Archives: February
Saturday, February 18th
Wierd
Soundtrack: SB6
Its 2 a.m. I went to bed seven hours ago and got up two hours ago. In half an hour I'm going to go and pick Sarah up and drive to Birmingham. We're then going to drive to Bath. In about 12 hours we should be back here. At which point we'll probably go to bed.
It's gonna be a bit of a wierd day.
posted by David @ 02:04 AM [link]
Thursday, February 16th
When did we all become criminals?
Soundtrack: Sonic Boom Six - Sounds to Consume
Radio 4's PM programme carried a feature this evening about a 'Sonic Teenager Deterrent' apparently being trialled in some areas of the country. Basically it is a transmitter which emits a very unpleasant high pitched noise. Since the ability to hear high pitched sounds decreases as you get older, most people over 25 or so are unable to hear it. They played it over the radio and I could hear it clearly (I'm 23)
Google reveals that the device is being marketed by Compound Security Systems Ltd, whose website reads:
"Fed Up With Abusive Teenagers Hanging Around Your Shop?
Yes !
Compound Security Systems Ltd, Through Extensive R & D Has
Produced The MOSQUITO Unit That Uses Complex High
Frequency Sound To Chase Away Those Annoying Teenagers!!"
I'll ignore for a minute the horrendous grammar, the Tendency To Capitalise Everything, and the eye-wateringly garish nature of their website (grumbling middle-aged middle-england can't be expected to get to grips with this new fangled interweb thingy now can they). Instead I'll get straight to the point.
When did everyone under the age of 25 become an 'undesirable'? This is the only conclusion I can draw since this system isn't going to discriminate between hardened 'yobs' intent on intimidating people, kids hanging round because there's nowhere else in their village to go, and perfectly law-abiding people who just want to buy a bag of chips and who happen to have good hearing.
Does it occur to anyone that saying to a whole section of the population "We saw some young people acting suspiciously once. You are young, therefore you must also be up to no good." is only going to lead to a whole lot more pissed off, alienated youth?
I guess as with many things it's easier to brand everyone with the same brush and forget about it than actually address the real problems. If the police push these at shop owners they don't have to deal with the (minority) of people who are actually there to cause trouble. Noone has to wonder why they have nothing better to do than hang around outside the shops on a friday night. It's out of sight and out of mind for British youth.
If I ever come across a shop with one of these, I will venture inside just long enough to tell them exactly why I will not be spending a single penny of my money on their premises.
posted by David @ 09:33 PM [link]
Wednesday, February 15th
Lost in the supermarket
Soundtrack: Rammstein - Rosenrot
"the bloodstream/gets its sugar from the intestine/gets its sugar from the supermarket chain/that left the village drained/every high street same soulless refrain"
They were talking on the radio this morning about the evils of supermarket chains, and their effect on small businesses and local high streets. It seems the government has set up a committee to look into this and possible ways of regulating the supermarkets. To be honest I'd be amazed if it makes a blind bit of difference.
Supermarkets are big businesses, just like any other, and there is a good collection of nasty practices which they get up to (Walmart's approach to trade unions in the states, the pittance which UK farmers are paid for what they produce and the several hundred percent mark-up that it gets sold to us for, for example). But this is only part of the problem.
The big problem is us, the customers, willing to whore ourselves out to the best special offer, buy-one-get-one-free deal. We who have become accustomed to getting whatever we like, regardless of the season or the country of origin. We are prepared to fight through the car park road rage, into aisles littered with stray trolleys and people aimlessly wandering from one shelf to another in search of over-packaged mediocre produce. We argue that it saves us time, that it's convenient. Is it?
Every weekend, I get in a car and drive past the village shops (about 1/4 of a mile away) and carry on another 6 miles to the nearest Sainsbury's. I could walk to the shops and do the shopping in the time it takes to get in through the door of Sainsbury's. Something inside me grates every time I do it but I still do and I don't understand why.
"I looked a little closer at the walls of my house/but to my surprise they were made out of glass/I made my way softly towards my front door/but to my surprise it was bolted shut and barred"
Maybe next weekend...
[both the lines quoted above are from "Holloway Prison Blues" by Million Dead, who were rather good until they split up last year]
posted by David @ 09:44 PM [link]
Tuesday, February 7th
Attack of the killer spam
Soundtrack: David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
As anyone who may have happened to glance at this site over the last couple of days might have noticed, I've had a bit of an attack of comment spam. I've had a couple of spam comments before, but this was anywhere between 1 and 15 comments on almost all my posts. Not good.
After I'd got over the feeling of being violated by lots of crawling little spambots, I went in search of a solution, and ended up here:
Small hack to fix comment spam
Simple idea, but it ought to work until the spammers get to grips with artificial intelligence. I've been back and deleted all the spam comments, so we'll see if it works. I'm going to apply the same fix to Sarah's blog in a minute - she hasn't had any yet, but it's more of a pain to have to do it afterwards.