Stray Dogs in Lewisham

So, the other day, for no particular reason other than arriving slightly earlier than normal (and being a bit curious), I decided to take a little walk around Lewisham...and promptly wished I hadn't bothered...*hoards* of fighting school children (yelling in no language I could identify) threatening to knock over scared looking commuters (running the gauntlet from the bus station to the entrance to the DLR)-

- I didn't dare get out even my telephone in the midst of that little riot, let alone my camera...scooting past I came upon a tiny little green patch, strewn with discarded Special Brew/White Lightning cans where a small pack of (obviously well fed) stray dogs were feasting on heaps of discarded "Favorite Abhorred Fried Chicken" bones, shedding greasy stools over the tarmac -

- drinking from puddles, sipping stale remnants from the cans -

- and performing opportunist sniffing raids on Al Fresco breakfast plates for more greasy abandoned morsels...

Put it this way, on a first impressions basis, Lewisham wasn't scoring terribly highly...

I felt uncomfortable, and that feeling didn't leave me (100%) for the rest of the day, which bothered me a bit...I mean, I'm quite used to London (Per se) and have certainly seen similar, if not actually worse, (I mean, I've wandered around Chinatown in New York shooting the graffiti without the smile leaving my face) -

- and I used to have the pleasure of working in pre-regeneration cash Kings Cross -

- so what was it about Lewisham? My solution? I kept on going back, saying "Good Morning" to the guy that gives out the Metro, finding the local supermarket to buy my milk (instead of popping to Tesco or Waitrose in the Wharf), exploring some of the local shops, and now I'm walking around bold as brass (and shooting, as you can see)...

So, maybe it was just that...a bad first impression... ;)

Finks Links #127

Hurrah, back to Friday again! Almost the weekend...and loads of great links to help you get there! ;)

To get things started let's learn all about internet astroturfing...

The Worlds smallest aquarium...

Scientists try to solve Amelia Earhart mystery via saliva...

Life is too short for the wrong job (click to zoom)...

Skydiving whoops!

Three men vs. fifteen lions...

Snowman slide!

Guy spooks ducklings, hilarity ensues...

What a LOL actually looks like (click to zoom)...

Could there really be a zombie apocalypse?

Rules for putting up signs in the office... (CTZ)

A 1000mph car...

Pi is Pie!

The largest telescope on Earth...!

Two new dinosaurs are being discovered every week!

A Fly-powered clock...

Notes from a Hospital Bed (if you missed it on BBC Breakfast)...

...and finally a rather unfortunate place to leave the bin and an *awesome* LASER CAT BOWLING WIN...!

Hope that entertained you! Have a great weekend!! ;)

Save the NHS!

Come on everyone, let's get this petition going viral - Save the NHS! Sign up (fill in your details to the left of the post card object then hit "Send to my MP"...

Crude Panorama - View from One Canada Square

So I get up nice and early, hear the favorable weather report, grab my camera and rush into the office, gasp at the great conditions when I hurry from the lift, fiddle with my settings and boot the camera up -*AaaaaND*- dead batteries, 2 seconds of life, it *almost* manages to auto focus, then it just shuts off, so we'll have to make do with what the crappy camera on my phone can do, I even stitched them (very crudely) together...originals are below (you can click to zoom if you feel so inclined, very big version here, although you may need to log into Yahoo/Flickr to view it)-



...and now I promise to stop going on about it... ;)

Great, much clearer day...

...and no decent camera...bah!

Office Golf...?

...yep, believe it or not someone just calmly "played through" past my desk with their putter...this is a *very* different floor... :0

Thomas at 19(ish) months

Well, here we are, Thomas is now (roughly) 19 months, not *much* has changed since my last update (still obsessed with food/books/etc.) apart from one or two brilliant things-his sudden realisation (when presented with the dusty Shinco in preparation for possible upcoming holiday flight) that moving "In the Night Garden" could come out of something book-shaped (and on his lap) was priceless (twenty minutes of wide-eyed smiles and pointing)-

- discovering that he can now climb (by himself) into an adult chair to sit and read his own magazines (very clever) and some really cute new vocabulary...over the weekend we witnessed the emergence of "Hello Mumum!!" and "Hello Dadn!!" when he came running up to us, successful pronunciation of "Router", "Xbox", "Laptop", "Mouse" (although that is with a confused face as it doesn't look much like the other mice he has been introduced to) "Controller" and "Remote" (just starting to trust him in the technology/patch cupboard) plus "UH OH!" when something falls onto the floor...oh and he has learned how to nod his head (instead of just shaking it while saying "No!")... ;)

Hello 22nd Floor!

Well here we are! Some higher resolution pictures as promised (of *course* it had to be the foggiest day of the year today, didn't it), anyway, this is a quick peek across the Editorial floor towards the "Big Screen" (more on that, perhaps, another day)...

...and a glimpse straight down at the roof of the Canary Wharf DLR station...

...and finally a "portrait" look at Cabot Square (and the whole of London behind)...

...and a "landscape" look...I'll try again on a lovely sunny day, but it gives you an idea anyway...only two bad things so far, the new desks are about a third smaller than our old ones (even the pedestals are about half the size), but thanks to my huge spring clean on Friday I've just about squeezed everything in...second bad thing is that we now have two more stops in the way trying to get in and out of the building (before the express zone), but I guess the way the lifts work around here is really a post in it's own right for another day... ;)

Bye bye 20th Floor...

That's it, all packed up, threw away about 40000000 bits of paper (things like holiday booking sheets dating back to 2008), and now only my PC (pretty much) is left sat on my desk -

- next stop, floor 22 (well, after the weekend anyway)! Things I won't miss? The stupid sun blinding me reflecting off the Bank of America in the morning, my super wobbly chair and the noisy binding machine that sits right behind my head...

Who wants to bet I hit the wrong button in the lift on Monday...? ;)

Finks Links #126

...and before we even knew it, here we are back on Friday again!

A night in the life of the twin 8-m "Very Large Telescopes" in Chile...

The Human race begins plotting their first interstellar jellyfish...

Discover the Ithaa Undersea Restaurant...

Danny MacAskill riding his bicicle back home (via @jimstaples)...

Custom Living Room...

British Airways flight 5390...

The universcale...

...and following the theme, the scale of the universe (I'll let you decide which one you like best)...

Real life Mario Kart...

No surf today? No problem, let's make some...! ;)

A new Commodore 64 is being released...(really)!

Destroying dreams, one flyer at a time...

...and finally an incredible firework launch fail...(woah)...!

Have a wonderful weekend! :)

Going up in the World...

Well, it's come around a bit quicker than I thought, over this weekend my little team is moving up to the Editorial floor (two floors even higher up than I already am)! Just popped up to have a little peep at our new domain (and take a shot out the window), my new view is West, back towards London Bridge, in the distance you can just about pick out the "Shard" and that thing that looks a bit like the Rebel base on Hoth is the roof of the DLR station...although the stickers the IT guys have put on my VDUs ready for the move do make me look like a bit of a retard... ;)

Still, looking forward to the change... :) I'll try and bring in my proper camera next week and get a better pic...

Food Standard Agency - Hygiene Results

Wow, spotted this over at Hint of Sarcasm and thought I would check it out, unfortunately Tower Hamlets doesn't seem to have published theirs yet, so I can't tell how well Canary Wharf has been scrubbed, but Reigate and Banstead have managed to get their act together and pop their results online - 756 pubs, mini-marts and restaurants (and there are some *serious* shocks!)...Basically, what each local authority has been tasked with doing is visiting and inspecting each place of preparation/sale of food and giving them a public rating (between 0 and 5) based on (and I quote) "how hygienically the food is handled – how it is prepared, cooked, re-heated, cooled and stored. The condition of the structure of the buildings – the cleanliness, layout, lighting, ventilation and other facilities and how the business manages and records what it does to make sure food is safe", in this ranking system a 1 means "Urgent Improvement Necessary" and a 5 means "Very Good" (to put it very simply, anything above a 3 is a "pass")...I guess if you get zero they wrap the place in blue plastic and send in the exterminators... ;)

You can search your area here, but to summarise Redhill/Earlswood (for example), the *vast* majority of places are comfortable 5s, but there are a couple of real shockers, Moza (the Indian that replaced my favorite one when it closed down) in Earlswood got 1 out of 5! Won't be going there ever again then! The Abbot Public House (on the roundabout opposite the station in central Redhill) - 1 out of 5 (thank goodness I've never eaten there)! Redhill Fish Bar (the one near Earlswood station which we usually use for our fish and chips if Flyingpops comes to pick me up) 2 out of 5! Think we'll be finding a new chip shop!

Believe it or not, Reigate has a *lot* more problems than Redhill(!) - *ALL* 1 out of 5 - The Skimmington Castle, Fillz in Bell Street, Katies Confectionery, The Market Hotel, Reigate Kitchen, The Barley Mow, Gates Cafe and Reigate Kebab and Burger House (so that's about half the town)! 2 out of 5 - La Bottega, Corner Cafe (in Woodhatch) and C P Easton Traditional Family Butchers...all places now on my "Do not visit" list... :(

Of course this pales into insignificance compared to searching for "Croydon" where (when sorted by ranking) the first seven *pages* are all *zero* rated followed by 24 pages of venues (including several day nurseries and a multitude of Halal butchers, from whom you would expect a little better) rate 1 out of 5...so it just looks like (if you care about your/your families health) just forget eating *anywhere* in the Croydon area full stop... (without due diligence) it's totally shocking and disgusting... :0

I can't believe there hasn't been more fuss made about this, it's actually a really important public resource - so don't delay, check out where you are planning on eating tonight...(urm)...today! Your tummy may very well thank you very kindly...Spread the word! ;)

You've just got to love Anonymous...

Evolving from a bunch of pranksters (largely lurkers and participants from the anarchy of places like 4chan, 7chan and Futaba - don't go in there, you might get lost) Anonymous really do seem to have become the first true internet "hive mind", a disconnected, truly identity-free, hierarchy-free, opt-in/opt-out swarm of constantly shifting, technology savvy individuals who flock to get behind group objectives (the actual individuals/approach varying accordingly)...So, it's almost like a free-to-own-mask you can put on, and when you are wearing it, the hive (or a subset of it) *might* rally behind your idea, if it is a compelling one...the rest of the time the hive just buzzes around (mostly) stinging people - some that deserve it, some that definitely don't...that doesn't bother the hive, it's all done "for the lulz" (in a casual way)...

"They" (it's important to remember here, it's highly unlikely it's going to be the same people each time - this is just a mask) have a chequered past, as obviously thanks to it's decentralised structure and constantly shifting "leadership" and membership (the hive led purely by compelling concepts) the hive will never have an "agenda", merely a target...targets in the past have been as diverse as a racist disc jockey, a Canadian paedophile, The "church" of Scientology (which, interestingly, erupted into the real world)...all of which one could argue were in the public interest, but they also flew off in some very naughty directions, like Youtube Porn Day (SFW) and putting violently flashing images all over epilepsy support forums (which some people would find very amusing, others not amusing at all)...another favorite prank is to bring down unpopular (for whatever reason) websites using tools like this (which is how a few Brits got arrested lately, because if you run it at home without any onion routing, you give up your IP address, and thus the bill payer's identity), click the picture in that article and you'll see the button to turn the Ion Cannon over to the "hive mind"...

The latest attack is staggering, Anonymous (largely) likes Wikileaks and Julian Assange (it appears) and is a bit annoyed with his treatment, and businesses that are working against Wikileaks and are poking sticks into the hive-mind are being *viciously* attacked...I am very excited to watch how this pans out...

...and I quote - "We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." (troll face)....

Meh - mouth a *bit* better...

Woo ha! Managed to eat lovely roast dinner on Sunday and even "normal" lunch yesterday, but it still sort of *hurt* instead of being really enjoyable (although I could at least taste most of it), my boss is convinced I "just took it one step too far and burnt your(my) mouth off", but I quickly countered with the *irrefutable* arguement "How can 1.15 billion Indian people be wrong"? Besides, it's a whole load better - I can now sneeze without feeling like I have just burst open my tonsils (in screaming agony), my tongue isn't all swolen up any longer and my taste buds are slowly returning to "normal" (although some people may disagree with quite what "normal" is... ;) The only thing I need to get rid of now is this crippling disability to deal with *extremely* spicy food, without which, quite a lot of life (the eating food bits) wouldn't be worth living... ;)

Om.....nom nom bah... :(

Happy Valentines Day!

Lots of love to Flyingpops/Mummy from Fink and Thomas (who asked me to show you a couple of pictures of him this time last year - if you can believe quite how much he has grown in so short a time) -



We both love you sweetheart, can't wait for our special dinner tonight... ;)

xxx

Finks Links #125

Yay! Friday! So brace yourself, because here we go again!

Japanese Sushi Candy (including some cool molecular gastronomy towards the end)...

Meanwhile, in Norway (redefining skating on thin ice)...

Wait, there *really* are pet detectives?

Sh*t my kids ruined...(and the source site if you fancy a bit more)...

Stock Photography - the best of sexual harassment (SFW)...

Omg...not joking - The Monkey steals the peach... ;S

Suddenly, a cat!

How they board trains in Yangon...

Unearthed - Motorway Maximus (got to wonder how we missed it all this time really)...

NOT how a family tree is supposed to look

Wii Fit may not be entirely good for you (or your TV)...

A great new use for Google Earth...!

Getting close to a universal translator!

The Voynich manuscript gives up *one* of it's secrets...

...and finally a hilarious newspaper correction, a highly amusing TV info button error and *ANOTHER* awesome Internet Win...! ;)

Yay for the Internets!!! :)

Kudos - Boots the Chemist...

...near Waitrose in "The Wharf"...they said my medicine would be there at 10am today, and there it was...mouth (caveat - might be just my imagination) already feeling a bit better, managed to taste salt a bit earlier when I ate my sandwich, still couldn't taste egg or sausage however, but hey, progress is progress!

Free Childminding Kit!

Wow...just *WOW*...Day before yesterday Flyingpops went to Leatherhead to pick up her box of "toys" (that she has been due for a while) to help with getting started as a childminder (courtesy of the local council), but oh *boy* - when we opened it up (it came in that lovely white wicker storage box at the back of the shot) it was a case of open mouths all round, the contents I have inventoried for you below (working roughly top to bottom, but you can click the image to see the notes I have added if you like) -

• A "Sonic Explorer" sound amplifier...
• A Kiddyzoom Digital Camera and matching storage case...
• A TTS Tuff Cam 2 digital camcorder
• Two wireless walkie talkie phones...
• A 2Gb SD card (for the camcorder/camera)
• A "make 'n go" (Duplo compatible) remote controlled (whatever you want it to be)...
• A "Bee bot" (like a mini Big Trak to teach basic programming skills)
• Two play mats (for the Bee-Bot to navigate, according the kids chosen programming)
• An Easi Scope Electronic Microscope (connects to a PC, results shown on VDU)...
• A TTS Talking photo album...
• A Silverlit R/C I-Bug (Ladybird shaped)...
• An Easi Speak Digital Microphone...
• A mini metal detector...

(and that's not all)

- she also got (to make it up to her for the delay in getting the toys to her) a hard storage box filled with about 30 (very expensive) kids books...

I don't even want to *begin* to tot up how much that little lot would have cost us to buy (the camcorder alone is worth £85, and kids books cost about a tenner each)...

Urm...*astonished gasp*...thanks council! ;)

Poorly Mouth & Southern Trains *SUCK* :(

Had a really pants time of it during the last week-Wednesday last, my normal spicy (free range-home roasted) chicken dinner caused me an unbelievable amount of pain, taking me about fourty minutes to consume (normally fully nommed in about 5), which I thought was odd (taking into account the fact that I am perfectly happy *drinking* raw tabasco sauce under normal circumstances), but just shrugged it off, however, over the next few days my tonsils, tongue and lips gradually became more and more painful and swollen...

Sunday, I spent a couple of hours cooking a lovely roast, and for all the amount of it I actually managed to taste, I may as well have just gone up to the bathroom and stuffed a load of toilet paper into my mouth and eaten that... :(

Anyway, here we are a week later and I'm still no better, I can just about manage to sip a tiny bit of a cold cup of tea, or cold water and I can just about cope with an extremely floppy plain white bread sandwich (even the thought of the pain a tiny spot of branston pickle would cause sends me reeling) or some cold noodles...so, today, thinking enough was certainly enough, I went to the doctors and got diagnosed with an oral fungal bacterial infection...nice...and given a prescription, apparently the bugs that cause it live in the mouth of all humans all the time anyway (before you get any ideas) and only occasionally manage to dominate enough to cause a problem, usually when you are run down or suffering from something else...meh...

So, already made extremely late by doctors appointment (even though I was on the phone half an hour before they opened, and Flyingpops was assured yesterday that there were plenty of appointments earlier, the first momement they could see me was 1030hrs), got to the station to see an announcement that all trains in and out of London Bridge and London Victoria (pretty much my only options) were subject to delay, alteration or cancellation (face+palm)...

Sat waiting for ten minutes then got kicked out into the freezing cold when the Station Mistress finished her shift and had to lock the waiting room, sat for a further half an hour with stinging lips and shivering body until a train finally arrived (supposed to be for London Bridge but now bound for London Victoria)...it got cancelled at East Croydon, waited ten minutes and got on another train bound for London Bridge, it got cancelled at Norwood Junction...sat for a minute panicking, then noticed that the Overground trains (although they stop at about 20 stations on the way) go to Canada Water, hopped on that (and waited and waited and waited), then got to Canada Water, hopped on the Jubilee line, got to Canary Wharf, went to all three chemists with my prescription and *none* of them had the medicine I so desperately needed...best offer, the Boots near Waitrose said "it should be in stock by tomorrow", so I left the prescription there...

Just checked train running back home...everything is delayed by at least an hour, the 8 and 12 carriage trains that always end up full and standing before they leave London, mostly now *TWO* carriages...there is going to be a riot...wish me luck getting home...

What a f******g day... >:(

Bargain - Christmas with Gordon

Christmas with Gordon - RRP - £15, the price at Tesco Canary Wharf (where normally the mark-up is about 20%) this morning?

Three Quid...! Ka-ching! ;)

New Surrey Streetlights - Update

Time for a quick update on the new street lights, as (I guess) it's going to end up affecting everyone in the UK (eventually), in the past few days, I would estimate 80% of the lights on the estate have gone from looking like this -

- to looking like this (if you click that picture below to zoom it in, you will be able to more clearly see the little radio antenna atop the lamp used, presumably, to remotely control it) -

As well as being impressed with the speed and smoothness of installation, I'll have to admit to also being slightly bemused as to (a) why they were still blazing in the middle of the day (and b) quite why I was continuing to refer to them as "lights" when they weren't actually doing a terribly effective job of illuminating everything when it was dark-

However, as luck would have it both questions were answered when I bumped into our resident representative from Southern Housing as I was out taking these pictures - apparently during this testing phase the lights are set at about 50% of their capacity, and to run 24 hours a day so they can eliminate any (unlikely) failed installations/faulty kit, once they have run for 3-4 days like this (and passed an inspection) then they will be switched to "normal" operating mode, so (if you are interested) watch this space for a further update coming, probably, later on this week...

Finks Links #124

Yay! Friday! Some great links this week -

Let's begin with a nice home-made solar death ray...

Baby monkey (going backwards on a pig)...

Cats vs Metronome...

11 reasonably priced gifts *guaranteed* to impress a geek...

A rather crazy Xbox accessory...

Impending meme alert - Cool beer guy... ;)

Anglo-Saxon London...

Mars crew arrives at Red Planet...

A (real) digital ammo counter...

Mandlebrot meets HTML5 thanks to Google labs...

...following the theme - the Google Art Project...

My car smells like...(wtf?)...

Giant Solar Pyramids...

North Korea...

Stupid Future...

...and finally a giant internet win!

Enjoy the weekend! :)

Earlwood Crime Map!

Well, here it is, after trying (on and off) for almost 36 hours I've finally managed to get a completed search out of www.police.uk...the decidedly dull result? Lots of "Antisocial Behaviour", or ASB as they are calling it (unsurprisingly mostly at the nearby hospital) and a few miscellaneous crimes which aren't embellished with any sort of interesting detail...I'm not sure what I was expecting, but actually this doesn't tell me very much that I didn't already know - for example, I'm well aware bored kids on the estate muck about outside smoking and drinking 10p taurine drinks while they are waiting for Mum to finish burning their turkey twizzler dinners, and I'm also well aware drunk teenagers (air lifted en masse from Redhill/Horley town center) regularly express their displeasure at loosing their fight (outside the pub) to the kind doctors and nurses trying to stitch them back together...but just categorizing everything else as "Other" makes all the rest of the results rather pointless, worse still is the fact that there isn't any information about whether any of these crimes were investigated (after they were reported), let alone solved...so basically (in office/twitter banter) it's come down to a numbers game - "Oh, you had 1260 crimes in your area in December? I only had 3"...but none of us are really any the wiser, it's just a list of how many people rang the police to report a crime...For the insight I've been afforded, I'm not entirely sure that was worth £300k of tax payers hard-earned, frankly...

Still, no doubt it'll do wonders for certain parts of London's house prices... >;(

Abandoned Metro Newspapers - DLR

Yep, believe it or not, this was the slightly ridiculous scene that greeted me as I got onto the DLR at Lewisham station this morning...No-one bothered to move them (obviously preferring to stand than tackle the task), even a member of staff who walked past them checking tickets turned a completely blind eye...incredible...

Save our Forests!

Okay, time to do some do-gooding again, this time, please sign this petition to ask the Con-Dem government to NOT sell off all our forests to the highest bidder...short sighted idiots... >:(

Grand Theft Milk

Time for an update on the whole milk going missing in the office situation...I actually think we have found a solution! As you can see, I have tried a number of approaches to labelling up the unfinished bottles - to list a few - my name, "DO NOT STEAL", the above "Reddit style" frown of disapproval with admonishing query, even "NOT MILK" didn't work...the final solution, now successful for three days in a row (even though he never even goes into the kitchen)? Put the name of the boss of the department on the bottle, not even the lady whose job it is to clean out the fridge dared to touch it... ;)