Ciaran’s Omnipurpose Blog

Last night was Göran’s official Carphone Warehouse (CPW) leaving drinks. I left Carphone Warehouse in June 2006 but stayed in England. Göran’s leaving and going back to Sweden with his lovely young wife Monica and even younger son, Isac.

So as is usual at CPW, drinks were had at the Castle. Göran (big hair, left) and I are sitting with some PATNI contractors, to whom CPW’s IT department is outsourcing a lot of its key systems. They’re nice guys, but I don’t think this is a wise move for CPW.

Afterwards, I dropped Göran off home to say goodbye to Monica and Isac. Isac can walk and make noises and spill food everywhere but his calculus is pretty shocking. Here’s the little chap playing with Göran’s goatee. How cute!

I’ll be sad to see them go. Göran stayed with me and Rebecca when he first came to the UK about two years ago. He and Monica have been very good friends to us.

On a self-indulgent note, it made me think: People are moving on with their lives, coming and going, and here I stay.  

Bon Voyage!

I’d not really seen much of Dave Chapelle before, but an online buddy from Norway sent me this video. I don’t usually like to put videos on my blog, but this was awesome!

I’m absolutely starving this morning! I trained pretty hard at the gym last night and even though I had a big bowl of muesli for breakfast, I was still craving something.

My good friend Craig, whom I met during my time in Berlin, works just around the corner from me and we shamefully have never managed to get together for lunch! So it was nice to spontaneously meet him for a coffee and bagel this morning at the cheap and cheerful Rosie Tate cafe.

I asked Craig if he ever read my blog and he said he didn’t because there aren’t any pictures of him on it. So Craig, this one’s for you:

The Tobacco companies are on the run, it seems. A recent court ruling in the USA has ordered that they take out a full page advert apologising for misleading the public on the dangers of smoking, as well as pay damages and change their branding to remove references to cigarettes being “Light”, since that implies that these cigarettes are not so bad for you.

Coming back from holiday in Germany on Monday, I saw this nice little bit of accessorising; a free bag that came with Lucky Strikes:

The health warning was actually stitched onto the bag. This was clearly something that was meant to be part of the design. Clearly, the government-imposed warning labels have become part of the actual branding of the cigarette!

Are tobacco companies changing tack? Since they’ve now lost the struggle to keep the lethality of their product a secret, are they now embarking on a clever campaign to market cigarettes as the product of choice for the discerning risk-taker?

Will it become the new extreme sport, to rival BASE Jumping, river-rapid kayaking or bungee jumping?

Will it one day become the anti-establishment norm to smoke cigarettes, in the way that having piercings, a green Mohican or tattoos were?

Will we see a new raft of smoking-led body modifications? Watch out for the avant-garde gangrenous foot or the sexy and neckline-enhancing Tracheotomy hole, complete with alluring robotic voice.

Death Cigarettes were a little ahead of their time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the tobacco companies start marketing their products with pictures of cancerous lungs, larynxes and premature babies.

I see London’s Metro is keeping up-to-date. They ran an article this morning “scooping” the fact that “criminals” are selling items and currency for online games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest. This is old news: it has been happening ever since Everquest was released in 1999.

On a more up-to-date note, Wired Online ran an article about musicians holding virtual concerts in a MMORPG setting.

MMORPG stands for “Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game”, an online computer role-playing game (RPG) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world. Players appear in the game as “Avatars“, graphical representations of themselves.

The article describes artists, such as Suzanne Vega, holding a concert through their online avatars. The concert was attended by perhaps a few dozen people in “person” (ie. their avatars were there). This was due to the technical limitations of the MMORPG they were playing: the system simply couldn’t support any more people in the virtual concert hall. The BBC itself has also staged its “Big Weekend 2006″ in the Second Life space.

Of course, a lot of the addictive draw of online gaming is to do with the grinding for cash or items and other so-called “Time Sinks“, but the social element is also very important to a lot of people. The “just another couple of minutes” effect is often to do with a positive feeling of not wanting to let your friends down, rather than purely a negative avoiding real life reponsibilities. People really are building viable communities and friendships online that often spill out into “Real-Life” interactions.

The ability to interact with, not just watch, your entertainment is clearly the way things are going to go. Check out what is happening with Windows Vista and Web 2.0. We’re moving from a publishing/ Media consumer model to a model that supports user-driven content and social networks.

Back to the concert. Sure, it was limited, but big things start small. With the gradual convergence of traditional TV technology and digital/ broadband in the near future, could this be a viable future channel for celebrities and their fans to interact?

I’m looking at upgrading my mobile phone. I’m not sure which network to pick as T-Mobile has crappy reception in my area but is fairly cheap. Vodafone seems fairly reliable and is very expensive.

I’m considering either sticking with T-Mobile or switching to maybe Three (on price). Any advice on a good network to go for would be appreciated. 

Imagine my amusement this morning, on visiting the Orange site and keying in “N80″ (the model of the handset I’ll likely go for) and seeing this search result. It seems that Orange isn’t too keen on selling me a phone!

A rainy saturday morning greeted me as I leaned out of bed to look out of my window. It was overcast and miserable. Not only was the climate outside unfavourable, but the climate inside my skull was also inclement; a week of late nights and drinking had taken their toll.

Still, I couldn’t miss out on celebrating Nick’s impending wedding in a truly traditional manner: helping him make a fool of himself and getting him very drunk. He was my best buddy during my time in Berlin, after all!

I was supposed to arrive in Bath between 12 noon and 1230 and check into our hotel, but in the end I got a little lost and arrived in Bradford-on-Avon in order to avoid the traffic jams snaking into bath. I didn’t see a single Salwar Kameez in what has come to be known as Bradfordistan. (Note to pedants: This is a deliberate misunderstanding)

Finally, after much faffing and changes of plan, including getting rescued by Nick’s brother from Bradford-on-Avon, I hooked up with the main group of people at a bar in Bath. Downing our pints, we headed off to Bradford again for more drinking and merriment over a game of cricket. Highlights of the match included:

• Tom bowling like a demon: I think he bowled the most wickets.
• My Samurai/Maori fusion of batsmanship, including the one-hander of death.
• Nick behaving like a chimp on a methamphetamie/ laughing gas cocktail.
• Every player getting a can of bitter to hold and drink from whilst batting/fielding/bowling.
• A random dog off its leash coming to the pitch and trying to field.
• Another random dog joining the first random dog and kicking off a doggy altercation.

I think we finished the game after the beer ran out. Got back to the hotel and changed and then met in the hotel bar, where Nick’s traditional humiliation was to take place:

He took the dressing up like a brave girl, though, and we trotted off for a curry at the Eastern Eye. En route to the restaurant, Nick was fortunate enough to get lots of admiring glances and smirks from the residents of Bath. Nick was a true sport.

A massive set menu and some beers later, and we were off to the Pig and Fiddle for a pint of the nastiest, soapiest lager I think I have ever drunk.

The evening ended in Cadillacs, which has been saluted by ItchyBath.co.uk for providing a public service to Bath, “If it were ever to close then the bunch of misfits who go here every week to vomit all over their shoes would be free to infiltrate any of the better clubs in Bath at will.”

Highlights of this part of the evening included:

• Warm beer
• Nasty looking hen night parties
• Awful music
• Nick pogoing to Belinda Carlisle
• Nick streaking through the rugby grounds near the Bath Canal from one end of the pitch to the other, hurdling the sprinklers. He was congratulated with a cheery handshake by the groundsman, who was zipping up after his own “Saturday Night Special” in the stands with one of the fine ladies of bath.

The casualties met the following afternoon for brunch before heading home. All in all, a successful send off for Nick, who departs these shores for the Island of Matrimony in early September.

Bon Voyage!

An excellent selection of photos and videos from the site is available at greghawkins.net. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid appearing in any of Greg’s photos!

One of my all-time favourite gags!!

Who the Hell is Sean John?

Try saying “Sean John” five times fast. Go on!

Makes you sound like an lisping, fat-tongued idiot, doesn’t it?

Now try saying “Puff Daddy” five times fast.

This is getting boring, right?

Now try saying “P Diddy” just once!

Yep – once is enough, isn’t it?

What the hell is it with Sean Combs? He starts off his (by all accounts commerically successful) music career calling himself “Puff Daddy”, which I have to admit I could never accept. The Daddy of all Puffs was either The Honey Monster or Larry Grayson/ Kenneth Williams. No one else comes close.

So that proves that “Puff Daddy” is a fraudulent and misleading name for Sean Combs.

Publicly declaring his intention to re-invent himself, although most likely realising this error, he then took the name “P Diddy”. This name is clearly ridiculous. End of story.

Or is it? He then appears on the Today Show in 2005 to announce his newest contribution to our global culture: dropping the “P” from “P Diddy”. His reasoning: “the P was getting between me and my fans.”

Our hero decided to become a fashion designer in 1998, marketing clothes under his first two names, Sean John.

So what’s with this constant self-reinvention? Most people are quite content to be known by the same name(s) throughout their lifetime. These are some of the possible explanations I can think of:

• Cheap publicity
• Insecurity
• A desire to put the gun-toting past behind him
• Sheer Posing
• A deep-seated conviction that “Puff Daddy” was the wrong choice and fundamentally misrepresents the deep and complex characteristics of his soul.

This whole renaming thing is so lame. Why do I go on about it? Well, it reminds me of when they renamed Marathon to Snickers, or Opal Fruits to Starburst or Midland Bank to HSBC. Nothing really changed, just a name. So much in public life nowadays is about what things seem, rather than what they are.

Oh – and take that stupid toothpick out of your mouth. It just looks stupid. The last people I saw doing that who thought it made them look cool and tough were the kids on my schoolbus when I was twelve.

You’re not a ganster, Puffy/Diddy/whatever you’re called today. You make “music” and perfume.

Every summer Rebecca and I go with my Mum and Dad to visit my family in Wiesbaden in Germany. We usually go on the second weekend in August.

Last summer, on the second weekend in August, the Gate Gourmet dispute resulted in BA cancelling our flight to Wiesbaden. My dad had taken time off work and we’d booked a trip with the family on the Rhine and we had to cancel due to BA’s inability to manage its contracts. The horror was compounded by the fact that the weather was bad and we decided to go to the cinema in my parents’ home town to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was absolutely dire and really rubbed our noses in the fact that we weren’t with our family, we weren’t on the on the Rhine or visiting the Weinfest or drinking good beer and eating great food. We were watching Johnny Depp impersonate Michael Jackson instead!

The thing that might stop us from reching Wiesbaden this year is the thwarting of an alleged bomb plot involving several aeroplanes flying between the UK and USA. The result of this has been the closure (for a time – then reopening to massive disruptions) of most of the UK’s major airports.

Guess what? It’s the second weekend of August!

Not everyone seems to be aware of the situation. Sure, the BBC knows, my Google newsfeeder knows, my friends know, the newspapers know, the British Airports Authority knows (and has taken its site down). MI5 (the British security service) also know about it:

The only people not to know, it seems, are Easyjet, who had nothing on their site mentioning the plot and disruption. They even allowed me to start booking a flight out of Gatwick, departing today. Oh, they did warn me, but not about what I thought they might warn me:

It goes without saying that I’m glad they found out, that we’re going to be safe, that something ‘orrible was prevented. The thing is, though, I’m terrified of getting stranded in the UK again and missing out on Wiesbaden and getting stuck in the cinema watching a rubbish movie. Any suggestions for the rubbish movie to watch in the even of getting stuck in the UK again, would be most welcome.

And don’t get me started on this whole Islamofascist business (though we don’t know who the plotters were at this time, or even if there was a plot as described). I’m keeping my powder dry for that lot in another blog, I think. And don’t worry – I’ve got some nasty things to say about Neocons too.