Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Sometimes it takes a disaster like the fire at David?s flat you make you realise that you?re not as prepared as you?d like should something bad happen. The house has smoke alarms but that really isn?t any good if you?re at work or on holiday and there?s no one at home to do anything about it. Because of this I decided it was time to take a proper look at how we can keep a closer eye on the house when we?re away ? not only in case there?s a fire but also in case someone breaks in.

A few months ago my friends Chris and Rob bought a wireless burglar alarm system from BT which automatically calls you on your mobile if the alarm goes off at your house. It doesn?t contact the police through some overpriced monitoring system it simply phones and SMSs you so you can either call the police yourself or get someone to go and have a look to see what?s going on.

It turns out (after some trolling round on the net) that in addition to being able to let you know when bandits are raiding your prized processions the system can also let you know when your house is on fire through the use of optional smoke detectors too.

The best price for the complete system online, including the smoke sensors, was just under £250.00. Needless to say I?ve ordered the system and will be fitting it at the weekend.

Posted by Antz at 2:28 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, March 28, 2005

News of David's fire made it into the Leicester Mercury today.

Posted by Antz at 10:49 AM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, March 27, 2005

14 hours later we're back at David's flat (this time with the keys) so we can see for ourselves how bad the damage is. David goes in first and I give him a few minutes to see what the fire has done to the last 11 years of his life. It turns out that it's bad... but not that bad. As I walked into the flat the first thing I noticed was the stench of thick black smoke.

The main living area (where the fire started) was blackened and some of the plaster had fallen from the walls. A large area had been cleared by the firemen as they chucked smoldering debris out of the windows into the yard below. Anything in the room above waist height was pretty much a write off - the TV looked like a deflated balloon; books and pictures were blackened and the light fittings had completely disappeared. Things at floor level seemed to survive much better including a bunch of willow twigs that (very surprisingly) didn't burst into flames.

The kitchen's windows were smashed and the whole room was grey with smoke. By the looks of it some stuff in the kitchen will be okay after some serious cleaning although a lot of it won't be. The final room seemed to escape any real damage apart from the stench of smoke.

It's very lucky that no one was in the flat at the time and that no one got hurt. It's also lucky that David is a strong believer in contents insurance so that he can replace most of the stuff that was destroyed by the fire.

Posted by Antz at 10:54 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, March 26, 2005

It's 7.30pm. The phone rings. David answers. He listens a while and then turns to me and says "That was someone telling me that they've heard my flat has caught on fire". I grab my car keys and we rush off to David's flat which is about 5 minutes away from the house where we live. As we approach everything looks normal and then we notice that three of the windows are boarded up and there is smoke damage to the outside. There isn't anyone else in the building and David doesn't have keys as he'd lent the flat to a friend for a few days. We're shocked.

We phone a couple of people to see if they know what went on. It appears that one of the other residents got home a few hours earlier, discovered the fire and phoned 999. Four fire engines rushed from around the city and the blaze was under control. The police said that we couldn't get access to the flat until this morning because some of the floorboards had been ripped out by the firemen. Rumours are circulating about how badly the flat is damaged; one person said that the whole flat was gutted while another said everything was alright. We leave the scene and head off to Rutland to pick up the keys and to explain to the Friend who'd been spending a few days there what had happened.

Posted by Antz at 9:05 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Most lunchtimes I find myself in the queue at my local Sainsburys petrol station ready to pay for my sandwich. All over the shop are A4 sheets of paper warning customers about how they should switch their phones off because of the risk of the phones causing the whole petrol station to burst into flames should they ring while you're filling up your car. I've always been dubious of this, especially as (let's face it) cars drive in and out all day and a very small number their engines cause the pumps to explode.

But researchers at the University of Kent now say this is not so. Of the 243 petrol station fires worldwide attributed to mobiles over the last decade not a single one was actually caused by a spark from a mobile. You can find the whole story here.

Posted by Antz at 2:49 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, March 18, 2005

Each year more and more top level domains get added to the internet to try to compensate for the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have bought all the good .com domains; each new top level domain being less and less desirable than the last. It seems to me that most worldwide sites (and a lot of more personal sites) want to have the dotcom domain rather than some third-rate dotbiz or dotinfo one and it is about time those who police the dotcom domains found a better, fairer way to deal with the demand.

I spend my days working on-line. The business I set up four years ago is the proud owner of a number of brands all of which have been chosen because we could actually get the dotcom domains. While looking we came across hundreds of suitable names which, although registered, weren't being used: they were either pointing to spammy directories or simply not pointing anywhere at all.

It seems to me that if you have a domain name then you should have to use it; after all, what's the point of having one if you're just going to leave it floating around, unloved, in cyberspace. If you don't use it within a sensible period of time you should be forced to surrend it if someone else wants it. Of course there would be independent adjudication to deal with disputes and, if needed, judge whether a domain was really being used.

Suddenly, over night, thousands of sad and lonely domains would be available to people who really wanted them. And there wouldn't be the need for second rate dotbiz domains.

Posted by Antz at 8:21 PM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, March 17, 2005

The internet is full of far too much knowledge. Everywhere you go there are sites telling you the answers to just about everything you could ever want (or not want) to know. I've had just about enough of it so was very happy to come across the Uncyclopedia as it pretty much promises not to provide any real information at all. Was it does promise though are hundreds of encyclopedia style entries full of up-to-the-minute lies and misinformation.

You'll find everything from the Eurovision Song Contest (The Eurovision Song Contest was cited in 1998 as the third most stressful life event, after the death of a spouse and a family trip to IKEA.) to Santa Claus (Santa Claus was created as a genetic clone of Jesus, but somehow a KFC drumstick fell into the synthesis vat. The result was a messiah who both reflected the Colonel's facial features as well as the highly saturated fat of his food products.)

Posted by Antz at 6:02 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

I woke up this morning with a jump as someone was banging on the front door trying to get my attention. Focused on the alarm clock and discovered it was only 6.20am. Threw on some clothes and bolted down to see whether or not some person on the street was trying to tell me that the house was on fire. Turned out it was a delivery man with a package from Orange; a man who felt that 6.20am was a perfectly acceptable time to start delivery shit to people. Bastard.

Posted by Antz at 8:12 AM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Today involved an early start (considering it is Sunday) as David had signed up to take part in the official warm-up race for the London Marathon at Silverstone. Mid-morning found us and our friend Maz (who'd been roped in to keep me company while David was off running) at British Formula One Racing's HQ with 6,000 other runners; all ready to run just over 13 miles round the circuit.

Because of all the other stuff going on in David's world at the minute he has let the training slip a little bit over the last couple of weeks. He's still been out a couple of times a week but hasn't managed to get out on those extra runs he'd been hoping to. Because of this I think he was pretty worried about how well prepared he was for his first ever half marathon; especially when most of the people at the circuit looked liked they train 24 hours a day.

We watched David set off from the main grandstands and managed to see him among all the other runners. Sadly the same couldn't be said for the first time he passed by (at 3 miles) where, despite actively staring at the runners for 20 minutes, he slipped past without me noticing him. I have to admit I was a bit concerned that something had happened to him on the first lap and he was laying on a verge somewhere.

As it turned out he had a brilliant half-marathon debut and got round the course in just under two hours 10 minutes. When we saw him approaching the finish line I had to double check it was him as he was SPRINTING for the finishing line - I'd been expecting him to be crawling on hands and knees.

Posted by Antz at 9:53 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, March 11, 2005

Today is Red Nose Day here in the UK; our chance to wear silly plastic noses all day and raise a huge amount of money to help those in need in the UK and in Africa. During the last Comic Relief the British public raised over £61 ,000,000 and with some luck Britain will manage to raise even more this time round. To make a donation click here.

Posted by Antz at 10:24 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

At Casa Del Antz we have a problem in that one of the smaller members of our 'family' spends her life knocking her drinking water all over the kitchen floor. It's not a real drama but it can be a real pain in the arse when she makes soggy paw prints throughout the house. She also loves running water and will leap onto the side of the basin in the bathroom as soon as anyone runs a tap.

Today in the mail arrived what I hope will be the solution to all my cat related problems - the CatIn Water Fountain. This clever little bit of kit is basically a water cooler for cats and holds 3 litres of crystal clear loveliness in its large clear dome which runs down the sides into a drinking bowl. The water is filtered and flows through the system continuously allowing our four legged friends the excitement of non-stop running water.

So far Fitch (our water lover) has enjoyed playing with the water as it runs over the dome however Abercrombie is still treating it with complete indifference.

Posted by Antz at 10:52 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, March 04, 2005

Several years ago I lent a friend a pile of my best design books because he needed some serious creative inspiration; sadly he and my books vanished off of the face of the earth a few days later. This left me minus a small design library and one good friend.

Now, unless you happen to get off on buying design books you probably don't know that they always appear to be more expensive than other books of the same size and weight. There is some magical force at work that makes most of the innovative or stylish ones cost between £30-50 a go. You can see why I was pretty pissed at the sudden disappearance of several of them.

This month I set aside a chunk of my hard earned wages to treat myself to buying some serious design porn and am now the proud owner of several new volumes of graphical inspiration. There is something so reassuring about having some new design books on my shelves. How sad am I?

Posted by Antz at 5:22 PM | Permalink | | |

There's something very strange about the city where I live which seems
to prevent it getting snow like everywhere else. For the last couple of
weeks the news has been full of pictures and stories about how the East
Midlands has been having inches and inches of snow and yet my garden
(yes I'm lucky enough to have a garden) hasn't seen more than about two
flakes this year

Because of this lack of white powder I'd pretty much thought our snowy
winter had passed and the country was back to normal, however when I
spoke to my parents today they said that they had been pretty much cut
off from the rest of the world by a foot of snow over the last week. I'd
heard that there had been some of the fluffy goodness down south but I
had now idea it was that serious.

Posted by Antz at 9:10 AM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, March 03, 2005

It's four days before Mother's Day and so I've arranged for my mum to get a lovely bunch of flowers for the big day. Not a hard task you'd imagine however it turned out to be a lot more tricky than i thought.

In principle it should have been a two minute job to visit an online florist, choose a fantastic arrangement and arrange for them to be delivered to my mum's in time for this Sunday but the first four sites I trawled though couldn't offer delivery until the middle of next week.

The fifth could actually get the flowers in time for Mother's Day but only if I chose from a range of two arrangements, both of which looked like they'd been created by a blind quadriplegic.

The sixth and final site, Interflora, actually had a nice range of flowers which were all available in time for Mother's Day. Of course being Interflora they cost much much more than the other sites I'd checked out but my mum is worth it.

Posted by Antz at 7:04 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Came across Thrift Deluxe when it was featured on Coolhunting recently. The site is a London Based DIY site for cool people; so in other words Blue Peter for Generation X. The site creates inexpensive DIY projects that do their best to be cool and is no doubt the only site where you can discover how to make a cheese grater into a lamp.

Posted by Antz at 9:31 PM | Permalink | | |

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