Live From Wembley #1

I was trying to find a photie for the next blogpost and stumbled upon this video I made a month or so ago of me playing El Perro Del Mar's God Knows (You gotta give to get) on my ukelele.

Well, I thought it was nice.

The original's here.

The graph on my bedroom wall

Leg Iron has been doing a series of posts about the state of the government's finances. Its all well and topical, but I'm not the government and I can't affect government spending at all, apart from by not paying taxes and not collecting my working tax credits.

My own finances are a bit crap at the moment, those months of unemployment and living off my credit card were pretty damning, but I'm all employed up now and on the road to recovery, its all a matter of spending less than I earn.

To help me in this endeavor and to focus the mind I have drawn a graph on my bedroom wall.

It shows the level of my current account at each day of the month. It's a game, as long as the line is higher than it was that day the previous month, then I'm winning.

If the line's running lower than then previous month, then I'm losing and I have to stop spending for a few days.

Its working, the line keeps going higher and higher. My debts are still huge, but I'm getting on top of things.

Looks like I'm more financially smarter than the British government.

London Bloggers Meetup - the Greene King

My first London Bloggers Meetup in months and months, damn my job requiring I get up at 4:30am. I slip into Bank underground station, walk for ages to get to the surface, then wander the streets randomly until I find the venue. Admittedly I did use myBerry and googlemaps, but it was still loading when I stumbled in to The City Tavern.

It was a very pubby pub, just like a pub. The meetup was in an upstairs room, kind of crowded. You could see straight into the office above the opposite street. The event was sponsored by Greene King IPA, its a kind of beer. There were a handful of helpful brewer type people around being knowledgable about the ways of beer.

The free beer on tap could be served in one of two ways:-

• Smooth and creamy - the northern style
• Clean and Crisp - the southern style

I went northern. Its all to do with the nozzle, but is it a patronising stereotypically thing? Well, the beer's all right, and the talky brewer chap recommends trying the clean and crisp southern version and comparing.

I wish Aref-Adib was here.

Aw man, the nature of tasting beer is as nuanced as high end audio listening.

The difference between northern and southern styles is in the north the beer is broadly poured from the bottom with a sparkler to add turbulence and for southern jessies its poured from the top without the sparkler. When you make white sugar, you bubble up bubbles of somekind of sodium which removed impurities and bleaches the sugar. Similarly bubbles travelling through the length of the glass changes the flavour and makes the head taste different.

Its the Target hops, an English variety, that give Greene King IPA its distinctive flavour, the oils in the hops. Most people don't know what hops taste like, I don't, well, they taste like that.

I love hearing this sort of thing. Although its a little bit cheesy for the hosty speakery people to list words that people usually use to describe flavour at an event where people will be describing flavours. "Rearrange the following words in the order of you choosing".

So aye, there was a short talk by the brewery people about the nature of beer tasting, which sides of the tongue do the trick and how to pour it.

How would I describe the taste?

It was all right.

There followed a talk from a charity blogger. The travails of charities trying to preach to a new audience who aren't already charitynuts.

Madagasca faces problems, but I can't help but think of Mark Wadsworth's post today about a sequence of adverts on Sky, NHS quit-smoking services, private quit-smoking products, WWF soliciting climate change donations, and then airlines.

It begs the question, how can the government afford TV adverts?

Anyhoo, back to Madagasca, quite clearly having a forest just sitting there, not providing substantial income for the country is unsustainable. Its not going to feed the population, or educate them or get them iPhones. Making your blogpost titles keyword rich ain't going to get Madagasca into the Amazonspace. Ooh, did I make an irony?

Greene King IPA Cask Revolution
Originally uploaded by consolidatedpr

Anyways, as is my way for the London Bloggers Meetups, I'll try to list bloggery people I saw and spoke to.

Spoke/grunted at (7)

• Hailey the beard drummer
• Her friend Shell
• Christiano Betta
• Anthony Fresh Plastic
• Bruce Bird
• Oscar
• Godwyns

Folk who I saw and recognised (8)

• Andy Bargery
• Peter Marshall
• Krista Booker
• Chris qwgmlm
• Sweena
• Lolly
• Michael someone
• Caroline of Caroline's Miscellany

Hmm, everyone's a lot better looking than I remember from last time.

Please excuse spelling, poor memory and lack of links, I'll sort it next time I get on broadband internet. I'm on the train home right now, tapping this out on myBerry, clutching my goodie bag of Greene King beers, and wondering where I'm sleeping tonight.

Adverts as news stories

I think this is wonderful

A controversial Scottish brewery has said it has reclaimed the title of the world's strongest beer from German rivals - with Sink the Bismarck at 41%.

BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, made headlines last year when it unveiled a 32% beer called Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

However, Schorschbrau released the 40% strength Schorschbock.

BrewDog said its newly released 41%, Sink the Bismarck, would cost £40 for a 330ml bottle and would only be sold online.

More here

Give me my internet - part 7

- In which Vodafone cause pain to WIN -

Days and days have passed since the nice man from Vodafone called me up and promised to have a mobile broadband dongle delivered in 24 hours. A wee note slipped through my door of Friday, letting me know that they tried to deliver it, but failed, so I called the number on the card and arrange to pick up the dongle from a depot somewhere in darkest Park Royal.

I have it now before me, plugged into my Acer Aspire One netbook with Ubuntu running.

It blinks at me.

It taunts me.

It does not connect me to the internet, instead I must sneakily use my attractive young ladyfriend's net connection to find out how to get this damned thing to work.

Most people use Windows for their computing, it has a 92% market share. Mac has a 5.16% market share and Linux (upon which Ubuntu is based) has a 1% market share. The Vodafone dongle comes with Windows and Mac drivers on it. But for Ubuntu you have to get online, and via helpful posts from GreenHuges we discover the existence of Betavine, Vodafone's secret open-source software research and development facility. Further clicking and ploughing gets me to the page with instructions for getting it to work on Ubuntu Linux.

I got the Vodafone Mobile Connect application all right, but it doesn't find the K3675 dongle I've got plugged in to the right side of my netbook.

I'm not quite sure what information I can type in to get it recognised, It asks for "Device type:" and only gives me the option of Serial, this dongle is USB right, so that ain't gonna work.

Then "Data port device", "Control port device" and "Speed connection:" I got no idea.

Damn you Vodafone, why why why can't I get online?

Can't anyone help me?

Climate Change report errors and Tiger Woods

You'll be aware the EU Referendum site has been somewhat neglecting its coverage of EU issues, such as US President's Obama's snubbing of the annual EU meeting cos no one was sure which European Union President has primacy and the whole Greek bailout thing. Instead EU Referendum's Richard North has been concentrating on mercilessly tearing climate change to shreds.

You'll also be aware of EU Referendum's Tiger Woods index, its a gauge of public interest in a news story, and calculated as the number of google web results divided by the number of google news results.

Here's a wee table of the various errors and issues in the current Climate Change debate with their Tiger Woods index today.

Issue	Google web results	Google news results	Tiger Woods Index
Glaciergate	242,000	221	1,095
Droughtgate	3,770	3	1,257
Netherlands sea level	258,000	173	1,491
Africagate	36,400	15	2,427
Chinese Urban Heat Island	169,000	33	5,121
Losses from disasters	445,000	65	6,846
Climategate	14,600,000	1,801	8,107
1.3 billion agriculture employees	176,000	0	n/a
Antarctic boot cleaning manual	84100	2	42,050

Thrilling stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Give me my internet - part 6

- In which Talk Talk don't get it -

So Vodaphone's dongle was whizzing through the postal system to me. I just had to cancel my installation date with Talk Talk.

They'd sent me a text massage saying an engineer to connect me up weeks and weeks in the future, that was no good, I need my google reader, I need my facebook, I need my RedTube!

So I phoned the number in the text, and after a few exchanges reached their cancellation department.

Why would I want to cancel, they asked.

Cos I signed up thinking it'd be four weeks and it turns out I'd have to wait seven weeks to get online, Vodaphone would have me wired with mobile broadband in less than 24 hours.

They could understand my frustration, I was told, and would I stick with Talk Talk if they waived the £59.99 connection charge.

Weel, that is a significant ammount of money but its beside the point, I want to get online as soon as possible and seven weeks ain't good enough compared to 24 hours.

Ah, but, I was told, with Talk Talk I could get download speeds of 2 megs a second comapred to Vodafone's mobile broadband which is slower.

Weel, I countered, if I wanted to download 2 megs, with Vodaphone it before the weekend's out, with Talk Talk, I would take months.

The woman on the phone got quite snooty at this point, but the connection speed is faster.

No, seven weeks is not fast.

But we'll wave the connection charge. Its cos we use BT open reach engineers and when phone lines are down cos of the cold weather, that takes priority over what the salesman told be the other day.

Don't care, waiving the fee doesn't give you an excuse to bore me with your bureaucratic problems.

Right, I'll just cancel your installation now.

Thanks, that's very kind.

Talk Talk fail.

Give me my internet - part 5

- In which Vodafone try to win -

I would be able to respond to comments and surf messageboards if I had a decent internet connection, but I don't. I just have my BlackBerry, good enough for writing email blogposts and a wee bit of surfing, and that's it.

I was poised the other afternoon, poised to phone Talk Talk and cancel my installation with them, when out of the blue, my mobile phone rang.

It was a nice chap from Vodafone, chasing up my customer experience after having signed up for a line with them.

I explained I didn't have a line with them and then retold my ongoing saga of trying to get online.

On hearing I was having trouble finding a Vodafone shop with mobile broadband dongles in stock, he said he could get one delivered to me the next day, and since they already had all my details it was as simple as a simple thing.

In less than 24 hours I could be wired!!!

In summary, out of three attempts Vodafone win once, 33% success rate, and great customer service at last.

Give me my internet - part 4

- In which Talk Talk almost wins but fail -

The was junk mail in the post from Talk Talk. In my squad there are phone sockets in most of the rooms, they have NTL branding, god knows what provider they're on now. All I know is that it isn't BT.

The junk mail inspired me, so I gave them a ring, thinking landline broadband was next on my voyage of internet connection discovery. The bumf said they were cheap, only £6.99 a month for t'internet, also line rental of £11.99 a month and £59.99. So that would be a total of around £72 to get online.

The chap on the phone said they'd send an engineer round at the start of next week, and then it would be four or five weeks later when the Broadband service would start.

Not quite the instant broadband I was hoping for, but bank details handed over and the future secure.

Alas two days later I get a text message from Talk Talk saying the engineer would be round at the start of March. By my reckoning that means I wouldn't get online for the best part of seven weeks, that's no good.

So in summary Talk Talk were just too slow. One fail out of one attempt, success rate 0%

Give me my internet - part 3

- Vodafone round two fail -

I kept the faith in Vodafone, after the early success of passing their worthiness test, I kept the faith.

It was about a week later, instead of heading to Harrow once more, thought I'd phone up to see if they had any mobile broadband dongles in stock. A reasonable desire you might think, but alas, fail.

Google via BlackBerry gives no clues to individual branch phone numbers so I ended up calling the generic customer services line and spoke to a gentleman.

I explained I just wanted to know which shops nearby had stock of the dongle, but he suggested I just buy one online.

I explained that if I could get online I wouldn't need to buy a mobile broadband dongle as I'd self-evidently have internet access, and asked if he could check which shops nearby had them in stock, Harrow, Watford or Kings Cross.

Again he explained that the online shop would have them and even read out the web address.

I hung up in despair.

In summary, out of two attempts Vodafone failed twice, success rate 0%