Systeme D

The ten most terrible characters in the Archers

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:04:32 GMT

1. Will

My liberal-left consience cautions me against using such an awful, snobby word as "chav", but Will vaults past the remains of my conscience - and the nagging doubts that this is radio and you can't actually see what he looks like - to win first prize as a jug-eared, permanently aggrieved, buck-toothed, gormless little chav. His hands-off-my-precious-little-spoilt-brat attitude is so overblown it almost verges on comedy. As I finish this blog post while listening to this evening's episode of the Archers, I've actually promoted Will two places on the basis of his full-tilt rant about Ed: "Couldn't leave it, could he? Couldn't bear to see me happy. He won't stop until I've got nothing left to live for." Er, hate to break it to you, Will, but not everyone thinks you're as important as you yourself do.

2. Pat

Sanctimonious, loud-mouthed old boot and unquestionably winner of the "person you would least like as your neighbour" award. Has managed the achievement of making me cheer on pantomime villain Matt Crawford in his efforts to sell off their cottage. With any luck Pat will do something highly illegal in her efforts to resist and get an ASBO for the privilege (you can have that idea for free, scriptwriters). Deportation to Australia would be better still.

3. Amy

According to the Archers website: "Her feistiness, though charming, can take her beyond the boundaries of good behaviour"... "Amy can get into scrapes when driven by her highly developed sense of justice"... "nutty about horses". Which is all very polite but "self-righteous, utter gobshite who only appears every six months and still manages to be intensely annoying" is more how I'd phrase it.

4. Usha

Was insufferably prissy and well-what-do-you-expect when Ruth was having the whole Sam/David trauma. Then as soon as she runs into trouble herself (over the wedding and the odd misplaced comment by Shula, hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer herself), becomes helpless and needy and oh-everyone-else-has-to-look-after-me. Gah.

5. Tony

It's not clear whether Pat was turned awful by marriage to uber-dullard Tony, or whether Tony was turned dismal by marriage to Pat, or, oh, I can't be bothered with this. Even just writing about Tony takes it out of you. Without doubt Tony reads the Daily Mail - actually, no, I suspect Tony never had the get-up-and-go to change from the Express.

6. Susan

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

7. Tom

Being bereft of telly I don't actually watch The Apprentice, so do tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing Tom would fit right in: self-assured verging on arrogant, had a fairly average business idea which he's pushing forward in oh-you-seem-to-have-substituted-a-bulldozer-for-your-personality fashion, and loves the sound of his own voice. Tom has a knack of sounding reasonable, pleasant even, for three-episode stretches until then doing something really obnoxious (e.g. kicking off about Mike's house) that causes you to punch your radio quite hard. (Clearly I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect here. The only time I've ever hit a radio was about 18 years ago when Virginia Bottomley was on the Today programme.)

8. Brian

It's too easy to nominate Brian as a terrible character and I really tried to resist. I quite like Brian really. Generally he adds to the gaiety of nations, roughly in the same way that, say, Mussolini did. But, really. Putting up a memorial stone to Siobhan in Ambridge is the sort of thing that makes you blink and ask "Did he really just suggest that?". I'm now half expecting him to ask Jennifer to rename herself Siobhan by deed poll (again, scriptwriters, that's my present to you).

9. Emma

Oh, but Emma is just a drip. It's not so much that she's annoying per se, it's just utterly bemusing how Ed could dump Fallon, who rocks and could clearly drink the entire cast under the table (possibly with the exception of Lilian), for Emma, who would like to be a space cadet if only she had the force of personality. Note to Archers nerds: yes I know technically Fallon dumped Ed. You know what I mean.

10. Bert Fry

This is unfair. I'm sorry, Bert, I don't mean it. It's just that if they're going to devote airtime to a bumbling old duffer with a comedy rural accent, I'd far rather that it was conniving, drunk, incompetent, hilarious Joe Grundy than innocuous-and-really-a-bit-boring old Bert.

Appendix

People (sorry, I meant "characters". Of course I did) who definitely don't merit the list: Lynda Snell (who is superbly well observed), Matt Crawford (who is a hoot), Ruth (who is lovely despite what the Archers messageboard might think), Shula (who's just too dumb to be included). And Jazzer. Jazzer deserves an entire spin-off series. Ideally at 6.30 every Thursday and with Mark Watson in the starring role.

Huawei E220 on Mac OS X

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:57:44 GMT

A couple of tips to make the E220 3G USB modem work a bit less dreadfully on OS X. I suspect the missing tip is 'upgrading the internal firmware', which sadly can only be done from a Windows box.

Firstly, download the latest Mac drivers - at the time of writing, the April 2008 revision. These work with Leopard, seem to be a bit less prone to the "You have inserted a disc that cannot be read by this computer" alert, and crash less often. When I say "less", I mean you might get away with one kernal panic per week. If you're lucky.

Secondly, you might want to try setting it to "3G only". This works if you're staying in one place where the reception occasionally drops down to 2G, because on renegotiation, the Mac tends to lose connectivity for a minute or more. A 3G-only connection will go slowly and occasionally pause, but not suffer so many of the serious drop-outs.

To do this, open a terminal window, and type:

screen /dev/tty.HUAWEIMobile-Modem
ATSYSCFG=14,1,3FFFFFFF,2,4

then, to quit, ctrl-A, ctrl-\, and Y.

Thanks to Paul Sladen for drawing my attention to this page in the pub in Birmingham!

Boat design fun

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:31:17 GMT

Just completed the first version of our boat design utility on the Waterways World website. It's a fun drag-and-drop floorplan tool - in Flash, of course. (You need to register on the site to use it.)

There's the odd bit of code borrowed from Potlatch in there, notably the UI library. I was going to use this as my excuse to learn ActionScript 3 on a fairly lightweight project, but unfortunately the schedule (as ever) ended up a bit more compressed than it should be, so it's in AS1 as per usual. But I'm intending to refactor it to be used on one of our other sites at some point, so will probably do it then.

Obviously nowhere near as good as the Foxton Locks game, though...

When you leave your camera in a pub

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:58:37 GMT

...you have to be prepared for it to come back with photos like this on it.

Thank you, very much, to the wonderful Angel Inn in Grosmont (pork pies and local bottled cider a speciality) for keeping my camera safe.

Installing Ruby and MySQL on a G5 running Leopard

Wed, 21 May 2008 21:37:48 GMT

I'm coming to the conclusion that Leopard is no easier than Panther to install Unixy stuff on, and a whole load harder than Tiger. But after many fruitless hours last night trying to get Ruby and MySQL to talk to each other via the mysql gem, here's what I've now found.

The good news is that you can use the version of Ruby that ships with Leopard - no need to recompile.

However, for a G5 machine, you need to download the right version of MySQL. Not the version "for Mac OS 10.5", because this is Intel-only. And not the "64-bit PowerPC" version, though this might seem obvious.

No, you need to download and install the 32-bit PowerPC version for OS X 10.4. I know, I know, it's not exactly intuitive.

You can then install the Ruby mysql gem like this:

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch ppc" gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

Again, note ppc, not ppc64. You can then test that it works happily by going into irb and typing require 'mysql' - it should simply return true.

(Dear Mr Google, kindly index this post to save others the wasted hours I had trying to figure out how to install. Thanks awfy.)

More competition for PR person of the year

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:44:56 GMT

Andrew over at Granny Buttons occasionally writes - always entertainingly - about how the magazine world needs reinvention. Now in fairness to Andrew he's a very engaging cove and I'm sure is a rare exemplar of how PR people should carry out their business. But other than him, the PR world doesn't need reinvention, it needs taking outside and shooting (this blog, passim).

Given that CCD PR has now claimed the "Lifetime Achievement Award" for PR cluelessness, that still leaves the 2008 title wide open, and this week's nominee is a Yorkshire-based PR agency whose name I'll withhold... for now.

Until this week the 2008 award looked like a dead cert - see Portsmouth Poll over at Boating Business, who chronicles a particularly snitty little "why haven't you published my release yet IT'S VERY IMPORTANT" spraymail to the editors of several boating magazines. All of whom were in the cc: line, making it far too easy to make sure you could share the put-down with your fellow hacks. Hours of fun.

But this new entrant is making a surprise bid for the prize. The episode begins with a pretty dumbly-phrased enquiry - from their receptionist, so it's clearly a high-priority matter - about getting a reprint of a quarter-page feature we'd done.

"Our client had an editorial" NO THEY DIDN'T. We put stuff in the magazine because we think it'll interest the readers, not for the benefit of your client. If your client wants to "have" some space to get their message across, we have this interesting concept called "advertising". I recommend it.

"...in October or November last year, we think". Right. Thanks for that. "It was called ****** **** Boats". Er, that doesn't sound much like a headline we'd have used, but no matter.

So I search through the files and find an article in January referring to ****** **** Boats somewhere in it, which is close, I guess. Send PDF across and explain how we can sort them out a reprint of the whole article, or if they just want to whizz off a thousand colour copies on their laser, that saves us a lot of hassle and all we'd ask is an acknowledgement.

"Can you send me a copy of the magazine first class". Well, usually how this bit works is that you go down a newsagent, you give them £3.50 and they give you a magazine in exchange, but I haven't really got the energy to cause a fuss so yeah, go on then.

So this morning I get a follow-up e-mail.

"I didn't seem to receive a copy of the issue of Waterways World I had requested, did you send it first class?"

"Yes." (You're really endearing yourself here, Ms Receptionist - as you can imagine we're now going to be doubly keen to give your client "an editorial".)

"Ok, I haven't received it though, did you send it to the address below?"

"No, I thought I'd send it to 10 Downing Street for a laugh."

She's gone a bit quiet now. Gah.

Subversion for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:05 GMT

This is to remind me (and perhaps help others by noting) that a recent version, 1.4.4, in 10.3-friendly form can be found here.

I do dislike Subversion intensely, buggy heap of crap that it is, but 1.4.4 does seem marginally less evil than older versions. In particular, it allows you to rm .svn/all-wcprops to get round the infuriating version problem that keeps cropping up.

Still can't quite believe this one

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:39:00 GMT

We were over in Bisbrooke this weekend and Mum had Classic FM on.

There was some programme about 'The Stories Behind Your Favourite Music', where the idea was that they'd play the same music they always play, but preface each piece with a longer-than-usual background. It was "hosted" by John Suchet, though as any connoisseur of GCrap radio stations will recognise, he clearly drives into the studio a week beforehand, reads out the links, then it's all stitched together by the backroom guys before transmission.

Anyway, the first piece was Beethoven's Fur Elise. And he introduced it with this inordinate spiel about "this piece by Beethoven is, without a doubt, the most famous piece of piano music ever, and everyone who's ever played the piano will be able to play it". (By this time - he hadn't named it yet - both Mum and I were both expecting it to be the Moonlight Sonata. So much for "without a doubt".)

He then continues with this really snitty little homily about how Uneducated People call it "furr eleeze" when, as any fule apparently kno, it's "Fieeur El-EEEsuh", delivered in a terrible cod-Teutonic accent. Ok, whatever, I'll remember that next time I'm in Munchen.

Finally, it's time for the music and we're duly expecting to hear E-D#-E-D#-E-B-D-C-A, which is, as we now know, the most famous piece of piano music ever.

At which point an entirely different piece comes out the speakers.

A little bemused, we look at the whizzy scrolling display on the digital radio and it informs us that it's playing the Bagatelle No 4 in A Major. Ok, fine, the backroom guys cued the wrong track.

Three-and-a-bit minutes later Mr Suchet reappears to say "that was the most famous piece of piano music ever, Beethoven's Bagatelle No 4 in A Major, better known of course as Fieeur El-EEEsuh".

Hello?

I mean, ok, this is Classic FM, listeners may not expect the presenters to know the exact opus number - or, in this case, lack thereof - that's a bit Radio 3 territory. But they should at least, at least, get a slight feeling of unease when reading out a script that claims Fur Elise, the most famous piece of etc. etc., is in a major key. Especially if they've just lectured their listeners on a fairly minor matter like the pronunciation of the title.

Next week: John Suchet introduces Wagner's Ride of the Valkyrie Eleisons.

Blogging

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:41:30 GMT

WIll people (people I know, obviously) please stop starting blogs and not telling me about them. I mean. Tsk. Honestly. Pffrt.

I wouldn't mind so much but the one I've just stumbled upon describes me and Anna as "fiends [with a] narrowboat". It might be a fair description but if I'm going to be described as a fiend then I'd like to know about it.

Speaking of the narrowboat, I have recently installed a new piece of equipment:

Yes, it's a 20-litre cider tank. All I need now is for someone to invent a 20-litre bag-in-a-box pie dispenser and I'm sorted.

I've intermittently started twittering as richardf. I figure that, given that I update this blog once every two months or so, once every two weeks would be a good twitter cycle.

CCD PR are spamming wankers

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:14:41 GMT

Some excerpts from my Sent mail folder.

18 Sep 2007: "Please remove us from your list, none of these have anything to do with the content of our magazine. Thanks."
11 Oct 2007: "Please remove me from your mailing list."
13 Dec 2007: "Please remove me from your list, thanks."
29 Jan 2008: "Please please remove us from CCD's mailing list - much though we like getting press releases about leggy babes, neither this nor any of the other alternative health things you send us really have anything at all to do with canals. Thanks."
5 Feb 2008: "Please please take me off all your company's PR lists, none of this has anything to do with the subject of our magazine."

Has this stopped them? Has it my arse.

"Them" are CCD PR (Sarah Summerfield, Siarah Khan, Rachael Parkman), possibly the most clueless PR agency in world history. The five "please stop sending me this shit" e-mails above were sent in response to releases about Sage Organic St John's Wort, Naturtint sensitive hair colourant, Patch-it! ("placed on the soles of the feet overnight to stimulate healthy circulation"), Patch-it! again (which now apparently will "banish nasty drainage-clogging toxins out of your system to give you picture perfect pins"), and last of all, Zotrim, an "over-the-counter herbal formulation based on three South American herbs, that has been proven to boost satiety" (sorry, wtf is satiety?) "by delaying gastric emptying" ("gastric emptying"? is that "having a crap"?) "so you eat smaller portions at mealtimes and snack less between meals".

Needless to say, there is absolutely no chance of us printing anything based on these releases.

Some may feel that people like this deserve a mildly reproachful epithet such as "snake-oil salesmen" or "unprincipled charlatans". But, you know, I get several dozen unsolicited e-mails a day for "over-the-counter herbal formulations based on three South American herbs". I'm sure you do too. It's not generally called "PR". It's called spam, and the people who send it are called spamming wankers.