Grombles

I'm truly sick of Vodafone ( after having been sicker of O2 ). Both networks aren't networks in that a network is meant to connect things - and my phone doesn't connect to anything most of the time. Vast swathes of the UK are invisible to it, but especially the barren unpopulated wastes (not) of Surrey. My biggest gromble is about the lack of signal (3G especially) that I experience on the train between Guildford (county town of Surrey) and London - a distance of around 35 miles through some of the most densely populated parts of the planet. Wealthy too. At best you get a Vodafone signal for half the journey and perhaps only 5% of it is usable for data (ie 3G). This independent comparison research explains why I decided to experiment with a new network, EE (Everything Everywhere), who have combined the masts of Orange and T-Mobile: I have an iPhone 4S on a Vodafone contract which recently expired. So I'm due either an upgrade from them or I can easily move to a n...

In the summer of 1986, I met a guy in a pub. At the time I was between jobs having left mainstream marketing at BMW and trying to make a go of Marketing 4 Motorsport (most of my start-up businesses subsequently contained a numeral... 2nd Byte, 10ACT, Calls2Account, R9 etc). The bloke I met, Tom, was a freelance systems engineer (a sort of software expert) who had formed a company called Tome Associates Ltd with another systems expert, Carl Mattocks (now living in New Jersey). Together with an academic duo - Alina Vickery and her husband Professor Brian Vickery, from the University of London, who were much published in the field of Information Science... or librarianship - they formed a company called Tome Associates. The Vickerys had developed some pioneering software with a small team of computer experts at UCL that used an expert system to formulate and then modify boolean search strategies (sets of words combined with AND, OR and NOT that you could use to search textual databases) f...

I've arrived at the conclusion that the Conservatives can improve their chances of victory at future elections by making them as boring as possible. My non-PC logic is as follows: Nobody will disagree that we need more and better national infrastructure, education, healthcare, defence, law-enforcement, support for the arts etc etc. The question is, which party has the best chance of delivering it? The ones who prioritise how we can afford it  or the ones who prioritise doing it Ask the average voter if they want more money and more public services, and the answer's bound to be 'yes please'. And turkeys never vote for Christmas (although if turkeys could think a little clearer, then the only reason they exist at all is for Christmas/Thanks Giving - so not voting for Christmas etc means extinction. But I digress). So it's really easy to make the majority believe you're nicer and on their side. The problem is, countries like ours need tough love. What's...

I was in Paris this weekend to watch England very nearly beat the French at rugby. Really close game, only marred by a) not winning, and b) getting mugged that morning at an ATM for €200. It was about 9.30 in the morning on a relatively quiet road. I needed a top-up of Euros having arrived the evening before with my wife and two (female) friends for a weekend of rugby (yes, I know). So naturally we'd run out of cash since the shops had already been open a good hour. (Note to self... rugby trips are cheaper with blokes). I went up to an ATM outside a post office while the girls stood to one side. I had noticed a couple of teenagers hanging around nearby (one bizarrely was sitting on a grating in the pavement (sidewalk) apparently warming his butt), but I paid them no attention. I inserted my card, entered my PIN and then realised that the kids had flanked me on either side. The guy on my right held a piece of newspaper on top of the lower screen (the one with the keypad buttons). ...

The British press are having a field day. They adore a good scandal. The more surprising the participants, the more delight they exhibit as their feeding frenzies outside courtrooms and all over the mainstream news testify. And when the details about gropes, bonks and cuddles get revealed, even more joy spreads through their ranks as their outrage intensifies into an orgy of indignation ostensibly proclaimed on behalf of a shocked British public. Imagine their collective squeals of joy when they discovered that not one but three otherwise highly popular celebrities, all with 'cleaning-living', 'butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouths' personas, were all going to be tried in different courts, on the same day! What sort of collusion must there have been between the Department of Justice responsible for scheduling these trials and the baying packs of wildly excited press representing their profit-motivated newspapers and magazines. Plenty of titillating details about vict...

Dr Michael Moseley, the BBC medical documentary presenter, invented a diet called 5:2 (there are inevitably also 4:3 and 6:1 versions), but the idea is to only eat a very limited number of calories for 2 days every week (600 for men, 500 for women - ha!). By doing this we can emulate how our bodies were designed to deal with the feast and famine existences of our hunter gatherer ancestors. On the remaining 5 days of the week, we eat normally. So there's nothing complicated about it, and while you're fasting you know tomorrow you can eat and drink whatever you like - unlike every other diet (that never ever work out). 5:2 makes good sense. Homo Sapiens have been around for at least 200,000 years (lets say 10,000 evolutionary generations). Our primate ancestors for a million or two more (say 100,000 generations). Waitrose and Sainsburys, on the other hand, have only been around for 2 or 3 generations. Our lifestyles, and nutrition in particular, are no longer dictated by survi...

and if you ever thought about having a tattoo...brave girl!