Things Noticeable this week

[mizlaplan]

The site seems a bit slow at the moment and yesterday it broke down completely.
Hope everything is OK.

[Greenman]

Today should have been a joyous occasion-today was my parents' 52nd wedding anniversary and they were supposed to be heading to Cardiff to stay with friends for five days, but instead they had to cancel it for a day and we all headed out to the funeral of their best friends' husband. It was also a baking hot day and being in shirt, jacket and tie was not really what was required in this sort of weather-also my mother felt giddy, and it transpired she hadn't had anything to drink before we went.

Later this evening, we went back to the house where the family were sitting Shiva-in the Jewish religion this is where the mourners welcome family and friends to their house and prayers are said by a Rabbi or other. Again it was stifling due to the vast number of mourners in the house. We wouldn't have missed this for anything, but it sort of put a dampner on the Anniversary. They head off to Cardiff tomorrow so at least they have a chance to relax a bit-if only for three days. What a day!

Good to see the back of Jeremy Hunt and Andrew Lansley but shame that Gove, May & smug Osborne still keep their jobs but at least that idiot Clarke has been booted out of Justice

[Greenman]

Good grief!! Talk about unlucky. Today parents went off to Cardiff finally and guess what had to make a huge detour to the M25 as the A406 North Circular Road was jammed up-what caused it? I found out later it was a big burst water main out near Brent Cross Shopping Centre-more red faces at Thames Water-will they never learn-look what happened earlier this year when another main burst and flooded the Central Line causing chaos. Anyway you will be pleased to know that they made it to their hotel and tonight went out with their friends for a post Anniversary dinner.

Have you noticed a loss of signal or break up with your television picture recently. It has happened several times downstairs and I can only attribute it to the extreme weather we've had-above a certain temperature it does strange things to satellite dishes...very annoying when it happens right in the middle of watching the Paralympic Wheelchair tennis final. Incidentally I don't know if you noticed, but the Channel 4 team for the Paralympics are dire including Clare Balding unfortunately, she should really stick to horses. And Ade Adepitan, former wheelchair basketball star really should learn how to present-his pronounciation of Athletics is appalling 'afletics'-come on Ade, speak properly, you're not a child! You might also have spotted a lot of BBC commentators pulled in like John Rawling(BBC R5Live), Rob Walker(Athletics) and Bob Ballard(Swimming) as well as Andrew Cotter(Rugby) Apart from that, the actual coverage has been good but too many advert breaks spoils the momentum.

[mizlaplan]

Regarding the loss of TV signal I've got to say that the whole switch-over from analogue to digital has been a bit underwhelming.
Sure, watching "The Big Bang Theory" over and over and over and over is entertaining for a while but eventually you see just how sad most of the schedules are.
Repeats galore, often with very oddly placed commercial breaks which contain nothing of any interest.
My area, on the England/Wales border is apparently going to be served by a transmitter in Sutton Coldfield (Birmingham) which will be fuel-injected, turbo-charged, super-charged, a trillion megasomething strong and the service will improve.
To put it in perspective.
When it's up and running, I challenge any digital station to have a 24 hour Laurel & Hardy marathon with no interruptions in service whatsoever.
If ultra-modern 21st century tech can stand up to the HUGE () technical demands of complicated 1920s and 1930s films then I'll be satisfied.

[TCO95]

It may be attributable to solar flares and wind. The sun has been particularly active this year, which seems to be part of its life cycle. It was also hit by a good size comet earlier this year. Although the sun is quite large the comet, at impact, carried an estimated weight of 60,000 metric tons and was moving at 2.1 million Km P.H. There is a video link with the attached article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1218833.html

[vo1v0d]

Originally Posted by TCO95

It may be attributable to solar flares and wind. htp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/comet-hits-sun_n_1218833.html

Sir. I resent deeply your accusation that my tv signal is bad due to my flatulence and lack of sunscreen

[otokonomidori]

Originally Posted by TCO95

...The sun has been particularly active this year....

Not in Scotland .

[Greenman]

Ah yes I forgot about that, there was an article about that in the paper this morning along with William Roache believing the Earth will cleanse itself on 21st Dec-another doom merchant that believes the world will end or something cataclysmic will occur-how many more I wonder will surface before the end of the year?

Paralympics GB-what an amazing team, winning more medals than ever before-some standout performances Gold to Josef Craig-Swimming, GB Wheelchair Rugby men's team make it to semi-finals. On the track-David Weir-Wheelchair triple paralympic champion of 1500m, 5,000m & tonight the 800m and still the Marathon to come. Hannah Cockroft 100m & 200m paralympic champion, left everyone for dead-the female Usain Bolt on wheels and Jonnie Peacock 100m champion tonight blew the opposition away including 200m champion Oscar Pistorious!! And there are still three more days to go.

[exfarmer]

I was wondering earlier, why is it that the main Olympics was all over the BBC but the Paralympics got one of the smaller channels, Channel 4?
That's kind of like saying the Paralympians are fourth rate people. I'm very surprised that the Paralympics aren't being shown on the BBC or ITV.

[mizlaplan]

Been enjoying the Paralympics. (and the preceding Olympics)
But it's opened up a can of worms.
I'm currently in the middle of a holiday and listening to stuff on the radio I normally avoid or don't take on board.
So, I was listening to Chris Evans on Radio 2 a couple of days back and the sports bulletin came up, supplied by his colleague, Vassos Alexander.
VA was about to give out some football news when CE told him that he honestly wasn't interested, he'd much rather concentrate on the Paralympics and how he was fed up with the whole football scene which he honestly believed, wasn't that important.
What a f*cking eye-opener.
A quote from George Orwell's 1984:
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.”
God help us, Orwell was 100% right.
(except for the Heavy physical work which doesn't exist anymore)
I think Aldous Huxley summed Football up when he described Soma in "Brave New World":
"A fictional drug in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel, Brave New World in which the population voluntarily consume Soma to dispel any anxieties or negative emotion"
Football?
Just say no.