Simon Rumble’s blog

Went down to the Thames this morning to see the whale. There were thousands of people down there lining bridges and climbing trees. Doesn't look so hopeful now for the whale, unfortunately.

Now would be a good time to point out that endangered whales are being killed by the Japanese for sale as meat. Greenpeace and the much more aggressive Sea Shepherds are campaigning against this barbarism. They could use your support.

I'm not opposed to whaling as a traditional practise. If you've traditionally hunted whales, I think you should be free to hunt whales in the traditional manner. By "traditional manner" I'm talking tiny tiny boats and hand-held harpoons. Trying to disguise slaughter as "research", however, and using incredbly efficient modern methods, is just not on.

I was about to recommend Konica Minolta for anyone buying a digitial camera, but now I guess I won't bother. Reason for the recommendation was their repair division. The lens got stuck so I posted it off and got it back, no charge, in two weeks. It's what we should expect for warranty repairs, but not often what we get.

Getting into that bad time of year here in London. Haven't seen the sun in weeks, and not much prospect of seeing it. Well, at least we'll be skiing in a couple of weeks, and that's something to look forward to.

Just got a 419 spam with a new twist:

Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 21:42:53 +0700
From: "Mr. Mark Kewell" <mark_kewell@walla.com>
To:
Cc:
Subject: Hello Friend.


Hello Friend,

I am Mr. Mark Kewell a personal treasurer to Late Mr. Kerry Packer the
Richest man in Australia and owner of the many companies. His business
empire, built around Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL), includes
television, magazines, Internet-related enterprises, Melbourne's Crown
Casino and the Burswood Casino in  Perth, beef cattle properties,
petrochemicals, property investment, resources and engineering.
[ ... ]

Today we bought three DVDs with free newspapers attached. I love these newspaper wars! Daily Express went straight in the recycling, but we'll enjoy the Cary Grant film.

I finally found a decent online calendar site that synchronizes using SyncML. That means my new phone can synchronize with it over-the-air. Fantastic stuff!

So Gordon Brown wants a British "Independence Day" like the Yanks. Well I guess first we have to throw off the shackles of the British Monarchy. Might I suggest the Romanov Solution?

According to this article in yesterday's Guardian, the hierarchy of road users that traffic engineers should be: disabled and visually impaired people first, pedestrians next, then cyclists, public transport, delivery vehicles, cars used for business with more than one occupant and, at the bottom of the heap, single-occupancy motorists.

Evidently the traffic engineers behind the signals from Constitution Hill (incidentally, this country doesn't have a Constitution, but we have a road commemorating one) to Hyde Park Corner. Cyclists and pedestrians get four seconds of green out of a three and a half minute traffic light cycle!

Got back from NYE in Paris last night. Photos soon.

Meanwhile, I've been toying with my new phone (Nokia 6630) and Bluetooth GPS. Took this track while wandering around Paris on Saturday. You can see me wandering around the square in front of the Louvre pyramid looking for Margaret, then we wander off to grab a (rather good) kebab in the Quartier Latin.

I'm toying with this stuff. The tool I'm using, AFTrack is nicely configurable. You can set it up to hit an arbitrary web page passing it GPS data, which will make some cool stuff possible involving travel and blogging.

We just got home from Xmas at Scott and Katie's place. Fabulous day had by all. An appropriate level of gluttony and exuberence was had by all.

Recipe for me curried cashews and cinammon almonds will be forthcoming.