I really don't seem to be writing in this very often, do I?!?
Fact is, at the moment very little is irking me, and I'm definitely at my best when I can rant about something.
Therefore, it's time for some moaning! What a lovely way to start 2005!
Number one: Windows XP SP2
Now, unlike a lot of people, I've had no problems whatsoever with SP2 on any of the thee PCs we've got here. And I know of a people who have found that SP2 has sped up their PC a great deal.
My only real complaint is that they've gone too far with the cotton wool in Internet Explorer.
I only noticed this a month or so ago, as I use Firefox (go to www.mozilla.org and get it now!) - IE now blocks ALL javascript. My company website uses javascript to display its sidebar menu, so for quite some time it was unusable to all IE users. I have now included instructions on the home page for IE users to get my menu bar to appear...
...which they have to go through every time they visit the web site! Damn Microsoft all the way to hades!
Nextly, I'm miffed by the magical disappearance of Granada Plus (or just "Plus", as it was known of late) from channel 118 of Sky Digital (and, indeed, from cable too - I just don't know what its channel number was there).
It turns out that there is only one reason for this - ITV wanted to be better positioned numerically in Sky's channel line-up.
I don't think Sky and ITV have ever really gotten on. When we first had Sky, ITV2 was on channel 226 (I think!). It then moved to 176. Now, it's on 118 and ITV3 in on 119.
But right up until the launch of ITV3, adverts were quite clearly stating that the channel would only be available on digital cable and Freeview. I was certain at the time that ITV would realise that an "oldies" channel would not persuade people to get (or change to) either of these digital services and that advertisers would surely demand that ITV3 be carried by the UKs biggest digital TV provider.
The day before ITV3 launched, Sky (who owned part of Granada Sky Broadcasting, which owned both Plus and Men and Motors) offered ITV (which is basically just Carlton and Granada - who, as you might have gathered, own the rest of Granada Sky Broadcasting) a deal; buy them out of Granada Sky Broadcasting and they would throw in the currently vacant channel 119.
So ITV did just that, unceremoniously pulling Plus from the air without even telling the continuity announcers (or the people who programmed the "now and next" screens that appear between each program) on the channel what they were going to do. Programmes were both advertised and announced for the evening in which Plus simply disappeared, and ITV2 popped up in its place.
Whilst ITV3 have picked up some of the programmes that Plus used to carry, I don't know what they're going to do with the rest. I've read that Plus own the rights to over 100 episodes of The Two Ronnies. With this being a BBC programme its clearly very, very unlikely that ITV3 will ever screen it. Will they let UKTV buy the programmes that they don't want?
ITV2 is still a waste of airspace. ITV3 at least has some decent archive programmes (basically, stuff that was made for ITV originally and that Plus had the rights to) and show repeats of recent ITV shows that you might have missed on the terrestrial channel (such as showing the new Marple dramatisations the Sunday after ITV1 has screened them). But I miss Plus! It was the channel that UK Gold used to be when we first had multi-channel TV back in 1994!
So damn ITV, too; they can meet up for drinks with Microsoft in the lounge at the Hades Hilton.
Sunday, 2 January 2005
Friday, 25 June 2004
Radio, what's new?
More annoying radio commercials...
This one is from Land Rover. Whilst comparing the new Freelander to a beehive (no, really) the narrator goes on to say:
"But unlike the bee, the Freelander doesn't come with a sting in its' tail"
Now, let's ignore the fact that the advert had spent the last thirty seconds comparing the Freelander to a beehive and not a bee. No, the thing that really bugs me (pun both intended and poor) is that bees don't have tails! I mean, have you ever seen a bee with its big ole' sting-equipped tail flapping in the breeze? No, you haven't. Unless you've been smoking something.
Note to Land Rover: You're confusing them with scorpions.
This one is from Land Rover. Whilst comparing the new Freelander to a beehive (no, really) the narrator goes on to say:
"But unlike the bee, the Freelander doesn't come with a sting in its' tail"
Now, let's ignore the fact that the advert had spent the last thirty seconds comparing the Freelander to a beehive and not a bee. No, the thing that really bugs me (pun both intended and poor) is that bees don't have tails! I mean, have you ever seen a bee with its big ole' sting-equipped tail flapping in the breeze? No, you haven't. Unless you've been smoking something.
Note to Land Rover: You're confusing them with scorpions.
Monday, 31 May 2004
Radio Goo-goo
Following on...
DFS. Now, I bloody hate furniture stores. This is not an irrational fear. Allow me to extrapolate:
It's May bank holiday 2003 and Cathy and I are trying to buy a three-piece suite. Seeing as we're moving in to our house after we return from honeymoon (the middle of July 2003) we're looking at about eight weeks. The only suite we've seen so far that we liked (in Walmsley's in Halesowen) has a 12-week delivery time.
Err, no.
So, we've trundled to Kidderminster to see if their Walmsley's has one (it doesn't) and also been to Droitwich and into DFS. Nothing there so, having previously been unimpressed by Cousins at Dudley (although we did buy our bed from there) we head up to Cannock because we've heard that they're very, very big at Brian James.
This proves to be true, but they're also very, very pricey.
Off we trot to Junction 9 of the M6, and a clump of furniture stores, one of which is SCS.
Shudder.
You see, as soon as we walked into SCS we were accosted by not one, not two, but pretty much every sales assistant. One after the other, they asked "Can I help you, sir?"
"Just looking, thanks," I replied. EVERY BLOODY TIME.
And then we went up the stairs to where the three-piece suites were. And made our fatal mistake. We sat down.
Cue a very slimy salesman telling us how quickly they could delivery the suite we were sitting on and how we could spread the payment over three ice ages. At no point did he ask us if we actually liked the suite in question.
So we politely pointed out that we were still just looking. And off we went to the next suite. And he followed us. All around the store.
The moment we went to sit down he would leap into the foreground and start his sales pitch. So we walked out.
(In the end, we bought a lovely suite from Courts in Wolverhampton, after being particularly impressed by a salesman who greeted us with the phrase, "Frankly, I don't care whether you buy a suite from us or not because Wolves have just won the play-off final and life is good")!
Where was I? Oh yes, DFS. Or rather, their current radio commercial.
Well, one of them. They're all annoying but this one really irks me.
Basically, it features a bloke getting chucked out of his hotel bedroom at 2am because, as he booked his stay under their half price offer he only gets to stay half the night and there are people waiting for his room.
Let's ignore the fact that there's no such thing as "half a night". Let's ignore the burning question of why someone wants to check into a room halfway through the night - did they also go for the "half price deal"?
No, what gets my goat (and some other livestock) is the fact that, if by paying half the room rate he can only stay half the night, it's not a half price offer! He's paying the full price! That's like trying to claim that half a pint of beer isn't what you should expect when you pay half the price of a full pint!!
Pah. And double pah!
DFS. Now, I bloody hate furniture stores. This is not an irrational fear. Allow me to extrapolate:
It's May bank holiday 2003 and Cathy and I are trying to buy a three-piece suite. Seeing as we're moving in to our house after we return from honeymoon (the middle of July 2003) we're looking at about eight weeks. The only suite we've seen so far that we liked (in Walmsley's in Halesowen) has a 12-week delivery time.
Err, no.
So, we've trundled to Kidderminster to see if their Walmsley's has one (it doesn't) and also been to Droitwich and into DFS. Nothing there so, having previously been unimpressed by Cousins at Dudley (although we did buy our bed from there) we head up to Cannock because we've heard that they're very, very big at Brian James.
This proves to be true, but they're also very, very pricey.
Off we trot to Junction 9 of the M6, and a clump of furniture stores, one of which is SCS.
Shudder.
You see, as soon as we walked into SCS we were accosted by not one, not two, but pretty much every sales assistant. One after the other, they asked "Can I help you, sir?"
"Just looking, thanks," I replied. EVERY BLOODY TIME.
And then we went up the stairs to where the three-piece suites were. And made our fatal mistake. We sat down.
Cue a very slimy salesman telling us how quickly they could delivery the suite we were sitting on and how we could spread the payment over three ice ages. At no point did he ask us if we actually liked the suite in question.
So we politely pointed out that we were still just looking. And off we went to the next suite. And he followed us. All around the store.
The moment we went to sit down he would leap into the foreground and start his sales pitch. So we walked out.
(In the end, we bought a lovely suite from Courts in Wolverhampton, after being particularly impressed by a salesman who greeted us with the phrase, "Frankly, I don't care whether you buy a suite from us or not because Wolves have just won the play-off final and life is good")!
Where was I? Oh yes, DFS. Or rather, their current radio commercial.
Well, one of them. They're all annoying but this one really irks me.
Basically, it features a bloke getting chucked out of his hotel bedroom at 2am because, as he booked his stay under their half price offer he only gets to stay half the night and there are people waiting for his room.
Let's ignore the fact that there's no such thing as "half a night". Let's ignore the burning question of why someone wants to check into a room halfway through the night - did they also go for the "half price deal"?
No, what gets my goat (and some other livestock) is the fact that, if by paying half the room rate he can only stay half the night, it's not a half price offer! He's paying the full price! That's like trying to claim that half a pint of beer isn't what you should expect when you pay half the price of a full pint!!
Pah. And double pah!
Radio Ga-ga
Rant mode...
Have you heard the latest radio advert for McCain Micro Chips? You know, the microwavable boxes which contain barely half a potatoes' worth of scrapings which always either come out slightly under-done or completely incinerated?
Well, if you haven't heard it, here's a (very) paraphrased version:
Small annoying boy (SAB): Mum, can Simon, Mark, Gary, Paul, Peter, Carl, Andy, James, Christopher, Ben, David, Kevin, Luke, Charles and Tim stay for tea?
Ridiculously-consenting mother: (slightly exasperated) Yes.
SAB: Oh, and Daniel, Greg and Stephen.
Annoying voice-over woman: Thank heavens for McCain Micro Chips; real chips in three minutes. Chin up, mum.
Now, apart from being bloody irritating as adverts go, can you spot a flaw in the premise here?
To save you the bother of counting them, sonny boy asks for 18 friends to stay for tea. Assuming that he's going to eat as well (and assuming that both mum and dad - if he hasn't already moved in with his secretary - aren't eating), and also assuming that mum deems a cardboard box containing half a dozen shards of potato will suffice for an evening meal for a group of growing boys, all she has to do is cook 19 boxes of Micro Chips.
Let's also, logically, assume she has only one microwave oven.
It will take 57 minutes to cook the chips. 57! If, on the other hand, she slapped several baking trays of oven chips in her regular oven (along with something else to make a proper meal) she could feed the lot of them with about half an hours cooking time.
New slogan:
McCain Micro Chips - half the food in twice the time.
Have you heard the latest radio advert for McCain Micro Chips? You know, the microwavable boxes which contain barely half a potatoes' worth of scrapings which always either come out slightly under-done or completely incinerated?
Well, if you haven't heard it, here's a (very) paraphrased version:
Small annoying boy (SAB): Mum, can Simon, Mark, Gary, Paul, Peter, Carl, Andy, James, Christopher, Ben, David, Kevin, Luke, Charles and Tim stay for tea?
Ridiculously-consenting mother: (slightly exasperated) Yes.
SAB: Oh, and Daniel, Greg and Stephen.
Annoying voice-over woman: Thank heavens for McCain Micro Chips; real chips in three minutes. Chin up, mum.
Now, apart from being bloody irritating as adverts go, can you spot a flaw in the premise here?
To save you the bother of counting them, sonny boy asks for 18 friends to stay for tea. Assuming that he's going to eat as well (and assuming that both mum and dad - if he hasn't already moved in with his secretary - aren't eating), and also assuming that mum deems a cardboard box containing half a dozen shards of potato will suffice for an evening meal for a group of growing boys, all she has to do is cook 19 boxes of Micro Chips.
Let's also, logically, assume she has only one microwave oven.
It will take 57 minutes to cook the chips. 57! If, on the other hand, she slapped several baking trays of oven chips in her regular oven (along with something else to make a proper meal) she could feed the lot of them with about half an hours cooking time.
New slogan:
McCain Micro Chips - half the food in twice the time.
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