Today someone outside the library told me “Jesus loves you!”. Honestly, Jesus is like a shy teenager sending a friend to be a go-between. I’m going to need more active persuasion than that.

I responded with something like “Thanks, that’s nice. But I’m not that keen on him”. That sounded a bit patronising, and I didn’t mean it to. Frankly I’d rather it sounded a bit funnier and slightly ruder. This is OK: evangelic Christians like a bit of mild persecution. It makes them feel like they’re doing their jobs properly. Nobody got to be a saint as a result of polite “no-thank-yous”.

As I’m too dim to manage an instant and witty response I’m working on better replies so that next time I can appear mildly persecutional and destined for their hell. So far I’ve got:

• “But he never phones!”
• “Yeah, but he never stays the night” <– I think the gay element might improve things
• “I’d like to talk, but Cthulhu will rip me apart if I talk to you. He’s waking up, you know.”
• “Krishna sent me a birthday card - what did Jesus send? Nothing.”
• “I like monkeys. I’ve heard that The Bible doesn’t have any monkeys in it at all”
• “The Bible says that Pi equals 3.”

There’s a slim chance the poor deluded fool will wake up one day and realise he’s wasting his only life worrying about the one he’ll never have, but sadly I don’t think snarky comments about Elder Gods will be enough.

A. assures me that she never gets approached by Evangelicals, but this was the second one I’ve been approached by this week. I think my hat is attracting them.

I’ve just read an astoundingly stupid article by Frank Field, in which he attacks the police for investigating government corruption when they could be chasing terrorists instead:

A successful terrorist attack on London could make part of the capital uninhabitable for decades and make Britain permanently poorer. Yet, while London awaits its fate, Scotland Yard is fiddling away on an enquiry into the alleged sale of honours. How can the Metropolitan commissioner defend this enquiry as the best use of scarce police resources?

Does Frank Field wander London shouting at traffic police for neglecting counter-terrorism? Which crimes should no longer be investigated so that more time can be spent on counter-terrorism?

Presumably if any of this rabble end up in court they’ll answer each question by shouting “Look! Terrorists! Over there! Look!”. It’s how they’ve run the country for years.

The article is well worth reading, particularly the comments.

I showed my utter, shocking ignorance of British history and classical music yesterday by saying “Henry Purcell? Who’s he then?” - I heard gasps.

    Apparently, from my frantic search of Wikepedia, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Purcell">Mr Purcell</a>

    <blockquote>
    a Baroque composer, is generally considered to be one of England's greatest composers—indeed, he has often been called England's finest native composer.
    </blockquote>

    But <strong>far</strong> more interesting (to me at least) is this bit:

    <blockquote>
    The cause of Purcell's death is unclear: one theory is that he caught a chill after returning late from the theatre one night to find that his wife had locked him out; another is that he succumbed to chocolate poisoning; perhaps the most likely is that he died of tuberculosis.
    </blockquote>

    <i>Chocolate poisoning?</i> Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, but not people. Chocolate had only been available in England for slightly longer than Purcell had been alive. Was it was feared as a strange and dangerous habit with terrible consequences, much as hash was in 1950s America (Was there an equivalent to <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/reefer_madness1938">Reefer Madness</a>?) Or was something done to the chocolate, or done while eating or drinking it, that made it dangerous?

    Searching for more information on Purcell's dangerous consumption of chocolate returns dozens of copies of the same Wikipedia text. I did learn (on Nestle's site, I'm ashamed to say) that at one stage almost all the chocolate in England was stolen property, taken from Spanish ships, and that the first time the English encountered raw chocolate they thought it was sheep manure and burned it all.

British people love interesting weather. We don’t get much. Thanks to global warming we might get all sorts of interesting weather soon.

This Thursday was definitely interesting. At work we had four buildings evacuated, a few windows blown out, network failures, and lots of twigs appearing everywhere. Plus rumours and strange stories. Luckily nobody was hurt and everything was managed very well. By Friday morning life was back to normal, apart from the abundance of twigs.

The main impact was on traffic. Railway and tram traffic stopped. Roads jammed to an extent I’ve never seen before - parts of the city centre seemed genuinely gridlocked, with cars tangled up at odd angles or arranged like Tetris blocks. One road was almost entirely filled with stationary empty buses. The pavements had lots more people on them setting off to walk home in groups, or gathered about waiting for people to struggle in to drive them home. I suspect the restaurants and hotels did rather more business than usual, unless they were in one of the taped-off streets.

About ten people died as a result of the storms nationwide, two in Manchester, but it wasn’t a disaster, and wasn’t a crisis, and people didn’t worry much - for most this sort of thing is just something else to grumble about. Most of the news media seemed more interested in an idiot being rude to an actress on TV.

The best description of the windier-than-normal day is from JonnyB’s Secret Diary: Mighty winds shake the Village (a more rural and southern angle). My photos are all of stationary buses but the BBC has some great ones..

Someone had once told me that you wear to work what your customers wear to work.

That would give me an interesting range of stuff to wear…

I can’t stand wearing suits. It’s like being in drag, or fancy dress. Disguising myself in someone else’s uniform. Expensive, uncomfortable, impractical. I’m very glad I don’t need to.

People who choose to wear suits (believing that suits impress or make them seem more professional) are unaware of the impression many people actually get. With any luck the damn things will die out in a decade or so.

Link: Mark Cuban - Why I Don’t Wear a Suit and Can’t Figure Out Why Anyone Does !

Missing Invader!
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe.

The Invader outside Piccadilly Railway Station disappeared over Christmas, along with it’s concrete block. I’ve heard that the concrete block made it difficult to clear litter nearby so the whole thing was removed.

I’ll try to find out what happened to the invader. Letters and emails have been sent.

Happier days: http://www.flickr.com/photos/binaryape/26612012/in/set-604388/

Update: Mystery solved

Last year I lit my spare room with a low-energy UV ‘sunlight’ lamp. While packing up my stuff to move house I noticed that many of my classic (OK, junk) computers had become slightly yellow on one side - the side facing the lamp.

I’ve not had much trouble with the old Macs (apart from the Mac Plus). The worst affected seems to be Acorn kit, even if it’s never been exposed to sunlight. Some of it turns a particularly foul I-don’t-want-to-even-touch-that colour.

This article at Vintage Computing explains the phenomena of yellowing plastic - it’s actually a reaction caused by flame retardants.

Link: Why Super Nintendos Lose Their Color: Plastic Discoloration in Classic Machines

Since the Cooperative Bank didn’t answer my email questioning their Ethical Policy I’ve resorted to sending an actual letter:

Chris Mills Corporate Affairs The Cooperative Bank 1 Balloon Street Manchester M4 9HA Dear Mr Mills, I have been a Cooperative Bank customer for many years and I have generally been very happy with the quality of service I have received, but one of the main reasons I have stayed with the Cooperative Bank is its Ethical Policy. Unfortunately the events of recent years have caused me to wonder just how real the Cooperative Bank’s much advertised Ethical Policy really is. The Cooperative Bank provides extensive banking facilities to The Labour Party. The Cooperative Bank has also provided a large, favourable loan (around ¬£10,000,000 I believe) to the Labour Party. The Labour Government has been involved in numerous highly unethical activities, notably: Supporting kidnap and imprisonment without trial Direct involvement in an illegal war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and social collapse Permitting the supply of cluster bombs to Israel with the knowledge that such weapons were already being used in civilian areas The supply of weapons to oppressive dictatorships Refusing to investigate bribery and fraud cases Pro-Trident and Pro-Nuclear programs Anti-organic farming, pro-GM food policies Restrictions on liberty within the UK These activities would be entirely incompatible with your published Ethical Policy if not for the loophole: The Cooperative Bank does not apply ethical considerations to The Labour Party. You cannot argue that the Government and The Labour Party are two unrelated entities: the membership of the Labour Party select those currently in government and are responsible for their actions. You cannot argue that The Cooperative Bank is politically neutral: you would not allow other political parties guilty of this behaviour to open accounts. Would you accept the National Front or Uzbekistan’s government as customers? You cannot claim that your special treatment of the Labour Party is supported by your customers: most customers do not realise that the Labour Party is exempt from your ethical policy. At present I feel that the Cooperative Bank’s Ethical Policy has become little more than a ‘greenwash’ in the same manner as BP’s new ‘green’ image or the reinvention of the Conservative Party. Ideally I would like the Cooperative Bank to immediately call in its loans to the Labour Party and close the national Labour Party account. I realise that this is highly unlikely. Instead I request that The Cooperative Bank is true to its word and directly survey its customers on whether or not the Labour Party should be exempt from the Ethical Policy. Secondly I request that advertising for The Cooperative Bank’s Ethical Policy makes it very clear that governments are exempt, and that although the Cooperative Bank will not permit its business customers to supply cluster bombs, it will allow The Labour Party to do so. The current advertising is misleading. Your sincerely, Peter Birkinshaw

The AppleTV gadget looks neat and has a good price but a closed product tied to one supplier of content isn’t going to tempt many people until it has some actual content. The UK iTunes store currently offers 0 TV shows and 0 movies.

I can buy* “Tin Toy” and a few other Pixar shorts for ¬£1.89 each, but so far that’s it.

Of course, if the AppleTV box can run MythTV I’ll be queueing up to get one. It’s good value at ¬£200 just as a remote iTunes node, even without the video features.

(*Buying DRMed products isn’t really buying in the traditional sense, of course. You just borrow them from Apple)

I often walk past these guys on my way home. This sort of energetic behaviour is too tiring for me nowadays*.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1pxvlRszzo]

(* Disclaimer: I’ve only ever done this sort of thing while playing ‘Prince of Persia’ on a console. I once managed to injure myself doing beginners’ yoga - jumping up walls in real life would kill me)