#119 on men's mags

current mood - tired (what else)
current music - from your favourite sky by i am kloot

the other day when travelling by tube i picked up one of the millions of free papers discarded across the carriage. but instead of london lite or metro or whatever i found myself clutching shortlist - a free magazine for men.

i've never been taken by the likes of nuts and loaded. i'd be embarrassed to read them in public so i'd never bothered. having said that i do enjoy gadgets and am trying to staying in touch culture so i suppose i shouldn't have been surprised to find shortlist strangely engaging in a disengaged-pass-the-time-on-the-tube sort of way.

the main thing to report is the lack of t and a. if it had been packed with more tits than a spearmint rhino club i would have ditched it straight away - firstly because it would have been embarrassing (surely porn, however soft, should be viewed as a solo sport) and secondly linking to this is that i know what a lady's upper portions look like and have access to the real thing if you see what i mean. i thought these mags were packed with bikinis or not. but in fact there was probably more eye candy for gay men than straight.

there were lots of lists - hence the name. top 10 this and that. occasionally funny, occasionally thought provoking, occasionally badly researched but often interesting.

there was some journalism - articles worth reading, reviews of gadgets worth considering and news of current stuff in the arts. all pretty lightweight but all perfectly balanced for reading on the tube.

so all in all a good read on the tube. i will plan future tube excursions for thursdays or visit the website for top 10 things to read on the tube etc.

#118 on caleb's flickr set

current music - star mile by joshua radin
current mood - (on the way to being) drunk

you can find all the caleb pics here my dear hob blogglings

#117 on confusion

current mood - tired (still)
current music - real world by matchbox twenty

i'm confused about my phone contract.

my current deal is with talktalk. they've got me for a 18 month contract but i'm relatively pleased with the terms - calls and surf time and who cares. that's not the problem.

the problem is with bt. they regularly write to me and ask me politely to go back to them. eventually, with the aim of either negotiating a better deal and/or stopping the junk mail i rang them and asked them to buy me out of my talktalk contract. which they wouldn't. nor would they agree to stop sending junk mail. until i got cross.

then the phone started playing up. cutting off in the midst of conversations. so did the internet. so i rang talktalk and reported it and after being patronised about have i tried this and being threatened with a £150 bill if it's my fault, i got a fault report code and a promise of an engineer.

but that's not the reason why i'm confused.

today the engineer arrived. a bt engineer. who fixed the problem. perhaps i should have asked why a bt engineer should be fixing a phone line i pay talktalk but, on reflection, i'm glad i didn't.

the answer would have been more confusing than the ignorance. i've only got so much ram, you know what i mean. or as rob thomas was just singing, "I wish the real world, would just stop hassling me".

#116 on not being a geek

current mood - tired (it's a permanent state at present)
current music - my old man by ian dury and the blockheads

i don't have a beard. i don't have a degree in computer science. i know what it is to hold a woman. i own no cardigans. i have no imaginary friends.

but i do run linux on my computer and am proud of it. not just because it's better than windoze. not just because it's free. not just because it simply works in the way i want it to work (and let's face who of us needs to stray far beyond the word processing, web browsing, picture processing jukebox that we want our computers to be)

and as for apple... i tell you in years to come our grand children won't say to us 'grandpa, how come that microsoft were able to make us think that a computer would only work if we used their software and that it was so expensive and that it was basically crap although it tried its best to look good.' instead they'll say, 'grandpa, how did apple ever manage to convince you that they were the ethical alternative to microsoft.'

don't get me wrong, apple make fine products but by heck you have to pay for it. and if you don't like a program, itunes for example, well tough shit basically. the code is closed - as closed as the microsoft code. they make you do it their way or no way.

think open source.

take a look at linux.

you'll never look back.

find out what ubuntu means my dear hob bloglings and it'll all make sense. trust me.

#115 on new arrivals

current mood - tired
current music - precious by annie lennox

Introducing the latest addition to the Goddard Family...

Caleb Reuben Joel Goddard born Monday 31 March 2008 at 2:24am weighing in at 6lb 11oz. Mother and baby both beautiful and well.

Watch this space for flickr link for more photos.