Uk

Rejoice ! After 18 months, Rupert and Richard have ended their standoff and the Sky channels will be returning to Virgin Media. Now, I wonder if some kind soul could fill me in on the last 18 months of ‘Lost’.

Occasionally, I commute into London on South West Trains. I normally listen to music or podcasts during the half hour commute into Waterloo. Whenever I buy a ticket at the station, I always pause the music and remove my earphones. This is for two reasons: I need to be able to communicate with the person to purchase my ticket. People behind me in the queue may not want to hear ‘Serve the Servants’ by Nirvana....

Surrey Traffic Police should run a recruitment campaign with the tagline ‘Join Surrey Traffic Police and see the world.’ This would appeal to young men who fancy the glamour and travel traditionally associated with the Armed Forces but are slightly wary of losing their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan. In August, I hired a car mid-way through my holiday in Venice to drive to the foot of the Dolomite mountains and also took the opportunity to visit Lake Garda....

18 months ago, I reviewed the online editions of the leading UK newspapers and the various syndication options. At that time, all the newspapers only offered partial text feeds which, in my opinion, is understandable but unsatisfactory. So I was pleasantly surprised to read in ReadWriteWeb that The Guardian has broken ranks and now offers full text RSS feeds. It will be interesting to see whether this increases subscribers for The Guardian and whether the competition will be persuaded to follow suit....

During a ritual purge of ‘Inbox’, I just discovered the following email Years ago, in a different life. I worked as an Oracle DBA for a dot com in deepest Clapham. For reasons that now escape me, the CEO managed to get a discounted rate so we could all lie in complete darkness in a flotation chamber listening to whale music with joss sticks burning. Performance was pretty bad and the backups never got done but we were all completely relaxed about it....

I recently got an iTouch and, as I have been commuting into London recently, I have been listening to a few podcasts in an effort to usefully pass the time. Digital Planet - BBC’s short (30 minute) roundup of technology news. Tends to cover new and interesting topics not on my conventional radar. Ricky Gervais - Yes, sometimes he’s repetitive and childish but Ricky Gervais still produces occasional moments of pure genius that bring you to tears....

Last night, I took a number 521, red, bendy bus from St. Paul’s to Waterloo station. As the journey progressed, someone insistently and repeatedly pressed the bell to indicate they wished to disembark at the next stop. Nothing too unusual in that. At the next stop, again the bell was sounded early and rang repeatedly. I assumed the ‘Bus stopping’ sign didn’t light up as the individual concerned continued to sporadically, but repeatedly and insistently, press the bell....

I have written before about the consolidation of my various pension pots into a self-invested pension plan (SIPP). One slight irritation was that the Protected Rights elements could not be transferred so I was forced to hold these funds in a stakeholder pension. However, today I received an email from Sippdeal stating that the Government is lifting these restrictions and that, from October 1, protected rights contributions can be transferred into my SIPP....

So now the whole world knows what living in London is really like. Clamouring with a crowd of 15 cosmopolitan, wackily dressed people, pushing and shoving trying to get on a red, double decker bus having waited 45 minutes. With some idiot playing Led Zep too loud on his iPod. Then David Beckham comes along, takes your brand new football and smashes it into the adjacent park and some bastard nicks it....

‘This commercial free Bank Holiday Monday is brought to you by Magners.’ - Virgin Radio (25 August 2008) Well it may have fooled some of the listeners but it certainly didn’t fool me.