There's no accounting for taste

Whilst trawling the web to identify a decent RAM upgrade, I happened across a blog written by a guy who, it transpires, has the same laptop as me. As is common, I found this serendipitously stumbled-upon website to be a much more interesting read than many of the sites I had deliberately gone looking for. Unusually for a blog it was consistently amusing and (gasp) showed at least several instances of semi-original thought. Blimey, I thought, this is maybe good enough to warrant a recommendation in my humble blog. Except then I read his précis of the gigs he'd been to in the last year, in which he described Rancid as "incredible" and Morrissey as "awful"...

I guess there's simply no accounting for taste. I do commend his choice of laptops though...

Why are there no beautiful women in IT?

Okay, so it's hardly the riddle of the Sphinx, I know, but it's a valid question. Why are there no beautiful women working in the field of IT? Or are there? Certainly they are few and far between. In a computing career now in its thirteenth year, I can honestly say that I can count the number of women working in IT that I have found genuinely attractive on the fingers of one hand, and that's only by using the broadest definition of IT... of those five, one was a saleswoman, two were more data management than IT per sé, one was the IT department's secretary, and the fifth was pretty rather than beautiful but is included, to make up the numbers, on the basis that she had a nice personality, doe-like brown eyes and a spectacular pair of, ahem, routers...

So where are the beauties in IT? The law of averages suggests that there must be at least some. Naturally I seem to have eluded all but five of them. If anyone would like to suggest themselves, or a colleague, as a computing fox, the missing honey in the IS/IT world, then please do use comments to send a nomination... but I suspect I won't get many candidates. There are, of course, two reasons for this: firstly, there are no beautiful women in IT; secondly, no-one reads this 'blog.

The year of regret

As the end of the year draws near, thoughts inevitably take a reflective turn as the world and his wife look back on the last twelve months. And what a year it has been, undoubtedly, for some. Not me though. Suffice to say that 2006 has been Mister P's year of regret.

Actually, that's not entirely true. January was okay. This feeling even crept in February, for the first week or so... but since then it has been an unbroken chain of regret. Regret that I did not seize a chance of some happiness, when it was dangling right there in front of me. Regret that, despite missing the chance of happiness, I still haven't bitten the bullet and put and end to the cause of unhappiness, because I don't have the guts to hurt someone's feelings. Regret that my personal life, though never a giddy social whirl, has changed from generally happy and fulfilling to something you might find embedded in the ice at the back of an old freezer. Regret that I live so far (not actually that far but far enough, if you know what I mean) from friends and family. Regret that things have gotten so bad that the highlight of my week, by an enormous margin, is a weekly game of casual five-a-side football with some work colleagues. Regret...

Life is hard.

Genuine Klass... so why this?

Myleene Klass shot to fame as a result of Pop Stars, one of the first reality TV shows in the UK to be really popular, and was a member of the "end product" group, the unfortunately monickered Hear'Say (don't forget the all-important apostrophe). After their demise, she took some time out to do a degree in Astronomy, before returning to the limelight with an album of classical music (she is a classically trained pianist) and an increasing amount of television presenting work. She's clearly intelligent, multi-talented and, dare I say it, beautiful too... so what on earth is she doing on the current series of reality TV dross, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Is it some sort of vicious televisual circle? Come on Myleene (insert your own Dexy's Midnight Runners joke here), you can do better than this!

Of course, she is very fit (and not just in the cardio-vascular sense) and viewers have already seen Miss Klass showering under a waterfall in a tiny white bikini, so maybe I should just stop complaining...

The World Wide Web. Good, isn't it?

I haven't felt too inspired to write much of late, undoubtedly to the relief of anyone who has ever read this blog before. I have spent a lot of time on the Internet though, and have stumbled across some sites that I would like to refer you to. These are they:

• ChromeWaves.net - Frank lives near Toronto and works as a web developer. So far, so un-noteworthy. However, he is also passionate about music and writes this site to demonstrate that passion, reviewing new releases and gigs, and sharing his thoughts on all things guitar-based indie-shaped. Best of all is his "MP3 of the Week" page, which features an artist covering another artist. As an example of Frank's fine taste, just the other week he was offering Billy Bragg covering Bob Dylan in downloadable form. I'm not sure of the legality of this page, but Frank cheerily offers to take down any MP3 that offends the copyright holder, which is nice. Anyway, Frank has good musical taste, in my view, and his site can only enrich your musical life. Go and visit it.... now! Well, after you've finished reading this, at least...
• AskOxford.com's FAQ - Oxford are world-renowned for their dictionaries, many of which are very expensive... so it's nice of them to publish these FAQ free to all and sundry. Uncertain on the use of apostrophe-S? Not sure when to use "fewer" or "less"? Want to know what comes after once, twice, thrice? All these questions and more are answered in clear, yet detailed, fashion. Seeing how the English language is increasingly distorted and misused all around us, this linguistic reference makes salient and informative reading. As the Reader's Digest says, "it pays to enrich your word power."
• PeopleSketch - poor old Talk Talk. Their recent "free broadband for ever" promo has backfired spectacularly, as they simply cannot meet the demand. Forget that then, and remember instead their TV advertisements that showed aerial shots of people making shapes by standing in patterns. You know, phones, smiley faces, that kind of thing. Well now you can do it for yourself, courtesy of PeopleSketch - you simply doodle a line drawing of whatever you like (try to keep it clean, people) and then watch as scurrying people fly on to your screen and map out your artwork in human form. I can't explain it any better than that, so just take a look for yourself if you want to know more. No, it's not going to change the world. But it is a clever site... and an excellent way of killing time during your lunch-break.
• The Telegraph PM - fancy a free daily newspaper? And a quality one at that? Every day at 4pm (UK time), the Daily Telegraph makes a ten page version of itself available for download as a PDF file, for reading on-screen or printing off and reading on the way home from work. News, sport, business, TV listings, puzzles... all you need is PDF-reading software like Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit. Highly recommended.

As seen on TV the street!



Childhood memories of watching Scooby Doo came flooding back to me recently when I stumbled upon The Mystery Machine, parked, would you believe, outside my local Volkswagen dealership. After a quick check to make sure Old Man Withers wasn't loitering amongst the used Golfs and Passats, ready to mistake me for a meddling kid at the drop of a hat, I had a closer look and secured photographic evidence (left). Sadly, there was no sign of Daphne either though... maybe she was off exploring an abandoned funfair or haunted mine somewhere...

But really, who would have thought that Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma and Fred did all their crime-fighting, ghost-busting and scooby-snack consumption in a VW Transporter Trendline? Yikes indeed.

News of the world

I live in a quiet cul-de-sac, in a small village, in an isolated county that is basically on the road to nowhere. In fact, it's so insular around here that a local MP even suggested the locals are in-bred (I should add that I'm an interloper, not a local). There aren't many advantages to being so far off the beaten track... but one of them is the idiosyncrasies of the local media. I wrote last month about the, ahem, unique stories you find in the local press, so this time around I'll just mention regional television. Specifically, I'd like to draw attention to the all-round brilliance of the little honey that is Julie Reinger, weather girl on my evening regional news programme. I knew there must be some compensation for living in such a barren outpost; turns out to be that the rest of the nation doesn't get to see her every day.

Whilst we're on the subject of news, this was reported by the BBC today. Man marries goat? Really, you couldn't make it up...

Progress

Today is the last day that Southwold-based brewers Adnams will deliver any beer by dray. Until this morning's news I was unaware that any beer was still delivered this way but, now I know, I find that I am sad to learn that this has come to an end. I am sure health & safety, throughput and other harsh economic truths will be cited as reasons. At least the last two horses, Percherons called Sam and Monarch, get to retire, I guess. Progress? Erosion? I'll leave it to you to decide.

Perspective

I took a beach-based holiday last month. Obviously this leant itself well to that traditional male pastime of evaluating ladies in biknis and other skimpy summer-wear. Tremendous fun, obviously... so if you don't want to read something that could ruin this game for you forever, look away now!

You see, I took to rating every woman I saw against the woman I was with... subconsciously at first but then, when I realised what I was doing, I added some structure. I ended up concluding "more" or "less" for every girl I saw, depending how much I fancied them in comparison to my companion. I know, how shallow am I? But try it for yourself (and women can play too): evaluate how much you are attracted to any person you see in your age range (I leave that parameter up to your personal taste) and compare it to how much you fancy your current beau/belle. The law of averages suggests a 50/50 split. Since you won't know most people you see, you'll inevitably end up judging them on looks alone, but that's okay - again, I'll leave it up to you to judge attraction on whatever criteria you would normally use. If you're lucky, everyone else comes out as a "less"... but if the majority come out as "more", well, I hope that's not so depressing as to ruin the very act of lechery for you... forever...!

Derailing my train of thought

Whilst driving to the garage yesterday, where my ailing bucket of rust had an MOT-shaped date with destiny, I had to stop to let a line of ducks cross the road. The four web-footed friends waddled slowly across the street, for all the world like a feathered version of the Abbey Road album sleeve. But I digress - what I really want to get down on paper is the sequence of thoughts this sight triggered in me, so here goes.

First of all, I was reminded of a woman I used to work with in a previous job. She was fond of saying "you've got your ducks all in a row" to indicate that something was correct or going well. She also had amazing blue eyes, but that's not really relevant here. Anyway, she then led me to think of another woman I worked with in the same job who I had a bit of a thing for. One evening after a night out to celebrate her birthday we stumbled out of a club and, standing next to a long line of expectant taxis, she said that I could come back to her place to call a cab. Somehow - don't ask me how - I missed this sign that maybe she was interested in me too, and simply replied that I'd get one of the cabs that we were standing right next to. How could I be so dense?

By now the Thought Express was gathering steam, as I recalled another missed opportunity. Years previously, whilst still at university in fact, I became close friends with a girl on the same hall as me who was just so amazing... we really clicked on every level, shared thoughts and feelings, sat up all night talking and listening to music... you get the idea. One night out on the town (again celebrating someone's birthday, coincidentally), I noticed that she seemed very attracted to another partygoer, yet seemed to lack the confidence to do anything about it. On my way back to my room I left a note under her door quoting lyrics from Ask by The Smiths (you know, "shyness is nice and shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life that you want to", that kind of thing) in an attempt to bolster her confidence, even though subconsciously the last thing I wanted her to do was to make progress with this other guy. Anyway, I got up very early the next morning and went home for the weekend. Within minutes of my arriving back late on Sunday night, she was at my door, clutching the note. Turns out that despite my truncating the line "if there's something you want to try, ask me, I won't say no, how could I?" to just "if there's something you want to try, ask" she thought the note was my way of saying that I wanted us to become a couple. Which it wasn't, even though the thought had crossed my mind. Thinking back to the look on her face as all this came out, when it seemed I could actually hear her racing heart thumping, I think that maybe it had crossed her mind too... so why did I get flustered and laugh it off? Why did I explain the perceived attraction to this other guy, and the real reason for the note? A few months later she went home to the US and, although we're still in touch by letter and email, I've only actually seen her once since, and that was ten years ago this month. If I'm honest with myself, I compare how I feel about any woman I meet with how I felt about her, and so far no-one measures up... so again, how could I be so dense?

By now my train of thought was thundering down the track, crashing through leaves on the line as if they weren't there, as I cast my mind back still further, to primary school in fact. In my last year (making me about 11) there was one girl in class who was so pretty that she made us boys think that maybe there was more to girls than met the eye. To my pre-pubescent self her long honey-coloured hair and chestnut-brown eyes were distracting in a way I didn't quite understand at the time. She even had a cool Irish name that I liked to say aloud, just to hear the unusual sound of it. As Valentine's Day rolled around I made a card for her, the verse of which culminated in my asking her if she'd like to be my girlfriend (I was much bolder then than I am these days, it seems). Cunningly, or so I thought, I signed the card in very flowery, upside-down and back-to-front calligraphy, safe in the knowledge that she wouldn't be able to decipher the name, But of course she did. Walking home from school that night I dragged my feet, so that I wouldn't see her, but as I passed her road I looked down and saw her, maybe 50 yards away. "Yes!" she shouted, over and over. So why didn't I run down the road to talk to her, maybe hold her hand, or do any of the other stuff that primary school sweethearts do? Why, precisely, did I deny sending the card the next day, and say that Simon had forged it as a joke? She was the prettiest girl in school, I really liked her and she, it seemed, liked me. Again, how could I be so dense?

At this point my train of thought derailed completely, as I arrived at the garage and deposited my depressing Italian hatchback. 28 hours later, I still haven't got the car back, as the mechanics find untold and undoubtedly costly repairs to be made. But when I go to pick the car up later today, I hope I don't see those damned ducks - I can do without reminding myself of all this again.