Manchester United

Devlin Conor
Hargreaves Owen
Neville Gary Alexander
Scholes Paul
Van Der Sar Edwin

Sad to see such great talents go

This whole privacy row really should be seen in the context of an old
media, the “press”, competing with a more democratic new media online. If “celebrity” tittle tattle can be passed around as easily and rapidly
as the likes of Twitter facilitate, there is little use in waiting for a
“Daily” or “Weekly” tabloid newspaper to read about it. The press are
then no longer the sole distributors of content and as a result the
influence of the press is diminished. Newspapers, with their access to source material (they send reporters to
courts) are losing the immediacy. So they wish to remove the barriers to
publishing so that they can get the story out first in an exclusive,
before all of the salacious (because they are only really interested in
the salacious – the Sun said nothing about the Trafigura case) gossip
spreads across the internet.

In the same way that the record companies, and increasingly the film
companies are struggling to come to terms with a world that moves
quicker and with more volume than they can, and the subsequent loss of
control as they no longer control the distribution of their content. The
press are trying to keep hold of their monopoly on distribution, in this
case of gossip

They are trying to do this by removing restrictions so that they can
take advantage of being further upstream than anybody else. However, by
doing so they are harming all of us by removing personal privacy
measures. You may not agree with what the footballer and the model did,
but that doesn't mean that they are not entitled to their privacy. The footballer in question has not courted the press or publicity, he
has kept out of the tabloids as best he can and doesn't seek to gain
fame through the press. So IMHO it is an invasion of privacy, with no
public interest angle. As someone recently pointed out there is a big
difference between the interest of the public and the public interest.

just.my2p

I am watching a programme on TV where they are talking about the semi-circular canal in your inner ear and I am reminded that when you drink beer, wine or spirits the  alcohol in your blood stream thins the liquid in your semi-circular canals which affects your sense of balance. And you fall over. It is not you brain being affected but your ears.
Sent from my HTC

S
o, it's Friday we are working on our submission to a client to get on
their roster (v.important).

A lot of effort, sweat and creativity has been put into our submission -
which is limited to 5 slides. The submission is eventually agreed by everyone, the deadline
approaches.

The last step is to upload it into the online bid management system, we
upload the file, check it is right, double check and treble check.
Satisfied we press "Submit"

And their system errors, badly. It doesn't say what is wrong, just
crashes.

F*CK.

The problem? underscores in the file name, doh!

Rule number 3 in our File Naming Conventions 3 Use capital letters to delimit words, not spaces or underscores

Happy to share them all, they definitely work.

The conventions comprise the following rules. 1. Keep file names short, but meaningful.
2. Avoid unnecessary repetition and redundancy in file names and
file paths.
3. Use capital letters to delimit words, not spaces or underscores.
4. When including a number in a file name always give it as a
two-digit number, i.e. 01-99, unless it is a year or another
number with more than two digits.
5. If using a date in the file name always state the date ‘back to
front’, and use four digit years, two digit months and two digit
days if needed: standard format YYYYMM 6. Avoid using common words such as ‘draft’ or ‘letter’ at the
start of file names, unless doing so will make it easier to
retrieve the record.
7. Avoid using non-alphanumeric characters in file names.

I was watching Waterloo Road on TV this evening (you have no idea how compelling it is to Sam who is 9) and there was a scene where a boy was suicidal, but saved by a teacher.

All well and good, except for some reason those kind of scenes really affect me. I get upset and tearful, for no real reason (that I can understand) and have to go off and calm myself down somewhere.

But that's not the reason for this post, although god knows it may be connected. No, the reason for the post is that it reminds me of my lost, imaginary children.

Yes, you heard me right, my lost imaginary children.

I had a serious illness a few years ago, blogged here if you are interested, and as part of my recovery I spent 10 days in Intensive Care on a ventilator under anaesthetic and when I woke up I had all these memories that were as real to me as the rest of my life. And they weren't even in the same ballpark in terms of possibility, some of them really out there (the Da Vinci house that was recreated for one party on New Years Eve and burnt to the ground that night, on purpose and that's the explicable bit). Some of those memories involved having significantly more children than I really had.

At that time, I have two children, Matt and Sam, they were 3 and 4 at the time. And in my mind I had four others This was a surprise to Elaine and everyone who knew me. Two, who I adopted after an ex girlfriend (imaginary of course, and what's wrong with imaginary girlfriends huh) committed suicide and asked me to adopt them, and two others who I adopted after rescuing them many years ago from a pretty strange set of circumstances in Scotland.

Whatever. What is strange is that I really, really miss them. They don't exist, they never existed, they only exist in my mind (and over time they dim and fade out), yet I miss them. I don't want other children, I'm so happy with the ones I have, but I bizarrely miss the one's I have in some sense lost. I don't do it all the time, but maybe when I am emotional I lose the sense of family and community that they kind of brought with them.

Anyway, at the end of the day I miss them and wish they were still here.

I am a fan of Dect phones, we had some Phillips Omni's for a few years,
then changed over to BT (can't for the life of me remember which) for
the last 4 years. Reception works well, feature rich with built in
answerphone, long battery life (AA Rechargeable with the BT ones) all I
could ask for. Well mostly.

They were all pretty ugly. The BT ones had rechargers which gently
buzzed and they suffered by being designed by engineers.

So, when we got down to a single BT phone working, it was time to
replace them. It is really hard to find phones that are designed to look
good and work well. Oh, there are lots of Japanese/Korean phones with
more features than you can shake a stick at, which I am sure do a great
job. There are a few "designer" phones, with all of the lack of good
design that that entails - you know what I mean, they have to look
"designed" so that we recognise the value in them. Yeah, right.

The best industrial design doesn't show, it reveals itself in use and in
subtle, unobtrusive ways that just seem and feel right. And there are
too many odd shaped, too glossy phone masquarading as quality. So having
looked far and wide (well on the web at least) we plumped for some
Magicbox Columbo phones
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-ten-bes... and I am not alone in liking them. I'd go more for 2001 than
Barabarella/Austin Powers, but there is a retro feel, in the best way.

Clean lines, simple design, fully featured, without being at all showy -
great design. I got three from Amazon for about £75, so not expensive at
all.

The only niggle I have is the quality of the ring tones. Not up to
scratch, but not a show stopper.

I'll leave the last word to Sam (age 9) who says they are great because
they are "so easy to use, you know how to use them without being told."
It doesn't get much better than that. Well done to Chauhan Studios for
taking the time to redesign the home phone http://www.tejchauhan.com/
thank you.

It's the commentary and edited highlights of a conversation between a
teenager and a composer, and how the composer is, ultimately, trying and
failing to defend an outmoded business model. Where music publishers used to have a monopoly on the means of
distribution, they were able to extract a high price for their goods,
but now the means of distribution are so widely available there is less
value in that monopoly. This is where the recorded music industries are getting it wrong. Whilst
there is some value in the composition, there is more value in the live
performance - as it was before the 20th century. This is starting to happen, live performance is a huge growth area,
£1.45 billion will be spent at Festivals this year in the UK alone, up
45% from last year - who wouldn't want that kind of growth in a
recession?

Technology changes business, it closes some doors and opens up others,
this is the natural order of things and record companies are just
clutching at straws on their way down sadly. http://techdirt.com/articles/20100701/10251210046.shtml