Making a pig's breakfast...

Sorry I've been a bit quiet lately. I seem to have misplaced my magic blogging dust somewhere along the line, but I spect it'll turn up behind the sofa.

I did start writing a long ranty post the other week about swine flu, and how it was another example of the media distorting the facts for their own agenda. In my view the approach of the WHO and health authorities here was entirely approriate to the situation. The media, meanwhile, seemed to be gagging for panic on the streets.

But as usual, other people are more adept at putting across a message more succinctly. Here is a recent offering from the wonderful PhD comics. (click to enlarge)

So very true.

All Things Ginger #3: Jamaica Ginger Cake

I’m not sure many people associate McVitee's Jamaica Ginger Cake with calculus but I am one of them.

I never knew it existed until I was studying A Level Further Maths. There were several maths classes in my year at college but only a handful of us were nuts enough to do a second A level on the subject. By the time we reached the upper sixth an even smaller number of us remained. We were blessed with a cheerful Geordie teacher who was happy to interrupt our two-hour lessons for a sneaky tea break. If we put 20p in the ‘charity pot’ we were entitled to a cuppa and the chance to help ourselves from the biscuit tin. By the end of the year we had accumulated £76 for Guidedogs for the Blind.

Anyhoo, sometimes the biscuit tin wasn’t called for because there was cake. Specifically, Jamaica Ginger Cake (I never recall any other type of cake being on offer). Definitely a bonus day.

I can’t say it’s the most gingery thing on the planet. In fact, were it not for the label, one might have difficulty identifying the flavour, beyond something vaguely warm and spicy. I mean, we’re not even talking about the still-fairly-tame-but-at-least noticeable levels of ginger in gingernut biscuits. But no matter. It is sticky, claggy, warming and friendly. And makes 3D vectors marginally easier to deal with. Happy days.

The world outside your window

Google unveiled its newest feature today: Google Street View. Already launched in a number of places elsewhere in the world, this impressive project today added 25 UK cities to its pages. All you have to do is go to Google Maps, pick a location, click and drag the little orange man to any of the roads outlines in blue, and you can have a nose around.

My initial reaction was astonishment at the sheer scale of the undertaking. Wonderful possibilities popped into my head - checking out what the route to a new place was like before visiting it; giving extra directions to colleagues who were coming to our building for the first time; enhancing my (admittedly rather dormant) London Street Guide.

Once I had got over my excitement at being able to 'wander around' familiar central London locations, on a whim I did a quick search for my house. And it was there. When they said they were including whole cities they really, really meant it.

It's hard not to feel slightly perturbed. I meant - having a visual database of commercial and public buildings is pretty cool. But ordinary residential property? I reckon I could work out to within a couple of weeks when the photo was taken, based simply on the arrangements of cars on our street and the flowers in bloom in our front garden. It seems to me there are many ways in which this could be used for less than positive things. Google Maps' satellite feature has already been exploited by teenagers who used it to work out which houses had swimming pools they could invade. Apart from being a stalker's dream, surely Street View has potential for such pleasantries as identifying places with a lot of expensive cars, checking which properties had burglar alarms or security weaknesses, making assumptions about potential employees' socioeconomic status etc?

Sure, one could glean the same information by actually visiting the places in real life. But this makes it an awful lot easier. Given that the government are sufficiently paranoid that we're supposed to jump at the sight of photographers and mobile phone enthusiasts, it's surprising that the authorities are at ease with this. And how does this sit with point 6 of Google's ten things?

Perhaps this is just the way things will go. The early web was was created by the chosen few. Web 2.0 has been Joe Public's domain. Maybe another volte-face will lead to Web 3.0 consisting of those in the know imparting information about Joe Public? The pace of change in technology is hard to halt. Perhaps the best thing is just to embrace it. So here's a suggestion for the next phased of Google Maps:

Google CCTV.

Because 5 million cameras can't be wrong.

Generation ADD

I do sometimes think that the problem with the younger generation is not that they have no ability to concentrate - it's that they're treated as such.

Example? Just watched an hour long programme celebrating the 25th anniversary of Torvill and Dean's Bolero routine which earned them a perfect score and a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics.

Various people were interviewed about the routine. Oh, how they were touched by the emotion of it. Transfixed. Couldn't believe that the pair of them weren't really in love. We heard how ground breaking and rule stretching it was. The struggle to find the music, and then make it an appropriate length. The story behind the opening sequence. All the way through we were teased with how wonderful a routine it was.

Finally, the last section of the show. The moment the viewers have been waiting for. The dated 80s footage appears and that music starts. We watch with rapt attention. And then.... 35 seconds in, a talking head appears telling us how much the routine meant to him. Another 30 seconds of footage, and then thoughts from their coach. In total there were probably only around 2 minutes of footage shown, interspersed with various atmosphere-shattering comments.

Four minutes. All they had to do was show a four minute routine, uninterrupted. But some numpty thinks the audience couldn't possibly cope with that. I guess we should be lucky that they didn't cut to the adverts after the first 20 seconds.

Ah well. For those of you blessed with enough concentration or interest to get this far, Advancing Gingerly presents Bolero in its entirety. I won't interrupt. Promise.

All Things Ginger #2: World Carrot Museum

Don't ask me how I found this out, but I recently discovered that there exists on our planet a World Carrot Museum. Seriously. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's an enterprise located in the British Isles, but overseas readers will be delighted to learn that it is, in fact, a virtual museum, and thus they will be able to get just as much out of a visit as I possibly could.

I'm not quite sure how it all began. One can glean that the author is left handed, the names of his cats, and countries he's visited, but no particular statement as to why one would create an online carrot museum. But then, who cares, when you have the opportunity to learn about Carrots in Literature, discover where to attend a Carrot Festival, how to make antifreeze from carrots (useful at the moment), or peruse a list of people interested in collecting carrotabilia. I have to commend the attention to detail and sheer amount of research that has gone into this endeavour. I can assert with some confidence that it is unlikely that I will ever come up with a carrot-related enquiry for which they are unable to provide an answer.

There are also a bewildering collection of links including other unusual museums at the bottom of this page. No mention, though, of the rope museum I've been to, or the pencil museum a friend has visited.

I know it's customary to use hyperbole to make what you do sound more enticing, but I must admit to being somewhat befuddle by the tagline: 'Discover the Power of Carrots'. Perhaps they are the future of alternative energy. Orange gold...

"You're not too tired for this life, and it's not gonna matter if you fall down twice"

Ok, so I eventually shrugged off the 'Stranded Commuter' persona and went for a walk where I rediscovered the Joy of Snow™.

(The feet are mine but the snowman wasn't)

I can't say I'm gutted that I couldn't go in today. Time to brace myself for a trek tomorrow though. I have a feeling it's going to be a bit of a mission.

And the prize for the most helpful web update ever goes to...

...South Eastern Trains, for the following highly informative description of their current service status:

Great Britain - ready for anything!

In my neck of the woods, there's about six inches of snow. They've been telling us for days that it was coming. It's quite unusual to get that much settling snow in London, but it's hardly at Siberian quantities. Capital Radio has just announced that it's the heaviest snow in London for.... six years. Gee, that really is historical.

Despite all the advanced warnings:
- There are no buses running in London. None. At all. Not one.
- Only one tube line has no disruption.
- There are no trains on my line, according to the radio. Which I cannot verify as the train company website won't load. National Rail Enquiries seems to have collapsed. Transport for London is loading better, but doesn't have the information I'm looking for.

I guess I could try walking to work but (a) it's a longish way, (b) I have no snow shoes and (c) I don't think I'm really important enough to bother.

It's just as well we're not proposing to host the Winter Olympics.

All things ginger #1: Through a Lens

There was an article in today's Guardian magazine about redheads. I've noticed that these kind of articles feature in at least one broadsheet each year, and I certainly didn't glean any new anecdotes or facts from this one, save for learning that there's an exhibition in East London starting next month of photos of gingers.

Not that that's a new idea - it's the third photo project I've been aware of. What with that, and the fact that we're going extinct, am I destined to become a museum piece?

Something for the new year...

Too busy to blog at the mo, but here's something new I'll try for 2009: