Oh but how much fun!!!

Time for a bit of fun.....

People in LA really don't like standing near each other while waiting for the bus. Look at the equal spacing between them, is this a LA 'my personal space' rule.

time to pack my bags as its time for the monkey boy to head across the pond, back to LA and then down to Texas, which should be fun as when i looked this morning it was 36C or 96F for our imperic cousins and I just love the sun. so expect the normal on off posting. stay safe

in the mean time, enjoy this poster from my trip to South Africa

Well I'm just back from South Africa, so I thought I've give you a little bit of video I shot there on my Leica D-Lux3. Its making me hunger of a nice steak.

Hello from Johannesburg in South Africa, well its just about time to leave back for the UK. Africa as always has had it share of surprises...nothing like the local Police going on strike and closing down the freeways with tyres and the government police coming in and having a shoot out. Always entertaining. Nothing but good clean fun. See you all in Blighty

Looks like it was a bad landlord try to make the issue bigger than it was, it was only about they pub and not soho as a whole

------
You recently signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to "resist the ban
on outside drinking and maintain the liberal culture of Soho."

A formal response to the petition will be sent to you, and posted online,
once the petition has closed.

In the meantime, you may wish to know that Westminster Council has released
a statement on the subject of the petition as follows:

Contrary to internet rumours, Westminster has no plans to ban outside
drinking in Soho or in the city as a whole. This is an inaccurate and
misleading rumour.

Indeed, the council is actively trying to promote responsible
alfresco-style dining and drinking in certain parts of the city by creating
calm oases away from the hustle and bustle of the main streets.

We are, however, reviewing the licence for The Endurance pub in Berwick
Street following a long history of complaints from nearby residents about
noise from drinkers outside the premises. The Council has previously tried
to work with this pub to resolve this problem and we regret that this
review is now necessary.

The review by the council's licensing committee is due to take place on
June 26, 2008. We want everyone to be able to come to Westminster and have
a good time, but we need to ensure that the interests of residents are
protected and licensees must work with us to this end.

Petition information - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SaveOurSoho/

If you would like to opt out of receiving further mail on this or any other
petitions you signed, please email optout@petitions.pm.gov.uk

linked to http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2008/5/14/3690444.html

Well a great night was had by all, thank you everyone for turning up, no doubt numerous pictures will appear on facebook and the like but I'll put some of my shots on flickr. click on the link to view.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resist the ban on outside drinking and maintain the liberal culture of Soho.

This petition as been created by the licensee's of Soho. If you live, work or just visit Soho, and you are familiar with The Endurance Pub and want to support us against Westminster Councils objective for a complete ban on outside drinking and socializing then please sign our petition. It is the councils intention to enforce a complete ban on outside drinking in all licensed premises.

Submitted by Alan Drew of Hope & Glory Public Houses LTD – Deadline to sign up by: 12 November 2008 –

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SaveOurSoho/

The Cans Festival

building the ContentAgent stand at NAB 2008 in Las Vegas

Any if you see someone you that looks like a long haired Geordie jumping at the back its not me honest

Well haven't we been busy,  below is a graph of the traffic that my  blog has attracted since I started it back in June  2006 . It seems I now topping out my bandwidth and my blog was shut down by my  providers for going over one gigabyte of transfer usage a month. Looks like I 'll be moving service or transferring my package soon.

Went to see the La clippers vs Memphis grizzlies last night, La won which was good but a weird game. most people more intrested on getting on TV than watching the game and the thought of drinking Budweiser again....eeeekkkkk

Just spend the weekend in Las Vegas, it was great as always just wish it could have been longer. Its amazing how much you miss people and how many memories come flooding back. But I'm writing this in Burbank, CA for a week of work which is always fun.....No doubt i'll have more pictures on the blog in a bit.

A part of me knows how these guys feel,

warranty that ya b***ards

why'd you have to go and let it die....

Well I've just got Thames Water to fit me a water meter, as I spend so much time away I thought it would help the old bank balance and the planet if I got one fitted.

Thames Water Leaflet on http://www.thameswater.co.uk/en_gb/Downloads/PDFs/PBS_Metering_should_I_have_a_meter_FINAL_June06_101kb.pdf
and the request form online
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/UK/region/en_gb/content/MeterRequest

sometimes you look beautiful London, you really do.

Well its all in a name they say, Virgin Megastore rebrand as Zavvi....some time ago I blogged about the extreme poor customer service that I recieved from Parcel2go you can read the article on this link, http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2006/12/18/2582255.html well it seems they are going for a bit of a rebranding excerise and rebranding as Border HQ or borderhq.com if you like a web address. This I found out when I recieved an email from BorderHQ.com they email is below

From: c.jones@borderhq.com
To:
CC: a.adams@parcel2go.com
Subject: BorderHQ
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:36:57 +0000

Dear

Anneka Mercer (cc’d above) has asked me to contact you as Parcel2Go.com are terminating their USA address service and offering their customers a free move to www.BorderHQ.com who will take over this service.
This is due to the huge increase in subscriptions and the need for dedicated customer services and to help ensure service quality is as good as it can be.

As a current customer of Parcel2Go.com with part of a year’s subscription still left, Parcel2Go.com has negotiated a deal whereby you will receive a full year’s standard subscription with BorderHQ.com at no cost to yourself.
You will be given a free Lite membership worth £19.99 and also BorderHQ.com will fix the renewal fee to £9.99 for a further year should you choose to renew.
If you increased your membership level in the following year then £9.99 would be deducted from your renewal fee.
See http://www.borderhq.com/levels.aspx for details of the membership levels

BorderHQ.com will be opening up a log in area where you can view any receipts and you can manage your own shipments online.

Also full time customer services advisors such as myself are at hand to help with any problems you may have.
Please email me if you want me to set this up but please take note that Parcel2Go.com will be terminating its USA address services within 28 days and you will be unable to continue to use this service with Parcel2Go.com

 

Kindest Regards

Chris Jones

BorderHQ.com

e: c.jones@BorderHQ.com

---

 Well thats a bit of a turn up for the books Parcel2go terminating their service and going to a new company well maybe this company will be different. Well I hoped until I did a DNS lookup at www.dnsstuff.com and checked out who registered the website and shock horror Parcel2go and Border HQ have the same mailing address and low and behold its our old friend Anneka Mercer, know from such services as not returning your calls and being know as far as I was concerned "the biggest stumbling block at Parcel2go" when I had dealings with them. So a completely new company is it under the worst person I dealt with at Parcel2go, well BorderHQ better get themselves sorted at they don't seem to have registered under the Data Protection Act to hold peoples details and also Parcel2go or FAM Logistics as they like to be know seem to be giving peoples personal data away to new companies willynilly. Oh I feel a wheeze coming on. Watch this space.

 

The DNS results for Border HQ Ltd..

Registrant:
 Border HQ Limited
 Coe House
 Coe Street
 Bolton, Greater Manchester BL3 6BU
 GB

 Domain name: BORDERHQ.COM

 Administrative Contact:
    Mercer, Anneka  ****@borderhq.com
    Coe House
    Coe Street
    Bolton, Greater Manchester BL3 6BU
    GB
    +448708033812
 Technical Contact:
    Mercer, Anneka  ****@borderhq.com
    Coe House
    Coe Street
    Bolton, Greater Manchester BL3 6BU
    GB
    +448708033812


 Registration Service Provider:
    UK Reg, *******@fasthosts.co.uk
    +44 1452 541252
    +44 1452 538485 (fax)
    http://www.ukreg.com/



 Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC.
 Record last updated on 13-Jan-2008.
 Record expires on 06-Sep-2008.
 Record created on 06-Sep-2007.

 Registrar Domain Name Help Center:
    http://domainhelp.tucows.com

 Domain servers in listed order:
    NS3.LIVEDNS.CO.UK   
    NS1.LIVEDNS.CO.UK   
    NS2.LIVEDNS.CO.UK   


 Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
                clientUpdateProhibited

 

Companies House results for Border HQ

Name & Registered Office: BORDERHQ LTD COE HOUSE, COE STREET BOLTON ENGLAND BL3 6BU Company No. 06361240

Status: Active Date of Incorporation: 05/09/2007 Country of Origin: United Kingdom Company Type: Private Limited Company Nature of Business (SIC(03)): None Supplied Accounting Reference Date: 30/09 Last Accounts Made Up To:  (NO ACCOUNTS FILED) Next Accounts Due: 05/07/2009 Last Return Made Up To: Next Return Due: 03/10/2008 Previous Names: No previous name information has been recorded over the last 20 years.

---

The list in the Register of data controllers for FAM LOGISTICS LTD

Registration Number: Z8622554

Date Registered: 28 May 2004     Registration Expires: 27 May 2008

Data Controller: FAM LOGISTICS LTD

Address:

COE HOUSE
COE STREET
BOLTON
BL3 6BU

Other Names:

PARCEL2GO.COM

---

This register entry describes, in very general terms, the personal data being processed by:

FAM LOGISTICS LTD

This register entry contains personal data held for 3 purpose(s)

---

Purpose 1

Staff Administration

Purpose Description:

Appointments or removals, pay, discipline, superannuation, work management or other personnel matters in relation to the staff of the data controller.

Data subjects are:

Staff including volunteers, agents, temporary and casual workers

Data classes are:

Personal Details
Family, Lifestyle and Social Circumstances
Education and Training Details
Employment Details
Financial Details
Racial or Ethnic Origin
Trade Union Membership
Physical or Mental Health or Condition

Sources (S) and Disclosures (D)(1984 Act). Recipients (1998 Act):

Data subjects themselves
Relatives, guardians or other persons associated with the data subject
Current, past or prospective employers of the data subject
Education, training establishments and examining bodies
Suppliers, providers of goods or services
Financial organisations and advisers
Trade, employer associations and professional bodies
Central Government
Employment and recruitment agencies

Transfers:

None outside the European Economic Area

---

Purpose 2

Advertising, Marketing & Public Relations

Purpose Description:

Advertising or marketing the business of the data controller, activity, goods or services and promoting public relations in connection with that business or activity, or those goods or services.

Data subjects are:

Customers and clients

Data classes are:

Personal Details
Family, Lifestyle and Social Circumstances
Financial Details
Goods or Services Provided

Sources (S) and Disclosures (D)(1984 Act). Recipients (1998 Act):

Data subjects themselves

Transfers:

None outside the European Economic Area

---

Purpose 3

Accounts & Records

Purpose Description:

Keeping accounts related to any business or other activity carried on by the data controller, or deciding whether to accept any person as a customer or supplier, or keeping records of purchases, sales or other transactions for the purpose of ensuring that the requisite payments and deliveries are made or services provided by him or to him in respect of those transactions, or for the purpose of making financial or management forecasts to assist him in the conduct of any such business or activity

Data subjects are:

Customers and clients

Data classes are:

Personal Details
Family, Lifestyle and Social Circumstances
Goods or Services Provided

Sources (S) and Disclosures (D)(1984 Act). Recipients (1998 Act):

Data subjects themselves
Suppliers, providers of goods or services
Ombudsmen and regulatory authorities

Transfers:

None outside the European Economic Area

 

i seem to have a few unread messages after being away fo a few days...lets hope its just the iphone messing me about and not really that many otherwise I'm going to have to get through a lot of Viagra emails.

Seems my blog got rapped by another bot yesterday, it ignored the robots.txt file much like ID-search.org so it looks like it was id harvesting.

The offending network was giganet from the 216.40.222.50 looks like another one for the htaccess file
seems like others are having the same problem http://www.a-daily-rant.com/2007/12/17/gigamega-gona/

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make this planet great and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

This was sent to me by a friend Geoff

Intel has released Linux source code, and set up a community site, to allow Fibre Channel frames to be embedded in Ethernet packets. This means companies using Fibre Channel can make more use of the protocol while maintaining their existing kit. Open-fcoe will provide a home for developments, as well as the various tools and guides that will be needed by anyone trying the technology.

From The Register
Ethernet dances the light fantastic
I seem to have lambasted the rest of the article when i made my comments on the The Register

Part of me thinks, where were the Assistants who do the crowd control and did the director even tell the authorities that they were filming in the area??...Of course not, probably another production on the cheap thinking they can get away with it,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7149216.stm
----- The director of an Angolan crime film says police have shot dead two of his actors after mistaking them for real armed robbers.

The duo were carrying unloaded firearms as they filmed a scene in a rough suburb of the capital Luanda, director Radical Ribeiro told AFP news agency.

He said police roared up to the set and began shooting at close range.

Angolan officials have not commented on the incident. Mr Ribeiro says he had permission to film in the area.

Mr Ribeiro told AFP that police arrived at the scene in a pick-up truck and "started shooting at everybody at close range".

He was "stunned" when he saw the two actors fall down, he added.

"They went on shooting until I shouted out: 'Please don't shoot, this is a movie.'"

The officers then stopped firing and left without attending to the wounded, who were taken to hospital, Mr Ribeiro said.

Well as its the season to be jolly I thought I'd share this lovely tit bit I found the The Register. Remember what ever you do at the office party you have to see that person the next day. The guys and girls in the building with RED Consulting seem to be having a bit of fun.


We're absolutely delighted to announce this morning that the traditional drunken spirit of Xmas is most certainly not dead down at 41-44 Great Windmill Street, London W1, as the following email proves:

From: Mark XXXX
Sent: 14 December 2007 11:43
To: . All RED All Users
Subject: Extra Curricular Activities

Good Morning Everyone,

This morning the Office Manager from Sthree (company that occupies the 2nd floor) informed me that last night two people were caught enjoying 'relations' on one of their desks. The member of staff from Sthree was working late and heard something going on around the corner, after deciding to investigate he discovered the couple having sex and to his astonishment they noticed that he had noticed, but decided to continue anyway. Once 'finished' the lady in high boots asked the member of staff if there was a toilet she could borrow. Classy!

Ok, this does raise a few questions. If a horny couple decided to enter the office from the street they would have had to get past the main street doors without a fob and into Sthree's offices without a fob, which is a bit tricky. Sthree's main reception door in situated in the main atrium and is always open. Therefore, there is a good chance that they were already in the building. The member of staff describes them as dressed casually, pretty much like we are dressed most days. Also they appeared to be under the influence of alcohol…oh, that's right we have a free bar on the 5th floor.

So, the message here is quite clear, please make sure you know who is coming in the door behind you, make sure you can trust your friends when they visit the bar and make sure all office staff have gone home!

Thanks

Mark

P.S. If anyone does know who the copulating couple were, you can drop me a little email to save me the task of trailing through a whole evenings worth of CCTV! Thanks

Google Maps with My Location (beta)

Their website says See your location on the map, with or without GPS. Save time and tedious keystrokes finding where you are, what's around you, and how to get there. Why the uncertainty? The My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near you to approximate your current location on the map - it's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average). We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy."

So as you can see from the picture the dot is not showing me where I am, (the dot is around St James somewhere when I'm currently located in Soho, London and the accuracy of the location data can be up to 5km off. So rather than telling me i'm in Soho it could be telling me I'm in Islington lets hope they improve the accuracy soon.

After yesterdays little delay http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/12/9/3399945.html.

Well it seems that the new London Overground management have got the same refund process as the other Transport for London services.

you can find the refund page here http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/refunds/1092.aspx

The rules are for Tube refunds Tube journey has been delayed for more than 15 minutes by circumstances within TFL control, use the Tube refund link to claim your refund.

The rules are for  journey on London Overground has been delayed for more than 30 minutes by circumstances within TFL control, use the Overground refund link to claim your refund.

You can read the Overground Passenger Charter one the link http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/Overground-Passenger-Charter.pdf

My claim was number on their site was #123

Typical British railways, London overground new management same problems. Trying to get anywhere is painful.

Update: How to claim for delays on the London Overground. http://blog.kking.co.uk/blog/_archives/2007/12/10/3401563.html

Well the academics at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis revealed their shock findings yesterday from their research "Beer makes people have sex with you!!!!"

Yes, they have already started on next years work Trying to find out if the Pope is Catholic and do Bears toilet in the woods.

Release http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0145-6008
Abstract http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2007.00537.x

No more listening to the guitarist tune up between songs, oh bliss! Guitar manufacturer Gibson has started to produce the self-tuning Robot Guitar.

The technical details of how the axe keeps the strings nicely in tune - via pitch-monitoring bridge, CPU, and servo-motored machine heads - is available here.

Also a great training vid HTTP://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/robotguitarvideovoting.aspx?playvideo=training

indexing is great and can allow people to find great stuff on the web but when someone comes along and programs their spiders to make 10000 request and indexes(rapes) the whole site, I think oh my god you've killed my bandwidth. Which has got me a bit pev'd. The last few times its be Id-search.org, you and read all about that on this link.
This time it looks like Identity sellers 192.com  .I don't mind them indexing but have some consideration of peoples bandwidth cost, 10000 pages in one go is just excessive. Here a example out of the log file.

212.227.102.48 "/blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html" "-" "192.comAgent" "GET /blog/_archives/2007/9/5/3208735.html HTTP/1.1 " - - "text/html"
[01/Dec/2007:14:26:14 -0500] 0 200 26523 GET blog.kking.co.uk

Whois for 212.227.102.48 from www.dnsstuff.com

inetnum:      212.227.68.0 - 212.227.108.255
netname:      SCHLUND-CUSTOMERS
descr:        Schlund + Partner AG
descr:        NCC#1999110113
country:      DE
admin-c:      UI-RIPE
tech-c:       UI-RIPE
rev-srv:      ns.schlund.de
rev-srv:      ns2.schlund.de
status:       ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:       SCHLUND-MNT
changed:      ***@schlund.net 20040611
source:       RIPE

role:           Schlund NCC
address:        1&1 Internet AG
address:        Brauerstrasse 48
address:        D-76135 Karlsruhe
address:        Germany
remarks:        For abuse issues, please use only *****@oneandone.net
phone:          +49 721 91374 50
fax-no:         +49 721 91374 20
e-mail:         ***@oneandone.net
admin-c:        SPNC-RIPE
tech-c:         SPNC-RIPE
nic-hdl:        UI-RIPE
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
abuse-mailbox:  *****@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        *****@schlund.com 20040512
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071116
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071119
source:         RIPE

% Information related to '212.227.0.0/16AS8560'

route:          212.227.0.0/16
descr:          SCHLUND-PA-2
origin:         AS8560
notify:         *********@oneandone.net
mnt-by:         SCHLUND-MNT
changed:        ***@schlund.net 20040611
changed:        *********@oneandone.net 20071030
source:         RIPE

So this IP range is now going into the firewall of the blog.