that canadian girl

Time is a resource we have too little of,
Too many things to do, too little brainpower.

For this very reason,
You won’t find me around here.
For the next few days,
Little brain gets its deserved rest.

Turn the computer off, leave your mobile at home and go sit in the park with a good cheap novel with a nice glass of wine. Sometimes it’s worth remembering that the world’s not going to stop turning because you’re making yourself unavailable for a few days.

*scratches head*

I was going to blog tonight… but now my eyes are closing by themselves and all I want is to go snuggle up in bed since, for once, the weather’s cool enough to fall asleep without Tornado Fan turned on in the bedroom.

Oh well, I’m sure you’ve all got plenty to do anyways!

If you haven’t, here are just a few funny/interesting links:

• Tolerate Mornings: A viral attempt by Folgers coffee, with a boss-tracker so you don’t get busted for surfing the Tinternet at 9:30am. (Let me know if it’s any good, haven’t tried it yet)
• The Mentos and Diet Coke experiment ingredients have caused very different reactions back home. And for the giggles, here’s the original video, if you haven’t seen it yet.
• Big Brother… Is it still going on? Haven’t they all killed each other yet? If only they were all as clever as Jade is.
• Monkeys are World Cup fans too, you know?

This weekend was my sister in law Lisa’s 30th birthday party, and everyone had to dress up as something that starts with an “L”. Lisa made a (very camp) leperchaun costume for my other half Andrew, and I came as Lea from Big Brother (She makes Jordan’s implants look reasonable).

Before my mom freaks out, it IS a fake cigarette I am smoking halfway through the photo album Andrew’s put together in Picasa. So have a laugh on this beautiful Monday morning and see what I’d look like as a blonde.

PS – If anyone is wondering what my sister Julie is dressed up in all her Canadian gear, she’s a Loser – a Worldcup loser who has no team to cheer for.
PPS – Spot Lara Croft, a Lego man, a Lumberjack, a Lawn tennis player, Love and two Lazy people.

This is what happens when you forget to take your shirt off before putting it in the wash…

I feel like Alice.

Today was one of the first truly sweltering hot days of the week-we-will-call-Summer in Britain.

As somebody at work pinched my desk fan, will one of my faithful readers buy me this USB piggy fan, please? It’s just too cute! “The fan/tree bit wobbles from side to side, swaying in the self-made breeze, while the little piggy acts as an on/off sliding switch,” says Shiny Shiny. It may not compete with a proper full-size blow-your-head-off desk fan but it’s got a little piggy which makes it all better!

Ok, I think the sun is getting to my brain (or maybe it’s the margaritas…) We now return to our usual posting, sorry for the distraction!

If you liked the Sony Bravia advert with the 250,000 superballs bouncing down San Francisco streets, you’ll love Tango Clear’s spoof ad. The ad sums up British humour at its best. What else can I say? It’s just a hilarious way to parody what was a remarkable ad.

Adrants points out that “Apparently, the ad, shot in Wales, has some residents in Swansea so upset, they’ve launched a cheesy looking website to protest against the damage all that fruit did in Wales and to state it will never happen in Swansea. Actually, a little Whois research points out the creators of the Tango Clear ad, Clemmow Hornby Inge, created the protest site apparently hoping to keep the fruit rolling a bit longer.”

The ad has the potential of becoming a great viral on its own, while that fake mini-site is unnecessary and a bit lame on their part. I still hope the advert makes it way around – I can only imagine the reaction of Americans when seeing it.

Hopefully this time, we’ll get more than a fleeting visit from the sun, warmth and vitamin D we’ve been lacking so much over the past few months.

To celebrate the sun (and to go annoy my sister), we went down to Scudamore’s for a river punt, with strawberries and beer. (Less classy that strawberries and champagne, I know… and opening bottles is tougher!) Annabel and I sat back and enjoyed the sun, while the boys (Andrew & John) did all the hard work.

After a few weeks of very chilled out holiday-like time, hanging out with my sisters, I’m jumping back into full routine as of Monday, so time to go spend some time in the sun (yes mom, I haven’t forgotten the sunscreen!) and finish the book I’ve started reading…

“Britons using bargain music download website allofmp3.com have been warned that they are breaking the law. Record industry trade association the BPI said consumers were breaking UK copyright law because allofmp3.com was not licensed to sell recordings”, say the Beebs and CNet.

Why doesn’t the music industry focus on building a new business model that works in today’s world, rather than try to close down sites that sell illegal music? There will always be ways to acquire music or other entertainment media without paying for it, the music industry just need to make their offering more appealing than the illegal one. At the moment, this isn’t the case; overpriced CDs, DRM mp3s which cause unbelievable headaches when trying to transfer music to your own devices, albums with 2 good songs and a load of rubbish on the rest of it. You catch my drift?

Services like Allofmp3, Napster, BitTorrent, etc will keep cropping up, and to try and beat them all is like playing Whack-a-Mole, there’s always another one appearing somewhere else! Rather than take away the users’ rights for buying legally[1], the industry needs to give users unique features and treat them well.

It’s a broken and angry industry, stuck in its old ways. Music will change, with or without them.

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[1] If anyone can find the picture of the insert Sony puts inside CDs to list exceptions where those legally-bought CDs would not play. “Any computer which has burning/ripping devices installed, any Apple Mac computers, some car stereos, DVD players, etc…” That’s the perfect example of taking away legal users’ rights.

Ok, let me start off by saying I recognise the irony of posting in English when looking for French language books, but I’m sure even my French-impaired readers may be able to point me in the right direction.

I’m looking for sources of French language books; novels, easy reads, fun fiction, non-work-related reading material. Either in a brick and mortar shop in the Cambridge area (bonus points if it’s a second hand shop), online (I know of Amazon.fr but for novels, I’m hoping to pay a bit less than full price) or even in libraries.

Most of my work/marketing-related reading will remain in English because terminology in French tends to distract me, either because it’s horribly translated or just amusing terminology. So I’m looking for enjoyable holiday reading more than anything, which is why I’m looking for cheap and cheerful prices.

Anyone has any recommendations of shops, online or offline?

In April, a young man called Amir decided to sell a broken laptop on eBay. This kind of thing unfortunately happens regularly, and the scammers never get what they deserve. Or almost never.

Clever scammers can get away with it, but unfortunately for our friend Amir, he wasn’t clever. Yes, the laptop he sold was broken, but the hard drive remained intact. And the buyer? Now, him, he was clever. He created a website for Amir.

On the laptop’s hard drive, Amir left the following:

• Lots of porn,
• Some foot fetishism,
• Plenty of webcam photos of himself shirtless,
• A disturbing number of photos of ladies’ legs taken with his camera phone on the tube,
• And some more porn…

But more seriously, Amir left things such as:

• A scan of his passport (he was born in Milton Keynes),
• His bank details,
• His mum’s bank details,
• Multiple copies of his CV (all with different GCSE grades),
• Full access to MSN and Hotmail (automatically signed in).

So Amir’s shot himself in the foot and the backfire could have been a lot worse if the owner of the new laptop had wanted to make it so.

Putting that situation aside, we, as normal non-scamming people, need to learn to protect our personal data. There are as many reasons to protect your personal information as there are types of information to protect. So much of our information is now available in digital format, which means it can be duplicated and shared easily.

However, there is a fine line between being careful and being paranoid. For example, if your home wireless network is secure, well protected and all computers on the network are in a “healthy” state, there is no need to turn off the wireless router every time you’re done surfing the web. That’s just impractical and silly. (Also, the tin foil hat, take that off now please. Ah, that’s better, you were starting to get on my nerves with that!) But it’s worth shredding/ripping letters with your name and address on it[1], holding your hand or your wallet over your other hand while entering your PIN when shopping and checking that your bank’s outdoor cash point hasn’t been modified.

Tips to keep your personal information safe:

• Shred letters and paperwork with your name on it before throwing it out or recycling it
• Put your hand or your wallet over your other hand to hide your PIN as you enter it (if at an outdoor cash, have a look over your shoulder to be sure no dodgy person is looking over your shoulder)
• If a cash machine looks like it’s been tampered with, don’t risk it and go to a safer cash point
• Don’t enter your bank details on websites you don’t completely trust, and ensure the security certificate matches the site address
• Keep passports and important personal papers locked up in a safe and keep a tally of the cards in your wallet (so you can easily and quickly cancel and replace them if your wallet gets stolen)
• If you use USB keys to carry business data, encrypt your files when possible and keep the damn key close to yourself. The boss wouldn’t be pleased to know you’ve lost a copy of your top secret files while at a conference filled with your competitors, would he? (more from the BBC on this topic)
• Use common sense – Before you sign up, agree to or hand over your details for any service or transaction, take a step back and question whether it’s a good idea or not.

As for Amir, last time I checked, the site had seen just over a million visitors in three weeks (of which +600,000 were from the past 3 days) close to three million viewers – most of which are from the past week[2], which in Internet terms is nothing, but I’m sure laptopguy got more revenge satisfaction out of that than by whinging to his mates at the pub.

Moral of the story, keep your personal data safe. And don’t leave half-nude photos of yourself on your hard drive if you want to scam someone on eBay – it’ll bite back!

—
[1] Having watched Dispatches: Britain’s Rubbish, I’m more careful than ever when disposing of personal paperwork. You expect your recycling goods to go straight into pulping machines, but they’re in fact intercepted by so many disgruntled low-pay employees who could very well use your paperwork for their own gain that it’s better to be safe than sorry.
[2] This took me over a week to post so the numbers changed drastically every day!