Revs

Dear Bill

Today, for the zillionth time, I listened to the theme tune of The Archers, “Barwick Green” and want it to be the last time I have to endure the same version repeated.

Why do we have to hear the same thing every time? You could be our saviour.

I envisage a future in which each airing of The Archers starts with one of fifty different renditions of the theme tune. One day a Slayer version, another day a Kraftwerk version, then a Cockney version, Chris de Burgh, apocalyptic rave, smoky jazz… you know the list. If the BBC’s budget could stretch to it, a sequence of orchestral versions could evoke so many moods and textures.

You are the only person who could grab a project like this and save us from mundanity.

Fondest regards,

Matt

I’m a big-time procrastinator – if it were an Olympic event I’d be representing my country. But I’m constantly fighting to keep procrastination at bay, and I recently threw together a new website where I can vent my spleen:

AntiProcrastination.com

I’m not saying you will find the answers to the big questions about how to solve procrastination problems, but I can offer a sympathetic ear and a few hints and tips.

Government plans for an Internet porn block “at source” seem oddly misshapen.

The proposal to remove access to pornographic material was raised by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey in his interview with the Sunday Times when he said:

“This is a very serious matter… I think it’s very important that it’s the ISPs that come up with solutions to protect children.”

Surely it is parent’s responsibility for protecting their children – not a reliance on a big brother state.

I must have a very common name, because in my Gmail account I receive an awful lot of emails addressed to other people called Matt Williams.

Rather than ignore them, I am compelled to reply as if I am the Matt Williams they think I am, but giving a few small clues that I might not be.

For example, this is one I received today from someone called Craig, that he sent to a circulation list of 26 people:

Sorry to have missed Breakfast today, but I was home with a Temp and the bug……hopefully I will see you all this Saturday at Island Middle School for the Re-org and vote on candidates…….

Craig Dougherty

This was my reply:

Hi Craig

I will be sorry to hear about your temp bug – I hope you make a speedy recovery.

Because I am currently travelling in time and don’t get back until last week I probably won’t be there for the vote. Also I don’t know where Island Middle School is (is it somewhere in eighteenth century Belgium? I want to set the controls on my time machine to an approximately correct value so I pick up your reply email – you know how these things are).

Fond regards,

Matt

ps. I built an ant farm in my loft and one of my ants has gone missing. He answers to the name of Charles (which leads me to believe he is male) and in temperament he is like a cat. Please keep an eye out for him. Or her.

His reply back to me:

Don’t hit reply all next time, some can’t tell you are kidding !!!! ::))

Mercer Island!!!

You out of country?

Drop in and say Hi when you can, Time Bandit……….

Craig

The question is, do I send another reply, and if so, what do I say?

Now that’s a small 16Gb flash drive: LaCie MosKeyto 16GB

On 18th November 2010 I asked when my contract expires because I had received a letter from Three saying the price of my monthly contract had increased. I had several concerns about this price increase.

1. Three claim a right to increase my fixed price service that is confusingly expressed in their contract, it is not what I signed up for when I agreed my contract with them. The terminology for the right they claim is expressed in an obtuse way. I think it is an unfair contract term.

2. There is no corresponding right under my contract to decrease the amount that I pay, and I think most people would agree with me that this lack of equality under a consumer contract is disproportionate and unfair.

3. The contract itself is not available in a way that is accessible.

Three terms and conditions

If you print it the typeface is ridiculously small, and if you try and navigate the document on screen it is unintuitive. I think Three have deliberately published it in a way that is unusable in print and on screen. I presume when Three have it printed professionally and send it out they send accessible versions that occupy more than two A4 pages.

4. I need a better excuse from a utility provider that I am receiving a price increase than that it is because of inflation. I think a more honest explanation would be that the price has been rounded up to a figure that matches a psychological price point, and they have taken the liberty of applying this to existing customers as well as new customers.

So, I asked for the expiry date of my contract so that I will be able to vote with my feet when my fixed term expires and select a different mobile broadband service provider.

By the way, the letter I received from Three described an increase by 0.56p a month (ex VAT) but the price increase shown on the back of the letter is actually a hundred times this amount, at 56p.

I was just trawling through an old backup of this website and found a funny article I wrote about 3 years ago:

I am accustomed to wearing clothes that are easy to wash, but after buying a dozen black T shirts from The Gap and then looking like I only owned one T shirt that I wore all the time, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a different T shirt, and as a result have learned a big lesson about reading the washing instructions before simply throwing a new garment in the wash.

I bought three T shirts and a pair of shorts. It was one of the T shirts that was the culprit, made by Mantaray – an attractive reddish orange number with a picture of a Volkswagen Caravanette on the front.

Here are the washing instructions:

This one contains most of the information I now really wish I hadn’t ignored.

Label 1:

There are five pictures; a 40 degree bucket of water, a crossed out triangle, a crossed out square with a circle in the middle, an iron with two dots on it and a crossed out circle. Then the following text:

Wash as wool cycle
Warm iron on reverse
Reshape whilst damp
Do not tumble dry
Do not iron print
Wash separately
Wash inside out
Do not pile whilst damp
Remove promptly from washing
Machine at end of cycle
Do not rub isolated stains
Dry away from direct sunlight

I can only claim to understand two out of the five washing symbols, the temperature thing and the picture of the iron. The others are a mystery.

So I was supposed to wash my cotton T shirt as if it was made of wool. I don’t iron ANYTHING, so the ironing instructions were not relevant to me, although it’s worth observing that the picture of the Volkswagen is off to the top left, so if I didn’t iron that but did iron everything else then it would probably look a little odd.

The big warning hidden in there though is that I should have washed it separately. It can’t go in with anything else. And now I know why. The reddish orange dye is totally temporary. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it was coloured white when I took it out of the machine, because everything else had taken on its colour, including my new green camouflage print shorts.

What we are looking at here is the princess and the pea of the T shirt world. But it doesn’t stop there because there are some other quite significant warnings on the second label. The good thing about this second label is that the print is at least visible, unlike label 1. The bad thing is that it has the sort of warning that I would have expected to have signed in triplicate before taking ownership of the garment, it really is that severe.

Label 2:

This garment has been dyed using a special process. The colour will fade with each wash giving a unique aged appearance. Due to this dye process it is advisable to avoid direct contact with light Coloured materials and upholstery. Please follow the wash care instructions inside the garment.

If I had been bothered to read the serious warning that was hidden in there I would have learned that there are some things I shouldn’t lean against while wearing this T shirt, and I should be very careful about relaxing back on a settee because I am likely to stain it reddish orange. When you think about it, many relaxed positions that you put your body in mean that you are leaning against something, so it’s worth thinking about just how much relaxation you are going to be able to do while wearing this T shirt.

I am seriously worried that my skin will go reddish orange if I carry on wearing this thing.

The good thing is that I now have a whole collection of clothes in a new and unique shade of reddish orange. The bad thing is that I can’t bring myself to run a whole wash cycle just for one garment.

So I have the following warning that I think Mantaray should get customers to sign before taking ownership of this particular garment:

Warning

Only buy this garment if you want to have more reddish orange in your life, such as on the upholstery in your house, in your friend’s house, at your place of work, in the places you visit. Seriously, don’t go out in the rain in this thing, or get it wet, because you are liable to cause an ecological disaster. You really will not believe how reddish orange this thing is. And the reddish orange likes to escape at any opportunity, so carefully monitor where you are sitting, or what you lean against. Treasure your early days with this garment before the red light receptors in your eyeballs become ineffective because everything in your surroundings has suddenly become reddish orange. You are likely to cripple yourself with debt trying to wash and care for this T shirt away from any of your other clothes. You might consider building a whole separate wash room just for this purpose, and paint the walls red so you don’t have to worry about staining. Wave goodbye to your planet which will soon become uninhabitable because of the global warming you cause when you keep running those wash cycles with just one garment. And when you are wearing this garment do not under any circumstances relax, because scientific tests have shown that when you are relaxed you are likely to be resting on something, and whatever that thing is you are unlikely to want it to become reddish orange.

When you look at a USB plug it looks more or less the same one way up as it does the other. This means that when you go to plug it in to a USB socket you have an approximately 50% chance of having it the right way up.

It’s particularly bad if you are plugging a USB plug into a socket that you don’t use very often.

I went to London today with Andy the designer at Ecru and I took a load of photos. The weird thing was that a security guard came over and asked me to stop. Apparently you have to ask permission from the owners of the buildings. Anyway, the sky was clear, the sun was shining through the clouds, and the buildings looked epic and dramatic.
 
See my photos of the buildings in the Docklands… until I had to stop, that is…

I went for a helicopter flight along the River Thames with Tom on Saturday. The weather was great, very clear with just a bit of haze that was less than expected for the middle of London. The pilot was very good, didn’t throw his chopper around so we felt very relaxed.I took a full memory card of photos on my Canon EOS 350D – that’s 542 images!

See the photos from the helicopter flight here

My favourite is Img_1754.jpg – Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall – the high resolution version is amazingly detailed and you can pick out people all over the place. The version you see here on Revs.org is 25% of the original so that it downloads more quickly so you’ll just have to take my word for it.