March 31, 2006

Rising seas on google maps

Here's an interesting google maps hack showing how rising sea levels would affect the coastlines of the world.

This makes me glad that I live up in the Pennines ...

March 28, 2006

Shit Music

Over on Scaryduck's site, he's doing more "done a poo" related content. It's a gloriously puerile competition to substitute some of the words in a song title with "done a poo" or some variation thereof. Right up my street. In comments I proposed a new game where you name songs which sound like they could be about done-ing a poo, such as:

Drop it like it's hot - Snoop Dogg

Comin' On - The Shamen

EZ Pass - Har Mar Superstar

Exceedin' Headache - Truth

Flowin' Prose - The Beastie Boys

Funky Shit - The Prodigy

Give it up or Turn it loose - Lynne Collins

Any other suggestions?

March 24, 2006

Finland's GWAR-like Eurovision entry

This is Finland's entry into Eurovision this year. Doomlord, can you confirm? I can't make head nor tail of that bizarre lacka-lacka-lacka talk that web page has on it ...

Good work, Finns!

Thanks (void)!

British Gas Homecare Timeline

I subscribe to the Homecare service offered by British Gas - you pay them a monthly fee and they send round someone to fix your boiler/plumbing/electrics etc any time something goes wrong, free of charge. It's generally a pretty good service and every time I've used it in the past for the plumbing they've been great - they've come round quickly and sorted the problem. My subscription to the cover service has easily paid for itself already and I would reccomend it.

Except. Well, this week they've not lived up to their usual standards of service. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's the worst example of customer service I've ever received, and I'm an NTL customer so that takes some doing! I want to get this off my chest so here's a timeline:

Monday 20/3/2006 7:00am:
We wake up to find fusebox has tripped and none of the plug sockets in the house work. Upon investigation I find that the pipes under the kitchen sink have developed a drip and water has dripped onto the plug socket into which my washing machine and dishwasher are plugged. I curse the bloke who fitted kitchen and put plug sockets directly underneath water pipes. I ring the Homecare number and arrange for a plumber to come round the following day. Homecare persuade me to up my level of cover to include electrics.

Tuesday 21/3/2006:
Cres takes the day off to wait in for plumber. Plumber comes but after he goes the drip starts again. I ring to arrange for a plumber to some round to fix the drip and for an electrician to come round to fix the broken plug sockets. I am given a 12 midday to 18:00 timeslot. I use up all of my remaining flexi-time and then some to take wednesday afternoon off.

Wednesday 22/3/2006 14:00:
Homecare plumber arrives and fixes drip. While working, he expresses surprise that the electrician hasn't been yet.

16:00:
I wonder where the electrician is. I ring to confirm that one is booked and Homecare assure me that they can see it on the system "Electrician between 12 and 6pm".

18:00:
Still no electrician. I ring to find out why and am told that because I made a plumber appointment the same day, their system did not send the electrician appointment to the planning department who assign and dispatch electricians. I tell them that I can take no further time off work. Homebase tell me that they will send out an electrician that evening between now and 10pm.

18:30:
I receive a phone call from the aforementioned planning department that they cannot send an electrician out this evening since the 6pm-10pm slots are reserved for emergencies only. Fair enough, I think, I don't want genuine emergencies to go unattended just because I have a busted plug socket and can't run my washing machine.

I explain that taking another morning or afternoon off is not an option. The planning department manager tells me that she can give me an 8am-10am timeslot for an electrician. I take it because if the electrician comes round first thing then I can be in work for 10am which doesn't count as time off if you work late.

Thursday 23/6/2006 9:00am:
Still no electrician. I ring my boss to explain that I might be in after 10am. Luckily, boss is very decent about it. I ring Homecare to confirm that an electrician is coming. I am told "Yes, I can see it on the system, and electrician between 8 and 10".

10:15:
No electrician. I call a taxi to go into work.

11:30:
I ring Homecare to find out what happened. I am told "We don't do 2-hour timeslots for electricians". THEN WHY DID YOUR PLANNING DEPARTMENT GIVE ME AN 8-10 TIMESLOT? You'd think that their electrician appointment planning department would be aware of Homecare's policy on how they plan their electrician appointments. I ask to speak to a supervisor. Supervisor tells me that he will escalate it to his manager who will call me back. I ask him to ring me after 1pm 'cos I am off to lunch.

14:30:
No phonecall from manager. I ring Homecare to find out what is going on. I am told "The electrician is on his way to you now sir". I explain that I am now at work (as I told them at 11:30), so there is no point sending an electrician out. I ask to speak to someone from the planning department to see if I can get them to give me a weekend appointment since I can take no further time off work. I am told that she will get a member of the department to call me back. I leave my work number and tell them I will be going home at 6pm. I ask if they can guarantee that someone from planning will ring me by 6pm. I am told "Yes, without fail."

17:00:
I get tired of waiting for planning to ring and call Homecare again. I am told by the nice lady in the call centre that she will chase them up.

18:10:
I go home.

Today, Friday 24/3/2006:
I ring to find out why planning haven't called me. Nice lady in call centre says that she will put me through to someone. Nice bloke from customer relations comes onto the line and makes conciliatory and apologetic noises. This is the turning point. Within an hour I am put through to someone who explains that they can't do weekend appointments at all, full stop, not even for the Pope, but that he will bypass the (obvioulsy defective) electrician appointment planning system, speak to an electrician directly and tell him to make me his first call of the day at 8am the following Tuesday.

So that's where we are. I'm going to have to run an extension cord across my kitchen floor to run the washing machine if I want clean clothes between now and Tuesday, and they'd better turn up.

UPDATE: They did. Finally. I only had to wait a week!

March 17, 2006

Ken McLeod's speech from Boskone

Ken McLeod treats us to his Guest of Honour talk from the Boskone SF convention this year:

Now we come to the science bit. One of the things you might expect from what I've said about my upbringing is that I had a lot of scientific creationist nonsense shoved down my throat in my early years and that discovering the truth about biology and geology and evolution would be a shocking revelation and that I would be very bitter and twisted about how I had been misled. You would be absolutely right. I think I got as far as first year at university still thinking that even if creationism wasn't true there might be something in its criticisms of biology. That lasted all the way into my reading of the first chapter of the standard textbook, Keeton's Biological Science. As usual in such matters it was something trivial that tipped the balance. In this case it was Keeton's pointing out an obviously vestigial organ, the dew-claws of pigs. 'Why,' Keeton asked, 'would the Creator have given pigs, which walk on only two toes per foot, two other toes that dangle uselessly well above the ground?' I had no answer to that but I'm sure the Institute for Creation Science has several. Some time later I went on to read The Origin of Species and found how badly it had been misrepresented, and also and more seriously how strong Darwin's argument was.

Posted by Jonah at 2:32 PM | Comments (1)