Jack Dee (British stand-up comedian) guested on Top Gear last night, and was quite disparaging about people who campaign on transport/environmental issues:

(Paraphrase) If you’ve got nothing better to do than campaign against a particular type of car people are driving, you need to take a serious look at your own life; you know, join an evening class or something.

I know some activists take things to extremes, focusing on one particular make or type of vehicle – and I wouldn’t expect anyone to speak against everyone’s obvious God-given right to drive unlimited quantities of cars around our towns and cities on a programme like Top Gear – but the fact is there are too many vehicles on Britain’s roads, and someone needs to take an active stand for our towns, spaces and environment.

He also had a go at people involved in car accidents. He defended his right to ‘rubberneck’ an accident scene:

If I’ve been delayed for 45 minutes I want to take a good look at the idiot that caused it. At least you’ve got a neck brace to show for it; I’m late for work.

Compassionate as ever, Jack.

I took a look online last week to see if there was any information on Pwllheli, a small town in North Wales that I holidayed with my parents in for many years.

Sure enough, we now have Pwllheli Online. It’s not an exhaustive site by any means, but offers a few memories.

Whilst we’re at it, the Lizard Lighthouse on the Lizard Point in Cornwall is also online, and here are some great photos of the peninsula.

Hmm I’m feeling in need of a holiday now, looking at those pictures.

The first talk of IIS7 is here.

Great. A whole new load of bugs to sort out, at the same time as Long(timeoverdue)horn comes out.

I am so glad I don’t have to deal with this crap on a daily basis. I don’t understand why everyone is getting excited about the next headache. Use some decent system instead…

Steven writes:

I’ve got a hunch that the blogosphere is getting soft, weak, passive, and timid.

The blogosphere is a commonly-used term meaning the entire collective of blogs, and therefore the people who create them. This statement therefore implies that all bloggers are getting soft, weak, passive and timid.

I totally disagree with you Steven. There is a whole diverse range of differing opinions and ways of blogging out there, and this will only increase as more people get on board.

Maybe in a certain subset or niche of blogging the above could be true, but having observed a large number of blogs, I can’t comprehend the above statement as being true.

Maybe some people just ignore the bad stuff and concentrate on praising people and ideas that they agree with. Others post constructive critique. Yet others go for full-blown personal attacks.

It’s all out there.

Blogs were originally pioneered by outspoken, brazen, hard edged individuals who were also geeks, techies, computer nurds. I mean this with all respect and fondness.

The Early Bloggers were outcasts. They understood HTML. They could build their own web sites, home pages, and blogs. They communicated with each other.

“Normal” people made fun of them.

This sounds as if all bloggers should be technical nerds, outcasts from society, outspoken, hard-edged (rude?) individuals… Dreaming of bygone days does not sit well with pioneering future trends.

Two things:

1. I am probably a computer ‘nerd’ (geek, is a better word, I think) and actually don’t associate myself with this appalling stereotype that continues to be portrayed…

2. I shudder to think of the incestuousness of the blogosphere if it stayed simply with a lot of techno-folk babbling to each other. The blogosphere is opening up and that’s a good thing. I don’t remotely care if a blogger can code in HTML or not?!

I was pondering what items of technology and geekery I would miss the most if I had to do without them.

I could do quite well without my mobile phone – I only use it for occasional texts, and most people know how to get hold of me in other ways. I rarely make or receive phone calls on it, and rarer still from places where there aren’t alternative methods.

When it comes to computer stuff, I’d miss a lot more.

I’d miss my iBook more than my desktop Mac, even though it’s less powerful, because of the way I tend to work at the moment. I love being able to work and write on the move, and sit in my comfortable armchair rather than at a computer desk.

I’d miss my iPod because I wanted something like it for years and years – way before it was even invented.

Not having my PDA would mean I’d go back to a paper diary, which is no big deal. Some of the other things on it are useful though.

I wouldn’t miss TVs, videos, DVDs, particularly.

I would die without the Internet. Well, OK, I wouldn’t. I still go to the supermarket for groceries. Yet my life has become scarily attached to the net. I communicate via it, I research on it, I publish on it, I read the news on it, I shop on it, I play games on it, I met my wife on it (no wonder, I spent so much time on it…), my work doesn’t really depend on it now, but it has done in the past, some of my future dreams and aspirations depend on it…

Take the Internet away and I would have to do a major reorganisation of my life. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be very difficult.

What technological stuff would you miss the most, and why?

You may have seen a change to my feed title. “Andy Merrett Online” doesn’t tell you much at first glance, except that it’s a personal blog of some description. The tag-line helps, but I wanted to add something else to make it a bit more interesting.

“Pastoral Activist” may not make much sense as a term on its own, so I’ll explain here.

Last night Julie and I were having a conversation about various different people – who we felt most able to trust deeper thoughts and concerns with, and who were more ‘activists’ who had plenty of ideas and actions, but were probably not pastorally-minded, unable or unwilling to connect at a deeper level with individuals’ needs.

People may be one or the other (or neither, of course) but generally don’t excel at both. However, I made the point that I, and at least one of our close friends, probably are fairly equally gifted with pastoral and activist’s concerns.

That’s not to say that I always get it right on either front. I tread on people, I shy away from situations; sometimes I am neither pastoral (caring, compassionate, interested in the needs of people) nor activist (standing for what I believe in, campaigning for the rights of people, groups and situations, seeking change for the good).

Nevertheless, it’s what I strive for. This blog isn’t always about that, and there’s more to me than those two words, even joined together, can convey. Even so, it does qualify my blog somewhat beyond “oh there’s another personal blog”. It is still a personal blog, primarily (I have other online soapboxes and platforms) – and this doesn’t necessarily signify a change in direction. Longer term readers or perusers of the archives will note that my style and subject matter changes daily.

Still hard to classify, this is another step for my blog, and me.

Robert Scoble writes

Yes, Tris Hussey I’m unsubscribing from Chris Pirillo’s and any other feed that isn’t full text. I’m tired of reading feeds that treat me badly. I have more than 1,300 full text feeds. There’s one or two exceptions. The New York Times. CNET. Slashdot. But, sorry, Chris, I’ll visit your site once in a while or whenever one of the bloggers that I read tells me you’ve written something interesting (which is quite often)

I suppose it helps to be arrogant and self-sufficient, working for Microsoft.

Maybe you have enough time in the day, when you should be working (fixing some crap M$ code perhaps?) to read full feeds all the time? Many of us don’t?

You’ll be happy for other bloggers to tell you when x or y write something interesting? Great. That sounds like you’ll be happy to get things second-hand.

Why shouldn’t x or y publish RSS (site summary) postings? It’s down to them to write interesting enough prose in their excerpts to make people want to read more, sure, but this attitude effectively says “I don’t value what you write enough to even scan your partial feeds for interesting news”. Fine, don’t read it – but don’t whinge about it and expect people to change their publishing style.

“I’m tired of feeds that treat me badly”

Grow up, Robert. It’s a feed An inanimate object. That’d be like saying that Microsoft Excel treats me badly. It doesn’t actually do that – it’s a pile of crap that screws up my working day – but it doesn’t treat me badly.

This is just text.

There’s one or two exceptions.

Why not just visit their sites direct anyway?

I’m sure Chris Pirillo will find it a great loss that Scoble isn’t reading his posts any more.

By the way, I’m unsubscribing from Scobleizer – not for any other reason than I don’t like the content (full or otherwise) and not sure I wanna read Microsoft toys-out-of-the-pram rubbish any more.

(I never read it much anyway)

It’s fairly obvious who’s listening to an iPod by the distinctive white headphones. The rise in iPod-related muggings has been dramatic. Police are apparently blaming this music craze for the rise.

Wouldn’t it be better to blame the criminals?

I suppose us iPod users should be offered advice:

Don’t listen to your iPod using headphones.

Don’t use your iPod in public places, or whilst on the move.

In other words, don’t use your iPod anywhere it might be seen, coveted, and stolen.

Get a less popular machine, or better still, go and buy a tape Walkman on eBay, copy all your MP3s to CD and then to tape, and use that on the go. No-one in their right mind would steal a tape player these days.

We’re entering the silly season again on the London Underground. Passenger numbers and delays seem to increase with the temperature – good job British summers are so short.

If you’re jammed into a train carriage, you don’t always get much choice as to where you stand – or sit, if you’re lucky – but there are optimum areas to make your way to.

Generally, the ends of each carriage are cooler, because the windows on interconnecting doors can be lowered, letting in cooler moving air from the tunnel. This does assume that your train is moving, but even when it isn’t, it’s a little cooler there.

The central section of the train, where the double-doors are, is generally the worst place to be. You’ll be squashed for most of the time as it’s the main entrance and exit area, and people won’t move down into the spaces between the seats – and even when they do, there are plenty more people to fill up the floor space.

I’ve not done conclusive research on what it’s like to sit in a crowded carriage, as I rarely get that privilege. At least you don’t have to concentrate on standing up – but you still have a load of sweaty bodies around you, with reduced fresh air flow.

Whether you squish yourself onto the first train that arrives, or wait for the next in the hope it’s emptier, is a matter of chance. If you get on the crowded train, you’ll be squished at the doors. If you wait for the next train, which may be emptier, you’ll get a better choice of position, but the build-uip of passengers behind you will squash you in the middle.

It’s hard to win, without abandoning the Tube altogether for the joys of London buses, or walking.