FWIW: Just got this email from Barclays Cycle Hire Head of Operations….

During the recent Meet the Managers online consultation, it became clear many customers were not aware they can get an extra 15 minutes of usage if a docking station is full when you come to return your cycle. So I am sending this mail to ensure everyone knows how to take advantage of this.

To do this, touch the ’No docking point free’ icon on the terminal screen and you will automatically be granted the extra time. The status of empty docking points at the nearest six terminals is always available on the terminal screen and maps are displayed showing their locations.

Please note that if you hired more than one cycle this request needs to be made for each cycle on hire.

So if you can actually get a bike when you need one, and find you can’t get rid of it at your destination, doing the above will give you 15 mins extra to race around looking for somewhere slightly further… and further and further to re-dock it…

I tried the hire bikes, found it to be a massive let-down. The gear ratio is too low so you have no hope in hell of going fast on one, waterloo is out of them in the morning, if you get a key for yourself and your wife on the same account, then everytime you borrow a bike yourself you get charged for two bikes (utterly retarded logic).

If you are a tourist and want a way to get around London, they are probably great, for commuting purposes.. no chance.

What the hell was the driver thinking?..

Update: seems to have caused such a stir these videos have been published about what these busses are like for chinese kids.. f*ckin disgusting…. look how they are treated…

One fish asks another fish “How’s the water?” The other fish replies, “what the hell is water?”

The point: it’s easy to forget that what surrounds you is only normal because it’s what you know. To others, those surroundings might seem pretty strange, try to look at things from a different perspective to get a more true vision of what something might be.

Also consider the value of “New” and “Old”, in relation to when?, if you don’t simultaneously specify at what point it was considered new then using the word new has very little value as time passes.

#justsayin….

Last week I had 10 BSOD’s crashing the hell out of my windows XP machine at work, I knew what the problem was related to though as I had created a new TrueCrypt container which was larger than the one I had been using without problem for two years now.

As my dropbox storage availability was going up, the container holding the data was staying at 4GB so I had to do something as having to move files each day due to the virtual drive filling up was becoming tedious..

I had benchmarked the fastest algorithm as AES which was not the previous one I had been using (twofish) so decided to switch to that so program file access would drag a little less…

So I have a FAT AES 6GB partition and two times a day the machine BSOD’s after years of stability. If you are having blue screens then the starting point is to download the free utility BlueScreenView to check out what those memory dumps contain which pointed out that fastfat.sys was the problematic driver.

Upgrading TrueCrypt from version 6.3 to 7 and changing the algorithm back to twofish did not help as 10 mins later it happened again.

So two days ago I decided to create a new AES NTFS 6GB partition to remove the FAT driver from the equation and two days on not a single bluescreen… fingers crossed it continues to be stable.

Another freeware program from the makers of BlueScreenView that I used years ago and think is great is ShellExView which you can use to trim the crap out of your right click menus so you can be more efficient with less clutter.

We started our usual trip in a new unusual manner on our couple of times a year holiday in macedonia.

Waking up at 5.45 in the morning (nor entirely unusual now we are new parents), our friend Becky was super nice enough to take us and our 100 tonnes of luggage to Heathrow in her 4×4 which made getting to the airport easy, there is no way we could have done it without a car, big thanks to Becky.

putting our luggage where it needed to go in the airport was also quick and straightforward, then the happy bit started, the security check, this with a baby strapped to the front of my 110kg body, 3 bags for handluggage, a folded pushchair, far more complicated than the usual laptop in a rucksack.

Of course the scanner beeped as I walked through with theo sleeping in the baby bjorn so I had to take him off then we got frisked by some bloke who was nice and chatty so not too bad….

Of course some Bitch with a tent wrapped around her head singled us out and took everything out of the changing bag (lots of baby stuff) and went through it bit by bit… Seriously what a Fuckin bitch, of course some essentials that were slightly over the ridiculous 100ml allowance were taken, so we could by them again in the shop that was 3 metres away, thank you very much osama.

I was sweating like he’ll as we prepared to get all our stuff on the plane (last) after quickly scoffing our coffees. The staff on the b.a. Flight to Sofia were really helpful, got to put the pushchair up the back of the cabin and the guy who was in our isle seat moved to the window.

I was expecting 3 hours of crying now but only got 2 minutes of it… Pretty much all of the flight Theo slept.. I squeezed my elbows together as if I were disabled so I could eat as much of the greasy slop that b.a. Had provided for breakfast, the rest was pretty much plain sailing ..

Got changed as soon as we got off the plane, fixed up the buggy and off we went to collect the suitcases, not the normal “are they ever going to come” wait, by then the conveyor had stopped and they were waiting for us.

Now we are in the taxi for our 3 hour drive across bulgaria and up the ear popping mountain border to macedonia to natasas parents who have no idea we are bringing their new grandson to see them :)

Our usual taxi driver stops off half way and treats us to some grilled chicken, salad, and tasty beer and now the booze is flowing it’s the start of enjoying some fine east european drink, macedonian red wine is definitely in need of getting around more and increasing awareness so more people can enjoy such varieties as “tia za jug”.

The taxi ride was a couple of hours until the circus routine at the border between bulgaria and macedonia where our taxi driver must suck up to some “officials” who act in a rather dopey manner. To our surprise as three passengers with british passports this time we have to get “examined” by a doctor at this mountain border.

This turns our to be a bloke seeing if we have a fever etc and puzzles me for a minute until I work out this has something to do with keeping swine flu out of the country then the penny drops and I understand the need.

We then cruise down the macedonia side to the town to surprise the socks off natasas parents which we certainly did.