The IRA have decommissioned its arms. But I have a question – exactly how does one destroy 3 tonnes of Semtex? Apart from the obvious and surely that big a bang would have been noticed?

From Rude Britain, a book by Rob Bailey and Ed Hurst, here’s what they consider the top 10 rudest place names in Britain. The authoirs have listed 100 real places, taken photos of the the place signs and done some research into the origins of the name – whilst maintaining a well-honed sense of humour. Take a look – a potential fun Christmas present*

10 Slag Lane – a street in Haydock Merseyside
9 Shitterton – a hamlet in Dorset
8 Back Passage – an alley in City of London
7 Fingringhoe – a village in Essex
6 Muff – a village in County Derry
5 Sandy Balls – in Hampshire
4 Twatt – a cillage in Orkney
3 Bell End – a street in Rowley Regis, W Mids
2 Minge Lane -a street in Upton upon Severn, Worcs,
1 Cocks – a village in Cornwall

*if the shops in Oxford Street are already selling Christmas cards, wrapping and ‘seasonal’ presents, then I can mention it!

On the train home, I usually sit in the same part, right at the front. At the station I get off, the exit to the station is opposite the front of the train and I just like getting straight off and on my way. As at Waterloo, the platform entrance is at the back of the train, I know that I’ll walk the length of it wherever I sit, it just feels better to have a shorter walk at the end of the journey.

My preferred sitting position allows me to observe a few peculiarities of human behaviour- the attempt o get through the locked door. Mnay people just walk right up and try and get through the last door of the train, which only leads to the drivers section. Some people have walked through a few carriages, and each time the doors are inviting. There’s a brightly lit green button and you can see through the windows to the carriage beyond. The last door is different though; there’s a handle, the door button is unlit and, the biggest clue of all, the view through the window is of blackness – there is nothing beyond., But still people try and open it before giving up, looking around either puzzled or sheepishly before turning around to find a seat. Some are tipsy, others seem perfectly sober, but many try it.

But what puzzles me more is the people who walk down the outside of the train, get on at the last set of doors and then try and go through the end of the train. I’ve never seen the train parked in such a way that it is impossible to see that there are no further carriages, there’s always a space. But sometimes, it does not register and they try the door; or, even scarier, maybe it does register but the door is tried anyway, soem small part of the brain living in a Harry Potter worl where there is a train behind the locked doors, where they will get a nice large seat and no-one to bother them.

I’m currently looking for another job, which is interesting as I realise I have never had to do it properly before. The recent resolution of the long-running re-organisation in the company has been a catalyst in me taking a look at where I am. Given I have been in the same company for 14 years, I believe it is time for a new challenge.

When I first joined, it was straight from university and the recruitment was via the milkround – companies going out to universities and presenting a good show to attract graduates to apply to them. Since then, I think I have applied for one role externally (which was actually to a company that ended up being bought by my current one 12 months later!) but everything else has been internal.

So now I am in a busy period of understanding how the job market works, the best places to look for work and polishing my presentation, whilst applying for a number of roles. And then waiting. There’s definitely a black hole in recruitment companies; you can tell how systemised a company is by whether they have an automated ‘we’ve received your CV’ email, others have nothing. But they all appear to have enthusiastic screeners for the first ‘chat’! I’m not sure where I’m going to end up, but I’m going to make the most of the journey.

OK, slight worrying moment when I realised that Adrian Edmundson, who is fixed in my mind as an ‘alternative commedian’ from the Eighties, from The Young Ones, Bottom and the Comic Strip and other such progammes is playing a serious role on Holby City. I’m sure he’s done serious stuff over the last few years, but I obviously missed it. The mind must be going.

A lot of photos were taken last week; they’re all up on Flickr and also photoblogged with comments over on this blog. I found it easier to load them up to Flickr and then blog directly from there instead of loading up the images to the server direct, especially as I had little software on the laptop to reduce the size of the images.

Finally back. Benbg outside for most of the day and working longer hours than usual means I’m really tired. Just marked over 2000 posts as read on the aggregator (no chance to catch up with those) and need to admin for the rest of the day.

Well, I’m going to be in Scotland for the week. Unfortunately the hotel does not have conenction from the rooms. But the pub next door does! So guess where I may be spending a little of my time ;o)

I’m here working (sort of) and will be blogging the rowing stuff over a the other blog.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave an interview with WWL-AM, which can be found a HREF=”http://www.zen41771.zen.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/WWL-AM%20Interview%20Nagin.mp3″>here. He gives a passionate plea for help and slams into the different levels of government he sees as not helping; it ends with both Nagin and hte interview lost for words, sounding as if they are in tears. Even in the midst of his anger and frustration, Nagin remembered he was on air, and his expletives were restricted to the odd dammed and frickin. But apparently even these are being bleeped out when the interview is being rebroadcast.

Via Boing Boing, there is another tale of self-censorship. Kanye West strayed from script when presenting an NBC telethon, declaring “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!”. It seems that his outburst is being broadcast on CNN, but censored by Comcast who carry it.

After the announcement that London had got the 2012 Olympics, a series of celebrations were planned. They never happened; we were bombed and things had to change. But today, there was a little get together in Trafalgar Square. Speeches by Ken Livingston, Tessa Jowell and Seb Coe were followed by Heather Small giving a live performance of Proud. The budget for bits of coloured paper had not been exhausted and bits were blown everywhere.

After the song, there was the obligatory interviews and photocall. Here’s one of my efforts of the three speakers..

More photos over on Flickr

At the moment on the telly, there’s a Channel 4 programme about the London Bombings. But these are the bombs of 1974 and 1975, when the IRA exploded 40 bombs in a year, when the city felt under siege and bag checks and high security were constant. They were using grenades and machine guns as well. Nothing Changes, there’s always someone.

We’ve had no airconditioning in the office all week; leading to them, for the first time, opening windows up on the 6th floor here. Fans have appeared but it’s been way too hot in a very hot week. We had a new chller put in the other week – I guess they are having some problems!

In the meantime, why does chocolate take longer to cool down than to melt. I put a bar next to the PC, not noticing it’s actually next to the heat vents. So now I have a bar of liquid that is not setting again! I need my chocolate ;o(

The BBC are reporting that a lorry load of Hydrogen Peroxide crashed and exploded on the M25 in Middlesex. Reports that a group of blondes wearing short skirts and white stillettoes were busy heard to complain about getting the map upside down were dismissed by police.

Sorry…sorry, it’s that kind of day.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it would be good from companies to do just a little more cross-cultural research. What is going to attract me to a film that is apparently about underwear that can get aeouind on its own?

It’sBank Holiday Weekend , whoch means the BBC/ITV are running previews for the autumn TV. And both are doing exactly the same thing, a 30 second montage of dramatic clips from the new programmes set to uplifting music. So whilst I’m greatful we do not get the US version of never ending trailers for weeks, sometimes months in advance, the clips don’t really tell me anything. But I bet the internal marketers were really chuffed!

Oh, sorry – it does tell me one thing. Oh God, it;s AUTUMN!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear 17674 American bloggers who have posted about the season finale of Six Feet Under. Stop – or at least mark your posts with big spoiler warning. Some of us who live in other countries haven’t seen it yet

It’s that time of year again – the release of the A level results. The media continue to spin two messages:

– the exams are getting easier, the grades are being inflated, the pass rate massaged
– don’t worry if you fial, they;re only exams and there are plenty of things you can do.

The mixed messages and the impact on people who don’t get the results is ignored; meanwhile the TV stations continue to embarass select pupils by making them open their results live on TV.

The Observer have an ar ticle about bloggers from the emergency services. A mainly positive piece, there’s a little bit about how ‘dangerous’ blogging is with a reference to Jo Gordon’s sacking from Waterstone’s, but no reference to the fact he got another job pretty quickly, which included blogging.

There’s a glaringly obvious error in the report though

Worldwide, there are now more than four million blogs – online diaries – where people post their thoughts about anything from politics to housework.

The author, Jo Revill, either missed out the ‘teen’ on the word four or failed to find a key report from Technorati:

As of the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links. Interestingly, this is just about double the number of blogs that we were tracking 5 months ago.

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It’s a pity there’s such an error, as The Observer definitely has one of the best news blogs around,

Update: Suw also has a comment on the Observer article, regarding her quote and a clarification of what she said during the interview.

I spent yesterday wandering round the Natural History Museum; obviously they have not yet cuaght up with prevailing trends in the US as evolution was the only thoery discussed throughout. It’s interesting seeing the different halls and stages in development of the museum. In the older section, it’s full of panoramas, stuffed animals displayed in ‘natural’ settings with painted landscapes. The newer sections have more opportunities to display good information and combine different exhibits to explain things. My favourite section was the Hall of Ocean Life, although golf-ball size sapphires are good to look at as well 😉

The museum was full of parties of children, usually in matching T-Shirts displaying the name of the dayschool/scheme they wre from. Obviously this is so the carers can try and keep an eye on them, but given the number of missing/found children scares I heard going round it’s difficult to keep track. As RFID costs go down, I can see a use for it here – provide each party a bunch of specific tags and then you can keep rack of those kids who wander away, or get lost in contemplation of T. Rex.

More museums and walking today (as long as the feet hold up) and I now have an extra 24 hours due to flight cancellations so not travelling back til Monday.

I can’t help but notice the current education debate in the US regarding the teaching of evolutionary theory vs ‘intelligent design’; the first being development based primarily on small selection pressures with an element of randomisation and the second based on the premise that something, somewhere had a hand in guiding the development of life, because obviously humans are far too perfect to have got here by chance 😉 In Kansas, the Board of Education has formally voted to include alternative theories in their teaching of science, no doubt encouraged by President Bush’s enthusiasm for the idea.

I thought that in the US the church could not influence the state (hence such things as removing school prayers), but what do you call this? And do other countries teach alternative views of evolution based on their religious preferences?