Google now has an SMS service. You text a query to it, and it texts you back results. "Pubs" then your postcode finds the nearest pubs. "From" location "to" location gives you (driving) directions. They're an American company, so I guess public transport, cycling and walking directions would seem quite ridiculous to them.
What they really need, is to be able to respond to a query like "late opening pubs" location... Now that would be handy!
For most of my life, I have despised tomatoes. Tomato soup, ketchup, pasta sauce and the like are all fine. Just raw tomatoes, I've always hated.
For the last year or so, I've been trying to work myself out of this. I've been doing this by leaving the tomato on bought sandwiches, munching down on tomato in salads and occasionally, just occasionally, eating chunks of tomato for the hell of it.
It's mostly worked. I wouldn't say I love the things, but I can now easily tolerate them. I'll wait until I get to Italy, land of tomato heaven supposedly, and see if I can find some really really good tomatoes. Then I'll eat some.
This article is by a restaurant critic who, getting the job, needed to lose some irrational food dislikes. Pretty odd ones (except the retsina bit) and he hated one of my favourite foods, kimchi.
Now I've been trying to think what other irrational food dislikes I have. The only one I can think of is avocado. I'm not so pressed to get rid of this one, as it's not such a staple as tomato. If I end up planning a trip to South America, I'll probably have to work on it.
If only I could get Holly to work on some of her food dislikes. She hates tomatoes, most pulses, peppers (but not chillis) and most of all, peas. Even lovely, sweet, fresh peas straight out of the pod. Freak.
I've been trying to get my rumble.net domain off Network Solutions for the past three months. Eight support requests later and they still have it locked with lock status "REGISTRAR-LOCK".
Every time I submit a support request, the first response is "we can't do this by email, please phone". When I point out that I was logged into their site when I created the request, they then send their form letter that says "done" and promptly do nothing.
Now do you think there's a complaints procedure on their site? Course not!
So does anyone know where I can escalate this? I mean I'm not asking for anything complicated, just the ability to migrate to another (less crap) registrar. Ferfuxxake!
In songwriting, I'm a sucker for a good bridge in a song. To make an ordinary song in the standard Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Chorus-fade turn into something extraordinary for me, all you need to do is change key and insert a bridge before the two ending choruses.
Been listening to the Sarah Blasko album I picked up in Sydney, and Don't U Eva works for me in this way. Love that bridge and its synth backing line. Lovely.
Last night I went to Hammersmith and Fulham FOE's pre-election meet-the-candidates thingy to try and make up my mind about who to vote for.
The Lib Dem was, as expected, a dorky looking type without much presence nor firm policy. The Tory, again as expected, was smarmy, charming and completely full of shit. The Labour candidate was surprising. Far from being parachuted in by Neo Labour Head Office (our sitting Labour member is standing down this election) she's actually a passionate local campaigner.
I didn't stick around for the Green candidate. She's apparently a "lifestyle coach", whatever that means. I think you'd be hard pressed to find me a candidate's profession I'd be less likely to vote for.
So it looks like, despite being from a party that is a lying sack of shit, I think she's the right one to go for. In this appalling first-past-the-post voting system, in a tight electorate with the Tories only 2,000 votes behind, I think the fact that the candidate's heart is in the right place counts for a lot.
You may wonder why I'm not voting Lib Dem. Well, I'm not convinced they're not just the socially liberal part of the Tory party. They certainly seem to believe a lot in laissez-faire free market economics.
So, it seems, I'll be voting for Melanie Smallman. I will, however, be making sure she knows I'm not voting for Iraq or for Tony Bliar.
According to FFA there's a friendly match between Australia and New Zealand here in London on 9th June. But do you think there's any information about when, where and how one gets tickets? Don't be ridiculous!
Any ideas?
This broken foot is quite a pain. The flight from Australia was a nightmare with the foot swelling up enormously and an annoying bitch behind me kicking my seat constantly.
Swelling has gone down now and I can actually hobble along without the crutches. This is a good thing because the crutches I was given by Ryde Hospital are terrible. I've got a huge blister on the palm of my hand and my arms feel like I've spent hours at the gym doing weights. A work colleague has given me some of the more modern metal ones, which seem better in that regard.
Makes me think about the inaccessibility of London transport. My world has been significantly reduced the last few days. Getting more mobile now though.
This has been an eventful trip to Sydney. I'm flying back to London tomorrow morning, but this afternoon while walking in Bronte, I slipped off the footpath, twisted my ankle and broke my foot. ARGH!
With a bit of luck I'll get an upgrade, but it's really not good.
While I've been here in Sydney I've bought a huge amount of Aussie music. Stuff you just can't get in London.
Combat Wombat - Unsound $ystem seems to be a grouping within the Elefant Traks keiretsu. From my listens so far, I would say it's the best release on the label yet. Really quite serious, intense lyrically with tightly polished beats. Really impressive.
Decoder Ring - Decoder Ring is fantastic, immense soundscapes. I've been hearing their stuff for ages on Triple J's Sound Lab programme. Glad I've finally managed to get hold of the album. Love it.
Prop - Small Craft Rough Sea is another brilliant soundscape type piece. Kind of like Tortoise and Godspeed! You Black Emperor, only I think better. Track 9 is an incredible xylophone number. The album is probably my fave from the buying spree. If you like some of the soundtracks by Philip Glass, I'd recommend checking these guys out. I'm going to try and hunt down their latest album now.
Hilltop Hoods - The Calling we saw these guys play at Cargo in London about a month ago, when it was snowing in London. Absolutely incredible live set, and the place was jammed to the rafters with happy Aussie hip-hop fans. Looks like there's good demand for Aussie hip-hop over there. Incredibly, the guys weren't financing their tour beer fund with merchandise sales, so I couldn't buy their album. Finally found it now, though their distributor needs to pull his finger out because I had to trawl through four shops to find it.
Results from my Dad's tests have shown his heart is fine. That's excellent news and means his chest pains were probably the result of stress over the last few weeks, and nowhere near as worrying.
So I'm still currently booked to be in Sydney until Monday. I'm trying to get on a flight back to London for the weekend, because it's Holly's birthday and we have big plans for it, though it's unlikely I'll get onto an earlier flight. Still trying though.
If I'm around on the weekend, I'd love to catch up with people. Saturday night is looking good, and this time I'll choose a pub that's not so crap. Maybe the Courthouse?