Friday afternoon is one of those times where you do the little tasks which don’t take too much brain power, but wrap things up neatly for the weekend.

So, for example, if you had a profile at your local travel company, you might go and update your details.

A simple little task.

But for the love of God (who may or may not exist) think of the travel agents! On their side, they’re bombarded by thousands upon thousands of profile updates at exactly the time they’d like to be doing little jobs to round off their week.

Poor things.

While we’re here… don’t use your phone to send texts while driving…

Sorry. Geek alert.

We found this…

void log(string message)
{
   try
   {
      blah blah blah
   }
   catch (Exception ex)
   {
      this.log("An exception occurred in logging : {0}" + ex.Message);
   }
}

Hey… I’ve been a biker for A YEAR! As of today.

I have thoroughly enjoyed it and have never, so far, touch wood, fingers crossed, dropped a motorbike.

Hooray!

Ok… another problem with the iPhone. I have now made approximately 10 accidental outgoing calls with it. This should not happen.

There are certain screens where if you tap on a contact or a phone number it JUST MAKES THE CALL. You then have to find the ‘End Call’ button and press it, if the user interface has caught up in time.

Recent ones include a call to the USA which I fortunately cancelled before it was answered, and today a call to a car service company which they did answer, and I had to sheepishly explain that I was a complete retard with a gay phone.

If you accidentally make a call and then press the ‘home’ button, you’re now in the main menu WITHOUT an ‘End Call’ button to press and THE CALL IS STILL BEING MADE.

This is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Before making a call, there should ALWAYS be a specific button you should press. So you KNOW you’re making a call. A confirmation if you like.

Really, Apple, this is NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Update: Ok… I discovered that the ’sleep’ button on the top of the phone will drop a call whatever state it’s in. That’s good. But it still doesn’t change the unacceptability of making calls without confirmation.

I went on confused.com to obtain a bunch of quotes for my bike insurance which is imminently up for renewal. There were a couple of very attractive quotes, one from a company I’ve never heard of and another, costing about 6p more from the AA.

I made a mental note to go with the AA and thought nothing more of it.

About 15 minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hello”, said the man, “I’m from Company X, and I notice you’ve had a quote for insurance. This is a courtesy call to find out if you are planning to follow up and take our offer?”

“Ah, hello”, said I, “I was very happy to see that you offered the cheapest quote but I’m afraid there was a quote not much more expensive from the AA which is a name I trust.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust us?” he replied shirtily.

“Um… no”, I replied slightly taken aback, “it’s just that the difference in price was only about 6p, and so I…”

beep beep beep said the phone I was cut off.

Charming.

whocallsme.com now have another entry in their database.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

There were two of us playing, and each of us came up with only one word, for one point. The same word, I hasten to add. I tried a couple of online Boggle solvers, and one of those came up with an additional “LBW” of which I’m rather dubious - sure I recognise it’s a valid abbreviation, but not a word.

How frustrating to sit there for 3 minutes thinking “I’m sure there must be more than this… there must be…”

We woke up yesterday not really knowing what we were going to do with our day. I phoned mum to see if she’d be around for a cup of tea and to tell us all about Iceland. She wouldn’t be. So H said “How about a couple of county tops?”

We’ve been eyeing up Rutland and Peterborough for a while. They’re not too far apart, and separated by Rutland Water. It promised to be a nice little trip out.

The highest point of Rutland is actually on private land, belonging to a hunt pony club, but there are public footpaths very nearby. We parked the car in a convenient location at the side of the track and walked along the footpath, regarding Rutland Water far off to our left and looking for a trig point to our right. There was a pony meeting of some sort on, with cars coming and going across the adjacent field. When we spotted the trig point, it was in the adjacent field.

Hmm… what to do? It was clearly just a field of grass - no crop to destroy. There were clearly cars coming and going, so despite being private land, it had access to the main event. We made our decision upon finding a gate that was held shut with nothing more than a loop thrown over the post - classic accessible gate closing. We crossed the field towards the trig point, and it’s then that we spotted the fences around us…

Oh no! The horses will surely come thundering through any moment and we could nearly die.

Luckily they didn’t, and the top was bagged without unneccesary drama.

Peterborough’s top was on Racecourse Road, a moderately impossible-to-find place not helped by one end of it being closed. A great 2km section of dead straight, level road though…

Despite setting out late, there was still plenty of time to enjoy ourselves, so it was then on to somewhere I’d only read about a week or so ago, and just happened to be pretty close (ie. within 50 miles) of where we were… the Lowest Point of Britain.

Holme Fen, Cambridgeshire lies around nine metres below sea level. The surrounding land is around one metre above, but the ground in the Fen consists of peat which has been shrinking as the area was drained. In fact, in 1852 the shrinkage was already apparant and a post was sunk into the peat into the clay below until its top was flush with the ground. The post is still standing…

The ground has shrunk A LOT. But it’s still strangely spongey underfoot. In fact, it’s an altogether very funny bit of the world. Well worth a visit. On the way out, we had to drive over what felt like a small mountain just to cross the ‘level’ crossing of the mainline railway.

A quick potter to Ely for a look at the magnificent cathedral, and then into Norfolk for the old Bedford River - where the Bedford Level Experiment was carried out in 1838 thereby proving beyond all doubt that the earth is, indeed, flat.

On the way back, as darkness fell, we passed within a couple of miles of the highpoint of Leicester City, and it would certainly have been rude not to visit.

And that is how we visited three tops, a bottom and a flat earth.

Statistics

Total: 137
Done: 36
Todo: 101
Completed: 26%

First date: 09/05/2007
Last date: 05/10/2008
Days elapsed: 515
Days per visit: 14
Projected finish: 15/02/2014

It is possible to be too paranoid.

You forgot to mention what happened if you sounded the (roof mounted) air horns with the sunroof open!

Sweavo’s comment on yesterday’s blog reminded me, strangely enough, about what happened if you sounded the (roof mounted) air horns with the sunroof open.

The sunroof was a tilt-and-remove one. It would be tilt-and-slide, but being in a pickup, there was nowhere to slide to. So if you wanted a full open roof, you’d open it, click the quick release and the whole panel came out.

I already mentioned the small sliding windows - they weren’t great for ventilation, and there were no fresh-air vents due to, like fuel gauges and so on, those being considered a luxury item on a commercial vehicle of that era. So basically, I ran with the sunroof tilted open for most of the time.

I have made a virtual reality artists impression of the scene to help you picture it…

Now lets look at a few axioms and postulates. (I don’t know what that means, but I think it sounds good).

1. Sound reflects from hard object.

2. Glass is hard. Especially the toughened glass used in making sunroofs.

3. Therefore sound reflects from sunroofs.

4. The angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence from a plane perpendicular to the reflecting surface.

5. The sunroof’s angle is such that any sound entering from directly behind will be reflected directly downwards.

6. The airhorns are directly behind the sunroof.

7. The driver and passenger of a car are directly below the sun roof.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I shall present the results in just that manner…

What is the common factor between Rustie Lee and Schipol Airport?

They both have a huge apron.

Haha!

If I get the bad jokes over with now, my acquaintances at the pub tonight should, unlike last week, escape unscathed.