In 5 days I leave London for the relative calm of South Wales, so my time is consumed by box-packing and wrapping up those websites I’ve got left over from the past few weeks. At perhaps the worst possible time, I decided to revamp my MB Web Design website and this one concurrently. The latest WordPress release has largely fuelled this change, it really is fantastic by the way.

I’m starting a web design blog via MB Web Design and letting this one be my personal venting place.  A side effect of being linked to from my business site is that this blog got a pretty large pagerank very quickly, and resultantly has been a big attraction for commenters. Sifting through the hundreds of comments to moderate is rather a drain on my time, so I’m going to relax the emphasis on this site for the time being. (And also plug the Pagerank leak from the business site*)

* For the smart arses: Pagerank doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. Tell that to the 440 commenters in the last week or so.

My fiancee finished her final exam yesterday, with fingers crossed I say that in a month or so she will officially be a doctor. When business success goes to my head she will always be there to remind me that I just sit at a desk all day, and that no matter how much money I make, my job doesn’t save lives. (There is a rant about people not appreciating the hard work of doctors, but that can wait for another day.)

I’ll check back in a couple of days to report on the move.

So it looks like there is yet another tube strike on the cards. (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7354470.stm) All of life’s ills can be resolved by striking, according to Bob’s blinkered logic. “The RMT executive was left with no choice but to set strike dates” apparently.

Just you wait until the Olympic games are here – he’ll hold the city’s transport to ransom in exchange for a 500% pay rise, citing some tenuous grievance barely worth mentioning. He may be trying to drum up sympathy for his hard done by workforce, but this is hard for the average person to do when tube drivers earn £30k for doing pretty much fuck all, let’s be honest. What he’s actually doing is making himself the most hated man in London.

The title of this post has been shamelessly SEO’d in the hope that he’s vain enough to input “orange lamborgini” and “london” or “docklands” to see if anyone’s mentioned him. Well congratulations pal, you got my attention. Now fuck off to Silverstone where you can race it properly without interrupting my conversation.

P.S. My grumpiness has nothing to do with England beating Australia at the rugby. Honest.

Get the tickets with Ticketmaster

Above: the view from my window (Excel is the big white building in the background)

Here are some of the nearest pubs/bars, along with some relevant links.

• The Fox About a 20 second walk from Excel’s main entrance. HUGE bar but it has to be seeing as most visitors to Excel try this bar first. Can get very busy on event days (or rather, after the event has finished for the day).
• So Over the footbridge from Excel – which is a pleasant walk in itself. Outdoor seating if it’s decent weather. Likely to be less busy than The Fox on an event day.
• Caribbean Scene (highly recommended if it’s sunny)
• Failing the above, the hotels – Ibis, Crowne Plaza, Novotel – all have their own bar (though I haven’t been in so can’t vouch for quality on way or another)

It’s hideous enough as it is, without knowing that this logo cost £400,000 to produce (which many have labelled a flagrant ‘backhander’), and is supposed to appeal to young people. The young people of 1986, presumably. Compare to the original London 2012 logo, which I grew quite fond of.

Let’s have a look at how the other cities competing for the 2012 games fared with their logos.

How did we get it so wrong?!

The campaign to get rid of the new London 2012 logo is well underway, less than 24 hours after the unveiling, an online petition has gained nearly 10,000 signatures. I urge the 2012 Olympic committee to ask for their money back – all £400K of it – and seek out the designers of the following logos. These are how you do an Olympic logo properly.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any thoughts on the new London 2012 logo, or any other the suggestions I made above. I would be especially interested to hear from you if you like the new London 2012 logo, though I don’t anticipate many responses…

Latest News: According to the BBC, an animated version has been banned from British television because it may cause epileptic seizures.

Links

Online petition to change the London 2012 logo

London 2012 Official Website

Wolff-Olins – The “design” firm who brought you the London 2012 logo / atrocity

At the risk of sounding like an “Outraged in Oxbridge” letter to the editor of a broadsheet…

As if we weren’t a big enough target already, the country is spending billions on attracting people from all over the world to the Olympic games. The fact that the London tube system was bombed less than 24 hours after we secured the Games might prove to be an omen.

As usual, the price they’ve quoted is hugely underestimated (see the Millennium Dome, a hive of tourist activity and profit-making grand public events…)
As usual, the timescales they’ve quoted are slipping back (see the Wembley building site, sorry, “stadium”)

If the bookies would accept my bet, I’d gladly put a grand on the much-lauded Channel Tunnel – Olympic rail link not being completed on time. Sadly, the bookies learnt their lesson when a bunch of guys in hard hats in the Wembley area placed large sums of cash against Wembley opening on time.

I live in East London (the nice part not the grubby part, obviously) yet even I fail to see the long term benefit to anyone other than the contruction firms who will secure sizable chunks of the billions to build the various arenas and Olympic village, then afterwards convert the lot into “luxury Olympic apartments” and make a fortune selling or letting them out to the ever-increasing Canary Wharf workforce. (There’s another rant about Canary Wharf-types, but I’ll save that for another day)

All this heavy investment in an area which – if you’re a New Scientist reader – stands a good chance of being underwater in 50 years. Leave NuHackney and NuStratford drown and run to the hills!

Had a weekend at the in-laws, which was a stress sandwich. The highlight was leaving the house to visit the local shopping centre – I had the dubious honour of returning to the car with 4 bags, all containing nothing but confectionary of some sort. They had a Thorntons and a Cadbury outlet shop… hence I snapped up broken Crunchies and abnormally-shaped truffles at bargain prices. They’ll last me about a week. Expect a less-streamlined Math when you next see him. Type 2 diabetes beckons.

At least when I was at their house I got to relegate myself to their spare room and get some work done. I have recently finished a site for a cleaning firm and a new site for my boss’s company, but I still have a bunch of sites to work on / begin, for the following people/organisations:
- botox clinic
- 2x sites for a dating agency
- greeting card manufacturer
- 2x sites for personal trainers
- and finally, a Flash photo gallery for a guy wanting to distribute his wedding photos online. novel idea

That’ll keep me busy for a while!

I was asked to produce a website for someone claiming to own “London’s biggest escort agency”. Two thumbs up! Except they wanted to pay me with “store credit”, so I passed up the opportunity, much to the chagrin of some (single) web dev friends of mine. One in particular was furious that I hadn’t thought of negotiating a good deal and referring the job to him.

Looking forward to seeing Tim Vine on Friday night. Also, I may be seeing the Wales vs New Zealand match at the Millennium Stadium on November 25. I’ll gloss over the fact that we don’t stand a chance.

Halloween and Bonfire night fast approaching… I really miss being a kid, then these nights were a big deal. This applies even more to Christmas, which the shops would have you believe is next week.

$ky Television have acquired the rights to Lost, right from under Channel 4′s nose. Either Sky have been unscrupulous shits, C4 have been poor negotiators, or both, but either way all parties are bastards for denying me some great TV for free. Some people would resort to downloading the episodes off Bittorrent, but everyone knows I’m not such a person.

I know I sound like a stuck record, but I really am looking forward to leaving London. 5 years ago, I was stuck record preaching the benefits of going to London. Now, older and wiser, the honeymoon is over. Unless you are earning a lot more than I am, or unless you have rich parents to leech off, London simply isn’t viable. It’s a shame.

I shall leave you with
something you don’t already know

Went to a signing of the Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace DVD. Garth, Todd Rivers and Dean Learner were all there in character. I ended up having a discussion with Garth about the benefits of equipping all NHS staff with firearms. Surreal.

Saw some weirdo masturbating on a platform at Canning Town station. As you do.

Got absolutely bladdered on Sunday afternoon and spent that evening heartily chundering and vowing never to drink again. I’m still hungover.

The BBC and Great Ormond Street Hospital are now involved in this medical physics video we’re making at work. Our producer, of all goes to plan, was one of the producers for Tomorrow’s World [/geek fanboy mode]