Key Product Placement

I was reading the other day about a desginer's interesting concept for a computer keyboard:


Each key has a brand name that begins with the appropriate letter. It's a fun idea, and I'd be tempted to get one, if they ever become available to buy. Or maybe they could get enough sponsorship from all of the companies to make the keyboard free.

We don't have set desks at work, and I recently started sitting at one which had a lousy keyboard. Sometimes keys wouldn't work at all, and other times I'd get two of whatever I typed. This was a major issue when it came to entering passwords, so I asked our IT people for a new keyboard. They offered me the choice of an HP keyboard, or a more ergonomic "Microsoft" one. I picked the HP one, partly because the other one was a bit dusty, but mainly because I couldn't bring myself to voluntarily use something with "Microsoft" printed on it. Most of our desks have the MickeySoft keyboards, and they're pretty good. Of course, they're not actually made by Mr Gates' company anyway.

Unfortunately, due to an unfortunate combination of the lighting conditions at that desk and the angle of the keys on the HP keyboard, I can't read any of the letters and numbers on the keys. Because I touch type, this is not much of a problem, except that I now realise that I look down at the keys when I enter passwords and numbers. I must learn how to touch type numbers. The glare is so bad that I might as well have one of those Japanese "Happy Hacker" keyboards:


Years ago someone told me about people physically pulling out keys from their keyboard and swapping them with others. The idea was to stop anyone else using their desk when they were away. I've never seen this in the office, but I do have a colleague who uses a keyboard that's a bit like this one:

Presumably the idea is that your wrists don't get as strained as they do with the more normal flat design. I've always wondered whether a piano keyboard could be used for a computer. The standard one has 88 keys, which should be enough to be going on with.


I wonder what kind of music something like this blog post would make?

Wild Things

No, this has nothing to do with that film about sex, lies, murder, lesbian love and Bill Murray. This is the latest holiday report.

This morning was bright and sunny, and so Helena and I went to the Cotswold Wildlife Park. This is situated in Burford, about a million inches (17 miles) from Oxford. We got there mid-morning, and had an early lunch. As seasoned visitors, we know that the canteen always gets busy at lunchtime.

For once we remembered to take a camera with us. Unfortunately we didn't remember to take a decent photographer. Nevertheless, some of the pictures weren't total disasters. For example, here's an excellent one of a 7-legged 2-headed zebra.


At the CWP they have all sorts of creatures - lions, rhinos, monkeys, penguins, and so on. Sadly our visit was cut short by the weather, and we didn't end up seeing all of them. The clouds arrived and the heavens opened, which meant that we had to take refuge in some of the covered areas.

These areas house all of the really disgusting creatures - reptiles, bats and insects. The insect house is especially important, as I needed to check that all of the giant spiders were still there and hadn't escaped to terrorise the neighbourhood. I'm pleased to report that even the pink bird-eating tarantula was in its rightful place. If these things can catch birds, then there's little hope for us humans. The only spider picture that came out well was of one of the other tarantulas. Not pink, but still terrifying.


I did my best to get a picture of the ants for Bee, but ants are very small, even with an 8 megapixel camera.


I'm afraid that I failed to locate the aardvarks. I'm sure they have some, and I thought that they might not mind if I borrowed one to send to the ant-infested Bee. If it only it hadn't rained. Sorry, Bee.

There is a moral to this holiday report. Always check the weather forecast beforehand. Even if they're wrong, at least you've got someone to blame...

Wordy Wednesday - Holiday Report

It seems that I'm in good company. All the other major European dignataries are on holiday as well. Gordon Brown has gone to Scotland to do volunteer work. Sarkozy is in the Riveria showing off his wife, and Vladimir "Gas" Putin is having an environmentally friendly holiday climbing trees and making friends with the locals.

"Do you come here often?"

So far the weather has been changeable, as expected. Yesterday was wet all day. I had arranged to go and see my mother today on the basis of the BBC's five day weather forecast, which on Sunday was showing a picture of a big yellow sun on a cloudless blue sky, suggesting something like this:


Sadly, when I got up this morning the view from my window didn't quite match this picture. it was still rather wet, even if the torrential downpours had stopped.

[Source and License]

By the time we'd got ready and arrived at my mother's, it was at least looking a bit better, so she took us to the docks. Helena was thirsty, so we went to a "Costa" coffee place and had drinks. 2 iced fruit drinks and one coffee cost around £9! Still, when you're on holiday you expect to get ripped off, so I didn't complain.

I've often wondered what it would be like living on a narrow boat. There were a couple for sale at the dock, though neither had prices on them, but I bet they're cheaper than the trendy flats in the converted warehouses. There's something tempting about life on the canal.


There used to be a programme on TV about canals, in the days when I used to watch UK broadcasts, and there were all sorts of people like Toyah Wilcox, David Suchet and Prunella Scales and her husband extolling the virtues of boating holidays.

Living in one permanently is a different story, of course. Sadly, my office isn't on a canal route, and I suspect that internet access might be an issue. And where would my piano go?

After some consideration, I decided not to embark on a life on the water just yet. I'll wait until I've accumulated a few million and afford one of those yachts with the bikini-clad girls.


I suppose I'm not going to do that any time soon if I keep spending £3 a head on coffee. Still, the main thing is that our holiday has so far been enjoyable and relaxing.

Summer Holidays

Today is the start of my summer holidays. As usual I'm not going anywhere, but Helena is coming to stay, this year for two weeks. It's just as well that I didn't check the weather forecast before organising this, as I learned from the Cypriot news the other day that forecasters had been predicting a hot and sunny August in Britain, but that they'd now revised this slightly to say "rain and storms". I'd have been somewhat annoyed if I'd known earlier.

Yesterday was wet and miserable with torrential rain at times, so maybe the forecasters have got it right in the end. Although today has been dry and bright, so maybe not.

[Source and License]

As long as we get a few reasonable days out, I won't complain. We've also got the last 17 Columbo episodes to watch, which should keep us going on the rainy days. I've also stocked up on reading material, with two parcels of books arriving from Athens yesterday.


Needless to say, I'll keep you informed of developments with regular holiday updates.

Wordy Wednesday - Exclusive

Over the weekend London hosted the Gulf Luxury Goods Fair. This fair is aimed at wealthy Arabs, and is full of things that they couldn't possibly live without. For some reason I wasn't invited. Admittedly I'm not a wealthy Arab, but it would have been nice to at least have been invited. It's not as if I'd have embarrassed anyone by actually showing up. Still, no-one likes being excluded, especially a blogger who delights in keeping his readers up to date with all the latest products. Luckily, the fair got a mention on the Aimilia Show.

One of the leading attractions was the £90,000 iphone. "So what?", I hear you ask, "Apple products are always ludicrously overpriced." However, with this one not only do you get some bog-standard electronics in a fancy case, but the fancy case is jewel encrusted. This doesn't seem entirely sensible on an item that you're likely to misplace or get mugged for, but maybe that doesn't happen in the Gulf. Or maybe if you own a significant proportion of the world's oil, you just shrug and buy another one.


If, like me, you're on a more modest budget, you will be interested to learn about the cheaper items. Such as the new Jaguar. Starting at £52,000, it's only around half the price of an iphone. In fact, I'm not sure why they bothered to turn up to the fair. Surely no-one with a £90,000 phone is going to be seen dead in a £50,000 car? Perhaps you'd buy such cars for your servants, to save them risking them pranging one of your 30 Rolls Royces whilst running errands.

If I was an oil magnate, I'd have servants like that.

Those in a frivolous mood could do worse than get a £150,000 novelty watch. A lot of people could easily afford this if they traded in their house. They showed one on the news that has a built-in fruit machine. You'd have thought there wouldn't be much of a market for such a thing in the Gulf, where their religion frowns on gambling, but I suppose they're allowed fruit.

With all these amazing offers, it's perhaps just as well I didn't get my invitation. At least I'll be able to afford to eat again this month.

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Footnote:

FADKOG readers might be interested to know that in response to this post, google gave me adverts for Arab dating. Maybe I'll try it. Though I'll insist that my potential dates have to own at least one jewel-encrusted iphone...

Mr President...

This post contains an open letter to the President of the USA. It's the second one that I've posted here since his election, although this time I didn't write it.

I happened to mention to Helena that female Elephants are called "cows", and male elephants "bulls". Being a great fan of the bovine variety of cow (both alive and on her dinner plate), she took exception to this, and immediately demanded to know who was responsible for allowing elephants to take on the names of cows and bulls.

I suggested that it was probably a zoologist, but she asked me whether I'd informed the Prime Minister of this terrible injustice. When I confessed that I had omitted to do this she suggested I either write a letter to Mr Brown, or to the US President. I said that they probably had more pressing matters on their minds. She wasn't having any of this and wrote the following letter on my behalf to the "Planetarch", as the Greeks call the American leader:

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Dear Baraca Barman,

Elephants have their own name and they don't have the right to steal cows and bulls' names. Why can't elephants be elephants, cows be cows and bulls be bulls?

You will probably want to take this to court and please inform the Queen so that she can help you do something about it.

Thankyou,

Brian o vretanos.

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I've made no attempt to correct or edit this, apart from giving Her Majesty a capital Q. She even got all of the apostrophes in the correct places.

[l-r: US President, British Queen,
US First Lady, Shifty-looking Greek]

I think you'll agree that this is a wonderfully eloquent letter for an eleven year old. I think she's got a great future ahead of her as a blogger or a twitterer, or something...

Wordy Wednesday - Sunless

Apparently today was a special day for astronomers in Asia, since they endured the longest eclipse of this century.

In China, they believe that this is a time of misfortune and disaster, since by tradition the sun is swallowed up by a huge invisible dragon. I'm not sure how they explain its return. Maybe it shines out of the dragon somehow.

In India people rushed to the Gangees where by being immersed in its unique waters they believe they can be freed from the circle of life and death. At least one woman drowned, sadly.

These areas of the world were without sun for all of 6 minutes and 39 seconds.

I'm afraid that I'm not really impressed. In Britain, the sun was eclipsed for most of the day.


I shouldn't complain. There are floods in Germany and fires in Spain, whilst New Zealand was moved closer to Australia last week by a massive earthquake. I hope that wherever you are you're managing to avoid the worst of the summer weather...