Gordon Ramsey is in Sydney at the moment for the Good Food and Wine Show. While here, he has been mentioned in the parliament for his abusive language and rudeness on television. To clarify, that’s the Australian parliament. Oh the irony! Aussies swear like a docker who just stubbed his toe at the best of times.
A few years ago I got talking to an Australian girl in a bar in Edinburgh. Once she realised that I was English she asked me how I felt having the whole world hate me. I explained that not everyone in the world knew me and enquired if having such a pleasant demeanour helped her make friends easily. The conversation carried on in a similar vein for a while until I eventually lost patience and told the criminal to rack off.
Chef Ramsey has snubbed Sydney and opted to locate his first restaurant in Melbourne instead. Apparently he thinks Melbourne is more like New York. I’ll find out for myself this week.
Now I’ve recovered after being taken around the Kings Cross area for my cousins birthday, I headed into the City and walked from Darling Harbour up to The Rocks, Circular Quay and around the Botanical Gardens. I remember a rumour that one of the guides on the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb was Kristian Schmidt (you’ll know him better as Todd Landers from Neighbours). I didn’t particularly want to blow a couple of hundred dollars to find out so I hopped on a bus to Bondi. I opted for the 333 limited stop service (AUS $4) instead of the Bondi Explorer (AUS $39). I’m not sure exactly why the regular bus was so much cheaper. It may have been a little slower but I was still walking on the beach 30 minutes later.
I carried on my walk along the coastal path down to Coogee. I arrived in time for the reply of last nights game between Spain and Italy and by luck walked into the Coogee Bay Hotel Sports Bar which is home to the two largest plasma televisions in Australia (103″ Panasonic TH-103PF9UK).
I fancied Spain before the tournament got underway so I’m glad they’re through. Who knows, the “Spain never wins a major trophy” hoodoo just may be over.
I decided that yesterday wasn’t the day for looking out of tall buildings so it turned out to be my day of culture with a walk up 5th Avenue (pausing to browse the Apple Store obviously) to Museum Mile and the Metropolitan and Guggenheim museums.
I managed to get myself admonished in the Guggenheim within five minutes thanks to some contradictory signs apropos photography. The outside was also not photographable as it is covered with scaffolding for exterior restoration at the moment which was disappointing. Inside the Frank Lloyd Wright designed building was stunning though. There was some impressive Kandisky and Klee in the Nierendorf collection but the main installation along rotunda spirals was Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want To Believe (and no, it’s not related to the X-Files).
I reached the top of spiral just as my patience with pretentious and sullen arty types was running out but I timed it perfectly to see the full three minute film of Cai’s 2005 Black Rainbow: Explosion Project for Edinburgh being played.
Any artist that gets away with using vast amounts of explosives is fine in my book. He’s also on the creative team for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics so be prepared for something special.
So Marion Cotillard has been getting flak for not swallowing what the establishment is shoveling and yet Tom Cruise can believe in Xenu without similar adverse reaction?
I don’t know what led Cotillard to make the comments she did but I recently watched the Loose Change 9/11 documentary and I certainly have more unanswered questions now than I did before.
What happens when a conspiracy theory is no longer just a theory?
How do you know when you’ve made it as a blogger? Sure, web access log analysis will give you an idea of how many people are reading your thoughts and ramblings. You may even pick up some mention of yourself on other sites. But I don’t think it’s until people start to referring to you by your surname only that you can say that you’re now Internet famous (or notorious as the case may be). Doctorow, Gruber and Kottke, Scoble and Thurrott - I’ll let you decide who I think falls in to which category.
Of course, if you reach true uber geek status you get assigned your very own TLA like PPK or JZW.
Over lunch today I saw one of my colleagues reading the daily sports section of one of the office newspapers. The masthead of the section reads “Monday Sport”, “Tuesday Sport” and so on through the days - apart from Wednesday when it is titled “Midweek Sport”. I was deeply puzzled by this illogical sequence until one of the designers pointed out that there just wasn’t enough room to fit in the word “Wednesday” without some kind of reworking of the layout.
Oversight, laziness or is it just me?
This morning saw the last BBC Breakfast video podcast of the trial period. I really hope that this trial showed the Beeb that this kind of thing is really popular.
My morning routine is pretty, well, routine I guess. My MBP wakes up about 15 minutes before I do and with a little bit of AppleScript downloads new podcasts and syncs my phone. I was able to watch the news headlines on my own schedule, pausing and restarting while eating my breakfast, showering and generally getting my things together for the day ahead.
The BBC also launched its iPlayer application today. This is along the same lines as Channel 4’s 4oD and allows Windows XP (for now) users to watch BBC TV shows for up to seven days after their initial broadcast. I’m a little peeved that an OS X version isn’t out yet but we’ve been assured there’s one in the works. This is the end result of work that started back in 2003 with the innovative use of P2P technology in the then monikered iMP and I can’t help but feel that the delay in getting this full release out has harmed its appeal.
It may no longer be fashionable to be be British but it was refreshing to see a celebration of probably one of the last bastions of Britishness today – The Falkland islands. My brother was part of the II Para battalion representation in the parade in London today and for the soldiers to be cheered by crowds who are usually expressing exactly the opposite emotions over the current day situation in Iraq meant a great deal to them.
Political devolution I can understand but the Cornish National Liberation Army attacking restaurants owned by Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver last week was just beyond me. It seems that nobody wants to be called British anymore. From Newcastle, down through Yorkshire to Cornwall and everywhere in between it seems that everyone wants to be thought of as disparate. Is it a need for identity, a backlash against an ever-looming European constitution or are these two sides of the same coin?
I’m not trying to gloss over any of the terrible things that the Empire was responsible for in the past but it seems to me that by shunning this concept that’s exactly what is going on.
“You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
- Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems
There’s been a lot of discussion about online privacy in the media recently. From Google’s privacy policy to Facebook’s terms and conditions, more and more questions are being asked about what happens to the data we submit and policies we blindly agree to. Ask yourself when was the last time you actually read, understood and agreed to the mandatory terms and conditions when signing up for an online service or buying something from a web store?
Now balance this against the smashing of a huge paedophile ring due to the use of personal information. The anonymity that the Internet provides is just one of the great things about it but at the same time is also one of it’s greatest threats to its very existence – at least in its current form.
Maybe that is no bad thing.
If you’re not sure what goatse refers to then please do not Google for it if at work, in a public place, eating, have any sense of decency or if you have a weak stomach. It is very, very NSFW. You have been warned!
After we stopped laughing at the new London 2012 Olympics brand I noticed some user submitted attempts on the BBC. Flicking through a fair amount of dross, my jaw dropped in disbelief. It couldn’t be, could it?
I took a screen grab just in case it disappeared (which it duely did, and in double-quick time too) and called for verification from my colleagues. They agreed it couldn’t be anything other than a goatse reference!
Sure enough, it was already the top story on Boing Boing.