Beware of Greeks Bearing Paintballs

I know that this is a bit late, but I've just found out that Panagiotis Stathis, the police spokesman for Athens revealed on Tuesday that Wednesday night's Champions League match will be policed by officers carrying paintballs.

The reasoning behind the bizarre choice of arms is as follows

"The paintball guns will be one of the weapons the riot police will use in case of fan clashes. They have the double aim of stopping trouble because they are quite painful, as well as marking violent fans."

hmmmm - I think that the inginuity of even your average football hooligan might actually stretch to wiping off a bit of paint.

What concerns me most about this plan, is that the hooligans will not be wearing their mandatory eye protection. Have they not seen Biker Grove!? Human Rights lawyers have already voiced concerns about the plan - I envisage some kind of high-profile publicity campaign headed up by Ant and Dec.

Technical Problems II

I sent an email explaining my situation to the people at my web hosting company. They sent one back telling me that they've sent the password reminder out to the lycos account again.

Can these people even read?

I had to re-write my response three times to make sure that all the insults and threats were removed and settled for a simple "As I said - my lycos account doesn't work."

You would have thought literacy was a big part of manning an emai-based customer support unit?

Technical Problems

It would appear that the world is against me.

I received a letter toay from the people who host this website, asking me to pay my bill.

Sadly I've lost the password that I need to access the billing system, so I asked them to send a reminder to my lycos account.

Lycos has now migrated from Lycos, to the new Jubii system. I know this, because every time I try to log in, I'm redirected to a web site telling me how lucky I am. The website tells me that "information about how to migrate to the new system is coming soon". Which strikes me as being a bit late seeing as I can't log into the old account any more.

When I log into the Jubii website using my old Lycos details, it sends me to the same useless website explaining how lucky I am.

So I tried to register a new account, wondering if I can reattach my old account later. But the anti-bot system is apparently sensitive to the robots in my lab, as when I try to enter the bmp security code to prove that I'm human, it doesn't work. Either that, or its written by the same morons who did the rest of this abortion of a code project.

I'm adding the developers of Jubii to my list of people who should be killed come the revolution, which basically now reads: Jubii developers, Steam developers.

Moron Convention

There's a moron convention in London today. I can tell because there were lots of incredibly stupid people driving around Nottingham. I think assuming that they actually wanted to be in Nottingham would be giving these particular mindless drones far too much credit.

After a nightmarish journey involving the standard 30mph old guy in the fast lane, BMW and Merc drivers using psychic powers alone to warn you of lane changes and a few new tricks, (I particularly liked the builders who parked their land rover and trailer directly across my road and didn't get why I was gesturing them to move the f**k out of the way) I get to my destination, step out of the car and relax.... only to have some crazy girl with the spacial awareness of a drunk rodent just walk into me. She wasn't on her phone, she was looking straight ahead, and just walked into the side of me.

My two leading theories involve a) Her being a moron b) The Lynx effect.

More good stuff...

Well this week I found out that I will be teaching the programming foundation year course at the university. This is a really good opportunity, as I have been given a great deal of freedom about how to teach it, how to assess it and what to include.

I spent this weekend with John, Emma, Hester and Nic in J&Em's lovely house in the South. I was predictably late, but arrived just in time to take part in a lovely meal and consume a healthy amount of red wine.

Today we went for a nice walk in the park, but we were too full of John's awesome poached-egg muffins to consume ice-cream!

My only regret was that my visit was all too swift, (sorry guys) but that just means that we'll have to do it again soon!

Red Mist Descending

God-dammit you people piss me off. You know who you are. You're the people who sit and chat in the doorways of shops and stop everyone getting in or out. You're the people who ignore no-entry signs. You're the people who stop dead at the top of escalators. You're the people who say it "suposebly". You're the little old lady who sits and moans at the bus stop for half an hour, but STILL doesn't have the right change when the fucking thing comes. You're the bin men who keep forgetting to collect our rubbish. You're the "scientists" who use needlessly complex maths to hide your simplstic drivel. You're the people chatting in the silent section of the library. You're the meddlars in things you don't understand. You're the co-workers who put more effort into avoiding their job than they would expend if they just actually did their job. You're the ungrateful, the stubborn and the many.

You are people.

I will weak my tewibul we-wengey.

When my robot army is complete, yada yada yada, seas running red with the blood of my enemies etc etc etc, rule with an iron fist, waffle waffle waffle, free health care for all, a badger in every garden and a partridge in every pear treeeeeeeeeeeeee.

and relax

The Weekend of Goodness

Well, I'm waiting for the bad stuff to happen, but as yet - I'm escaping. For whatever reason, the bad stuff fairies are giving me a bit of a miss of late and life is looking up.

I spent this weekend with the pallindromic queen of chemistry, annA, in Zomerzet. We went to Kilve beach did a bit of fossil hunting, had cream teas and generally had a really nice weekend. Her dad showed me his swanky new Cobra kit car being built in their swanky new, purpose-built garage, though I think that he was dissapointed when I showed the most interest in the management electronics. As usual annA's mum spoiled me rotten and generally made me feel totally at home.

On Sat I discovered that my paper had not only been accepted, but the review ccomments are REALLY good, and I'm genuinely chuffed about them. I may well post the comments later.

These events are minor when compared to the fact that I'm happy to announce that Jonh asked me to be joint best man at his and Emma's wedding. I'm really honoured and actually feeling a little sentimental.... I mean, grrrr, did you see the rugby at the weekend? Girls, drink.... etc etc.... God, I hope I don't cry at the wedding....

Blogging

I have, of late, received complaints about both the frequency and quality of my blogging. I did some research, (by reading my friends' blogs) and realised that indeed, my quality has dropped considerably since I first undertook this mighty task.

This can be largely blamed on living in a shared house again, so I esentially have a captive audience for my monologing.

Most people have a "thing" that they specifically use their blog for, dr-frank for example uses his blog to comment, (generally controversially) about science and the like. So I looked around and worked out the most popular uses for these things, below is the list, with worked examples:

- Being entertaining / funny: This is a bit risky, I can just about pull off "mildly amusing" in person, so I'm damned if I'm going to try "funny" via the medium of a blog that you're only going to scan. eg. "A funny thing happened to me whilst I was using my cheese grater"

- Moaning: Always popular with the author, not such a hit with the readers. eg. "Oh God, I hate my cheese grater"

- Technical: I occaisionally indulge this, but I'm generally too lazy to elaborate eg. "My cheese grater's density is sufficient to carve through the toughest cheddar"

- Diaryesque: This is publically readable - not a chance, my mum might read this! eg. "Dear diary, I grated some cheese today"

- Relentless Tedium: Has worked well for me in the past. eg. This entry and most before it.

- Ranting: I have been known to indulge this, though as a rule, if I'm calm enough to type, I'm not really at my ranting peak. eg. "F***ing cheese graters, coming over here, taking our women..."

The basic upshot being that I am unlikely to change and you're unlikely to care.