Reruns of Sinbad and Queen’s Speech for Me
Happy Christmas!
Published on 25th December, 2008
J.K. Fucking Rowling
The best analysis to date on Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s £1m donation to the Labour Party definitely comes from Scott Pack:
Gordon Brown has welcomed the donation and proclaimed Rowling ‘one of the world’s greatest ever authors’.
Move aside Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Virgil, Dostoyevsky, the Brontes, Fitzgerald, Hardy, Chaucer and [insert your favourite here] - JK Rowling has surpassed you all.
Most popular I would probably grant her, but greatest ever?
I would politely suggest that the Prime Minister’s literary judgement has been clouded somewhat by the huge fucking cheque he has just received from the author. I presume Jeffrey Archer has thrown loads of money at the Conservative Party over the years but I am pretty sure no one there has ever made such high claims about him. Quite sensible really, what with him being a bit shit.
In other news, I’m reading this at the moment. Highly recommended.
Published on 20th September, 2008
If your 3G iPhone won’t connect to 3G…
…then the chances are that the O2 shop in which you upgraded won’t have told you that you need a 3G SIM card. They’re now posting me one.
It’s only taken me a month to work it out, after waiting patiently for Apple to fix a few issues.
On the plus side, it only took me a fortnight to realise my contract tariff hadn’t been changed by O2 either, exposing me to potentially huge phone bills for heavy data usage. They kindly fixed that, though were then at a loss about my other problem. One at a time, I told myself.
I’m now wondering how long it’ll take ‘em to realise that my 18 month contract - according to my online account - runs out six months early. I might just hold them to that…
Gripes aside, it is marvellous to - finally - own a phone that syncs with my calendar, and my email, and everything else, with the minimum of hassle. And, hats off to the O2 customer support people I spoke to today - they were, honestly, great.
Memo to self: next time, stick to buying phones online.
UPDATE: New SIM card arrived the next day, although I’d expected to wait 3-5 days. A quick phone call and the new card was activated. It began working immediately. Great service - if only O2 could replicate it across the board.
Published on 15th September, 2008
Comment Snob
What a brilliant idea. Some technical cove has come up with a Firefox browser extension called “YouTube Comment Snob“. All you have to do is download it, restart your browser and - hey presto! - all the illiterate, half-witted, foul-mouthed comments on YouTube disappear.
Like so.
It’s simple, really. Comments are filtered out if they:
- have more than a specified number spelling mistakes:
- are written solely in capital letters
- have no capital letters at all
- don’t start with a capital letter
- use excessive punctuation (!!!! ???? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- use excessive capitalization
- contain profanity.
Which rather set me thinking. Maybe, just maybe, the author might be willing to collaborate with me to create…
Comment is Free Comment Snob
The idea is simple. Any comment that falls into the following categories will automatically be removed from the page:
- Dreary, half-baked tosspottery about Israel and/ or Palestine. Especially on articles that have nothing to do with either - like heavyweight pieces on West End boutiques or guides on staging operas in your own home.
- Patronising dismissal of any logical argument (and thus defence of one’s fondly-cherished prejudices) with phrases like “the beauty of your argument is its simplicity”.
- Accusations that other commenters are Tories, simply because they don’t drool at the thought of Ken Livingstone.
Indeed, before I get carried away, why don’t we go the whole hog and invent a browser extension that deletes articles by anyone who falls into one or more of these categories?
- A banger on about the plight of the poor who earns a six-figure salary.
- A relative of someone else who works on the Guardian.
- An occasional, non-journalist contributor who has been on holiday with anyone who works for the Guardian.
- An environment bore who buys a car the moment they actually need one.
- A columnist who is secretly indignant that they’ve not been poached by The Times, where they’d get a fatter salary and a wider readership.
I could go on, but I think that’s enough to make the thing readable once again. I could just about face leafing through something like this over my morning tea and toast:
Or maybe I’ve been too hasty. A browser plugin that pastes Simon Hoggart’s latest parliamentary sketch over any Comment is Free page would do the job perfectly.
I only wish I knew how to write it myself.
Published on 26th August, 2008
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