Sunday, 12 January 2003
Thursday, 9 January 2003
Operation ATLAS swings into action [brit]
You'd be amazed how differently America is handling the war with Iraq, compared with the UK.
I flew back from New York this morning (arriving 8.40am our time, in work by 9.10am - go figure) having spent 3 days attending various head shed meetings at DDB Worldwide (the global agency that own my ass) and thought I'd tell you about Operation ATLAS.
Literally 5 minutes after the tomahawk missiles were launched from USS Bunker Hill (an Aegis air defence cruiser in the Red Sea), the most awe inspiring civilian protection programme went into overdrive.
National Guard in their hundreds appeared on the streets of New York; 1,000 extra police with armoured trucks and mobile command posts closed down the bridges, tunnels and other approaches to Manhatten.. anything bigger than a family saloon was stopped and searched.
And nobody minded.
It took 25 minutes to drive to the hotel from JFK airport on the way IN, but nearly 2.5 hours to get OUT because of all the checkpoints. People didn't get irate, they didn't toot their horns madly, they openly agreed with the policy and had immense faith in their government and more locally, the governor of New York who, along with Conneticut and Maryland (I think) is spearheading an immense tri-state security operation at a cost of US$5m a day.
Can you imagine if this happened in the UK?
There would be public outcry of enormous dimensions; not to mention that fact that we simply couldn't do it with our immensely overstretched civilian and military authority resources.
What struck me above all else is the fact that despite the roads being full of police cruisers with their lights going, and 18 year old National Guardsmen in full kit walking around, life continued as normal.
You can still buy pretzels from street vendors, you can still stand in Time Square and enjoy the atmosphere, you can still spend a lovely evening in a fabulous restaurant, or go ice skating in Central Park - and you're not alone; the City That Never Sleeps is now adding The City That Continues Regardless to it's many accolades.
Incidentally, there is absolutely no hiding the absolute and perhaps deserved hatred of the French. TV pundits from CNN downwards are openly criticising the Chirac administration; and no expense is being spared to dig out the financial reasons behind France's decision to debunk the war.
Did you know France has a US$50bn contract with Iraq to export it's oil? Did you know France owns 90% of all of Iraq's oil infrastructure maintenance rights?
Contracts which are worth nothing now, since once Hussein is removed, all previous bets are off.
I have an immense feeling of kinship with our American cousins; and I for one having spoken at length with New Yorkers about everything from '9-Eleven' onwards and believe wholeheartedly that the war with Iraq is 100% justified.
I flew back from New York this morning (arriving 8.40am our time, in work by 9.10am - go figure) having spent 3 days attending various head shed meetings at DDB Worldwide (the global agency that own my ass) and thought I'd tell you about Operation ATLAS.
Literally 5 minutes after the tomahawk missiles were launched from USS Bunker Hill (an Aegis air defence cruiser in the Red Sea), the most awe inspiring civilian protection programme went into overdrive.
National Guard in their hundreds appeared on the streets of New York; 1,000 extra police with armoured trucks and mobile command posts closed down the bridges, tunnels and other approaches to Manhatten.. anything bigger than a family saloon was stopped and searched.
And nobody minded.
It took 25 minutes to drive to the hotel from JFK airport on the way IN, but nearly 2.5 hours to get OUT because of all the checkpoints. People didn't get irate, they didn't toot their horns madly, they openly agreed with the policy and had immense faith in their government and more locally, the governor of New York who, along with Conneticut and Maryland (I think) is spearheading an immense tri-state security operation at a cost of US$5m a day.
Can you imagine if this happened in the UK?
There would be public outcry of enormous dimensions; not to mention that fact that we simply couldn't do it with our immensely overstretched civilian and military authority resources.
What struck me above all else is the fact that despite the roads being full of police cruisers with their lights going, and 18 year old National Guardsmen in full kit walking around, life continued as normal.
You can still buy pretzels from street vendors, you can still stand in Time Square and enjoy the atmosphere, you can still spend a lovely evening in a fabulous restaurant, or go ice skating in Central Park - and you're not alone; the City That Never Sleeps is now adding The City That Continues Regardless to it's many accolades.
Incidentally, there is absolutely no hiding the absolute and perhaps deserved hatred of the French. TV pundits from CNN downwards are openly criticising the Chirac administration; and no expense is being spared to dig out the financial reasons behind France's decision to debunk the war.
Did you know France has a US$50bn contract with Iraq to export it's oil? Did you know France owns 90% of all of Iraq's oil infrastructure maintenance rights?
Contracts which are worth nothing now, since once Hussein is removed, all previous bets are off.
I have an immense feeling of kinship with our American cousins; and I for one having spoken at length with New Yorkers about everything from '9-Eleven' onwards and believe wholeheartedly that the war with Iraq is 100% justified.
Tuesday, 7 January 2003
Nokia in sucking shocker [lurks]
Strikes me that all of Nokia's victories in the mobile phone arena involve making pretty simple phones that just work. You know, making calls, SMS and crap like that. They work, they're solid, the SMS stuff pretty much wrote the book on how to do it properly. Can't really go wrong.
Unfortunately every time they try to add gadgets and hocus pocus, the Fins go horribly horribly wrong. The first being the 7110, which while the whole 'chock' thing ruled, the err WAP shit and general doing stuff really really sucked. You think they'd learn their lesson?
Well yes because they went back to making a load of really good phones like the 6210 and stuff like that. Again nothing fancy just phones that worked. Then the 7210 happened. This is that nifty picture phone thing with the nifty slidey openeny thing. Yeah only err, it doesn't fucking work does it.
What's up with these goons? Basically if you were gonna buy a Nokia, you'd buy a no-nonsense phone and not one of their cutting-edge lifestyle abortions.
The thing is, I reckon the picture phone is a real revolution. Eventually every phone will have them, it'll just be too cool not to have. Mine you, I wont touch one so long as they want a tenner a month and 50p a message just to send the damn things!
Unfortunately every time they try to add gadgets and hocus pocus, the Fins go horribly horribly wrong. The first being the 7110, which while the whole 'chock' thing ruled, the err WAP shit and general doing stuff really really sucked. You think they'd learn their lesson?
Well yes because they went back to making a load of really good phones like the 6210 and stuff like that. Again nothing fancy just phones that worked. Then the 7210 happened. This is that nifty picture phone thing with the nifty slidey openeny thing. Yeah only err, it doesn't fucking work does it.
What's up with these goons? Basically if you were gonna buy a Nokia, you'd buy a no-nonsense phone and not one of their cutting-edge lifestyle abortions.
The thing is, I reckon the picture phone is a real revolution. Eventually every phone will have them, it'll just be too cool not to have. Mine you, I wont touch one so long as they want a tenner a month and 50p a message just to send the damn things!
Monday, 6 January 2003
Sunday, 29 December 2002
Korea, why do we care? [lurks]
Right, you've seen what's going on in Korea? Quick summary right, the evil communist dictatorship North revealed they have a secret nuclear weapons program going on. Now some time ago the US brokered a deal where North Korea would suspend their nuclear program and in return they'd shop a cool half mil tons of oil over every now and again. So unsurprisingly the US says, well err fuck your oil then. So the North goes, right well we're cracking the seals on our heavy water reactor instead so we can power the homes of all our starving people. Oh and whoopy, we get some nice plutonium in the bargain. Woot!
Meanwhile, down in the South, there be a million land mines in the demilitarized zone and a crap load of US help standing by stopping the commies from rushing over the border to unify the country in some big red orgasmic communist reunion gang bang. Except that what happened was that some GIs ran down a couple of South Korean girls in a road accident, killed them both. So the South is holding all these demonstrations, burning US flags. Out yankee out! No War in Iraq! Shit like that.
Err so one does have to wonder why on earth the US gives a flying fuck about these ungrateful peons! The South having gotten fat on trade with the west and pretty much now represent the most progressive modern Net loving capitalist democratic industrial nation in the SE Asia. So one wonders if they just HAPPEN to have noticed the millions of starving Chinese backed commie loonies just gnashing their teeth on the lovely propaganda which drives them to head south and quash this decadent capitalist nightmare? You know, the fucking invasion the yanks are there to stop to protect the South Korean way of life.
I just don't understand those fuckers, maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, fuck them. Pull out I say. Korean computer games suck ass anyway :)
Meanwhile, down in the South, there be a million land mines in the demilitarized zone and a crap load of US help standing by stopping the commies from rushing over the border to unify the country in some big red orgasmic communist reunion gang bang. Except that what happened was that some GIs ran down a couple of South Korean girls in a road accident, killed them both. So the South is holding all these demonstrations, burning US flags. Out yankee out! No War in Iraq! Shit like that.
Err so one does have to wonder why on earth the US gives a flying fuck about these ungrateful peons! The South having gotten fat on trade with the west and pretty much now represent the most progressive modern Net loving capitalist democratic industrial nation in the SE Asia. So one wonders if they just HAPPEN to have noticed the millions of starving Chinese backed commie loonies just gnashing their teeth on the lovely propaganda which drives them to head south and quash this decadent capitalist nightmare? You know, the fucking invasion the yanks are there to stop to protect the South Korean way of life.
I just don't understand those fuckers, maybe I'm missing something. Anyway, fuck them. Pull out I say. Korean computer games suck ass anyway :)
Saturday, 21 December 2002
Time for DSAT [lurks]
Y'all know how I've been into this DAB thing. That's Digital Audio Radio for the technophobes among you. It's ace right, bag load of stations which can be grabbed straight to disk or played to any PC in my house with a little £50 Psion Wavefinder plugged into a USB port on Wench. Trouble is over time, the bitrate has reduced. Now this sucks because I'm really quite into recording things like BBC Radio 6 Music's 'Dream Ticket' live sessions and putting in my collection. 128kbs MP2 is unfortunately pretty manky. Equivalent to about 96kbps MP3.
Now it turns out that basically Astra is transmitting a bunch of free to air radio stations. Likewise digital MP2 streams but much higher bitrates. 160-192kbps which is ... bloody good to nearly CD quality. There's some tele on there too. So, after a good day and a half of web research I formulated a plan. A plan so cunning you could pull it's beard back and scrub your toilet.
Essentially I intend to buy a small Sky minidish for next to no money, get some coax and F connectors from Maplins and mount, align and tune the whole lot up myself. Not even going to use a Digibox, I'm going to use an el-cheapo DVB card in a PC with some decent third party software to do scheduled recordings etc. Bingo all the same radio stations in much higher bitrates and I can also capture some tele to hard drive as well. If I get into the tele capturing thing, I can buy a decent DVB card down the line and watch the 'free to view' stuff as well.
The best bit is, it wont cost me a penny other than the ton or so for all the bits. This way I keep my crappy but cheap telewest cable TV for regular tele and so keep my discount on the cable modem.
Now all I need is to find my compass and protractor and work out whether 28% east of south is a LOS which will clear the house out back without raising the dish too far up...
Now it turns out that basically Astra is transmitting a bunch of free to air radio stations. Likewise digital MP2 streams but much higher bitrates. 160-192kbps which is ... bloody good to nearly CD quality. There's some tele on there too. So, after a good day and a half of web research I formulated a plan. A plan so cunning you could pull it's beard back and scrub your toilet.
Essentially I intend to buy a small Sky minidish for next to no money, get some coax and F connectors from Maplins and mount, align and tune the whole lot up myself. Not even going to use a Digibox, I'm going to use an el-cheapo DVB card in a PC with some decent third party software to do scheduled recordings etc. Bingo all the same radio stations in much higher bitrates and I can also capture some tele to hard drive as well. If I get into the tele capturing thing, I can buy a decent DVB card down the line and watch the 'free to view' stuff as well.
The best bit is, it wont cost me a penny other than the ton or so for all the bits. This way I keep my crappy but cheap telewest cable TV for regular tele and so keep my discount on the cable modem.
Now all I need is to find my compass and protractor and work out whether 28% east of south is a LOS which will clear the house out back without raising the dish too far up...
Monday, 16 December 2002
Fame academy [lurks]
I tuned in pretty late to this reality tv show thing that the Beeb has been pushing out called Fame Academy. Just as well really because the last hopefuls from the dozen were kind of borderline talented as it was so I hate to think what the first evictees were like. Pretty bad I guess since the Beeb was taking a bunch of flack about the show early on and it was rating badly, but then so has every new reality tv show until people start to get hooked on it.
Anyway, the only thing worth talking about on this is again how the legions of teenage girls are the only ones that vote and you can clearly see their utterly illogical, not to mention bad taste, outright and the final of Fame Academy was no different.
First off, last week the guy to get canned was some bloke called Ainsley. He isn't a great singer but he's really got a style of his own, sort of indy with a touch of the cure going on. Struck me he was an ideal front man for a band or whatnot. The fact they dumped him last week was just astounding. The record industry pros on the show were also surprised.
Anyhow, the final was this friday. I didn't see it since I was out getting wankers with the EED boyz for our crimbo pissup. Surprise surprise but pretty much the least talented one won it, the second one was also absolutely dreadful and the guy who came rank last was the only one that was actually talented and ought to get a shot at the million quid recording contract which was up for a prize.
Yep you guessed it, the legions of teenage girls voted in this pretty-boy boy band guy who, while he can certainly sing, has to be the the biggest example of zero personality zero identity llamatron syndrome that I've seen for a long time. Ho hum. Second in was this Irish girl who, err, no one seems to have spotted can't actually sing at all, is crap on stage and ... is a bit ugly as well. Jesus christ.
So how did she come second? Well she's Irish right and apparently it's a real popular show over there. So that left in third place, a slothenly black teenager called Lamar. Now let's get this straight, I don't like this guy - I think he's a bit of a tosser but he does have an enormous amount of talent. He's got a fantastic really distinctive husky soul voice and brilliant stage presence. He's fucking good, he deserves to put an album out. He's the only one who did. So he comes last.
I don't reckon that bloke has enough get-up-and-go to go make it for himself unfortunately, so he'll probably disappear for good. Oh well.
What is it about women (and in particular teenage girls) and their complete and utter lack of any musical taste whatsoever?
Anyway, the only thing worth talking about on this is again how the legions of teenage girls are the only ones that vote and you can clearly see their utterly illogical, not to mention bad taste, outright and the final of Fame Academy was no different.
First off, last week the guy to get canned was some bloke called Ainsley. He isn't a great singer but he's really got a style of his own, sort of indy with a touch of the cure going on. Struck me he was an ideal front man for a band or whatnot. The fact they dumped him last week was just astounding. The record industry pros on the show were also surprised.
Anyhow, the final was this friday. I didn't see it since I was out getting wankers with the EED boyz for our crimbo pissup. Surprise surprise but pretty much the least talented one won it, the second one was also absolutely dreadful and the guy who came rank last was the only one that was actually talented and ought to get a shot at the million quid recording contract which was up for a prize.
Yep you guessed it, the legions of teenage girls voted in this pretty-boy boy band guy who, while he can certainly sing, has to be the the biggest example of zero personality zero identity llamatron syndrome that I've seen for a long time. Ho hum. Second in was this Irish girl who, err, no one seems to have spotted can't actually sing at all, is crap on stage and ... is a bit ugly as well. Jesus christ.
So how did she come second? Well she's Irish right and apparently it's a real popular show over there. So that left in third place, a slothenly black teenager called Lamar. Now let's get this straight, I don't like this guy - I think he's a bit of a tosser but he does have an enormous amount of talent. He's got a fantastic really distinctive husky soul voice and brilliant stage presence. He's fucking good, he deserves to put an album out. He's the only one who did. So he comes last.
I don't reckon that bloke has enough get-up-and-go to go make it for himself unfortunately, so he'll probably disappear for good. Oh well.
What is it about women (and in particular teenage girls) and their complete and utter lack of any musical taste whatsoever?
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