White Lines

Having once again found myself mouthing "F*** me" and shifting the car to the left as I drive past the restaurant on Sandy Lane to avoid the oncoming vehicles in my lane I was prompted to give a call to the Worcestershire Hub.

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Brutal Legend's RTS elements

Still playing Brutal Legend and reached some of the RTS sections where you defend the stage, and draw in the fans. I can see why some people complain.

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Amazon's emails and sale

Recently the content of Amazon's newsletters have become quite minimalist.

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Co-op car park incident

An article in the Shuttle bears closer inspection as to the attitude of some of the 'young'.

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Motorway driving

I'll start with the admission that I'm not a fan of motorway driving, according to the BBC this morning I'm not the only one.

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Good old Acer 2

No sign of the laptop. Another call to the payment centre that being the only one who provided me with any information and the line is answered by Mr. Surly. He tells me that the unit hasn't been shipped and it's nothing to do with him call this number.

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Protect the nothing

Traffic lights on the B4125 next to Cook's while workers did workey things to a telegraph pole. As it's offset into Hartlebury Common this meant the use of a cherry picker and this is what the lights were protecting. Well at least until 2pm when the lights were still up but the reason for them had gone.

I'd like to say this is another example of where market forces 'efficiency' breaks down, except this can only occur where the value of the drivers on the road is zero. If this were a toll road drivers would have value and any work would be cleared up as soon as possible.

Police Pledge adverts

I've only seen one and apparently there are three floating around, however in my opinion the one I've seen captures the essence of modern policing to a tee.

A kid comes along and knocks askew one of the letters hanging on the screen, then another kicks one of the letters to the cries of "Oy!". Then a policeman shows up to talk to the owner and then is shown sauntering off having down absolutely nothing... no wait I tell a lie he readjusts the skewed letter.

See perfect representation - the police show up after the event and do bugger all.

Observations

Bewdley Bridge is closed according to Central News due to "Fears of flooding at Beales Corner". Bit of a catch 22 complaints because they've closed it when it's not flooded, complaints if they don't close it and floods happen.

Anyway the river is up and has been since Monday. It hasn't burst its banks, but the putting green is once again flooded an occurrence that seems to be happening at least once a year now. Oh and Engine Basin has overflowed into the carpark since at least Friday when the procession started. Now if only someone had suggested that a foot high wall be built along the edge so this wouldn't happen...

[Additional - the pool of water fills the car-park, now as this is a private pay car-park you'd think they'd want to stop this from happening]

Good old Acer

A work Acer computer seemed to get fried when the transformer went pop; so off to Acer it went to be looked at.

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Spreading the word

Just had two Jehova's Witnesses turn up at work because "It's difficult to find people at home". Congratulations a captive audience whose only desire is to get you to leave as soon as possible, sure leave the magazines, put them with the others in reception type of way.
"I'm not religious in anyway"
"Oh okay bye then."
Well I could have preached the true word of the Four Gods, but the word states "Teach only those who seek it". ;-)

Supreme Court

Watching the news this morning about the forthcoming decision on bank charges and the phrase "Supreme Court" kept cropping up. I'm sure some watching (those who pay attention at least) may wonder why a US court is ruling on this and how that affects us?

They are of course referring to the UK Supreme Court. What do you mean you've not heard of it, it's been around for oo almost two months now.

Yes the UK gained a Supreme Court on the 1st October 2009 taking the function away from the House of Lords. At first glance this seems a sensible arrangement taking away the final say from an unelected, appointed house comprised of people who may not practice law and handing it over to an unelected, appointed house comprised of people who do practice law.

Except that's not why is was done. See previously this was handled by the Lord Chancellor who acted as the judge, except the LC is also a government minster with executive and legislative powers and other than separation of powers this might violate the Convention on Human Rights regarding a fair trial. Yup it's another case of doing things to satisfy the EU.

Hold on however, sometimes these impositions are a good thing. Isn't this one of them, isn't this the constitutional reform that takes away power from the 'privileged class'? Well yes, but look at it another way the judges in ordinary cases are steeped in law the basis on which they make decisions cannot help be influenced by this - yet as we know at times the law is an ass.

Acting only on the experience gleaned from sitting in the House of Lords members, I think, were more likely to take a common sense approach and reflect 'the people' more rather than the government position.

Of course the big point about this is - who knew about it? I don't recall any headlines in the paper or reports on the television.

Wiping a PS3

I got a phone call last night from The Artist, mobile to mobile with both of us in bad reception areas and OTD screaming in the background; damn she's got some lungs on her.

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HMRC spoof email

A rather clever one got caught in the spam filter, regarding a tax refund. The apparent sending/return address is services@hrnrc.co.uk; note how the r and n can blend into an m. Oh and of course the official one is a .gov.uk.

Gilgal jams again

Yes I keep going on about Gilgal, but that's because no-one seems to want to do anything about it. This morning the jam at the Gilgal/Vale Road junction blocked up the third lane, which in turn stopped traffic getting out of High Street, which in turn stopped traffic in Bridge Street, which in turn stopped traffic on the bridge and Dunley Road.

I've offered a low to zero cost option that might alleviate some of the problem by changing the traffic light timings to allow traffic to clear, and have been ignored.

Any time I mention this in the paper the same negative criticism can be heard 'Drivers aren't using it correctly'. Yep if drivers from Vale Road treated it as the merger system that it is (and in turn treated Vale Road as the merger system it is) we wouldn't have this problem. Every time I come back with the question "How do you merge into a queue of traffic?" and every time they come back with the Minster Road traffic is "supposed" to let vehicles merge. Yep that's right the entire system is based on "supposed", drivers doing what they're "supposed" to do.

That's not a solution that's wishful thinking.

Movie rentals and purchases on PSN

Sony announced that from November the 19th Playstation 3 owners will be able to rent or buy movies via the Playstation Store. For anyone without a PS3 or a PSN id who may be tempted by this announcement they can check out the fun at the UK Video Store

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Jedward tributes?

My news feed popped up with one from the Guardian "X Factor: Celebrity tributes pour in for Jedward over Twitter". Are they dead? Did they overdose on hair gel? I mean why else would any celebrity issue a tribute to two talentless twerps?

3D television

For those paying attention 3D has been back in vogue with the announcements of manufacturers regarding 3D televisions. Channel 4 ran several 3D programmes and some films are being released with a 3D version available.

So I hereby present Backward Compatible take on 3D glasses. Amen brother, amen.

Brutal Legend PS3 First Impressions

So Brutal Legend from Asda for £25. I popped it in got it updated and took it for a test drive.

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Merry Hill visit

Headed up on Saturday for some shopping both normal and Christmas. Got out a little later than I'd hoped and ended up arriving around 10:30. With one minor hold-up from the bus stopping in front of me. Hey I know let's not put the bus-stop a little further down where there are multiple lanes, let's put it next toa  speed bump and concrete divider so it's impossible to overtake

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Munchkin Quest play review

So yes I and the Bratii ended up playing Munchkin Quest; I'd got everything ready before they'd shown up so we got straight into it.

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Three Kings Parade

Once again it's time for the Three Kings Parade and the switching on of the lights in Stourport and once again by the cry of "This is when we've always done it" it's being held at 6pm today. So yes once again just as we reach the end of the rush hour in Stourport they'll be closing the town's roads down. Once again the parade will run through the streets while commuters are either stuck in traffic waiting for it to finish, or have just got home and want to collapse after a hard day's work.

Seriously is there any reason we can't hold this on a Saturday or Sunday?

Munchkin Quest Mats

Had five minutes spare during lunch so I knocked out some guide mats

Two slots for the backpack, Helm, Armour, Footwear. Two slots each for Race and Profession. Then some space for the movement counters, health and gold, icon reminders and phase order. Should keep things tidy.

[Update - Got the sizes wrong. Redone and now most fits onto one sheet]

Munchkin Quest. First Impression review.

One of the times I had the Bratii over I tried to introduce them to the board game "Arkham Horror" in hindsight this may have been a little complicated for them. I say this despite the fact that Bratus Minor picked it up quickly and enjoyed it so much he wanted to play again next time they came visiting.

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Business Police protection

Caught a story on the news last night about armed police escorting security vans in cash collections. The reporter pointed out that this cost money to provide and asked one of the officers how he thought the public would react to police providing these services at tax-payer expense to private firms.

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Quick Time Events - solution?

I've mentioned Quick Time Events (QTE) before, but playing a quick game of Prince of Persia on the PS3 reminds me of how badly these can be implemented.

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More fun with the router

Router claims there's an internet connection, but nothing connects. Hmm I can ping the DNS servers so there is indeed a connection what's up, must be the DNS.

A quick call and a test ping to Google directly  and yep it's not resolving names. A quick call to our ISP and... they've changed the DNS server addresses. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as you obtain the information automatically, but our original setup instructions gave us a manual setup. One auto and a reboot later and everything's working.