Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

Silenced by moving

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Hi all,

another 3 weeks of silence, but this time it wasn’t my fault, honestly! The best girlfriend and I have finally moved out of the post-apocalyptic and post-industrial land of the NEET to lusher pastures, to be correct to an (almost) coastal village in Mid-Essex. While the move itself was only over a distance of 50km, the usual catastrophes had to happen (the van not being ready on time, snow, a sulking workforce, misassembled furniture). But things have now settled, both the best girlfriend ever and me are starting to get used to the extra time it takes to commute to London and we have started to enjoy the trappings of living in the English countryside: world class rural pub within staggering distance, nocturnal silence, nice neighbours, no rioting in the streets and people smiling when you greet them. This alone makes the half an hour less sleep in the morning worth it. National Express East Anglia has so far performed admirably, apart from that night when (likely caused by snow) our train was replaced by a bus replacement service with a driver who had no idea where he was going and we were all saved by an enterprising chap who showed the driver the way (and helped him manoevre when he had to reverse) through the snowy night on treacherous country roads.

Gripped by Fear

 

There is only one small problem with our rural idyll: Broadband sucks. With the next exchange 5km away, I have to survive on downloads so slow that watching a movie on Apple TV needs a day’s planning. Our TV – aerial isn’t quite working either, so BBC’s iPlayer is the medium of choice. But hey: there’s always books. And the silence to enjoy. And no direct means that the Klipsch speakers can finally be turned up a bit…

 

Dear Boris,

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I happen to work in that amazing city of yours. I don’t live there anymore because I don’t want to pay the exorbitant rents or pay 900.000 pounds for a two up – two down semi but I love the place nevertheless and enjoy working there.

But honestly Dude, you have to do something about public transport on the weekend. You can’t continue letting your TfL minions shut down the tube and expect us to sit in buses on gridlocked streets. Some cities have their engineering work done at night, you know? And whoever had the idea to shut down the tube AND have the Lord Mayor shut down the whole of the city should be named and have Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail write an article about him/her.

Disgruntled,

Fordiebianco

Nabaztag, my Nabaztag!

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I have been a keen Nabaztag user pretty much since they came out. My house is being graced by two of them, with Henriette (Nabaztag)  and Karlchen (Nabaztag/tag) adorning the office and living room. They advise us of the footy results over in Germany, tell us when email from the family arrives, give us their opinion on next days weather, play the story of the day from NPR, wriggle their ears spontaneously and sometimes just mysteriously glow.

As you undoubtedly can see, I’m a fan.

Nabaztag Antipodensis

 

Unfortunately the geniuses who designed the thing were never able to translate their brainpower into a working IT-infrastructure, so the Nabaztags’ performance was frequently hampered by spontaneous server crash, crummy code and a general laissez fair attitude to the whole back office thing. Due to the obvious problems the Nabaztags only ever achieved half of their promised functionality. Financially nothing really worked either, and so Violet, the company that produced them, went bankrupt as was being swallowed by Mindscape.

After this I expected my Nabaztags to fall asleep forever, but amazingly Mindscape actually seems to be putting some money into the bunny factory, and Violet’s website is now actually working and there is even talk of a new Bunny being released next year.

I am of course aware that these plasticky computer thingies are not particularly useful, but so is a dachshound or a cat, so I will keep them until their cute little ears fall off.

 

Not a Nabaztag.

Dear Americans….

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…hi there. I know you read this blog, I’ve seen your traces on my geotracker. That’s ok, I take it as a compliment. But we have to talk.

Again.

See here, over the last 2 years us Europeans (and the rest of the world, I presume) have started to warm to you again. You have an amazing president who (while not being able to deliver everything within the first two years but had a good stab at it) has singlehandedly turned around the perception that the rest of the world had of you. I even ended my self-imposed travel ban and visited your lovely east coast after 8 years again and was delighted to meet more open minded, friendly and intelligent people with a thoroughly modern and international outlook than you can shake a stick at, all delighted to be again embraced by the world after 8 years of being the butt of jokes and disliked for a disastrous foreign and domestic politics (and the odd war thrown in). It just re-emphasised my belief in what an amazing bunch of people you can be.

But now this: how in your right mind can you even think about re-electing the same people to congress, senate and state-mansions that turned you into in an international pariah in the first place? Some of them with views that are so alien to the rest of the civilised world that we are constantly shaking our heads.

So, please don’t let the nutters back in. Do you really want to make life harder for this guy:

Thank you for your consideration.

That will be all.

FB