Dottiddydot

It's a mockumentary, innit. Well weapon!

192 piss me off no end and now I find this new site Zoopla, a site which lists house prices with no way of delisting your property. Privacy just got stripped another notch. If you work for a company that provides this service or similar please drop yourselves down a bottomless hole.

I accept that a lot of information is available on the net mainly from my own activity. However I hate the method of reusing relatively private info (electoral roll, land registry etc) just to scrape some company ad revenue or database sales. I opt out where I can from these kind of registries but its like plugging a dam with a victoria sponge cake. Sites like this remove the hurdles from wholesale identity theft and it makes me so feckin mad!

I was getting ready for work this morning and overheard a snippet of conversation between my two sons.
Ross, age 6, said "...because God made everything!"
Ewan, age 4, replied "What else did he make?"
I had to smile. Not sure what prompted that little exchange as we're not especially religious.

I was a little miffed at hearing of a recent paydeal. The Daily Mash sums it up quite nicely. The mash could very well be my new favouritest site on the web. Oh and have this too!
This post contains no Youtubeness.

For the last decade I've been ranting to people about how our vocabulary is going to pot. Business-speak has slowly been encroaching into everyday speech. The BBC are just waking up to it and have published a rather good list of the most annoying: 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate. I'd dedicate a blog to it if I was incentivised enough to do a positive feedback that puts us all on the same page! It goes without saying that I hear this sort of wibble from people around me on a daily basis.

A rather good video showing old bits of redundant hardware doing their best to play a reworking of Radioheads' "Nude". Takes a little while to get going but well worth it. I hope the student who made this gets top course marks for this.

Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.
Apologies for adding yet another video to this blog!

Curve were probably the best thing to come out of the early nineties...

One of the best things to come out of the 80's... "The The"...

A long time ago I registered with 192.com, at the time it was an innovative way of getting free directory enquiries back when BT had a stranglehold on the phone service. I quickly abandoned 192 once it gave up its free stance and started charging. Fair enough, it has to raise money somehow. Anyway, I remained on their newsletter database having never got around to removing myself. The last few letters I've had have raised my hackles. It seems that their emphasis is now on the business marketeer industry and as such they are advertising their abilities to datamine the electoral role.
Now I know its getting harder to remain private in this modern world but when you've got companies that readily provide your personal info you begin to wonder where it will all stop.
Excuse me while I adjust the tinfoil.
Anyway, I long ago registered my details with the TPS and MPS, services which provide protection from overzealous direct marketing companies. This has stopped an awful lot of the sales calls and mail that I receive. However I hate the idea of companies (or individuals) being able to invisibly collect stats and data from my decision to register for the right to vote. I now mark my electoral role registration to remain off the commercial list - however before I got all paranoid I didn't mark my form as such.
So now I find that 192 are able to sell my data! The only way to stop this is to use the form on their Help and Support page. But now I'm wondering just how many other companies are able to sell on this info and how many cancellation requests I would have to send out to stop it. Gah, why do I feel like I'm trying to stick my finger in a leaky dam?
I think I need to check out the governments information commission site but its not loading at the moment.

I know I keep banging on about Prince but he was a big part of my youth. Here's probably the best offshoot from his rather large family, Wendy and Lisa...

Hypnotic.

I'm easily distracted and games like this easily hook me. Well worth a bash and the controls are few. Enjoy!

The BBC has just posted this news item that the Premier league is considering extending the season by 10 extra games. These games would be played at a variety of overseas venues. How mental is that?
I originally read this as being ten extra games for each team but what it actually equates to is that teams play 39 matches a season instead of 38. The proposal is that the top teams avoid each other and a lottery is made of the remaining teams to see who plays who. What happens if the top team draws a match against the bottom team? How unfair would that be? Not just to the teams involved but to their rivals?

Saul Bass style re-imagining of the original Star Wars opening credits.

I've been dusting off all my old prince related music after many years. What a joy it is to hear all those old classics. He also created a lot of tracks for other artists. Check out this sublime Martika track. Eminem needs slapping fort what he did to "Toy Soldiers".

Someone has recreated The Battle of Pelennor Fields from "Lord of the Rings" using Gummy Bears and Liquorice Allsorts! Fantastic.