Security risks

I've been in Lisbon for a few days, which has been very pleasant. It's a lovely city and the company and conversation has been excellent. On the way back, though, I started to get nervous about security, and not just because I heard on the TV about the car bombs in London (one of which was towed away for a parking violation, not for being a tool of indiscriminate mass murder -- shades of J.G. Ballard again). When I went through the security check to get on the plane, I forgot that I put my toothpaste in my carry-on bag in clear violation of the posted procedures. No-one noticed of course, and nor did they seem concerned that there were six mobile phones in it either (I'd been running a seminar that needed phones for demonstration purposes). I only remembered when I was waiting to pick up my bag the other side of X-ray and the security guards were making an old dear in front of me empty out all of her stuff until they discovered the offending item: a small bottle of orange juice. Then, on the way back, I forgot to turn my phone off. I didn't realise until I was back at terminal one at Heathrow and I went to turn it back on again. Amazingly, though, it didn't appear to interfere with the aircraft's navigational systems and we didn't crash, despite the dire warnings on the in-flight announcement. Why would terrorists drive cars full of explosive around when all they need to do is get off a plane but leave their mobile phone switched on an hidden in the seat pocket in front of them?

I decided to leave that last sentence in, despite the fact that five minutes after I got home and was making a cup of tea in the kitchen while chatting with the family, there was a newsflash on the radio concerning terrorists trying to drive a car full of petrol into Glasgow airport.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, travel

Sur vs. sous

People are always going on about surveillance, but they spend less time thinking about sousveillance. This is just as much of a problem and it is uncontrolled: when everyone has cameraphones, all of us are under sousveillance all the time. This isn't a major problem for nonentities like me, but it must get a bit wearing for anyone with the slightest degree of celebrity as they wouldn't get a private moment to the themselves anywhere. We have to wonder what sort of society this will create, if you ask me.

Anyway, here's noted BBC television celebrity Tony Hawks in the Apple Store in London...

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: technology

Keep off the grass

It's that time of year again. Glastonbury has become an English institution. I haven't been for twenty years, and have no intention of going ever again. For a start, camping out for the weekend at a pop festival is a rite of passage, part of the process of shifting from childhood the prolonged childhood that is post-modern adulthood in an affluent society. I went a few times and it was great: sitting here typing I can recall some of the happiest times of my life. Jumping up and down singing along to the Paul Jones and The Blues Band's version of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" (I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more) a couple of years after my working class first-time Tory vote had brought Mrs. Thatcher to power. Laughing myself into a pharmacologically-assisted vegitative state after watching John Cooper-Clarke deliver the Daily Express (This paper's boring, mindless, mean / Full of pornography, the kind that's clean). Yes, great days: look at the 1981 line-up (when it was still only 24,000 people, including me -- see below) and then tell me that today's is better.

Now the tickets are proto-ID cards, the bog rolls are recycled only and it can only be a matter of time before Glastonbury bans smoking as well as drugs because they will get the field designated a place of work. How long before they confiscate booze, too, on the basis that it’s bad for the liver - and junk food, because, as Jamie Oliver warned, that’s bad for us and the environment, too? It just doesn't sound very much fun to me, and that's without the continuous Green hectoring and Saga motorhome campers.

I don't want to sound like Victor Meldrew in every paragraph, but now that Glastonbury is the new Glyndebourne (not that the old one has gone away), I can't imagine anything more hideous that standing soaked to the skin in a field, surrounded by management consultants and their spouses, and watching Shirley Bassey while stone cold sober.

What youthful rebellion can be accompanied by tickets that cost 150 quid, policemen with spy cameras and Lily Allen? No thanks. And while I can see "the kids" wanting to go and see The Arctic Chiefs or whoever, if you wanted to see The Who, then you should have gone to see them at Charlton Athletic Football Ground in 1974 like I did.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, pop stars, nostalgia

And about time too

Well done British Airways. At last! I've been moaning for years that there's no free wifi in the Executive Club lounges. I've never understood why someone paying thousands of pounds for a business class ticket should have to screw around trying to buy wifi time with a credit card in an airline premium lounge. I typed this sitting in an Executive Club lounge (location withheld) on the free wifi network. Simply, easy solution: you get a username and password on a slip of paper, given to you when you check in at the lounge. It would have been a perfect 10 travel experience, if it hadn't been for the guy from Accenture sitting across from me and talking loudly on this mobile phone to a friend about a project they're doing for Lloyds TSB and how many air miles he was racking up.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, travel

My new Windows logo

I wasted hours on a stupid Windows problem that turned out to be because I was using the wrong Windows XP install disk. My PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE Windows disk wouldn't install because it wanted a serial number that I couldn't find anywhere so I borrowed one from my next door neighbour. It turned out to the be wrong version (I needed SP2, whatever that is). In the end, I went on to PirateBay and downloaded a copy using BitTorrent. What kind of world is it when it's easier to get a copy of some software from PirateBay than to install the software that you've paid for? Anyway, since I had hours to waste while all this was going on, I designed my very own new Windows logo that I'm going to use on all my Windows CDs and DVDs from now...

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: moaning, technology

I found a thing to do Denver

In fact, I found quite few. It's a very pleasant place. Yesterday I went for an amble around the Capitol (below) and wandered in to the Colorado History Museum. I ended up spending a couple of hours there and found it fascinating, since I knew very little about the subject. It was very nicely laid out. Highly recommended. I'm staying out of town at a conference centre so I used the light rail to get around: it was fantastic, and (I think) pretty unusual for North America. It was fast, clean and efficient. It reminded me of the light rail in SimCity: it looks exactly the same, a fact which clearly bothers some people in another city I like very much, Austin.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: travel

Argy Bargy

I'm in Barcelona for a couple of days and it's very pleasant here indeed. When I was going down to the lobby earlier on there were a couple of guys in Argentinian football shirts in the lift with me, but I wasn't paying much attention. When we got out of the lift I noticed another couple of guys in Argentinian shirts. Then I noticed that one of them was Carlos Tevez. At which point I realised that there were loads of people in Argentinian shirts and dark blue polo shirts, lots of photographers and lots of kids trying to get autographs. It turns out that I'm staying in the same hotel as the Argentinian national football team. I tried to get a picture from the Mezzanine level, but they were all underneath so I couldn't. I did get a quick snap of one of them being interviewed, but I can't figure out who it is (!)

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: sport, travel

I got my Cards

I'd taken over Woking FC (Come on you Cards). I adopted a long-term strategy, cutting back on some of the deadwood in the first team squad and investing in coaches and scouts to find and work with young players, except that the board wouldn't let me hire another scout even though I had the wage budget. The idea was to avoid relegation from the Conference this year and then push for the league next year. I managed to avoid the drop by a couple of points and had a decent cup run so I had a bit of money to spend. But two days after the last match of the season, I was fired.

Yes, I've been playing Championship Manager again because the 2007 version has come out. I love this game. I've been pretty busy recently so it's nice to switch off for a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there to play.

Things are about to get even better, though. Something is brewing in the UK, something that the Internet was invented for... an idea so utterly brilliant that I did actually gasp out loud when I read about it in The Telegraph... some guy has set up a web site to get 50,000 football fans to register and pledge 35 quid (and yes, I've already done it). When there are 50,000 people signed up, they're going to spend a million quid on BUYING A REAL FOOTBALL TEAM. All the fans will have a share in it. How fantastic is that! I'm hoping against hope that they'll buy Woking, but whoever they buy it's going to be so much fun. The idea is to run the team through the web site -- transfers, tactics voted on by the fans -- with a head coach appointed to execute the fans' instructions. It's going to be like Championship Manager but for real! I absolutely can't wait. Whichever club gets bought is going to see gates go from 1,000 to 20,000 and have cash to buy new players and there will be fans going to all of their away games all over the country as well.

Like all of the very, very best ideas I am literally green with envy at not having thought of it myself.

The voices may not be real, but they do have some good ideas.
[posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: sport, technology