It’s all to easy to drone on… bla bla bla… PC (political correctness, just incase you thought I was geekin’ again!) has gone too far again… bla bla…

but it has!

The Barclays advert, where a guy gets stung by a bee has been pulled from TV!!!

The reasons I’m sad about this are not quite the obvious ones…

1) Bees DO sting, if we never show the consequences of a bee sting… how will children ever learn! No really… I’m serious! …do we start removing all danger from our TV screens???

2) “More than 20 people complained they or someone they knew had nearly died from an adverse reaction like the one shown.”

So what? Things happen in life, deal with it and move on people! I nearly got run over last week… do I want all car ads banned, showing drivers going faster than 20mph? No.. jeebus, if you’re that sensitive, to what is a light hearted advert, then its you that needs help pal.

Pandering to these kind of complaints is making us a nation of downtrodden wussies! (is that a real word? I dunno…)

3) “We noted that many people face the reality that they might suffer a severe allergic reaction to a bee or wasp sting and therefore, despite the farcical turn of events, the ad was offensive to them.”

How exactly was it offensive? Did it glorify bees stinging humans? Did it promote how to get stung??? No. If they’re still “suffering” from the trauma of a bee sting (which can be serious for people with anaphylaptic shock, granted) get counselling you loser!

4) The needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many!

What about all those people who laughed, chuckled and smiled when this ad was on TV? Life is far too serious n heavy to be removing light heartedness in any form from TV!!!

Depriving me of the ad, adversly affects my sanity… hmmm, I wonder if we could get more than 200 people to complain in that way? (add a comment below if you agree!)

So I have a cunning plan, this advert should not of been pulled… but, in light of the fact that nearly 200 people were affected by it, lets be sensible…

Channel 4 always amuses me with the way that following an episode of Hollyoaks, whatever has been an “issue”… death, pregnancy, drugs etc… they offer help and guidance on their website following the program. (we used to run a book, which issue would be the focus of help each episode)

How about a guideline that balances the humour of an ad with a URL for advice at the end?

The people traumatised by this ad NEED help!!!

rant over… hi how are you?

Not really sure what that topic means… it looked about right for what was in my head.

I’ve worked out one of the secrets to life, the universe and everything.

No really!

The appropriateness of your response, determines how the world reacts to you in any given circumstance and this response determines your action.

Bit heavy for a monday, i know, sorry…. had to get it out of my head though.

Think of any problem you’ve had or witnessed recently and think about what I put… tell me it aint true? You can even determine future events by the same thing.

It’s kind of an extension on my long held philosophy of life:

Things happen, its how you deal with it that counts.

…but taken a step further.

The more I think about this, the more I can apply it to things happening around me.

I can see a couple of people around me who are in relationships, where they are reacting to things dis-proportionately. That is to say, their response to behaviour from their other halves is out of scale to the actual behaviour….

an example: Case study G – A severe lack of self confidence, self worth and insecurity means that the slightest thing is taken to its worst extreme… an unreturned phone call, slightly outside the normal response time means they are convinced its over and their life will end! Conversely, they are so dependent upon this other person to validate them, that they are stretching beyond their means to shower the other half with affection and “love”… which I guarantee will lead to them making the other person feel smothered and end the relationship, within 2 months.

Hmmmm, I need to get on with some work now… might add a couple of other case studies later.

Wow, I just transcended to an almost zen level of geekiness.

It all started simply enough, transfered my pics fom camera to pc (more on them later) then I wanted to crop one of them and put it on my phone…

So this pic has gone…

Camera > USB > PC
PC > Ethernet > hub
hub > WiFi > Laptop
Laptop > Bluetooth > Phone

man, what a nerd.

thats not even the ubergeek part!!! (ubergeek is the new uberchic, ok kids?)

The bluetooth thingy on my laptop stopped working, ok, quick re-install, fixed it… then I noticed something… had a minor tinker, small bit of geeking later, now I can use my phone as a remote control for my laptop!

The joystick on my phone, moves the mouse pointer and the buttons on my phone perform left click, right click and other useful (how exactly is this usefull Luke?) functions.

WOW!!!!

to rephrase the simpsons:

Technology, is there anything they can’t do?

(although I prefer Homer’s “Celebrities, is there anything they can’t do!”)

anyway, better go now n sort out my tunes for tonight.

Hope y’all havin’ a good ol’ bank holiday! Yeeeehhaaaa…

(I like gigs where I’m playing as part of a free vodka tour… ut oh…)

Congratulations to Rob n Emma (wedding #2) pics’ll be online tomo.

oh and congrats to James n Dani who got engaged today… James you big softy!

Grrrrr…. I hate spam… all of it… this week, I’ve felt under attack!

Three main types:

1) Well meaning friends, who have moments of sheer stupidity!

There are some weird people in the world and while I think the internet is overall a good thing, have some common sense people…

If I sent you an email saying that aliens had landed, it must be true its been on CNN and AOL… would you:

a) Forward it on to everyone you know thinking, “wow it must be true… I mean Luke says so and he says its on CNN and AOL”

or

b) Have a look on BBC news and think, “what is he on about now!”

2) Email spam

Annoying… but for me, becoming less frequent thanks to Mozilla Thunderbird

I beg you, please… never, EVER, reply or follow links in email spam… that 1 in a million who do… mean we’re all still getting it. The easiest way to stop spam (and by that I mean, unsolicited emails) would be if everyone made sure no-one clicked onto their sites.

3) Blog comment spam

This blog is getting quite a lot of traffic now, if you search for certain things it appears on google… sadly this has also meant I’ve started having comment spam (you may of noticed some this morning if you were online).

I’ve installed another layer of anti-spam protection now, so fingers crossed its all sorted….

After 68 years of the smartie lid… they’re phasing them out this summer for a new haxagonal packaging

Normally, I’m not one to opose change for no real reason, but I love the smartie lid… I have so many fond memories of using them to make things with, collecting the letters on the lid to make my name… karate chopping an empty tube to see how far the lid would go.

To say goodbye, they are doing 5 limited edition lids, I must collect these!

Smarties/Nestle won my best consumer response ever about 3 years ago for a letter I sent to customer services.

Allow me to digress for a second… I worked as team leader in a technical call centre, one of my ways to break up time at the screen would be a wander to the vending machine for a fix of smarties… and so a tub of lids started filling up.. until I realised I had every letter except “u”!!!!

Try as hard as we could (team included) no “u” was available, so I emailed Smarties and asked if it existed.. after replying yes, they then offered me the lid as a valued customer!

I wrote back with my address and got a fantasticly well written note which I kept as I was so impressed, my faovurite sentence being along the lines of:

“We find children of all ages like to collect the lids…”
(their use of bold not mine )

So now I am sad… for smartie lids are no more. I must complete my set, with these limited edition lids before its too late!!! Any donations greatly accepted.

gold / pink / green / blue / red to go…