Last week was so good that the only thing eligible to round it off properly was febrile delirium. Thankfully somehow I managed to pick up a virus that enabled me to reach such a state by Sunday night. There’s nothing nicer than lying awake shivering whilst sweating profusely, dealing with pain, and wishing you were dead. Michele was worried enough to call out the quack. In typical NHS style the doctor did turn up and was very good, but we had to wait 4 hours. After a round of examinations and a dollop of sympathetic bedside manner she told me it was a virus and there was nothing she could give me beyond pain killers. By the next morning the fever had gone but three days later I’m still not better and it’s getting right up my hooter. Please, can’t I just be ill, or completely better? This hideous limbo state of sore throat combined with muzzy head is really life-sapping. I’m beginning to forget what it looks like outside…which some would consider a bonus when they found out we live in New Cross I suppose. The biggest problem is the amount of time I’m blowing away that could be more productively spent preparing for our departure to the States on October 15th. We’ve got our tickets! Woohoo! Michele’s dad has even given her his old car which is probably going to be the poshest car I ever get to drive!
Even if it all goes pear-shaped and we end up coming back after a month, it has to be done.

We finally got round to listening to Fonejacker this week. Neither of us thought we would really like it; there are so many crank call merchants around now and few are ever as good as the Jerky Boys at their best. Despite the direct ripoffs of the Jerky boys and some of the bad-taste, bordering on downright cruel, calls, we’ve been laughing our arses off every night listening to them on our vespertine MP3 player. The calls related to automated voice recognition systems particularly tickle me. In fact they make me wonder whether these systems exist solely to give people at Parcelline and CityLink a laugh at the exasperated customers.

Despite being an abnormally crap photographer, I’ve just had a second picture published on a commercial site. No financial remuneration or anything but it’s quite flattering nonetheless. This one was a picture of a plaque on the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia; a subject so obscure that it was bound to get spotted I suppose. The only problem is that I’m not sure I really want to promote this place. I mean, just look at their website. For a secret society they’re pretty bloody blatant. Not only are they running a children-chipping campaign, but they even have an on-line database of Masons-friendly businesses for “Masons helping Masons”! They just don’t care! I wonder if it has a section for “friendly” police officers, or judges ?
So mote it be.

Yesterday turned out not only to be surprisingly pleasant but also helped rekindle my faith in human nature. Not bad considering the only concrete plan we had was a trip up the Old Kent Road to PC-World – the next step in my plan to help Matsui 120MR owners. While we were in the badlands of Southwark we decided to visit Burgess Park, something I’ve been craving since reading an article in Smoke. It was an Oasis! Imagine the scene: a huge, hilly, green park in the middle of urban mess. In the middle is a sprawling lake surrounded by well-equipped anglers sharing joints and cans of lager with Southwark council employees, right under “no fishing” signs. In the middle of the lake is a fountain and several small islands housing nesting families of Mallards, Coots and Moorhens. Michele was in seventh heaven with her binoculars cocked. We spent some time observing two tiny baby moorhens swimming through the sludge with their mother, and a baby coot hunting through the reeds for some sustenance.

Some time ago I blogged about a local restaurant that I felt had ripped us off. Ever since then, walking past the place invoked feelings of sadness; partly because of the feeling of organised, petty, dishonesty, and partly because I really liked the food there. I used to fantasise about the owner seeing me walk past and stopping me to tell me they’d made a mistake – pathetic I know.
Well, after our sojourn in Southwark and a drink in the Rosie, we decided to go back there for dinner, and Suzanne accompanied us. Half way through the meal the owner approached the table and apologised for what happened in our last visit! Wow, she remembered! No only that, but she produced a ten pound note, stapled to my original receipt that has been kept by the till ever since! Double wow! It was a mistake and they’re that honest! So go to The Thailand in New Cross! The food is superb and the owner is lovely.

This week was the start of my new regime: part-time work. The original idea was to provide quality time for preparing our impeding move to Philadelphia. We have to do it, even if we get pissed off after a month and come back. We just do. But so far very little preparation has been achieved. Instead yesterday I fulfilled a long term ambition and took a young boy to the Science museum! My first journey on the tube (Underground) was with my dad to the Science museum and it was one of my most significant memories. When I got home, my Lego set was employed to create a reconstruction of the cool ticket gates on the tube. Yesterday, my friend Katie, her 6 year old son Matthew, and I went on a pilgrimage to South Ken and it was better than I could have hoped for. Like me at his age, Matthew was as interested in the Tube ride as the museum and we all had a superb day. He was running around all of the exhibits pushing buttons, turning handles, and generally tickling his neurons. Despite the energy provided by two sandwiches, a chocolate bar, an apple and several bottles of water, by the time we got back to New Cross he was ready for bed. Good lad. If you have a child that has an active mind and enough energy for an entire village then I can’t recommend the Science museum highly enough as a cheap day out. The staff (‘explainers’) were so friendly, helpful and kind…go and see them.

Today I did a naughty thing and spent the afternoon in the pub with some good friends. No regrets though…you’re just envious. We had a great day in the lovely weather and this evening Michele and I went to Greenwich for a gorgeous meal at inside and even found time for a drink with Jackie and Galina from Goldsmiths. Perfect entertainment!

BTW – on a different subject, “Bad Manners” really are much better than they’re given credit for. Even as a child I was always wary of that sort of stuff because of the whole skinhead connotation, but listening to the anthology there’s so many faithful covers of classic ska tracks that I can’t help but like them. In fact there’s one track called “Rocksteady Breakfast” that is such a happy nod to Lee Perry that they must know what they’re doing. It’s a London version of “Kentucky Skank” only instead of the KFC references (“box of chicken, keep the drum kickin'”) it’s full of stuff about full English breakfasts (“egg and bacon! Sausage!”).

Good night.

On the way to a posh party yesterday (that turned out to be really enjoyable by the way) Michele noticed that one of the long-term pigeon nests at New Cross station was filled with babies again. We’ve seen this happen a lot over the years but this time we have them in squab stage, and they’re lovely! Michele was so excited that we decided to go back today and take some pictures. The problem was that even with a 3x zoom, the nest is up so high that we couldn’t get much detail. As we were cooing over them a young rude-boy looking lad sitting nearby with his rudy girlfriend started asking us what we were doing. His reaction to being told about the baby pigeons was not what we expected; he jumped up and ran over with tones of genuine excitement. “He’s mad, he takes pictures of ducks ” his girlfriend shouted. He didn’t seem embarrassed though, in fact he was only too keen to tell us about them as Michele handed over the binoculars.
“I might look like a thug but I love those ducks” he said. Once he’d seen the baldy, fluffy little bird he seemed almost overwhelmed “oh my days!” he exclaimed. I told him the problem we had getting pictures of them and he lunged towards a low wall nearby and within a matter of seconds he was hanging by one hand from an RSJ, feet perched on a bolt, and attempting to take close-up pictures of the baby with his mobile. I handed him my camera and he got a couple of cracking shots. The most stupid thing I did that day was to not think of taking a picture of him in his spiderman pose up that pillar. I’d never have had the guts to do that, especially as my weight is more considerable and may have threatened the entire shelter… Top lad though – thanks whoever you are.

For the past week or so I’ve been playing with Flash Media Server. Getting deeply involved with non-free software always makes me feel a bit dirty, but after a year of writing Winblows software this is like a nice bath. It would seem that Macromedia really knew what they were doing…video in Flash is shockingly easy and yet utterly enjoyable. With any luck the OSS gurus will soon have the whole thing replicated and improved.

Here’s a superb Radio 4 documentary that describes how Prescott Bush (George Wanlker Bush’s grandpappy) planned a Fascist coup to overthrow FDR in 1933.
I suppose it’s hardly surprising; after the direct approach failed, W is currently fulfilling his grandfathers dreams by bringing about a similar state through the democratic “back-door”…
But just look at who else was involved: Heinz, Birds-Eye, Colgate and Maxwell house!
So that’s who those kids are on Captain Birdseye’s ship: the Birdseye Youth. Spreading his aryan, fascist fishfingers throughout the world with his army of pure-bred nazi children.
Next time you fancy cooking up some beans and fishfingers, think again.

Giving up drinking was easy and of course I could have gone on forever, but I didn’t. In fact it only lasted two weeks. Please don’t scoff. The tipping point was receiving another tax bill for money I haven’t even declared yet; you see, these days HMRC have to be extra vigilant with us middle-class muppets because of the enormous amounts of money they need to give to the high earners who can afford offshore banking. Also, they know that we spineless cowards usually cough up without too much aggro. But, I’ve been very good since. It would seem that black tea has a very similar effect on the palette as red wine. Drinking more tea and less wine leads to less tiredness, which in turn leads to more late night TV. Oddly it seems that these days late night TV is when all the good stuff is scheduled, on Freeview at least. So many good films:

• Le Dîner de cons
• The Shining
• Thank you for smoking
• The Last Supper

Meanwhile the “prime time” schedules have sunk so low that ITV, rather than come up with something worth watching, have the Saturday night slot filled with a celebrity pantomime where we’re encouraged to get nostalgic about how wonderful TV was thirty years ago… It’s like a pathetic public admission of defeat in a suicide note. Even endless repeats of Rising Damp on ITV3 are preferable to a bunch of third-rate gobshites performing revisionist surgery on third-rate TV programmes from the 70s.

BBC 4 is jolly good though.

Good night.

How reassuring to know that I’m not the only person who thinks that blog comments are a total nause. With typical erudition, Joel neatly summarises the problem. I get quite annoyed that an ex-Microsoft employee can hit the nail on the head so frequently and with such clarity of expression…git.

As a follow up to my rant about Dixons, the Matsui MP3 player and the broken CD, here is a brief description of how I fixed it: I bought another one. Hold on though, this wasn’t a cop out! Despite having the same, broken, cd, I extracted the firmware from the new device and constructed an uploader distribution from what was present on the cd. Then I reflashed my old device and bingo – works perfectly. At some point the new player will need reflashing and rather than do so I shall simply exercise my consumer rights and take it back for a refund.
So DSGi loose out on each occasion, purely as a result of their unwillingness to help themselves and their consumers.

Oh yes, I discovered why none of the other firmware worked properly. This device is DRM crippled and the firmware is lamely encrypted…arseholes.

If you have a Matsui 110MR mp3 player that’s broken, mail me and I’ll send you the doings to fix it visit this page. If DSGi get shirty about me distributing the software they should have been giving away themselves then I’ll take them to Trading Standards for knowingly selling faulty goods.

The British girl who took her school to court for not allowing her to wear a “purity ring”, has lost the case and now has to cough up 12 grand. This is, of course, excellent news, but I was more interested in another aspect of the story. Have a look at the article and note the dramatis personae:

• Lydia Playfoot
• Michael Supperstone
• Paul Diamond

Don’t these strike you as being a little unusual ? They could have been invented by Dickens or Brecht.

Michele’s reaction to the name “Lydia Playfoot” was “more like Lydia Oral-play, because that’s typically what these girls do instead.” She has a wonderful way with words. The other night she drifted into the front room where I was watching ‘face the music’ on BBC4. She regarded the TV for a few seconds before turning round and asking “what is this high-brow shit ?”

Made me laugh anyway.

Here’s a case study that neatly demonstrates everything that is wrong with contemporary business – from the customer’s point of view.
Curry’s sell a cheap MP3 player (110MR), branded as “Matsui”. Neither Currys nor Matsui exist beyond the name; they are simply phantom brands that provide layers of abstration from the actual company that owns both: Dixons Stores Group International (DSGi).
The MP3 player is small and works well but it has a problem: every few months it needs to have its firmware reflashed. This shouldn’t be a problem because it comes with a mini-CD containing the software to perform this simple task. To cut a long and technical story short, it’s my contention that the CD provided is faulty and doesn’t contain the firmware. In fact, I’m pretty bloody convinced that’s what’s wrong.
So, what do I do ? I know I can go back to the shop and get it replaced with another, equally doomed, device. I could get my money back and buy a different device. Or I could just think “oh well, it was only 20 quid, what did I expect ?”
Well I don’t want to do any of those. I want Currys/Matsui to fix the problem so that I and the thousands of other people who are having the same problem can fix their otherwise perfectly functional devices. In fact, my research into this little toy has revealed it to be a surprisingly cool bit of hardware and unbrickable – providing you have the right firmware.
So, my question is, how do I go about fixing this ?
The hardware manufacturer, based in China, does not deal with end users and recommends going to the vendor. They make thousands of other similar devices but the firmware is ever-so-slightly different on each device and after trying 5 different types, I gave up.
Matsui doesn’t even have a website, let alone a phone number or address.
Currys have a website but no firmware downloads.
So, I finally resort to calling one of they many expensive 0870 numbers – they’re already winning.
Several menu options and a long wait later, I am put through to someone. He is not even an employee of DSGi, but an employee of “The Tech Guys” another fake company that is owned by everyone’s favourite public-money sink: Capita. I explain the problem and he has sympathy but no suggestions beyond either taking it back to the shop or calling Currys number again.
The poorly paid staff in the shop, even when at their most attentive, really don’t give a toss about anything beyond putting stuff in the till – who can blame them.
So, I decided to do battle with the Currys’ expensive automated call system again – yet more money to them. This time, after a long wait, I end up talking to another guy in a call center who works for yet another company. He did the usual stuff he’s supposed to do which is advise me to return it for a replacement. I persist in asking for a contact number for their product development division. Of course, not even being an employee of DSGi he doesn’t have that information and instead offers me a postal address…of DSGi’s head office. Thanks, I could have looked that up myself.
So I, and thousands of others like me, now own a useless piece of hardware. Many other people will go out and buy new ones too, that will break. All I want to do is alert them to the problem and maybe even provide a website that allows a download of the firmware so we can all get our little devices working again…but I can’t because the people I need to talk to are hidden within a distant castle keep, the location of which is a closely guarded secret.
Of course, there could be another, more sinister, reason why this is all so difficult: they don’t want people fixing it. You’re not supposed to repair things any more. That is radical loony left behaviour. These days, we are supposed to simply cave in and buy another more expensive product like the good little consumers we are. Well not me matey. I shall NEVER give up until my little device is working again! Muwahahahahahaha!