shred

A few days ago, I noticed that my local Sainsbury's is selling shredders near to the organic vegetables and Christmas mince pies. I guess this is a sign of the times, with all the missing secrets that have been revealed in the press. I even noticed that some of them (and they had a variety) were able to shred CDs. So today when I was passed a CD with a big label saying it contained encrypted data, my first thought was how quickly I could read its content and then shred it. Of course, I then discovered that rashbre central's puny shredder can feebly manage but one sheet of paper at a time.

poladroid westminster abbey

It had to be done. Take a perfectly good picture with a DSLR and poladroid it. It makes the sounds of a polaroid, comes out looking brown, you can shake it (not sure what happens) and then after a couple of mins 'voila'. Vignetting, strange colours, unexpected framing, distortion - its all there. The software appears to be in Franglais too. Oooh - and you can only do a maximum of ten at a time (like a packet of film). Shake it, you SXy Polaroid Swingers.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, polaroid, poladroid, london, westminster, photography

solving the credit crunch

If I accepted the money from all the well formatted and perfectly spelled mailshots I get from Coca-Cola lotteries, unknown distant relatives leaving me millions, soldiers with unexpected cash caches and various foreign diplomats prepared to cut me in on 30-50% of their offshore wealth, then I could really help put some money back in circulation. And there's so many like me. We could fix this fiscal turmoil.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, credit, credit+crunch, stock+exchange, london,

taverna agni and the naughty nautical tales

Once upon a time, there was a naughty girl named Mandy. Mandy had been naughty so many times in that she was banished to another country where they could not understand her very well. This meant it was much harder to make mischief.

Mandy was a friend of a very rich man named Ivan, who was also a friend of the very pink pig who ate everything.

Ivan was from another country and he had a big boat to go with his richness. It was a boat big enough to have lovely parties. Some people said that Ivan was a wizard and could turn ordinary metal into gold. When Ivan had a party on his boat he invited all kinds of people.

Some of the people who came to the party would not usually be seen together, but because the parties were so good they would go anyway.

Mandy also knew about metal and had a big job in a special place where metal was priced. Mandy knew the price of metals but not always their value.

Another person at Ivan's party was named George and he also had his own big party that sometimes needed extra money to keep it going. George brought his friend Andy to Ivan's party on the boat. Andy happened to be a party fundraiser for George's own party.

Of course, the drink and food was excellent at the party. There was lots of wild talk as the rather good wines began to take effect. Everyone wanted to show that they were important and influential people but because some of the people were not really friends, they sometimes made fun of each other too.

Mandy said some things about a man called Gordon to George and then George told some other people what Mandy had said. This upset Mandy, who thought she had said it in confidence. Mandy was furious.

As the party continued, Mandy's friend Natty heard George and Ivan talking about parties and then George's fundraiser Andy suggested ways that Ivan could help George without it being too obvious. That way Ivan could join George's party games whenever he wanted and wouldn't even need an invitation. Maybe one day in the future George could even help Ivan in return.

So when Mandy heard about the conversation she decided to get even with George. Mandy was full of mischief and decided to get one of her friends to tell the story. Mandy had always liked to spin her mischief through others rather than doing it herself.

Natty had lots of girlfriends and told a few of them first and then also put it in a letter to another friend who had a printing press. The next thing, it was all over the Kingdom and everyone was talking about it.

Poor Mandy, though, she had not seen how everyone could get in trouble by telling so many people. Mandy could get in trouble with Gordon, George could get into trouble with the people who organised parties and Ivan could get into trouble for talking to George's fundraiser.

This was enough of a leak to sink the biggest boat and that's just what happened. Ivan's ship sank, along with Mandy, George and even Gordon had to swim hard to get back to the shore. And as the party food from the ship washed up on the shore, the pink piggy gobbled it all up.

Technorati Tags: rashbre, taverna, agni, mandy, prince+of+darkness, mandelson, osborne, yacht, corfu, oligarch, russian, allegedly

sandwiched

A week of sandwich bars as I travel around various parts of London and beyond. My meetings this week mean I should probably take a packed lunch, but will probably end up in Pret, Eat and similar venues.

NaNoWriMo Storyline Collapse

There I was, innocently collecting a few words for a possible story in November's NaNoWriMo, when all of a sudden the press seems to have grabbed most of them for its own story.

Sometimes you just can't make it up.

darkness
amoral
elitism
bullingdon
oligarch
allegation
political toys
retribution
spin
fundraiser
party
prince
insouciance
club rules
poison
boat
tavern

Oh well

Technorati Tags: rashbre, taverna, agni, mandy, prince+of+darkness, mandelson, osborne, yacht, corfu, oligarch, russian, allegedly

spend

I was around Downing Street today, where civil servants are creating new spending programmes to keep the economy turning in the aftermath of the banksters.

To paraphrase: "Short of cash? let's borrow more. Money is printable."

And we have John Maynard Keynes being quoted by mediaconomists as the next worthy idea.

Keynes of the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which (if my lessons with Mrs Fairclough serve me well) suggested a number of macroeconomic disconnects. Savings and investments would be independent of one another. Spending would be affected by marginal changes in wages. Nowadays we'd call it a tipping point.

The idea everyone has latched on to is that Keynes talked about counter cyclical spending (governments spending more in a downturn). Er, what if the same government has already been spending heavily in a positive market? And what if big business has been busily moving all its production and services to Chindia?

I suspect the politicos and journos are mainly looking for a simple label (Keynes? Galbraith?) and that finer points (eg of countervailing powers) will be glossed over. At the moment it seems to boil down to using public spending to generate employment, wages and grand investment projects during the upcoming tough times. Hmm - big projects using freshly printed money? ...sounds a bit like devaluation of a currency to me. Perhaps €uro 2012 is "game on" again for Britain after all?

Keynes had another thought in his theories, which related to something Lenin had said. It was about debauching a currency, using inflation to destroy wealth. I'm wondering if the City used a different form of debauchery driven from the bonus culture, with very similar consequences?

evening

Pleasant chilled evening. Hints of a Halloween sky. Chianti. Television. Reconnect.

el guincho alegranza loro muerto

Dub corrosion click loops and steel drums through a 303 are not making this wreckaged calypso work for me.

Pablo Diaz Reixa's Canary Island scratchy sample fest may be cutting edge programmed world dance to some, but its crass and badly equalized loops evoke more sunstroke and bad times in Barbados to me.

Press Release over substance. To distort a track title: "de modo que no celebren todos". No celebrations here.

Nah. Loro muerto.

not all etfs are created equal

There's an old story about Joe Kennedy hearing a shoe-shine boy giving stock tips and deciding it was time to get out of the market, shortly before the crash at the end of the 20s.

I snapped this bus advert a few weeks ago, and had a wry smile for similar reasons, when I noticed it wasn't for the latest blockbuster or a new hair shampoo.

No, it was for exchange traded funds, similar to index-tracking pooled funds reflecting performance of an index by holding a diversified basket of assets. Traded on-line, of course, with a small 'i'.

Admittedly not as simple a stock tip from a shoe-shine boy, but maybe a 2008 manifestation of a similar market mind-set.

I originally snapped it onto film and only just uploaded it. Maybe this time its already too late to sell.

crackberry

Yeah, my rather ancient blackberry finally cracked.

I caught it in a car door a few days ago and at the time it kept working, although the screen had a rather severe crack across it.

Then I used it in the rain.

Big mistake, because presumably some water leaked inside. It still worked but then one day the screen had a little mist over it and the colours started to fade. It still knew it was a blackberry, bleeped, rang and the little light flashed, but no pictures or text.

I took it in to be erased by the scientists and they gave me a replacement which is about half the size and weight. They said they needed to move my email back from the USA and then I could converge my main cellphone number and the one on the blackberry.

One less device to remember to charge.

So far so good and I'm keeping it away from car doors.

Wordless Wednesday

spot the Autumnal surveillance camera