Apparently, These Days Fires Have Schedule

Back in my day, (puts the pipe in and feet up on a foot stall by the fireplace) fire drills were meant to keep people in practice and make people aware of procedure in case of an emergency. The other reason is, of course, to make that little kid in Year 7 wet himself.

Now, as a member of support staff, we knew there was going to be a practice of evacuation procedure at 10am, so just before the big hand on the clock turned twelve we collected our stuff in preparation and, peering into a few classroom windows, so was everyone else. Now I don't know about you, but when I was at school not so long ago, we weren't told about fire drills because it was meant to be a realistic test of how we cope in an emergency. Although on one occasion, we just stop bothering after the third time the fire alarm went of in one day, probably due to someone burning the toast in Food Technology.

So apparently fires can only exist these days if they first book in and tell everyone when their going to happen. I think this is a very Ank-Morporkian ways of doing things. For those of you that aren't familiar with the great Terry Pratchett's Discworld series of books, in the capital city of Ank-Morpork, the leader accepted that crime will always exist so he set up a guild for thieves and assassins etc. The premise being that anyone who pays tax in the city can expect to get robbed no more and no less than twice per year providing they keep a receipt of robbery. Of course, if you don't pay your taxes then your fair game. Well maybe that's whats going to happen in the future with fire seen as we're now telling people exactly when drills are going to happen so they can prepare and be ready.

If you like maps, click on this one, it's so detailed and there are some things that are bound to make you laugh, 30 points if you spot the Guilds

By a complete coincidence, the whole school was having its photograph taken and had to be assembled outside on the field by 10:30am. I think what this suggests is that they couldn't be bothered to get all the well-behaved kids out by themselves so just organised a fire drill so the kids what sort themselves out. Of course, for the badly behaved kids....well just let them burn then. They should have listened, it was scheduled...

What Makes Truly Great Music?

You'll know when you hear music that you would classify as 'great'. Whether it has a beat to it that makes you want to get up and go or sing your heart out, you'll know it. Over the years there have been many theories as to why humans have such a deep connection with rhythmic sounds. One in particular, which makes sense to me, is that we are subconsciously constantly looking for safety and security and crave a predictable regular rhythm. Certainly this would explain why music sometimes takes time before you start liking it.

For me, for music to be worthy of that 'great' status, it has to be able to change or enhance my mood for a sustained amount of time. Take listening to Your Latest Trick by Dire Straits. Listening to that on the train coming back from work enhanced my feeling and relaxed me, all be it almost to much so as I nearly fell asleep. In contrast, when listening to The Catalyst by Linkin Park makes me want to sing along and even do a bit of dancing. It makes me feel good about myself and gives me confidence...which is then shattered by people laughing at my dancing. Well OK that's a lie, if you can't laugh at yourself then what can you laugh at? The point is, great music works its way into your mind and completely absorbs you into it and heightens your emotions.

So now that we've defined what great music is, what about 'great' albums? Well when I get a new album I'll put it on in the background and forget about it. If I find myself trying to sing along to words I don't know or connecting with it all the way through then it is exactly that. But there's more to it than that. There has to be some sort of moral or story that progressively advances through each song and, if its very good, contain different themes throughout. Most notable for that for me would be Pink Floyd's The Wall album, if you don't know it then look it up! You won't be disappointed. The latest great album I would say would be Linkin Park's A Thousand Suns album because it flows extremely well even though I don't like the song Blackout. If I run through the album without paying attention them it flows fine. Although on a side note, Blackout has just come on on my media player and talking about it made me notice it which is annoying.

So to sum up, a great song evokes and enhances you emotions and a great album evolves them. What we have here is the triple E criteria. I think it also has to have complimentary contrasting songs which helps the evolution of the story in the music. Even the hardest upbeat artists nearly always put in a slower song. I mean, look at Abba's greatest hits.

...On Learning to Drive

After being asked for a year and half (because apparently if you don't start your driving lessons on your 17th birthday your not human) when I'm going to start learning to drive, so I can get a car that I can't afford and then crash it, I've finally booked them. As much as I want to drive, at the moment there really is no real need, especially when you clock the cost of the insurance which for me is somehow six times the worth of the few hundred pound car that I'd be driving. What their saying is that I'm going to completely write it off six times in my first year. Now I know that 25% (or something like that) of all crashes are young men between ages of 17 and 24 but the insurance has gone up almost two fold for me since I did a preliminary check last year. Now, is it just me or does that not seem a tad excessive?

Now because I've done a few hours of driving over the past year or two I decided to book a block of 20 hours, knowing that I could add some at a later date. The following Friday night, whilst I was having some private time with my now ex-girlfriend, my phone rings three times in half an hour between 8 and 9PM. On the Tuesday of the next week, whilst patching in network cable at work, the same number rings again and I answer it to find out its my Instructor Company. The guy on the end of the phone said this: "I tried to get hold of you last week but you weren't answering." Because apparently I couldn't possibly be doing anything at all on a Friday night. I don't know if these people live on a different planet where they don't have social lives but they shouldn't be ringing up people at that time right? Is that not included in one of the many training courses?

Moving onto my first lesson on a public road. It went quite well actually, only one or two stalls and a mistaken gear change in 90 minutes of driving. Even if I was feeling dizzy because we must have gone around at least as many roundabouts. However at the end of it my instructor said he was pleased with how things had gone so that put my worries to bed for a while. Today I had my second lesson, 2 hours of driving this time, and again it went quite well except for a double kangaroo stall at a set of lights on a hill. On that point, stalling like that only ever seems to happen at the lights when there at least 500 cars queued up behind you. I did notice how a learner coming in the opposite direction to me barely left me enough room between him and the stone wall. Bloody learner drivers!

During a 10 minutes brake to go over a few things, and more importantly to rest my limbs a bit, my instructor went over the different sorts of crossings; Zebra, Pelican and Toucan. Now I was familiar with the first two, the zebra has no traffic lights as such and you must let people across, yet somehow I seem to find that not many people obey that particular law. Pelicans are the ones where you push the button and the traffic lights, eventually, turn red and you can cross. So what on Earths a Toucan crossing? For those of you as stumped as I was, a Toucan crossing is like a Pelican crossing except it also has a green light for cyclists. Did that really require a whole new name?

As my Theory Test is in just over a weeks time, wish me luck, I've been revising for that two using the company iPhone app. There are lots of very on questions in there but one of them was; What does a blue circular sign with the number 30 written in white on it mean? Turns out that's a minimum speed limit sign. I beg the question has anyone ever seen one of these in operation? They've managed to evade myself and my family members all our lives. However, what this means is that there can now be a minimum speed limits on all roads. How brilliant would that be if on a motorway, except for heavy goods vehicles, if it was the law for you to be doing the national speed limit. Then all those average speed cameras the government set up can check this and send you a fine if your going to slowly. An even better idea, one that would drastically reduce unemployment, would be to train people up at traffic snipers that sit on top of bridges and pick people off who are holding up the traffic and breaking the law. 

So there we go, quite by chance, I've sorted out unemployment and enabled everyone to get where their going on time. Of the plan would involve many more guns out and about so crime could rise but that method has already tried and tested in the UK's secret test and training facility knowing as the United States of America and there's certainly no lack of Americans in the world.

...About Apple

I don't have a long history with Apple. I'm neither a fan boy nor a apple hater but I do admit I have been quite a late entry to the race. The very first Apple product I bought was an iPod Nano 4th generation, most crucially, in purple. Previous to that I hadn't thought that I would listen to music whilst out and about so what would be the point in spending £150 on a device that I wouldn't use? Well turns out that I can't go out without listening to music. I don't know what it is or how I got the bug but once I got it it stayed and I doubt it will never leave. 

I remember that when I was looking at buying a 16gb nano in the shop the guy tried to sell me the 8gb 1st generation iTouch for £20 more. I remember how he was trying to sell me on the idea of apps and having a device that can do it all etc. In the end I had to say to him quite shortly that I just wanted a device that could play music and have good battery life. I came in knowing exactly what I wanted and it wasn't an iTouch. Partly because of the poor battery life but mostly because they don't come in purple.

Skip forward 3 years and several chances to use other peoples iTouchs later I decided I wanted one, mostly for a couple of simple apps such as Shazam and Game Dev Story. But, as always, I thought that the prices for a new iTouch was way to much because knowing me I probably wouldn't use it after a week. Good thing I know me because if I didn't I'd be in trouble, both mentally and financially. Fortunately it was a cheap Ebay buy and I got a 2nd generation iTouch and sure it was useful was places where I had access to Wifi. But if I had an app that tells me train times which live updates, chances are I'm going to be on my way to the station where there is no Wifi available. What Apple have done here is an incredible marketing ploy. Yes, we'll give you all the apps you want on a cheaper device but if you want to take them outside, away from a computer, then you'll have to spend more of your money on adding a phone and 3G connectivity. Not just a little bit more, but a lot more.

So skip forward to last Friday and I decided to buy a 16gb iPhone 3GS, again, from Ebay. The idea being is I'd sell my iTouch and my phone along with a spare I had which should cover the cost so I don't waste to much money. I've never really wanted an iPhone or a Blackberry because I wanted to be slightly different. So I was in a situation where I had both a Sony Ericsson X1 and Palm Pre. I decided on the Sony because of it's amazing physical landscape qwerty slider, which just sound geekily dirty, and I bought the Palm (for my girlfriend who then due to changes circumstances gave it back within a month) to play with WebOS. The problem with the Sony is that it had slow, clunky Windows Mobile 6.1 and the problem with the Palm was the hardware was not up to standard. If I could somehow glue these phones together, make a XPre (too close to Windows XP) and add apps it would be perfect.

So after two screen replacements in three day (only one of which was my fault) I spent an hour setting up my new iPhone the way I wanted with the apps I wanted. Got it syncing with both my work and personal email as well as importing my SIM contacts. That confused the hell out of it. One thing I could say about the Palm is that its contact merging system worked pretty flawlessly and included Facebook integration. The iPhone on the other hand does get a little confused and no doubt I'll have to spend a few hours in the future sorting it all out but other than that I'm perfectly happy with it. Except one thing...it's not purple!