Graphite..
I like drawing. A lot.

Funny thing is, I never actually realised how much until April earlier this year.

The wife bought me a drawing board for my birthday, after seeing me straining for hours over an A3 pad on the dining room table, as I was trying to put together a picture to fill a large bare gap on the living room wall.

I used to be a trainee graphic designer many years ago, during my teens for my local ad agency, and, although learning the basics of my trade at art college, I had arrived at my new employers just as the whole desktop publishing age had literally burst into the studios.

Within weeks, the art of cutting, pasting, planning layouts with non-reproducable blue pencils and trying not to smudge your scribblings with the T-Square had gone right out of the window, only to be to be replaced by Mac II's, the early Quadras, Very basic versions of Photoshop, Freehand, Pagemaker (before Quark..) and Multi-Ad.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, fast-forward 18 years, and I am, as the saying goes 'back to the old drawing board' during my spare time.

The artistic process is a lot longer than it's digital counterpart, there's no undo button, I find it totally peaceful when I'm using it, and what's more, everytime I go back to it, and lift the protective sheet from my latest creation, there's a constant sense of pride because my work is 'hand-made' so to speak.

Even incomplete work looks kinda cool, cause the guidelines give the artwork that 'sketchy' look, something which no-longer exists in the clinical world of digital illustration.

I often use my laptop, just to view reference pictures for my work that I take with my camera, rather than resorting to Photoshop all the time:



What's even better, is that my 6-year old son loves watching me, and is now developing a keen interest in drawing too.

Length? - Ooh, roughly a couple of millimetres wider than an A2 sheet of paper..
(danniekavanagh did nothing constructive on, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 12:10, 32 replies)

I madethe clock
in this picture with some old russian display tubes.

The living room phone is non to modern either. I like the way it rings and I love the dialing mechanisim, made frome brass and hugely over engineered. It will last 4eva.



Edit: Thanks for the nice words.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Thu 4 Nov 2010, 13:14, 12 replies)

I still have my original wife
Some of my friends have traded in theirs for flashier, more expensive models, but at the end of the day, I like what I have. Some of the newer ones come in a variety of colors, have higher suction, can be smaller, but I'm not sure if the advances are worth the cost.

Some are sold as new, and it's only later when one finds out a previous owner has made them undrivable. Plus, the new ones are DAMNED expensive and are prone to being stolen.

You can take a cheap car and put alloy rims, a new paint job, tinted windows and a nice sound system in it, but it still is a cheap car.

Compare that with, say, a 1967 Corvette Stingray. Sure, it's getting on in years, and there may be some cosmetic irregularities, it may not have all the new-fangled add ons, but the thrill you still get when you drive it just can't be beat, especially since you know its moves like the back of your hand.

The classics cannot be improved upon.

No, I will stick with what I have. I got her for a reason and to be honest, after the breaking-in period, I really like the comfort of the ride and am looking forward to a looonnnggg road trip.
( BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:10, 12 replies)

I'm still using a Hawking-Heisenberg drive.
It never breaks, and even though it's a bit less accurate than an iTravel, so what? It's not like I'm going to end up before time travel was invented and out of fuel.

EDIT: Oh dear.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:33, 3 replies)

I still use toilet paper. My kids bought me a toilet brush for my birthday, but it made my arse so sore I had to stop using it.
(A Blair, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:42, 4 replies)

On a serious note.
I would like to offer my sympathies to all American b3tards on this the anniversary of one of the darkest hours in your countries history.
(Tugnut Ex of this parish, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 10:08, 8 replies)

not so much technology but surely a redundant workplace practice
i hate appraisals - i dont see the point, if you fuck up your manager should mention it then, not 6 months later, if you do well, a simple 'well done' and the odd drink never goes amiss. if you're really good you get a raise. if you're shite you get the boot. simple as.

I work in a creative agency, I've just been emailed and asked to offer my thoughts on a member of staff, everybody likes her, she's great at her job and one of the nicest people in the company, she's also pretty hot. I've changed the names but heres what i responded with...

re: Sue's appraisal
-------------------------------


Hi Steve

Thanks for the opportunity to offer some feed back on Sue. I've been meaning to have a chat for a while but inevitably workload gets in the way. Sue, or 'Super Sue' as i like to call her, is a likeable and affable person and is consistently professional in the execution of both her client liaison and account management duties. I think she does some great work and is clearly a wonderful ambassador for the agency.

However there are some points I would like to raise in regard to Sue's dealings with the studio teams. Naturally I appreciate it is the role of an account manager to guide work through the creative studio as expediently as possible but to be fair there are some concerns over of Sue's methods. Whilst I accept that some jocular banter and a 'carry on regardless' approach will always be part of agency culture, I find Sues's constant use of sexual innuendo, profanity and obscure scatalogical references a real drain on studio morale, there are times when her comments would quite frankly make a docker blush. Furthermore Sues's increasing use of verbal and physical aggression has become a deeply contentious issue. Andy has been forced to undertake martial arts training, both to the detriment of his Saxophone lessons and increasingly feeble mental state. Brian, although capable and robust, is also a complex and vulnerable individual, it is often very difficult to console him. Once the hyperventilating starts he is quite a large man to restrain. It is also deeply disturbing for the team to witness a man of Phil's standing lie broken and weeping uncontrollably after yet another heated and strenuous exchange with Sue over the vagaries of frozen ready meals.

Which brings us to the issue of Sue's understanding of personal space, for my own part I really feel the sexual touching has to stop. Similarly whilst Sue is clearly a confident and attractive young woman, her tactic of regularly exposing herself to Dave in order to procure studio time is at best unfair to the less well endowed members of the account team and at worst a potentially volatile provocation for Rob given the various restraining orders and bail conditions currently imposed upon him.

I will also be returning to you an envelope left on my desk which I believe to be from Sue regarding her forthcoming appraisal. Although I like to regard myself as a broadminded individual I found the note (apparently written in lipstick) highly inappropriate, morally offensive and of a deeply personal nature. I am also unclear as to whether the activities proposed are a) physically possible and b) legal outside of Brazil. Similarly i cannot accept the £20 enclosed, nor for that matter the undergarments which are clearly too small for me and probably more appropriate as women's attire. It is also my personal opinion that they had not been laundered.

I do hope this helps

Spimf
( spimf ™ is whoever you want him to be, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 12:40, 13 replies)

Way back in the 90s...
I was working for a software developer who was doing some stuff on peer-to-peer downloads.

Now, back in the day, you could really only do the bog-standard server to client download: Server has the file, you connect to server, download file. Done.

What we were working on was a way to spread the load on the server - bandwidth was expensive those days. So we needed some way of making the client machines do some of the work for us. Bitorrent was yet to arrive, and the idea of having clients downloading separate bits of the file from each other wasn't around either.

Then, one day, I read an article about insect colonies, and how individual critters could spread chemical messages along to each other to reach the main colony quickly - kind of playing pass-the-parcel with pheromones. INSPIRATION!

We knocked out a protocol which essentially re-directed download requests from the server to the clients - one or two clients would download from the server whilst the other clients would be downloading off them - pass-the-parcel! Huzzah!

I named the protocol "ParcelPass". Not particularly flashy, but it worked. Our little protocol netted us a nice little sum and off it went into the interwebs to help corporations get files to people who needed them. All was good.

Then, 6 years later, Bitorrent came onto the scene and had a much better protocol, forcing ParcelPass onto the scrap heap. I was quite upset at first, but then I realised that all my work on ParcelPass was simply Re-done Ant Technology.

*runs*
(DarkLite swallowed my entire undercarriage, Sun 7 Nov 2010, 1:58, 7 replies)

Thank God for books
Books are great. I like some parts of the e-reader concept like the abilty to store a few books for a holiday so saving space, but everything else about it is negative I reckon.

I love the tactile involvement of a book - the feel, the smell, the weight of it. I love the fact that I can read one on the train platform and not worry about some chav snatching it out of my hands. I like the way I can drop it on the floor and not break electronic internals or LCD screens. I like the fact that leaving it on the train by accident will not bankrupt my wallet and might just make someone else happy. I like the way I can lay one aside on a sandy beach and not worry about fucking it up. I like having one to hand when I am in bed and spot another Spidersaurus Rex on the wall...is there an app for squishing insects with an Ipad? I like the ability to pick a book up at short notice - Next time my connecting flight is delayed and I find myself with 7 hours to wait in Luton airport (dear God, that was grim) I want the comfort of being able to browse WHSmith for an hour, choose a book and read it in a quiet corner without worrying about the bloody battery going flat. I like having piles of books in the house - they look nice and are a good conversation starter.
No reader gadget will replace any of that.
(dave likes cheese, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 17:54, 6 replies)

My first push-bike
I bought with my own money was a Raleigh Team out of my mum's catalogue as a student back in 1990. For an extra tenner, I could've got the Raleigh Banana, but it was exactly the same bike except for the decals. I put some serious mileage on that. Never anything long distance that was more than a day out, but still added up to many 1000s of miles. A common trip was the 15 miles or so to The Hare & Hounds pub in Leven in the evening. A couple of mates bought mountain bikes (which were still quite a novelty) about the same time and the racer vs mountain bike arguments were commonplace.

In 1998, when the only original parts were the frame, saddle and handlebars, I was cycling into town when some dozy bint in a Micra pulled out on me and I went clean over her bonnet. My frame actually creased with the force and that was that. It was only fit for the bin. Still, it left a nasty crease in the side of her car and a massive yet satisfying score across the bonnet. Not just a scratch either, a sizeable groove that would need filling.

I was gutted and I was nearly in tears when I got home. I loved that bike. After a couple of weeks of mourning, I consigned the bike to a skip.

About 6 years later, I came across this webpage.
www.simonmason.karoo.net/page470.htm

It can't be. Surely. The front forks were pushed back like mine were. Had someone dug it out of the skip, tarted it up and ridden about on it before dumping it on the mud? I emailed the guy. Alas, it wasn't the same bike. I had pink paint splashed under mine after riding through a spillage on the road. Also the frame wasn't big enough. Mine was a whopping 25 inches. Ah well.

A few months later, he emailed me back and asked me if I wanted it as he had bought a better bike. I jumped at the chance and he dropped it off. He didn't want anything for it, but I traded it for a crate of his favourite ale. I was overjoyed.

It needed a bit of work, but not much. I replaced the 10-speed gear cassette with a 12-speed, replaced the various cables and brake blocks and the gear shifters to indexed ones that click into place and it was as near as damnit to my old bike.

I was positively orgasmic. I took it for a spin around the block with a big stupid grin on my face. I had resigned to buying a mountain bike a few years previously, but this went like a rat up a drainpipe and could stop on a sixpence. I did forget how narrow the saddle was and the next day it felt like I'd been kicked up the arse to death.

My son's mates think it's fabulous but that's probably because such road bikes are rare nowadays and they all seem to be in excess of £500 in the shops. I've put many miles on it since, and unless some dozy cow in a Micra doesn't look where she's going, I intend to keep it on the road for many years to come.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 12:22, 18 replies)

This..


I use this bad boy most days. It's a 1949 2-5/8" RB8 Acme Gridley Automatic multispindle.

My company has about 30 of them.

Churn out fittings for the oil and gas industry at about 1 a second, far faster than any modern CNC could do. Makes a massive racket, is scary as fuck, and when you look through that window it looks like the internals of a terminator.

Completely mechanical.

I think it runs on steam.
(inflateable, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 18:14, 18 replies)

Shaving
Until recently, in my opinion, the Gilette Mach 3 was the best shaving method by a country mile. The two-blade Gilette Sensor isn't quite enough and the Wilkinson Quattro is just too big. The 5-blade Fusion thing is so wide it just drags.

Complaining about the price of them, my mate got a Gilette Safety razor, the chrome things that you fit a razor blade into the top and screw it into place. He demonstrated it when I met him at his house before going out on the lash. It seemed quite cool, but I wanted something more bad-ass.

So I bought a pair of cut-throat razors and strop off eBay. They needed honing a bit and not having a proper whetstone, I used a kitchen knife steel to sharpen the edge, and then sat at my desk and stropped a keen edge to the blade for a good half hour making me look a bit of a serial killer, as my wife pointed out.

I prepared my face with hot flannels, soap and so on and then went to make the first pass whereby I jabbed myself in the cheek with the edge of the blade. 10 minutes later, standing in a bathroom that now resembled a slaughterhouse I finally stopped the bleeding and had another go.

It was ace, and apart from the leading edge of my chin it was pretty simple. Apart from slicing my face open, I only nicked myself twice. It takes maybe 2 or 3 shaves practice before you can avoid drawing blood. However, Mrs Sandettie can't watch and refuses to be in the room at the same time.

Oh, I will add that the only way I'd get a closer shave would be to do it from the inside.

Obligatory length joke: About 4 inches, surgically sharp like a brand-new scalpel and held inches away from your eye obscured from view behind your hand.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 5 Nov 2010, 16:25, 21 replies)

I recently threw away my collection of printed pronography
I gathered all my mags up and chucked them in a bin bag and dumped it in my neighbours bin. As I did so I felt a tear course down my cheek. There was no point of leaving the collection in the woods for kids to find, cherish and masturbate furiously to. Bloody new fangled internet ruining the traditions of the past.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 16:37, 7 replies)

Damn it feels good to be a DOS geek...
I was tasked with copying a folder and its contents to another location and renaming everything from 50MMGD to 100MMGD (we were using it as the starting point for a new project). My boss smirked and said, "That ought to keep you busy for a few hours."

"Oh really?" I opened a DOS shell and typed in "ren 50*.* 100*.*" and sat back for a moment as it scrolled, then said "Okay, what next?"

It took him a moment to get his jaw off the floor.
( Wanderer, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 16:26, 21 replies)

Redundant technology?
My car comes with orange lights on the corners which I use to 'indicate' to other road users my intentions of turning.
( snee held his breath since, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 13:54, 9 replies)

Books, but not a rant about ipads
I have a book on my shelf at home. It's green, about a thousand pages long, and quite old. It's called "The Handy Boys Book", and was printed in 1912. It contains hundreds of articles on various things of interest to Edwardian boys, including constructing balsa wood submarines, carpentry, making electric motors, flying kites, looking after pets and collecting moths. It has delightfully anachronistic warnings in it (example: "Do not spill nitric acid on your skin, as it tends to leave a nasty burn.") It smells of Old Book and all the measurements in it are not just non-metric, they are proudly Imperial.

Everything it talks about is solidly old school: tangible, existant, hand-made, cast iron, analogue technology. With the knowledge contained in this book one could have a decent stab at reconstructing society after the zombie apocalypse. Grab a Mrs. Beeton and you'd be set for tasty food and well-pressed sheets too.

The best bit wasn't written by some mustachioed old ex-Army major a hundred years go, though, but by a series of authors in pen: the flysheet has my name, my father's name, his father's name, my great grandfather's name and my great-great grandfather's name, together with the dates (usually 25th December) when the book was handed over from one Senior Scrumper to the next Junior in line.

It is this book more than anything else* which has made me realize I want to acquiesce to my wife's desire for kids.



*well, that, and the fact that I really hate condoms...
( Scrumper, Mon 8 Nov 2010, 19:12, 11 replies)

Toilet paper
I still haven't figured out how to use the three seashells :(
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 13:43, 6 replies)

Earlier today
I went round all my mates' houses and told them what I've been up to. Twitter can kiss my arse.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 10 Nov 2010, 17:26, Reply)

In 2005, I went back to college.
I enrolled at my former 6th Form college to do a couple of A levels. I would be in classes with kids half my age and I wondered how I might be received. Fortunately I wasn't shunned as some weird outsider that would be on the watchlist of social services and pretty much got on with everybody.

The college broke up for Xmas and on my return in the new year, a good many of my classmates brandished iPods. I however didn't as I'm not keen on listening to music through earphones. In maths, the teacher woud allow us to listen to music whilst working through an exercise book and I was pretty much the only one in the class that didn't have an iPod. This would not do.

The next lesson, we were working through a trigonometry exercise and people were plugging in their iPods so I fished out of my bag my answer to this ubiquitous over-hyped music device. A 20 year old Aiwa personal stereo, complete with battery cover held in place with red electricians tape. It drew considerable attention. Do kids nowadays have no knowledge of older technology? When I was their age, I knew what a Dansette record player was and that it played 78s, and TVs that could be fixed by your dad belting the side of it with his shoe and I could even have recognised a gramophone.

But no, this was like some weird alien device that they couldn't even comprehend. It played a format that they had no memories of and was obsolete before they even started nursery school. Surely their parents must own similar stuff. This was proved when one of them declared that their dad had something in the loft that played cassettes.

To complete the image, I dug out "Now That's What I call Music 10". The problem was that it needed rewinding and notwithstanding the technical wizardry of Aiwa's R&D department, my player had no rewind function as it used up batteries on a scale not seen since Big Trak. Rewinding the tape involved slotting the cassette spool onto a Bic biro and spinning it around and around and this actually drew gasps as if I had just levitated out of the window.

If only I still had the original headphones which were those strip of spring-steel affairs with a sponge headphone pad at each end; none of these uncomfortable ear-plug things for me.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 8 Nov 2010, 10:14, 9 replies)

David and the insects.
Not entirely sure if this counts as being on-topic or not, but any excuse to tell one of my favourite stories from my childhood and all that.

~~~~A few wavy lines ~~~

It was about eight years ago now that I first met my cousin, who we shall refer to as David, for that was his name. My mum’s sister lives in Spain, thus we rarely get to see her, but we as a family needed a holiday and being a tad low on funds had to go and stay with her. I had been warned beforehand by my mother that David had severe learning and communication difficulties and that he might be difficult to understand at times – being a young lad myself I hadn’t had much experience with things like this. Needless to say, my 11 year old mind ran wild with images of a seven-limbed gargantuan, perhaps with an extra eye or head.

Upon our meeting I was pleasantly/disappointingly surprised. He only had four limbs, two eyes and one head. It also became apparent to me that David was a very smart guy, and was quite capable of stringing a sentence together. In fact the only noticeable thing regarding his disabilities was his inability to grasp correct grammar when either speaking or writing (irregular verbs especially were a problem and anything that had the audacity to be in the past-tense was awarded the suffix ‘ed’ for example ‘I was’ became ‘I wased’, ‘I had’ became ‘I haded’ etc. – you get the idea). Other than that though he appeared to be normal.

(For those qotw purists out there, this is the bit involving technology). I was getting along with my new-found cousin quite well, but things really moved along when he invited me to his bedroom (settle down at the back there!). Turns out this guy LOVED insects and all that goes with them – praying mantis bed sheets, stick insect curtains, stag beetle lampshade, every toy going that looked remotely bug-like. The crowning joy of this collection, however, was an enormous ant farm that took up almost an entire wall of his bedroom and, this being a time when ant farms were cool (especially to ten year old boys), what an ant farm it was – glass walls, blue neon lights for when it gets dark, several other gadgets and gizmos designed to make watching the little guys all the more enjoyable. It was an absolute masterpiece (quite technological – see, its slightly on topic) of retro equipment.

We went back the following year, all was well, Mum and Aunty were twittering away as Mums and Auntys tend to do. I overheard that in the winter David had had what was described as an ‘episode’ resulting in the destruction of his beloved farm, and that the ants had run riot in the house for a few days before they could get an exterminator in to deal with them. I was slightly gutted for the loss of that late 90’s must have piece of kit. My guttedness was premature, however, as dearest Aunt went on to explain that David had worked hard and built a new farm - a much smaller one - but a farm nonetheless. As is only natural I went to investigate, peering into his room I saw him pining over a tiny little Perspex box containing about 17 ants, with a blue torch underneath to replicate that neon effect. I could see that he was over the moon with his creation, so I thought I’d play along for a bit. I’ll never forget his response when I asked what it was – he smiled warmly and said "It’s my re-doned ant technology".

Do you know what? I apologise for neither length nor lack of funnies. *Re-lurks*
(2_Killer_Mockingbirds Listened to all the same songs on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 21:39, 4 replies)

I am so amazingly primitive
that I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 23:24, 4 replies)

A book, this time
"Diesel Traction - A Manual for Enginemen", found in a workshop my dad was clearing out some time in the late 1970s. On the inside cover is a date stamp that reads "British Railways / Loco Shed Master / 16 APR 1963", and on the flyleaf is my name and where we lived, in my dad's handwriting. It too smells of Old Book, and old machinery. The target audience was engine drivers and crew of steam trains, making the transition to diesel-mechanical, diesel-hydraulic and diesel-electric locomotives. I remember reading it one rather wet weekend when I was a wee proto-geek aged about six or seven (so round about when he gave me it, I suppose), when one of the diagrams - as I recall, of an epicyclic gearbox - just kind of clicked into place. I could see *exactly* how the brake bands stopped the outer ring from turning, how the sun gear would drive the planet gears around the inside and push the planet carrier, and how releasing the brake band and pulling the next one on would change you up to second... and then up to third... and then pop that clutch in and it locks solid, that's you in straight through top - and I knew at that moment not just how a Wilson epicyclic gearbox worked, but how the *whole world* worked.

I just had to find the right book with the diagrams, and I could figure out how to do *anything*.

Almost nothing comes with proper diagrams any more. I've always known how to fix train gearboxes, though.
(edit - at Scrumper's suggestion, a scan of the Deltic engine diagrams. Click for big versions.)

(gordonjcp, Mon 8 Nov 2010, 20:29, 6 replies)

Bastards.
Until recently I rode an ancient Yamaha XJ550.

Utterly bulletproof, willing to start and run in all weathers, held onto the road like it was glued there and had more power at the top end than I was willing to use. The low tech, non vented disk brakes meant stopping in the wet was was scary as hell, but hey you can't have everything.

It was a bike that looked like a bike, no poncy chrome or dayglo plastic with go faster stripes. Even just sat there it said "Hey, I'm an awesome fucking motorcycle, get your leathers and lets go for a burn!" People would stop beside me at traffic lights and say ask me what the hell I was riding. Some would shake their heads in disbelief, others would ask if I was willing to sell it.

It's made out of that old fashioned material "metal", even better it's almost entirely steel, heavy, black, and subject only to the ravages of rust. Something which can be remedied by keeping the thing filthy and oily like a proper motorbike.

Unfortunately, some little ben sherman clad, acne ridden, ear studded, addiddas trainer wearing, blood type O, chavscum fuckpig with no sense of morals or decency broke into my garage and stole my bike.

Stole it, rode it too fast, lost control and went face first into the windscreen of a Nissan micra coming in the other direction.
Worse, the fucker had also spent hours using a brick to bash his way through the laminated security glass in the back porch to steal my crash helmet otherwise this would be a tale of Honda Accord level justice.
As it is he managed to escape from the police. On foot, bleeding heavily, missing a shoe, probably concussed, even then the met's finest couldn't catch up with him.

So what I have in the garage now is the remains of my proud bike, front wheel destroyed, forks bent in under the engine, all indicators missing, petrol tank mashed and dented.

Bloody but unbowed, it still starts and runs.
I can rebuild it, and someday soon I will ride again.
( DukeEuphoria Comes highly reccomended, Mon 8 Nov 2010, 15:24, 21 replies)

My dad Won't let me get a Spinning Jenny
What a Luddite
(FondaAccord, Sat 6 Nov 2010, 15:16, 1 reply)

I sometimes use my right hand
Even though I have a girl to play with
(Dwarfsmuggler Has hogtied Snow White, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 15:01, Reply)

I still twat chicks with my club
job done, bosh. None of that trendy rohypnol nonsense needed here ta.
( broadsword now that's fresh, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:44, 2 replies)

Letters
There can be nothing that fits the description of "redundant technology" than the good, old-fashioned letter.

My best friend growing up was Alan. Same age as me, we'd met at school at became mates pretty quickly. This was in the early 90s. Although we were learning in IT about a "network of computers worldwide" and the prospect of "electronic mail", we were still a few years away from seeing the explosion of web addresses, emails and internet stuff in general and as such the main form of long distance communication was by phone or letter.

Alan had a cousin who, a couple of years older than us, had just completed his A Levels. For reasons that are beyond me now, Alan and his cousin used to exchange letters every few weeks in a matter that would befit penpals.

One day, Alan received a letter full of normal witterings, but signed off in a way that he had never seen before, and couldn't understand what the strange sentence meant.

"Mum..." he asked as he approached his very conservative mother, reading aloud from the bottom of the letter, "what does 'See you NT' mean?"

It was only speaking it aloud, coupled with the jaw-dropping horror displayed by his mum, that he realised he had been stitched up by his cousin.
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Thu 4 Nov 2010, 14:17, 1 reply)

Buckets Of Instant Sunshine
...otherwise known as nuclear weapons. I mean, wtf?

I can't be the only person here to think that if a right wing goverment (sorry, even more right wing) got into power in Israel and decided to nuke Iran that the west would make nothing more than tutting noises.

By putting off the decision on renewal of Trident, David Cameron has shown the sum total of his moral backbone to be - as many will have suspected - zero. If he wanted to be a "world statesman" he'd have taken the initiative and told Obama, Medvedev and even the poison dwarf (Sarkozy) that UK was being a world leader and going for a phased withdrawl of all nuclear weapons and missile boats (the SSBNs that carry them). Instead, by putting the decision off, he makes himself a laughing stock.

As for the countries most likely to fling nukes at each other (most likely in this context being Pakistan, India and China alongside the aforementioned Israel): there's a good economic as well as geopolitical case for their not doing so.

India and Pakistan come to blows regularly over Jammu and Kashmir and thus far - with years of conventional weapons - no-one's been dumb enough to escalate because, as with the point of deterrence, mutually assured destruction is in place.

China, the busy beast to the north, might yet decide to break down and nuke someone, but who? Nuking the Americans is a ridiculous concept - the majority of Chinese gilts are held in the US. Nuking India? Why would they?

To bring this home to us - the replacements for Trident are (allegedly) going to cost £20billion. There's a lot more things that the UK needs that the £20billion could be spent on.
(Wibblist Last said "Wibble" on, Thu 4 Nov 2010, 13:23, 4 replies)

Vampires!
I'm so out of touch, my vampires are intimidating, day fearing, blood drinking scourges of the night. Not some sparkly pretty boys who are afraid to get laid.
(Mong goose, Tue 9 Nov 2010, 18:00, 3 replies)