Last week Surrey House, the student block that we have “temporarily” been living within for the past 3 years, was violated by a very professional burgler. The Halls’ manager asked me to help get a snapshot from the CCTV footage so I was fortunate enough to see him in action.
The first thing that struck me was how old he was – at least in his 40s. Not the sort of ratboy I’d expected. The second was how coolly he managed to wander in. From the end of the road he clocked a bunch of bewildered looking parents heading to the main door, and ran up until he got within sauntering distance. A student heading to the launderette was only too happy to admit the complete strangers before they even got a chance to ring the doorbell, and our man kindly held the door for the parents as they preceded him into the foyer.
A short while later he sauntered back out with a newly acquired carrier bag containing a newly acquired laptop. The former owner of the laptop had thoughtfully left her door unlocked while she went out for the day.
Now, to be perfectly honest, this really didn’t bother me too much. If there are going to be burglars then I’d much prefer them to be polite, efficient, thieves of easily replaceable consumer goods from unlocked rooms, rather than home-wrecking turd-distributors that piss all over your photos. In fact I almost admired him…
But when, a week later, he interrupts my mellow programming by looking at me through my front window I think that’s taking the piss. It’s like mice; I don’t mind co-habiting with mice. But when they start crapping over my food and interrupting my TV viewing I get the mousetraps out.
So I ran upstairs to get a second opinion. The only person I could find was Adrian, a really good, old, friend whom I haven’t seen for months, and this took me by surprise; a dangerous thing to happen when you are already in a state of surprise. Unable to explain the situation, I pathetically spluttered, and gestured until, like Lassie, I managed to persaude him that I wanted him to follow. We watched him amble around outside the door and then, after taking some shit out of a skip, wander into the back garden of a house over the road. This was definitely the guy…

So, I called the Police on the poor bugger. They turned up in about 10 minutes (not bad at all), by which time Raffles had fucked off up the road. Five minutes later they called me and told me they’d caught him! They described him to me and asked about the CCTV footage.
Now I’m waiting for a further call back.

Eek!
What if it’s not the guy ?
What if it is the guy ?
Eek!

Firstly, let’s all raise a glass to Alex and Jael’s new baby, Scientific, who was born at 2:30 on May day. Nice one Alex! May day is the best it could be. He’ll become the next Zapata!
Cough…pictures…cough…

Working at home affords you the luxury of being able to watch Film 4 in the afternoons. Film 4 has been showing some seriously good stuff in the afternoons recently and I often wonder who else gets a chance to see them. The sort of films that everyone should see but few rarely get an opportunity. Who has the time in their lives to go out and watch a couple of film noir classics like The Ministry of Fear and The Dark Corner. Not me, but being able to experience them, even on our crap little telly was a thrill. Whenever I see people making films in black and white these days I think “you wanker!” That doesn’t make it cool! Black and white was the only option in those days, and the guys stretched the medium to its full. The lighting in any Fritz Lang film makes your hairs tingle. They were using the medium and extending it. Simply filming in black and while whilst hoping it looks more arty is the habit of the morons. Fuck off and stick to commercials.
We’re spoiled in this country, or at least I am. Imagine being able to watch classic films during your working day and then loads of Secret Army ? Doesn’t get much better than that…except for Blakes 7 obviously.

This evening Michele and I went to a local restaurant that gets loads of good reviews. We’ve both been meaning to go there for a while but never seemed to have the chance. Tonight, after a very pleasurable drink in the Royal Albert with some very pleasurable (ex)Goldsmiths people, we went along.

Restaurants that have menus with too many adjectives normally turn me off. Things like “free-range, home-reared, corn-fed, lightly-grilled, lovingly prepared , scottish chicken” make me think “chicken”. This place had the full quota of bullshit, right down to the snotty French staff, but we persevered. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a mistake. The bullshit and snottyness were heavily outweighed by the heavenly food. We eat out a lot compared to most people our age, but this food was simply spectacular.

I started with lamb-sweetbreads, together with a pea and mint sauce in a lamb/madeira “jus”. I know, wanky name, but it shook me and my expectations. Such flavours, such textures and such pleasure. The second course was equally good and contained a prefect piece of perfectly prepared, perfect, beef, in perfect sauce.

Michele seemed equally happy. Go there.

I was going to write a long spiel about couriers,morse keys and general modern cuntiness but I won’t. Think of lovely food instead. Or maybe think of baby Alex! That’s what I’m doing.

You know what I really don’t need ? Another mobile phone. But today I fell in love and, within an hour, I had bought the object of my desire. A Motorola F3. No bluetooth, no camera, no wi-fi, no Java, no hi-res colour display and no data. It’s the antithesis of my M600 but as soon as I saw it I feel in love. Mainly because it costs less than 15 quid brand-new, with no contract. But also because it looks nice, feels nice, uses next to no power, is beautiful and well-made. William Morris would have been chuffed. In a way, it’s very UNIXy: it does one job, but it does it really well.

These were designed for use in the third world and don’t use LCD. Instead they use “e-ink” that only needs power when you want to alter the display. Consequently, taking the battery out leaves whatever was on the screen intact and looking like it was written with quink on parchment.

A guy I work with introduced them to me; he bought three of them in different colours. Now I want to collect the set.

Yes I know, and I do plan to get a life one of these days.

For various reasons the last couple of weeks have been very tough. Despite that I’ve been lucky enough to have several life-affirming moments:

• Me and Tony (and his mate Tony) meeting up with Hubert for his birthday. Hubert went to our school and it was so, so lovely to see him again. We even got a chance to hear his new band play a few tunes.
• Spending more time walking around with Michele. The quack really thinks I need more exercise and so we’ve spent a lot of time walking around, just enjoying the pockets of wildlife, and chatting.
• Replacing my former employer’s aged OpenBSD/ipf firewall with a nice new OpenBSD/pf firewall. pf r0xx0rz.
• Bizarrely, two days after seeing Hubert, whom I haven’t seen for a few years, I bumped into Corine, whom I haven’t seen for over 11 years. We had a long chat in the pub and it turns out that not only has she has expanded her circle of friends to include world leaders, philosophers and Jeremy Hardy, but she’s also a rather cool documentary filmmaker. It was so nice to see her again…
• My friend Claire did the Marathon!
• Spending a lot of time talking to James

Apologies for being so crap with the blog recently. I’ll make it up…

Thank the stupid people. Don’t they do a wonderful job ? Without them going out and buying every piece of overpriced crap as soon as it hits the shops, we’d never be able to afford modern consumer equipment. As soon as some piece of new technology becomes available, stupid people go out and buy it, seemingly unconcerned by whether it’s the “new Compact Disc” or the “new Betamax”.

• Without these pioneering pillocks, the people that spent more than 150 quid on a CD-ROM drive, we normal people would never be able to pick up a DVD+-R/CDROM/EVERYTHING drive for less than 30 quid.
• Thanks to the armies of stupid people who went out and bought a mobile phone when they cost so much to buy and rent that it made houses look cheap. As a result of your massive stupidity we can now own mobile phones for next to nothing.
• Stupid people went out and bought DVD players when VCRs still worked perfectly. As a result the DVD manufacturers could afford to sell their warez off at a reasonable price.
• Privatisation is so massively stupid that it’s doomed to failure. A nice example is how, on the trains, they can no longer afford the inspectors they employed to ensure everyone pays their fare. Of course they can’t! Privatisation doesn’t work! You can’t keep increasing your profits without reducing your costs. As a result, they’re in a position where they can’t afford the ridiculous fare, but secure in the knowledge that the organisation that caused the rise through greed can no longer afford the inspectors to enforce it. All rail travel is now free!

After a truly delicious home-made gastronomic extravaganza this evening, I bludgeoned Michele into watching the first ever episode of Peep Show. Half way through, one of the characters was eating a bowl of spag bol.

“Hmm,” said Michele, “When you’re hungry, that looks really good.
“But,” I protested, “you can’t possibly be hungry after that massive meal.”
“No, but it still looks good.”

I don’t know why I laughed so much.

Michele was convinced that it was Humphrey’s “official” birthday tomorrow and in order to “officially” verify it we turned to our normal source of personal historical information: this blog. Michele was a month out on her assertion, but after reading a few nostalgia-inducing entries I realised that this blog has recently passed its 5 year anniversary! Five years I’ve been writing bollocks to no-one and on reflection it seems even more worthwhile than I could have imagined. If you don’t have a blog, then start one! It’s good and everything.

Over the past few days I’ve been getting hangups on my mobile phone from an 0161 number and it’s been getting right on my tits. The phone ringing at all is a pain in the arse these days, but ringing from Manchester, where I know no-one, and then hanging up as I answer is more than I can deal with.
Today, in the office, I managed to answer it in time. The conversation went like this:

• Caller: Hello Mr W*******, My name’s Monkeygirl and I’m calling from HappySlapUK, an Orange business partner…
• Me (angrily): Don’t ever call me again!
• Caller: Par…
• Me (as before): Don’t call me again! I’ve had loads of calls from you over the past few days and every time I pick up you ring off and it’s a pain in the arse!
• Caller (sheepishly): Sorry Mr W******** I’ll make sure your number is removed from the list.

I hang up.

Now, I know I was wrong to have a go at this poor girl, it wasn’t her fault (probably), but that pisses me right off; selling my number to some bunch of crooks who harass me all week in an attempt to sell me something that I’m not even eligible for in the first place…

Tom, a work colleague who had overheard one half of the conversation, touched me on the shoulder compassionately and asked,
“was that your mum ?”

Watching Secret Army and the Belgian resistance sending messages to London by morse, made me wonder about the possibility of using morse-code over the Internet.

Of course… of course… it’s been done:
http://users.skynet.be/ppc/cw_channel/

CW over IRC!

Waking up in the morning, even with a hangover, can be the most life-affirming experience. Especially when you don’t have to work that day, you’re married to a cuddly bat, and you have a Dunlopillo. In fact it’s the purest form of joy I have experienced since I turned off voice-mail on the mobile phone. Mobile phones are truly evil pieces of work and yes, I own many and take at least two out wherever I go; this makes me a terrorist according to the recent alarmist government propaganda.
Years ago, when mobiles were becoming cool, I worked for a tech company that was moving into WAP. At the time my colleague told me how evil he thought they were because people always thought that if you didn’t answer, you were avoiding them. Well in the last year or two I have developed a hatred for them that borders on psychosis. People get genuinely angry if you don’t pick up! That’s outrageous! There are many reasons for not picking up and, quite frankly, just fuck off. The motivation for not having a phone-call at any particular time can be just as strong as yours for wanting one. At least in the cable days you could only answer if you were at home and, presumably, were in more of a mood to talk to people. The number of people that get the hump with me being uncontactable is increasing by the day and it’s beginning to make me wonder why they want to talk to me at all… If you really want to stay in touch then send an email or text and we can perhaps meet up in person and talk like civilised humans. It might be nice! We could even have food and a drink. Imagine that. You wouldn’t have to listen to me moving my bowels on the phone.

Anyway, Easter here has been lovely. An indolent, selfish, self-indulgent, avian-centric, family and friend based pleasure. We’ve seen my family, taken Humph in to a couple of gardens and spent time with friends. I’ve also managed to watch the complete Ripping Yarns and a bunch of Secret Army, which I missed at the time and now, thanks to Suzanne for lending me the complete box set, think is the best series ever made.

Happy Easter, and God bless Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.

• It’s Easter. Rather than any of that insane cobblers the Christians came up with to hijack the spring festival, the real meaning of Easter is a long time off of work with sunny weather that doesn’t yet cause the dangerous levels of sweat caused by Summer.
• The sun’s out.
• I’ve not been to work since Wednesday and don’t have to go back until Tuesday.
• This MacBook now has 2G of RAM and lets me run Parallels properly.
• Ahamdinejad managed to make complete pratts out of the US neo-cons and the Brits . Daddy Mention has very clear-headed take on the events of the Iranian hostage crisis that is the only explaination I’ve heard so far that makes any sense. My favourite bit about the whole teacup-based-storm is how angry John Bolton got; his hair almost went black with rage.
• The birthday season has started
• I’ve had time to write stupid and pointless little toys.
• He has all of teh peas.