My Blog ThingWe have what can only really be described as bible boasters coming down my way next week for a week-long conference. A whole week on biblical literature. Sounds about as exciting as watching the X-Factor whilst listening to paint dry. Which, I suppose, is better than watching paint dry whilst listening to the X-Factor.
Still, I have found the perfect lapel pin to wear for the week to let people know how I feel:
Yes yes, I know this looks like a news post. But it isn’t.
Turns out a coroner has stated that the turning off of a speed camera played a major role in the death of a 19-year-old in Somerset. From the BBC News article:
A Somerset coroner has said the turning off of a speed camera was a significant factor in a fatal car crash.
In a letter to the county council, West Somerset coroner Michael Rose said the death of 19-year-old Billy Davis “in part may have been prevented”.
Mr Davis died on the A370 at East Brent in September 2010 near a camera which had been disabled weeks earlier.
Now, any regulars to this blog will know that I am not all that keen on speed cameras. Maybe some of you are thinking that I may be about to rescind my previous comments and agree that yes, speed cameras can save lives.
But take a look at the paragraph that follows that quote above.
An inquest found Mr Davis had been one-and-a-half times over the drink-drive limit when he died and had been driving at speeds between 60mph to 70mph in a 40mph area.
Right. So what we appear to be claiming now is that speed cameras can detect drunk drivers or that an intoxicated driver will be able to slow down and react safely when he unexpectedly comes across a speed camera.
It is far more likely that a speed camera would have expedited the death of the chap in question. A drunk driver slamming on the breaks would lose control and is more likely crash into the camera than be saved by it.
It’s an increasing problem that no-one in this country seems to want to take responsibility for their own actions. It is really rather worrying however when a coroner of all people seems to think that the blame for an accident lies with the as much with the lack of a speed camera as with a drunk driver going at almost twice the speed limit.
We’re now up to quadruple chocolate cookies.
Not just cookies. Super quadruple megaultrachocolate flavoured cookies.
It’s only a matter of time before they have to start branding them as cookie flavoured chocolates, rather than the other way round.
One of the nice background features of the software that powers this blog is the ability to see a variety of stats for site visits. I can see the number of visitors, what posts have been viewed, the other webpages people were on when they followed a link to this site (in other words, mainly Facebook) and search engine terms that have directed people to this site.
I check this stats page periodically to satisfy my curiosity. Sometimes, however, the page only serves to pique that curiosity.
For instance, here is the Google search terms that have apparently brought people to this site over the last seven days:
Ignore for a moment the slightly depressingly low view counts, and take a closer look at the terms that led people here. See anything?
Let’s highlight the part in question if you’re having trouble.
Right. Now who the heck was looking for that? And why the heck would you want to?
Every so often, my mind will take a situation I’m in, insert a hypothetical comment or action by someone (usually something that’s confrontational in some way), then run with the whole conversation.
Take the other day, for example (well, due to my peculiar drafting process and a inadvertent hiatus from this site, ‘the other day’ was in fact over two months ago, but still, that’s not strictly relevant to this post). On the way home I cycled past an ambulance that had seen to a crash of some sort just by the stadium. Wondering if they might chastise me for my lack of helmet, my mind then envisaged one of them mentioning me not wearing a helmet, then carried on the conversation with my response:
“Quit complaining; I’m a registered organ donor!”
At the point I became consciously aware that I was doing it, and stopped. But sometimes it gets carried away, and I end up getting angry at someone for something they haven’t done.
It happens quite a lot at work, where someone has phoned up asking for assistance, and in the time it’s taken me to walk to the room in question I’ve already run through the events in my mind of what’ll happen when I get there. Usually I end up disappointed because I’ve shown up ready for a fight with someone who’s being unreasonable, and they end up being a sweet old lady with arthritis who can’t operate the remote control, or some such thing (well okay, it’s not often that bad, but you get the idea).
Sometimes I do the same thing, but instead of getting ready for a fight, I’ll successfully get a red-light-running cyclist into a hammerlock until the police arrive, or some such thing.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that most men do this.
Right?
Well, as you may have noticed, I’ve just managed to – entirely accidentally – go an entire month without making a post. A very disappointing turn after managing to average over a post a day in March.
I could lay the blame on many things; drafts not coming together properly, my new job occupying more of my time than I intended, a lack of inspiration, tiredness, an iPad that distracted me more than I expected it to – so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. It’s all their fault.
Still, I have a handful of drafts with merit in them, and hopefully I’ll be able to find the inspiration that I’ve temporarily misplaced. Let’s see if I can at least get a post a week out in May.
Maybe.
Rob
One thing I have learnt since starting to cycle more: everyone on the road is a cock.
I used to lump just cyclists into that category. They are, after all, quite the menace in central London where a significant proportion of them ignore traffic lights, zebra crossings and most other things that tell them to stop, presumably under some misguided notion that what they’re doing is saving the planet. Or maybe they’re just impatient bastards.
Of course, cyclists will tell you that white van men are the bastards. They’ll also tell you that bus drivers are basically white van men with government backing.
For me, the worst people on the road in central London are the taxi drivers. They block bus lanes, drive like they’re cyclists with four wheels, and have that same high-and mighty attitude that irks me so about cyclists.
This post isn’t about London, however, nor who I hate most on the road. As I said, I hate all of them. I can say this categorically as I have spent quite an amount of time as a pedestrian, a cyclist, a car driver, a van driver, and a bus passenger. I’ve seen it from most sides.
The main problem is that everyone on the road – from buses and vans down to cyclists and pedestrians – are all out for themselves. They seem to forget that for just about every situation, someone has a right of way.
I’m the sort of person that will take a risk in order to enforce his right of way. I’ve stared down buses at zebra crossings, had collisions with cyclists and near misses with cars. I also like to go out of my way to remind people exactly who has right of way in any given situation.
I do find this sometimes annoys people. One cyclist who ran a red right in front of me a couple of years ago received a copy of the London Lite to his face as he cycled past. This upset him so much he threw his bicycle at me.
Take last Friday morning too. This time I was the cyclist, and the pedestrian was the one on the receiving end. One the way to the station, there is a left turn into a side road where the cycle racks – and station car park – are located. Now, I know that, if a vehicle is turning into a side road and there are pedestrians crossing, the pedestrians have right of way. As I approached the side road, there was a woman walking along, heading towards the junction. I signalled courteously and kept my hand out whilst waiting for her to look around prior to crossing the road, in keeping with the green cross code.
She didn’t.
As luck would have it, the timing of both our journeys also meant that we would both be occupying the end of the side road at the same time. And she still hadn’t looked around to see if something was coming. So I decided to ‘ping’ her to teach her a lesson. I made a point of cycling in front of her and let out a ring of my bell as I passed.
With a start she jumped out of the little world of her own she was occupying, and entered the real world.
“What are you doing, you idiot?!” she exclaimed in an Eastern European accent of some ilk, before waffling on about how I was the vehicle and as such she had right of way. I tried to explain to her that the road was by definition the place for vehicles, not pedestrians, but she was having none of it.
So ultimately, I came across looking like a cock cyclist to this dozy cow, despite me being perfectly in my rights to do what I did. As for the woman, next time she doesn’t look before crossing the road it’ll be a lorry she ignores, and she’ll only have herself to blame.
I don’t have encounters like this that often any more. Time was I would go out looking for trouble like this; deliberately pausing in front of a cyclist who was about to run a red light so he’d have to avoid me, for instance. However when I began to try to curtail my anger late last year I stopped doing it, and after that they dropped in frequency. I still have them from time to time – not long after I decided I would stop baiting cyclists I made the mistake of crossing the road at a pelican without looking out for bikes, and got hit by one – but these days they find me.
I’ll still enforce my right of way to the last, though.
As may be coming gradually clearer from the type of posts I’ve made there recently (as well as the existence of this place), for a variety of reasons I’m trying to take a step back from Facebook. Just a step, mind.
Why am I doing this? The main reason is that, although I am not as addicted to Facebook as some people, I still ultimately live my life though it. If go out and take pictures somewhere, or find a funny link, or think of an amusing use of the word cockwaffle, then Facebook is the only place to know. As far as I’m concerned, that’s living my life through Facebook, even if I’m not glued to the computer 24/7 waiting for updates from people I hardly know (although another part of the reason for that is I’m pretty strict about who I actually add as a friend, which is why my friend count is 51, not, er, 60).
So, I’ve decided that Facebook is no longer going to be my life, just a window into it. My photos, videos and ramblings will no longer be put directly onto Facebook; they’ll be put onto this site, or one of my other blogs (listed here), and the link will be put on Facebook (much like I currently do with Instagram).
What good will this do? Well, primarily I believe it will help me keep active by actually updating them regularly. If I don’t put anything on Facebook, it’ll carry on without me; these blogs will not. It also allows me to take a little more pride in my work by putting it on the wider web (suitably watermarked, of course) where I can let anybody see it, and allows me to build up a publicly viewable portfolio of my stuff. It also protects my photography against sudden changes to the terms of use of Facebook, which could suddenly see their copyright whisked away from me (a slightly drastic sounding scenario I know, but Facebook have made several alarming moves in that direction over the last few years).
It also allows me to own and manage my own webspace, albeit one powered by WordPress. I’m still exploring various other ways of making use of this domain which include having blogs as part of the webpage, not the main webpage, but for now this is the way I’m running it, and I like it.
Whether in the future I return to Facebook with my tail between my legs, or drop off from Facebook all together, I’m excited about the possibilities.
My Blog Thing 