Andy Ramblings

Most criminals who get caught are not always the brightest sparks, well they got caught? isn't that a give away ? So here's this bright spark (well a dim one, but there is a spark there) He has a master plan, he needs to get out of the hell hole that a state prison in Georgia, USA Not Georgia in the Caucasu. Anyway, he's got this plan, Escape! It works very well, he gets out, he's a free man! Nobody say him do a runner. Brilliant, pure genius! 

This is where the real plan fails, he was out of cigarettes, he was so desperate to get some, he hatched the escape plan, got out, and raided a local store, no he didn't pay for the ciggies, no he stole them, so far so not bright spark!

The spark has now just gone out! He master plan was to escape the prision, raid a local store for a few cartages of ciggies, then try and creep back in. Yep, he got caught when he was creeping back in with the swag of ciggies. Genius!

You don't think this is true ? well it's all here on the good old BBC, here from the Huffington post.

I'll put this down as Escape Fail!

Yes, I could be in trouble as I often go to demonstration with my camera and what does one do, takes pictures of the real trouble makers, yep, not the folks in the demo, but the cops. They, in my view, get a bit too excited and well, though their weight (law) around abit.

From today, anyone taking a photograph of a police officer could be deemed to have committed a criminal offence.
That is because of a new law - Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act - which has come into force.
It permits the arrest of anyone found "eliciting, publishing or communicating information" relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".
That means anyone taking a picture of one of those people could face a fine or a prison sentence of up to 10 years, if a link to terrorism is proved. Source

 

So, I could be in the slammer for upto 10yrs just for taking photos. The question I would like to know is this, How do you prove a 'link to terrorism' ?

I can see these PCSO or those known as Plastic Cops (PCSO) who are basically folks who are part time coppers but can't really do coppers job. The worry is, if one of these folks doesn't like you, and you happen to be taking photos of some of the great London Landmarks, s/he could have you in the slammer with trumped up charges and your life is wrecked. This really is something that should never have been allowed to pass into Law!

Oh and here's why I may in trouble... check here

Facebook group here

OK, a bit late. but just felt that, you know, better late than never. Anyway, how many of you have set yourselves up with resolutions for the year? I made one a few years back, t'is very easy to keep, in fact, I've kept it ever since, that was, to never make them again. It appears that I was correct in this, it has now been shown that making resolutions is bad for you, not only in the fact that, well, you will never keep it, but that it's bad for your health. SO says the BBC.

Deciding to turn over a new leaf in the new year could do more harm than good, a mental health charity has warned. Mind has urged people not to feel they must start 2009 armed with resolutions for self-improvement. The charity said resolutions which focus on issues such as the need to lose weight or job worries create a negative self-image. Source

 

I can imagine that the resolution to loose weight is most likely doomed to failure. Job worries, why is that a resolution? no idea, maybe I'l get of my arse and look harder. But I don't think that in it's self will not help too much with the current prevailing economic situation.

They use the forever usefully line, It will create a negative self-image. This is, I bet the same folks who also say, that telling a kid that they have failed and exam could damage their self image for the rest of their lives. What a load of Bull.  You learn from mistakes, you learn from failures it's called learning, it's part of life. You never stop learning. I bet the last thing you learn in life is that there isn't any heaven, but you have no way of telling anyone. My view anyway.

So, now that we are now 3 days into 2009, things are, so far, pretty much the same. Only time will tell.

So sod this stuff about global warming, bahh humbug! Burn, over use everything! that's the way to go these days! So what if the grand kids have nothing but sand and rocks. Who goes to the North Pole to see the Ice? Cold, windy, useless place anyway. Dark for 6 months of the year, useless place really isn't it. Why not have it as a place where you can windsurf, or water sky around the pole ? Ya useless place really.

Yep, no chance in hell to sort out any of the world issues with this kind of educated people? Or are they educated? Looks like it's a suitable situation if your a politician. These one, I guess all watch Fox News or something else of low caliber.

After many years, well. well over the usual 20 yrs. Just a note on the 20yrs,  When you, well, if you channel hop on one of those nights or days when there is nothing on, and you fall on one of those shopping channels. The experts there always have 20yrs experience, not that I watch those channels you know.

Anyway, I was challenged to a quiz to determine how much of a geek I am, Obviously, I took this with great gusto, and happily found that I wasn't that geeky. Only 60%. SO, fellow reader(s) how geeky are you!

?The WSPA are complaining that some zoos in China feed cow to the tigers, OK you can pay $100 and they will feed a cow to the tiger, the cow, is alive and is killed by the said tigers. Ok, tell me what's the difference between this and in the wild life? for me, the only difference is that the cow can't run as fast as a gazelle, maybe not enough room.
Either way, I don't really see what's barbaric about this? 

Rob Laidlaw of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) says he's appalled by what he's seen of the exotic animal shows, and doesn't think they teach much about the animals in their natural habitat.

"It's horrendously cruel," Laidlaw told CTV News. "You've got an animal that's being preyed upon -- it can be an ostrich or cow or a pig, or even in some cases horses -- that are put into barren enclosures with predatory animals like lions and tigers, so it's completely artificial."

Source

Are these folks going to complain about the leopards or Jaguars or even the beautiful cheetah from going out and getting a bit of wildebeest?

Sometimes I think these animal rights groups meddle too much.

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.


BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

Yep, Just before St Pats Day when everything turns Green! Today is Red Nose day, Where everything is Fun, and people want you to open your wallet and give cash. Why give cash and get nothing in return? Why not give cash and get a great book! Yes, Shaggy Blog Stories is out for you to buy. So, run along, nothing else to read here, go buy the book.

That's your mission for today... Buy the book and make some one happy!

Some people have good names that sound great, it may be theirs or it maybe their stage name. Other people sometimes are just given the wrong name, and one wonders what the hell the parents were thinking of, or what were they on? something rather strong I would say.
However, this poor guys parents must have been in some hell of a trip or bad mood or something or the baby was but ugly? Or you have some people who name their kids after the first thing they see... In either case, this guys parents obviously didn't have their brains in gear and gave him this name.... Click on the image.... Poor guy, I mean.... what can I say?

I'm one of those people who gets a sort of kick out of reading warning messages on product packaging. Here are some good ones:

Liquid Plummer
Warning: Do not reuse the bottle to store beverages.

Windex
Do not spray in eyes.

Bowl Fresh
Safe to use around pets and children, although it is not recommended that either be permitted to drink from toilet.

Toilet Plunger
Caution: Do not use near power lines.

Dremel Electric Rotary Tool
This product not intended for use as a dental drill.

Arm & Hammer Scoopable Cat Litter
Safe to use around pets.

Endust Duster
This product is not defined as flammable by the Consumer Products Safety Commision Regulations. However, this product can be ignited under certain circumstances.

Baby Oil
Keep out of reach of children

Little Ones Baby Lotion
Keep away from children

Hair Coloring
Do not use as an ice cream topping.

Wet-Nap
Directions: Tear open packet and use.

Dial Soap
Directions: Use like regular soap.

Stridex Foaming Face Wash
May contain foam.

Beach Ball
CAUTION: It is not a life saving device.

Chainsaw
Do not attempt to stop chain with hands.

Sears hairdryer:
Do not use while sleeping.

Bag of Fritos:
You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside.

Bar of Dial soap:
Directions: Use like regular soap.

Swann frozen dinners:
Serving suggestion: Defrost.

Hotel provided shower cap in a box:
Fits one head.

Tesco's Tiramisu dessert: (printed on bottom of the box)
Do not turn upside down.

Also form Tesco's cheap branded Eggs,
allergy warning, may contain eggs!

As quite a few of you may know, the education system in the UK isn't the best in the world. You can basically get through all the way till your 16 and get your GCSC, and not have the ability to Read, Write or do your Arithmetic (yep that's the 3 R's!). This is becoming rather worrisome for the people responsible for educating the country. What do they do instead, they go and do some research on where the problem could show it's self up. Yep, they found that it can show it's self up in the karaoke bars!

So, if you're one of those souls who goes to the Karaoke bars and can't read the prompts, it could be that you can't read?!

The lyrics of the 10 most popular karaoke songs have been assessed and rated by government literacy experts.

Those tackling Robbie Williams' Angels needed the reading skills required to pass five good GCSEs (Level 2).

Experts from the Get On literacy campaign said 17.8 million adults would not be able to follow the song.

Ok, Angels (Lyrics here) is a hard song to get right, I don't mean in the lyrics area, but in getting it to sound right. Most folk who do tend to 'try' and sing it tend to have had a few pints to many? Or did these experts test the folks make sure they didn't have a drop to drink or a splif to smoke?
Some other notable songs that suffer the same fate are:

• Gloria Gaynor: I will survive
• Queen: Don't Stop Me Now
• The Commitments: Mustang Sally
• Grease: Summer nights
• Elvis Presley: Suspicious Minds
• Abba: Dancing Queen (not only is that hard, but like Angels, hard to get right!)

So, as the report says, get yer readin' up ta scratch before ya embarrass yerself on the Karaoke!
I'm not saying that you would ever, ever find me on a Karaoke Stage, Drunk or Sober! This was just a comment on that BBC news report...

More info on English GSCS here.

Well, I've been rebuilding my PC yet again. It's a chore that I don't enjoy as I have hundreds of programs to re-install, some need configuring and well, some just don't get put back on. So it's a chance to do some early spring cleaning of a PC.
During this task, and over the years, I have found methods of making this chore a tad easier, being a computer 'geek' to some people, to me, I just like the things, and am constantly amazed at the speed of change. I used to be able to keep up, but I can't now, the turnaround cycle of upgrades and new technologies has gone from 18 months down to almost 3 months. I can't see any sane mortal keeping apace of that, unless they are Ubergeeks. Not me then

So, those tips?
Well, having a good backup is always a good idea, when I say backup, I don't just mean your e-mails, programs files and the likes, I mean total backup nothing less. My tool of choice for this is Acronis True Image. What True Image does, is take a snapshot of your harddrive, so that you have a full copy of all the contents of what you had safely stored away.
So, with that, I rebuild windows XP, the true image comes in use only to recover all the documents & settings files, these hold all the setting of all the files I have to re-install... (I'm going geeky aren't I?)
Anyway, as I said, it helps, but you still need to re-install all the apps, so that windows knows that they are there.
If you are using Open Source apps, Firefox and the likes, these don't need to be re-installed !!

Anyway, I'm still at it, installing, rebooting, installing rebooting.... Hopefully I should be finished soon......

So, the date has been announced and is England leading from the front? Of course not, we never do! We wait, like a master, to see if the food taster dies, before we'll start to eat a meal.
What brings this up? Well it's the smoking ban, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, in fact, I'm rejoicing! So way all the baa humbug and all that? Well it's because, England will be banning smoking last, and in my view, not the best time either.
Here's the banning list, in order of who's going to ban first in the UK.

• Irish Republic: March 2004 (ok not in the UK)
• Scotland: March 2006
• Northern Ireland: April 2007
• Wales: April 2007
•  England: July 2007

Read more about the time table here

OK, the Irish Republic (Eire) banned it and the pub industry didn't die! In the Summer I can imagine the pubs being empty inside and all the smokers falling over themselves outside in the pavement. If it's raining, well, they'll all be huddled in a corner under some ledge getting rain down their necks.

All I can say is this, I'll be glad, I just don't like going to pubs in general, you go in, you leave smelling like a big pile of poo. And yes you, if you smoke you smell like that too, especially when you have just come back from your fag break..

Yep, So 1st of July 2007 can't come quick enough!  But why can't England start at the same times as everyone else? Scared? Vote loser? (May Local elections?)

Not normally a fan of cricket, but it appears that the English are getting a hefty pummelling by the Australians.
The BBC should really be the team playing.... looking at their tag graphic.