grumpyf1

I got so excited by a new App this week, I almost forgot to scowl at people threateningly. If you aren’t in possession of a Smartphone: a) It’s 2014! What’s wrong with you?! b) It’s probably time to put the wireless on to warm up, make a nice cuppa and grumble about ‘kids these days’. The App, called Cloak, combines that well-know tactic of trying to avoid people you’d rather not see (exes, your boss, that newspaper columnist with unbearably loud shirts and receding hairline etc.) with cunning technology, and a very healthy dollop of good-old fashioned cynicism. By utilising other Social Media applications used by those you’d rather avoid, it can figure out where they are and alert you to the fact that they’re getting perilously close, thus allowing you to hastily vacate the scene, before you get into a nasty round of having to smile at someone and pretend to be interested in their kids/hobby/near-death experience or love of TV ‘talent’ shows. As someone who now has an office...

It’s now 2 weeks since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared. In this technology-stuffed age, how can an aeroplane simply vanish? Let’s face it, we’ve all lost stuff. Keys, wallet, you name it – I’ve even spent half an hour trying to find my car in a multi-story car park once (I was on the wrong floor). But I’ve always found my missing stuff again. An aeroplane, especially one carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, isn’t the sort of thing you can easily mislay though. So why is it, 14 days later, that there still seems to be no sign of it? Unlike the glossy, strange series ‘Lost’, it seems pretty unlikely that the aircraft’s occupants are now living some alternative existence on a desert island. Although, very much in common with the TV show, this real-life drama seems to have plot twists and turns that are sometimes bizarre and hard to believe. When the flight from Kuala Lumpur disappeared, I sadly assumed I’d be hearing evidence of a disastrous crash into the sea, dis...

If ultra-fit blokes driving round in circles in stupidly expensive cars is your thing, then Hurrah! Formula 1 returns this weekend. It may only seem like a couple of months since Formula 1 packed up for the winter break with that German chap with the pointy finger looking smug again, but in fact... oh. Yes, it was only November. The F1 circus opens up it’s big top of baffling wonderment in Australia this weekend, and for the first time in years it really is anyone’s guess as to who might win the title. Had things remained the same, it seemed entirely plausible that Sebastian Vettel would have picked up where he left off – which was winning nine races in a row and crushing all opposition in his Red Bull dream machine. Happily, the biggest set of rule changes this century has given the pack and jolly good shuffle, and the signs from winter testing sessions are that things really have changed a lot. In a sport where a 0.1 second improvement is considered a huge gain, the timesh...

It has been revealed this week that scientists have successfully defrosted a 30,000 year old virus. Should we be worried? Hell, yes! “March the...? Dammit! I don’t even know the day any more..! 2024. It’s over, people. The end of mankind is upon us. Germageddon! It all seemed so innocent back in 2014. Some scientists found a 30,000 year old virus in the Siberian permafrost, popped it in the microwave for a bit, and before you could say ‘re-animated harbingers of death are upon us’, it had woken up, yawned, and popped off to kill some passing amoebas, just like in the very, very, old days. As climate change melted more and more of the planet’s ice, other long-buried carriers of disease were soon enjoying a spot of much needed warmth and sunshine, before toddling off to wreak liberal helpings of death on unsuspecting wildlife who had foolishly begun thinking they were safe. And then they started on us. Our microscopic chilled old-school enemies started off with a few things w...

It turns out that in amongst all the sensible qualifications we possess, there are usually some less useful ones. And some downright weird ones. I’ve been updating my CV recently – It’s important to be able to adequately show a prospective employer my decades of chronic underachievement in a neat chronological list – and it turns out some of the things I’ve got certificates for are rather out of date, irrelevant, or just plain weird. I’m grateful for the First Aid course I went on, as it’s always useful to know what to do if someone goes into labour. It was good that I knew roughly what to do when a colleague attempted to cut his finger off with a jigsaw, even if the shaking like a leaf and having a quivery voice when I rang for an ambulance weren’t part of the training. Happy days. Proper O and A Level subjects aside, the fading, tatty, blue folder of my training history reveals some less helpful areas of expertise. I can vaguely recall bits of the “IBM MVS Operations Techni...