competently, and the solicitor takes responsibility for it for years to come because they can be sued for negligence if they cocked up etc. The estate agent, on the other hand, got over 3 grand for putting a (technically rather poor) photo of the flat in their window and failing to turn up to show me round on the first attempt. They also lost the phone number of someone who had made a higher offer for the flat - good for me, but not exactly professional! Once the flat was sold, no further liability for the estate agent - they can't be sued for cocking anything up because they never did anything for their 3 grand in the first place! There's got to be an easier life than this, and that is it.

Ah yes, and the answer to the meaning of life. Why are we here?

As a junior solicitor, one of the many unsatisfactory and frankly rather tedious things about everyday life at work is having to listen to people uttering such cringe-worthy bollocks as "touch base", "best practice" and "put this one to bed". Ironically, it is one of these spine-tinglingly irritating instances of subversion of the English language that made me realise the answer to the question "why are we here?"

The phrase is "add value". And that's what we're here to do. At work it's wank, of course, because all you're doing is charging clients a whole wodge of dosh for doing something which they don't really give a shit about - nobody's really adding any value to anything. But outside of work, what people try to do is improve things - make friends out of strangers, make a family out of nothing, make a home - generally turn chaos into order and make the world a better place... or add value.

p.s. I pity the fool who thought he was leaving someone responsible in charge.

As I was sitting at work, waiting around for some n*b jockey to send me some tax opinion that some other n*b jockey needs to see before I can go home, I decided to type "work sucks" into a search engine (much like tucola typed in "eat my shorts" as a web address once, and has had hours of fun ever since.....). Amongst various interesting Scandinavian sites (triggered by "sucks" rather than "work" I presume), I came across a site for ranting and in particular instructions on how to make a hand-turkey. I'm off to make one now to see if anyone at work notices.

the anti-disclaimer

"IMPORTANT. Antidisclaimer. This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from me to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any number of system administrators along the way. If you have received this message by mistake, it would be ridiculous for me to tell you not to read it or copy it to anyone else, because, let's face it, if it's a message revealing confidential information or one that could embarass me intensely, that's precisely what you'll do. Wouldn't you?. Likewise it is superfluous for me to claim copyright in the contents, because surely I own that anyway, even if you print out a hard copy or disseminate this message all over the universe."

Whilst looking out of the window with my roommate and musing on the meaning of life, cabbages and kings and whether puce is really a colour that you would want your overcoat to be, we got round to talking about Stuart Hall. Not Stuart Hall, the professor of sociology at the Open University, or Stuart Hall for boys, you understand, but Stuart Hall the some time presenter of "It's a knockout!" and current roving reporter for Manchester City's home games on Radio 5 live. In particular, we were trying to decide whether the man is (in Neil's words) a prick or not. I am in the "not" camp until someone can persuade me otherwise, partly because he did "It's a knockout!" with far more panache than Cheggers can ever hope to achieve, but because his vocabulary and range of reporting has no equal in the football reporter's world. Granted, you don't always get to find out what the score was, but I think that is where he distinguishes himself from his peers. Neil, being no fan of football (but a Jeux sans frontieres enthusiast) was intrigued.

Anyway, to prove my point, I set about trying to find a website I once saw which contained some of Stuart Hall's best ever quotations. Not a tricky task I thought. Simply search for the man on the internet and the wonders of modern technology will sort it out. But no, foiled. Once I had removed the pretenders to the Stuart Hall crown (sociologists and boys' schools in the main), all I was left with was about a grillion websites which had repeated the quote "what will you do when you leave football Jack - will you stay in football?", which was probably uttered about 25 years ago when Jack Charlton hung up his shinpads.

I cannot believe that a man that I assumed to have iconic or, at the very least, cult status does not have a website dedicated to him. Or at least a decent amount of space. Eddie Waring's got some for Chrissakes.

On the other hand, I have a sneaking suspicion that a good half of what the man says is absolute garbage and would look like nothing on earth if written down. Perhaps I should leave it to my {always unreliable} memory.

They ask about my beeper, I’m not a dope dealer,
This is the Cherokee 4 wheeler.
If I was sellin’ drugs
To all of the street thugs
Yo, I don’t mean to brag
But I’d be drivin’ in a Jag.
I wouldn't be hittin’ the Eastside lowridin’
I’d be in Hollywood or Venice Beach high-profilin’.

Hi-diddley dee, a lawyer's life for me?

Throughout my career as a lawyer so far, from the start of my law degree to date, I’ve always had the feeling that the idea of being a lawyer didn’t really suit me. Lawyers are careful, unexciting, risk–averse, boring. Not quite how a young man normally chooses to see himself. But it’s starting to occur to me that maybe that is precisely what I’m like. I am basically a timid, unadventurous person. I’ve never had a wild phase when I’ve gone off the rails and although I’ve always kind of seen myself as willing to try things, to put myself in interesting situations, I think that despite my best efforts to the contrary, I am congenitally incapable of living dangerously. In the final analysis, I’m not sure I have the nerve for it.

Looking back, I’ve never taken shit–loads of drugs, or got incredibly pissed, or joined a cult, or lived in a squat, or slept with large numbers of people, or, since I was literally about 4 years old, really taken a chance or done anything without thinking about the consequences. And what’s starting to worry me is not that I secretly wish I’d been doing / was still doing those things, but whether I’m secretly glad I never did / will. But I still have this vague feeling that there’s something missing.

This is the dogs. DIY police identi-kit picture-maker.

Why you need to give up this piss.

The sounds of Dr Evil, so you can see whether your annoying mate’s impersonations are any good or not - via Carrie.

What noise does it make when you chew an elastic band?

The bloke who shares my office has been making strange crunching noises since he moved in. Since I can’t see what he’s doing from behind my computer, I assumed he was a fan of eating rice crackers or popcorn or something. But all day? I finally asked what he was eating. Turns out he is actually chewing an elastic band, as a concentration aid. Never heard that one before. He tells me it used to drive his previous room–mate up the wall. No shit.

Apparently, Phil’s gone on holiday until 18 March. So we are expected to remain in suspense until then on his business plan saga. Also Blogger’s been pretty flaky lately because they’re upgrading. So if it’s not been working it probably isn’t your fault and I don’t think it’s my fault, cos I haven’t changed anything my end. It’ll all come right before long I’m sure.

How to make a fortune part 2

Anyone figured it out yet? The business plan avoids the problem that most market niches have already been cornered by vaguely competent organisations. It would, in fact, involve entering a market where to refer to the competition as muppets would be doing Kermit and co a grave disservice. A market where you could be considerably more competent than the opposition even if you only ever turned up to work immediately after an extremely heavy session down the pub, AND tied both hands behind your back AND you had a frontal lobotomy AND had lived on a diet of nothing other than raw extract of cow's spinal cord since birth...

Hotmail is a spam magnet, and at the moment I am finding that depressing.

How to make a fortune

Strikes me there are a number of ways of making an absolute wodge of cash. One involves rare levels of extreme skill such as those exhibited by Michael Schumacher, David Beckham, etc. So that's out, really. Another involves coming up with a novel business idea which nobody else has thought of, such as selling vacuum cleaners that actually suck or flat-packed furniture which looks quite good once you put it together. The problem with trying to enter most markets with a novel business idea is that there are usually already loads of people doing quite a good job. However, I have come up with something which is so guaranteed quickly to make vast quantities of money, and so obvious, that I'm amazed nobody has thought of it before. A money making scheme so cunning that you could put a bra on it and call it Sam Fox. What is this scheme I hear you ask?

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For any Star Wars fans, I came across this sneak preview of Samuel L Jackson's, ahem, purple lightsaber on the internet. Apparently, George Lucas has made a special exception from the "lightsabers only come in red, green or blue" rule cos Jackson REALLY wanted a purple one. I wonder if it has "Bad Muthafu**er" written down the side of it....

Whilst watching Liverpool tonk the Toon Army last night, I was wondering why the Geordie strikers seemed so intimidated by the Scouse defence. I've now realised it must've been because of the Portuguese lad, Abel Xavier...

Cool. That’s three people at least who have managed to get their heads around logging in now. I await with interest how you will choose to use your new awesome power. (And by awesome, I mean totally sweet).

chrish

apologies, i believe i am now online and can ramble inanely on the internet about sharks, vertebrae, or whatever else.

thanks for the invite....I now feel a real part of this cool website.

In an attempt to prevent this site from becoming moribund, I’m going to throw it open to a wider number of contributors and try to make it more of a community. I’ll probably find that no–one wants to post! The first batch of invites have gone out to some of the old forum-blog crowd. If anyone else wants to post, give me a shout.

Why did you just invite me to your blogsite?

Good snow. Good resort. Good times. I suppose all good things must come to an end.