Aquarionics

Some time in the future, when I’m rich, famous and living in a huge mansion house somewhere, I shall declare January null and void.

I shall, on returning from whatever New Years party I go to, retreat into a room with a water supply, a kettle, a large amount of tea leaves, mug, sugar, spoon, a series of notebooks and a sofa.

This room shall already contain my music system and all MP3s.

I shall then emerge only for meals for an entire month. I shall not leave that room, save for meals & showers. The economy will collapse, world war three will start, end, restart, destroy life on this planet except me, and I shall remain in my room.

It will have a thick baize backing on the door, so I can’t hear anything.

This way, I shall avoid whatever January brings me. Because January always sucks. Nothing ever works, nothing ever suceeds, all that happens is things that once were good get worse, and things that were worse get life-threaterning.

Last year I dismissed it as karma, which was silly. It *is* karma, but dismissing it as such is depriving me of a study of exactly how much things can get worse when I don’t believe they can.

Last year I lost my job, almost lost a friend, lost my finantial stability, began the process of losing the one place I’ve activly enjoyed living in.

This year… well, I will laugh when it’s all over. Until then I shall content myself with this demonstration of this day:

Today we hosted a meeting for the DTi about BrowserAngel’s future, which was a positive meeting.

I left at 17:30. On the dot.

I arrived home at 19:25, having spent an hour on a 25 minute journey from London, because something went wrong with the train half way. The 18:00, which has about 50% more passangers than seats, so I was standing in the vestry.

We waited at the station.

And waited.

The train was broken, said the Train Manager, and whilst this had been fixed, the train had applied the emergancy parking brake.

Great. We couldn’t move because the driver left the hand-brake on.

It was fixed – by disabling the emergancy brakes, yay safety – and we moved on.

At 19:25 I got back. At 19:30 Adrian arrived, we were going to see Spirited Away. We got in. The movie started.

The movie continued.

The movie stopped making sense.

I wasn’t really suprised at this. I’m a low-level Anime fan, so I’m fairly used to Japanese animation making little to no sense for most of the movie.

This time the movie wasn’t making sense because the cinema had the reels in the wrong order.

So we got our money back and went home

I still would like to see the film, preferably in the cinema, but it’s coming on R2 DVD some time this year… (Yes, I know it’s out on R1, but I prefer to get R2 DVDs)

I’ve just sold you all to pay for my sanity.

Details in Feburary.

As is traditional, at the begining of every even-numbered year I update my GeekCode. The new code is:

GCS$/PA d+(-) s+:+ a-- C+++ L++$ P+ E--- W+++$ N+++ o K w O- M>++ V- PS+ PE- Y+ PGP++ t+@ 5++ X R+ !tv b+++ DI++++ D++ G++ e+ h- r++ y?

As is just-as-traditional, since before Aquarionics existed, I’ve added it to the Codes Page, and in order to compare it more easily, six years of Geek Codes as a Text File

By which you can tell: I used to be a Librarian, but have given that up, am less computer orientated than I was, and have been meaning to learn perl properly since ’98.

Okay, it’s less interesting than dirt, but what else are you here for, Cat pictures?

As part of Wet Blunket’s Anti-Social Behaviour act, Traffic Wardens and Security Guards are going to be given the right to fine cyclists who ride on the pavement 30.

I have mixed feelings about this. As a pedestrian, I find people who ride bicycles on the pavement to be an irritation, but as an ex-cyclist (Our bicycles were stolen from our back garden a couple of months ago) I would rather people cycled on the pavements than on the roads with no lights.

They should walk their bikes home, but people are morons, and don’t.

In fact, people should not be allowed to ride bikes on the road at all until they’ve passed their cycling proficiency.

Cycling Proficiency is a bit like Driver’s Ed for primary school children. Someone – usually the local community policeman, spare teachers, or Local Council People – comes to most primary schools sometime in years 4 -> 6 (That’s about 9 to 11 years) (depending on school and local council) and teaches anyone with a bike the relevant bits of the highway code (Our school you brought your bike with you one day a week for about a month, and you weren’t allowed to cycle to school until you’d already passed your CP. Guess how many pupils pushed their bike to school?). At the end we got a badge and a certificate.

When I was in Cambridge cyclists in the summer were a menace to the roads. Gangs of tourists with no idea of British road laws or etiquette, but because it was traditional to ride bikes in Cambridge. Apparently they did about 20,000 damage to taxis a year, to the point where, when I left, the local Taxi driver’s union¹ was campaigning to make all cycle hiring places make their clients take out insurance (at something like 50p to 1 per bike) against damage to third parties. This is probably a good idea.

I think the idea of the spot-fines for cycling on the pavements is a good one, although 30 is about 10 too high. I’m less sure about the rest of the content of the bill, since it includes giving councils the right to declare “Anti-Social Hotspots” which the police can turf kids out of. And into, for example, somewhere else they can then define as a hotspot.

It’s a free country?

¹ Are you cycling at me? Then why the hell are you coming in my direction? You cycling at me? Doesn’t look like there’s anyone else on the roads, Where do you think you’re cycling? Oh yeah? Huh? Ok.