Posts in category "UK"

During the week I am a boring IT consultant.

However, at weekends, I transform into a massive, dance, trance, garage, hop-hip, mixmaster DJ, spinning vinyl, entertaining the masses at Glastonbury.

No wonder I'm so tired every Monday morning.

I was wrong. I sincerely apologise. That wasnt my worst nightmare at all.

This is truly my worst nightmare.

Trevor Phillips makes an early (and unexpected) bid to succeed Bernard Manning.

Phew - what a relief. I often spend a night in the pub or a whole weekend at a beer festival and am completely flummoxed by such trick questions on my return such as 'Well - what did you actually talk about ?' or worse, 'How are Janet, Jonathan, Jennifer and Jocasta ?'

A peculiar challenge for modern day parents: How do you ask your teenage son to tidy his room ? Seems straightforward but not so easy when he gave you the silent treatment for 10 whole years just because you gave consent for his tonsils to be removed. Let's just hope his schoolmates don't take the mickey out of his surname.

And finally, Cyril. And finally, Esther. Some ex-international football stars become highly paid pundits or run country pubs. The Welsh wing wizard, Leighton James, chose to put something back into the community by embarking on a career as a popular and award winning lollypop man. Pity he spoils it by drink-driving.

Oh look Henry. Over to the right. Isnt that Nelsons Column ?

I upgraded to a Virgin Media V+ service three months ago. Although I have had some initial teething problems, I am pretty satisfied with the V+ service.

The V+ box is a personal video recorder (PVR) similar to the Sky Plus service. The V+ box contains a 160GB hard drive which can store 80 hours of recorded TV programs.

Recording a TV program is very easy. You simply navigate through the 7 day TV guide, select the desired TV program and hit 'Record'. You get the option to either record the individual broadcast or the series (if appropriate).

This is much preferable to finding an old video tape, wondering what is on it and inadvertently erasing 4 hours of Olympic Gymnastics from Sydney 2000. The whole operation is so easy, the rest of my family have mastered it and my only problem now is educating them to erase programs once viewed. Although the V+ box does have an option to automatically purge the oldest recordings.

You can pause and rewind live TV too. This is especially useful for 'Have I Got News For You' which requires ones full attention to appreciate all the one-liners and rapid fire jokes. So, if the wife wants to discuss GCSE options for next year or the mother-in-law calls, you can simply pause the program, make a cup of tea and resume when the coast is clear.

I once suspended a football match for 75 minutes and I assume the duration of 'Delay TV' is only constrained by the amount of free disk space. The football match was a excellent example of the benefits of V+. In the olden days, I would have to record the game on a tape, then wait until the game had finished before discovering, to my horror, the tape ended abruptly mid-way through the second half. With 'Delay TV', I was able to resume watching the game (exactly where I left it) while the actual match was still in progress.

You can rewind and forward at varying speeds (2, 6, 12 and 32) which makes finding the crucial moment much quicker than tape technology.

The other great feature of the V+ box is that you can watch one program while simultaneously recording two other channels. You get a warning if you try to record three overlapping programs. This feature essentially completely negates the need for the VCR for recording purposes, at least.

Another useful feature is that if you watch a recorded program, you get the option to resume viewing from where you left the program which saves you having to waste time, fast-forwarding to the correct place.

Tapes do have only minor advantage though. You can play them back in any TV with a VCR while V+ programs can only be played back on the V+ box. This sounds obvious but my children did once ask 'Why can't I watch the recorded program on the little telly ?' And when the program in question is 'Big Brother' or 'Breast Reductions Gone Badly Wrong', they do indeed have a valid point.

I also assumed the V+ box was intelligent enough to decode signals to indicate the start and end of a program to cater for the World Snooker Final overrunning by 3 hours. However, on one occasion, I swear 'Jonathan Ross' was replaced by, err, 60 minutes of World Championship Snooker.

Overall, the introduction of the V+ box has changed the way I view TV. I tend to select programs I really want to watch, hit 'Record' and forget about it. Then, instead of mindlessly channel flicking, I simply scan the library of recorded programs.

I can't comment on the High Definition service as I don't have it nor have I ever transferred recordings from the V+ box to DVD which is also possible.

More info on V+:

• Virgin Media (costs and marketing fluff)
• Wikipedia (what do all those connectors do ?)
• Digital Spy V+ Forum

Lots of people stumble onto this blog hoping to find technical information, reviews and images of a black Virgin Media V+ set top box.

I presume this is either husbands trying to convince the wife that the box will comply with the aesthetics in the lounge or geeks trying to look at all those connectors on the back.

Whoever you are, whatever you are, these pictures are for all you people out there.

I was going to spend Saturday compiling very important guidelines for the formatting, style and content of comments but decided to go and watch the Ladies final and Mens semi-finals at the Surbiton Trophy instead.

I packed a lovely picnic (much to the envy of my neighbours), took a proper camera and enjoyed three matches in the sun:

• Brenda Schultz McCarthy (36 years old, 6 foot tall) beat Ayumi Morita (17 years old, 5 foot tall) in three entertaining sets.
• The eventual winner, Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, edged out the Australian 4th seed in a tight match featuring many impressive aces.
• Dodged for cover as 6'10" Croatian, Ivo Karlovic, smashed his way past a bewildered American, Robbie Kendrick (whose lovely girlfriend was sitting next to me).

On 3 May 2007, a four year old toddler (not girl), Madeleine McCann, was abducted from her hotel room in Praia Da Luz, Portugal while her parents enjoyed a well-deserved pizza and a glass of wine in a nearby restaurant.

Since then the parents have launched a concerted and impressive campaign to keep Madeleine's name in the media spotlight. The distraught mother is carrying Madeleine's grubby, pink cuddly cat everywhere she goes.

Yesterday, the father flew home to England to pick up copies of the Sunday papers together with clean underpants and shirts. He announces the list of brands and colours of his top drawer to the assembled UK TV, radio and press who dutifully report every last word.

A two minute video publicising Madeleine's plight was played prior to the FA Cup Final at Wembley on Saturday. Many fans reported it was the most entertaining part of the whole afternoon. Posters of Madeleine's angelic, innocent face are plastered all over Heathrow Airport.

A 'Bring Madeleine Home' web site has been launched and is groaning under the strain of large numbers of deluded Daily Mail readers hoping and praying for a prompt and happy outcome.

Celebrities have made media appeals, bands have offered to play benefit concerts and captains of industry have offered sizeable financial rewards for information.

While I am loosely following developments (it's pretty hard to avoid), I have a growing unease and sense of incredulity about this story. Not just because I immediately feared the worse the moment the story broke. When the pretty, young girl was not found within the first four hours, wandering around disoriented in a hotel corridor or colouring pretty pictures in the Kids Club, my instinctive gut feeling was always that Madeleine McCann is dead.

I am a father and can only imagine what her parents are going through. I completely understand and appreciate all they are trying to do is get their beloved daughter back alive, praying to a God they don't worship, sobbing inconsolably at night, fighting off the horrendous feelings of guilt, torturing themselves with 'ifs buts and maybes' and desperately clinging to a fading but faint glimmer of hope

I can partially empathise because my own daughter was nearly run over when she was five years old. We were walking on a Saturday morning to the newsagent. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, she ran out across the road to get to the sweet shop and a car knocked her over, running over her foot. If the car had been going slightly quicker or if she had set off 5 seconds earlier, she would have been killed. In front of my eyes. In my sole care. My responsibility. My fault. Dead.

I still have occasional nightmares where I am standing over her grave and people are saying 'Andy - Listen, it was just an accident. There was absolutely nothing you could do.' when all I had to do was not to relinquish her tiny, precious, little hand.

However, I do not believe that I would go to a restaurant and leave a four year old girl alone in a strange hotel room as I sat down with my wife to enjoy lasagne and glass of wine in a restaurant ten minutes away. There is absolutely no way that I would have left the two year old twins (yes - two babies just two years old) alone in that hotel room.

Well that's not completely true because I do really love pizza and I strongly feel that parents have every right to enjoy a half-term break as much as the children.

However, while I might have attempted to book the restaurant and change into a collared shirt, my wife certainly wouldn't. She would have been fussing so much ('What if she rolls onto the babies and smothers them?', 'What if she opens the balcony doors and falls 50 feet ?', 'What if she is crying and no-one is there ?', 'What if she falls out of bed and cracks her head on the tile floor ?') and checking the room every ten seconds, we would simply never have made it beyond the end of the corridor.

Another interesting development is the 'Maddy fund' to assist with the search ? Is this to pay for the families extended stay in Portugal, the father's recent flight home or is it to bribe foreign police officials for information ?

What happens to the fund if and when the search for Madeleine is finally resolved ? Do all the contributors and Portsmouth Football Club (£50k) get their money back ?

Or does it go into a fund for middle class professionals who can afford two foreign holidays a year but are too mean to shell out for a baby-sitter ?

Amusing story in Fridays Torygraph about how a Sat Nav system left a poor, helpless 20- year old female student marooned on a level crossing in the face of a high speed train.

Thankfully, this woman escaped with her life and will probably sue TomTom, her boyfriend and Carlos Tevez. However, Paula Ceely is so unbelievably stupid, hopefully she will manage to secure an early nomination for the Darwin Awards imminently.

The online version of this story omits a crucial section - the picture of the warning sign that was clearly displayed on the level crossing that was included in the newspaper edition.

1. Check that the green light shows
2. Open both gates
3. Check that the green light still shows
4. Cross quickly
5. Close both gates

RTFM.