Tag: BBC

bookmark_borderTerror! Inept?

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Some brief thoughts that sparked through my head after the “terror” attack on Glasgow Airport.

1. Glasgow, my home city. All of a sudden it’s close to home. Doubly so as I drive right past the runway every day on my way to work every day.

2. Glasgow, isn’t a capital city, why didn’t they hit Edinburgh?

3. If they HAD gotten the vehicle inside it would have been awful.. queues of people waiting to checkin would’ve been about 15 feet from the doorway the car hit.

4. Ummm the car was too wide for the doors?

5. Ummmm they only used one car, and were targetting one end of a long narrow building. Even if they HAD have gotten in… the building would probably still be usable…

6. Can we stop reporting that the terrorists are Asian? It’s wholly pointless really.

7. Who was the last white terrorist?

8. BBC News 24 is awful. The fact that “some ministers have been seen heading for No.10” is NOT news!

9. I seem to be de-sensitised to this already. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

So today I’ll watch the French Grand Prix, do a little work and try, again, to get my Wifi connection to play nicely with my Mac.

Just another Sunday really. Except it’s not, it’s now tainted with thoughts of car bombs and suspicion is creeping in… paranoia to follow?

bookmark_borderHuman Nature

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There is a vague thought tickling the back of my brain, all prompted from spending some time driving around in our new car. No, it’s not about the car, nor about driving, at least not directly. It’s roughly centred around our natural competitive nature, and the weird effect that sitting behind the wheel of a car seems to have.

Basically, having gone from driving a small, low powered, low spec car, we now drive something a little larger, more powerful and higher spec and, and this is surely no coincidence, it seems that we now receive different ‘on road’ treatment from other drivers.

No, I’m not talking about road rage but something akin to it. I’m still not entirely sure what it is though, and I’m perfectly willing to accept that it might be being projected from me but… well I’ll come back to that at a later date.

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I mentioned Belbin team analysis the other day and, to answer my own question for I’m sure many of you have lost… ohh… whole minutes of sleep over it, I am primarily a co-ordinator, a chairman, the type of person who gets all excited about new ideas and helps organise and motivate people at the start of a project. Unfortunately, coupled with my secondary role (resource/investigator) my “allowable weaknessâ€? amounts to the fact that I tend to drop things after the initial excitement has died down.

I wish that weren’t true but it’s an easily identifiable trait.

In addition to the Belbin team role, my company also runs another form of personality test which, as I’m hiring, I’m privvy to the results. It’s quite startling how, within the space of 24 questions, the outcome is not only accurate but includes information on whether or not you are ‘adapting your behaviour’ to try and manipulate the test.

Adding these things together, and coupling them with some recent book purchases, and it’s obvious that I’m currently undergoing some form of introspective analysis/psychology study. As usual it was nothing planned but I’ve always found that kind of thing fascinating. Which reminds me that I have a copy of “50 Key Contemporary Figures” to add to the ‘unread pile’. This is especially bad as I bought it from Meg about.. ohh… 4 years ago?

Looks like my next holiday reading list will largely be compiled of non-fiction.

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And finally a hello to everyone visiting from the BBC website, I do wish I had a list of suggested reading prepared but I don’t. Sorry. Mind you, the search is usually fairly reliable and as I’ve covered a fair amount of nonsense it’s probably your best bet. Presuming you even get that far, of course…

bookmark_borderBBC News

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I WAS going to write about the article on Jacqueline Gold and discuss whether her Ann Summers shops were adding to the objectification of women, or whether they were helping women become more confident, empowered and… something else that fits the feminist checklist.

I WAS going to write about whether being normal was a good thing, or not and at what point ‘being normal’ becomes extraordinary.

I WAS going to tackle, as I said I would, the situation in the Middle East, hopefully offering some suggestions as to what (if I had the power) I would do to help rectify things but, in balance, I’m not sure there is much anyone can do. The simple fact, in that situation, is that there are two diametrically opposed groups, both of which are armed. The only solution is to disarm both. And that’s never going happen.

Instead I’m going to talk about one website that I visit every single day, usually more than once, and which has slowly been evolving.

In particular I want to mention the new ‘Show and Hide’ sections that have been added recently and, specifically the section that will supply “Local news, weather and sport”. It’s a great idea. I really like it but there is a tiny problem.

It loads AFTER the rest of the page!!

Previously when visiting the BBC News website, I only had to pause for a second to let things load and I could start clicking onto stories that caught my eye. Now?

Now I have to pause for a second then, just as I go to click on an interesting article in the top half of the screen… IT MOVES! The “Local news, weather and sport” section starts to load, causing the entire screen to shuffle to accomodate it.

This is REALLY beginning to piss me off, so much so that I even considered switching to another news source, something like FOX News maybe?

So, rather than switch to an entertainment channel like FOX, I decided to just delete the BBC News cookie from my machine so it would forget the local information I’d supplied. Now I can get the news I want, when I want, and where (on the screen) I think it’s gonna be!

bookmark_borderFriday This and That

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I watch BBC News in the morning and I’m getting increasingly annoyed by the “plug an upcoming BBC show” section. This morning it was about school reports as, apparently (I wasn’t really paying that much attention) the BBC will be a broadcasting a programme about this tonight.

So, instead of catching up on world events and, you know, news, instead I got to sit through random excerpts from peoples school reports, emailed in by viewers, including the HILARIOUS revelation that one report card stated the pupil “didn’t excel at geography” and, guess what… go on guess… bet you can’t… yes, that’s right, they are now a geography teacher. WOW!

I wish there was some way to convey just how far back into my head I’m rolling my eyes at the moment.. put it this way, it’s so far back that it really REALLY hurts. Actually, it’s a bit like an ice cream headache. Odd.

Really should stop doing it though. Hurts.

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Zeldman has started using WordPress. Not such a big deal to many, but considering that up until now he still hand-coded his site it’s a fairly big step for one of the early web design “pioneers”. I’ve been reading his site for over six years ya know (and still prefer the old orange to the current ‘organic’ colours).

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Billionaires are on the rise, which proves the old adage that the rich keep getting richer. Well, it’s not so much an adage as a “power-law distribution” and the same type of reasoning (the popular keeping getting more popular) can be applied to blogging as well.

The latter article is a mildly interesting read. Probably one for those who are continually pondering on WHY the “A-listers” are so deemed. Turns out it’s all our fault. Funny that.

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Profumo dies (great photo of him partway down the page). This was, I’m told, a BIG THING back in the day. It was around the time of the Cold War, a period where everyone left their fridge doors open with last person to close it declared the winner (there are still some fridge doors lying ajar in deepest darkest Siberia. Allegedly)

My knowledge of the Profumo affair is solely based around the Queen song Scandal which was used for a movie based on the events. I’ve not seen the movie.

This means my knowledge of this incident includes the name Christine Keeler and that famous photo of her, a copy of which was stolen and published in the Sunday Mirror.

I’m just too young I guess.

*ducks*

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Top Blogging Tip #23152: Post more often.

I’m basing that tip solely on the fact that my stats seem to be rising in the past couple of weeks, especially this week, when I’m finding myself posting more than once a day.

Of course this is typical. I’m far too busy, shouldn’t be blogging or reading blogs at all but with my current workload comes an increased requirement to focus on tasks at hand and that’s then turned into more posts rather than less. I’m sure smarter people than I have a term for this.

And no, it’s not task avoidance… well not completely…

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Afternoon proverb: Chilli and Guinness for lunch do not a productive afternoon make. Roll on 5pm.