Catmachine

A lot of people complain about customer service. The general consensus is that it's gone to the dogs. As I've pointed out before, more often than not these days consumers are treated as suspects rather than customers. A terrible state of affairs of course, but what's even more terrible is when customer service goes the other way and becomes over attentive and solicitous. It's not just me - I've spoken to friends about this and they all feel the same. It's at its worst when you get into a routine - for example if you call at a particular shop/cafe/stall for your lunchtime roll. After a surprisingly short amount of time the owner recognises you and then starts anticipating you. That's what I hate, being anticipated, with all the underlying implications that I'm being dull and predictable. Unfortunately when they say "Ah, cheese salad roll again today sir?" I haven't yet plucked up the courage to say "No, I thought today I'd go for a...

It has been suggested by some people that occasionally my blog entries here are perhaps a little too angry. And therefore might come across as rude. Sorry! That was never the intention – firstly they're always a bit tongue in cheek. And secondly – this is the internet. Next to what often seems to pass for normal internet behaviour, my blogs are a model of restraint! You'd think that online where people are communicating anonymously with people they don't know in forums, chat rooms, email groups, Second Life etc etc etc… people would be on their best behaviour. After all, in real life you don't walk into a room full of people you don't know and start insulting them. However, in reality the anonymity offered by the online world seems to make many people lose all their inhibitions and fly off the handle at the drop of a hat over the tiniest things. For an example of this in action just go and have a look at any number of forums dedicated to popular TV shows. They'r...

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while; its been a busy time. Anyway, before I come back with a fresh entry here is a list of people who should be shot. Apologies for the swearing. It was worse on the original version of this I posted elsewhere. People who talk about " a month's deposit " in reference to the deposit they pay on rented accommodation. The deposit is paid against any damage to the material of the flat. It has nothing to do with time! Most of the time it is around the same amount as a month's rent, true. But that's all. Shopkeepers who don't offer you a plastic bag until asked and then with extremely bad grace give you a wisp of translucent plastic that evaporates within fifteen seconds spilling your shopping over the pavement. Skinflints (yes, I am fully aware that we should all reuse plastic bags in the interests of being green). People who, whilst doing their shopping in the supermarket, start eating the food before having passed thr...

I realise that I'm just being annoyed at nothing again, but this particular nothing has been bothering me for years, ever since I first started working in an office environment way back in 1989. I usually spot instances of it whilst on my way somewhere - toilet, canteen, refectory, library - it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that I'm in transit. And I will spot them - two people who until relatively recently were obviously also in transit - sometimes one of them might be halfway through a door, another might be carrying a cup of coffee. But their transit has been interrupted by the fact that they've found something to talk about. Now of course there's nothing wrong with this so far. Seeing someone whilst on your way somewhere might remind you of something you had to say to them; instead of putting it off and possibly forgetting, it makes sense to pause in your travels and get it off your chest. The annoying thing starts when I'm on my way back fro...

Spam email seems to be getting worse on an almost daily basis. I do wonder sometimes why they bother - the techniques they use are so basic and flawed that surely only those with a complete brain-bypass would ever be taken in? That's the problem though -it costs nothing to send spam so it's worth sending out even if only one in a hundred thousand are suckered - that's 25 sales if you send out 2.5 million emails (a not uncommon figure). The only way to stop this as far as I can see would be charging for mass emails - I'm not sure how that would work exactly, but it would certainly cause some spammers pause for thought - their number one reason for doing it would have been taken away. What I don't get though is the lengths they go to get around people's spam filters by mis-spelling the keywords or using similar tricks. Surely if you set up a spam filter to discard all emails which mention Viagra it's because you are not interested in purchasing Viagra? So if a...

In a bid to improve their service, my local medical practice has taken to have a walk-in surgery running alongside the regular appointments system. And since they did so, I've noticed that when I arrive for my appointments (which I continue to make - I like the security a precise time and place gives me) it can take anything from fifteen minutes until a full hour after my actual appointment time before I'm seen - unlike before when I was seen on time or as near as damnit. Obviously this new system is not a good idea then... Still it's not all bad though. There's a TV in there which meant that a couple of visits ago I was able to watch a whole episode of "Murder She Wrote" whilst waiting - not normally something I'd want to do, I'll admit, but it did have Andrew "Garak" Robinson in it, so was entertaining at least. ( Why does my head look so big in this picture? ) However, this morning it was just tuned to the Jeremy Kyle show which I'd ne...

I have a bad cough. And it occurs to me... If, as they claim, the Non-drowsy versions of cough syrups work just as well as the Original versions (i.e. the drowsy versions) then why don't they stop making the Original ? I reckon it's because the Non-drowsy version actually is a bit crap in comparison.

Why have 12 people looked at my blog today? I haven't written anything in it since August... This is not a real blog entry, written for the sake of writing a blog. It's mere displacement activity and what's more, it's displacement activity once removed from whatever it is I should be doing in the first place. You see I should be doing some freelance work - even though I've just finished one client's work there's another that has been hanging around since January like a bad smell in a pub toilet, plus there are some more snapping at my heels. At some point when I actually get some time to properly relax and do nothing (as opposed to doing nothing whilst feeling guilty because I should be doing something) I'll put together some strict terms and conditions and send them out to everyone. Plus I'll have the time to update my own website instead of other people's! But the freelance work isn't what I'm avoiding by writing this. In order to avo...

For some reason - probably being busy or at least as busy as you can be when actually on holiday - I didn't get the time to complete this aide memoire whilst still in Edinburgh. So I'd better do it now before memories fade but the scars still linger... Saturday 19 August I think this is where I left you. Made my way over to the Gilded Balloon to see Hils Barker - a show I had not only done the poster for but also designed some fake chicklit covers for: Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Friendly, chatty standup with just the right level (for me) of annoyance with the world and some amusing musical sequences too. I then made my way over to the Pleasance Courtyard and saw Star Trip - a comedy-mime-music-dance science fiction show.Very odd. The second half of it was pretty good though. Afterwards I suddenly discovered that we would be doing a Gonzo show after all... Sunday 20 August Up latish and into town as per. J and I met up with M and made our way over to the Baby Bel...

And so on and so forth... Got back into town the following day just before J's show. Hung around the courtyard for a while then had a drink with J,P,D and D's brother & friend before making my way across to the Smirnoff Underbelly to see Gary le Strange: Beef Scarecrow . Another great show. Very different from the previous ones and somewhat disturbing. In a good way. Then it was off to Brookes for the rest of the evening. So - so far two days and two shows. Not a good rate as I'm only here for a very few days. I'll have to do something about that today.

Another in the occasional series of not-so-much-a-blog-as-an-aide-memoire-to-prevent-myself-forgetting my holidays... After a flight which involved a lot less hassle with the security than I had imagined (I actually turned up to early to check in) I arrived in Edinburgh. It was raining. I walked from the bus stop to the Pleasance Courtyard which didn't seem to have changed - odd to think that it doesn't actually exist as such outside August. Met up with J, D and P, hung around for a while and then went to see their show ( Bad Play: Second Coming ). Which was excellent. Would definitely like to see it again and not just because it's family. After that it was off to Dolphinton for a relatively early night and ten hour's sleep, which was greatly appreciated as I was a little the worse for wear after the apparent "excesses" in Brighton the night before.

Once again I find I've disappointed myself by not writing anything here for simply ages. And once again I must insist that it's not a case of writer's block – I haven't even got far enough to discover whether I'm suffering from that particular ailment. No, the problem is that I'm still under the thrall of a spell of extreme busyness (as opposed to business). Luckily things now seem to be easing off – just ever so slightly. Nevertheless, this has been one of my busiest periods ever, especially regarding the freelance workload. I had – well actually still have – a couple of largish projects on the go which were taking up most of the time I normally allocate to this sort of stuff. And then, all of a sudden, after a silence of over two years, old clients came crawling out of the woodwork en masse like an infestation of termites demanding further work and updates to projects I'd created for them in the past. So what brought that on? The odd thing about this is ...

After a couple of weeks complaining about other things I am returning to the subject of two earlier blog entries as I just can't leave it alone. And of course because there is still more to say. Yes, I'm going back to talking about travelling on the railways. So far the majority of the negative things I've been saying about train travel have been to do with fellow passengers. This isn't surprising, as Other People are generally responsible for 95 per cent of trouble, irritation and annoyance in the world. However the third and final whine in the railway trilogy concerns the attitude of the railway people themselves. A while back the railways - who were probably all one nation under the flag of British Rail at the time - stopped calling their users "passengers" and started calling them "customers". I seem to recall something of an outcry at the time, complaints about over commercialisation and the inappropriate application of a business model to a pu...

Today is the anniversary of me being single. Being on my own in this way is really starting to have a deleterious effect on my quality of life, and I'm not just talking about gloomy solitude or lust frustration. I feel that in order to meet someone I have to look my best, which means that I have to lose weight, which means that I have to exercise and diet. Exercise is never any fun (no matter what the steroid-freak body nazis at the gym might say) and even though I'm no foodie, a strict diet can be annoying and unpleasant. But I persevere in the hope that - in the face of all the evidence - it might make a difference. But no matter how much I try and make myself more attractive, the problem remains that I'm not meeting enough eligible women for there to be a chance of it having an effect. The people I'm surrounded by - be they friends or work colleagues - are all firmly in long-term relationships Probably hanging on for dear life if they've spotted what it's lik...

This still isn't very good. It seems almost impossible to get me to write this thing on a daily basis. I've already offered up my excuses; despite this I am rather disappointed in myself. Its almost as if writing on a weekly basis is my limit. The easiest thing for me to talk about would be the weather were I to conform to the British stereotype. So I won't do that. However, I will use it as a jumping off point. It's been exceptionally hot of late, and whilst I'm more than happy with the long days and the amount of light (which amongst other things prevents SAD), the temperature makes me want to hide in a cave. How lucky am I then to work in an office with brand-new, kick-arse reinforced steel air conditioners. Very lucky, that's how lucky. Except... since moving into these offices a couple of months ago I've had more colds (or respiratory disorders as I call them when I want to sound high falutin') than I have in the past couple of years . I'm sure ...

Well this isn't very good is it? Only a few days ago I was going on about how I'd be trying to write at least 500 words a day and then I write nothing for five days. In my defence I would just like to mention that it's not as if I sat down at the computer to blog and then discovered that I had writer's block. It's more that I've been busy. Lame excuse perhaps, but true nonetheless. Last night, a work night, I got home and did nearly four hours of freelance work. That's a whole 'nother half day. Still, enough of that. Despite the lack of action, I did actually have a rough idea of what I was going to write about. It all came about when I was reading an online advert seeking to fill a position. One particular phrase stuck in my mind. No Time Wasters This strikes me as a very odd thing to say. As if someone reading the advertisement is going to say to themselves, " Ah. I was going to apply for this post in order to waste their time and mine, but I see...

I'm attempting to use this blogging tool as a way to practice writing. This is in the hope that if I flex my brain's creative node often enough, I'll be able to start (and in one or two rare cases finish ) some of the short stories that are lurking in my head. I have already been blogging approximately 500 words weekly on Myspace (the posts from which I'm going to start sharing here from now on) but I am beginning to suspect that it's not nearly enough. I'm going to aim for approximately 500 words a day on here. Wish me luck. So here I am wittering away about nothing in particular. I doubt that anyone is going to read it. Which is lucky really - reading this kind of thing is liable to be the literary equivalent of watching a very unhealthy flabby person's first visit to the gym in years. Which is something else I should really be doing. If only there was some kind of shortcut to all this - if I could get back the physical body I had fifteen years ago I pro...

In theory I can drive as I passed my test; however I have never owned a car. As a result it's around thirteen years since I last found myself behind the wheel of a large automobile. I've probably forgotten how to do it. The thing is there's no space for a car where I live at the moment and the advantages of sticking to public transport or cycling around far outweigh the disadvantages. Not that you'd think that from the way I whinge on and on about it. But the important thing to take on board is that there's nothing wrong with cycling per se or travelling by train per se . The problem is that you have to engage in these activities alongside members of what sometimes seems to be the planet's dominant species, Homo Stultus ("Stupid Man"). Queuing to buy a ticket behind a member of this species can drive you to premature distraction. However, the problems don't cease once you've bought your ticket. Firstly, Homo Stultus always has a problem with ...

This is one of the new ticket machines on Brighton station. Not bad really. A nice touch screen, which means that there are less moving parts to break - and that the interface can easily be updated by installing new software. It takes credit cards, which means that, what with the new chip-and-pin system, buying a ticket should be quick, easy and painless. Its cousin - not pictured - takes coins and notes as well as cards, so there really is no excuse for not being able to buy your ticket now. Finally, something that will free us forever from Ticket Hall Hell - where belligerent morons use the fact that they're buying a ticket from an unfortunate cashier to make the rest of us wait in a frustrating, interminable purgatory. You know the types. Firstly, the kind of person who doesn't know where they're going, when they're travelling or what a train is until they arrive at the ticket window. They then proceed to use the hapless ticket clerk as a sounding board about what ro...

The world of advertising is an odd one. However it seems that when you can advertise yourself though your own media then even the normal rules don't apply and it all starts getting surreal. I started thinking about this the other day when I saw this self-promotion on the back of a bus: Yes, I know it's a quote from Little Britain , but I don't understand the relevance to the Park & Ride scheme. Am I being obtuse or does it just make no sense? Did the advertising "creatives" get stoned and watch a L ittle Britain DVD? I suppose we're just lucky that we didn't end up with: "Park and Ride... The only gay in the village" It gets weirder when you get on the bus though - that's when you come across the posters inside. Originally they used stock photography of middle aged men and women photoshopped into a bus driver's uniform. The same bus driver's uniform. Which was boring and not particularly well done, but not really that odd. Howev...