Nixta Sinks

When I left work for lunch at home with JB and Susan and to catch some cricket on TV (since England had dismissed the Aussies for a paltry 190 at Lord's), Warren Street tube was cordoned off. They had cut off Euston Road so that all traffic had to take the underpass and go either north or south (which meant that Tottenham Court Road was also cordoned off south of Warren Street), and which forced me to walk all the way around the long way via Great Portland Street station. In this heat?! Outrageous.

When I left work, the cordon had spread to at least Maple Street to the south, and Euston Square had been closed off, with many people upset that they couldn't get to Pret. When I left, people were still Pretting it, but angry that their Benji's plan had been scuppered.

Now they've spread the cordon even further with the front doors of my building shut and people arranging to open the back doors. Police are saying that they don't know what the repercussions of these bombs not being very explosively violent is, which honestly doesn't inspire much confidence and led me for a moment to the brink of psychosomatic anthrax symptoms, and let me tell you - it's not a nice thing, not nice at all - but that's a load of old shit so I put that back in the cupboard.

Can't even get a RealAudio feed from the beeb to see what the cricket's about. Dashed inconvenient. Break out the PSP and go and have a fag (out the back)...

Down with Samsung!

Nixta's Sony Pocket, that is. Not to be outdone by Dani's magnificent purchase of the Nikon D70, Nixta finally showed that bastard Samsung D500 what for and bought himself a Sony Ericsson K750i. Not only does it not wake him up with some tuneless cacophony every morning, but it takes lovely pictures, is slightly quicker to make calls (but still not up to Nokia speeds), makes texting easy again and can have... custom sounds... for incoming texts, alarm calls, etc. etc. AND it has a memory stick slot (1Gb stick on its way) making this a fine replacement for my old and trusty Cybershot DSC-20U. It even has a zoom, albeit digital, which the Cybershot didn't have, and of course Panorama Mode!

But the clincher was this review by Waseem Malik(taken from here):

This phone is amazing!!!!!!My cousin Aqeel Malik has it so I went and got it too. Now we swap things and play on it all the time. So to all you k750i haters out there, we'll blow you're planet up. Anyway back to serious buisness. It is an amazing phone so go buy it or humayara my cousin will sit on you. Peace out my homies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

In other news, Susan was kind enough to bring me back a Sony PSP from Toyko. Varoo Pack! Happy time! 1Gb Memory stick on its way for that also, especially now that clever people appear to have exploited PSP software v1.50 (which mine happily has installed) to load ISOs from a memory stick...

I agreed strongly with Dr. R's observation that Ian McEwan was a cheese eating surrender monkey based on the article he wrote, but I'm beginning to wonder if he wasn't right somehow.

This morning I got up for work in the usual manner, and made my way in where I found a couple of colleagues and we began a discussion over a cup of tea about projected plans to rewrite some web service interfaces in Java rather than .Net. We'd found an empty desk down the corridor to sit around and just catch up. I was so shocked at this stupidity (since it all worked perfectly well the way it was) that if asked if I needed to potter over and twat the chap who suggested it and was pushing for it but before I had a chance to do that, the owner of the desk returned so we made our usual mumbling excuses about warming up chairs, he replied with the socially accceptable fake gratitude for the effort and we wandered back to my desk and started looking at code. It was just a moment later that the air-raid sirens went off. Some people in the office dashed for the doors, but I stayed put just a second or two to see if they were tests. Dull thudding in the distance drew my attention to the horizon where smoke was gently rising into the air and I fancied I saw a plane. It made me wonder how terrorists could get an air force together. I distinctly recall saying "here it comes" to no-one in particular. Without any warning, and smooth as anything the whole building began to tip over. Tartley said "oh shit", and I looked out the window which was now hurtling towards the roof of a building 20 floors below. I shut my eyes and told Dani that I loved her and imagined her distress at finding out the news that I had been killed. Somewhere I found time to realise I wasn't afraid of dying, though it would have been slightly better if I hadn't, and was there any chance of survival. Everything went black and there was silence.

Next thing, I woke up safe in my bed, drenched in sweat.

Now, I have the odd apocalyptic dream - perhaps one every fortnight - but this was unsettling and close to home. They're normally in some abstract green and pleasant land with nukes in the distance or enormous sky-darkening aircraft hurtling overhead. Very War Of The Worlds (the book, not the film, which might be the same-ish, but I haven't seen it so can't say). Sometimes I'm in a Colorado/Desert pastiche and massive tornados are destroying cities a mile or two away. But this was very very vivid and obviously related to last Thursday's events. I should have realised though:

• Tartley doesn't work with us
• I can't see out of any windows
• Our building is no more than 4 storeys tall
• I didn't recognise many people in the dream

I hope this is just a side-effect of my extreme tiredness after the weekend (I did hallucinate/dream a maniacal phone conversation on Saturday afternoon whilst taking a nap). I should be very upset if I allowed something like last Thursday to affect me in any way. After all, I managed a good couple of years in New York without any problem. What a start to the week.

I'm not sure this covers it, but it's damned near close enough for me, what! Pip pip! Ya boo, sucks to you, Binzie!

If you don't read Gawker, stop not reading it.

Thanks to DaniMC for the linkage. Made my evening even more eveningy. That is to say, it was so worthwhile posting that I had to stay up another 5 minutes so to do.

More shit journalism to come.

So far the BBC has:

• Tried to push an ex-MP into causing panic by agreeing to prophesies of doom only to be put in their place.


• Interviewed an American tourist, asking them questions clearly designed to compare the British emergency services favourably against their American counterparts, and finding out that British police don't shout.


• Asked one of their journalists to cast considered opinions on severity of injuries he's just insisted that he hasn't seen. Repeatedly.


• Stopped some poor chap who could barely speak and tried to interview him and get *his* considered medical opinion on the situation and the injuries he'd just escaped from.

I look forward to more atrocious reporting as the day continues. Let's hope that they're more considerate of those really affected by it than they were earlier on. They seem to have been reigned in a little.

Not for London, but for me, because it's not going to be in New York (though given the bid that was a given) and the Frenchies got another good kick in the nuts. New York would have been a singularly terrible choice, and they themselves showed it in typical incompetent fashion, exuding the kind of arrogance that has sadly dribbled down from politics into American business. Fighting over the location and not even having a location to use until after the deadlines, and still pretending (though I'm sure even they didn't really believe it, but why the hell were they still wasting time and money bullshitting?) that it could come their way. It's what I miss the least about working in the US. Then again, this time last year when I passed through Athens more like a bit of chewy steak destined to get stuck in the colon than free-flowing roughage (or indeed an airline passenger), I felt that Athens had no chance of pulling it off, and at the time the Olympics were less than a month away.

To reward me for all my whininig, fate will no doubt determine that I move to London in early 2012 and have to live right by the busiest roads for crap-removal vehicles and McDonald's transportation (delivery and disposal being barely distinguishable). I'll probably move in just to be evicted to make way for an access road.

Ah, the Olympic ideal.

Continuing my theme of BBC News front page articles (I'm a very busy man and a very slow reader), this spurious court-case in Russia will achieve 3 things:

• Make an ass of the Russian legal system.
• A half-life of 2 minutes.
• Give Astrology a bad name. I blame MTV.

Better news to come here at Nixta Sinks after the break.

Ahhh. That's better.

Mad cat action

My mother, already proud owner of 2 houses, 2 deadbeat sons, 4 cats and a ridiculous accent has just taken delivery of another 4 cats (size XXS). Hot on the heels of Dr. R's, the cats arrived 4 days ago wrapped in one of the existing cats and have been stretching and eating (and discovering other bodily functions) ever since. On my bed. Nice one, new cats. Welcome to the lair.

I am assured by my rapidly crazing cat-mother that these new members of the family will be distributed around the village. My prediction is that they won't go anywhere and will terrorize big old Harry, our current Cat Number 2 and pretender to Charles' throne (Charles, I should add, like the Queen, refuses to die) before taking over the whole village in a Cardinal Guzmanesque manner.

Contemplating a purchase. Canon Digital Rebel (the 350D for UKers) or the Nikon D70. Both seem to be stunners. Both have minor failings (though the Canon's seem more major). But the Nikon is bigger. And heavier. Much heavier. I had almost been set on the Nikon, particularly because of the better burst-speed (but am I just translating that into a pointless nerd-lauding exercise) and the better flash synching and faster shutter release, but reading the size/weight stuff again, I'm suddenly swung back towards the Canon. Good old DPReview.com and their comparative reviews.

But now Nikon are targeting the Digital Rebel a bit more with the D50. Oh bugger. Still heavier though, and not even available yet, so that might make the decision for me.

Pottering down to The Glass House Thursday night was an eye-opener. Some spectacular works on show, and all the more amazing that Mr. Logan actually lives there.

Played and lost a game of Chasing Rufus and Finding Phil on the way to Asylum where I bumped into Charlie and his informed commentary on Swiss Gameboy 8-bit music. Got home, and when I awoke at 8am something was wrong. For the past 4 weeks I've been plagued by incessant traffic noise and police-sirens outside my window. The windows open (and they must be open during summer) in such a way that sound is reflected straight into the apartment and I'm bombarded with every word, footstep, door closing, and engine rev that goes on down there. Come Friday morning I thought the windows had been closed because there was relative silence. I was of course still drunk, but more importantly I was deaf from Asylum.

Idiots and competitions rolled into one. What could be better?