Blog in Isolation

There is a radiant darkness upon us

Posts

my alter ego

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.

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go faster stripes

This Bluehost powered blog is now FastCGI enabled. You may find the site faster but, then again, hyperlinks may return completely random articles. You will probably struggle to tell the difference.

Which reminds me of a funny story…

I am currently working in the North East on an ’escalation’. An ’escalation’ is characterised by frequent, lengthy conference calls with bi-hourly status updates, the phrases ‘high-profile’, ‘alternative technical solutions’, ‘severe degradation’, ‘impacting the bottom line’, ‘CIO visibility’, ‘options for the weekend’ and the perennial favourite: ‘any progress yet ?’

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Google finally sees sense

On the face of it, the recent changes to the interface to Google Docs and Spreadsheets look trivial and superficial.

Google’s official announcement is brief and understated but Google Blogoscoped hits the nail on the head (twice):

‘The file listing now resembles a more traditional view in the style of, say, Windows Explorer.’

…that ordinary mortals understand and are comfortable with.

‘Google D&S looks more and more like an office application.’

In fact, Google Docs looks and performs much better than the most popular office application. I recently upgraded three home PC’s to Office 2007. I think Microsoft Office is a superb suite of professional applications (Word, Excel, OneNote) and represents great value for money as £85 buys licenses for use on three separate PC’s.

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my worst nightmare

Ten hours cooped up on a plane with facile excuses (‘just another 10 minutes’), no food and screaming babies for company.

Love the cheerful musical score, the facial expressions and the way the video starts in daylight and ends in complete darkness.

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Movable Type 4 (beta)

No one ever asks me: ‘Hey, Norman - why haven’t you installed Movable Type 4 (beta) yet ?’

Well, I just did. The product is pretty impressive but I have invested too much time and effort in WordPress to switch blogging platforms.

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The Who at Glastonbury

That set list in full

  • Theme from ‘CSI’
  • Track ripped off from ‘Quadrophenia’
  • Theme from ‘CSI: Miami’
  • Another track shamelessly ripped off from ‘Quadrophenia’
  • Theme from ‘CSI: New York (Series 5)’
  • Song ripped off from ‘Tommy’
  • Theme from ‘CSI: Special Victims Unit’
  • Encore: Terrible cover version of ‘My Generation’ by The Zimmers
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quiet, loud and very loud

A great weekend for the middle-aged, barstool musical correspondent.

Music and chat from Iggy and The Stooges on Jonathan Ross. I never realised ‘Elves’ by The Fall was such a complete rip-off of ‘I wanna be your dog’.

Seven Ages of Rock

  • Black Flag, R.E.M, Pixies and Nirvana.

‘Some people can not do that and will not do that.’ (simple bass riff) - Kim Deal on ‘Where is my mind’

‘It had to end right there. Right with that scream. Right with that song. Right with that howl’ - Scott Litt on Kurt Cobain’s final words on ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’

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Theatre of Comedy

Moss Side, near Manchester, England - Friday 22 June 2007

The hopes and dreams of the loyal and long suffering supporters of the popular football club, Manchester City, were cruelly shattered last night when the former Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra suddenly withdrew from takeover negotiations and and unexpectedly deposited his £81 million from a brown paper bag into an unnamed Swiss bank account.

In an exclusive interview, Mr. Shinywart explained:

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