I hate c2c

Basildon station at 6.25pm. Arrived and there is a LONG queue for the ticket machine. The security barriers are down on the ticket office.

There are two c2c security staff not doing a lot. I asked why the ticket office was shut, apparantly they were on a break until 7.00pm!!

I overlooked the shoulder of dude using other machine (no queue), its not working! I ask security guard A if there is a problem with it, he said no. He then tried it, and then said; oh its not working.

I ask if I can have a permit to travel; no you'll have to wait for the ticket office!

Queue getting longer, and I join it.

Waiting, the first person finally finishes. Meanwhile my 6.36 train is coming soon.

This chap can't find his station. Types it in manually, starts again, types it in again, then can't work out how to put in his money. For a loooong time.

Queue getting longer, people getting aggitated. Someone tries to help the chap with no luck.

I call out to the c2c guys to ask them to help with the ticket machine. After a lot of persuasion security guard 2 reluctantly offers to help.

My train goes.

The queue is getting longer. The chap still hasn't paid. This could well take another half an hour to get a ticket.

So I made a slight change of plan; I ran for a taxi. It dropped me off at Laindon for a fiver. Got the 6.52 to Fenchurch Street. Now i'm gonna be late :-(



Fucking c2c. 'cuse my French.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Cool french chaps

I met two cool French chaps in Paris. One at a service station was all smiles, responded to my French and was singing and dancing, and then waved as I drove past.


Then second guy was in eurodisney, I gave him my best "Bonsoir, parle vous Anglais, si vous plait" he then gave me a long response in French, with a big grin on his face, then we both burst out laughing.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Giving a lift

I always considered giving a lift ettiquette meant you dropped someone outside their home.

Recently someone wanted to drop me off at the top of my close because they couldn't be bothered to turn around and go back out. I was a little offended; it would have taken them moments.



Then a chap from work social tonight asked if he can drop me off at the traffic lights, a 10min walk from my home; if I haven't got too far to walk. I said it was fine because I thought he might not consider it far, and because I was shocked that he had asked. Seriously not cool. It would have taken him a few minutes.

I know I'm being ungrateful, because afterall they've given me a lift, but I always drop people at their door.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Paranomal Activity

Jonathan Ross was totally right with his review of Paranomal Activity. It is an excellent movie. No special effects, no big budget, no gore. Just sheer unadulterated terror.



Its just so terrorfying. My heart was beating so fast, I was genuinely scared. There were at least 3 points when the audience screamed! I've never been to a movie with so many people screaming out in horror.

Really well done. No start or end credits, brave by the film makers - or is that due to how it got itself distributed? Leaves questioning is it real?

I feel uneasy enough when there is a loud noise at night and I have to investigate. Now I'm going to be really scared.

Apparently one of, if not the, most profitable movies of all time. It definitely deserves to do well.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Shops can't make wraps

Prepackaged wraps are (usually) great, eg Marks & Spencer, Pret-a-Manger, etc.



Subway can make a good wrap, though I prefer the prepackaged ones.

My canteen at work makes terrible wraps. The filling is okay, but they put so much in the tortilla. Then they don't wrap, more like, fold it and roll a little. Then cut it in half. So you're got this overflowing "wrap" open at both ends and most of the filling falls out and its really messy.


I thought that was bad, I went in Cafe Giardino today, my canteen underfills by Cafe Giardino's standards! Fold and roll. I emptied half the contents in protest. I still got really messy. Coronation chicken filling wasn't very nice. And it was almost £5 quid!!!! Daylight robbery.

Leon in Covent Garden makes the worst wrap. Chicken wrap was filled with what I think was raw cabbage, and loads of it, urghh!!

On my trip to Lakeside, Pret-a-Manger saved the day with a gorgeous heated chicken jalapeno wrap.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Film reviews recent

2012 - 3/5 spectacular, but plot pretty dumb in parts

Juno - 3/5 okay though my attention kept waning

Cirque de Freak; the vampires assistant - 2/5 okay, not bad, but not brilliant. Entertaining but underwhelming

District 9 - 5/5 loved this movie. Aliens, action, emotions, awesome plot, wow

A Perfect Getaway - 5/5 great thriller. Exciting and gripping, great plot, love the twist.

The happening - 4/5 I liked the plot, I thought it was a clever idea. Really freaky how the people kill themselves



Slumdog Millionaire - 5/5 Now my favourite movie. Excellent plot, very poweful and moving film.

The Motorcycle Diaries - 5/5 makes me want to go on a south american road trip. Awesome film.

The Barbarian invasions - 3/5 I enjoyed this film. Bit slow though.

Russian arc - 1/5 uttery clever yes, but its got no plot and its soooo boring

Gran Torino - 4/5 I really like this film, didn't have same punch as cinema, when watching on dvd.

iRobot - 5/5 love, love, love this movie. This is one I can watch all the time.

So I Married an Axe Murderer - 5/5 really funny comedy with Mike Myers. Love the sound track. One of my favourite movies


Twilight (the first one) - 4/5 yes I enjoyed this, looking forward to sequel.

Tropic Thunder - 0/5 biggest pile of cack. Not funny, horrible




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The O2 tips

Before a show, at the O2 Arena, the queues for food are crazy, in the O2. Plus they are all restaurants, with seemingly only one hotdog stand, being the only fast food.

Top tip; carry on all the way to entrance H; there is a secret hotdog stand with no queues.

Alternatively go into Vue cinema; they serve hotdogs and nachos, and all they'll be is a few cinema goers queuing.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Great customer service

I seem to be getting lots of great customer service recently. I'd like to commend the RAC and Halifax car insurance for their quick response, polite, helpful and intelligent staff, and general greatness. They provided me what I wanted, at a reaonable price, they all went above what I thought I'd get, thank you.

Seafrance are particularly impressive. And when I couldn't get through via phone I tried emailing them. They responded a few minutes later and immediately amended my booking. I was stunned and really impressed that they had an email, and someone monitoring it. I've never known a large company to be so responsive!

The 02 shop was extremely helpful recently when I needed to make a call to customer services; they were really friendly and let me use their phone.

I'm getting used to great customer service, I can't remember the last time I had poor customer service!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

iPhone frustration

I'm getting frustrated with my iPhone. I've had 3 occasions recently were its crashed whilst I'm using Tweekdeck or Safari. It keeps intermittently freezing for several seconds; with quick on-off relieving the symptoms. This has happened twice as someone rang me, and the phone wouldn't respond to my attempts to answer it! First time I tried on-off trick - but that cancelled the call. Second time I kept desperately pressing the accept button, and it eventually answered.

Cut and paste is getting flakey; occasionally it won't let me select just a bit of text; only a whole paragraph or nothing. Or I copy okay, but it won't paste.

Also on Tweetie, I can't get the cursor to before the RT, unless I swap to landscape mode.

The phone keeps switching itself off on its own accord, its getting quite frequent, sometimes it does it when its sitting beside me doing nothing. Not good apple not good.

On a positive, battery life has been excellent recently. It's still a brilliant phone.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Crazy drivers

There are some crazy drivers; I drove past Progress Road lights, to see lots of worried shouting people at the side of the road on cellphones. In the layby ahead were their cars and additional worried looking cellphone people. I quickly realised there was an old fellow, not moving, lying face down on the side of the road. I'm guessing one of the cellphone people hit him with their car. They looked like the had it covered. I hope he is okay.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Trolley dent

Driving past Sainsburys in Southend, I heard a loud bang from the rear passenger side. I thought I'd hit something! I pulled over to see a trolley travelling along on its own accord across the road, which the wind had pushed into my car as I drove along. I now have a lovely dent in my car :-(


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Crazy pedestrians

There are some crazy pedestrians, 2 teenagers walked out into the road, 40mph limit, oblivious I was coming, I did an emergency stop, they just looked at me and carried on walking slow. I was too scared to then beep them incase they reacted and try and do something to my car!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Lucie shouldn't have gone on X Factor

Lucie you were the best thing to happen to the X Factor since Leona, in fact I prefer your voice. I think people thought you were safe, I'm so sorry I didn't vote this week. People can go from most votes to bottom, like Jedward. Leon Jackson was bottom 2 one week then won it. You were main competition, hense Simon's critisms, and saving Jedward. Shame on Simon. I wish there was a way to vote you back on Lucie.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Positive psychology

I attended an hours training course on positive pyschology. The items that make us happy and that make us less happy were really interesting.

More attractive people aren't happier

Having kids does not make you happier

Winning the lottery makes you less happy

Married people are happier

Money has no relation to happiness.

Interestingly from analysis of nuns entrance letters, happiness adds 9.4 years to your life.

Your health has no relation to how happy you are; its about how healthy you think you are; or how positive you think about your health; cancer patients can choose to be happy.

Things you can do to make yourself happier;

Excersise and relax often

Provide gratitude and thanks to others

Do random acts of kindness

Do things to help people out or the community out.

And apparantly happiness is not about doing things you enjoy; but enjoying the things you have to do.


-- Posted from my iPhone

May the vacation begin

9 days from work. First proper vacation since Christmas. Left work early (only fair considering the extra hours I've done), driving home, remembered I left food in work fridge, drove back to work :-(

Back at home, I managed to phone two friends in the middle of meetings, its happened to me before, but I don't recall doing it to anyone else.

My plan, a weekend of doing nothing but TV and movies, and then we'll see after that.

I settled down for some V+ catch up;






- Flash Forward - I'm really enjoying this, I can't wait to find out why it happened.






- Good Will Hunting - I always forget what an excellent film this is. Please someone buy it for me.






- Bullit - OMG I've got ADHD just kept finding myself on Twitter. Great car chase though



- Ali - Will Smith was incredible in this. I felt very disatisfied by this film though, long dialogless sections intersected with people singing in clubs, it explained very little, it looks like he treated women pretty badly. I felt I didn't really learn much else about him in the film. How did they manage to give away so little in 3 hours?

There was also a visit from my Dad who was in a very good mood after a night out with friends. I decided to feed him my chocolate cake, and eat lots of it myself :-)


-- Posted from my iPhone

Traffic Apocalipse

The M25 was closed tonight, I drove over it on my way home from from Corbets Tey and it wasn't moving anti-clockwise.






I looked at the A127 southend bound and that wasn't really moving, so I thought I'd go up Bird Lane, via Warley Herongate and The Old Dog to Dunton. That was a very silly idea.



There was a car crash on Great Warley Road and the traffic wasn't moving. 15 minutes later I was heading down Bird Lane. It was bonkers i've never known so much traffic trying to get both ways along Bird Lane.

It took a long time to get down Bird Lane. The end bit was one way, and I don't see the cars going the other way getting down there. They are probably still waiting there! It was very close to blocking up completely...

I probably should have stuck the A127 out. My whole trip took me 50 minutes for a 20 minute journey :-(

On the radio they said the accident closed the M25 at 11.00 this morning. I hope everyone is okay, how bad must it have been to take 7 hours and still not be re-opened?


-- Posted from my iPhone

Intelagos 2009 F1

What a great race IMO.



So much happened; crashes, safety car, fire in the pitlane! Overtaking, overtaking, overtaking, Webber won, hamilton got podium from near back of grid and BUTTON WORLD CHAMPION!! and what a ballsy drive!



I had to watch it on 5 minute Sky+ delay. Then halfway through someone accidently changed the channel. "What have you done!!!" I exclaimed, though it was quickly rectified. It is a very serious thing when someone does a remote fail, especially when watching live sports!

Canabalt - iPhone game review

In the game Canabalt on the iPhone there is an alien invasion and you're trying to escape the aliens And collapsing buildings by running along the roof tops.

All you have to do is jump with a swipe gesture; the bigger the swipe the bigger the jump. Hitting things slows you down, hitting a bomb kills you, and falling to your death is bad also.



It is beautiful, sounds great, perfect simplistic controls. Very addictive, though a little bit frustrating if you keep dieing quickly. When you build up momentum it feels brilliant, like Sonic speed.

A fantastic game.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Can animals see ghosts?

Can animals see ghosts?

The evidence;

1) My cat was sat in the corner staring at the corner of the room. She must have been staring at a ghost.

2) My grandad's dog used to go mental when he walked past part of a building at an army barrocks. He later found out there had been an archway there where people were hung. The dog must have been seeing ghosts coming through the bricked up archway.

So its conclusive right?

-- Posted from my iPhone

Choosing a company name

I didn't anticipate how hard this was going to be. The problem is all the good names seem to have been taken.

What I did was first find a word that I liked, but found it was already taken as a URL.

So then I tried combing other words with it. I came up with loads of really good names, but the majority unfortunately were taken or were parked (where someone buys a URL with the intent of reselling it for a profit). However I did get one name I really liked.

My sister thought it was too many syllables though.

So I got a list of 1 and 2 syllable words and started combining. Couldn't find one that fitted my company though. Thought up some really good ones that weren't taken, thinking of doing my own parking.

Gave up and went back to the "sister says it's too long" one.

The whole process took me about 4 or 5 hours! I recon there's a business opportunity or two in here.


-- Posted from my iPhone

iPhone wish list - 21 wants

Here is a list of 21 items that I would like for the next iPhone; new features, enhancements, app changes, etc.

1. OLED screen, because it would look even more beautiful

2. Be able to save images that are in facebook, currently all you can do is copy them.

3. Fully funtional Google Docs

4. Full Flash support, I wish Apple would rethink their policy and allow this.

5. Apps allowed to run in the background. Actually the only ones I want to run in the background are music apps; radio, lastfm or spotify. I don't really need other apps in the background.

6. Allow me to have more than 4 buttons along the bottom of the home screen.

7. Allow me to put an image behind the home screen.

8. Fix voice control. No matter how hard I try, asking to play music always calls someone from my contacts!

9. 02 improve the signal and bandwidth, I guess this will be resolved with making it available on Orange and Vodafine.

10. Maintain zooming into next page I load would be nice. For example I have zoomed in to read an article, when I page next, I wish it wasn't zoomed out again on loading the next page.

11. I wish it would remember my log in details on websites on Safari.

12. I wish I could organise my bookmarks within Safari on the iPhone.

13. Have a zoom built into the camera.

14. Be able to manually swap the screen alignment between portrait and lanscape, for times when it gets confused.

15. Be able to go instantly into camera mode with a single button or gesture or switch. Rather than 1) turn on 2) unlock 3) enter pin 4) navigate to camera icon 5) load camera app 6) take picture. It is impossible to take a picture instantly, and it's very easy to miss things whilst you get to the camera.

16. Longer battery life. I wish the iPhone could last a week without a charge. My 3GS currently lasts 2 days with low usage. But with heavy usage it only lasts a day e.g. On a recent trip to London I was using several apps, GPS, Twitter, Safari, text messages, phonecalls and voice mail all day. However I didn't play music or video or play any games. If I had it wouldn't have lasted.

17. Be able to cancel text messages whilst the sending bar is progressing. The number of times autocorrect has got me into trouble...

18. Be able to edit the autocorrect list. Why does kev get autocorrected to keV?!

19. Better solution to autocorrect; I am always retyping stuff that got incorrectly autocorrected, and I forgot to cancel the autocorrection.

20. On clicking on phone numbers, rather than ring the number, let me choose what to do; call, text, add to contacts, copy, etc.

21. A solution to having no physical control pad for games. I'm not offering a solution, but there is quite a limitation to what games work om the iPhone. Playing something like Sonic The Hedgehog with a virtual d-pad and buttons is not fun.

That's my 21. wants for the iPhone, what about you? Checkout this site, a wonderful site dedicated to what people want for their iPhone.

http://pleasefixtheiphone.com/problems/iphone_homepage/ (best viewed on your iPhone)


-- Posted from my iPhone

Don't stop yourself sneezing

I now know why it's a good idea not to stop yourself sneezing. At the BCS evening after doing that, my throat suddenly got dry and painful. Coughing wasn't clearing it, and the only exit was the central isle, blocked by the chap who was speaking.

I had no water and I only a box of tik taks. A combination of chewing loads of tik taks and blowing my nose sorted out the problem.

Sneezing is brilliant, but not in front of other people. I proceeded to sneeze as soon as I could step away from the group after the lecture had finished.


-- Posted from my iPhone

My little niece

Holding and playing with my little 5 month old niece this afternoon, I had her over my shoulder and I was bouncing her a bit and singing lots of songs to her.

She fell asleep! I then sat down and she stayed sleeping on me for about 45 minutes. That was amazing!!


-- Posted from my iPhone

Trying to embed video

Okay I took the embed code from somewhere else and added the video code to it. Will it work?



Yeah this worked. Check out this video, these group of kids are absolutely awesome muscians. I love this video.
-- Posted from my iPhone

Allow hyperlinks?

Does this allow hyperlinks? Test

Selfish pig

Check out these cartoons, they are very funny :-) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/6255182/Selfish-Pigs-by-Andy-Riley-creator-of-The-Bunny-Suicides.html

Oliver medley

Oliver medley from Southend windband at the Southend bandstand at Priory park;

I love apple strudel and custard

Before:


After:

Adding Tweets to blogger

Awesome, adding tweets to your blogger feed is really easy. Just got to www.twitter.com/badges and follow the simple instructions.

Header/title returns

I've added the title as it acts as a link back to the front page... so maybe I'll remove the Kev's Web text in the image, or maybe I won't.

Comments don't seem to be work... maybe I'll try again later.

The video renders correctly. That's therefore a nice touch that you can upload video - but embedding youtube videos is actually perfect!

How about adding video?

Tried the video, unfortunately it wants me to upload a video. Lets try embedding a youtube video;

Testing adding some media to the post

Lets try out the web interface. Okay, so I can add a link eg. to www.kevingordon.org.uk. And then I can add an image?

This was from an image on flick, and how about uploading an image;


Yeah its fine, but always adds the images to the top, and you then have to edit the html to place them in the correct place.

Customising the blog

Cool, you can customise blogger using layout and playing around with the css. Harder than I thought it was going to be to get the header as I wanted it (hiding the header text, as my header title is embedded in the header image). So use "display: none" on .titlewrapper in the css (you'll have to add this).

District 9 and drivers moan

District 9 was an awesome movie, I'm so glad I got to watch it. The story was fast paced and kept me guessing.

I was so rooting for the main chap and the aliens. Other humans were rubbish (as in kinda evil rubbish, not crap rubbish)!

Some drivers puzzle me, some scare me.

At the end of my road a car could have waited to let me go; rather it squeezed past me, forcing me on to the pavement.

There was a car - a car and a halves length in front in the middle lane of the 3 lane part of the A13. This car I am soon to overtake. A car then comes acclerating up from the left, overtaking through the rapidly decreasing gap between me and car I am overtaking. The danger they put all 3 cars in, and everyone behind us!

I have a new found respect for London drivers. London pedestrians have no respect for drivers. Two emergency stops and one quick avoiding action were required during my first short adventure.

Lights take 5 minutes to cycle round, only to stay on green for 10 seconds; when the slowest walker comes in front of your car, argh!!

Totally respect the beeping now.

Taxes argh!

A kind of alcohol, induced putting the world to right evening, I'll spare you our solutions, but here is my rant.

I'm inflamed with how much tax I pay. I would be happy if I saw something for it.

But trains are pretty poor (they'll always being replaced by buses), tube is always getting cancelled, unairconditioned and standing room only. Roads are suffocating with traffic.

I came out of uni with massive dept. Schools only help the average, so when I fell behind, parents had to pay for private tuition, or end up with an uneducated son.

NHS has never worked for me when I've needed it, so I end up paying privately. Same goes for others in the family, where we can afford it. NHS dentist, what's that?

Then we pay tax on everthing we buy, and then we pay tax on everything when we die.

Where is all this tax going? Really?

Blogpress

Found Blogpress, it looks far more promising.

Blogwriter iPhone

Blogwriter is a bit pants, need another app.

TGI Fridays

We went in TGI Fridays, had to wait for table. After a while, I asked when a table would be ready.

Suddenly our table was ready. They sat us in the corner of the conservatory by a draft away from everyone except an obnoxious family.

Was that punishment for being impatient? Should I have said something?

Where have my posts gone?

Where?

Creating via blog app

There is an app for that. Trying lite version to check it works. Looks like you can't format it though.

Or maybe that's in the paid version.

Kev's web arrives at blogger

Created on an iPhone, compose doesn't work that well. I wonder if there is an app for that?