Archive for category Miscellaneous

I’m mildly amused but mostly slightly irritated by those seeking to attack the decision by Waterstones not to use the apostrophe in their name any more. I’m annoyed mostly because of their reasoning – it’s really not that inconvenient, right?

Wrong.

My surname is O’Connell. In general, I don’t use the apostrophe when I enter my name on computer systems. It does not appear on my bank cards for example, because I asked them to take it off when I changed my name. It’s not on my blood donor card, because I did not put it on the forms when I signed up.

But some people will “helpfully” reinsert it if I leave it off. This leads to problems. Not just the Little Bobby Tables problem, but that’s bad enough when systems won’t let you enter it but still require an exact match on your name. More than once I’ve started at a company to find my email is “Zoe.O’Connell@company.com” which isn’t a valid address.

And you can forget personalised domains, because someone is bound to try zoeo’connell.com which also won’t work.

Fix the computers? I wish it was that easy but humans can’t handle it either. I’ve been stuck at the front gates of data centres or on the phone to some call centre more than once because they are typing “O-Connell”, “O,Connell” or even just Connell on the computer to search for me.

I’ve ranted about this before, back in 2009:

I’ve decided that I’m going to change my name to संसृति कुमारी. This is, as far as I can figure out, the closest you can get to “Life Maiden” (Zoe Imogen) in सम्भाषनसंस्कृत (Sanskrit). I shall write to everyone – banks etc. – and inform them of my name change. Of course, they’ll all write back and tell me that they’re very sorry, but their computer systems can’t handle सम्भाषनसंस्कृत letters.

To which there’s a simple reply – You can’t handle the stupid apostrophie in my surname as it is without breaking things, why would having it in Sanskrit many any difference?

So, until someone can fix the whole Internet and teach all humans everywhere to enter data properly, I’ll stick without it.

(As an aside, there is likely not even supposed to be an apostrophe in the name anyway. I’ve seen various explanations but it’s most likely simply an anglicisation that happened during the first censuses of Ireland to mean “of the Connell clan”, “son/daughter of Conall” etc.)

Today’s big news (Well, it had first billing on the radio this morning) is that women in the UK are fatter than anywhere else in Europe. Men don’t escape criticism either, being second “fattest”.

Whilst I don’t doubt health is important, I’m always wary of the numbers like this. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, the British Army regards me as both healthy and fit enough to serve on the front line, and I can comfortably pass all the fitness tests required.

But my BMI, 26.1, says I’m “overweight”. 18-25 is regarded as a healthy range, depending on who you ask, but I suspect I’d look like an unhealthy stick insect with a BMI of 18 and I’m almost certain I would struggle with fitness.

I do wonder how much of the media focus on BMI is due to a Daily-Mailesque obsession not with fitness and health in general, but with looking like a supermodel.

I’m currently on a roll with near-future Science Fiction (Rule 34 currently graces my iPad Kindle app) with all it’s predictions of a capitalist, dystopian and advert-laden future. And I run across a blog post called 5 Terrifying Things Movies Don’t Tell You About Los Angeles. It’s number 5 entry bemoans the capitalist, dystopian advert-ladent present that is LA.

Billboard ads for gastric bands proclaiming “Dieting sucks!”? With a man who appears to be struggling with some sort of food-related being that’s attempting to stuff itself down his throat? Perhaps Ridley Scott just came forward in time three decades to modern Los Angeles before filming Blade Runner.

But I have a solution. Augmented reality glasses feature heavily in some modern Science Fiction, usually coupled with intrusive advertising being thrown through the cybersphere at the protagonist. We already have Augmented Reality apps of a sort on the iPhone, and seperately from this Ad-blocking technology is popular with some folk. (I use it myself on Firefox, because Flash hurts)

So, instead of glasses or a VR application on the iPhone that allow unscrupulous spammers to invade your reality with their sales pitch, how about a version with that blacks out locations of known billboards? You could even filter certain kinds of adverts perhaps. Or replace the adverts (And paper copies of the Daily Mail that accidentally come too close to you) with pictures of kittens.

Oddly, calorie counting seems to be the enemy of diet food companies.

Mcdonalds Double Sausage & Egg Muffin and Hash Brown = 690 calories.

Slimfast (Or similar) shake, meal replacement bar plus three snacks (Their recommended daily intake before dinner) = 725 calories.

If I have McDonalds, I feel full until dinner (I won’t have lunch) and have the energy to do a good 45 minutes of hard exercise around lunchtime. If I have Slimfast I’m left feeling hungry all day and may end up snacking, plus I’ll lack the energy and motivation to get any exercise.

I had McDonalds this morning. I am yet to find a drawback to this plan.

Back in 2009, Labour tried to mothball the Territorial Army in order to save just 20 million pounds. To put that in context, over 10% of the total regular and volunteer manning of the British Armed forces was threatened for a saving of around 0.05% of the total military budget.

The situation was dire, with military out of control and with a budget “black hole” of £36 billion. Even without a huge deficit to worry about, something had to be done – but the choice of cuts was bizarre and displayed a fundamental lack of understanding of how the military, and volunteer reservists in particular, worked.

Labour did a partial U-Turn, but the damage was done: training was reduced and people left, in part simply because there was nothing to do any more. This wasn’t the only event that got me active in politics: I’d previously written letters to MPs as long ago as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, (As it then was) but it was only a few months after this that I stopped being a “mere” leaflet deliverer and joined the Liberal Democrats, so defence is something I still keep a close eye on.

The government is dealing with the black hole by cutting £5 billion from the budget, with just over 20,000 posts going – less than the total size of the Territorial Army. No, it’s not great and not something I welcome. And of course there is discussion and criticism from those who still have some credibility left on the issue. I’d be amazed if that was not the case.

But it’s hardly surprising that given what happened in 2009 and a complete failure to control military spending, Labour haven’t been as loud as they could be in their condemnation of the cuts – they lack the credibility to do so. The shadow defence secretary has trotted out the usual “too far, too fast” rhetoric but with little substance, as usual, to back it up.

Dear Eric Pickles,

You seem a little confused this morning. I notice you are quoted in several places stating that “Weekly rubbish collections are the most visible of all frontline services…“. Fair enough, if the council did not collect the rubbish at all there would be uproar, so I can’t disagree with you there. But then you go on “…I believe every household in England has a basic right to have their rubbish collected every week“.

I’ve had a quick look at Liberty’s guide to human rights and oddly, bin collections are not listed. Right to marry is, so perhaps you were confused on the way to an equal marriage consultation and went into the wrong room.

There’s also the right to vote, something I know your Conservative colleagues have had trouble with understanding recently when it comes to prisoners. But I just thought I’d point these out, because if you are on a “basic rights” crusade, I felt you might want directing towards some more fundamental matters than weekly bin collections.

Hope this helps,

Zoë.