Eurovision

I like watching Eurovison. (a kind of international song/popularity contest in which the rest of Europe votes for themselves and gives England a good kicking). I don't watch the musical performances (although these are great if you have the translation switched on) but I do watch the judging. This time it was even more hilarious than usual, with 36 countries passing judgement on 24 songs. And even with all those votes floating around England still only managed to come 16th or so. Serves us right for entering with a proper song. Everyone voted for all the people they were directly joined to by land. Which left us in a bit of a mess. And Ireland got hammered as well.

The thing that puzzles/irritates me is that in this age of information hyper technology there is no need for all this "Can we have the votes from Kurdistan?" kind of nonsense. A bit of tomfoolery with a website and the votes could be counted and displayed in the blink of eye. All that the voting does is let us look at pictures of roundabouts in Kiev or wherever and marvel at the makeup habits of the rest of Europe (particularly the men). If you think about it, the winner has actually been chosen once voting has closed and the sequence of successive revelations; "And Greece are really catching up now...." is actually a big waste of time. But perhaps this goes against the spirit of the occasion. If indeed there is any spirit. Of course, if England had won I'd be going on about how wonderful the competition is....

 

Spoon Collecting

Rather surprised to find 8 spoons on my office desk today. It all has to do with yogurt, or expensive mouldy milk with sugar in, as it should be more properly known. Anyhoo, every day, in order to make myself even more healthy (glossy coat, wet nose etc etc) I take a yogurt to work with me as part of my calorie controlled lunch. I also take a spoon to eat it with. This has resulted in a migration of spoons from kitchen to office, leading to questions in the house like "where have all the spoons gone?.". I suppose I'd better take some back home at some point.

I noticed one of the students looking a bit askance at my collection. I wasn't sure whether to explain or just use it to add to my mystique. In the end I failed to mention them. Perhaps I will now be known as "The Spoon Man of Hull". Whatever.

 

How to spot the baddie

Impress your friends. Confound your enemies. Here are my patented techniques to spot the baddie in any TV detective series. Follow these simple steps and convince people that you have either have incredible crime fighting deductive skills or you have have seen the episode before.

• if one of the suspects is played by a suspiciously good actor this is a dead giveaway. It is virtually certain that they will be called upon to play a "you'll never take me alive copper" or "where did it all go wrong" scene towards the end.

• If the music plays a mournful theme whenever the character enters the room this is a dead giveaway. They are the villain for sure. This is particularly useful in Agatha Christie adaptations.

• If one of the characters is behaving in a particularly level headed or sensible way. Bingo. You've just fingered the murderer.

• It of course goes without saying that anyone that the lead detective is so stupid as to fall in love with is either a. the baddie or b. destined to be murdered next. If they don't get their cloggs popped you know who to look for.

• Finally, when all else fails it is almost certain to be the one person who couldn't have done it. Or in extreme cases, the first victim.

 

Argos Comes Through

Did something brave on Saturday. Ordered some stuff from Argos and selected their "home delivery service". In the past this service has been something like "We knock once on your door (or perhaps the neighbours) and then run off with your precious goods before you can catch us". A kind of stealth delivery/hide and seek technique which does not result in a happy ending. Anyhoo, we elected for delivery today, and were informed that the mystic van could arrive any time between 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. Fantastic. Cue lots of frantic schedule mangling and re-arrangement of plans to ensure that this 10 hour window was properly covered.

So, having got a complex series of shift changes so that everyone could do their proper jobs and there will always be someone present to answer the call it turns out that the goods (some rather nice garden furniture as it happens) arrive at 8:30 in the morning. Cue lots of frantic schedule re-mangling as the impossible suddenly becomes possible again. Oh, and the furniture is very nice. Even used it for our first home BBQ. A very british affair. The weather was probably too cold, but we all sat there in our numerous layers of clothing, warming our hands on the chilled wine and saying how nice it was. And, you know, it was.

 

Hull and Winning

Hull students seem to like winning competitions. We've had lots of success in the Imagine Cup and now a student has won a BCS essay competition. Matthew (Matt) Jones has won the IT Directors Forum competition and now gets a free cruise with lots of the great and the good in computing. I've suggested that he blog the event and so you can find out about his adventures here. 

Displacement Activity

I've been tidying my office again. You know what that means? It means that I really should be doing something else, in this case marking. I'm around half way through the first year coursework, using my wonderful marking program to help me along the way. Even the fun of using the Tablet PC to scribble on listings and screenshots is starting to run a bit dry in the face of 150 of the blighters. However, the good news is that there is some really good stuff in there. And my room is actually quite tidy now.

 

What Good is the Internet?

The internet is broken for me. Not for number one son, who taunts me with cries of "I'm getting 55K per second now, ha ha". However, my connection (which is exactly the same as his) keeps coming up with timed out messages. Do you suppose that these two facts might be related? Anyhoo, everywhere I want to go to is broken. I can't get to my desktop in my office, and all the other sites I want to visit are the other side of the "thing of slowness" which is my link to the outside world. At this rate I might have to go back to that "real life" thing...