Guess who managed to wash his mobile phone with a pair of trousers over the weekend? Doh! Amazingly, the thing still works. I let it dry out overnight, then tried switching it on and it's fine. Screen looks a bit odd, but otherwise works fine. Clean too.
Finally a decent dumping of snow. Even Stonebridge Park looks nice in the snow. The picture shows the view from work, with Wembley Stadium in the background.
Well it appears my crack at Google Justice has been wildly successful. Searches for vallandry apartment, apartment les choucas and john and sonia potts all end up on my page about them trying to rip us off. Excellent!
Looks like my work Windows XP machine ate itself on Friday. Completely destroyed itself. Impressive considering I hadn't installed any new software (except last week's Windows updates?). Doesn't seem to be a hardware problem so far. Ubuntu live CD works fine, and a memtest hasn't shown any problems. Quality software, this Windows.
The people who own the Les Choucas apartment in Vallandry, John and Sonia Potts where we stayed for our recent ski trip have tried to fleece us out of some of the deposit. So I've written up a page about it that, after its next crawl of my site, Google is going to just love.
I predict that in a few weeks, the keywords "Vallandry apartment", "Les Choucas" and "John and Sonia Potts" will end up finding my page. I call it Google justice.
I'm out of books (read all the ones I bought off Amazon with my xmas gift voucher) and am back to reading the excellent Snow Crash yet again. Loving it, but I'd like to discover something written this decade that is as ground breaking and exciting.
Suggestions?
After a week of false starts, looks like we've finally got a decent dump of snow. You can compare this picture with this one from the Summer.
As a socialist, I have no problem with taxation. In fact, I think it's an important thing. I don't mind paying what I'm due.
What does piss me off, however, is the incompetence of the UK's Inland Revenue. They sent me a nasty letter this week demanding my (already sent) tax returns for the previous few years. I rang them to see what was going on and discovered that, actually, they have two records for me in their computer system.
Remember, now, that this is the organisation that forced me to wait ten months, attend two interviews and produce an enormous amount of identification to get my National Insurance Number. One would assume that the NI Number would be used as their unique identifier and having two files for a single number would throw up some alarms? Seemingly not...
So now I'm told all their huffing and puffing in the letter can be disregarded. I've written them a letter stating that I'll disregard it. I don't trust these arseholes to not start nasty proceeding, despite their fuckup.
If this lot's brains were putty, the windows would fall out.
Yesterday we went on a Marx walking tour of Soho with Scott and the Trots associated with his flatmate Hannah. An excellent tour which he'll be repeating on Mayday apparently. Lots of interesting history and a good view of Soho in the era.
Afterwards we went to an excellent Korean restaurant on Coptic Street. It might be rather new because I can't find any reference to it online. We had an amazing feed: jellyfish salad, fried chicken, barbecue squid and beef, kimchee, rice and a beer coming to £20 each. Fantastic! We'll definitely be going back.
A couple of years ago I saw Ed DMX (of DMX Krew fame DJing at 93 Feet East. He played a blinding set of booty bass and electro. Absolutely awesome and had us sweating our arses off the whole time.
Well I just found this great set on his site. Mixes old school rave, hip-hop, electro and garage. Really great stuff. Interestingly there's a track by a "Mr Rumble" on the set list.
mp3 is available here.