Coofer Cat's Weblog

You can't opt-out of the full body scanners at Heathrow and Manchester now. That means, if they select you, you have to give someone you can't see a good look at your naked body. It's only a matter of time before someone gets sacked for posting those pictures online. Remember, the person watching the scanner is a £10/hour security droid - not exactly the most trustworthy demographic.

One to think about if you've got children. We Brits seem paranoid enough about paedophiles and perverts - now you've got Government sanctioned one.

This was a joke. Not so much any more, eh?

A friend posted this on facebook. It's a light piece about an ill-advised idea from Nu Labour to get the community spirit involved to photograph things that Labour have done that we all think are great. They were angling for shiny hospitals, schools and the like. The rest of us seem to think otherwise. You can upload pictures into their Flickr group.

After a swathe of pictures were removed from that group, a couple more sprang up. Change we are not allowed to see is the obvious one, but also Caught in the Act of Flickr-ing is another one on the same lines.

By the looks of the stories people are posting, the paranoia about photography-is-terrorism is out of control. There's a part of me that wants to put this to the test. Shame I'm a terrible photographer :-(

We bought the Brüno DVD a while back. We got the player setup last night and watched it. It's characteristically cringe-worthy, and the cage fighting scene is really something to watch. It's another nice comment about the USA, the media and the audience :-)

However, I'm really upset with the DVD itself. You put it in, and for 2 minutes get told that you're going to burn in hell after being subjected to a life of poverty if you so much as think about lending the DVD to your friends, let alone copy it. If that's not enough of an insult, you then have to sit through 10 minutes of trailers before you even get to the "play movie" option.

It's clear to me that the (Hollywood) film industry is even more broken than the music industry. Universal Pictures (and others), if you're listening (which it's clear you're not): I don't want to PAY to watch adverts. By all means give me some trailers on the DVD, but don't make it impossible for me to watch the film without seeing them. Surely you can just put another option on the main menu called "see some trailers" - that gives me a choice - you know, "choice" - that thing consumers crave?

I seriously doubt I'll be buying many more DVDs because of the general degradation of the medium, and this "final straw". I still want to watch good films at home, mind you. They just won't be on DVD.

Happy New Year!

I've come to realise that my knee sweat smells like tramps do. I know this because I have some knee pads, which I've been using whilst doing various bits of DIY. After considerable use, I'm finding they pong pretty badly, and smell like, well, tramps. The first time this happened was back in the summer, and I wrote it off based on heat and the dusty work I was doing. However, it's cooler now, and I'm doing different work, but the pads smell the same.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you. Carry on as you were...

I be appreciatin' the Pirate Facebook - juss' find yer way below decks and picks yer language, and you'd best be pickin' English (Pirate) unless ye be one of those land lubbin' Ninja seadogs!

(via me wench) Yaarr!

CooferCat went off the air for a couple of hours this evening because the PSU on the Cat Towers backbone switch failed. By 'backbone', I of course mean a little tiny Netgear GS116 16 port, unmanaged gigabit switch.

I have to say, these little switches are great. I've long had a 5 port version of the same running CooferCat, and doing so in pretty inhospitable circumstances (mostly because it was a bit hot where the computer gear was). I've only had this 16 port switch for a couple of months, and it's in a decent, generally cool area, but the power supply's failed already :-( I'm not seeing much that's conclusive about it on the Internet, apart from this (generally good) review.

Either way, fixing up the power supply isn't too hard, as any 12 volt supply with enough current capacity and suitable connector will do nicely. I ended up cutting and rejoining a couple of cables to get it all going, but that's all pretty easy work.

Following on from yesterday's GPS debacle, I've been passed a link to GPS cocks. What an excellent idea, now if only I had a GPS phone to do it with... Hang on, GPS is what got me into this mess in the first place!

Sat-Nav (or GPS) makes you stupid. Best of all, you don't even need to be in a car to be stupid.

A couple of months ago, I moved house. Having DIY to do hasn't been very conducive to cycling to work, so I haven't managed to do it for about 3 months. During that time, almost every vehicular journey away from the house has been in a car, with a (very lovely) Tom Tom GPS.

I have now lost my ability to travel even short distances on my own. I took my dad to the station (about a 20 minute drive) sans-GPS the other day, and went the wrong way. A couple of weeks ago, I rode my bike to a nearby shop and went the wrong way. Today, I went the wrong way to work.

I swear it's because what previously required a small amount of due care and attention has not needed any. I just get in the car, and it tells me where to go. Sadly, the bike isn't that clever, and the consequences of going the wrong way require considerably more effort on my part to put right.

Thankfully, I'm not alone. There are many stories on the intarwebs about people doing silly things because of wayward satnavs. None of that prevents me from being stupider because of GPS though.

We're buying a new fridge/freezer, and found one we like in Currys, so we ordered it online. A week later, delivery was due (yesterday). I received a 'courtesy call' on Saturday to confirm it all, and all seemed well.

Firstly, the delivery was late - maybe 30-45 minutes later than the end of the 4 hour delivery slot. About 20 minutes before arriving, the driver called to say he was on his way (nice!), but then said "oh, er, top flat?" and proceeded to explain that the fridge we had selected was classed as an "American style fridge/freezer", and so they wouldn't be able to take it upstairs. On arrival, they took one look at the stairs and flat-out refused to do anything more - not even to try, so we refused delivery and sent the goods back.

Naturally, I called Currys and got passed to a couple of people, both were generally unhelpful and unsympathetic. They ended up re-iterating the same line, that they wouldn't deliver American fridges up more than four steps. At no time during the buying process did anyone at Currys ever describe this fridge as "American style", much less that there may be any difficulty delivering it.

In short, Currys Home Delivery appears to be "only if it's easy". If basically, they can drag your items along on a trolley to their final resting place in your house, you may be okay. If there are awkward corners, steps or other obstacles, they won't bother. Oh, and don't expect any sort of help if it's getting close to the end of the shift either.

Of course, now we've found this out, we can find any number of sites on the Internet confirming how rubbish Currys are at delivery. Here a couple:

Don't use Currys Home Delivery Service
The Lowest Circle of Hell is Reserved for Currys Staff
Although a quick web search fill find lots more!

Update: We tried M&S Appliances. They're basically the same people (DRL), but offer a completely different experience. For these guys, nothing was too much hassle, the delivery done swiftly, tidily, and problem-free. It turns out they're about the same price as Currys too (especially if you include delivery, recycling, etc), so clearly a far preferable option.

Honda's new segway-esque super-transport gadget looks seriously cool. A nice round up of it at redferret.

My cow-orker just said "oh yeah, that Honda thing. Yeah, pretty old school". Woteva :-)