Dramatic Chipmunk
Best five second video on the internet
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1764124

I dunno, but it makes me laugh.

As far as I can tell if I want to do this then I get to PAY around $1 to send a PICTURE of some tat and a message to someone else. Eh? I can see how it’s a nice bit of fun (or maybe a nice thought) but to actually pay them for this service is quite evidently a rip-off, it’s not like you get to use the gift. I do see that there’s could be deemed a certain amount of exclusivity what with these ‘gifts’ being limited edition and time limited too but even so I really don’t see the point.

Money for old rope, I’m in the wrong game, when I were a lad, mumble mumble.

DO NOT USE ABBEY BUSINESS BANKING SERVICES

it’s like a death by paper-cuts; many small and irritating things will start to happen, bleeding you dry.

It’s a half-assed implementation of a business banking service; quite obviously a trial that has gone wrong. Their business banking laughably referred to as ‘online banking’ is a good example of this. It WILL go down regularly and you WILL be unable to do online transactions. You will also get fobbed off with lame ‘technical’ reasons for this happening that put the blame back onto you and your ‘firewall’ which after application of even rudimentary networking theory turns out to be utter bollocks.

One day we had enough and went to the HSBC in the village and asked them to become our bank. “No problem” we got a visa debit card with a 30 day credit option, like a mini overdraft which is great and we get to walk over the road to pay cheques in now. They, like all other banks offer a switcher service so all DD’s and standing orders are copied over. So we sign a letter telling Abbey to let HSBC discuss our account then left HSBC to get on with it.

Some time elapses

It’s our quarter end so this Sunday we went online to pay ourselves a 3 month dividend plus to sanity check that cashflow was not lying and that there was indeed enough money get a chq raised for the VAT man; all basic, basic stuff for a small business.

Going online didn’t work, we rang up of course they are not there, so we waited a day. Then we rang up again and got an IP address to access the service (after side stepping a number of ‘have you checked your firewall’ type questions) so it now works. When we got to the account listing page our main account is *gone* an we’re left with the reserve account that has about 20p in. After a small panic we came to the conclusion that Abbey had probably totally screwed up and closed our account early - see how they’ve managed our expectations so well that we expect the worse.

No problem, screw Abbey we can use our new bank to pay us and Mr VAT man. Umm, no, actually there’s only the money that we’ve been paying in over the past few weeks from cheque payments, nowhere near enough, where’s our money gone?

Turns out that Abbey closed out account -even though told not to - and then SENT A CHEQUE to HSBC
which took 4 days to get there and we’ll now have to wait a further 5 days, actually 7 because of the weekend, to get our money. As a nice addition they also neglected to send the details of each payee with the DD’s and Standing orders so, whilst we so helpfully have the names, we have to ring back up our suppliers and get the bank details to get everything set up manually again.

Deep breath

Luckily for us all our suppliers and been paid this month and the wages had already been paid so it’s turned out to be an inconvenience only, but it could have been much worse.

It’s also worth pointing out that I know the other banks have many horror stories and are by no means perfect but I simply can’t believe that they could do a worse job than Abbey.

That gentle reminder :

DO NOT USE ABBEY BUSINESS BANKING SERVICES

Here’s a few more satisfied customers like us at Siftware:

• Abbey National Business: How I hate thee
• Another reason why Abbey business banking is rubbish
• Abbey National Business Banking Review
• http://www.blagger.com/db4/company_id/684/companyname/Abbey-National.html

I have not bothered signing because IMO it’s such a ridiculous and doomed to fail idea that’ll it never fly - how many gov ‘IT’ projects go tits up? - plus it’s not like they can’t already track us by our mobile phones.

Anyhoo, I recently became aware of a much worthier petition:

We, the people of Britain, feel that our current National Anthem has lost a bit of its sparkle.

When we are confronted by the rare occasion of us winning a medal at the Olympics, we all have to mumble through “God Save The Queen”, well God help us in 2012!

We would thereby like to table the suggestion that we change the National Anthem to something more modern and appropriate and that will re-invigorate our pride.

What we specifically want to see, is that the National Anthem be changed in favour of “Gold” by Spandau Ballet.

Further, we would like our National Olympic Committee to decree that Tony Hadley is the only person permitted to handle medal ceremonies where the National Anthem is played.

We don’t mind what he wears when he does this, but preference is given towards a a gold colured suit.

Sincerely,

I urge you to make your voice heard:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/goldanthem

With this mind I found this recent article by Charlie Brooker - where he takes offence to the recnt mac ads starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb - rather amusing.

Here’s some highlights:

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Ultimately the campaign’s biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow “define themselves” with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that “says something” about your personality, don’t bother. You don’t have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality.

Full article

With this in mind my own personal domestic goddess, Cathie, has been preparing for the party by getting odds and ends in, including music for it.

For some reason no-one could understand why I found the CD cover funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fclYmVaORbM

LOL

Here’s a still:

From the author (3DBlasphemy):

Here is my last little project. It is about one of my favourite robots: Optimus Prime from the Transformers Gen 1. I have tried to make this robot as I think he would be in the real world. I mean, a true truck. As a true truck he is no clear and his parts as truck are the same that his parts like robot. I like to see it as an old used truck.

I don’t want to even think about how long that took to put together.

Related:

• Original Thread
• Creator’s Website
• Link to Hi-Res (70MB) Movie

The Standardista Rebels have established a secret base on the remote domain of squidoo.com. The Dark Lord of the Kludge, Darth Gates has sent web crawlers in search of this base and its commander, Luke Veloso. While Luke is out browsing around the base, he is locked up and his browser is crashed by a Wampa applet.

Meanwhile, back at the base, the hacker-blogger Tantek Solo announces his intention to leave the Rebels to repay the debt he owes to the vile gangster Digg the Hutt (much to the displeasure of Princess Molly). But after Tantek discovers that Luke has not returned from his browsing patrol, he delays his departure and leaves the base to look for him.

*chuckle*

http://www.andyrutledge.com/web-wars.php

S / ( P x A ) = M

Where:
S = Total number of spam emails that you have
P = Period that they were collected over
A = Num of accounts collected from
M = My spam index

I use gmail so this calculation is easy:

S = 11,242 in my spam filter right now
P = 30 days (as it auto deletes after 30 days)
A = 2 (the main gmail account plus my 8+ yr old bealers.com email account)

M = 11242 / ( 30 x 2) = 187.37

So there you have it, my spam index is 187.37.

What’s yours?