Something

Annoying the UK

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 23:59:19 +0100

"Hello there, could I speak to my blog reader please?" "Yes, of course. My name's Nic Parkes and I'm calling from a Market Research Company on behalf of their bank. "

Yer, I'm doing that. I'm currently employed by a company who annoy people for the purposes of Market Research. Of course, as a business guru and such - I'm clear that what I'm doing has a very good purpose - but that doesn't stop many people from thinking that what you're doing is bad.

Last night, I spoke to someone who - for example - decided that I was a conman because I couldn't give him a number to call me back, and I was only able to give him a number for the project manager who he could contact during office hours. I've spoken to other people who think the call is a reason to be worried about everything they've ever done ever, and others who simply think you're phoning for a good bit of fun and that you don't actually need them to answer the questions.

Other people are, of course, absolutely lovely. But that's beside the point, because what I do seem to have mastered is sounding very interested while at all times sat looking bored out of my skull hitting a space bar and arrow keys. Such is life. At least talking solidly for hours makes me drink more water.

I can't delete you

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:20:22 +0100

It's been two months, and I'm doing well - so I'm told.It's difficult to know what "doing well" is, exactly; it seems to be something along the lines of forgetting about it when you need to, and not letting it bubble over when you don't need to forget - that's what I'm doing, anyway.

I've always been quite used to people leaving my 'sphere' as it were. I'm built, or - rather - I've built myself to not really rely on anyone for anything. It's always nice to have someone there to talk to, and it's always nice to be able to know that you can just go up to someone, ask, and get. And then to stand there, even if it's just for a few seconds, that there's someone there holding you up.

Some people struggle to take on this role, some people are amazing at it because they try to be - and others are rather good because they don't try one little bit. Those ones who don't try are often the best at it, and yet - alas - they don't even realise they're doing it. Then they leave.

They don't realise what they've done - they don't realise that they've left you quite how they have. They don't realise the respect you have for them, and they don't realise how easy it is to love someone for doing what they've done for you. Then they leave. Bored with whatever it is they're bored with, or because they're being depended on just that little bit too much, or even worse - because they're scared.

Every other time this has happened - as serious or not - I've been fine with it. Because I always am. I'm always there, and always the same. Some kind of biological robot that sleeps at night, eats during the day - but feels nothing. Gets up, and gets on with it. Makes stuff happen.

This time it's different: I don't want to get up. I mean, not to say that I haven't - I'm not being silly. I've got up, and I've carried on. I've dealt with it, and I've carried on. That's what I do. I'm just not sure quite why, or how, I started - and now I've started, I've got to finish.

Don't trust him... He's watching

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:57:02 +0100

We all know that if we�re out drinking, we really shouldn�t leave our drinks unattended. We know that we shouldn�t leave them unattended because they will be drugged, leading to us being drugged and having sex with someone who we wouldn�t have.
In fact, some of the people I know are so concerned about being drugged that they keep they drink wine without opening the bottle (you can�t trust anyone, nowadays) and consume only vaccum-packed food through a straw.

Not many people, though, ever worry about the risks involved in being drugged during the day. It is a very real risk which, every day, we risk; and I�m very worried.

I�m pretty certain that whenever you wash your car you take with you a drink. It might be coffee, it might be tea � I�m not sure. Either way, you�re � at some point � going to place it down in order to get the car soapy, or to make it less soapy, or to cover it in wax and then rub it all off again.

Once you�ve placed the drink down, in a public place, you�ll probably suddenly realise you�ve got a very full bladder. Or you�ll realise that � in fact � you forgot to get the wax from the kitchen. Any of these reasons will lead you inside.

�What�s wrong with me going inside?� you�re thinking, aren�t you? You�ve not left the keys in the car or anything so what can be the problem with going inside? It�s not going to do any harm.

That is until your nasty little next door neighbour throws some Rohipnol in your drink, waits for you to return and finish the coffee, watches you closely polish your car so that its blacks show up black and its silvers reflect the sky�s luscious blue.

Then he�ll watch you change your sidelight bulb, and then he�ll come over, you�ll say yes and before you know it you�ll be lay under a Morris Minor in his garage trying desperately to wash his sump plug just because it feels so dirty.

You hadn�t thought of that, had you? I bet you also hadn't realised how dirty your car was - or how cheap the car wash at the petrol station looks now!

Matt's dismembered face

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:28:00 +0100

I'm always excited by new Facebook features. I loved it when we were suddenly allowed to have friends, and when the design changed and then when the header expanded to fill the entire page.

I liked it when we could tag people in photographs, and I liked it even more when Facebook wanted me to invite everyone I knew (who was already on Facebook) to get a Facebook account.

I didn't like it when my Mother joined Facebook - because that's just a bit bizzare - but I liked it when I could add people who weren't my family as my siblings.

For about 20 minutes in late February 2009, I liked the fact that I could grow virtual crops - and for about 3 minutes I was enchanted by the concept of running a virtual cafe. Before I realised that I ran an actual cafe and went back to that instead.

I have to, though, speak out, at the 'tag your friends' box which I was presented with tonight. It's a sensible idea, because it takes untagged photos and asks you to tag them. Very clever. Very wise. We want to label everyone, of course - so that Facebook can take over the universe.

I do, however, dislike the dismembered section of Matt Walker's face that appeared today in the "Tag your friends" box.

To be honest, Facebook - No.

My god look at that hair

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:01:00 +0100

Around Easter time, though, I made the discovery that someone I'd been talking to for a few years - well, that's a lie: 7 years - was actually someone else. Although, the actual person who existed outside of the Internet was actually someone with exactly the same name.>> Continuing from Yesterday's post: Facebook, privacy and the fact you're not real"

How had I found this out though? Well, it was thanks to one of the whore-my-information sites/applications that a lot of us geeks have been using. It's called Foursquare.

So his Foursquare linked to his twitter, which - strangely - talked about other things. Despite being exactly the same person. From there, I went on to call Dom Self at some stupid time in the night to ask him if he thought I was going completely insane, or whether there was anything in what I'd found out.

After a couple of minutes of talking - and sharing web links the old way, over the phone and verbally, it quickly became apparent that I wasn't going insane, and we went on to find out various pieces of information - using just the Internet. In fact, the amount of things we found out about the real person ran to a six page Word document.

So it'd be fair for me to assume now that what I'd discovered was that, in fact, the Internet had a lot of information on it. Which was something that I already knew. I'd discovered that if given the right piece of information, or set of circumstances and a Dominic Self you could put together a pretty comprehensive idea of who someone is, where they lived and what they'd told you that was true - and more importantly what wasn't true.

What was more important, though, that I'd learnt was that actually there was more to be worried about when people didn't reveal themselves fully on the Internet, and went to extreme lengths to protect their privacy. Although we'd managed to find out all of this about the 'real' person - looking back at the fake that they'd created for us all that time ago: there wasn't that much on the Internet about them! In fact, there were about two pictures on a Facebook account with only me and our mutual friends 'attached'.

My conclusion, therefore, simply must be that the Internet doesn't have too much information on it - because you control what goes on line (even though you don't) by simply existing in only the way that you do. It's only when we walk into the area of creating new people for the purposes of a big faker that we start to cause problems.

Quite simply - I'd be worried I ever met someone who wasn't willing to send me a few photographs of them naked next to a statue in Leicester with some WKD Blue. Ahem.

Facebook, privacy and the fact you're not real

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:33:10 +0100

I remember being sat in the canteen at college three years ago. It was break time, and while everyone else was muttering on about something I didn't care about, or talking to one another, I was reading what was scrolling across the TV screen that hovered in the corner, over the bin and a little to the right of a door that was for teaching a subject I didn't do.Of course, the TV wasn't really hovering - it wasn't even anything more than a 28" non-wide-screen big old CRT connected to a computer hidden somewhere in the college (it was in the finance office, bizarrely) and set to display a PowerPoint presentation on a loop. The content of the presentation was, of course, downloadable as a PDF document from the virtual learning environment or on paper for those of us geeky enough to actually want to know that someone who'd previously attended the college was now studying for a diploma in Waste Management at Hull University, but not quite geeky enough to have mastered exactly what a virtual learning environment actually is.

If I'm honest, I've written the content for one - and I'm still not sure exactly what a Virtual Learning Environment is. It seems to be an excuse for designers to go a bit kids-TV, teachers to get excited about unique identity codes in individual envelopes and to send you the occasional ferocious email informing you your religious studies homework is available on there; and an excuse to call something Moodle. The most I've ever learnt has certainly not been from a virtual learning environment, despite having learnt at least 75% of what I know on the Internet.

The message that was scrolling across the screen for this week was one that had been in the news for what I remember to be the first time: the fact that Facebook have actually conned us all into uploading pictures of ourselves onto the Internet, forced us to hand over the copyright for them and then told us all they're never going to delete them. And if we didn't like it - well that was a bit tough.

We've since realised that the photos in question were probably of us vomiting some blue drink while standing naked at a statue in Leicester, and that at some point in the future an employer might not want to employ someone who drinks blue drink, or someone who stands naked next to statues.

Not only Facebook though, Twitter is collecting knowledge of where we all are - and what we're doing: although quite why a future employer will ever need to know that I've sat in the middle of muddy, windy a field eating a twix I'll never quite understand. The internet, of course, knows everything about everyone.

I'll admit to having been a bit of a sceptic about this - to be honest. I honestly don't think that the Internet has got that much information about you - unless you've chosen to give it out - and by adding extra security settings and the like to Facebook you're just increasing the amount of fear that people have got about this choice.

Imagine. You've just come home after a hard day's work. Walked in through the door, and your wife is cooking dinner in the kitchen as normal. It's a beef dinner, as you've asked. There's a letter on the table addressed to you. You pick it up and read it - just a card, inside, saying: "Your wife is at risk of cheating on you, would you like to change privacy settings?" You've previously had no reason to suspect that your wife might be cheating on you, have you? But oh, what if she is? I mean, there must be something to worry about musn't there?

"Your wife is visible to other men, would you like to change this?" the option might read. You're not an overbearing jealous man. I mean - last year she even went out all by herself when you ran out of sage and onion stuffing when your parents were down, and she didn't come back with smoked sausage to go with the meal. She just came back with stuffing.

"Better set it to friends only" you think to yourself.

>> Continues tomorrow: but your wife IS cheating on you, and she's got big hair

Don't try and control the media

Mon, 9 Aug 2010 07:00:00 +0100

So the media has the power to make you or break you, doesn't it? We've pretty much accepted that if you go on X Factor or some other reality TV show as a member of the people who aren't famous for no reason, you're either going to be made into one of the people who is famous for a reason, or those who are famous for a few hours while the whole of the country laughs at them.So why would anyone in this country, even if they are a football club with the same future prospects of the moonwalking dodo on the television advert for yoghurt, try and stop the press from doing their job in the way the press wanted to do it?

Of course, specifically, I haven't got any knowledge at all of whether Southampton FC are actually going to go on to start in the next set of cheese commercials - surely, the next gig for the moonwalking dodo? - or whether they're going to go down the league and start advertising butter, but what I do know for sure is that they're not going to do well from banning photographers from their home games.

As far as I can tell, the logic was that the newspapers would actually be quite happy that they wouldn't have to send anyone to the games, and they'd all happily run along to Digital South (the agency that got chosen) and ask for a photograph. They'd provide one, and Southampton FC would get a lovely wad of cash at the end of the year - as well as not having to bother paying the photographer, and the world would suddenly be fluffy and nice.

But then the dreams started to fall to pieces as The Guardian reported that even the agency involved in the whole issue are a bit annoyed and have walked away from the deal, and another newspaper has taken a leaf out of the court reporter's handbook and issued someone with an HB pencil, a sharpener and a pad of drawing paper and ordered them to draw as quickly as they can.

So while the newspapers fight back against the decision, leaving us lot to watch like it was some reality TV show with reporting about the restricted reporting, it seems only appropriate to look on the bright side of everything and wonder what the positives of this whole situation could be. There's always the ecological argument, the modern default defence against anything that has a chance of reducing our use of resources - that if there aren't any photographs to print then they might use a bit less energy printing them, or it might reduce paper usage, but that's a bit like suggesting that if you hide food from a fat woman, she isn't just going to eat all of the cupboard doors until she finds it. And then eat the food you hid anyway.

There's another angle to it - we might be onto something - in the carbon dioxide emitted by all of those photographers on their journeys to the match, and their cars. There's the charging of their camera battery, flash, etc.. to take pictures that Digital South would be taking anyway! All wasteful uses of resources that we scarcely need nowadays in these recessive times.

And at the end of it all, what's going to be the result? Well, chances are they'll back down. So carry on with your work.

A proper official holiday

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:07:40 +0100

So I haven't really been that good at blogging lately have I?I'm not ashamed to say that my writing history is somewhat like a middle aged woman: changing in looks only for the worse and havings bits removed from the middle when something starts to grumble, and then denying why and what has been done to anyone who asks - only to mumble "I had some threats" under my breath when I'm pushed.

So let's be clear about what's going to happen, instead of faffing around for a few weeks pretending I'm still here while feeding you all a few tiny little bits of some uninteresting life, I'm going to take a proper, official holiday from not blogging - a period of time where I won't blog. Somewhat like when pensioners go on holiday 'to get away from it all' I'm going to carry on doing what I've been doing before but without...well, without actually doing anything.

This holiday shall last until the 9th August 2010. On the 9th, there'll be a spanking new post here for you - and then on the 10th there'll be another. Another on the 11th, and - well - you get the theme. Until the next time I say something offensive and get asked to remove it, have a strop and delete the lot. So there.

My car's got a habbit

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 10:41:24 +0100

Six months ago, my little FIAT Punto was heading down a road near Birmingham Airport when it suddenly lost all of its umph and had to be recovered back to the house on the back of a truck.

Little did it know, I love it quite a bit and I'd call on help from an Uncle and a head gasket set to restore its ability to function just like all of its mates do.

Now, though, having sat around for six months eating cake and biscuits and thinking it had been abandoned. It's developed a nasty habit, and for those of you asking - it's probably because the battery went flat, and the car needs to do around 200 miles before the ECU will have re learnt how to mix fuel and air correctly. Being a FIAT of course, this isn't much of a shock.

This, I'm afraid, is the result when you leave a car's electrics and computing design to the local nursery and spend all of your time wandering around a mood room designing the car to look like a fat woman bending over in a skirt.

Worrying part is, it's got an MOT to pass on Monday. I'm not looking forward to the emissions test.

I love the Internet

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:41:45 +0100

Over the past few months I've gotten a little bit sick of the Internet and how it's taking over everyone's lives completely. I've even taken a few weeks to grow a complete dislike for Facebook because of it's ability to let you think you know people, even though you don't.More specifically, though, I've been annoyed by what Facebook can do with friends you've got in real life. But I'll discuss that in the future, as I kind of want to just show you something today.

Thanks to Diamond Geezer I discovered something that I can't think of an actual need for. He's popped a link onto a page which was developed by the same guy who runs Traintimes.org and other such sites and who develops for a company called My Society.

He took some data which has been released by TfL about the location of tube trains on the Underground system, and has developed some code which puts all of these trains onto a Google Map. It's not that neatly done, being developed as part of Science Hackday, and trains move in straight lines along slightly unrealisitic routes - with some trains running across the middle of "nowhere" to get to the stations they need.

You can look at it here.

Part of me has spent quite a few minutes just staring at the map, watching trains go from station to station - and clicking on them to find out where they're going, and where they've come from. Another part of me has simply sat here wondering why we need to be able to: first of all, know where the trains are (I can't think of *any* reason, since they run every couple of minutes) and second of all why we want to be able to watch them on the Internet.

That's just one of the wonders of the Internet, though, isn't it? Developing the whole... pointlessness of the Internet.