Blog Off

+++WARNING+++TETCHY TECHIE POST+++

I had an email from Blogger last night. Ooh, I thought. They’re hand selecting me for a blogging award.

Yeah right.

It was to inform me that Blogger would no longer be supporting FTP publishing from the end of March 2010.

Hello? Are you still there? Basically this means that people like me who publish their blog to their own bought and paid for domain name would no longer be able to do so. We must switch to Blogger’s own domain name – blogspot.com – or, I surmised (though it wasn’t stated) go elsewhere for our blogging needs.

I was not amused.

Apparently only 5% of Blogger users publish via FTP and yet it is a huge draw on Blogger’s resources to continue to support it. Myself, I can’t quite accept the logic of that. All my pages, all the images are held on web space that I own. They are not using up web space on Blogger’s own servers which must surely be chock-a-block with the material supplied by the other 95% of Blogger users.

What resources am I hogging exactly?

Anyway, I kind of got the impression that resistance and complaint was futile. I’m in the minority here after all. The blogging world will hardly down tools in protest if I disappear from the electronic ether. My choice is simple – either switch to blogspot.com or go elsewhere. I’ve tried other Blog suppliers and I don’t really like ‘em so I guess I have little choice but to cooperate with the new Blogger dictat.

I’m going to jump before I’m pushed and I am therefore requesting that all you good people who visit and read my blog – maybe even Follow it in the Blogger sense – will be good enough to update all your links and swap to my new blog address which is as follows: http://bloggertropolis.blogspot.com

I shall set up an auto redirect myself for stragglers but as from today the old address is essentially defunct. There is a new blogging world order.

Apparently there are pros to this move. I will be able to utilize some of the new Blogger templates that us awkward FTP users have been technologically denied access to – so maybe there will be a change of décor as well. Ooh! I bet you can hardly wait.

Ahem.

I hope to see you all on the other side...

(Please leave any comments on the new blog.)

The D Word

Nurses, doctors, medical staff. They do a tough, backbreaking, heartbreaking job. I couldn’t do it. Not at all. And I want to make that clear because there is a part of me that is just instinctively opposed to slating anyone in the medical profession.

But I can’t deny I am becoming more and more frustrated, disappointed and just let-down with the service my family is getting from the local hospital.

My grandfather is still in hospital. All week we’ve been getting reports from the staff on his ward that he is fine, that he is stable, that he is doing well. Yesterday morning we even got a fantastic report that he was doing very well indeed and was up and chirpy.

Then yesterday afternoon, out of the blue, a consultant advised us that actually he is doing very badly and is very poorly indeed. So much so my mother is rushing down from Sheffield tomorrow to see him. Things don’t look good.

I realize people can go downhill fast – especially when they’re old – but this really sounds like there has been a case of crosswires and misinformation. I sometimes wonder if the hospital staff are even talking about the right patient when they give us information about my grandfather.

There is also a massive and often very worrying omission of facts.

My grandfather has developed Clostridium difficile (C. diff) – not for the first time I hasten to add. It seems to be as a direct result of being admitted to hospital and pumped with antibiotics. He is very poorly with it and given his frailty the hospital has few options of how to treat it. Higher dose antibiotics could have an adverse effect and surgery to fix the resultant lump in his stomach / abdomen is off the cards because it is doubtful he’d survive an operation.

As C diff is very contagious it makes visiting him difficult – I have two young children and my parents both work with food and children; we need to be careful about not carrying any infection away from the hospital. Luckily my mother had tipped me off about his C diff diagnosis before my last visit and a good job too. The staff nurse, when told who I had come to see, merely waved me to his room and didn’t check to see if I knew of his condition or make any attempt to ensure that I took adequate precautions to prevent the spread of the disease. For all she knew I was just someone off the street who had no prior knowledge of his condition whatsoever.

This lackadaisical approach appals me. Again it comes down to poor communication and a reluctance to pass on necessary information. Surely this should all be part and parcel of the care package – keeping the next of kin fully and accurately informed?

Or, with the supremacy of the internet, should I be doing my own online Google research and Wikipedia-based prognoses? Or maybe checking the hospital’s Twitter account for updates on the state of my grandfather’s health?

My grandfather is dying. I shouldn’t have to bang my head against a brick wall to maintain a link that is already fading fast of its own accord.

Seventh Heaven

The end of last week saw me both ill and gadgetted up with a brand new PC. Unfortunately the former delayed my getting to grips with the latter by a day or two.

‘Cos, let’s face it, you have to be completely healthy when faced with a brand spanking new PC complete with brand spanking new operating system – the much vaunted Windows 7. New PC’s are stress-fests of the highest order. Will it like your peripherals? Will it run your software? Or will it spit the dummy at the first whiff of your modem, tantrum at the mere proximity of your scanner? Will you have to claw your way through dozens of installation discs that have littered your shelves like strange voodoo objects that you’re too scared to throw away but have no idea what at all it is they were created to do?

The man in the computer shop assured me that the above scenarios would just not take place. Windows 7 is – despite a ubiquitous mistrust of all things Microsoft – a break-through. An operating system that for once delivers; it does exactly what it says on the box.

Just plug everything in, the man advised me, it’ll all work instantly...

Yeah right.

I’ve run PC’s for 10 years, mate. Plug ‘n’ play in a fallacy. It rarely happens. Instead it takes hours of head-bashing to work everything out or to download the necessary patches and updates and tweaks.

Like I said. I needed to be fully fit and healthy before attempting a job of this magnitude.

But blow me if the man wasn’t right.

The installation discs for my various bits of antiquated hardware were unnecessary. The dust on them has not been disturbed.

I plugged everything in and everything worked with barely a pause. I was online, emailed up and fully connected with the WWW in under 10 minutes. An absolute record.

No glitches. No freezes. No compatibility issues. All my hardware A-OK. All my software A-OK.

Microsoft has at last come up with a shiny new operating system that I have fallen completely in love with. It’s smooth. It’s (so far) stable. It’s visual and intuitive. It’s easily customizable. It’s fast (though this might have more to do with my quad core processor and fully stocked memory than the OS).

It’s, in short, beautiful.

I like it. I’m impressed.

Suddenly I’ve fallen in love with my computer again. I’m experiencing a new honeymoon period. I hate being away from it. For anyone or anything.

All other life is a distraction.

Me and my new motherboard, we’re like bonded, OK?

So, that’s it, folks. Me and Windows 7 have got things to do, things to discuss. We gotta shoot the breeze. And we might be some time.

Bye.

Q: Where Do All The Little Toasters Go?

A: To Silicon Heaven.

My computer died over the weekend.

The secondary hard drive experienced some kind of coronary during a bout of game playing (that’ll teach me!) and went into catastrophic mechanical failure. In the process it managed to blow the network card, take out my museum-piece floppy disc drive and mangle parts of Windows and Internet Explorer.

Quite how all these components were ever interconnected is beyond me but my computer’s internal biology is now completely irrelevant.

My desktop buddy has been rendered a virtual vegetable as a consequence.

Internet access is impossible. No network card means no modem. Although the router is still working and I can gain access via my wife’s laptop downstairs I, nevertheless, feel cut off and isolated from the virtual world of the World Wide Web.

I can no longer surf as and when I see fit but must (quite rightly) await permission and book a time slot on the laptop.

The loss of the hard drive also means I have lost an immense amount of data and media that I had amassed over the last 10 years. Although I have always been pretty good about backing things up you know what it’s like... You get complacent. You get lazy. You put off until tomorrow what really should have been done today. I’ve undoubtedly lost stuff. Thankfully nothing major or essential but the loss of it still hurts.

The loss of my little electric friend has left me more than a little bereft.

I’d had my computer for 10 years and had built it myself to my own spec. It went from a single hard drive beastie to a high-end multi hard drive, disk burning, internet munching monster in the space of 2 years under my careful nurturing and tutelage.

But then I got married, had kids and, I admit, the computer got neglected. The upgrades petered out. I made do with what I had rather than buying shiny new add-ons. As a consequence, it began to slow. It began to struggle with newer programs. The processor speed began to under clock. It couldn’t keep up with what I wanted it to do let alone what the software was asking of it.

I guess that was the beginning of the end really. The day of reckoning was bound to come. And now it has finally arrived and my finger is poised over the switch to the life support machine. I am merely waiting until I have finished harvested its software organs and its data banks for any retrievables.

Call me heartless but I am already in the market for a new computer. A replacement. My wife, God bless her, has not only given me permission but has insisted that I treat myself. An upgrade is long, long overdue. Possibly my wife merely wants her laptop back.

So I will be going to the local computer shop this week to spec myself up a new high end, quad core machine that should be able to levitate off my desk with the sheer speed of its fans.

I feel strangely ambivalent. It’s money I’d rather not be spending right now but I cannot deny that the acquisition of a new computer is very exciting.

The only thing that truly gets me down is the days of work involved getting it all running properly... connecting the modem and router and the other peripheries... getting email and internet access re-established.... getting the software and drivers installed... ‘cos none of this ever runs smoothly. Plus I will have a brand new operating system to contend with: the much vaunted Windows 7 which, yes, I have heard good things about but I would still welcome other people’s opinions on it.

In the meantime I am building a funeral pyre for my poor crippled friend. His mask has fallen off and I have at last seen the face of Darth Vader. The Force has left him. The electronic wheezing is just getting on my wick.

It’s time for him to burn.

P.S. Another milestone. This is my 500th post! Thank you all for reading!

Anti Anti-virus

There are some things in life that you just have to put up with.

Paying taxes. Catching a cold. Working for idiots (for peanuts). Bruce Forsythe.

These things are just never going to go away. They are always there. The rough with the smooth. If you want the positives (i.e. local amenities, immunity to millions of bacteria, money to enjoy and... er... Tess Daly) then you just have to put up with the negatives.

So I understand why, if I want to enjoy broadband connectivity with the World Wide Web, I need to have an anti-virus program installed. And since first going online in 2000 I have never been without one. Although I initially bumped for McAfee I have, by and large, for the last 9 years stuck with Norton.

And it has increasingly irritated the shit out of me.

It has got more and more invasive. Rather like a virus itself actually.

It hogs resources. It does things behind my back. Things like “idle time scans”. It slows and frequently stalls my machine – particularly when I’m in a rush to do something – to the point where sometimes the whole thing just freezes and I have to initiate a “hard reboot”. Of course the scandisk thing then kicks in. And although you can press a key (any key) to opt out of this, you just know that paranoia will get the better of you in the end. So you let it scan.

And it finds errors. Invalid entries. Truncated files. Misreported file sizes. Files with names that no homo sapiens would ever come up with in a million years. And these files all originate from the Norton program folder.

Because Norton was doing something that I hadn’t asked it to do and the hard reboot messed it all up.

*Sigh*

I’ve started to hate my anti-virus program with a passion.

I know it is only doing its best to protect me. That it’s looking out for my best interests.

But really.

It’s like hiring a security guard to protect your house and then finding yourself barred from the kitchen when you want to make a meal.

“Sorry sir, you can’t come in. I’m scanning the kitchen for malicious equipment.”

“But... I’m hungry. I need to eat. Can’t you do this later?”

“Sorry sir. Got to be done now. The procedure can’t be interrupted once it’s been started.”

“But I only want to make a sandwich. I’ve somewhere I need to be in half an hour. I have to eat now or I won’t eat at all.”

“Sorry sir. Your security comes first. You’ll have to wait.”

“But... but it’s my bloody kitchen!”

And it’s my bloody computer!

I don’t want Norton to initiate idle time scans without my permission. If my computer is being idle leave it damn well alone. Let it be idle and receptive to my commands! I want it to be ready to do what I want it to do!

And I don’t want to have to have a Master’s Degree in computer programming just to be able to make Norton behave. I want Norton to have one button which says “Steve, you are my master” which I can press and then relax in the knowledge that my computer that I bought with my own money and operate daily does so under my command and not at the behest of a group of faceless computer geeks based in America writing program code that takes over every computer it is installed upon under the guise of doing the owner a favour.

Anti-virus?

Yeah. Half right.

The Pinch

Lord knows the times are hard for everyone at the moment (though the local pawn broker seems to be doing a roaring trade) but for the Blake household the shit has finally hit the fan, disintegrated at speed and then ricocheted around at a full 4D 360 degrees and coated absolutely everything.

I’m not going to reveal the harrowing state of my finances in detail but as some of you know I was already scouting around for a 3rd job (on top of my full time local authority post and my part time web design business) to help cover the shortfall we were experiencing.

We seem to be one of those families that has fallen in-between the cracks of social welfare. We can’t afford to have Karen not working but neither can we afford to put Tom into full time child care if Karen works full time. Therefore Karen works part-time and Tom goes into childcare part time. Which we still can’t afford. But as we can’t afford the full time child care even more we’ve no choice... It’s not even a vicious circle. It’s just a vicious hole.

I’ve had no real luck with acquiring a third job so far though was offered a post at a school – cleaning – for 17.5 hours a week last week. Unfortunately it would have meant me leaving the house at 8.30am to fulfill my full time employment obligations, finishing at 5.30pm, walking 2 miles to the school and then working through until 9.30 at night 5 days a week.

I was sorely tempted as we need the money so badly.

Karen however put her foot down. Something about loving me and not wanting me in hospital with exhaustion by Christmas and on the mortuary slab with a heart attack by Easter 2010.

Thinking about it, I suppose, she had a point. I’d be half dead within a month and wouldn’t have seen much of my family for the duration – which at the end of the day is who I’m doing all this for.

So I turned it down.

But I’m now wondering whether I’ve looked at a gift horse in the mouth and bitten the hand that was offering me food.

My little web design business has effectively bitten the dust.

I had two regular clients whose commissions each month added about £200 to the family coffers. The first is an amateur photographer and I’d built him a site to showcase his work. The other had various recruitment web sites and supplied me with the bulk of my work. They had bloody good rates from me – a darn sight cheaper than anything a high street internet business would have offered them. And both were making a decent amount of money from their sites – in fact the recruitment people have bought themselves new premises and new sports cars... or so my insider mole has told me.

However it seems Mr Photographer has acquired a new friend who is Flashed up to the gills (I can’t afford to buy a book on Flash at the moment let alone go for retraining) and is happy to work for the fiscal equivalent of peanuts. This is fine. Mr Photographer is not a business, he’s an individual. It’s his prerogative. Though I am hurt that after a long association he hasn’t had the decency to actually tell me that he’s dropped me in favour of another web designer. Instead I’ve had to find out through a mutual friend who is as disappointed in his actions as I am.

What really cheeses me off though is that Mr Photographer has also sold this new cheaper web designer to my other clients who, being chancers of the highest order, have also dropped me – again without any notification or “thank you very much for your services but this is goodbye”. And given their untrustworthy business nature I’m now very doubtful that they’ll pay my last invoice – thankfully they’re only into me for £90 but it’s £90 I desperately need.

My family’s one and only lifeline has effectively been severed just to save someone else a few pounds.

I know. I know.

It’s business. I shouldn’t take it personally. It’s not like we had a binding contract.

But I am very upset by it all and am feeling rather defeated and shat on at the moment. Acquiring new business in the current climate is extremely difficult. Acquiring a client who requires regular work is virtually impossible. It’s a real rarity.

I have no idea what we’re going to do. It’s no longer a case of us having no money.

We have less than no money.

Our only hope now is my aunt’s will and a bunch of solicitors who are content to swim slowly through toffee to get it sorted out.

I only hope we can keep our heads above water until the lifeboats reach us...

With Nobs On

With the BAFTAs out of the way we can at last move onto the REAL award ceremony. The Noblesse Oblige Awards.

(And sadly Jonathon Ross hasn’t won one of these either.)

I was nominated a couple of weeks ago by the superlative EmmaK who’s blog, Mommy Has A Headache, has tickled my fancy almost as many times as its tickled my funny bone. It was a tremendous honour to receive this award though I disappointingly noted that there was no 5 course meal, cabaret or excuse to hire a tux involved. Just the glamour and kudos of acquiring the award. However, in these days of austerity and recession I wouldn’t have been able to afford the coke or the after party hookers anyway so who’s to say it wasn’t a win-win situation after all?

The award works like this:

The recipient of this award is recognised for the following:

1) The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervades amongst different cultures and beliefs.
2) The Blog contents inspire; strives to encourage and offers solutions.
3) There is a clear purpose at the Blog; one that fosters a better understanding on Social, Political, Economic, the Arts, Culture and Sciences and Beliefs.
4) The Blog is refreshing and creative.
5) The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinking.

The Blogger who receives this award will need to perform the following steps:

1) Create a Post with a mention and link to the person who presented the Noblesse Oblige Award.
2) The Award Conditions must be displayed at the Post.
3) Write a short article about what the Blog has thus far achieved – preferably citing one or more older post to support.
4) The Blogger must present the Noblesse Oblige Award in concurrence with the Award conditions.
5) Blogger must display the Award at any location at the Blog.

I’m not going to follow the directions to the letter (it’s just the kind of cavalier guy I am – I’m an extreme blogger after all, dudes) but I am, with great delight, going to pass on the Noblesse Oblige award to showcase the talents of a select few of my favourite bloggers. It’s a tough choice because I love all the blogs that are listed in my sidebar but, to follow EmmaK’s example (and because I’m lazy) I’m only going to pick out and honour 5. Please don’t hold it against me if you are not picked – it is just that my love for your particular blog is beyond all description and defies expression in every language.

And so the winners are:

1) Diary Of An Old Cheeser: He’s been gone for a while but now he’s back. Hopefully for good. School teacher, self-confessed Whovian and cheesy TV aficionado the Old Cheeser is a reading must for those of you who like your TV served up hot, spicy and... well, cheesy. OC has a delightfully humorous touch and a penchant for saucy commentary that would make Graham Norton blush. This blog is guaranteed to brighten anybody’s day. In fact even Gordon Brown has been known to crack one off to OC’s blog. A smile that is.

2) The Reluctant Blogger: What can I say? RB’s blog has long been a safe and comfortable online haven for me, Articulate, sensitive, expressive, thought provoking and always, always warmly humane. RB has a writing style that is welcoming and all inclusive. It’s impossible to visit merely once. You will simply have to keep going back for more. And more.

3) Magic Lantern Show: I only discovered this blog a week or two ago though I think it was more of a case that this blogger stumbled onto me and was good enough to bestow a few intriguing comments my way. My curiosity was piqued and I followed them back to the source. I’m glad I did. I’m still sussing out the blog world of Magic Lantern Show but already I’ve been dazzled by wonderful photography, incredible writing, exciting travelogues and a brilliantly eclectic selection of posts. Go check it out.

4) A Write Blog: another recent addition to my blogging canon. AWB writes posts and leaves comments that are superbly crafted and challenging and push the reader to think a little deeper. No mean feat in this age of instant electronic gratification. AWB engages the reader on so many levels... if you’ve not dropped by before now I suggest you make an appointment in your diary to head over there as soon as possible.

5) Through A Glass, Darkly: one of those blogs that makes you cry out, “where have you been all of my life?” Brother Tobias has trodden the blogging boards for a while now and it is truly an honour to have him stop by and leave a carefully considered comment or three. The man has everything: style, panache and a humble and unpretentious sense of honour and dignity. Brother T’s posts balance gracefully between worldly wise and wide eyed wonder and are never sourly cynical or dismissive. To visit this blog is to breathe the free air. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Congratulations my friends. ‘Tis an honour to pass this award onto you all. Do with it as you will.

And so, in my closing speech, it only remains for me to say that I only wish I had time and energy enough to showcase all of the blogs on my reading list. For you are all wonderful and deserving of praise and riches and I thank you all for your dedication to the blogging cause.

And now I shall virtually retire and virtually polish my virtual award, stare at my mantelpiece and think how much more attractive it is than one of those awfully kitsch BAFTAs.

And far easier to dust.

Psychic Jam

Sauntering along to the local shops the other day I was struck by the sheer number of satellite dishes that adorn the houses – my own included though we are not connected (it came with the house and we haven’t as yet motivated ourselves sufficiently to have it removed).

And not for the first time – after all this is hardly an earth shatteringly original thought – I found myself musing on the terrifyingly large volume of radio waves that we must all spend our lives totally immersed within. TV, radio, satellite, citizen’s band, police radios, MI5 ops (they’re always hanging around outside my house) not to mention various pirate radio stations and various terrorist groups constructing vast microwave machines to fry our pituitary glands while we’re sleeping.

It can’t be good for us, surely, all that static and electronic caterwauling constantly beaming its way through our genetic building blocks? I’m not sure I want my DNA modified by Chris Moyles though Jo Whiley is very welcome to run her fingers through my scintillating chromosomes.

It’s only a transient worry, I admit. I hold it only for a few seconds and then it’s gone (possibly fried out of my brain cells by Jihadi microwaves) but it does keep recurring.

How do we know that all these radio waves aren’t having an adverse effect on our emotional make-up? That we’re not being psychologically damaged?

I’d love to be able to breathe some clean, unadulterated air one day just to be able to find out. To do this I need to find somewhere that’s in a technological blind spot – literally off the radar.

Anyone got any suggestions?

(Royston Vasey doesn’t count.)

Do You Know Ali Bongo?

As some of you know I’ve been getting more than my fair share of spam emails at the moment. Most of them purporting to originate from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. All of them asking me to claim vast sums of money held in trust by mysterious relatives who have all died in very inconvenient plane crashes.

For the most part I’ve been ignoring / deleting them but I’m now reaching the point where my irritation is seeking another outlet.

Taking my lead from others who have responded "in kind" to these emails I am embarking on a little programme of spurious RSVP myself. This could be a series of many or even just a series of one. But here, for your delectation, is one of the offending emails and below it, my carefully worded reply. Enjoy.

FROM THE OFFICE OF MR ALI DONGO
DIRECTOR AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING UNIT,
BANK OF AFRICA.(BOA)
OUAGADOUGOU -BURKINA FASO

SORRY IF THIS MESSAGE DO NOT MEET YOUR PERSONAL ADVANTAGE,
WE APOLOGIES

Compliment,
Pleasure writing to you at this moment of the day, I am Mr.ALI DONGO.
the director incharge of auditing and accounting Dept. of Bank of Africa OUAGADOUGOU -BURKINA FASO.I deem it fit to contact you regarding an inactive/dormant account fund that will benefit both of us at the end, if parties involved will take restrait and maintain absolute secrecy, honesty and integrity. I got your contact in my search for a reputable and reliable person to particularly assist me to claim the fund in question. During auditing, in our bank at the end of last fiscal year, We discovered the sum of Twenty five millions United States dollars (US$25M) in a dormant account belonging to an international businessman who was involved in the December 25th Benin plane crash. while travelling for his bussiness. I kept this information(secret) confidential within my jurisdiction to enable us submit claims and transfer this fund through trustworthy person whom we shall present to our bank as the bonafide next of kin to the ceased. Visit our investigations so far clearly reveals that there is no immediate survivor or even a relation to the deceased and as such, there is no immediate next of kin for further claims of the deceased fund as we have long been expecting someone to come forward with an applications. Further information's /verifications from reliable sources too have confirmed that the deceased customer supposed next of kin were all in the plane with him died with him.this is where the bank come in to do bussiness with who ever is interested.

Plane Crash Web site!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This fund is now ready for transfer into a foreign account, whose owner will be portrayed to our bank as the beneficiary and a next of kin to the deceased customer. The foreign account owner will impost himself appropriately as the next of kin to the deceased and respond positively like a true next of kin who wishes to speed up the release and transfer process of his inherited fund. Kindly be aware too that if the over-due fund if not claimed by the end of next quarter, the National Treasury and Bills of britain will take over the ownership of the fund in line with the National Edict Act of 2000. We do not want this to happen as it will not augur to our best interest, having worked all our lives in the banking sector, that is why I contacted you for us to do the deal together with absolute confidence, so that you will be portrayed as the bonafide beneficiary and an immediate next of kin to the deceased. I will give you further directives, advice and all needed information's required for this transaction as soon as I receive your positive response. Similarly, if you accept to carry out this transaction with us, we have resolved offering to you 30% of the total sum as commission, extra 10% of all proceeds to be generated from subsequent profit-viable. 5% of the total fund will be set aside to re-imburse all expenses incurred in this course of this transaction. This transfer will automatically be affected within 7 working days. Be rest assured that with the underground work i have laid so far, that this transaction carries no risk and no extra burdens on your part, except the above mentioned nominal roles you are required to fulfil and similarly will be required to maintain absolute information secrecy throughout the duration of this transaction, because discussing and exhibiting it with a third party might jeopardise the entire transaction.

I will give you directives and all needed information as soon as I receive your positive response. Kindly understand that we could not carry out this fund-transfer on our own, based on the simple facts that we are civil servants and presently bank staffs and this office excludes us from operating foreign accounts, moreover conducting such magnanimous transaction from the same place where we belong to/coming from will raise eyebrows on our side and the truth is that this fund belongs to a foreigner, and as such demands same as next of kin.I am looking forward to receiving your interesting response on this project as this will greatly enrich the both of us at the end. please you are required to reply this message as a matter of necessity.
(ali_dongo26@yahoo.fr)

Best regards,
MR ALI DONGO.

(Account Audithor B.O.A)

And my reply:

Dear Mr Dongo,

Felicitations from your grateful correspondent in England!

Your electronic missive reached me like a shaft of glorious sunshine in a very dark hour and has filled my heart with joy that there are such lovely, trustworthy people in the world who are at great pains to do good things and benefit others.

While I am deeply saddened to learn of the death of your client by plane crash I applaud your efforts to see that his financial estate is properly disposed of and I am willing to do all I can to assist you to this end. In short, Mr Dongo, I would be very willing to accept the money you so graciously offer me though I do, I admit, have a few concerns as to how its transfer to my holdings might be instigated.

You see Mr Dongo, due to a rather extravagant combine harvester accident 10 years ago I have since been closeted away in a nursing home, a broke and lonely man. I am virtually a paraplegic as my encounter with the combine harvester efficiently removed all of my limbs and my left ear making it impossible for me to wear normal glasses. I have had to have a special pair made that utilise the elastic from a pair of swimming goggles. I am told it looks ok but the elastic does tend to chafe my forehead. As I am unable to write in the normal way I must communicate with the world by tapping out words on a keyboard with a stick that I hold in my mouth. This is very time consuming – hence the long delay in my writing back to you. I do hope I am not too late and have not missed the gravy train.

Due to my disabilities all of my financial arrangements are handled by a trustee that I have employed for this purpose. Before my accident I was a famous racing car driver and had accrued a great personal fortune and I have been living off this for the last decade. So you see, I am used to handling great sums of money and would not be intimidated by the amounts involved in your proposed transaction. Unfortunately my accountant and indeed my Swiss bank manager – both rather sober fellows – might question a sudden influx of funds from Burkina Faso. Is there any way we can break up the money into smaller amounts that could be deposited into my account over a period of months? This would arouse far less suspicion. I must be careful not to attract attention from the authorities, you see, after I was accused of funding a diamond smuggling operation in South Africa a number of years ago. These accusations were entirely false I can assure you and my acquisition of gem stones since that time has been purely legal and without personal blemish on my part.

Regarding your proposal that I act as next of kin, I agree that this sounds the most expedite way in which to deal with your monetary problems. But I worry that it would be all too easy for my claim to be proved as false and my links to your diseased client proved as tenuous. To this end I will employ a legal expert with whom I have a long standing personal acquaintance and who, for reasons I do not wish to discuss, is not currently permitted to practice in the UK or Europe but is more than capable of providing me with all the necessary documents that will prove beyond any contestation my claim as next of kin to the diseased.

So much so I wonder if we might not renegotiate the 30% cut that you have so kindly offered me. As the legal next of kin I believe my cousin would rather the majority of his personal fortune stay within our close-knit family. To this end I wonder if 70% might not be a more realistic sum with 30% for your good self, Mr Dongo, to cover all of your administration costs? I am sure we can discuss this further and come to a mutually satisfactory conclusion.

I shall sign off here as my jaw is beginning to ache. My stick is not padded, you see, and keeping my teeth clamped for such a long period of time has a detrimental effect upon my molars. My dentist has warned me never to attempt novel writing or he will run out of enamel.

Before I go though, Mr Dongo, I must ask one more question that is pressing heavily upon my mind. I am sure you have been asked this many times before but I am afraid I must presume on your goodwill and ask it once again: are you in any way related to Ali Bongo, the Great British entertainer and master magician of huge renown? Are you indeed a member of the magic circle? Do you know any decent card tricks? Maybe we could set up a web cam for a future interview and you could show me some sleight of hand during our warm negotiations. This would be sure to bring a smile to my face although I will be unable – through no fault of my own – to applaud your most sterling efforts.

I look forward to your illuminating response.

Yours most sincerely,
Sir Reginald Wormall, MBE, OBE.

Please Sir, Kindly Take Receipt Of This $9 Million Dollars

As some of you will know, whilst launching a new blogging project recently I had cause to publish an email address of mine online. Only a Yahoo webmail account but still one that I use frequently.

I didn’t think anything of it to tell you the truth. I doubt it was online for more than a day or two.

But by God have I been deluged with spam mail.

Nothing about Viagra or sex techniques to make my woman “cry like a baby with ecstasy as I keep going all night without stopping” – well, I could write a book about that myself, couldn’t I?

Just loads and load of emails from various gentlemen in Burkina Faso who, it seems, wish to enlist my aid in helping them out of a rather sticky financial quandary. They’ve obviously heard that I‘m a financial whizz and regularly move immense sums of money into and out of my bank accounts without rousing any kind of suspicion whatsoever.

Take Dr. Alim Hadi for example. The poor man is the trustee of a monetary estate worth $9 million. He’d like to release the money to me as it seems I am the next of kin to his client who died in a plane crash with all of his family in July 2000. The account has lain dormant since then with nobody coming to claim the money. Nobody at all. The money has just sat there all this time. Unmolested. Wow.

Apparently I am entitled to 40% of the above sum which he will happily see transferred into my account provided I supply him with all of the necessary banking details. Of course I must keep this all top secret. And delete the email if I am not interested. Confidentiality is very important. As a high roller like myself fully understands.

Yeah right.

I think what insults me the most (though of course none of this is particularly personal) is the assumption that I’d be stupid enough to fall for it. I mean please. Next of kin to a previously unknown African branch of the family?

Mind you my granddad did spend time in Durban during the war so it’s quite possible he got up to some naughties with an African beauty of big bosomed persuasion whilst on shore leave...

Hmm. Whatever.

The thing is Dr. Hadi, you’re not even trying. Your attempts to screw me are clichéd and formulaic. At least be a little more inventive. A little more theatrical.

I want to see photographs of the crash site. I want to see mortuary pictures of my long lost relative laid out on the slab (something for the family album). I want a lock of hair or a fingernail – hell, the whole finger if possible (who’s going to notice its absence?) – something I can get DNA tested. And I want paperwork. A letter from my great granny perhaps talking wistfully of her elicit liaison with the late denizen of Ouagadougou and exhorting him to one day get in touch with the UK branch of his family should he ever fall onto hard times but especially should he fall onto good.

And most of all I want a huge, obsessively detailed family tree laid out on parchment and an episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” reserved for my very public reconciliation with my long lost African brothers – something in the style of Roots would be fine.

Give me all that and you can have my sodding bank account details with absolute pleasure. And, if I really must, I suppose I’ll accept my 40% cut of the $9 million. After all it’s what my cousin, Kunte Kinte, would have wanted.

*Sigh* Global families. Don’t you just love ‘em?

P.S. Can I just say that I am not available for babysitting?

Oh My God, I’ve Got Legs!

Since Tom’s birth nearly 17 months ago Karen and I started to do our weekly food shopping online.

It wasn’t that we found visiting a supermarket each week particularly onerous – in fact it was quite nice shopping as a family – it was just that it was so damned time consuming.

OK. OK. It was particularly onerous.

Nearly two hours of our precious weekend disappeared every week up the supermarket swanny. Nothing about supermarket shopping is geared up for ease, efficiency or pleasure. You have to use shoddy, ill-kept equipment (the ubiquitous trolley). You have to fight your way through herds of ignorant, selfish, grumpy animals (other people) barging their way passed you in the opposite direction. And then you have to pay for the entire social carbuncle at the tills which are merely a bottleneck of disgruntlement.

All you need is to have a favourite item of food discontinued or sold out to complete the misery.

Quite frankly shopping was a nightmare.

Hence our eagerness to embrace online “virtual” shopping.

And all in all it’s been great.

You still spend an hour or so doing it because the server is so damned slow but you can sit down while you do it. With a cup of tea. In the comfort of your own home. With the telly on.

And then some nice man in a van delivers it all to your door at a time that you specify.

It’s blooming marvellous.

If only I could find someone to put all the goods away in our freezer once they’ve arrived it would be a perfect system.

Anyway, the near perfect system let us down for the first time yesterday.

The fridge on the van broke down so they couldn’t deliver our fridge / freezer stuff. We could have waited another day for it but with a baby in the house you can’t really go without milk for any length of time. So we elected to physically drive to the store and collect our cold items ourselves.

My God, but it’s amazing how quickly shopping online de-skills you for the real world. The supermarket – once so unpleasantly familiar – is now totally alien... Horrid lighting, aisles like blocked arteries and... worst of all, people... living, breathing, moving people absolutely everywhere.

And not a cup of tea in sight!

I felt like a modern 21st Century man hurled back in time to a medieval darkly bygone age. How can people live like this?

The internet has plainly weakened me. It has destroyed my ability to cope with the real world. Reality has suddenly become antimatter. If it ain’t pixelated I can’t cope. I carry my modem around with me like a security blanket.

I’d already noted my recent inability to cope with the alphabetized system used in CD / DVD shops (where’s the effing search box?) but plainly the malaise is worse than I thought.

The rise of the machines has begun. They are prising us away from the real world one pinkie at a time and are wrapping us up warm and snug in little individual technospheres of automation and one-click ordering.

The game is up. Or rather it has just begun. And what can any of us do but be on permanent stand-by...

Gulp!

Oh no!

Theftbook

My relationship with Facebook has always been fraught to say the least.

I find the site annoyingly clunky, slow loading and just too bloated with useless “apps” and fly-by-night user groups who constantly paw at me wanting my cyber attention when in truth I’m rarely in the mood to give it.

The facility I use most on Facebook is the “ignore” button and I do apologize if you have been on the wrong end of it. It’s nothing personal.

Why be on Facebook in the first place then?

Well. I was curious. It was recommended to me by a friend (a real one). And I thought “why not?”

And once you’re on there it’s damned hard to get yourself off.

Facebook, you see, doesn’t like to let go.

Facebook has ownership issues.

Facebook is something of a smug, grasping, bully that doesn’t like to let anyone of anything out of its mucky clutches.

Want evidence?

Facebook has now decided to grant itself rights to users’ photos, wall posts and just about every conceivable bit of information that people are naïve enough to post on its site. Forever.

Even if you manage to delete your account all your photos and information will be archived somewhere and available for use by the Facebook bigwigs for what has been quoted in the Metro as “public performances”

Public performances?

WTF?

Has Facebook not heard of the data protection act or are they somehow exempt?

Here’s another quote for the Metro (only the best sources for me):

“Yesterday, the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg attempted to defuse the row, insisting in his blog, ‘In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.’”

Ri-i-i-i-ght.

In a way I wouldn’t want.

So that’ll be not at all then.

So what’s the point of Facebook hanging onto such information and private (can you read that, Zuckerberg: P – R – I – V – A – T – E ) photos in the first place?

Or is Facebook hoping that at some point in the future I will be quite content to let my personal information be used in some viral advertising campaign or pasted over a Beatles soundtrack to sell an updated version of their shitty little web site to invading Martians? Or even enable Wal-Mart to target me with useless white goods that they think I desperately need and must absolutely buy?

Dream on, Facebook.

Keeping my information without my express permission is theft. Holding my photos – my intellectual property – for a future use that I cannot control or opt out from, no mater how innocuous, is an infringement of my basic human rights.

Facebook, it’s time you were de-faced.

Permanently.

400

What a momentous day this is. Ripe with glory and grandeur!

Forget Barrack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Forget the news that this is the first Official day of the UK recession.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my 400th blog post.

Yes. That’s right. 400!

Since this blog’s inception in late 2006 I have continuously and without mercy produced 400 blog posts of varying length and dubious quality, luxuriously peppered them with photographs slyly half-inched from the World Wide Web, and thrown them to you, the blog reading masses, as if they were high class crumbs from my overflowing banqueting table.

Such food for though has passed before your poor fatigued eyes! Subjects such as Nigella Lawson, politics, television, celebrity culture, music, Keeley Hawes, parenthood, Lego, work and even how to wash up a tea mug have all been righteously laid before you like the tenets of a new religion.

And how you have gorged yourselves, you lucky people!

No, no, please don’t bow or scrape, there really is no need.

But it has not all been bouquets and banners! Oh no! There were some – you know who you are – who thought this blog would never amount to anything. Thought it would die, bawling and howling in its infancy, a shrivelled negatively potentialled hybrid of overweening ambition and undergrasping ability. You thought I’d get bored within the first 6 months. You thought I’d get sidetracked by the flash-bang-wallop of hardcore internet porn and the gaudy lure of online Poker. You thought I’d be discovered by the Head of Writing at the BBC who would snap me up like the last green triangle in a tin of Quality Street and beg me, dry-humping my leg as the tears roll down his face, to co-write the next series of Doctor Who and officiate over the next batch of period dramas primed to emerge from the pen of Andrew Davies.... no, no, Steve, you must give up this blog writing malarkey immediately, Hollywood beckons for one such as you, don’t cast your pearls before swine, your seed onto barren ground (you must leave the internet porn alone)... you must step up to the plate, dear boy, scripts must be written, book deals signed, an e-book autobiography with Flash and interactive content must be penned (keyboarded)...

But I said “nay!” And lo I sayeth “nay!” again.

I am going nowhere. This blog shall not be moved. This blog shall stayeth forever. Yay e’en unto perpetuity and the electronic eternity (server functionality excepted). Have no fear that I shall desert you, dear reader. I shall turn my back on all offers of wealth, stardom, critical acclaim and cheap easy sex with breast heavy celebrities who present property shows on Channel 4. I shall keep the Bloggertropolis standard held aloft and rippling in the breeze and my mind purely on the blogging tasks at hand for now and for ever more.

No need to thank me. This is simply what I do. Be confident and assured. Rest easy, dear reader.

I am going nowhere.

Absolutely. Effing. Nowhere.

Faces Come Out Of The Rain

I thought I was writing in a void.

Well, not so much a void – more of an airport waiting room where only people from other towns and other countries ever passed through. The people in my blog list for example. Maybe a few pieces of stray luggage passing by as they desperately try to locate their owners. My wife on occasion when I nag her to read through what I’ve composed...

But nobody else.

But it seems I was wrong.

It seems that some of the people that I work with are reading this here very blog. They are taking my hastily scrawled words or irreverence and discussing them over their sandwiches in the staffroom.

And how do I know this?

My boss told me this morning.

You know that crash you heard? That was the sound of my jaw smashing clean through my mug of hot chocolate and an MDF table top. I now have blood, chocolate and teeth on my shoes.

I confess I didn’t quite know what to say. What went through my mind was: “How dare people I know read my blog – it’s only meant for friends that I haven’t actually met.”

The other thought was: “Shit, what the hell have I written about my boss?”

I’m a lot calmer now though. As the day has progressed my keel has gradually evened itself. C’est la vie.

And as the sun sets on this (in)auspicious day, the questions now are slightly different:

Am I the unofficial spokesperson for a disenfranchised and World Wide Web friendly workforce? Am I the übermensch and spiritual leader of a new breed of chat-room based cyber terrorists? Or am I merely a source of local misinformation for my work colleagues and fellow council officers?

I suspect – alas – the latter.

Ho hum. Infamy, infamy, they’ve got it in for me... what is an erstwhile propagandist to do (except keep tapping away)?

One last question though before I sign off:

Can I now continue to write in as free and easy a manner (hey, I might make it look easy but...) as I have done these last three wonderfully unrestrained years now knowing that people I have daily contact with are possibly reading my cyber meanderings and offering up opinions on them as they go about their normal work duties?

It’s a toughie.

I hope the answer will be yes. I hope I will adhere to the writer’s motto of: “I write what I like”. I’ve always been (I hope) circumspect and careful. So really it should be business as usual.

But, I admit, I do feel rather...

Strange.

Arsebook

Following a justified dig at online social networking utilities by Rol over at Sunset Over Slawit yesterday I’ve misspent valuable work time this morning thinking up the perfect antidote.

I’d like to patent the idea for an antisocial networking utility which would function along the same lines as Facebook except that instead of trying to accrue loads of friends onto your web profile the goal would be to lose as many as possible. A possible name for this online service could be Arsebook (which, ahem, has a certain ring to it). I’m sure somebody out there could come up with a suitably pert little logo and even build and manage the site for me... cos I really can’t be arsed.

Members can accrue arse points each time they lose an online friend – and maybe earn extra arse points if they actually lose a real life friend that they’ve actually met in the real physical world? You could also install various apps onto your profile page designed to snub, insult and drive away all the other members who are there solely to pimp their band, homemade porno pics, terrorist training camps, etc. And there could be a status box where you could type in the current state of your arseyness at regular intervals of the day so that any other Arsebook member happening across your profile will know that you are flying the flag of arsedom and are to be added to their ever growing list of non-online-friends. Arsetastic!

Personally I think it’s a winner.

By the way, for those of you who have read this far: this is my 300th post. Send the Moet to the usual address please, barman...