Empty Handed

I’ve now received my ‘proper’ Moo Flickr-cards, the set of 100 I ordered and mentioned here. They’re really nice, but I’ve made some errors! The first thing I realised when I got them is that I made some poor picture choices. I think I’ve picked too many shots of the kids. These are good pictures which I like, but they’re not really right for a calling card. It’s not that they’re inappropriate in any way which would see them being exchanged on some dodgy website (with the possible exception of the one of them in the bath, but even that one is completely modest with only their upper halve’s visible). No, it’s just that they’re of my kids! I can’t imagine giving them to anyone who is not part of the family or a close friend. And I can’t really think why I’d want to give such people my calling card. D’oh! Ah, well. The other problem with my picture choices is the format of the cards - think extremely wide-screen and you’re pretty much there (or look at the picture of them to the side there if you’ve got imagination issues). Now, this is not news to me, I knew this when I ordered the cards, as you have to select how the picture should be cropped. It’s just that I didn’t pick well in some cases, picking pictures I liked rather than images which would suit the ratio of the card. To be honest, I picked them in a slight hurry coz I was doing it late at night and was trying to get it done quickly, but even so, I’m pretty sure I would have made some poor choices anyway.

With the benefit of experience, I wouldn’t have picked this one or this one. Basically, if you have to cut something out which is important to the picture don’t use it for the Moo cards! Seems pretty obvious, I guess.

The other mistakes I made were in the choice of text on the back of the card. Here, I made two mistakes. 1) I included a web address, which (doesn’t exist yet, but) is basically part of this site, and would pretty much lead anyone who chose to visit it to this blog. Why is this a mistake? Well, I’m not sure I want anyone I would be likely to give these cards to to know about the blog. Like family, friends, colleagues, associates and acquaintances. Not because there’s ever likely to be anything untoward written about them (but there might be), but because I mingle in different circles in real life, and, although we may not like to admit it, or may think it’s some sort of weakness, we do tend to behave differently depending on the group (well, I do, even if you don’t). Now, if everybody I know is a potential reader of this blog (OK, I know that technically they are anyway) then which persona should I adopt in my posts!? It’s not that I’m taking any great pains to be anonymous, or anything, but it’s just probably a little too extreme to actually encourage these people to find the site. Hmmm. Tricky. This error in itself probably means I will not actually use these cards.

Anyway, mistake 2) is my phone number. No, I didn’t get it wrong per se, it just turns out that I’ve been labouring under a misconception about international dialling. I’ve put my cell phone number down on the card as 00447770 nnnnnnm where my number has the dialling code 07770, so I’ve put down the UK international dialling code in place of the leading 0. This doesn’t work from landlines in the UK. Oops. It’s fine from another mobile (and I store all my numbers on my cell phone in this format so they just work from anywhere), and it would be presumably fine from pretty much anywhere outside the UK, but just not from a UK landline. well, how was I supposed to know!?

So, the pictures are wrong and the text is wrong. Gah, I’m an idiot. On the plus side, the cards themselves are lovely. The format and the nice thick-card with matte finish really help to improve the quality of the pictures themselves, making even my lousy snaps look rather splendid.

Looks like I’ll be ordering some more Moo cards pretty soon, then. At only 20USD they really are a bargain. I may order 2 lots - One set to use as calling cards (no web address this time and a proper phone number) and one lot to give to friends and family just with my Flickr address on, so they can find my photo stream - that set would be nice and safe (and sensible) to have pictures of the kids on.

I’ve been using Google Talk for a little while now, more or less since it launched. One of the reasons I prefer it over MSN, Yahoo and even Skype is that it’s nice and quiet, by which I mean not many people use it - precisely the reason many dislike it, I suppose. I got really fed up with using MSN (is that what it’s called?) because loads of random people added me to their contacts list the whole time, and then tried to talk to me! Can you believe it!? Also, loads of people who, shall we say, weren’t random had me as contacts, and also tried to talk to me, which I didn’t really like either. Anyway, it got to the point where I would log on, but never make myself visible, like going to the pub and hiding in the corner - actually, a lot like going to the pub and hiding in the corner. Then along came Google Talk to the rescue. Now, the only people on my list are people I really want to communicate with, and a lot of types that I know who cling to their hotmail accounts and refuse to see the @gmail light can’t get me. Hah! I think that’s a pretty good indication of whether I want someone on my IM list, to be honest - if they prefer to stick to the crappy Hotmail web mail or Yahoo or Freeserve or whatever when they could have the GMail web interface, I don’t want to share the web experience with them very much at all, because they are web idiots. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to interact with them in real life, obviously, just that I don’t really want to be chatted at or chain emailed by these types who don’t take the web too seriously, really.

But today, I’ve had a completely random contact request on GTalk. The same address tried to get me to be their friend several times, so it doesn’t seem particularly accidental, and the email address used doesn’t look like it would belong to anybody I’d be likely to know, or, in fact, anybody at all. I’m guessing that this is as a result of Google opening up the GTalk network to non-Google-Mail addresses. The address (27832355627@mxit.co.za) looks like a spammer address, or is certainly of that type. What’s puzzling is what would happen if I added them as a ‘friend’? Spam chat? Does this sort of thing go on on the other, larger and better established networks?

(edit: Of course it does - I’m such a web idiot! And it’s pretty obvious that a spimmer will try and do all the stuff they normally try by spam, just in the chat. Like, oh, yeah, I’m gonna download a file that 27832355627@mxit.co.za sends me. Anyway, it’s obviously a big problem, just Google for spim and see for yourself…)

Curiously, in the same day, I got a weird SMS from The National Lottery - well, the message isn’t weird, it’s the fact that they sent it to me (and probably thousands of others):

Sat LOTTO TRIPLE ROLLOVER jackpot is an est £20 million. Outlets shoud [sic] display their Double Rollover POS until new Triple Rollover POS arrives later this week.

I should just like to make it quite clear that, in the obviously highly unlikely event that a) 2,500 other people sign-up for this (not sure what will happen to the extra £20) and b) I’m the one drawn out of the hat, that I do not wish to avail myself of the prize…

When I first read about the idea at Chicken Yoghurt, I just assumed it was going to be to raise the money to send Justin to dinner with the Tory leader, and I rushed over to Pledge Bank to get my name down. With hindsight, of course, it’s pretty obvious he wasn’t going to ask for that, and the draw is obviously the right thing to do. If I do win, I’m going to donate the prize back to Justin, because he would clearly make much better use of it than I ever could, and it was really the thought of this that made me want to sign in the first place.

Anyway, as mentioned earlier, it’s not terribly likely to happen, judging by the 2,492 signature shortfall the pledge currently enjoys.

You should sign it.

I went fishing today, to Wych Elm fly fishery. Nothing particularly unusual about this, I go fly fishing reasonably regularly and Wych Elm is one of the 3 or 4 places I usually go. This afternoon was slightly unusual though, in that I did quite well.

Veronica and the kids had gone out for the afternoon to a kid’s party, so I was able to slope off and have a good half-day at it - typically, I only go fishing for a few hours at a time, coz I feel guilty spending too long away from the family, and also, I want to spend time with the family. The problem with fishing, rather like golf, is that it really drains time, amd time is always in pretty short supply for me. Anyway, V and the kids were going to be out all afternoon and into the evening anyway, so, no reason to rush back.

I’d planned this out in my head a few days ago, knowing I’d have a window this afternoon, and, typically, the weather turned out to be pretty far from ideal. It didn’t really look much like rain, but it was very windy, and that makes fly casting awkward and downright dangerous at times. Anyway, sod it, I’d already decided I was going to go whatever the weather was doing.

So, I started fishing around 2, and didn’t manage anything for the first hour or so. As per usual, other people seemed to be catching plenty. Hey ho. After about an hour and a half, the guy who’d been fishing diagonally opposite from me packed up his kit and wandered back around my way. I hadn’t seem him catch anything (other than some trees) whilst I’d been there. He wandered over and asked how I was getting on, and we had the usual anglers conversation that ensues from these encounters - what had I been trying? Buzzers and nymphs, mainly. How about you? Oh, I had 4 out this morning on this little white thing - he showed me a little white thing (no, it wasn’t his cock - that was massive). It was like a little white nymph with a lime piece at the head, probably size 12. Oh, right, I said (I was tying on a green and black buzzer at the time), I might have something like that. You can have this one if you like. Oh, well thank you very much, I will, that’s most generous of you, I’ll give it a try in a bit, how did you fish it> Dead slow, static retrieve. Nice one, thanks again. You’re welcome. And, as he was leaving (he wandered down to the fishing hut to fill in the returns book after that conversation, and then passed me again on his way out), tight lines! Tight lines! He actually said, tight lines! Cool.

So, I tried my green buzzer for a bit, and then tried my benefactor’s donation. Well, I didn’t get a fish first cast, or anything, but I did get my first only a few casts later. I then went on to take 5 more on that little white thing in fairly short order (over, maybe, an hour and a half). A couple of these were taken by using the bob fly I’d tied on (a loch ordie) as an indicator - something I’ve never succeeded at before, so I was very pleased with that, as there were 2 fish I probably wouldn’t have taken if it weren’t for that bob fly. Some of those fish were of a good size, too. The larger 2 were above 3lbs, with the largest definitely above 3 1/2, maybe close to 4. All were in excellent condition, and powered off as though nothing had happened when I released them.

Whilst all this was going on, I was pleased to note that most of the other anglers were doing nothing, and, I fancy, were glancing jealously over in my direction - well, maybe not, but I know I do jealous glancing when I’m the one catching nowt, so it’s a welcome change in any case!

So, now, I’m on 6 with maybe not much more than 1 1/2 hours to go (’til dark). My previous best fly-fishery trout session count is 6! Wow, one more to set a new PB! As I wandered round the lake, I was feeling pretty confident.

Shortly afterwards, I managed to hook one, again on the magic fly, but it came off almost straight away. Rats! After that, no more takes on that fly at all, and eventually I had to concede that it probably had had its moment, and I should move on. I tried a couple of other combinations (heading very much to dusk by now) without success, before I noticed that a few fish were actively feeding from the surface. Aha! I quickly swithced the point (a small black crisp-packet buzzer) for a hares-ear shipmans (size 16) and a few casts later was playing my record-breaking 7th fish. Result!

And that was it. There were no more after that. The only action I got was when I got an extremely vicious take to the dropper, a black spider. The rod was nearly snatched from my frigid fingers, and the dropper knot failed. Weirdley, the knot broke very cleanly adjacent to the main tippet, but left everything else intact. I’m not quite sure how that happened…

The darkness drove me away by 6.45. They’ve been dropped by their record label, you know. Now, that is weird.

What else is weird is that the other guy on the fishery at the same time as me who seemed to be really bagging up didn’t beat my score by all that many - we’d arrived at the same time, and it seemed like he had a fish on every time I looked round. I guessed that he’d have doubled my catch rate, easily. In the catch book, though, he’d only entered 9.

Oh, hang on, I’ve just realised - there are 2 books, 1 for kills and 1 for C&R, I only looked in the sport book; I guess if he was on a ticket which included fish, he’d have split his catch over the 2 books, and the 9 were only the fish after he’d killed his limit. Hmm. That makes sense. Bastard. Ah, well, I had a good day anyway, it matters not a jot how well anyone else did, I had fun and caught a few.

Must get some waterproofs, though.

Loads of people have been blogging about these, and they’re pretty cool. There’s a great offer on for Flickr Pro account holders, where you can get 10 free cards. I bought 100 anyway, because they look ace and I’m in love with the idea of calling cards, and, for not much more than 10GBP, what could go wrong (well, actually, they didn’t arrive, but, you know, apart from that?).

Then, I thought, just for a laugh, I’d get the 10 free cards done out in the livery of this blog. I’m not sure what I thought I was actually going to do with them, put them on the notice board of the local Spar? Post them through random doors?

That’s not a bad idea - I’ll mail one of these dinky Empty Handed cards to the first 5 applicants who leave a comment in this post saying why they want one - Leave your email and I’ll get in touch for postal details.

Praaaa-ang!!

On Tuesday, our car got pranged in the side by a careless motorist. Annoying, but these things happen (evidently) and no-one was hurt, although I do wish Veronica would stop phoning me at work and starting the conversation with I’ve got some really bad news, when what she means is that something very inconvenient has happened. No matter.

Veronica was driving with the kids, and had just turned out of our tiny road into a not-much-less-tiny road leading to the main road, and so wasn’t travelling very quickly when the third-party pulled out of another side road. All pretty low speed stuff, I guess. Anyway, I’ve no idea how he managed it, really. He said he didn’t see her for parked cars, but come on, he ran into the side of her! She must have been virtually upon him when he set off, where were these cars parked?

So, it was obviously his fault, and he held his hand up to it at the scene (naughty, hope his insurers aren’t reading this), details were (eventually) exchanged and insurance companies notified.

So what’s all this about cheaper car insurance? There’s been quite a bit in the news recently about soaring motor insurance premiums because of immigrants crashing lorries at roundabouts, or something (I don’t really understand that one), but what about the ridiculous expense of even a low grade and completely legitimate claim? To fix our car, our insurance company arranged for a ‘local’ garage (they’re based in Barrow, we’re in Morecambe, go figure) to come and collect the car; they’ll repair it and fully valet it, before returning it to our door. We’ll also get a ‘courtesy car’ from a not-inexpensive car rental firm (actually local, this one); they’re going to extra lengths to get us an even more expensive car, since ours is quite large (a 3.0l V6 estate), never having asked if a ‘normal’ car would be sufficient - after all, it’s not costing us anything and it’s extra in their pockets, right? Oh, and they’re coming to collect us to take us to collect it, I expect that isn’t free, but, again, it isn’t costing us anything.

Top line service, I’m sure you’ll agree, and fully expected these days, but just imagine how much this is all costing for a relatively small amount of damage! The amount of people in the chain, charging a premium for their service, then adding a margin, before passing it up to the claims department, is frightening. I’d love to know what the final cost to the other guy’s insurers will be, just for the damage to our car, let alone their member’s repairs (and also if my insurers will add a little margin to the final bill).

The total cost will be thousands, it’s just a matter of how many.

And all for damage which, if I wasn’t going through the insurance would probably be a couple of hundred at a local garage or body-shop (OK, maybe a bit more, what do I know?).

I don’t think the third-party’s excess, which is likely to be no more than 250GBP, will cover it, do you?

So, if you want cheaper car insurance, stop demanding such high quality service. Fully valeted? For Christ’s sake!