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Friday 28 April 2006

Surreal event of the day

HEMS (Helecopter Emergency Medical Service) landing in the playground outside my house. The black car to its right is mine, which led to a hairy moment when I thought it might land in the street. They were responding to an accident which had closed Essex Road in the Friday-before-Bank-Holiday Rush Hour and left a row of buses (at my count) 50 long.

Posted by dustbinman at 05:47 PM | Comments (2)

Sunday 11 September 2005

Filling a gap

Thought I'd better post something here, as the last entry shows me up to be one of those crazy arsed conspiracy theorists the internet is famous for, along with all the predatory males. If you believe the Daily Mail, that is.

So, here it is. Gap filled.

I may return when the house alterations are complete and my trusty old computer is back in action.

In the meantime, here is some music.

Posted by dustbinman at 05:05 PM | Comments (2)

Thursday 21 April 2005

About Dustbinman

Dustbinman is a 34 year-old English idiot who's in the fortunate position to be getting married (twice) this year to a wonderful girl from Calcutta. 'A wonderful girl from Calcutta' sounds like the first line of a limerick, and trust me, many have been written, but I won't repeat them here.

Professionally I'm a consultant at the interface between IT and Transport, and if that sounds like a pretentious description, then you're not far off. Unfortunately, however, that's what I do. I'm also involved in a music publishing collective that will soon dominate the world in the way that Sony-BMG does at the moment. But more of that as it progresses.

I live in London, just off Essex Road in Islington's lovely northern reaches. It's also close to the hilariously named Balls Pond Road, which I only recently discovered is named after a pub run by Mr Balls, who had a pond out the back where people could go and have a pot-shot at the various ducks and geese that frequented it. Honest!

I have a sister, some nieces and a brother who is going to be very famous soon. Stay tuned for progress updates.

Posted by dustbinman at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Thursday 13 January 2005

Come fly the friendly skies

I suppose under the freedom of information act, I should release the following.

London, 11th January 2004. Weather: Clear. Winds, from the North West. Approx 90mph (Storm force 10.)

By some miracle, I was booked on the only flight out of Aberdeen that night which didn't get cancelled. We board, and the pilot jocularly warns us that it's going to be a bumpy ride. The attendants speak extra slowly when doing the safety announcements, and the tannoy gets louder as the demonstration progresses, to the point that at the end of her speech the squealing feedback is getting a little annoying.

The first spot of turbulence hit the plane before we even backed away from the terminal. Seriously. Stationary Airbus A320 (or whatever), shaking around like anything. Ah well. We take off. It is bumpy. Very bumpy. The stewardess begins an attempt at inflight service, at which point there's a huge bump, she falls flat on her face, and all the oxygen masks drop down from the ceiling.

How funny, we all thought. The turbulence is so bad it's knocked the oxygen masks out of their housings. Heh.

A minute later, in a 'trying to be calm but somewhat higher pitched than during the safety announcement' purser switches on the intercom and advises us that actually we should be putting the safety masks on, to cover our noses and mouths, and to breathe normally. Eeek. At this point, I notice a rather strange smell. Like something burning. It really does smell like something is burning. I look out of the window at the engine on my side, and to my relief note that it isn't on fire.

After a couple of minutes, I notice that the guy on the opposite row to me is asleep, and consequently hasn't put his mask on. I throw a magazine at him, smile, and wave the spare mask from the seat next to me at him. He gets the message. The plane is bumping around, and I notice, now circling. (Despite the high winds the skies were eerily clear.)

The tension in the air is palpable. As is the smell. As is the irregular change in the noise from the engine. A burst of thrust, followed by a noticeable lift, followed by silence associated with a noticable drop in altitude. This happens a few times. Then we seem to level out, and we're not circling any more. The purser comes back on the intercom to tell us, in a slightly more relaxed tone, that everything is now fine.

The thought process that goes through ones head is quite telling. First, it's the settlement with yourself that if you do die, everything has been fine and you're happy and it couldn't happen at a better moment. Then you begin to look for reasons. Did the pilot sound drunk when he welcomed us on board? Now I come to think of it, maybe he did. Oh my god, we're all going to die because of a pilot who enjoys Jack Daniels. And he was American. This is all retribution. There's an American Republican Cell who are sending in suicide pilots to get their own back on us lily-livered liberals! Argh! Panic!

Of course, we landed safely, although the dangling oxygen masks do precisely emphasise the movement of the plane, which you don't normally notice. It makes the landing more real, you know?

The smell, as the obviously Democrat pilot pointed out after landing, was because the safety masks had never been activated on this plane before, and you always get a bit of a carbon smell from the vents that are exposed when the panels drop down. And he kindly explained, once we were safe on the ground, that there'd been a small problem with cabin pressurisation. i.e. There wasn't any for a bit. But then there was again.

And so endeth one of the scarier 75 minutes of my life.

Posted by dustbinman at 10:54 PM | Comments (2)

Tuesday 11 January 2005

A touch of Wind

So I find myself sat in the departure lounge at Aberdeen Airport, with this going off outside. Now I have suddenly had a really important meeting arranged for me tomorrow in London at early o'clock, and I suspect I'm not going to be there. Joy. However, I did get to experience the elements on the top of a hill halfway between here and Inverness, in a specially cleared area that the Forestry Commission are going to plant with 'native' trees, rather than the bloody awful fast-growing easily removed conifers that carpet half of Scotland at the moment. And it was extraordinary. I've never been so far north in these little islands before. And me without my camera. The one on my phone is just not up to the job.

Posted by dustbinman at 06:13 PM | Comments (2)

Sunday 9 January 2005

HBTM

Had a marvellous day/night out in London - Therefore I thoroughly recommend you eat here (The Mango Tree, Grosvenor Place) and see this (Fully Committed, at the Arts Theatre).

Posted by dustbinman at 11:19 AM | Comments (2)

Thursday 23 December 2004

Well - here we go, I suppose

It's been too long. It all came crashing down when I foolishly tried to update Movable Type to version 3. Ah well. If anyone knows a way of importing an SQL backup into a new database which may or may not have the same tables and structure, please let me know!

I'm sitting at home doing this when I really should be doing other things. Like Christmas Shopping. Or work. But I can multi-task and do laundry while I'm attempting to get this up and running, I suppose.

It's nice to have access to this little box again.

I thought I'd better pop in and say Merry Christmas, for those of us that celebrate the birth of an unprovable son of an unprovable god.

Proof is not easy to come by. But there are a few things I can be sure of.

There are about 70 planets that we can be fairly sure exist. And, by best estimates, an infinite number that we're not sure exist. One of them is just the right distance from a sun that's just the right temperature to allow the fusion of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and about 15 other basic elements into approximately 15 million types of life form. To enable this to happen, the planet has a magnetic outer core which repels enough space junk and holds certain chemicals in place to withstand the more harmful elements that the universe throws at it. The fact that a large part of the centre of the planet is liquid ensures that the cooled outer crust moves around and creates mountains and other pleasing ripples that keep the sea out. If they didn't, the whole planet would be covered in 4km of water. There might be life, but it wouldn't have arms, legs, oxygen breathing lungs and CNN. There's a moon which is just the right size and distance away to hold everything in place, and is only there because about 4 billion years ago an object the size of Mars slammed into the planet, jetissoning a perfect-sized chunk into nearby orbit. Only about 33% of the surface of the planet is dry land, and only 12% of that is habitable for these strange 2 legged creatures. And Of the 8 billion years of existence, only about 2% of that has been a time that is habitable by these weirdos.*

I'll ignore the fact that despite incredible odds, we're here, and yet still seem intent on fucking things up.

Is it all just a crazy-arsed coincidence? I don't know, but because nobody has had the guts to take responsibility for it, I'm going to assume that it was.

And I'm going to appreciate it.

So, for whatever reason, 25th of December is as good a day as any to have a bloody good party.

*Any or all of the Scientific "facts" presented here could be utterly wrong due to the author's dodgy memory.

Posted by dustbinman at 09:52 AM | Comments (3)