iMac television

My first hotel room with an iMac as a television. Quite clever really, it had a menu system to play television, DVDs, CDs, plug in an iPod and simply use it as a Mac. Very useful and one box instead of 3 or 4.

The hotel was also running an exhibition of Led Zeppelin album art, from the creator Zacron. It was interesting to see early inspirations for LZ3 and the spinning wheel. It could all be inspirational to anyone creating, say, a book cover.

And, of course, I couldn't resist putting rashbre central onto the hotel room telly, just because I could.

scream if you wanna go faster

Shrieks around rashbre central on Friday night, with the adjacent Xmas Fayre in full swing. It's Tuesday now and I'm just offloading a few pictures from my camera to help me remember the rather hectic last few days. As well as partying, we've had various get togethers as well as linking up for part of Julie's musical road trip.

And a Weihnachtsmarkt on Sunday too, so I'm well stocked with Gluhwein, Stollen und Nußknacker.

tweetdeck

Today's space capsule hotel should have bypassed my current broadband problems, but the special scratch n sniff pass code to their wi-fi didn't work properly. I'm making do with low speed until I have time to phone Bangalore again, although they already promised to restore full speed.

At least the hotel's decor matched the Enterprise party requirements over at JLP's.

Meanwhile my bandwidth deprivation means less distractions. I've noticed that the 140 character twitter messaging is now progressively eating more screen real estate. I really must decide which client to use. I started with twitteriffic, dallied with alert thingy and currently use tweetdeck, although it seems to take over more desktop space and presumably more bandwidth as more options are switched on.

no pebble unturned

A short seaside interlude this morning after spending last night in a brightly coloured hotel reminiscent of a space capsule.

Today I was really supposed to be elsewhere but it seemed a shame to leave the place without a short wander along the seafront.

At this time of the year the chilly but sunlit beach area was pretty much mine, with saner souls probably sitting indoors or shopping.

all the mice go Clang

I joined the fledgling Devoted and Disgruntled ning a few days ago, as it gathers critical mass towards the session in January. Nings are a kind of online collective without the flying sheep and vampires. I'll leave D&D for another time.

It's interesting to see the fabulous Spike Milligan poem gradually turning from nonsense language into vocabulary. With Nang as street for 'cool' and Nong meaning 'twit', we're gradually getting the whole "Ning, Nang, Nong" thing covered. Perhaps Spike knew this whilst his tea pots were jibber-jabbering.

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

buzz crackle

I was called this morning from Bangalore about my errant internet link.

As I was on the road, it wasn't very easy to explain the exact symptoms. I've been escalated now though and have another two phone numbers and a secret pin code for special access to the network specialists. I also discovered that the phone has now stopped working for outgoing calls. This requires a separate call to the phone specialists.

In the meantime, I'm using a mix of hotel, blackberry, iPhone and chocolate bourbons to get some sort of fragile access.

Pass the crocodile clips.

eleven for a secret never to be told

My entire digital communications infrastructure collapsed this afternoon. I was working and then my Thinkpad stopped in mid sentence and went into some sort of deep thought. The nearby Mac sent out a row of little exclamation in triangle icons and the nearby printer/fax lit up about twenty little lights.

Hmm.

Line failure. Reboot the router for the first time in months. No difference. It has to be a BT fault.

Call them. Oh, silly me. I needed a different number.
Call them again.

Hello, Pradeep in Bangalore. Very helpful as he explains how I need to uncable and move the ADSL router to a different part of the house and did I happen to have a spare microfilter and a BT431a to RJ45 adapter?

After 45 minutes, it was declared to be a line fault and I'm told that an engineer will be in contact in the next 4 to 48 hours. I'll be on the road throughout that time, so I hope its working again when I get back. Its taken out Sky and BT Vision as well.

I thought the two magpies I spotted yesterday were supposed to be 'for joy'? Maybe the ten in the same tree five minutes later has a different meaning?

santa sighting

My first 2008 Santa sighting today, outside rashbre central.

I'm guessing it was the naughty/nice reconnaissance run but it was hardly low profile - all the navigation lights were on.

I only managed to get one photo above because of the extreme speed.

I know its still early, but I suppose the countdown has begun and NORAD tracking is back online - more modestly, around our way there's a Christmas Fair on Friday.

wet musical interlude

An early start today, meeting (Yay!) christina for some musical exploits. Regular rashbre central readers will know this has been a long and somewhat intermittent project as fledgling tracks emerged from the nott/rashbre collaboration with various others helping along the way.

For arcane reasons we were in a small and vaguely proper looking studio instead of the usual home made arrangements with macs and lots of cables.

I'd got to the venue at the appointed time but it was all locked up. No sign of Christina so I headed around the corner towards Oxford Street to get some breakfast. Then I spotted Christina under an umbrella staring somewhat blankly at the statue of Freddie Mercury outside the Dominion.

Christina has been in Amsterdam and New York and regaled me with the various stories of both the music and some rather intriguing sub-plots. Best left over on her site though. Some of it wasn't quite so 'workplace friendly'. I'm sure there'll be more as we get closer to a CD full of tracks.

refuel

Late Thanksgiving evening, several of us in an American diner snacking on barbecue foods. Ancient American feelgood rocknroll playing and then later a strange feeling of a cold version of Florida as we left, before returning to a post apocalyptic car park on the South Bank.

Dylan Moran at Indigo

Yesterday's flaming penguins parachuting into a sea of crisps set the agenda for we Londoners.

Chocolate chewing Dylan explained that we needed to get out more. Turning up late for a gig used to get some sham cowering. In London people flaunted their texting as they took seats half way through the opening paragraphs. Not enough time for everything. Go to Stoke or Hull, he advises. Of course it was their loss.

The rapid-fire story-telling, the instantaneous sparks from the audience made what was probably a carefully prepared show look edgy and suitably chaotic.

I'll still sit and watch a whole DVD's worth of Black Books at a sitting and mourned the temporary loss under a cupboard of Volume 2, when I'd only got as far as the underfoot squishies that invaded the shop.

I think the tour tickets are all long gone. Ours were from May and entirely worth the wait. DM4DW.

What it is.

Thanksgiving Thursday Thirteen - a slight return

We don't have Thanksgiving here in the U.K., but best wishes for those who do celebrate today's neighbourly and family occasion. Here's a relevant Thursday Thirteen:

1) We don't get any equivalent time off here in England, except at Christmas, with Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
2) The Macy's Parade is well known here, probably also because of its appearance in several films.
3) The whole Pilgrim celebration also probably originates back to the UK Harvest Festivals, but in England that is back in September
4) Washington seemed to get interested in making Thanksgiving a Holiday after trouncing the Brits at Saratoga.
5) How do they choose which of the three turkeys presented to the President will survive? Thats the one that gets all of the press.
6) Some people like to listen to Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving. I kinda know why. Oh okay, here's an interview with Arlo and the whole 18 minute song. Song from 14:30 in the realplayer stream.
7) The native Americans seemed to have a celebration already called Keepunumuk going back many many years.
8 ) Thanksgiving also seems nowadays to be major sporting occasion.
9) The day after Thanksgiving holiday (Black Friday) appears to be the largest shopping day in the American year
10) The original feast was crow. This later changed to turkey. When there wasn't enough turkey the saying was 'let them eat crow'.
11) The USDA say that America consumes around 260 million turkeys per year averaging around 14 lbs, of which a decent proportion is consumed during Thanksgiving. That's around one turkey for everyone in the United States.
12) Luckily the Puritans brought a drink to America in the Mayflower. Beer.
13) Every long standing successful American TV series has a Thanksgiving episode.

Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday, 82ask, Alices Restaurant, thanksgiving