The End of an Era

I've finished up working for my current employer today after 10 years in the job. That's not bad considering that I accepted the job offer for want of something better to do. I can't say I'll miss the company but I think I will miss the office.

I've worked in a few offices over the years and they have varied between bland open-plan modernity to an overheated broom cupboard. However, the office in Bellshill has been by far and away the most welcoming. Part of this has been the office layout. It's all open-plan, which I largely dislike, but the part I worked in had a high roof with skylights which rather gave the feeling of being in a 1960's library building. I just needed the white plastic chandeliers to finish off the effect.

The building itself is situated on an industrial estate with a telecoms firm, utility company and whisky bottling plant for company - as well as a duck pond which has caused much amusement over the last few months as we watched startled mallards crashing into the frozen surface. Bellshill is an old mining community and is possibly best known as the birthplace of former Liverpool Football Club captain and legendary Manchester United manager, Sir Matt Busby - the local sports centre is named after him. The town itself has been modernised over the last few years but I think what really made it a great working environment was the people.

I was transferred there just over a year ago along with a few other IT staff. As far as I can tell the only reason this office was chosen is that there was some spare floor space. You might think that having some extra bodies filling up the building might have created some antagonism amongst the existing staff but they couldn't have been more welcoming. I think this may be a feature of small town offices. I've worked in a few big city centres and they do seem to attract more than their fair share of arrogant idiots - showing off in the Big Smoke. In the smaller towns people tend to be less full-of-it and much more pleasant to be with as a result.

Anyway. I'm off to Livingston tomorrow - Scotland's answer to Milton Keynes.

Guide Dogs

It's one of those thoughts that's been ticking away at the back of my head for a while, but I think guide dogs are taking the piss. This was confirmed to me the other day when a guide dog was waiting with it's owner at a pelican crossing. It waited until it changed back to the red man before stepping out. They made their way across, although they had a near miss with a cyclist coming the other way, and then he wrapped the owner around the traffic bollard on the other side. I'm sure the little beggar turned around and winked at me.

I used to think guide dogs were very quiet and unflappable. I can remember sitting on a bus in Newcastle with our dog at that time whilst a guide dog was lying patiently at its owner's side. Our dog was known as The Sausage, although a friend of mine referred to her as Zoltan: Hound of Dracula, and was a lurcher - a cross between a border collie and a greyhound, specifically designed to cause mayhem and round up sheep very quickly. I contemplated swapping it with the guide dog and wondered if the owner would notice. However, since he had a well trained working dog and I had what was essentially a Tasmanian Devil on a piece of rope, I didn't think I would get away with it that easily.

My first inkling that guide dogs might be taking the piss happened at a wedding I attended at Doune Castle. Doune Castle is famed as one of the locations for Monty Python and the Holy Grail and this resulted in American tourists mingling amongst the wedding guests whilst clacking coconut shells together. As half of them were Welsh, a bus had been provided to take the wedding guests to the reception and this is actually where the most Monty Python thing happened. A blind man with a guide dog arrived at the castle and let his dog off the lead. The dog took one sniff at the bus and wandered off to find discarded food, pee on trees or whatever it is that amuses dogs. However, clearly the man wasn't expecting the bus to be there as he walked straight into the thing. The dog looked around with an amused expression on it's face as if to say, "Look - he's knackered without me."

My next example of guide dog Mickey-taking was a couple of years ago in Glasgow at Christmas time. I had popped into the Argyle Street branch of Woolworths to look for some presents but the place was packed out. I tried to get out of the shop as best I could and noticed that it was rather quiet by the Pick 'n' Mix. I was trying to slip through to the main door when I saw a blind man, standing next to the sweets, looking bewildered and lost. His guide dog was by him merrily munching its way through the Everton mints. It's no wonder Woolies went bust.

As far as I can tell, the main criteria for becoming a guide dog is being a Labrador Retriever. The main purpose of these dogs is stuffing their faces and riding around in the back of Volvo estates but they have gained a reputation for being good working dogs - mainly for their intelligence and obedience. My current dog, Eddie, is a Whippet - a breed which is renowned for being very fast and very stupid. However, my dog can speak, of sorts. His favourite phrases are "Ah want one" and "Gonnae no". It's what I always wanted - a dog with a strong Glaswegian accent. The thing is, could he pull it off as a guide dog? Due to his colour, he looks vaguely like a guide dog - except he is only about a third of the width. If I put on a pair of Ray Bans, would anyone notice?

Now, the thing with me in Ray Bans, rather than my usual prescription lenses (which would not be out of place on the Hubble Space Telescope), is that I can't actually see much - so it is a fair test. Walking into the local CO-OP I actually manage to manoeuvre around the trolleys and make my way up the aisle. Then someone spoke to me.

Assistant: Can I help you?
Me: No thanks - I'm OK.
Assistant: Is that a guide dog?
Me: Err, yes
Assistant: He's a bit thin.
Me: I know, I can never find the dog food in this place.
Assistant: It's just over here.
Eddie: Ah want one!
Assistant: Is that a talking dog?
Eddie: Gonnae no!
Assistant: Is he from Glasgow?
Me: Oh, just outside.
Assistant: I thought so.

At this point I thought it would be a good time to scarper. Just outside the shop the little bugger managed to wrap me around the bike racks. Job done!

Family TV

There seems to have been a dearth of decent family TV on lately. On Saturday night we have had Harry Hill and his usual brand of silliness but aside from that there hasn't been much on that we can watch as a family that isn't either brain dead or marginally offensive.

It's a pity, as our oldest boy is too old to be chased off to bed by 7:30 but most of what we would like to watch isn't really suited to him (CSI for 8 year olds? Maybe not.) What tends to pass for family programming are the talent shows such as X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent or the numerous dancing or skating versions of the same. What I dislike about these is the freak show tendency of poking fun at the talentless, misfortunate or merely deluded contestants that show up. It's not that older shows such as Opportunity Knocks or New Faces didn't have their share of half-baked acts but it was left to the audience at home (or the dubious clapometer) to make their mind up without some gurning, half-talent celebrity pointing it out like weak irony with a smiley emoticon at the end.

There are some decent family shows about. Top Gear used to be a dull as dishwater motoring magazine but has been transformed into a boys-own silly-o-rama, with space shuttles made from Reliant Robins and a caravan that converts to a Zeppelin. It still has the occasional nod towards it's motoring origins but it's actually closer to The Goodies. The presenters are particularly well suited. Jeremy Clarkson is the main petrol-head with his right-of-Genghis oafishness but it's actually the other two that make it worth watching. James May has done some great TV on his own - particularly his toy sagas - and Richard Hammond is a modern-day John Noakes. We have just watched his latest series, Invisible Worlds, which is a superb mix of science with entertaining visuals and Hammond's likeable, eager personality. Physicist Brian Cox has also been doing a great series on the Solar System.

I think the big gap has been on family orientated drama. For the most part, this seems to be Soap Opera which I really can't stand and, for the most part, bores the kids to tears. The BBC has made a good effort of Saturday night drama with Doctor Who, Robin Hood and Merlin. Robin Hood didn't work for me but the other two have been great fun. Doctor Who is back next week (which should, at least, give me something to blog about). The trick of good family drama is to make something that kids want to watch but make it intelligent enough for the whole family. A great example of this was All Creatures Great and Small but many writers either make something juvenile or stick too many adult references in and force it post-watershed. Is it that hard to do?

Anyway, I looked up an old 1970's Saturday night schedule and how is this: Basil Brush, News & Sport, Doctor Who, The Generation Game, The Two Ronnies, Mike Yarwood, Match of the Day, Parkinson. Times and tastes change but do you think they could match that?

Emails

I've changed my email address - for the first time in about 8 years. The existing one is still working for the moment (which is just as well) buy I hadn't realised what a complete pain in the neck this was going to be. I still haven't sent out an email to all my contacts but what is really causing me grief is the number of firms and websites which I'm signed up to - many of which now use email addresses as their user ID.

On the face of it, having the email address as the user ID is a good idea. I have enough trouble remembering passwords and, for infrequently used sites, I can often not remember my login ID either. This leads to either a huge number of reminder emails - half of which will be lost in my Spam filter - or just re-registering with the site again. Many of the ones that I do have problems remembering are actually for important things like credit card accounts and utilities. So I can't even just ignore them and give up as a bad loss.

My first deadline for this is the end of this month. I will be swapping employers so my old works email will stop working. Very few people actually use this (at least very few that I care about) so this isn't such a great loss but I do have many registrations with firms like Microsoft and Oracle which are a pain in the neck to set up and will probably take me the best part of a day to go through again. After that I may be swapping my broadband provider and, since I have my email registered with them, my personal email address goes down the Suwannee as well. This is more of an issue as I have always tried to keep anything non-work related on that email and I really can't remember everything I've subscribed to off the top of my head (although given the amount of Spam I get that may be a good thing).

Anyway, I've tried amending this blog. If this is the last ever entry, you'll know that I've cocked it up.

More of that Jazz

I've been listening to a lot of Jazz over the last month since I bought a pile of CDs with an Amazon voucher I received for my birthday. In fact, I probably ended up with more than I bargained for as Jazz CDs, particularly of older recordings, are dirt cheap. So far, I've been pretty impressed with what I've heard.

I started off with a Miles Davies compilation. Davies was a mixed bag. The first disk covers the period from the mid 50's to mid 60's and is wonderful. Much of it sounds as if it belongs in a Film Noir and, in fact, he did compose for them although I don't know if any of these recordings were used. The music is soft, soulful and melodic - I could listen to it over and over again. The second disk of the set covers the late 60's to mid 70's and at first I wasn't at all fussed with it. In fairness, it improves at subsequent listenings but much of it is of such a free-form nature that there are hardly any noticeable structures to latch on to. One track sounds as if the musicians turned up to the studio on different days without knowing what the others were up to and the emotional trumpet playing had descended into a noise like a balloon slowly deflating - and this goes on for 20 minutes. Other tracks were better but I wouldn't say it was exactly easy listening.

I then went for a John Coltrane disk (he collaborated with Davies on Kind of Blue). This is lovely. He establishes themes at ease or even uses well known melodies (for example, Favourite Things from The Sound of Music) and then improvises at will but without ever losing the original tune. I have this disk in the car at the moment. I also went for a Herbie Hancock anthology. He has more pop sensibilities (he had a hit in the 1980's with Rockit). The disk has a vast array of styles from the Miles Davies band, collaborations with Stevie Wonder, through funk and even hip-hop. All eminently listenable and leaving me wanting to hear more.

The one surprise was how taken I was with the Jazz singers. I went for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong Best Of disks (both double CDs again). I think what surprised me with these is how much I knew. I was familiar with a few Satchmo songs but I found that I knew nearly everything. Ella Fitzgerald is also very familiar although I discovered that I know some of the songs on the disk by different singers - for example, the version of Cry Me a River I am familiar with is actually by Julie London. I think in the past I've associated Jazz singing with Rat Pack singers like Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin which isn't really my sort of thing - but then I do like Nina Simone and Nat King Cole (two more disks to look out for).

The oldest recordings I bought were by Django Reinhardt. This was a three disk set with one covering the 1930's, one the 40's and the third the 50's. Incredibly, the whole thing was only £4. As I play the guitar, I can appreciate the technical skill involved but with Reinhardt this is complicated by the fact that he only had full use of two fingers on his left hand - somehow he produced a sound that I would struggle to play with all my fingers (it's my right hand were not all the fingers work). The choice of tunes is inspired and has a more European flavour, incorporating many popular French songs and many influences from his own Roma culture. He also recorded quite a few tracks with Stéphane Grappelli, which is a bonus.

The only disk that I haven't taken to is Charlie Parker. I know he is a major Jazz influence and I enjoyed Clint Eastwood's film, Bird, but I just haven't been able to latch on to anything on the disks which takes my fancy. I think part of the problem might be the mix on the disks - the rhythm section is very low down and without being able to establish that base it just sounds like aimless twiddling - often, more to show off than anything of musical value. I'll have to listen to them again - it may grow on me yet.

So that's me on the road to New Orleans, as it were. It's positive as I enjoy the music and would definitely like to hear more. Of course I would also like a better recording of Verdi's Aida, and some early Dylan, and a Buzzcocks compilation, and a curiosity to know what Marilyn Manson is about, and a really strange desire to listen to some Serge Gainsbourg. It's all down to money, really - but I will be listening to more of that Jazz.

I also bought a Johnny Cash album. It was bloody brilliant!

Last Chance to See

The nice thing about being given books as presents is that it will often get me to read things I would never have thought of lending from the local library or even buying myself. A case in point is Mark Carwardine's Last Chance to See which was based on the TV series he made last year with Stephen Fry. I have to say that this passed me by completely and I will have to keep an eye out for it in case it is repeated.

Oddly enough, I have read a book by the same name, which was written by the late Douglas Adams along with Mark Carwardine, and the aim of this book and TV series was to update the original, but with Fry taking over from Adams as the intrepid naturalists' side kick, on a world tour to see (for possibly the last time) some of the most endangered and yet intriguing species. Sadly, since the first book was written two of the featured animals can no longer be seen: The Northern White Rhino no longer survives in the wild and the Yangtze River Dolphin is no longer with us at all.

I enjoy reading natural history books but this one has one major advantage going for it - lots of big colour pictures. Even so, it's difficult to capture quite how unique some of these animals are. Take, for example, the Manatee. This animal, also known as the seacow, has to bee seen to be believed. I saw one a few years ago at an aquarium in Australia and I could have sworn that this was from another planet. In fact, it is a mammal and so far more closely related to us than a fish or a lizard. However, Mark Carwardine does manage to get across just how awe inspiring some of these creatures are - for example, explaining the a single Blue Whale has the same body mass as the entire human population of the Scilly Isles.

The other creature that Carwardine gives an amusing portrayal of is the common or garden Stephen Fry. He appears to be somewhat like his TV persona: witty, amusing, slightly oafish, technology obsessed, occasionally irritable and one who likes their creature comforts (which I can rather relate to). I think it is just as well that it was Carwardine rather than Fry that writes the book as he still manages to get across the trials and tribulations of conservation whilst still being very amusing in his own right.

The only downside to the book is towards the end where the rather fruitless task of conservation is made clear. The fact that many of the most intriguing species have been pushed to the brink is tragedy in itself, but so often it is not the law of unintended consequences that has caused the problem but sheer, wanton, greed obsessed stupidity on the part of mankind. One need only look at the depletion of North Sea fish stocks to realise that we never learn the lesson until it is too late. The book closes with the sobering thought that even the iconic African Lions' numbers have fallen so catastrophically over the last century that, if it continues at it's current rate, we will only have 20 years until it is our Last Change to See them.

Facebook

I'm rather losing faith in Facebook. It strikes me as rather a nice idea and I have, in all fairness, heard from many people who I lost contact with years ago. However, it seems to be ruined by the large amount of spam, rubbish and scams that intrude on to the personal trivia that the system is used for.

The latest "thing I don't trust" is a password reset email that I received. I didn't request this but, whilst I can't see any obvious phishing attempt, I certainly don't want to click on the link to find out. I receive other emails from Facebook - should I trust these as well? This is the tip of the iceberg. I have fairly high security settings on my PC and the one thing that comes up as a potential threat time and again is related to Facebook

Then there is the content. I'm interested in what people are getting up to in their lives but I really can't be bothered as to what they are doing in Farmville or Mafia Wars. My wife has a selection of on-line aquaria which she constantly tends too. We also have a real aquarium but the fish could be lying tits-up in an algae infested lagoon before she took more interest in them than the virtual versions.

Finally, there is the advertising. If there is one thing that is going to put me off a product it's an advert on Facebook. Maybe, they are aiming at the hip, bright young things but most of the adverts look about as reliable as the on-line pharmacy, Russian bride and Willie extension emails which infest my in-box and end up hitting the trash-can icon before I've read past the subject line.

I'll stick with Facebook as far as it goes but I don't trust the thing any further than I could spit at it.

MP3 is not for me

I've owned an MP3 player for around a year now. It's actually a Walkman device that's built into my phone. It works well enough but I still haven't filled any more than a quarter of it's memory and use it rather infrequently. It's rather odd as I used to have a Walkman cassette player which I used all the time but I've never really taken to an MP3 player at all. For some reason it doesn't seem to fit in with the way I listen to music.

I'm not a huge fan of the MP3 format. It is often described as near-CD sound quality but I can tell the difference quite easily. It tends to be the sibilant sounds that show this up mostly. For this reason, many digital re-masters now try to accommodate this. It can work quite well if done in the initial mix (Rammstein's latest album is like this - although this leads to a truly brutal sound) but it can be applied to older recording. The Beatles remixes have compressed the sound to accommodate MP3 but, from what I've heard of them, they have made a real mess of the mix. However, I can get used to this minor distortion - in a similar way that I became accustomed to the racket that noctule bats made when I lived in Newcastle. After all, I mainly listen to music in the car and it's not as if that is conducive towards high fidelity.

One aspect that stops me using the MP3 player more is the discomfort that the ear pieces cause. I've tried various types of headphone but they all cause some form of ear-hole pain. The only ones I can use well are the big studio-style cans which don't exactly lend themselves to portability. There is always the option of plugging the player into another device - a hi-fi or computer for example. In fact, I find it easier to listen to music if I'm not actively attached to the device which is playing it. But this doesn't account for why I dislike the whole MP3 concept.

If I come down to it, the one thing that I can't take to is the hassle factor. If the MP3 player could house all the music I would ever possibly use I'd just get on with it and rip every CD I own to the player. However, all the players have some limitation (although I-Pods do have a large memory). Even if I had enough memory for everything then I would still have to rip new CDs or back up everything whenever I downloaded something new - in which case I may as well have the CDs as a ready made backup device. When simply listening to CDs on their own I can grab whatever takes my fancy and listen to those in the car. Of course, I don't have my entire music collection to hand but a handful of CDs will keep me amused for quite a while.

The one thing that may change my mind is streaming services such as Spotify. The idea here is that, for a monthly subscription, you can have access to any music you like without further charge (as long as the subscription remains current). This really appeals to me but I do have some reservations. For example, what music is not included? I believe that the Beatles catalogue is not available. Will music remain available on an ongoing basis or is it subject to censorship? Further, what would happen to the subscription rates in the long term. Spotify premium (the advert free system) is available at £10 per month. As much as this appeals to me, I can buy a lot of new music for £120 per year. If it is a matter of curiosity, there are many other avenues available to try out new music for free before buying.

So that's me. I'm not exactly a Luddite but I do tend to be quite conservative where technology is involved. If an innovation can be entirely life enhancing then I will take to it wholeheartedly, but technology should serve me and not the other way around.

Michael Foot

I was rather sad to hear of the death of Michael Foot today. Whatever you think of his politics, he always came across as thoughtful, considered and polite. He was also a great political orator - a skill that seems lacking in today's sound-bite media culture. I'm not sure how he will be remembered by history. I would say that he was the last political leader in this country to actually be honest in his election manifesto - and look where that got him!

I have noticed quite a few people mentioning that he showed great disrespect to our war dead by wearing a donkey jacket at the Cenotaph. This is well remembered by many people and was often brought up by the right-wing press when they wanted to give him a kicking. There was one problem, though. He never actually wore a donkey jacket to the Cenotaph. It was a green duffel coat - sensible attire for a man who, even then, was in his late 60's and was having to stand out for several hours on a cold November day. I must admit that it would have looked a tad smarter if he had buttoned the thing up but it was certainly far removed from the typical navvy attire that the press was attempting to associate him with.

It seems rather odd that certain "facts" seem to stick with people. Stephen Fry has made an entire television series out of this with the panel show QI and it seems that the general public are quite keen to run Alan Davies style into obvious but entirely wrong impressions of the truth. I know I have tried many times in vain to trace down the origin behind some of the most absurd sounding stories. Sometimes even Snopes can get it wrong.

The advent of the internet should have made it easier to get at the facts but it actually seems to be an ideal medium for some of the more pernicious memes to run virally out of control.