Alex Lomas

June 21, 2008

The SM Café

Not only does it have a funny name, but they suggest that you "Drink Yourself Happy"...

April 19, 2008

Domain Registry of America

The DROA are at it again and I'm the lucky recipient :)

For more information take a look at http://www.synuk.com/droa/ but definitely don't sign up with them!

I'm half tempted to stake out MBE on Gloucester Road to see if anyone picks up the mail, but I assume it's just a forwarding operation. Scum.

April 10, 2008

Nice ASUS kit

Leaving aside the awful Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee PC I really like the Aiguru S2. It will certainly go well with the as-yet-unreleased Essentio CS5110 which I'm rather drawn to as a new HTPC and Blu-Ray player.

March 9, 2008

RAF Welford

I passed a very well built sliproad on the M4 just before J13 today. What really caught my eye was the trusty enigmatic sign "Works Unit Only" albeit done in the military red pattern.

A quick check on Live Maps found me my sliproad - following it up the hill reveals RAF Welford, the largest munitions dump in Europe (apparently).

Cool :)

February 1, 2008

Skins

I'm so glad that Skins is coming back to E4 in a couple of weeks. I'm even happier that the first episode features Maxxie, whose Dad is played by Bill Bailey. Can't wait :)

January 21, 2008

Crazy Stairs

A cheap, but very cool way of building stairs out of some square packing cases set at angles. When I build my own house, I'll be doing this.

Below The Clouds » Trappa av TAF Arkitektkontor

January 14, 2008

BBC digital terrestrial test card

This, frankly, is the coolest thing ever: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=728920

The result?

December 16, 2007

Is it cheaper to use Oyster pay as you go than a travelcard?

Well, yes!

Let's assume first of all that you commute to and from work twice 5 days a week, from Zone 2 to Zone 1.

From 2008, a monthly 1-2 travelcard will cost you £93 [1]. A single pay as you go ticket (on Oyster) will cost you £2 [1] (assuming you're travelling peak hours).

So:

£2 x twice per day x 5 days per week x 4 weeks = £80

Ah-ha I hear you cry, but surely if you account for the fact that people travel at the weekend too, the monthly travelcard will pay for itself? I guess it does, but for some people it's a lot cheaper not to buy a travelcard but I don't remember it ever used to be quite this cut and dry. It's even more obvious now that travelcard rates have gone up, buy PAYG hasn't.

Do the sums kids (or ride a bike!)...

[1] http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/guide-to-fares-and-tickets-08-01-02.pdf

October 13, 2007

Google DMCA

How odd - when searching for "GMF" (I wondered who they were as they sponsor the Rugby World Cup) on Google - you get this:

Click for biggerer

Interestingly, you get the same error if you use google.co.uk where the DMCA doesn't apply...

More at http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi?sID=898

June 16, 2007

I don't think "NO MAN RIDING" means what I think it means

(Written on the side of a barrel lift at a pub)

May 14, 2007

TANZEN!!

A travesty of eurovision-block-voting justice. Bah.

April 17, 2007

My kind of alarm clock

The kind that jumps off your bedside table and hides somewhere so you're forced to get out of bed to turn its bleeping off...

[nandahome.com]

April 6, 2007

Seven Deadly Bins

Well, ok, there are only six of them...

February 6, 2007

Talk Talk arseholes

I just got cold called by someone from Talk Talk broadband trying to flog me ADSL. My home number has been on the the TPS for well over a year which legally requires companies not to make marketing calls to me. It takes a maximum of 28 days for it to take effect, and I've never had one until tonight.

What's made me particularly angry is that I queried why I was being called as my number is on the TPS. The lady on the phone demanded to know what my "registration number" was and they'd then stop calling me.

I stated that this wasn't how the TPS worked to which the lady said that without a "registration number" she didn't believe that I was on a do not call list. I was particularly angry at this remark and demanded to speak to her supervisor. She then hung up.

Arseholes. Thank $deity for online complaints forms...

January 11, 2007

Living with Vista - part 2: more niggles

I promise I'll write up some of the good things about Vista at some point, but I have to get the bad stuff out of the way first. These are going to seem a bit nit-picky, but I think they're pretty symptomatic of what the regular user's going to experience once they get their mits on Vista at the end of the month. Don't forget that Vista Ultimate will set you back £250 - for that kind of money I expect it to work.

Firstly, I have a Microsoft keyboard with an integrated fingerprint reader. Not for any sense of security (we all know how rubbish they are), but for convenience - it makes logging on and signing into web sites and email a lot easier. I was pretty pleased to see that Microsoft have a proper release of the "DigitalPersona" software available for download for Vista. Logging on (initially) worked just fine with the reader, however if I locked the screen and then tried to unlock it again by fingerprint, I'd just get an error "invalid username or password" (regular password worked fine). Great.

I could *just* about deal with this, however I started to find that when I was using IE7, it would crash on exit with an error about ntdll.dll and then decide to restart itself. I was trying to close IE in the first place, so I'd quit it and it would crash again, and again, and again... I found some posts where other people had had similar problems, and lo, the problem was caused by MS's DigitalPersona software. Off to the junk it went and the problems went away.

This is pretty amazing - a Microsoft produced product, running on their flagship OS with one of their premium bits of hardware. And it doesn't work. What does this say about their quality control and testing?

Next, yet another Microsoft mess. I have a copy of Vista Ultimate (albeit from MSDN, but still not cheap) - I like Media Centre. I love the design, the fancy graphics, the fact it can play and record TV... Perfect! I have a Hauppauge Nova-T USB2 which is touted to have drivers in the box for Vista. I plugged it in, Vista found the drivers and away I went.

I started Media Centre and started scanning for TV channels and it found all the regular ones I'd expect, except I couldn't watch any of them. Well, apart from some shitty shopping channels which might as well be nothing. I couldn't understand - with digital TV, if it finds the name of the channel during the scan you can be pretty sure it'll be able to view it. I ran up TV on an XP box and it worked fine, so I doubted it was the aerial.

It transpires that the Microsoft supplied drivers tune themselves to the wrong frequency - it's only off by 1mHz, but it's enough to make it unusable. The beta drivers from Hauppauge themselves cause Vista to bluescreen too... You can't blame Microsoft for Hauppauge's rubbish betas, but you can blame them for shipping wonky drivers in the first place.

If I'm an average user, I'm going to expect things to "just work". When I plug something in and it appears to work but then later transpires not to, I'm going to be pretty pissed. I'm not going to want to be trawling dodgy hardware manufacturer's forums in the vain hope of finding some broken beta driver from a slow FTP site that turns out to make my lovely new Vista PC more unstable than Windows ME!

Don't even get me started on the shocking state of Vista technical documentation. Even if it does exist, it's poorly written, wrong or just plain contradictory. Want to phone them up and get help? Well, you can't because Vista "isn't released yet", not even if you throw money at them (which currently stands at £200 per incident).

Well, I suppose it's no worse than open source ;)

Next time - some good things to say!

January 9, 2007

Case modding

It's pretty weird and to some it will be a complete waste of time: I present my SGI O2 case mod - I've stuffed a Core 2 Duo Vista machine inside the case of a mid-90s vintage workstation.

As it's quite a major undertaking, I've written up its own dedicated page.

December 19, 2006

Nike+ disassembled

This is very sad , but what else can you do when your Nike+iPod running sensor goes flat and you can't change the battery?

I had to take a Dremel to it to get it open...

Only after the event did I find a page with a technical writeup (if you're into that sort of thing).

I am still pretty annoyed that you have to spend £20 a year on replacing the thing. How hard could it have been to build in a watertight battery compartment?

October 26, 2006

Caesar Twins

My boyfriend and I saw them at the Edinburgh festival over the summer, they were excellent :)

October 18, 2006

Nano

I feel marginally guilty, but I've just bought myself a (new style) 8GB IPod Nano.

Oh well, I'm glad this month's bonus is going to good use :) It'll also go well with my new Nike+ top I bought:

October 3, 2006

Shopping Lists

It's always great to find other people's lists in your trolley.

I espcially like the juxtaposition and shoutyness.

MEAT.

PIES.

BURN CREAM

Best be careful when taking the pies out of the oven I guess...

September 29, 2006

Derren Brown

I've just preordered his long awaited book. You should too...

September 27, 2006

Mohawk

I've jut had my hair done and have got my bleached mohawk back :)

Woo!

August 28, 2006

New Photos

When you find an old memory stick on your camera, you never quite know what you're going to find. I've posted the rather electic mix up in the gallery - there's everything from Edinburgh at night and a rather sparkly new Atomium in Brussels to sheep in a city farm...

August 17, 2006

Noxious

Police say a "noxious" substance was released in a gay pub in Soho.

Come on plods, isn't it obvious? Someone dropped a bottle of poppers...

August 3, 2006

Russian Parkour

<sigh>

How I wish I looked that good and could jump around like that :)

June 5, 2006

Paco Rabanne

As if it wasn't enough to taunt us with the giant man-sized posters of boy flesh on the underground, they make it available to download as well.

Click for bigger:

May 22, 2006

Dima Bilan

At least Russia's Eurovision entry featured a pretty boy - if only he'd shave and remove his mullet.

You can find more of him on his own website or on Famous Males.

April 19, 2006

Lies, more lies & parceline

Parceline have got to be the worst courier company I have ever had the misfortune to had dealings with. What follows is the venting of my spleen, having shitted away a day waiting for them:

Hi,

I had a parcel due to be delivered today (xxxxxxxx) and there have been two of us in all day waiting for it, and taking time off work.

At around 3, I phoned your call centre and was told that the package was definitely out for delivery and that it could arrive any time before 5.

At 5.15 I phoned again - the helpful person tried to contact the driver but without success. The driver's depot told the CS agent that the driver was still out on his rounds and hadn't returned.

At 6, I phoned up your call centre again in an effort to find out what was going on - I was promised a call back "shortly" with the answer. I still haven't had the call...

I tried to phone you at 6.45, but of course, you were closed...

At 7 your online tracking updated to show that you were "Unable to deliver, calling card left" at 3.14 today. This is not true - no-one tried to deliver and no calling card was left.

What am I to do now? Do I take another day off on the off-chance you try to deliver tomorrow?

I expect an email or phone call to tell me that it will arrive before 9am tomorrow.

April 18, 2006

Nuke

It's about time someone stuck up for nuclear power, and there's no one better than the co-founder of Greenpeace writing in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401209.html

I only hope Mr Blair comes rapidly to the same conclusion...

April 9, 2006

Odd adverts

In GayTimes:

Click for bigger

September 25, 2005

F1 pinup boy

Perhaps it's because he made his best ever qualifying position in today's Brazilian Grand Prix, but Christian Klien has come to my attention.

More of him please!

Click for very big

July 25, 2005

Crazy search strings

A few of the more unusual search strings that have brought people here:

"Pierced dick"
"bum fluff"
"brewer twins gallery"

The last one features quite highly in Google it seems, hurrah for the lawyers!

June 19, 2005

Bisexual Doctor Who Companions

So perfect, it's bound to enrage the Daily Mail. Gay kissing on Doctor Who.

January 23, 2005

Oh, by the way...

As the holidays seem such a distant memory away, I've changed the style to, well, brown.

June 5, 2004

Democracy in action

Was walking back from the shops along Warwick Road this morning and was greeted by the sight of lots of motorcycle based policemen blocking the road off. Various things went through my mind:

- Terrorism? (stupid)
- Event at the exhibition centre? (perhaps)
- Other? (likely)

In actual fact it was a demonstration against the "Congestion Charge" being expanded into Kensington & Chelsea. I know a lot of people have stupid stickers in their car and house windows protesting against it, so I was expecting a huge mass of people. Not so! There was, in fact, maybe a hundred people (25% were in pushchairs) and a greater number of police officers.

I judge the effect of this demonstration to be virtually nil - except in really annoying and inconveniencing the residents and motorists of the area, the very people who these people are supposedly demonstrating for!

Awful, poor quality camera phone pic here.

May 29, 2004

Vacuous, tired, psychopaths

So, the latest incantation of this dreary format has started again. Last year I didn't watch "Big Brother", but instead spent the odd free evening watching otters and badgers with Bill Oddie on the BBC. Yes, BB4 was universally hated.

I have had every intention of not bothering watching again this year, however an accidental exposure (well, there was nothing else to watch) to the opening night has got me hooked I fear.

How have they managed to do this? The key ingredients that the viewing public wishes to see are essentially sex and masses of bitching and backstabbing. To this end they have filled the place with a bunch of nuts, fruit loops and psychopaths; thrown in several gay men (renowned to be promiscuous), a militant lesbian (I dislike her intensely already), a bisexual porn obsessed lady from the north and a post-op transsexual; then added in a religious fanatic.

Excellent - a recipe for sniping all around: BB5 shall have my limited viewing attention. Fuck - another summer wasted.

May 16, 2004

Dematifying and Redensifying

Apologies for the distinct lack of activity - this last week seems to have been rather busy for some reason.

My main focus of rant today is the current plethora of bullshit science in adverts for all sorted of facial concoctions, lotions and potions. These use words such as dematifying and redensifying and contain essence of cherries and other such "exotics". The added clincher for these sorts of ads is the pseudo-scientific trial which found 55% of the 19 women who used the product found some sort of improvement in a self-evaluated questionnaire.

I feel that this is the modern day equivalent of snake oil; charging astronomic prices for little more than grease and perfume in a bottle. Surely there should be a law against this sort of thing, but maybe we shouldn't bother protecting the stupid with far too much money at their disposal; maybe I should even get in on the act: Lomas' patent skinjuvenating cream. Has a certain ring about it don't you think?

April 4, 2004

How rare!

The current date and time is:

04-04-04 04:04:04

Soooo cool :)

March 31, 2004

Heliwhopper...

The Virgin air ambulance landed in the garden square outside my house today. Feel sorry for whoever it was called for...

Anyway, it was kind of exciting as it flew over the house setting off car alarms in its wake. I managed to video it as it took off. Sorry about the shoddy quality - I only had my stills camera to hand which does rather basic video.

March 19, 2004

Aerobitches follow up

If you want to sign up to the aerobitches mailing list (meant for those who were in my year in aeronautics) visit here.

A mail has been sent out inviting all those I could find, but if you haven't got one, use the link above instead.

March 18, 2004

Original aerobitches

Originally this site (domain) was meant to be used as a way for my year of my undergraduate degree to keep in touch. That sort of fizzled out, but someone emailed me today asking where it had gone...

Anyway, I want to set up a mailing list instead for us all, so I'll endeavour to set one up, but in the meantime drop me an email (see the bar on the right) if you have any suggestions.

February 9, 2004

Stupid, desparate sluts

There's an article on the BBC today about how impoverished young people can't afford to buy condoms and so have resorted to using cling film and even crisp packets as a last resort.

I feel salt & vinegar crisp packets should now come with a warning printed on them although I would have thought the combination of the chafing and the vinegar would make for an unpleasant time. Gives a whole new meaning to "ribbed for extra pleasure". Eugh.

As part of my civic duty, they should be reminded that condoms are available gratis from GPs and sexual health clinics, but then I guess as the article points out if they can't even afford a bus fare, that's probably out of the question. Perhaps if they spent less money on crack then it wouldn't be such a problem. Ah well, the youff of today, tomorrow's dole scum...

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