Day Jar View

I’ve watched most of the Olympic coverage on the BBC this time around. From 8am to 6pm, then the highlights show at 7pm, I’ve been pretty much glued to the screen. Of course this hasn’t always gone down well with the missus, but then plus ca change eh?

A comment by Michael Johnson, the best visiting pundit on the BBC, made me aware of one of the most important reasons why I enjoy the spectacle so much.

For the past 20 years, my life is punctuated with key memories, which meld into one another with the passage of time, and don’t usually conjoin with a particular news event in my head. With the Olympics, however, it seems to be different.

What is it about sport that makes me remember watching Ben Johnson’s astonishing 9.79 in the 100m in Seoul 1988 on a 4″ black and white TV in my dorm room, under the duvet so that we wouldn’t wake anyone; Chris Boardman’s triumph on the track in 1992 as my girlfriend and I sat cross-leggged on the grass outside our tent on our first holiday away together; Michael Johnson’s 200m World Record in Atlanta whilst at our family home in France with my Dad and younger Brother; Steve Redgrave’s 5th Gold on the radio whilst in my bedroom in 2000; Kelly Holmes’ first gold in 2004 cooking in the kitchen.

I’ve watched so much of this Games, and seen all of the highlights, but I think I will remember the pool hall in Guildford where I saw Usain Bolt’s embarrassment of his fellow runners in the 100m, and Rebecca Adlington’s unadulterated joy at winning her first whilst I was busy helping change the worktops in our kitchen.

Who knows, in 20 years’ time, something else might flash in there, but that’s the beauty of memories; they are at once fluid and fleeting.

I’m well pleased with my new Sony Bravia KDL-26T3000 LCD television. I previously had a 17″ DMTech with built in DVD, but this failed early on (although predictably just after the guarantee had expired), so I couldn’t use the internal DVD player.

This time round, to go with the new kitchen breakfast bar, we splashed out on a 26″ LCD to go with the separate DVD player, and chased the cables into the wall. I can now work with a whacking great TV to my immediate left and watch the women’s beach volleyball. Heaven.

The launch of the new iPhone has seen a predictably hysterical reaction in the more media-friendly press. It promises much of the same as the original version launched last year, with the addition of 3G promising fast internet access, and a GPS receiver, allowing navigation software to run on the unit.

The software glitches that have blighted the launch of the new unit have been the focus this week, but I wanted to point out something that I think makes the whole thing more of a fashion accessory, rather than a useful tool.

It’s called the iPhone but, in reality, from the very beginning the phone seems to have been included almost as an afterthought, in order that it can be marketed as a genuine catch-all alternative to the already ubiquitous and ground-breaking iPod and your current handset.

I say this because the keyboard of the iPhone is still a problem in my eyes. The problem with most phones is that the keyboard does not lend itself very well to typing, simply due to its physical size. Compound that with the touchscreen technology, and you have a keyboard on the iPhone that is considerably slower and more error-prone than those with conventional keys.

In their haste to produce a thing of beauty (and in that respect, incidentally, I think they have succeeded), they have taken the iPhone down a cul-de-sac that has hamstrung its desirability as a useful communication tool.

Sure, it looks great, will play music and apparently even makes phone calls, but try and use it to email, blog or compose a document, and you will find yourself yearning for an old-school keyboard that not only collects dust and crumbs, but means you can work faster. Surely that should be the point of these things?

No doubt Apple will shift orchard-sized piles of these things, in spite of my nit-picking, and good luck to them. But I will be sticking with the decidedly and resolutely old-school keyboard of my BlackBerry Curve, in all its crumby, dusty glory.

Read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7501321.stm

Over the past few years, I have experimented periodically with trying to reduce my amount of exposure to all things electronic. I include under electronic basically anything with a chip – tv, laptop, PC, PDA etc.

The driver for this was never a fear of potential damage to my innards from stray electromagentic radiation, but a desire to try and avoid a potentially far more damaging end result – my ability to concentrate.

I find that trying to concentrate on any one thing – whether it be a book, an article, a quote or composing an email, is becoming increasingly harder the more devices and websites are running around me. The urge to check email on my tabbed browser or PDA is so strong that the only thing to do is to turn them off, and go and sit in the next room. But then when it isn’t close at hand, you spend probably every other paragraph thinking about what you might be missing. Sound familiar?

I’ve read about some people only reading emails between certain times of the day, or having one day a week off everything, so maybe I should try that. But I think unless someone physically removes the PDA, PC or tv from my immediate vicinity and then straps me down to the chair, I have a feeling I might struggle to stick to the new regime.

Check out – http://tinyurl.com/6zdzcf

One of my pet hates, especially in today’s world of instant access to spell checkers and websites devoted to grammatical correctness (is that a word?), is the seeming increase in the use of the greengrocer’s apostrophe.

It’s one thing to see a scrawled sign on my way to work every day that says “lunch’s”, but quite another when one of the world’s largest companies, Dell Computers, makes a similar faux pas on its offers home page.

I don’t know what’s worse; that Dell don’t have a single person in their organisation who has spotted it, or has and then hasn’t reported it, or that the probable thousands who have seen it since haven’t contacted them to flag it immediately?

Of course I am included in that bunch. And at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I don’t want to be the one who tells them – I can imagine it wouldn’t be warmly received and I don’t want to be “one of those”.

So, instead, I will post up their mistake for everyone here to see and everyone else to potentially stumble across in year’s to come (geddit?).

Whilst I was away on a boozy weekend with some mates down South, apparently my daughter started going forwards when crawling, rather than just sideways, in circles, and backwards as has been the case so far.

I was a bit miffed to have missed it, but on my return on Sunday night she duly performed her new moves on the kitchen floor. Quite emotional really, and since then all I’ve done is try to encourage her to take her first steps – just for me!

I was amazed the other morning. Radio Five carried one of their usual tabloidy phone-ins, and the topic was the Olympics, and the Brits’ success.

Instead of blanket celebration, there were a number of callers who simply couldn’t bring themselves to bask in the reflected glory. Instead they came out with all sorts of crap about how the sports we had won medals in were “for the rich” or “elitist”.

Ask our current crop of athletes whether they have any money, and I think most people would be surprised what a struggle it is for most of their lives when they are training. It’s only when they achieve success (and even then, only in the blue ribbon sports) that they can make some decent money.

Only a Brit would look at our medal table position (currently 3rd) and say it was a bad thing.

I’m a firm believer in there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing.
However, this week I’m wondering whether whoever said that is still around to witness the deluge. It hasn’t stopped for a week.

As Brits, I think we are all guilty of remembering the bad more than the good when it comes to the weather; but I don’t think anyone would disagree that it has, as it’s known in metereological circles, been “pissing it down” for what seems like forever.

Our holiday in West Wales might well require waders all round at this rate.

I was wondering whether a single “Hundreds and Thousands” would be called a “One”, or a “Hundred and Thousandth”?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprinkles

I’ve succumbed.

After approximately 20 years of a 32″ inch waist (or, at least, buying 32″ trousers), I have finally given in and bought my first pairs of 34″ jeans.

I tried on the 32″s first of all, and even brought a pair home, but I couldn’t hide the fact that the muffin top was on full display.

Once I’d made the decision to upscale, I actually felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, if not my waist.

I look forward to a future filled with exuberant knee bends, improved circulation around my nether regions, and a permanent move away from that spray-on look.