Spy apps

I installed the Instagram app on my phone, just to try it out. But it wouldn't work unless I allowed it to access the microphone as well as the camera.

Why does a photo app need to have access to the mic?

Alarm bells rang.

I uninstalled the app.

Fuck you, Instagram!

Fakers

They used to say "on the internet, no-one knows you are a dog". Which kind of meant anyone could be anything, even themselves, if they really wanted to without being shot down immediately.

Things were kind of fun then.

There were a few trolls, but you could mostly ignore them. There were a few correctivists, but you could mostly ignore them.

Social media doesn't seem very sociable to me. People aren't themselves, or even a more interesting version of themselves. Everyone is scared of saying the wrong thing and being humiliated by the next shaming fad.

The other day I was notified that I had a new follower on Twitter. People don't often follow me so I took a look. It was a woman that I had met the previous week, so I assumed she was interested in my film club and had actually looked me up... which she said she would, but people often say that and then don't.

So I sent her a message with details of that week's film.

And got a puzzled response (what?)

It turns out that it wasn't her. It was a student in the Ukraine. Odd, I thought. She seemed quite chatty and I wasn't busy so we exchanged a few messages.

All seemed fairly normal until she mentioned that she was a big gamer and wanted to meet me inside one of her games. He next message had a link in to download the game.

Which sounded a bit suspicious.

I didn't click the link. I googled the game instead. It didn't sound like the sort of thing she would be into... given the little information she had told me about herself.

Then, of course, I realised that this wasn't a free game. She was just trying to get me to buy the game. It was marketing.

When I mentioned this to a friend (a little smug that I hadn't fallen for it) he said that she probably wasn't even a real person. It was probably a "chat bot" that just tricks you into thinking you are talking to a person.

Smugness evaporated. I was fooled by a bot.

For a few minutes I thought I had found a friendly voice out there in the big world. That's what the internet is good at, right? But it was a trick. To try and get some money out of me. Which made me really sad.

The next time someone follows me on Twitter, I probably wont even take a look. I've already stopped looking at Facebook because I don't understand why it shows me the posts that it does... and there seem to be a lot of ads on it now.

Which is probably a good thing. Talk to your friends in person... and their dogs.

Punctured

This has been a strange couple of weeks for me. It was my birthday on the 29th which should be a happy thing, but never seems that great since I lost my wife.

Thanks to the people who have helped me over the last few years I am coping with it better each year. Maybe by the time I am 50 I will be able to enjoy the day properly.

It didn't help that the day before I had a puncture on my bike. The second in as many weeks. And both caused by hitting holes in the road, rather than sharp objects or wear and tear. Which is annoying because that is just down to rubbish road maintenance by Surrey County Council.

Not surprising since even after a fatal accident on Bridge Street in Guildford, last February, which lead to a petition of 11,000 people calling for immediate change to protect pedestrians nothing has happened.

Only last week I was a passenger in a car being driven over Bridge Street at 20 mph and we had an impatient 4x4 driver angrily tailgating us. That road is so dangerous the way many people chase along it.

Anyway. To add insult to injury I had a spare tube with me but after replacing it by the side of the road, I found that my pump was broken so I couldn't inflate it. Had to walk home :(

But a few days after my birthday Guildford was totally gridlocked (again) so I got a reminder of why cycling is sometimes the best way to travel.

Olympics 2016

The Olympics are over for another 4 years.

Didn't we (GB) do well. Apparently, yes, according to the medal table. Well, one of the medal tables... I'm not sure that any of them really mean much. But we certainly won a lot of medals.

I say "we", as if I had anything to do with it. I don't even play the Lottery. I did cheer from the side of the road in the 2012 road race, which might have inspired Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins a bit. No. Probably didn't help much.

This was a weird games for me.

I watched some of it on TV. But because of the time difference I didn't stay up late to watch any of the "main" events. So lots of it was second-hand viewing.

The BBC did a decent job, apart from the mad channel switching. I mean, Olympics all night on BBC1 apart from Eastenders... please switch over to BBC2 for half an hour because we have to game the ratings.

Amazingly they did delay the 10pm news for Jason Kenny in the keirin. Which then over-ran massively with those 2 restarts. Go Kenny!!! And Laura!!!

Watched a bit of the Tae-kwon-do ... mixed feelings about that ... should probably call it Tae-do now that punches almost never score?

Even watched some horse things?!? And swimming.

What the hell is BMX about? Top riders got run off the course on lap 1... and out. Madness.

Hazel Irvine presenting. Slightly less annoying than when she ruins the snooker.

Lots of excitement about Usain Bolt (only saw the replays).

Distance runner Brendan Foster declaring distance runner Mo Farah the best British sportsman of all time. Yeah, not at all biased.

But overall a very fragmented experience. Didn't feel like one event at all this time.

Wonder what Tokyo will be like? Would love to go!!!

BBC Sport for everyone and no-one

Last week's BBC coverage of the Ride 100 Classic was pretty poor. Especially when they lost picture for the crucial last 5km with Geraint Thomas trying to cling on to his lead.

But at least they had David Millar on his motorbike giving us some insight.

Yesterday's coverage of the Olympic road race was awful.

For a start, it was bounced between BBC 1 and the "Red Button" channels that I can't get... so I watched a lot of it on the PS4 app... with no commentary initially, plenty of buffering and mediocre picture quality.

When we did get commentary it was Chris Boardman and some stato who kept talking over him to tell us that the guy on the front was 4th in the Tour of Nowhere 2 years ago !?!

It may have been the sound quality, but several times it sounded to me like Chris and Stato were eating something and trying to talk with their mouths full.

And clearly they had very little information about what was going on. Probably not their fault, but in that situation you need someone like David Millar who can fill in the gaps with educated guesses.

I have massive respect for Boardman, who has done a huge amount of work for cycling in the UK, but he is best as a pre-race and post-race analyst, not as an in-race commentator. Have the BBC never seen the excellent ITV4 coverage of the Tour de France?

So the live coverage was a bit dodgy. But what really made me angry was the potted summary which was shown later.

In the summary Steve Cummings was shown pulling over and Chris Boardman said "That's disappointing". Which gave the impression that Steve had done a poor ride. He did a brilliant job. The full quote was "That's disappointing he had to do a team job early on rather than having a chance to go for it himself".

Very poor editing.

There was also very little respect for Geraint Thomas who was shown in the gutter after his crash, without any mention of the fact that he had done an excellent ride and was in contention for a long time.

All the talk was about Chris Froome finishing 12th. As if he was ever a serious contender for gold. He's never won a major one-day race. He's a Grand Tour rider. Don't the BBC understand that? Or do they think the audience are too stupid to understand? He won the TdF, and this is only 200km, so he should win easy... right?

Even worse, I heard one piece that said "Just like Mark Cavendish's failure to win 4 years ago, Team GB favourite Chris Froome was disapointed to be out of the medals."

Really?

Cavendish is a bunch sprinter. There wasn't a bunch sprint in London 2012, so he didn't win. Froome was heavily marked yesterday, he never had a chance.

The ignorance of the BBC is astounding. Come on. You can do better than this. The BBC coverage of some sports is excellent. Surely you can find some decent journalists to write up a fair summary for all the events?

An Englishman In Prague

I was in Prague last week for the European Rubik's Cube Championship. It's the first time I have been to Eastern Europe and there were a few things I noticed.

0) Interesting

Don't take any of this as critical. I really enjoyed my visit. These are just my observations of differences between Prague and more western cities that I have visited.

1) Lack of vowels

Czech words are really hard to pronounce, because it looks like someone has stolen lots of the vowels. There are several types of accent too, which are used above both consonants and vowels. I tried to look up a few words before I travelled... but was worried that even the word for thank-you might trip me up.

2) Patchy English

Being a capital city popular with tourists, I thought there might be some signs in English. But I didn't see any. All the signs (even the ones to tourist attractions) are in Czech. Some cafes and restaurants have menus in foreign languages, but many do not.

Lots of people do speak quite good English though. One waiter got a nice tip from us after translating the whole menu for the restaurant!

3) Cash only

We almost got caught out a few times by cafes that did not accept card payments. I'm so used to places taking cards for anything over £10 so it was a bit of a surprise that cards weren't accepted at all sometimes. So make sure you have enough cash to pay your bill.

4) Clearing tables

It seems to be standard that waiters come and clear plates and glasses as soon as they are empty. Which feels odd if you are used to them waiting until everyone has finished. We had a large range of eating speeds; so there was often someone who had an empty setting and then later one person who was the only one with a plate left.

5) Transport

The trams and metro are brilliant. But where do you buy tickets? We were told that 3-day passes were the best value... but we couldn't find out where to buy them. The stations only seemed to sell 1-day tickets. Eventually a fellow tourist pointed us at a small shop that did sell them... even though there was no visible indication anywhere inside or out that they did.

Mainline trains were a bit trickier. We ended up getting out to Radotin on a coach and then trying to get back on the train. But the ticket office was closed. We got on the train hoping to buy a ticket from the guard... and didn't see one. Later someone said there was a 400 Kc fine for being on the train with no ticket... so it could have been bad... but what are you supposed to do???

6) Tour groups

The castle was swamped with big groups of tourists. We went into a cafe that looked half empty but all the tables were reserved for tour groups. To get a decent look at anything you had to track the groups and try to fit in between them.

I find it vaguely amusing to watch people in tour groups. They all shuffle along taking photos of everything without actually looking at anything. I pity the poor families back home who have to look at the pictures... "What's that?" ... "Another church in Prague."

7) Reasonably priced

Even the inflated tourist areas weren't very expensive. And the normal priced bars and restaurants were very reasonable. Makes a nice change from other capital cities where everyone just tries to rip off as much of your money as they possibly can.

True Colours

It has been a long week. In fact I can hardly believe it has only been one week since the UK voted to leave the EU.

A lot has happened and not much of it makes me proud to be British.

The worst of us have shown their true colours.

Firstly the racists didn't delay in telling as many migrants as they could to "go home". I even heard of someone who actually thought voting Leave was a vote for all the migrants to leave the UK. Morons.

Then the EU bureaucrats showed us why many reasonable people voted with the racists to leave. Jean-Claude Junker basically said "OK, piss off then, we never liked you anyway". Cheers. As a remain voter, you actually made me wonder why I ever bothered defending the EU to my leave friends.

Remainers lost their minds in despair and started crying for a second referendum because... er... they lost and didn't expect to. Millions signed a petition asking for the rules of the referendum to be changed. Sorry guys, 6 months too late.

People said "But what about the youth? It affects them so much more than the old people who voted out". And yet the turnout for under-25s was estimated at 30% compared to an overall 70%. Since this was about their future, why did so few of them bloody vote?!?

With the country in turmoil I thought we might be able to rely on our sportsmen to lift the mood. But no. Once again the mightily over-hyped millionaire footballers of England choked at a major footballing tournament and lost to the valiant amateurs from Iceland. All our hopes rest on Wales now... although I know England fans who actually want Wales to lose so they don't make England look too much like the mighty losers than we all really know they are!

Do the English want the UK broken up? I wonder sometimes. I certainly think London wants to break away from the rest of the UK next. And I've heard people say that they wish Scotland had already gone. Jesus Christ. What is going on?

With Cameron resigned but not gone what did Labour do? Their MPs suddenly decided that this was a good time to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. The leader they never wanted. A vote of no confidence. And what happens if the party members re-elect him by a big majority again? Will all the MPs have to resign from the party? What a mess. And how depressing. Opportunism at its worst.

The other smaller parties might have been saying things, but the media didn't report anything other than Nigel Farage going to the EU to say "Na na na na na".

Then finally the Tories had to stand up to replace Cameron. In a fit of irony Michael Gove decided to knife Boris in the back, just as he had done to Cameron. Instead of standing anyway Boris just quit! So now we will probably get Theresa "snoopers charter" May as the next PM.

Bollocks. Was Orwell wrong on one thing; might Big Brother be a woman?

And it has rained a lot.