I Love Google Street View

I've just spent the quiet part of the night looking at where I grew up and where I went to school. Why the heck do all these A-holes complain that GSV constitutes an invasion of privacy? The faces of people are pixelated out as are car number plates; the cameras can only photograph what people walking on the same streets can see. The photographs are approximately 2 years old by the time they get on line so they are not actually going to let a burglar know that the property’s empty! If you like to stand bollock naked in the front window of your house, displaying all you have to all and sundry, then that’s your business but you can't subsequently complain about privacy issues. Private-Exhibitionist is an oxymoron; and by that I don't mean you’re a stupid cow although you may well be!

Anyway back to my original point, I haven’t really walked these streets for the best part of 35 years but GSV makes it seem like only yesterday when I did. It’s amazing to see what has stayed the same as I remember and what’s changed. The café we used to get hot dogs from after the Saturday morning cinema is still there! I don’t know how long it was there before I started going to those performances but as an ongoing concern that business must be at least 50 years old! People bitch on about Google at the moment, that’s the cost of being successful and big, but they miss the point. Whilst Google certainly seems to represent a license to print money; at it's heart it remains a nerd’s paradise. Filled with very clever people who just want to see what they can do. Who else would have put the time and money into GSV other than a bunch of nerdy geeks who wanted to know if it was possible to realise an extraordinary idea. Well it proved to be possible and it’s bloody fantastic so why don’t all you moaning minis just go *&%$ yourselves! It’s like having a visual diary, smell may be the strongest sense for recalling old memories but vision is a close second. As I walked the virtual streets images triggered memories I hadn’t thought about for decades. I’m going to trawl through all the places were important and meant something to me as a child and try and write down the recollections they trigger. Maybe these will trigger further recollections and so on and so on until I can remember much of what I’d thought forgotten. No generation before ours has ever had such an opportunity! So to the naysayer’s I say (to quote Frankie Howard) Nay, Nay and Thrice Nay you Bummers!!!!

Last Night....... Again!!!!!

It seems that yet another Yank went postal



yesterday, and ended up killing a dozen or so hapless victims. My question is, instead of shooting a load of innocent bystanders before killing themselves, why don't they just shoot themselves 12 or 13 times? I'd have thought that would be a far more intense final experience!

Answers, on a postcard, from any of you Son's of Bitches that they've managed to take alive!



On a very different note, I'm really pissed off with the British Press. Once again, in their haste to make a story out of nothing, they've possibly bolloxed something pretty amazing. I refer, of course, in this instant, to Google Street View, the navigation aid that's finally come to the UK and that many of us have been eagerly anticipating. Privacy (something they're happy to ignore when they're invading yours - 3 Cheers for Max Mosley - Whip Whip Don't Fray) they all scream whilst, yet again, inaccurately reporting a story.

I've over hear people tonight saying how they don't want people to be able to see them sunbathing in their back gardens - it's Google STREET View for fu*ks sake, it films the street, it would only film You in Your back garden if You were in fact in Your front garden. For that to happen You would have to be a bit "special" when it came to identifying and classifying gardens, and that wouldn't be Google's fault! Google maps (satellite view) can see your back garden and has been able to do so for years. The good news (for the topless sunbathing fraternity anyway) is that these photo's show off your Great Tits at their best,


the way they were before the Sun damage made them go all wrinkly

and well before they went south and got saggy!


If you actually take the time to view GSV you'll see that faces are blacked out and number plates made hazy. As for burglars using it to case your house, well if they are happy to use infomation that's at least a year out of date rather than follow their usual practice of spur of the moment opportunistic break-ins I think that will actually make it more likely that they'll get caught, especially if you've bought a big dog in the interim.


"get im offa me"

GSV is designed (to be used on a mobile phone or GPS device) as an aid to navigation for people who find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings; it's not a charter for voyeurs.

Anyway, now I've got that off my chest on to more important matters, to wit. Have YOu Seen Some of the Chests on Google Maps?? My God, at first, I thought I had discovered a new range of big pink mountains. I give you :



On a final note; I'm sure there are still people who really don't think that the cusrrent financial crisis is a big deal, that it's all been hyped-up by the press.

To these people I say:

When was the last time, that YOU remember, the leaders of the 20 richest countries in the World sitting down and agreeing to a joint plan of action that involved them committing to expenditures of over $1 trillion in the space of a single day and where the French didn't get up and take their toys home?

Be Afraid, Be Very Very Afraid!!

Shopping For Mothers Day - Oh God - Never Again!!!

Never again!

Never take an 11 yr old boy and an 8 yr old girl shopping, for Mothers Day presents, in Salisbury's, on a Friday afternoon it's a nightmare!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there aren't enough !'s in the world to express how ! an experience that was. I may elaborate later, but most probably won't as I'm actively trying to suppress the memory (which makes writing about it a bit odd!).

Met Deb at Borders,they've changed the layout again, where she'd been having a relaxing coffee, in the Starbucks there,



whilst I had been tearing my hair out and wondering if a court would accepted a plea of diminished responsibility when I finally......



A cup of chocolate for Hannah, a slice of cake for Nat and a peruse of the books for me! Oh the calming powers of a book shop - who needs drugs (well actually I do but that's another matter - see below) when you can lose yourself amongst the shelves.

Home, Pizza, watched Grow your own Drugs (see above) and don't recall what else.
Fell asleep on the Settee about 22:30, I've just woken up.

03:25 - Off To Bed.

What's happened Today?

Google pulls some street images

As if I'm going to spend my time seeing if I can find embarrassing pictures of strangers, for feck sake, see the thing for what it is, a brilliant navigation aid NOT an invasion of privacy!!!!!!!

Major leap for faster computers

I wrote an essay on Quantum Computing summer of 2006, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out, if it does, it'll revolutionise the computer industry! For a deeper understanding see here but only if you are at your ease when reading about nonlinear optical spectroscopy of single excitonic states!