So, it looks like I owe you guys some photos. On the one hand I’m gutted (I look terrible when I’m exercising), but on the other I’m very, very grateful. Thank you for all of your support!
Target: £2500.00
Current Total: £560.55
Miles Run: Not sure, but I’m getting less out of breath 
Things are coming along very nicely. I am now training pretty regularly, but not recording mileage just yet. I’m going to wait until I stop coughing up my guts first. Man, I got unhealthy.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who’s donated so far. Update below.
Target: £2500.00
Current Total: £455.55
Miles Run: Ssshh.. still not counting. Maybe next time.
If we hit £500 before the end of the month I will share some embarrassing training photos with you all.
In case you missed it, linky here!
You may or may not know, but in September I’ll be climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money for VSO. The 1st of March sees me getting my arse in gear and training like a mad man.
Target: £2500.00
Current Total: £200.55
Miles Run: Better not to ask
Hours in Gym: Likewise
I have along way to go before I hit that fundraising target, so please, please, please help out if you can by donating here.
Over the course of the year I have a couple of events planned to raise money, which will be hella fun, I promise. Keep your eyes peeled!
MusicDNA, a new music file format, launched this week. It seeks to combine music with additional features (eg. lyrics, blog posts, artwork, searchability etc) in one single file format. The motivation, it seems, is to enrich the user experience and drive consumers to paid downloads rather than down illegal routes.
On the face of it this sounds great, but you know that I’m a cynic. A few things spring to mind, so I’m jotting them down here.
- When CDs were en vogue I didn’t read the lyrics in the insert, look at the artwork, buy magazines to read people’s opinion of the band etc. The MusicDNA proposition doesn’t offer me anything that warrants the fuss of changing my entire collection to the new format.
- The BBC article here quite rightly points out that the iTunes LP format is already a contender in this field. Coupled with the fact that MusicDNA does not [yet] have any buy in from major record labels I would wonder whether the format would have any real commercial success. That said, it is an open format, which has to be a good thing.
- Illegal file sharers will do so whether the file is in an MP3 or a MusicDNA format. People just don’t want to pay for things.
There’s an interesting post over on Gavin Hewitt’s blog at the BBC. It is about the ongoing debate in France around what it means to be French, a debate centralised on the politician Éric Besson.
Gavin’s post talks specifically about the inhabitants of France’s banlieues. The translation given for this is ’suburb’, but that doesn’t do it justice. The connotations of the word in French are very, very different. Forget picket fences, large gardens, close communities. A banlieue is likely to be littered with high rise blocks, with poor access to public transport, high unemployment etc.
As Gavin puts it:
The debate of what it means to be French, and what can be done to maintain a French society, is very different in this environment. These are people who are marginalised by mainstream French society in many ways.
Gavin goes on to say that at the moment there are no concrete proposals from Besson and states that more generally, on an international level, societies are asking themselves the same questions.
Do we expect people coming to our country to change their culture to fit in with us, or do we permit enclaves filled with different beliefs away from the mainstream? The former is very Borg-like, and the latter reminds me of several episodes in recent history where difference was actively fought against.
My view on this is probably quite clear already, but I’ll point out the obvious anyway.
When we as a society learn to understand and accept difference, and not just pay it the lip service that ‘tolerance’ demands, we will be in a far better position to understand what it means to be British, or French, or American, or whatever. We are not all the same, and there will never be one single way to define a modern nation.
What I believe is that blindly forcing jingoism onto people, whether national or immigrant, leads to only one thing. It leads to people recognising within themselves that they do not meet the norm you are expecting of them and quietly becoming more and more marginalised.
Mathew is mighty pissed off, and that’s putting it lightly. In November last year I took out Tiscali’s TV, broadband and phone package and not a day has gone by since where there have not been issues.
I have, therefore, decided to document my experiences in the hope that others will see this and avoid like the plague.
A few comments before I begin:
» The products that Tiscali offers are actually very good. I have no quibbles with the TV, broadband or phone.
» The service that Tiscali offers is, in my opinion, terrible.
In the beginning
In November last year I moved to London and towards the end of the month I got my BT phone line sorted and then went to Tiscali to set up my package. The sales guys were very helpful and so I took out the package, with provisioning due to take a couple of weeks.
Shortly after this I received a letter advising that they would need to push back the installation date, so I called to make a new appointment. The new appointment date, a few days after the original one, came and nobody turned up. So, again I called Tiscali and they advised that they had not arranged for a visit.
Slightly annoyed at having stayed home all day to deal with this, I arranged another visit. This time I needed to work from home to enable this to happen. Again, the day came and no engineer visited. Again, I called Tiscali and was informed that the visit was not arranged because of a system issue of some kind. The agent I spoke to gave the impression this was commonplace.
Finally, with some degree of cajoling, an engineer came (!), set me up and went on his merry way. We were finally up and running.
People sometimes remark about me, sometimes to my face but often behind my back, that I am not camp. This is meant to be a compliment. I want to break this down a little.
When people say this they mean it in a nice way. They are saying that they feel it is easier to identify with me because I am more like them. I understand that completely. There is no intent to offend in what they are saying.
You know what I’m about to say, though. It does offend.
What is actually being said is this: My view of homosexuality is of a closed stereotype, where a gay man is camp and enjoys pink things, and a lesbian wears vests and has short hair. Any deviation from this view is to be commended.
Whilst I am not offended at a personal level by the intent of what is said, the subtext to this kind of comment gives away just how much work still needs to be done in addressing the perception of LGBT / queer communities in the eyes of others.
Public Perception
Things like this probably do not help. I am not the first to call it out, either.
I watched this this for the first time on Friday night with my family. What I hadn’t realised until watching it was that this is not the only character playing on the camp stereotype for comedy.
This is not comedy for subversion, to highlight our social ills and get people thinking about how they view homosexuality. Far from it. This is hopping on a growing trend that legitimises this world view.
A Little Sense
I am not a killjoy and I recognise the role of satire / irony in comedy. What I am pointing out here is that we are not in a place yet as a society to start collectively looking gay stereotypes as comedic in this sense. Why? Because the public perception is still that this is the norm in gay culture. It isn’t viewed as a bad stereotype to have.
Until we start to see a more representative, slightly more serious view of the LGBT / queer community we will not see society’s values changing. In the meantime this so-called comedy on our screens will only serve to reinforce the negatively held beliefs that people hold, whether they hold those views consciously or not.
END RANT.
This had me stumped for a while until I figured it out. Seems simple enough, but man, my mind chugged along for a good 20 mins before I got it.
The problem: show mm:ss as mm.00.
For example, 1 minute 15 seconds would be 1.25.
The solution? If your time in mm:ss format is in cell A1:
=A1*(24*60)
Then, format that cell to ‘general’ and there you have it- the solution to a problem none of you will ever have! It keeps me busy, though.
I fell in love today.
With a poet named Rives. Watch his stuff on YouTube here, and enjoy two of my faves on TED (which is my addiction this week, as you may have noticed) here and here.
I just watched this and thought it was a nice enough departure from what I usually post, but worth mentioning all the same.
Ignore the ‘American meddling with the world’ feel to some parts of the video, because the story itself is a good one.
Also, I pretty much recommend most videos on the TED website. Watch ‘em!