Tangential Ramblings

Sad to see that Reese Witherspoon has broken up with her husband of seven years. However, Reese is on my short list of ladies who I would possibly leave my wife for. Kylie and Minnie Driver are also on the list.

So perhaps the split puts into jeopardy my own relationship. The closest I came to this happening was when I happened upon Minnie in a deli on Broadway last October. We didn't speak; she didn't even look at me. But that's the closest I've come. Oh, and I touched Kylie's sister's arm in HMV Newcastle once.

A little under a week ago, I requested some feedback on the old look-and-feel. I was delighted by the amount of feedback that came back. So after some half-assed futzing mid-week, I sat down in earnest (and indeed in the living room) last night to try to introduce a new look-and-feel. Around you are the results of a full battery-life's worth of CSS work.

The graphic design for the new look is courtesy of Elise. Thanks! The coding has all been done by myself, which is a miracle, as it's more a case of trial and error than anything more scientific. Padding and margins have been confusing, and I've little idea why some of the things work, but they seem to. The stylesheet feels to me a little like a house of cards, ready to collapse with the slightest breath of wind.

All of the futzing was done in Production (1. Make change, 2. Refresh homepage, 3. See what's broken, 4. Go to 1.), mainly because I didn't really listen when Rob told me how to access Dev. After all, it's hardly a mission-critical site.

Anyway, there's still some stuff to be done, but here are the main changes to date, in light of the feedback.

• First of all, I've gone for an 800 pixel width. Francis complained that on his super-duper 20" widescreen monitor, the full-width layout meant crazy line-lengths. I've kept with 800 as 17% of people are still using an 800x600 resolution
  
• The search box was deemed too big. I've made it such that on regular settings, the button (which now reads Go rather than Search) sits alongside the text-box, saving some real estate
• Meebo Me's gone. People (Rob) were complaining that it took a while to load, and it was frustrating that a new one had to load each time users navigated around the site. (My Web 2.0 skills are not up to dealing with the latter issue.) I love Meebo, but it's staying off for the time being
• Rob (a different one) liked the big font size. I've kept that. I've also got rid of the tacky page fold (top right) taking the advice of both Rob and Francis. (That took me ages to create! Harumph.)
• There's a new colour scheme. Francis had a dig at the old one, but gave no recommendations for improvement. Hopefully this will make him happy. The header even incorporates some of my life loves: pi, primes and sushi
• I've ignored the advice of Rob A. to include more porn, and indeed that of Andy Pandy to "Shut the f**kin' thing down"
• Oh, and I've started (with this one) to tag posts with more than one tag. The functionality was always there, I just chose not to use it.

There are still a few things to do. Firstly, I need to talk to Elise about the possibility of her making a few tweaks to the look-and-feel. For instance, I want the Posted by bar to have a light-blue background, but when I try to do that myself in the stylesheet, loads of other stuff inherits the same background. Also, some of the spacing and sizing needs a GD's eye, I feel.

Also, I need to work on the comment form, as per Rob's advice. Rob: if you're reading, it would be good to get some more input on how it could best be changed.

I need to figure out how not to repeat the date line for posts created on the same date. Some reading about the Smarty template engine needed for that.

And finally, I need to work on some new, more appealing left-hand modules. I can't guarantee satisfying Dominic's yearning for numbers, but I'm hoping to make a more useful sidebar. Again, this needs some template changes, which I find more difficult than the CSS stuff. If you make an error in CSS, it looks funny; mistakes in the templates and the site doesn't work.

Your feedback (constructive) on the new look would be gratefully received.

It's good that accessibility is getting some press on the BBC's website. I watched Click, the TV equivalent.

It was slightly odd that the challenge set for Emma Tracey, a blind journalist for the BBC's Ouch magazine, was to buy a book from Amazon. Not sure how useful the book will be when it arrives.

I would have thought that Amazon were leading the way on accesibility, but it appears not, and it proved a frustrating experience.

The latest comment I received on the current look-and-feel is nothing if not offensive. I had a strong inkling as to who had written it, someone who I would strangely classify as a friend (strange, given the comment), an ex-client indeed.

He denied the comment by IM ("i didn't comment..."), so I investigated further. I found the source IP address and ran it through GeoBytes' IP locator. It found that it came from America, New York, Brooklyn. It estimated that it might be from Ocean Avenue, a mere 2.1 miles from the workplace of the person who formed my original inkling.

The chances of two randomly chosen American points being within 2.1 miles of one another is around 0.00025% (1 in 400,000). Too much of a coincidence in my book.

I downloaded it at 11:30pm BST yesterday, an hour before its advertised 16:30pm PDT launch.

So far, I like it. I like it a lot. The menus seem more logical, the look-and-feel more professional and clean, and it has some nice new features, including remembering form completion, useful for my site users (who used to lose a comment entirely if they didn't pass my captcha).

There are quite a few important extensions (and less important, but nice-to-have themes) that don't yet work on 2.0. (I particularly miss the TinyUrl Creator and Fasterfox.) Hopefully they'll be upgraded soon.

I have one gripe. In 1.5, if I typed a keyword or two in the address bar (multiple words separated by spaces), it automatically looked it up in Google and loaded the first result returned. Very useful if you're confident that your keyword(s) will bring your desired site to the top of Google's listings. Not sure whether it was an extension that I'd activated, or whether it was a feature that has since deemed unnecessary. Either way, a little annoying.

Nonetheless, if you're on 1.5, I urge you to upgrade. If you're on Internet Explorer, I implore you to make the switch.

Please don't lengthen the a of latte. Ever. It's Italian for milk, and should be pronounced as such, even if you're a tw*t from Fulham.

Thank you.

Based on my last 15 posts, I'm deemed to be male. You?

So, ask anyone whether Sellotape (Scotch tape to my American fan-base) is any good, and they'll respond: you betcha!

Ask them whether they find it frustrating, and they'll echo their first response. Why? Because they can never find the end.

Sellotape/Scotch: if you're reading, here's the solution. Invent a tape with three thin layers. The bottom layer is the sticky stuff; the top layer is the smooth bit; the newly introduced technologically-advanced layer sits in the middle.

This middle layer would react to air, turning a lovely magenta colour on exposure. (The colour could be a user preference; I've used magenta for illustrative purposes, mainly because it's quite a nice word.)

When the user severs the tape, either with teeth or scissors, a tiny cross-section of the tape is exposed to the air, and changes colour within a few seconds. The next person who comes along wanting to wrap presents can find the end of the roll by simply finding the magenta stripe across the width of the roll.

Marvellous idea!

If you're reading this post, then I would love it if you could comment on it.

I'm currently going through a site re-design (with the help of my infinitely better-qualified friend Elise). This is in part because it's long overdue, and in part because the current design was a tactical change to the one I used when Stateside: its reference to New York's subway line numbering was no longer relevant now I'm living in London town, so the header has become somewhat bare.

So, I'd like to know:

• What you like about the current site
• What you don't like about the current site
• What you'd like to be changed/moved/removed
• What you'd like to see that's not there right now.

I'm afraid that I won't be able to address the drivel that appears in the posts, but hopefully I'll be able to address some of the looky and feely and positioningy issues.

Obviously, once the changes take effect, this post will be out of place, as the answers to 2, 3 and 4 will be null.

Please, comment away!

Caffè Nero runs a loyalty scheme such that every tenth cup of coffee is free. They do this through a card that they keep stamping on each visit. Today, I received my ninth stamp, making tomorrow morning cheaper than it otherwise might be.

Many organisations, or groups of organisations, use loyalty schemes in which you carry a personalised card around with you to swipe whenever you happen upon their store. I carry cards for Boots and Sainsbury's. (My thoughts on such schemes can be found here.)

What if there were a scheme with a card that was brand agnostic, but which simply identified you as an individual? It would not store any data (except the unique identity of the card), but would allow stores to identify your uniqueness and act accordingly. Caffè Nero would not know who I was, merely that my next latte should be free. Meanwhile, other companies could buy into the card by offering its own small-scale loyalty rewards. I would have thought that the concept would appeal to smaller-scale retailers keen to join the loyalty world without the expense of introducing its own scheme.

I've not thought through a cost model yet. It was dreamt up on tonight's journey home.

Grapes and raisins are up there with the best of the fruit. They didn't make the top five, but they'd certainly be in the top ten. But here's my question: why are raisins so much cheaper than grapes?

Ocado has 500g of raisins (made from Californian seedless grapes) available for £0.75. 500g of green, seedless grapes (a juicy and flavoursome grape) cost £1.99.

The bag of raisins will contain way more raisins than the bunch of grapes will grapes—I'd suggest that five times as many would be a conservative estimate. That would make the relative cost of a raisin 7.5% of that of your grape, and it has to go through a longer lifecycle before arriving in your kitchen.

The only two explanations I can think of for the price differential are:

• The time criticality of the grape's sale
• The grape's increased storage requirements.

Both of these suggest that the premium is for the circumstances surrounding their transport, rather than the product itself.

I'm having some difficulty solving my own taxi problem. Thomas Viner has commented with a generic solution, suggesting that the driver's expected distance from home is (100n)^0.5, after n 10km journeys.

Currently, I'm simply trying to figure out the expected distance after journey 2. Here's where I've got.

After the first journey, she is 10km from home, by definition. As such, it's immaterial to the puzzle which direction she took in this first journey. After journey 2, she lies on a circle with a radius of 10km and with a centre 10km from home. This circle passes through her home, and at its furthest, through a point 20km from her home.

I've adopted two scenarios: one in which her second journey results in her being in the semicircle nearest home (not necessarily meaning she ends up nearer home, however); another in which she ends up in the more distant semicircle.

Let's take the first of these.

Going through the trig., assuming a is the angle between the direction of her next journey and that of her home (less than 90° in this semicircle), I think that her distance from home after the second journey will be 10*((2−2cos(a))^0.5). If a = 0°, then this is 0km (i.e. at home); if a is 90°, then it's 14.14km. Pythagoras would support this if he were alive: root of 200.

In the farther semicircle (where a is now between 90° and 180°), the equivalent formula is 10*((2+2cos(180-a))^0.5). Again, this equates to 14.14km at 90°, and goes up to 20km at the 180° point. Things seem to be working.

Here's the problem: I don't know how to convert this into an expected value. (Maybe I did once, during my 17 years of maths schooling, but if I did, I don't now.)

What I have done is calculate the average distance from each of the 3,600 0.1° intervals around the circle. This is coming out at 12.73km. Thomas' formula calculates the expected distance as 14.14km. The discrepancy between the two suggests that one of us is most definitely wrong. Currently, I don't know who, but 14.14km certainly seems high.

An absolutely stunning piece of technology from those clever folks as CMU. Thanks to Elise for pointing this out.

All food in the UK comes with a best before date, which I believe is defined by the manufacturer.

First of all, this date should be defined by an independent body. This would save the likes of Jif Lemon would likely be given a longer shelf-life than the ten months which they currently get (a cunning pancake day-related marketing ploy).

In addition to the best before date, food should be given two additional dates:

• A still OK before date; and
• A rank after date

The superlative nature of the phrase best before suggests that the quality of the product is still above par after that date.

Depending on the day of opening, milk is generally good for a full day, possibly two, after the best before date. While dried and tinned goods don't have a genuine expiry date, as far as I can tell.

I'm fed up of ever-increasing page load times. Often the site itself can load quickly, but fails to do so because it's waiting for technorati widgets, ads coming in from sites all and sundry, flickr feeds, you name it.

Please put all of these at the end of your html, so that the stuff that I care about loads before the interminable delays kick in. Thanks.

Whatever happened to the simple ol' internet?

I conditionally format cell A10 based on the contents of cell A1, using the formula bit of the conditional formatting feature and leaving A1 undollared. I then copy A10 in its entirety to A9. Because Excel can't base its formatting on A0 (as such a cell doesn't exist), it instead bases it on A65536.

Quite cute really.

Lovely word, meaning the surround of a door. Worthy for both its combination of letters and its beautiful pronunciation.

I've watched all five episodes to date, many of them online, as I've often forgotten that they've been on.

I have to say, I'm thoroughly disappointed. Apart from the awards episode two weeks ago (rightly pointed out by Nicola), it's been mediocre comedy at best, living off the success and genius of the first season.

Last week's episode (Sir Ian McKellen) was purely shameful. Cringeworthy excuse for comedy that didn't warrant BBC's airtime. I've filed this under BBC blunders,as I feel it is one.

Let's assume that taxi journeys are all of an equal distance (10km, say), and that they go straight in a random direction. At the end of one journey, the driver picks up another passenger at that very drop-off spot.

After her first journey, the taxi driver is ten kilometres from her start point. But what is her expected distance from her original start point after a second journey? And is there a generic formula that tells us how far she is from his origin after n journeys?

With regard to the second journey, there is a tiny chance (infinitely small) that she will end up exactly at the start point; and there is an equally miniscule possibility that she'll be 20km from home. But I want the average distance (i.e. the expected distance, given that the angle of journey 2 is random). I have worked out that after the second journey, she has a 35% 33% chance of being closer to home than she was after the first journey.

I created a lovely Excel doneness matrix a while ago, and Vivek has kindly rooted it out for me. (I'd lost it between laptops.) Here it is.

It basically tracks the doneness of various deliverables through various stages. It warns of impending deadlines and tells you how early or late things were done. Quite beautiful and very useful.

Thanks for digging it out, Vivek.

A fun little game to make you learn the prime factors of all numbers under 100. And here's another page to help you learn how to do the cube-root of six- and nine-digit numbers.

There are two moments of seemingly incredulous stupidity in my life, which I thought I'd share.

The first was at a Jean Michel Jarre concert in London's Docklands when I was about eleven. At the merchandise stand, I bought a baseball cap for £10. The guy serving was trying to deal with too many people at once. Because of this, he'd run over to the other side of the stall, and I had both cap and £10 note in hand. I briefly tried to tell him, but he'd moved to the other side of the store.

At this stage, I had a net zero expense and a cap.

I decided that I'd make some money, so I sold the cap for £6 to someone else in the fracas that was passing itself off as a queue. I then 'queued' again, and bought another £10 cap.

Now, I have a net £4 expense and a cap. Idiot!

My next such moment of stupidity came while doing some simple plumbing. I was putting a back on our bathroom vanity unit, atop which are two wash basins. I had to cut two holes in the ply that formed the back of the unit, to allow the waste pipes to come through and connect to the U-bends.

Before fitting the back, I unscrewed the right-hand U-bend, put my arm above the right-hand basin and poured the water into the basin. I got covered in water. That's not the most stupid moment. While laughing at my stupidity, I unscrewed the left-hand U-bend and did exactly the same.

Just thought I'd share.

Here is some information on the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which is held every year in America. It's so popular, it even gets some significant coverage on ESPN.

The fascinating part of the above-linked page is the list of winners and the winning words. Such is the nature of the competition, a winning word for the winner is by definition a losing word for the runner(s)-up.

First of all, it's obvious that the standard has increased significantly over time. I don't know the meaning of the last 13 years' winning words, and would struggle to spell any of them. Meanwhile, there must have been some runner-up kids kicking themselves in the competition's early history, as the following list shows:

• 1928: albumen
• 1930: fracas
• 1932: knack
• 1934: deteriorating (please!)
• 1935: intelligible
• 1937: promiscuous
• 1940: therapy
• 1941: initials
• 1970: croissant

Some of the above faux-pas are an indication of how our language has evolved. Others are no doubt howlers that drew gasps from the live studio audience.

There are two ways. One is to have them act in the same way as a button would, the link being fed through what could be described as the 'outside' of both pieces of the cuff. Alternatively, it could be fed through from the outside of the first part of the cuff, and from the inside of the second part. The former forms a neater cuff, which slides under the jacket much more readily; I believe the latter to be correct from an etiquette standpoint.

I heard someone use the word hairy-fairy in a meeting today. Made me laugh within.

The BBC's story summary for Ruth Kelly's imminent speech to local councils could be read in either of two ways:

All communities should battle extremism, not just Muslims, minister Ruth Kelly is due to tell local councils.

It would be favourable to put the not just Muslims clause after the word communities to save confusion, particularly given the political climate in this area. Otherwise, she could be construed as suggesting that everyone should battle both extremism and Muslims.

Also, is it just me, or does Ruth Kelly look awfully like the Sunday Show's Paul Tonkinson?

Whenever I break a drinking glass, I always look at it for a few moments, I suppose in the hope that either the crack will mend itself, or I will suddenly figure out a way of mending it myself. Only after a few moments' thought will I banish it to the garbage.

Not sure if this is human nature or just me.

Nine days after my 34th birthday next year, I'll be 2^30 (1,073,741,824) seconds old: 28 July, 2007 at around 6.30pm. My 2^31 "birth-second" will fall on 6 August, 2041, 18 days after my 68th birthday, fingers crossed. Relative to your own birthday, you'll find the same, give or take a day to allow for leap years.

If the UK's population density was the same as that of Greater London, it would have a population of 1.17bn. If its density was the same as that of Scotland, it would have a population of 15.83m.

If the US's population density was the same as that of New York City, it would have a population of 64.27bn. If its density was the same as that of Alaska, it would have a population of 3.51m.

Would the BBC's Bill Thompson please get another picture taken to adorn his irritating articles? Currently, he has one stock picture, which appears to be taken aboard a boat or on the Southbank of the Thames, with Somerset House in the background. He appears to have had the same picture ever since he started reporting for the BBC. While his style of reporting is makes my blood boil (apparently, the boiling point of blood is 100°C, the same as that for water) it may be slightly more bearable if I didn't have to look at that excrutiating photo.

My mate asked me this morning whether people champ at the bit, or chomp at it. I prefer champ, as I think there might be some French root in there somewhere, the a becoming an o over time due to the lengthened pronunciation. (This is pure speculation on my part, btw.)

I even suggested he go out on a limb and talk of chimping at the bit. It might take off; I kinda like it.

In discussing the point over email, I used the phrase à la champignon, à la to mean akin to and champignon to give an example pronunciation for the lengthened a. Should it have been au champignon, given the masculine nature of the French mushroom?

Cleaners at work no longer do anything, as far as I'm aware. They may run a vacuum cleaner over the heavily-trodden walkways but will not go under desks, presumably because of the risk of unplugging something by accident. (Heavens, maybe they don't even do the former, due to their inability to find an unused plug socket.)

I have to clean my mouse (computer accessory, not animal) on a weekly basis, as it accumulates sufficient grime to make its performance sub-optimal. This points to the cleaners' failure to touch my desk, probably because they fear there might be confidential papers that they shouldn't look at. (There aren't, btw, if they're reading.)

Maybe my expectations are too high, but I'd suggest that the eagerness with which mice (animals, not computer accessories) venture out whenever the office goes quiet for a few minutes is a sure sign of room for improvement.

At work, just next to the men's toilets, there's a door carrying the following signage:

Plant Room
No Unauthorised Access

I really want to take a peek. I imagine it's a doorway to something akin to the Garden of Eden, but I'm probably wrong.

I hate justification in documents. It makes text look messy, rather than its intention of making it neat and orderly. Justification basically over-eggs the space character, often to ridiculous proportions when a particularly long word is shunted on to the following line.

Books tend to get away with it, partly because of the density of text on the page (which reduces the extent to which the eye is drawn to the spaces), and partly through the use of hyphens.

Documents are much less dense, and style dictates that we don't hyphenate words unless they're naturally hyphenated.

The space is no more or less important than any other character, so it shouldn't be treated differently. Please give it the respect it deserves, and left-align your documents.

While paying for dinner at M&S yesterday (fisherman's pie with cauliflower cheese and sweetcorn), a guy being served at the next till said that he had dropped a pre-packed curry on the floor, and wondered whether he could grab another one instead. The one he'd dropped was damaged and leaking.

He was asked whether he found it like that, or whether the split in the lid was due to his action. He indicated the latter, and was told he had to pay for the damaged item. If he'd said that he'd found it like that, he would have been able to take home a pristine one.

Nowadays, loyalty and goodwill can only be gained if they have a barcode attached. The value of the customer has been commoditised along with everything else.

The official results are now in from the Run London event. We South beat the North.

• South: average time of 56:09
• North: average time of 56:26

That is a difference of 17 seconds, or 0.502%. If I'd remembered anything from the Statistics portion of my Maths and Stats degree, I would tell you whether that margin is statistically significant. I haven't, so I won't.

I've also now received my split times. Below are the statistics from each of the 2km splits, including the following fields: section, time, % faster/slower than my overall average.

• 0–2km: 8:02, 7.6% faster
• 2–4km: 8:29, 2.4% faster
• 4–6km: 8:49, 1.4% slower
• 6–8km: 9:24, 8.1% slower
• 8–10km: 8:44, 0.5% slower

So, I started fast, got gradually slower with a serious lull from 6–8km, then picked it up again for the finish, which you can see here, btw. My official time has been rounded down to 43:28.

In relation to everyone else, I finished 603rd out of 10,906 South starters (top 5.5%), and 1,195th out of 21,973 overall (top 5.4%).

Despite this analysis, the relentless focus in the office is rather on whether a six-months' pregnant Paula Radcliffe beat me. Two sources conflict with one another. The Times claims she finished the course in about 43 minutes. Reuters claims an unofficial 44:18.

Well, it's over. I joined 35,000 other runners this morning for a splendid 10km race in Hyde Park. The agenda: North of the river vs. South, their relative merits having formed the basis of many a pub conversation for many a year. We South donned lovely orange t-shirts; the North, green.

It was a great event. The organisation seemed flawless, although a bunch of about five angry people directed venom at the stewards because they'd missed their allotted start time. The consequence? Wait 50 minutes until the next wave; this was apparently not acceptable. They seemed determined not to have an enjoyable day out. Idiots.

The branding was also very professional and compelling. The agenda was inspired, and all of the branding materials supported this beautifully. There was one tiny branding faux pas, the grammatical mistake on the giant screens: Lets get this race started.

I was in the third wave of four, with a start time of 11:55am. I managed to get to within around ten rows of the front at the start line, which I thought would be a good thing. In actual fact, it came with mixed blessings. On the one hand, I wasn't stuck in crazy amounts of traffic; on the other, I was with faster runners, who dragged me along in the early kms, meaning that I started faster than I should have.

The fast start resulted in a difficult stint between around 5km and 7km, but I came out of that strong. However, the last 500m was hard, with a finish line that never seemed to get closer, and a nasty slight uphill for the final 2–300 metres. My time: a respectable 43:29. In my mind, I was hoping for sub-45, but I'd communicated my target as sub-47 to save face, just in case. Incidentally, Paula Radcliffe was targeting 45 minutes, this when she's six months' pregnant! I must check whether I beat her.

My time equates to 6 minutes 59.8778 seconds per mile. One second more would have meant I'd have missed the seven minute milestone. That's 8.57 miles per hour. Keep that pace up, and I'd be running a 3 hour, 3 minute, 28 second marathon. Pipe dream!

I'll get my 2km splits later, which will make interesting reading. The first and last are likely to be the quickest, I expect.

There was a genuine sense of camaraderie on the way to the event, the orange masses heading over the river, eventually mixing with our green counterparts. I was slightly concerned about the fate of the South after hearing the following comments from fellow orange runners aboard the 137 bus.

• I've done no training
• I couldn't find my running trainers
• I was drinking from 5pm to 3am yesterday
• We should have brought a couple of cans of Stella with us

One guy looked decidedly out of breath after making his way up the stairs of the bus.

The North vs. South analysis started off on a very dodgy footing. The organisers were claiming that the North was winning, because after 46 minutes of the first wave, more green runners had finished than had orange ones. (This statistic is only useful if the number of entrants from each geography is equal.) I assume they realised their faux pas, and started instead to report on the average time of finishers so far. When I left, the South had an average 16 seconds better than that of the North, but this could easily swing, especially when my fellow bus riders pitch up at the finish line. The results have not yet been published.

Even this statistic is somewhat flawed. As the event evolves, you need to take into account both the average time of finishers and the percentage of entrants that have finished. If your average time is very low, but you have lots of people still out on the course, it's not necessarily a good place to be.

Before leaving, I did brave the 30 minute queue for a free massage, which was given by a guy. Before starting, he rolled my shorts up, which brought memories of George's massage in Seinfeld, a couple of poetic excerpts below.

RECEPTIONIST: … And George, you'll be with Raymond.
GEORGE: Excuse me, did you say 'Raymond'?
RECEPTIONIST: Yes.
GEORGE: But, uh, Raymond is a man.
RECEPTIONIST: That's right.
GEORGE: I can't get a massage from a man.
ELAINE: Why not?
GEORGE: What, are you crazy? I can't have a man touching me. Switch with me.
ELAINE: No, I don't want the man either.
GEORGE: What's the difference, you're a woman. They're supposed to be touching you.
ELAINE: He'd just be touching your back.
GEORGE: He'd just be touching your back too.
ELAINE: No, it could get sexual.
GEORGE: I know. That's the point. If it's gonna get sexual, it should get sexual with you.
ELAINE: I wouldn't be comfortable.
GEORGE: I would? What if something happens?
ELAINE: What could happen?
GEORGE: What if it felt good?
ELAINE: It's supposed to feel good.
GEORGE: I don't want it to feel good.
ELAINE: Then why get the massage?
GEORGE: Exactly!
RAYMOND: George?
GEORGE: Yes?
RAYMOND: I'm Raymond.
GEORGE: Hello.

JERRY: What's with you?
GEORGE: A... ah...
JERRY: Yes, A...?
GEORGE: A man gave me...
JERRY: Yes, a man gave you...?
GEORGE: A man gave me... a massage. hu, hu…
JERRY: So?
GEORGE: So he... had his hands and, uh, he was uh…
JERRY: He was what?!
GEORGE: He-he was uh… touching and rubbing. (nervous laugh)
JERRY: That's a massage.
GEORGE: And then I took my pants off.
JERRY: You took your pants off?
GEORGE: For my hamstring.
JERRY: Oh.
GEORGE: He got about uh, two inches from... there.
JERRY: Really?
GEORGE: I think it moved.
JERRY: Moved?
GEORGE: It may have moved, I don't know.
JERRY: I'm sure it didn't move.
GEORGE: It moved! It was imperceptible but I-I felt it.
JERRY: Maybe it just wanted to change positions? You know, shift to the other side.
GEORGE: No, no. It wasn't a shift, I've shifted, this was a move.
JERRY: Okay, so what if it moved?
GEORGE: That's the sign! The test; if a - if a man makes it move.
JERRY: That's not the test. Contact is the test, if it moves, as a result of contact.
GEORGE: You think it's contact? It has to be touched?
JERRY: That's what a gym teacher once told me.
(Kramer enters.)
KRAMER: Hey.
JERRY: Hey.
KRAMER: I just saw Joe DiMaggio in Dinky Donuts. You know, I-I looked in there and there he was having coffee and a donut.

(That last line had nothing to do with the context, but it's funny.)

Great massage, although the guy was genuinely shocked at how tight my calves were. Hard as rock, by all accounts. The calves, that is.

I rang someone today bearing what I thought to be good news. I ended the call feeling like I'd delivered some bad news. Made me feel despondent. Ho hum.

There was an article recently about a guy who set a new record by reciting pi to 100,000 decimal places. To check out the scale of the challenge, the digits are given here.

I decided that it was time that I at least made the effort to learn it beyond the seven decimal places that my school calculator displayed (3.1415927). So I've made it up to 20. If I were to learn 20 per day, I'd get to the 100,000 on 14 June, 2020.

Here are the first 20:

3.14159265358979323846

Gavin at work today overheard someone defining the word monotone to her friend: a word with one syllable or less. So very, very wrong.

A while ago, I commented on the dreadful customer service experienced in HSBC Covent Garden. (To give a balanced account, my Chambers Street, New York branch gave me a fabulous customer experience only two months earlier.)

After spending 15 minutes getting nowhere talking to someone on the US customer service number yesterday, I took their advice and took my request to the Chancery Lane branch this lunchtime. (My request: to do a wire transfer from my dollar HSBC account to my UK Lloyds TSB account.) I got nowhere. When I again questioned the bank's branding (the world's local bank), their defense was that HSBC UK was in no way affiliated with HSBC US. Maybe that's exactly what they mean by local.

Dreadful.

As mentioned before, my friend Steve's employers have sadly deemed the content of this site too risqué for his and his colleagues' eyes, so he comments by means of myself. Below are some extracts from his views on September's postings, his points in italics.

First of all, some views on swearing.

There’s nothing to compare with a good bit of “effing and jeffing” (I love that expression) and the “c” word. I remember The Mary Whitehouse Experience saying years ago that “felch” was arguably worse and was set on a swearing frequency so high that it bypassed the censors. However, this now seems a bit contrived and tame. I went to a BBFC seminar quite a few years ago in which they explained their categorising of swear words into (I think) four categories, which had impact on the certification of a film. The only two which were ranked as a Category 4 (the equivalent to a 9.2 on the swearing Richter scale), were f*ck (and its variations: f*cker, f*cked etc.) and c*nt. Curiously, while f*ck etc. were elements of the highest category, motherf*cker was in the category below. I’d have loved to have been at the meeting that decided that one.

The Mary Whitehouse Experience suggested that a good replacement for the “c” word might be something a little more everyday, like “Henry Kelly” (conjuring up amusing images of Henry, in full Going For Gold flow, saying “What C am I?”) However, they recognised that this might cause problems in such phrases as: “That Henry Kelly, what a Henry Kelly.”

Next, some Draconian views on the use of emoticons.

If I ruled the world I’d operate a zero-tolerance approach to emoticons. People that use them should be shot, or forced to wear a mask of shame (probably a face on a big yellow circle with a downturned mouth). If you can’t convey your emotions within the insanely-madcap diversity of the English language alone, then you should have your fingers surgically removed and should in no way be allowed to type.

And a retort to my acclamation of Sleeper's lyrics.

I’ve got this theory (given your opinion of Sleeper) that the upholding of a band’s lyrics as examples of lyrical genius is directly proportional to the extent to which you fancy the singer. If my theory is correct, I pity the people who regard The Pogues’ lyrics cornerstones of musical poetry.

Good point. Well made. And to "bi-weekly".

I’m in complete agreement. It’s every fortnight, not twice-weekly. Annoyingly however, while trying to prove this point, the normally-trustworthy OED stated that both are valid. I felt betrayed; if you ask me, it’s a case of the lexicographer not knowing his/her stuff. He’ll/she’ll never get a seat in Countdown’s Dictionary Dell. I’ll see them in hell.

And mouses.

I heard, and employ, the same plurality. The urge to correct people who call them ‘mice’ feels like attempting to subdue a rabid dog.

And finally to cat milk.

Head-shakingly worrying and sadly indicative of a profiteering and lazy society in which you can buy bags of pre-grated cheese and loaves of bread with the crusts already cut off. WITH THE CRUSTS CUT off I say.

Yesterday, one of the headlines on the front of one of those free, new, evening newspapers read: Tories in amazing attack on 'autistic' Gordon.

I'd be a shit journalist. I would struggle to make something not worthy of writing about, let alone newsworthy, into something page-turningly compelling. I guess I'm too honest. This story, about some Tory (sorry, some Conservative) joking about Gordon Brown's autistic tendencies, was trivial and benign. People joke about that very same thing with me, and I take it as the compliment intended. Even if it's not a compliment, I'll ignore the genuine sentiment in favour of my own interpretation, which is always favourable.

It seems bizarre in today's world that schools are still 'affiliated' with religion: All Saints C. of E. school, for example, the one that I attended.

Schools are a public service, paid for by the British tax-payer, regardless of their religion. It is as absurd as having religion-specific hospitals, or tips, or policemen. (Places of worship are fine, as they're privately funded.) Surely we need to get rid of these now-meaningless labels, to promote equality and a more diverse, welcoming society.