Gadgetry

30 Things The Minister Did On His Sabbatical

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  1. Learned more than he ever wanted to know about multiple myeloma, bone marrow transplants, quadruple heart bypass surgery and the work of cardiac intensive care nursing staff.
  2. Spent a lot of time driving up and down the M1.
  3. Lost 70lbs.
  4. Put 28lbs back on.
  5. Lost another 21lbs.
  6. Put another 18lbs back on.
  7. Lost another 14lbs.
  8. Joined the Labour Party in the hope that the new leader wouldn’t be a breathtakingly clueless wanker of the first water.
  9. Resigned from the Labour Party due to the breathtaking cluelessness of its new leader, Edward Samuel Miliband, Wanker of the First Water.
  10. Helped fund four albums (by Sophie Madeleine, Emmy The Great, Terra Naomi and a work-still-in-progress by Kat Edmondson).  Girls with guitars, eh?
  11. Been very impressed indeed by and become very well acquainted with the music of John Grant, The Wellspring, Sun Kil Moon, School Of Seven Bells, Alicia Witt, The National, Pete Yorn, Hannah Peel and A Fine Frenzy.
  12. Bought Tom McRae‘s back catalogue. Some fucker’s got to feed his pigs.
  13. Watched a lot of House, Wallander and Community, while wishing I lived in the States so I could watch more of Craig Ferguson.
  14. Got an iPad.
  15. Bought my godson his first iPod.
  16. Waved a fond farewell to Chesterfield FC’s “atmospheric” old stadium on Saltergate.
  17. Watched in open-mouthed amazement as Chesterfield FC won the Fourth Division title in their first season in their really rather fabulous new stadium.
  18. Bought a couple of domain names I like a lot.
  19. Almost completely deGoogleified my life.  Fuck, that felt good.
  20. Discovered and greatly approved of Mighty Leaf Teas.
  21. Got even more anal about fonts and typefaces.
  22. Fell in love some fabulous Mac software – Alfred, Flow, Hype, iA Writer, Sparrow.
  23. Installed a PowerLine network at the Ministerial Residence.  (I’m sure the Minister’s Wife would have preferred me to redecorate the staircase and landing, but you have to pace yourself at my age.)
  24. Discovered that Nerina Pallot is a seriously top lass.  (Her new album’s out next week.)
  25. Fell for Pop Culture Happy Hour.  Glen Weldon is now my personal hero.  (Mistyped that last sentence.  It originally said “Glen Weldon is now my personal herp”.  I think Glen Weldon would approve.)
  26. Had a Twitter exchange with Nicky Fucking Campbell in which I was so civil I did not once call him “Nicky Fucking Campbell”.
  27. Saw several David Ford gigs (travelling 150 miles through a snowstorm to attend one) and read David Ford’s book, I Choose This.  Was not disappointed once.
  28. Had brief work-related journeys to Miami, Puerto Rico, San Francisco, Paris, Munich, Madrid and Stockholm.  Didn’t really enjoy them but Stockholm is lovely (as are its inhabitants).
  29. Came up with an idea for Coalition Cabinet Toilet Paper, because wiping my arse is the only thing that shower of unmitigated cock cheese is fit for.
  30. Generally despaired rather a lot.
So we’re back.  Buckle up: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

304 Holloway Road

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Even if the movie is complete shit – and, given that the New Patron Saint Of Shark Jumping James Corden is in it, there’s every likelihood it will be – this is a great trailer.

(Ministerial Conundrum Of The Day: if the administrators of The Pirate Bay get a fine and prison time for assisting copyright infringement, why do the directors of Google/YouTube/Blogger, Inc. walk free?)

My mobile phone is dying.  I not only don’t care, I’m not sure I even want to replace it.  What the fuck is happening to me?  Is this what beta blockers do to you?

When you see a crowd I see a flock

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I knew I liked Barry for some reason.

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. 

The Minister has been under the weather these past few days and still stands shoulder to shoulder with Jeffrey Bernard.  It has meant I have not fully enveloped myself in the inauguration in quite the way I had hoped, but isn’t it just absolutely fucking fantastic to wake up in a morning knowing that, at long last, those unspeakable cunts are no longer in charge?

Anyway, brace yourselves, chaps: the Clusterfuck officially begins tomorrow.

£90k a year to become Legislative Drafter for the Falkland Islands?

Seriously – it’s got to be worth considering at the moment.

Who Are You?

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So, Woopra.

It’s been active for one month.

Excluding the freak results from The Day Of The Wikileak and visits from search engine robots, the Ministry is somehow attracting an average of 20.8 visitors each day – 603 in 29 days.

76% of these visitors come from the United Kingdom, with the United States of Yankee Doodle the next most frequent visitors (accounting for 11% of traffic).  However, the Ministry has stamped visas from residents of Canada, Iceland, Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland and Poland.

Three-quarters of visitors spend 0-5 minutes wandering the corridors, but 6% stay here for more than 20 minutes.  (Why?  Even I don’t find it that interesting…)

59% of visitors are running Windows XP as their operating system, 18% run Windows Vista, 17% are Mac converts and 4% use various flavours of Linux.

46% use Firefox to browse the Ministry, 39% inexplicably favour Internet Explorer, 11% opt for Safari and 2% use Google’s new Chrome browser.  Sadly just 0.5% of visitors use Opera, which is arguably the best of the lot.

61% of visitors find the Ministry because of search engines (with Google accounting for very nearly all of that traffic), while 30% of the site’s visitors arrive here directly, suggesting more than 20 people have the site bookmarked (assuming they visit 2-3 times a week).  5% come here following links on Facebook, of which I am not a member.

Very few searches come up more than once, but one that regularly appears is for variations of the name Renee Fladen-Kamm.  Amazingly, the most popular page of the Ministry – apart from the home page – is that containing SMIP #8, the story of Walk Away Renee: this page accounts for a full 12% of the site’s traffic.  Billy Bragg’s never been so popular.

Among the more unlikely Google searches that have led here in the past month have been “sue grabbit run”, “thesauretical”, “alec baldwin 30 rock meat locker” and “mouthofthemersey”.

And to complete the stat attack, I’ve been intrigued to learn about my visitors’ screen resolutions.  The most popular screen resolution for visitors is 1024 pixels x 768 pixels (24%), followed by 1280×1024 (18%), 1280×800 (15%), 1440×900 (12%), 1152×864 (10%) and 1680×1050 (5%).  I’m not sure what this means but for some reason I find it mildly piques my interest.

As I said the other day, the thing I find most amazing is that the Ministry pulls in any visitors at all other than the ten or so people to whom I have given the URL, at least one of whom – and I’m looking at you, Minister’s Wife, even if you’re not looking at this – has forgotten it.

I do not advertise or promote the Ministry and never have done, apart from having had three t-shirts printed for myself, one for Domdeplume and one for julesallen.  (Bearded_baby is owed one, too, but has still not told me his t-shirt size: this may be because that information is increasingly embarrassing to him…)  I have left one trackback link on Popdose but otherwise this site is invisible, which is just how I like it.

Nevertheless it’s gratifying that anyone finds the site intriguing enough to read it at all, let alone to return regularly, and I’m grateful that you would spend your time here.

So hello, thanks for stopping by and do please feel free to contribute: everyone is welcome – we’re an equal opportunity Ministry.  Unless you’re Nicky Fucking Campbell.

Scum (d. Alan Clarke, 1977)

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Two things.

First, I’m getting an iPhone 3G.  And I’m not even paying for it!  Said thing of beauty is to be provided by my employers.  (Of course I’ll probably have to forfeit this year’s remaining annual leave entitlement, but…)

Second, The Moral Bankruptcy Of 21st Century English Football (Part Infinity + 1) and There Are Times It’s Embarrassing To Be A Lawyer (Part Infinity + 2), courtesy of The Guardian‘s George Monbiot.

In the past few days, Sheffield Wednesday Football Club has dropped its [libel] cases against some of its fans. I am now allowed to write about the worst example of legal bullying I have ever seen.

The club has had serious problems, on and off the pitch, and many of its fans use an internet forum – owlstalk.co.uk – to discuss them. They make the kind of comments you would expect to find on any talk board, and which would normally be forgotten within 15 minutes. Two and half years ago the club launched its first suit. Only now have the people who posted these comments emerged blinking from the labyrinthine nightmare of English law…

Sheffield Wednesday went to court to demand the names and email addresses of 14 people who had posted comments on owlstalk. Here are some of the comments over which the club complained. “What an embarrassing, pathetic, laughing stock of a football club we’ve become.” “Another day, another blunder. I doubt even Leeds were in such a mess this time last summer, and look what happened to them.” “I am waiting with bated breath to hear who the Chuckle Brothers have signed after their trip to watch players abroad. With the amount of money they have to spend and the wages they can offer the best we can hope for is that little known Transvestitavian International I Sukblodov, who last scored in a brothel.”

Such comments were deemed by Sheffield Wednesday’s lawyers to be “false and seriously defamatory messages” which had caused grievous injury to the delicate flowers who ran the club. (They should try posting an article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free site.) The lawyers threatened “proceedings to include claims for injunctions, damages, interest and legal costs (which could be substantial)”. The judge threw most of the application out, but instructed the forum’s host to reveal the email addresses of four of the posters, whose remarks seem to me to be almost as trivial as those he dismissed. This took place a year ago, and the long shadow of the law hung over the posters until the club’s lawyers dropped the case last week.

Another case dates back to February 2006, when the club sent a warning letter to a fan called Nigel Short. When he received the letter he offered to apologise and to change his comments, but the club rejected this. He was able to fight it only because he found a lawyer – Mark Lewis of George Davies Solicitors in Manchester – who was incensed by this case and was prepared to represent him. “I’ve had two and a half years of worrying I was going to lose my house,” Short tells me. “It’s been hell. If Mark hadn’t done this no win, no fee, I would have been bankrupt by now.”

In November 2007, Short was diagnosed with throat cancer. The case continued. But on Wednesday September 3 he announced that his treatment had been successful. On Friday September 5, the club dropped the case and agreed to pay his costs. It issued a press release which suggested it had done so because of “Mr Short’s medical condition”. I asked the club whether it had abandoned the case because it knew that Short would now live to fight the action. It has refused to answer my questions.

Full case report of the fiasco here.

I dare say if I thought about it long and hard enough I could come up with some pithy pun or other on which to end this post – given my origins it would probably centre around an (entirely justifiable) insult towards natives of South Yorkshire.

As it is, I’ll suffice myself to say that the firm of solicitors instructed by Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, its directors and shareholders in the above matter was Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, known colloquially as K&L Gates.

Decide for yourself whether you would ever entertain the notion of instructing such a firm.  The Minister will be taking his (admittedly limited) purchasing power elsewhere.

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