Flying the Flag

With the European Championship football getting close, there's a noticeable number of houses and cars hereabouts flying the cross of St George. I like this - it adds a bit of colour around the place and, better still, rescues the English flag from the neo-nazi nationalist nutters who for years seem to have felt that it's solely their property.

Interesting Choice of Words!

There's a bit of a media storm brewing about Michael Winterbottom's new film "Nine Songs". The upcoming furore centres around the fact that the apparently extremely graphic sex-scenes therein are emphatically not faked, which will doubtless have the Daily Mail et al foaming at the mouth...

In today's Guardian there's a piece about the film which contains the following statement:

"...there was every chance at this stage for either of the actors to pull out"

Freudian slip,anyone?

Gee, thanks Mr Google

I'm not especially pleased to have read that the Google search engine is going to start placing graphical banner adverts on its pages. They aren't the first to do this, nor will they be the last, but I'm getting more and more fed-up with these bandwidth-wasting intrusions.

Fortunately, there are ways to combat this sort of thing. The method I use requires a custom "hosts" file and s pretty straightforward to implement. The page I've linked to here contains instructions for Linux/MacOS/Windows. If you try this and a decent pop-up blocker, or even a browser such as Opera or Mozilla - both of which can block pop-ups as standard, you might find the www becomes a more pleasant place to browse.

Quiet Please !!

Saturday just gone off I went with a mate to see the excellent Mostly Autumn in concert at the London Astoria. It was absolutely superb and I thoroughly enjoyed the show.

What I did NOT enjoy was the continual babble from the mindless idiots standing a little behind us at the bar. I'm sure that I'm stating the obvious here, but I'd actually gone there to HEAR the band, not just to watch them. People, if you just want a few beers and a talk, there are loads of bars just crying out for your trade. If you go to a concert, shut up and listen...you just might enjoy the music!

Have you completely lost it, Bill ?

Microsoft have completely lost the plot. I've had my suspicions for a while, but this idea proposing to allow spammers who put up the required money to get straight through Hotmail's security system is stark raving bonkers !