Sorry, I didn't know running over cyclists is frowned upon.

Last night on the way home a motorist in a 'turn left' lane decided to forgo convention and drove straight ahead, the problem was that I was already occupying the space he pointed his four wheels at as I was using the 'go straight ahead' lane and was already half through the 'going ahead' part of my journey.

I called out friendly 'HOY!' as I slammed on my brakes and (not for the first time) congratulated myself for not giving in to building my lardy self a fixie.  Said motorist had his window open and jumped out of his skin when he saw my considerable bulk about to topple onto his courdroys.  He sped off, but due to the nature of town driving I overtook him three times before I reached home (about 500 yards down the road from the incident).  

As I was dismounting and breath counting outside my house I noticed the offender and his hatchback slowly pull up a few yards away.  Fearing some unpleasantness I forced a smile and walked over to the car.  I opened negotiations by genially apologising for making the driver jump with my involuntary Kossack style exclamation. and explained that without request he had tried to aid me in my weight loss efforts by spreading my wide load across the road.

What followed was a bit of apologising on his part, and then something remarkable happened - he asked me to explain where he had gone wrong.  He demurred on the subject of his level of bike-awareness and claimed to be making a real effort to be aware of cyclists since some of his friends have taken up cycling.

Ten minutes later we found that we probably have a few mutual friends and he had invited me to a 'bike ball' that some of his mates were organising.  We found out we both have 'apostle' names and he had explained why he had recently joined the Russian orthodox church.

I've long maintained that if another road user makes a genuine mistake then cheerfully making them aware of your presence is much more positive than questioning their parentage and pointing out their low-forehead.  If I had verbally annihilated this bloke who didn't think to check his mirrors (or the windscreen) for cyclists I doubt he would have come away from the experience with the heightened level of bike-awareness that he hopefully now has.

Oh, and it turned out he wasn't following me, he was visiting friends who live on the same street as me.

How many sheets could a sheet slitter slit if a sheet slitter could slit sheets?

Pedantry isn’t sexy, nobody likes it when a joke is suffocated by someone pointing out that said feat isn’t scientifically possible.  A good example of pedantry killing something enjoyed by many (in this case a limerick) is the often stated case of the man from Nantucket - we all know the feat he is famed for isn’t possible (although for some reason we focus on physical restrictives rather than the Nantucket man’s motives for his actions) and yet the limerick lives on.  The Nantucket limerick remains popular because it is extremely uncouth and guarantees a gasp from any folk new to its punchline (hell, even the Simpsons do their bit to keep this limerick alive), but the reason I’m using up valuable seconds of my life writing this blog post is to have a micro-rant (a ‘mant’ if you will) about a particular rhetorical question / failed limerick currently doing the rounds on Twitter; this one:

‘How many sheets could a sheet slitter slit if a sheet slitter could slit sheets?’

This silly question has been tweeted and re-tweeted so often that I now see it pop up at least three or four times a day in my timeline.  So why does it grind my gears so?  If I were a more eloquent individual I would write a humorous Wodehouse style article, but as this is my blog and I currently write while thick with the type of flu that could fell an Oxen I’m going to focus on just three of the aspects of this irritating and much forwarded ‘question’.

Slitters DO exist!
Slitter machines exist, and therefore they slit sheets, I should know as I sell slitter machines for a living, there are also many easily found websites that sell used slitter machines if you can be bothered to verify my statement.  In fact slitters are so common place in industry that there are websites for recruiting slitter operators! So this question of ‘if’ a sheet slitter could slit sheets is a nonsense, unless someone has tipped jam in the controls or driven a Bentley Continental into a slitter (yup, it has happened) then a slitter will indeed slit sheets.  In the slitter / converting industry we tend to refer to rolls being slit (and call the machines slitter rewinders), but specific sheet slitters do exist, and often cut sheets or shapes out of material using a die-cutting method.

Forwarding the question without analysis lacks original thought.
The cut ‘n’ pasting and / retweeting of this type of budget ‘joke’ exposes a lack of imagination, and I’m not an intellectual snob, but the willingness to pass on dumb jokes keeps alive the sort of sick jokes that do the rounds after a celebrity death or racist / religious attack, thereby keeping the hate alive.  There - I bet you didn’t see that coming did you - a serious point being made on my blog, whoodda thunk it.

It’s not big, and it’s not clever.
No sniggering at the back please....  This crap question isn’t even very clever, it’s asking for a performance report on a bit of machinery performing the task for which is was designed.  If you’ve read my blog before then you’ve no doubt already reached the conclusion that I was staring at the wrong side of the wall when the queue for intelligence handouts was forming, but with no forethought at all I can come up with plenty of these failed limerick / pointless rhetorical questions, look, I’ll prove it:

• How many reels of rope would a rope reel winder wind if a rope reel winder would wind rope?
  
• How many chickens could a chicken chopper chop if a chicken chopper could chop chickens?
  
• How many cats could a cat catcher catch if a cat catcher could catch cats?
  
• How many beer barrels could a beer bareller barell if a beer bareller could barrel beers?
  
• How many thesis could a theorist theorise if a theorist could theorise about thesis?
  
• How many novels could a novelist novelise if a novelist could novelise novels?
  
• How many milk bottles could a milk bottle washer wash if a milk bottle washer could wash bottles?
  
• How many shit examples of inane rhetorical questions could a bloke with the flu make up if a bloke with the flu could make up shit examples of inane rhetorical questions.  Answer - seven.

Conclusion.
There isn’t one, but hey, this is the Internet, you weren’t expecting a logical closure where you?  Are people impressed by silly simple sequential alliteration?  Because any foolish fugger can find favour for fooling fools...

Automatically BCC someone/ an email address in Gmail

Copying an email address in on all emails being sent from Gmail might seem like a strange thing to do, but in terms of ultra-redundancy and/ or business continuity it can be quite useful.  Some organisations might also like to have all outgoing emails copied to a separate address for policy compliance or auditing reasons.

How to automatically BCC an address on all outgoing mail in Gmail.

First up you'll need to be using the Google Chrome browser for this to work, but if you're a Google fan than you're probably already a heavy user of Google Chrome anyway, er, aren't you?  This method of sending a BCC copy of all outgoing Gmail emails requires the use of Google Chrome extensions, but don't let that scare you, they're very easy to use.  This method will apparently work in FireFox, but I prefer Chrome so ner ner ner.

Auto BCC method:

1. Install the TamperMonkey Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store
2. Install the Gmail Auto BCC script from this page  http://jaidev.info/home/hacks/gmailAutoBcc (make sure you're reading the Chrome/ Chromium instructions not the FireFox instructions).
3. When you go to compose or reply to an email a prompt box will pop up asking which address should always receive a BCC copy of outgoing emails, this only happens once so get it right!
4. Sit back and make a cuppa, your work is done here.

Notes:

• If you have several 'send as' or pop3 accounts set up in Gmail you will be asked for a BCC address for each account/ profile, if you don't want to BCC one of the accounts then leave the box that pops up empty and click okay.
• If you want to send an email without the auto BCC then 'pause' the script using the TamperMonkey icon in the top right of Chrome.
• Watch out for TamperMonkey and/ or Chrome updates, they can sometimes break this auto-BCC script.

Funny kid's exam answers

These funny kid's exam answers are good example of the sort of anonymouse humour emails that go viral without any creditable source.  So if you know who put these funny exam answers together please let me know so that I can give credit where credit is due!

How to feel miserable as a writer

Look, it was tough gig... okay?

1. Constantly compare yourself to other writers
2. Talk to your family about what you do and expect them to cheer you on
3. Base the suceess of your entire career on one prospect
4. Stick with what you know
5. Undervalue your expertise
6. Let money dictate what you do
7. Bow to societal pressures
8. Only do work that your family would love
9. Do whatever the writers' magazines/ agent guides/ instructional books tell you to do
10. Set unachieveable/ overwhelming goals, to be accomplished by tomorrow

Okay, so this is 'slightly' pinched from something from an anonymous source currently doing the rounds of the interwebs, but the original version was aimed at artists, so I figured a slight re-tuning was needed.  If anyone knows who should get credit for this list please let me know!

An Ipswich arts centre for live music? Nah...

My well-established gripe is that original live music provision in Ipswich is always overlooked when this town gets money for arts development.  I know the reason is that bands are like little self-contained islands, in that they don't naturally work together to get things done for the collective good.  Bands are very friendly and helpful with each other, and mutual support within the Ipswich music scene is the crucial glue that binds it together, but bands have always lacked the consistent 'one voice' approach to the curators of cash that organisations like (for example) the Ipswich hospital band can present.

So what's the answer?  Well we need either a dedicated soul who will co-ordinate all us loser-musicians (possible I guess), or we need someone at the council with enough vision and passion to take one the task of setting up something along the lines of Norwich or Colchester Arts Centre, but sadly I don't think that's going to happen.  It's harsh truth, but one that must be acknowledged that lack of public money has always held back musicians in Ipswich.  There are some GREAT pubs to play in here in Ipswich, but commercial pressures can sometimes be an unhelpful influence (and just plain daunting) to anyone wishing to break out of the practise room and into the live music arena.

Suffolk PA Hire company Universal PA proved the need for a Arts Centre sized venue
in Ipswich by putting on The Stiff Little Fingers at the (now defunct)
Ipswich Caribbean Association, the event sold out quickly.

You may wonder I'm talking in terms of public money instead of private, and the reason is that alarmingly setting up the mid-size live music venue (like Norwich or Colchester Arts Centre) that Ipswich desperately needs is unlikely (at first) to be a profitable venture.  Good arts funding isn't about making a buck, it's about inspiring and facilitating something admittedly intangible but unquestionably positive for a very large group of people.

So while projects like the recently announced Ipswich arts 'hub' are an outstandingly positive move forward for Ipswich arts, I don't think anyone playing original music should get too excited just yet.  But hey, if you want to be the person who takes on the challenge of setting up an Arts centre style venue then I'll do everything I can to help you, in fact I think if someone were brave enough to stand up and be a figurehead for this campaign then he or she would be pleasantly surprised when they looked over their shoulder and saw just how many people were stood behind them backing them up.

---

UPDATE
There is now an 'Ipswich Arts Centre' website which has been created to discuss this idea http://www.ipswichartscentre.co.uk/

Against Me + Crazy Arm @ Norwich Arts Centre 21/11/11

Written for Lights Go out zine

Vicky from Crazy Arm lends Against Me! a hand.

Against Me! have gone through a lot of stylistic and directional changes over the years, and each time I've seen them the joyful passion they exude on stage gets more intense, but bands can't stay on top forever can they?  Can they?  Read on...

We missed the first band on due to the fact the modern marvel that is the cash machine is yet to grace the streets of Norwich, not that we could see anyhow, but then we are but simple folk from the rural village of Ipswich dazzled by the bright lights of a big city (as the lovely Pete 'Mild' Peril pointed out).

Crazy Arm were not at all what we were expecting - normally we enjoy punk rock tinged with Country about as much as ice cream tinged with dog toffee - but Crazy Arm played with all the intensity of power-sander dentistry, and packed a punch like a nuclear powered erm (bear with me while I look around my desk for inspiration) stapler. Okay, I guess that analogy doesn't work, but Crazy Arm were the perfect kissing cousins to Against Me (quite literally, as Tom Gabel was later to disclose from the stage).

Against Me! frontman @TommyGabel drew a single breath to introduce the band then they pounded through an extremely eclectic set of very old, not so old and brand new material.  I've seen this band a bunch of times but never somewhere as small as Nickers. Off. Ready. When. I. Come. Home. Arts Centre and the power blasting from the stage was almost a little overwhelming at times. Almost.  There a lot of young kids in the audience which is heartening, because Against Me are a band that just keep getting better and better.

The highlight of the set for me was when Vicky from Crazy Arm joined the band on stage for a spine shattering version of 'Bourne on the FM waves of the heart' - a song I never thought I'd get to see live.

I passionately love a lot of bands, but for me Against Me are a level higher - they're a band I wish I was in.

Too soon it was over and we headed back to Ipswich, a town where they now turn the lights off at midnight.

Andrew Culture