Status-Q

We are approaching the time of year often known in the British media as ‘silly season’. There’s usually relatively little real national news, and so a variety of completely daft things end up in the papers. Oliver Burkeman, writing in the Guardian this week, offered a wonderful “sneak preview of some of the other scoops you’ll be reading over the coming weeks“.

Extracts:

Gatwick terror panic

The government has banned airline passengers from wearing green hats after a man in a green hat was arrested at Gatwick airport carrying a bottle of potentially lethal hydrogen peroxide. Holidaymakers who flout the new rule face severe penalties, although hats of other colours will still be permitted, as will rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

…

Bohemian Rhapsody triumphs in ‘Top 100’ lists

Bohemian Rhapsody, by Queen, has been named the greatest film of all time following an administrative mixup among Sunday newspapers preparing this weekend’s plethora of “Top 100” lists. The glam-rock band’s celebrated anthem also won the title of funniest British comedy of all time, and most powerful person in the British media. A source at the polling company contracted to produce the lists blamed human error. However, a corrected version of the Best Musicians list still showed Arctic Monkeys several places ahead of the Beatles and Johnny Cash, a result that pollsters attributed to people these days having absolutely no taste whatsoever.

Interesting – I didn’t know that such services were generally available yet…

For a cost of about 35-50p, Trace A Mobile will tell you the location of a mobile phone. You need to sign up for a monthly subscription, and you need to have the advance approval of the phone user (usually established by sending them a text message) but for nervous parents, or for spouses who need to know how close their husband is to home, this could be a good service.

Of course, it would generally be cheaper just to call them and ask. So this may be better used for locating your lost Irish Wolfhound, or your stolen Ferarri.

Reading about the Iraqi post-football celebrations last week, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a nice spoof piece in The Onion: Iraq, Kentucky Vie For World Shooting-Into-The-Air Supremacy.

Wow, that was four years ago! It was rather easier to write humorous stories about Iraq back then; there was a greater underlying sense of optimism. What a lot has changed…

The Guardian sent a photographer round this evening – they’re likely to run an article about Ndiyo later this week. John Robertson turned out to be a fun guy to work with; he has just the temperament you would need to do this kind of thing late at night on your supposed day off and keep both yourself and others cheerful.

He obviously really enjoys his work – and he has a fabulous portfolio on his website. I like this one and this one, for example, but there’s a wide variety of styles. Worth watching all the way through.

So I was quite flattered that he was photographing me. We had fun coming up with ways to try and make interesting pictures of yours truly holding a circuit board, in an office. Not the most naturally inspiring subject matter. I wonder how it’ll work out…

In this week’s Economist, HP have a full-page ad – which can’t be cheap – extolling one particular virtue of their CP3505 printer. It’s called Colour Access Control.

This lets you set up lists of people who are entitled to print in colour. The others only get black and white.

Now, I’m sure printing costs are an issue for some businesses, but I can’t help being somewhat bemused by this. I have visions of people wasting large amounts of time trying to find someone who can print a document for them. Of secretaries noticing that you can actually buy a colour laser printer for less than the cost of a set of toner refills, and ‘accidentally’ ordering the wrong thing. But mostly of annual performance reviews: “Now, Fred, you’ve done some outstanding work this year. I’m sorry that we can’t give you a pay rise, but we will put you on the Colour Access List”.

There’s a new Mini Clubman on the way next year!

Those of us with happy memories of these:

may appreciate these:

Interestingly, they call it a ‘five door’. Two of the doors are at the back:

So where are the other three? Three?

You can look at the photos to find out.

The guys at terrainnova.org have used one of my photos as a banner for their site. It works very well: wish I’d though of it!

You can read more about the photo here.

I’m sitting at a departure gate at Stansted airport, where my flight is delayed “due to the late arrival of the incoming aircraft”. I love the way they say that, as if it excuses everything. I couldn’t help laughing as RyanAir announced just now that another flight will have “an on-time departure”. Definitely worthy of announcement!

The best bit, though, was as I walked past another gate where the last remaining passenger was asked in no uncertain terms to “make himself known at gate 45 immediately”. A couple of people called out “I’m Spartacus!”, “No, I’m Spartacus”…