The Sturdy Soapbox

Repealing the effects of the window tax

There are quite a lot of old buildings in this town and you will often see windows that have been bricked up for many years.

We did this at school, it was a sort of rebellion against the window tax, which operated for more than 150 years ending in 1851 when it was replaced by house duty.

There's a building across the road from me, which despite the modern look (thanks to renovation), is quite old and though there are two dwellings, was probably one house.  On the upstairs floor at the front, there are two bricked up windows.

This morning, I heard the tap, tap tapping and then noticed some bloke chipping out the bricks to one of the windows, bringing a little more light into the occupier's lives, that our government  was responsible for taking away some years ago.  In fact, it is alleged the term "daylight robbery" comes from this tax and the bricking up of windows to reduce the tax paid.

The Chalk play on words

I was telling Charlie Chalk this morning, how I'd offset my butchers bill by making a large number of little signs with things like RUMP STEAK - HAND RAISED PORK PIE (as opposed to those just left to grow up on their own).

To make them more durable, I told him I'd laminated them as opposed to "porkinated or beefinated he enquired."

OK everybody - The Welder is back tonight, so expect 15 hundred plus pictures on Flickr of his trip to Poland, brace yerself...

Sunny and fresh

Got a phone call the other night from Vodafone asking if I wanted a new phone for nothing (which obviously comes with a new contract attached).

I've been with them for so long, you wouldn't find a tariff anywhere near what I pay per month any more, so I decided to stay with them and got a Motorola K1 into the deal.

I can't get that excited about phones and as I really like the Motorola V3i I thought this might be an improvement. 

When I walked down to see McBark at lunchtime, the lilac growing in the garden of a cottage just down the road, caught my eye, so I used the cam phone to see how good or bad it is.

The phone tools software is pants, kept transferring a postage stamp sized picture and I couldn't get the file size from the phone but I suspected that 2 megapixels should give me a bigger image.

Well OK, it's a pretty pic, but to show that cam phones are utter shite, I plan  to walk past the house again tomorrow at a similar time and take a picture with a proper camera and post it here.

Lovely little cottage isn't it ?

Hmm a quiet weekend

My brother said a while ago how quiet his house was with all three kids away at university.  I feel a bit like that this weekend.  OBC is down in the west country painting his boat and I can reveal that the welder has landed, in Poland that is.  Mind you, I've already had one text message !

We media types

Well, I told you the other week about the sandals and socks website www.sandalandsoxer.co.uk was to be featured on Japanese TV.  Well, that's not happened yet, though I am assure it will be soon.

This morning however, I did a radio interview with BBC Radio Suffolk's James Hazell, where I put forward the case that whilst fashion may be fickle, I have 9 years worth of pictures on the web site to prove that "soxing" is here to stay as shown by one of OBC's crew last weekend (see pic).

So, just how nerdy is this ?

Today's post on the always entertaining rock chick Average Jane, had this picture of an embroidered pillow case asking how nerdy is this ?

Admittedly, she was a teenager when she did it, but to hand embroider something this complex.

OK, so I've got a towel with a Dalek embroidered on it, but I didn't do it myself, I got it off E Bay ages ago.

She concluded her post with "maybe this is why she didn't get dates".

http://averagejane.blogs.com/

The welder is still poorly

I didn't post on this subject originally, because when I was poorly all I got from him, was a picture of his pint sent by MMS when he was having a jolly time in the pub and I was laid up at home.

Pat answered the phone this morning and they were both in bed with it, but his was much worse of course.  She reckons he is on the mend, because he's moaning all the time, despite being waited on hand and foot, hot drinks on the hour, baths drawn, clothes changed etc.

She was so drugged with his griping, she was tempted to pack him off to his daughters till he's fully recovered.

He's even had get well greetings from his online fan club.  I ask you, gratitude of what ?

My trip to Torquay was a bit of a damp squib.  It wasn't anypone's fault, but we couldn't have timed our departure to be any worse.  4 o clock on a Friday preceeding a bank holiday weekend.  The radio described the traffic between junction  14 and 20 on the M5 as the worst in the country and that was our route.

It took us 4 hours to get to Torquay and I never saw the sea, as the place Sam, was staying was inland somewhere.  Because it was 8 o clock, I had no time to either go find the sea or even stop off on my way home in my old home town of Clevedon, seeing how OBC wanted his posh Volvo back.

Sam slept all the way, except for waking up for ten minutes to eat the stuff his aunty Val had packed for him.  When I told his mum later, she said "that's our Sam".

OBC used to have someone on his boat crew who slept all the time, who earned the nickname "Ship's Cat".  I think Sam now deserves to inherit this epithet.

As with any bank holiday in the UK, it's raining today.  And I am taking OBC down to Sharpness to join his boat which he is then taking down to Portishead in readiness for his summer of fun.

Now, as Portishead is a hop n a spit from Clevedon, I may get the opportunity to go visit the town I miss so much, so let's hope the weather picks up tomorrow.

I just checked the BBC weather and would you credit it, Tuesday and Wednesday when everyone's back at work (cept welfare trash), are set to be the sunny days.  Tomorrow is looking OK, even in the west country.

The concluding part of the Dr. Who Sontaran episode was absolutely first class last night and very much the standard that should be maintained throughout the series.

As I concluded my chat with the sickly welder this morning, he said "Pat's going to get me something to knock me out tonight so I sleep better".  First thing that sprung to my mind was a mallet !

Wicked, me ?

The spoof job debacle

I decided to take a look on the job site where I discovered the spoof job (which I applied for) the other day.  I wanted to see if they had removed it.

They had, but a search for the same job title, turned up THE SAME position being advertised by the same person three times in my short search of 10 minutes.

Here's one of them, but the copy is identical on all three I discovered (click for full size).

The sad thing, is that different agencies are handling this spoof opportunity, who are in turn using the Jobsite web site as a platform to attract a larger punter audience.

Sad because it shows somewhat conclusively, that none of these agencies are screening the jobs they are advertising and are helping criminals to "phish" for people's bank details by pretending to have a job for them.

Dunno about you, but I think this is pretty disgraceful.  Firstly, the leeches who scam bank details from innocent people, but the job agencies who are the sort of people you find when you scrape about at the bottom of the metaphorical barrel.  Recruitment professionals ?  Don't think so.

Spamming the spammers

Occasionally, I will spot a live e mail address when one of these cretins is trying to put one across and I take great pleasure in causing them a little inconvenience.

Yesterday, I decided to play a little trick on a bunch of spamming clowns named clash-media.com

I signed up for the shite they were hawking (I think it was the "chance" to win a day out at Alton Towers (a place I wouldn't be caught dead at).  I knew that once I entered my e mail address (which was a variant of one of my domains), I would be deluged with spam for other stuff.'

Then, using that variant, I set up a filter to stop the spam from landing in my inbox, but to be forwarded to: info@clash-media.com

Aren't I a scamp, especially as within 10 minutes of signing up, I received 5 mails all addressed to that variant, before I had set up my little redirection mechanism.

The sad thing is we're never going to close these arseholes down.  It would be nice to go burn down their offices and hack their websites, to cause them as much inconvenience as they cause us.

If a web site or mail server received so much traffic, it shuts down, that's known as a DOS or Denial Of Service.  Maybe if everyone sent their junk mail on to info@clash-media.com it would cause a DOS on a spammer's server.  Wouldn't that be fun?

Life and its disappointments

Got a call from OBC asking if I would like to drive his pickup down to Sharpness docks in Gloucester this afternoon.  I said yes and was all excited, like a little lad going on his holidays.

Half an hour later, I was cast aside like an old sandal for a bigger bloke with muscles.  This was because the reason for going, was to deliver a load of fuel for the boat and he realised it would need lifting, so he found someone more suited to mauling big barrels of diesel about.

Talk about the fickle finger of fate !

Mind you, he has asked me to drive someone down to Torquay in Devon tomorrow, so having been cooped up in the flat all week, I will at least get to see the sea !

Hooked a right snotty little twat in response to my protests about the socks being yanked off E Bay.

I asked a very simple question, which was how should I recognise a counterfeit pair of Ted Baker socks over the real article.

This morning, I received a response from some pikey Brand Protection Manager, that "they were counterfeit, end of story !"

Now, considering this guy hides behind a convenient Yahoo e mail address and works for a company you can't pull up anything about on Google, it suggests to me, he's a brand protection goon who works for a company that takes money off Ted Baker for ferreting out people who sell counterfeit goods on car boot stalls, E Bay and the likes.  A little like too many businesses in this country these days, they take in other people's washing.

If it transpires these socks are fake, then I have no problem with Ted Baker or anyone else protecting their brand, so I've sent them directly to Ted Baker for comment, but I have reminded them, that it's one pair of socks up for 99p on E Bay, not a kilo of heroin.

This brand protection clown took issue at my suggestion he hides behind a Yahoo address and in his snotty response told me "I hide from nobody!!!!!!!!"  (I include the exclamation marks just as he did).

Yeah, well my dad's bigger than your dad !!!!!!!!