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a night at The Office

On Saturday night, BBC2 broadcast a retrospective on ‘The Office’ and broadcast all of Series 1 together with soundbites from the creators (Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant), the cast (Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davis) and celebrity fans (Ben Stiller, Christopher Guest, Matthew Perry, David Baddiel, Richard Curtis).

My favourite episode of Series 1 is ‘Staff Training’ for all the normal reasons and for this rendition of ‘Free love on the free love freeway’ - I just love the harmonising from Gareth at 1:24 (‘She’s not dead’).

Virgin Media email outage

Virgin Media email has been down for 48 hours and counting…

I am not looking forward to explaining this (again) to Norma tonight. She seems to hold me personally responsible and keeps asking ‘What is wrong, why haven’t they got in touch, why is it taking so long to fix it and when is it going to be fixed ?’

This is a complete CRM disaster from Virgin Media. No meaningful updates in over 2 days.

why West Ham and Millwall kicked off

Obvious really. The FA and the police should have seen the disorder at last night’s Carling Cup tie between West Ham and Millwall coming.

Nothing to do with East End rivalry. Nothing to do with Millwall’s notorious hooligan element.

The problems were started by lengthy queues at all cashpoints in the vicinity of Upton Park before kick-off. None of these professional Cockernees could decipher the rhyming slang.

more questions than answers

Most of the Australians I met on my recent holiday were brilliant people; friendly, welcoming, great company and most possessed a very British style sense of humour.

However, there was one element of my Australian experience that was slightly irritating; the tendency for people to ask questions. For example, if you ever purchased goods in a shop using a card, you were immediately greeted with ‘Credit or savings ?’

Another fine example was the following exchange one early morning at Brisbane airport where I attempted the seemingly simply task of purchasing four hot drinks as we waited for a short flight to Hamilton Island.

poor man's Italian coffee shop

Most companies I viist have a (subsidised) coffee shop so I am used to waiting for my morning coffee and hearing a wide variety of exotic concoctions called out to the eager, caffeine starved workforce.

• ‘Large Mocha’
• ‘Tall, skinny Latte’
• ‘Overpriced Tea’
• ‘Decaf Americano’
• ‘Espresso with an extra shot’
• ‘Frothy Cappuccino with extra froth’
• ‘Pomegranate Peach Frappuccino’

But this morning, I was privileged to hear a new and exciting drink announced.

celebrities on Twitter

‘Anyone suffering from the desire to communicate what they are doing or thinking every minute of the day in fewer than 140 characters is best described as a twat.’

Janet Street Porter calling me a ’twat’. Possibly my proudest moment.

I prefer to define µblogging as ‘an infinite byte stream of inane drivel’ but I also enjoyed Stephen Fry’s post on the same subject:

‘40% of Twitter is “pointless babble”, which means of course that a full 60% of Twitter discourse is NOT pointless babble, which is disappointing.’

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where's your Google Shared Items ?

I have followed the development of Google Reader since it was launched in 2005.

Having used Thunderbird and then NetVibes, I have used Google Reader for the last two years to read blogs. The main reason I like Reader are the UI, the keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation and the fact I can also use it on mobile devices and multiple computers.

During that period, I have sporadically marked articles that interest, amuse or shock me on my ‘Shared Items’ feed and Google recently added improved support for the sharing of ‘Shared Items’.

Noel Gallagher on Citeh

‘I miss seeing Cockneys trying to get a taxi in Moss Side.’

Noel on Maine Road and the good old days.

strategies for making friends on social networks

Early Jurassic - Mum takes you to playgroup, kicking and screaming and your friends are forced upon you. Free milk at 11 am.

Cretaceous - Primary school. You go round to Robert’s for tea and Robert comes round to your house for tea. Painfully shy in female company.

Middle Monolithic - Secondary school - you hang out with the kids who play football and avoid those who threaten you with knives at the bus stop.

the resurrection of Google Reader

Google have recently added some ‘social’ features to Google Reader which enables much improved sharing of people’s Shared Items.

The features have re-energised my use of Reader as these were features I have wanted for a long time.