21 posts from 2007

.... of disastrous or deceptively understated eBay descriptions.  My latest "find" is a more-than-slightly disconcerting listing for a laptop which endeth as follows:

And just like 2 secs ago the w and the s keys have falling [sic] off they still work i just cant be bothered to put the keys back on looks fiddley

Oops.  Too much "Daley Thomson's Decathlon"?

Makes you wonder, don't it. 
Or "it make you think", perhaps, if those 'w' and 's' keys really are lying on the floor somewhere..

I love eBay, I fully admit to it.  It's not just that there are bargains to be had (although fewer and fewer of them as time goes on it seems) and that it's quite an easy way to sell things that you once convinced yourself you needed but which are now about as desirable as that Clairol Foot Spa that sits in the cupboard underneath the stairs after one solitary call to arms... err... feet.

There's an element of eBay which I must admit that I find highly entertaining in a twisted way.  It's what I have decided to call the understated listing syndrome.  This is classically evinced by the way in which sellers portray goods which are more or less faulty to the point of being utterly useless for the purpose that they were originally manufactured to serve.  The syndrome also commonly appears when sellers attempt to describe flaws in their goods which, whilst not rendering an item inoperable, are sufficiently serious to probably be the reason they are being sold in the first place. 

I give you today's peach of an example of the former case, which I stumbled across in my search for a decent yet cheap digital camera.  Boy, am I sorely tempted to purchase the camera from the listing below?  No, I'm not even sorely tempted not to buy it.  But, I'll let the listing do the talking...

"Camera has a slight fault - everything on it works fine (screen, dials, zoom, batttrery, charger) except it doesn't take photos"

Now, it's 10 out of 10 when it comes to being open and honest about the problem with the camera at the end of the sentence there.  That is to be applauded, of course.  But, one feels that the opening gambit sits about as comfortably as I would sit comfortably at my own funeral.  Or worse, at the evening disco after my own funeral.  Naked.  On a wooden chair with splinters, watching family members and hangers-on reeling around drunkenly to some terrible tune from their youth.

But rest assured, everything on the camera works fine.  Which is more than I could say about myself.  And I cannot take photos either at the moment, since I am lacking a camera, amongst the many other things I lack.

Then again, we all have our faults... 

  

I was looking for some cables to connect the outputs of one of my synths to my Delta Audio breakout box the other night and was slightly surprised and bemused to read an advert claiming that their cables would be the "last ones you'll ever use".

Is it just me, or is that, given the number of musicians who have died from electrocution, just rather a foreboding advertising slogan ?

I'll steer clear of them, I think.  My time is not yet nigh.  I have books out from the library, for starters.

Well, I've become one of those people.  I suspected it might happen sooner or later, but now it finally has. 

Yes, I have become one of those people that pre-rolls their cigarettes.   Now I know smoking is bad etc., etc., etc., so I'm not even going to skirt around that issue at all, but there is the whole subject of rolling your own cigarettes to consider.  I have been rolling my own for a long, long time now.  I actually enjoy the act of rolling a cigarette.  The presentation of the paper, adding the filter, the laying and then the evening out of the tobacco, the rolling into a cylinder, the licking of the paper and then the final smoothing out of the cigarette...

It's a ritual in some respects, I suppose.  It is perhaps just a little cathartic or therapeutic in and of itself. 

But, the smoking ban has meant that it's now not very convenient to roll a cigarette on-the-fly as and when you want one.  By the time you are outside in your designated smoking area and you've rolled one, your fellow smokers are already halfway through theirs.  It means also taking advantage of the times in-between "enclosed public areas" as and when you can, which requires having a cigarette more or less at hand.

So, I have taken to rolling a heap (that's not an exact measurement) of cigarettes before I go out.  This is not something I thought I would ever do, since I don't wish to sit there feeling like I'm working on piece-rate at my own  cottage industry - churning them out like my livelihood depended on it.  It's just not right.

None of the above, of course, represents anything at all important or meaningful, but it's a post all the same.

I've been down to London today, my third or fourth trip in as many weeks.  Truth be told, my recent trips in the last few weeks outnumber my trips to London over the past four or five years.  It's not a major journey by any means, just an hour and a quarter by train, then a few stops on the Tube.  It's a relatively stress-free journey.  I didn't even really set out very early or arrive back too late.  But, I have found that it has become quite a hurdle for me personally.

It's not that I don't like London.  I do.  I lived there there for quite a few years, I did my PhD there and worked there.  It's energetic, interesting and exciting in many respects.  It's also a world apart from how and where I spend 99% of my time now, which is rather slow and quiet (at least relatively speaking).  It isn't that I live far removed from civilisation, but there's something about a genuinely big city that makes it so much more than the equivalent sum of many bustling towns.  I'm not sure what it is, but you'll know it if you have spent time in a large city for any duration longer than a few days or weeks.  It's that thing that is exciting in some ways, but which ultimately weighs so heavily on you and your well-being too after a while..

A city the size of London, especially during the rush hours, is a collective organism in full flow.  It's both somewhat invigorating and somehow depressing all in the same breath.  I can only equate it to an awareness of being part of and driven along by a big and powerful machine, but feeling that one is such a very small component in it that you could be spat out of the machine or crushed in its mechanism and it would not be affected by your loss in the least.  

I was joined, no doubt, on my journey to and from London today by many people for whom it is a major part of their daily routine and a significant part of their waking hours (and non-waking hours judging by some of the snores from the train carriage).  Since my journeys are relatively few and far between I do see myself as a tourist in some ways, able to look at things slightly differently and able to shed my skin when I return home knowing I won't be retracing my steps the following day and the day after that.   I know I could not do that.  I know I also would not last very long in London at this stage in my life.  The noise, the fumes, the incessant movement is too much.

So, am I tired of London?  I don't think so.  Perhaps I appreciate it all the more for not being a part of it or I just appreciate different aspects of it now.  Perhaps I appreciate the opportunity of seeing, for example, a building like "The Gherkin" up close rather than simply in photographs on the web, and enjoy the novelty of both familiar and unfamiliar sights and sounds in teeming London streets.   By the same token, perhaps it gives me even more appreciation for the location and lifestyle choices that I have made which mean that the grind of London living and the daily commute feels now so very far behind me and not a part of me...

Thanks to Pam for sending me this.  It's cute and quite intriguing.  Sometimes simple is good.

http://www.interactivepinboard.com/

The only problem is if you try to grab and use a word and someone else wants it.  You might need to arm wrestle them or play a round of Top Trumps or perhaps even compare the height of your male parent to decide who gets the privilege of using the word.  Or, you might have to settle it in the traditional way with a duel to the death.  I don't know.  Try it, anyway.

Who is your favo[u]rite wizard of all time?

Why, Bill Bailey... of course.  The self-styled "Wizard in a Call Centre" when wearing a headset microphone on stage.  I'm sure this is just to deflect us with denigrating sleight of mouth from the fact that he's also a Wizard when not wearing one of those contraptions.
In any event, he doesn't work in a Call Centre.  This is certainly the Call Centre industry's loss and our gain, let's face it.  I present you Exhibit A... the Axis of Evil

Bill Bailey - Paranoid Nation