the excitement is palpable

You're here. Excellent. Welcome. If only I had something to say right now. But fear not. The answers are coming.

The perils of precipitate pronouncements

Rather like trying to steal a biscuit while mum is asleep on the sofa, the surprise and shock when, despite to all intents and purposes being unconscious, she mutters "hands off" from another room entirely, my PC is now awake to my treachery and is planning a magnificent and utterly self-destructive send-off, beginning, this morning, with the news that it has decided to unilaterally declare war on my word processing package.
Upon cranking up the machine this morning, I was faced with the news that "your version of Microsoft Office is a big poo head" or words to that effect, and then given the option to "immediately destroy all your work for the last three years" or "give me leave to nag you incessantly forever".
This, bear in mind, while it was still asking me what I wanted to do about the .NET 3.4-95i340953409583945 framework jack-knife dishwasher fluid mustard seed short wave feltrum XP update that had been sitting around for a while in the euphemistically-titled "tray" (litter? anyone?)

So, just to be clear, if my PC actually leaps up and bites off some extremity or just swallows my head before I get a chance to write again, I am buying a Mac. No I really am.

That's it. I'm buying a Mac

The day has come. I've only been waiting for the internet to come online for two and a half months, such is the towering incompetence of TalkTalk. I can finally access the internet from my house (imagine...) but something's been niggling at me for a few weeks. It's not that the computer has got slower and slower as time has gone on. That doesn't surprise me. Nor did it unnerve me that a RAM upgrade, C Cleaner, scouring out the annoying little programmes, uninstalling the AVG scanner that took up all my processor power, and a hundred other things failed to do anything to halt the slow deterioration of the system. The lack of battery power and dodgy build quality were just, I assumed, something I had to accept. The fact that it just sometimes randomly crashed was, in some philosophical way, an acceptable compromise. I hadn't realised that the compromise was all one way.

So when it comes to the point that I'm poring over forums reading posts from one techie to another discussing how to find a version of a file to note down then uninstall and keep a series of numbers to reinstall a programme that is bound to completely destroy everything on my desktop, and I can't even find the file so I'm looking for what to do when you can't find the file, and all of this is because Windows wants to install something and can't and gives me an error code that doesn't come up on the normal list of things that I start to recall a conversation I had with a friend a couple of weeks ago that goes something like this "so what happens when it breaks?" "it doesn't." "how often does it crash?" "*snigger* it doesn't"...

The conversation took place while discussing whether it was worth my buying a Mac. I had never thought of it until Cassie came to stay, and I started playing with the thing. Much as I tried to resist its charms, I started to realise that it wasn't so much the prettiness that was seducing me. It was the fact that it worked so much better than every single PC I've ever owned, seen or heard about. The fact that there doesn't seem to be any need to have to think about it, that I could just get on with what I was doing.

And I'm just so sick of having to fix the bloody thing so much of the time. Once I saw something that doesn't cock up, I feel like an arse for having put up with it for so long. So I'm not going to any more. I might be wrong, but then I can always go back and buy a PC in a couple of years. As of next week, I'm on the mac.

just gets more interesting every time i think about it

I'm not usually much of an enthusiast for the latest technology, Web 2.0, virtual remote desktop networking and what have you, but this evening, i think i might have been converted. I've been doing a lot of research to find a useful (and ideally cost-effective) platform on which to run my secret new City of London corporate treasure hunt activity, and I've found a utility where i can operate my phone from my laptop, which makes things an awful lot easier. Obviously i had to confuse myself horribly by trying to take on my phone of myself taking a picture of my handset on the screen on a backdrop of a picture of the phone (or something to that effect), but every time I think about it, the potential just grows and grows. I'd better get on with it. Watch this space.


Not literally this space. Just an idea of space. If you can watch an idea without form. And all credit to you if you can.

treasure hunt.

I'm doing a treasure hunt as well, and this baby is going to be huge

17th August
12pm (that's noon)
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, City of London
Forget your Dr Kawashima... you want brain training? You'll get an assault course the like of which you've never witnessed.
£12 (or £10 if you bring three other people and form your own team)
see facebook page
or email andrew@showmethesquaremile.com for details

walking tours

I'm doing a couple of walking tours

10th and 24th August
2pm sharp
City of London Information Centre, south side of St Pauls Cathedral
Whoever turns up gets a really bloody good two hours of London history.
For a mere £6
here's a link to a map and things

The Exits at Bank Station part 3

When I get back to England, this guide is going to be further improved, with photos of all exits, where you can really get to from them, and (given how utterly futile it is to move between exits) which is the closest exit when you get off the tube, so you don't have to spend any more time weeping with frustration than is strictly necessary.