jasonbstanding.com

I’m no great scientician, however I do find science interesting and I envy those who had the brain capacity to stick with it (my scientific academic career consisted of getting straight ‘A’s in chemistry right up to the point we started doing vapour pressure, at which point I lost the plot & never really recovered.  If my IT “career” ever stalls I hope to revisit chemistry, catch up where I left off, and become a Nobel prizewinner or something).

In my attempt to keep science on my conscious periphery I’m reading Big Bang by Simon Singh - a history of the universe in terms of development of scientific models to explain it, from the ancient greeks right through to Fred Hoyle and the excellently named George Smoot.  I decided to read this for 2 reasons:

1. I was lucky enough to see a presentation by Simon Singh at Robin Ince’s School For Gifted Children, and found him to be an intelligent, engaging, compelling speaker.
2. The other items on my reading list at the moment are the Viz magazine annual titled “The Turtle’s Head”, and Russell Brand’s autobiography - so it’s important to keep a sense of balance.

The bit I wanted to share, however, was a wonderful verbal insult - “popularised” by astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who made some quite important astronomical discoveries (supernovae, dark matter) and some questionable ones as well (tired light theory).

Zwicky was quite an outspoken chap by all accounts, and (this is the good bit) would often label people as “spherical bastards“.

In the same way that a sphere is a geometric object which is identically a sphere from all angles and viewpoints, so too a spherical bastard is a person who - no matter which direction you examine them from - is a complete bastard.

As I said, I’ve always loved science.

Tags:   scienceNo Comments.

In response to my recent Facebook message from Mr J. Davis of Adelaide, South Australia:

I’d like to suggest that there’s more than one form of victory available.

Yep.

Tags:   excellence in sportsmanship · facebook · scramble · smugnessNo Comments.

Oh dear, it’s another taxi anecdote.

Got a cab home from work last night (the closer to the next morning it gets, the less inclined I am to stand about waiting for buses), and I wave this clown over right?  As the turn of phrase goes, I say “Hi mate, can ya take us over to Camden Town?”, and he sits there looking at me for a minute.  He then says, “Us?  There’s nobody else here.”.

I know, strictly speaking, that I am a single unit of human atomicity - however I’m also firmly of the belief that at 1:30am one should be afforded a little leeway in one’s grammatical correctness, especially if the questionable phrase is a widely known & used  article of regional vernacular.

I suppose - had inspiration and inclination taken me - I could have (successfully) argued that the “us” in question was a plural, encompassing myself, and the driver of the Hackney Carriage in question: for such a transaction to remain legal according to the local bylaws there must be multiple persons in the vehicle.

However as it was I just wanted to get in the fecking cab.

As if to punish me further, he correctly ascertained that I worked in the Information Technology business (I don’t know if it was the physique or the tan that gave it away), and spent the remainder of the journey asking me whether Windows XP or Vista was better.

Do you think karma will punish me for saying “Vista, definitely”?

Tags:   linguistic pickle · taxi2 Comments

Recently-ish, in the habit I’ve grown accustomed to now, I had a birthday.  This temporal landmark doesn’t always seem to inspire a massive shower of gifts in the way that one quietly hopes it will, however I do from time to time receive a happy smattering of such tokens from my nearest & dearest.

It’s possible to read all sorts of interpretations into the gifts that people give you, and I suspect the phrase “it’s the thought that counts” was coined directly to stop any further interpreting going on - it’s always possible to over-analyse, and come to the wrong conclusion.  For instance, were someone to post me an Amazon.co.uk voucher I’d probably wonder whether it meant that they didn’t care enough to spend time picking out something I liked, or maybe my personality is so bland to the outward observer that they couldn’t find any single facet of it to attach a gift to and settled on a “one-size-fits-all” solution?  Maybe the person was ludicrously busy and wanted to make a gesture but didn’t have time to do more?  Maybe they’d heard me talking about something expensive I’d seen on Amazon and wanted to contribute?  Or maybe they just didn’t want to spend loads on posting something large or awkward.  (Nobody *did* post me an Amazon voucher, by the way - it was purely a fictional example…  but you’re most welcome to do so.  It encourages brain activity.)

This year though, one of the arrivals was nothing so open-ended in its purposes and it philosophical implications.  No, this was quite specific.  The new addition to my wordly goods & chattels was a Darth Vader Mr Potato Head.

The questions it raises I think are more to do with the recipient than the sender - I absolutely love it, and so you’d have to wonder “What in the hell does a 32 year old want with a nerded up version of a 1950s facsimile tuber based toy?”.

The question you’re probably thinking of right now, however, is probably very very different to the one that came to my mind as I unwrapped the box because you see - I’ve already got a Darth Tater.

There was no way the generous sender of this gift (who had cunningly ordered from Australia using a UK firm) could have known that my housemate & sometime kickboxing sparring partner Emma had already presented me with one of these potato gems 3 years hence.  So the question playing through my mind was more like “How in the world did I become the sort of person who has 2 Darth Taters?”.  The world is literally awash with warehouses full of gift options, and there are websites and businesses whose entire purpose is to purvey such things: Firebox, IWOOT, BoysStuff.co.uk, Think Geek… the list goes on.  I have had a gift doubling-up since I was about 9, and I was able to put that down to the likelihood that my Mum and the other kid’s Mum probably shopped at the same Big W.  To get 2 of these, 3 years apart is quite a different thing.  I think.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s an excellent present, and I was totally stoked to receive it!

However I’ve checked, and I can exchange it for one of these.

Tags:   film memorabilia · indiana jones · pressing issues of the day · star warsNo Comments.

OK so I just got a text from my mobile network (name removed in case anyone takes umbrage):

Hello from XXXXXX. Just to let you know we have made some improvements to our network in your area.  So, you should now get even better coverage from XXXXXX.

What interests me is the phrase “in your area”.  It’s a mobile phone, right?  Do they mean in the area surrounding my billing address, or are they basing it on the network cell that my phone is currently in?  In which case, how do they know that I’m going to be there for long enough to give a shit about what the network improvement is like?  OR maybe they’ve been monitoring which cells my phone registers itself in over the course of the past week, and they’ve concluded that the one covering my office is my predominant location…  OH MY GOD, THEY’RE WATCHING ME!

Maybe mum’s theory about increasing the line rental cost of home phones to the point where everybody switched to mobiles in order that The Government can track your whereabouts all the time was right?!

Tags:   conspiracy theory · marketing shamNo Comments.

This evening I had my usual free-ranging type of conversation with a cab driver whose cab I happened to be in the back of, and he mentioned his surprise that more people in London don’t just start talking to each other if there’s nothing better to do. This struck me as odd, and I pressed him for that most meaningful of analytical metrics - anecdotal statistics. He was of the firm belief that in the 10 years he’d been driving a taxi, about 10% of the punters chat with him, and the rest sit there silently and merely wait for him to take them where they’re going.

This seems unusual, as prior discussions I’ve had with cab drivers included finding out about The Knowledge, how much the driver would like to move to Australia, what’s happening that evening that’s interesting, and what the driver’s most frequently asked and least favourite bits of smalltalk were - unsurprisingly, The Knowledge, life in London, and what’s going on that evening that’s interesting. At the risk of boring them, I’d sooner discuss those things than sport, religion or politics with someone who spends all day in London traffic confined to a small perspex box.

So I guess what I’m wondering - given that 90% of the time I’ll find myself chatting with the cabbie - is would the 90%-of-punters-don’t-chat rule be accurate, or could it just be that the guy who made that claim isn’t much good at random light banter?

Tags:   taxiNo Comments.

Seems I misunderestimated the massive and wideranging talents of the Royal Mail.

Got a card through the door to say “we tried to deliver a parcel but it wouldn’t fit through your letter box - come & get it!”, so I did.  Well, I nearly did.  I went to the postal depot and handed over the red card.  The bloke went around behind into the parcel section and rummaged for a good 20 mins, then came back empty handed.  Even the little gnomes at Argos have better performance statistics than that!

The guy said “I dunno man.  It’s not back there.  Give us your phone number and we’ll call you if it turns up”.

The other joyful part of the expedition was that I got the bus to the postal depot, but the bus was diverted because of roadworks, and at the point where I was able to get off the bus I was about equidistant to the post office as I’d have been if I’d just walked there from home.  So I wasted another 20 mins, and a quid.  But I guess I can’t blame the Royal Mail for that.

Mmmm…  postal conundrums and public transport - I don’t ever want to hear another claim that you people are living vicariously through my blog.

Tags:   clusterfuck · royal mailNo Comments.

I know that sitting around wishing for vast amounts of cash to appear in one’s bank account is a fairly silly thing to be doing, however wouldn’t it be nice to be able to convince once of these guys to hand over 0.1% of their take-home pay?

The chief prompter of this vein of thought is, regrettably, that I recently read about a Hollywood prop auction that’s going on at the minute.  Now, there’s not much that could be any more frivilous than buying props from films - they’re not even real things!  They’re mostly mockups designed to look like things, which are replaced with ACTUAL things at appropriate points in filming, or post-edited with effects to make the pretend things look like they’re functioning like real things.

Additionally, most people would have learned from past experience - I sort of kind of maybe accidentally put a little bit of a bid in on a hollywood auction once before…  Well you know how it is - you go out for a couple of orange sherberts with the lads, then come home & decide that your life won’t be complete until you own the golf club from Dogma as used by Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) - lot 1053.  Luckily someone wanted it more than USD$400 bad.  You’d have think I’d have learned from the Duck Call Incident.

The difference here though is that for a mere USD$25,000 you could own The Holy Grail.  Naturally, not the authentic grail as used in the Bible and quested after by King Arthur et al, but “real” in the sense as it’s the actual one used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This, above all, is probably the reason why it’s a good idea that I don’t have the kind of cash alluded to in the first paragraph.  Were I to be free of such financial constraints then I’d also have to find places to keep The Ten Commandments (although maybe it’d be fun to stick them in a replica Ark of the Covenant ?), an Adam West-ian Bat Radio, a spear from The Wizard of Oz, a pair of C3PO feet, the “Here’s Johnny” axe from The Shining, the priest’s headdress worn by Conan the Barbarian, the key (shaped like a golden weenkie) to the tractor beam belonging to Goldmember, and of course on the side of my shed it would be a requirement to have the airlock handle from Aliens.

Heh heh… Bay 12, please.

If anyone at all has the urge to pick that lot up for me, you’re most welcome to do so - I’ll find places to keep most of it, I’m sure.  And that lot’s only estimated to go for a hundred and seventy two grand!  With the change from 1/4 of a million you could probably pick up Christopher Reeve’s Superman costume, and a pair of James Bond cufflinks as a stocking stuffer.

Tags:   drool · film memorabilia · indiana jones · insight into my shopping disorder · star warsNo Comments.

Being a reasonably ethical chap I suppose I am continually flabbergasted at some of the activities my fellow human beings will undertake in order to get ahead in life.  In a system where there’s a finite amount of resources, given that human wants are unlimited, it strikes me that unless there’s a social movement towards central equitable resource distribution then eventually some of the people are going to end up with all of the resources, and the rest without resources.  This is very much how the world works, and it is fascinating to see the mechanisms & techniques people employ in the pursuit of more crumbs of the pie.

The thing which has caused my gast to be flabbered on this particular occasion is a website which my boss Paul somehow got in touch with during the course of trying to sell his car.  My understanding of events was that he listed the car in the motor trader magazine, and was contacted shortly afterwards by a representative from this website.

The premise is that they offer a service where they have a list of buyers who have expressed interest in a car of the type you’re selling and if you sign up they find a match with these buyers.  Your listing will remain on their register until the vehicle sells (as opposed to regular classified ads where you pay per appearance of a listing).  The service is just shy of £100, and if you’re selling a car for £2000 or more it probably doesn’t sound a huge expense to expedite the selling of your vehicle.

The bit which tugs the danger-will-robinson-chain is a little tricky to find - at the very bottom of the T&Cs in fact:

They have defined the terms of their engagement such that if a person expresses an interest in purchasing a vehicle of the type you have, or a similar type, then they have fulfilled the obligation.  One wonders what the exact definition of “expresses an interest” covers, although it sounds like what they mean is if you list a Ford Escort for sale, and someone searches their database for all the Ford listings they have, then that probably means they’ve expressed an interest in a vehicle of similar type.  Helpfully, the definition doesn’t refer to the location of the buyer: Paul got an email from a guy purportedly in Nebraska asking him to calculate shipping costs and sending him a bill for the total amount - seems a little far fetched to believe that a serious buyer would ship a car from London to the US based on a brief text description and no photo, however under the terms of the agreement it’s certainly a match.

On first glance one could be forgiven for thinking that the company does all sorts of work marketing and trying to find interested buyers for the kind of car you’re listing.  On immediate thought about it however it becomes quite clear that the “marketing” which takes place is that they place your listing in their database, which is then retrieved should someone come to the site and search for it.  Given that Paul was contacted upon listing his car in the auto trader (a print & web company with an enormous readership and household name status) it seems fairly apparent that a potential buyer is far more likely to find his car through the auto trader than through this other site.

If you pay your money and then get wind of the fact the site’s shonky, well no need to worry about that - the T&Cs cover that as well:

So, you’ve got no right to a refund if you find out we’re dodgy or suddenly figure out how this scam works - and any right you would have had you now don’t have because we’ve specifically referred to it as a term of your agreeing to use our service.

I suppose my point is I just think it sucks that someone can set up an arrangement which is a dodgy scam to take money off people who misunderstand the specifics of what they’re getting into, largely by way of the definitions they come up with for the terms.

Then again I don’t suppose that’s any different to how any other business anywhere operates, come to think of it.  If only I’d thought this through before blogging about it with such incredulousness.  Oh well.

Tags:   car · scam · websiteNo Comments.

For reasons just beyond my understanding the room cleaners in my Paris hotel yesterday made off with the remaining pair of fresh boxer shorts I had for the weekend.  Of course I didn’t notice this until 5:50 this morning when I was looking for them in preparation for my shower and subsequent sprint to Gare du Nord.

The result of this is that I had the choice of either going commando, or re-using Sunday’s pair (turned inside out, naturally).  To give you an idea of how attractive the latter would be, Richie & I spent pretty much all day yesterday wandering about the Tour de France track in 30 degree heat, and selected periods in the sweaty morass of a summer’s day on the Metro.  So yeah, we’re talking moisture, but nothing an overnight stay pegged to a hotel room balcony couldn’t minimise.

Neither was particularly appealing as far as options go, and I guess you’ll be relieved to read (at least as far as mental imagery goes, unless the damage is already done) that I plumped for option B.

The quandry one now finds oneself in is whether or not it’s worth popping to Marks & Sparks near work to purchase a fresh pair of shreddies or not.  I mean, clean durps is obviously the most desireable outcome, however it’s midday now, which means I’ve had these skanky ones on for 6 hours now.  Surely there’s not going to be much benefit in calling subs in at this stage of the game, is there?

Compounding the problem is that I’ve nowehere to put the tarnished set should I change into pristine shorts - the backpack I took away for the weekend is quite compact, and is currently filled to capacity (with sweaty clothes from the weekend).  There’s not room in there for an extra set of Reg Grundies, so unless I procure a shopping bag from somewhere (increasingly hard to do) I’ll have to be carrying them around on the end of a biro - at least this should guarantee me safe passage through the peak hour underground crowds.

Tags:   horrifying · my eyes - the goggles do nothing! · pressing issues of the day · underdurpsNo Comments.