Joe asks 'Is it me or what?'

Arrest That Man!

This story amused me. An actor who helped in a police recreation of a jewel robbery for a German TV’s crime watch programme was arrested after being spotted by an eagle-eyed member of the public pointed him out to security guards as looking just like that thief on television. Apparently his protestations of innocence and his explanation about being an actor were said to be ‘a likely story’.

Aaron Defant, pictured in character, is quite well known in Germany and, apparently, no publicity is bad publicity. He was released after convincing police at the local station of the truth of his claims.

Meanwhile the real criminal has been offered a part in a remake of To Catch a Thief…

Grounded

Eric Carter claims he was amused rather than angry when told that he could not climb into the cockpit of a Spitfire on display at at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent. The ubiquitous health and safety excuses were given but the reason that this is newsworthy is that Mr Carter is one of the airmen who actually flew Spitfires during World War II. He was involved in dozens of missions both in Spitfires and Hurricanes and commented that he understood that

the staff were being extra careful, it’s a pity the Luftwaffe weren’t so considerate.

Mr Carter’s missions were mainly over northern Russia, attempting to keep the port of Murmansk open. Apparently one of the reasons was that the cockpit seat had been removed, another that some paint was used in the refurbishment that contained radioactive radium – not really sure why that would be – whose idea was that?

Do You Know This Man?

I found an article in the Evening Standard this week very amusing. David Cameron was pictured on the London Tube with a lady of obvious Asian origin.

Apparently he ventured out on the Jubilee Line, obviously having half the carriage reserved as there’s never enough room to take photos when I travel on it.

The article told how he went to this lady, who hailed from India where she’s a relatively successful actress, and made a standard politician’s comment on the bonniness of her baby. She was a little wary of this strange man and when he went away asked her husband who he was – That’s the British prime Minister – he replied. She told him off for taking the mickey until she realised from the accompanying entourage that her hubby was telling the truth.

She then felt the need to go and apologise for not recognising such a famous man.

I sympathise, not sure I’d recognise the Indian Prime Minister if he was sitting next to me on the Tube.

Secret to Success

I’ve been asked to update Beginning XML, one of the books shown in the left column. XML and its uses have changed so much since the last edition some five plus years ago. Over three-quarters of the content will be new and there’s only two authors this time, myself and Danny Ayers.

Wrox have tried to give me a few pointers on how to promote it, blog posts, Twitter etc. My own contribution is to write under a pseudonym, anything written by a Swede seems to sell well so I’m going to write as Henning Larssonquist and see if that increases sales.

Everyone’s Dream

There’s something very satisfying about this story of an American couple who were taken to court for defaulting on their mortgage payments by the Bank of America. The fact that they hadn’t missed payments, in fact they didn’t even have a mortgage and never had, made no difference to the institution.

After a court ruled against the bank and ordered them to pay costs they continually procrastinated until the couple had an asset seizing order made which involved the sheriff’s department locking the bank and removing goods until eventually they got a cheque from the bank’s manager.

Given the current popularity status of banks I don’t think the Sheriff needed much persuasion to carry out his duties.

Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It…

When there was trouble in Egypt earlier this year and the government cut internet and phone services in an attempt to disrupt the rebels’ activities many people asked about how easy was this to do? Could the same thing happen in the UK? Surely the internet was designed from the ground up to be invulnerable from attack? - its original purpose being as part of the USA’s military defence capabilities.

I remembered all these questions when I read today of how the internet was effectively turned off in Armenia, not through any sophisticated virus or by an SAS style attack force, but by a seventy-five year old lady from Georgia scavenging for copper. She inadvertently damaged the main fibre cable used for carrying internet traffic and shut it down for several hours in March.

Apparently she faces three years in prison, I’m not sure that’s for the theft of copper, the damage to the fibre optics or for embarrassing the relevant companies and government by exposing how fragile their service is.

One (or More) Born Every Minute

At our weekly IT meeting to review new change requests we heard the head of IT explode as he read through one:

We need the facility to be able to accept Nectar points as part payment for our financial courses

It went on to detail how much point would be worth, which depended on what they were buying, and finished with a request that the user could optionally tweet that they’d just used Nectar to buy a Kaplan course. It was at this point that we looked at the request more closely, it had emanated from one Jack Dorsey, the Social Marketing Opportunities Manager, ring a bell? – and the submission date was 1st April 2011.

It says a lot about the sort of requests that we receive that we were so easily taken in and we all had to agree not to mention the joke to our real marketing department in case they thought it was a good idea. Congratulations to @Michael_Barlow for this fine effort and just wait until next April!

You Started It

The good wife and I were invited to dinner by an old friend last weekend, they have recently moved to Devon, albeit the middle of nowhere, and we set off in the car Saturday evening. Our friend’s wife is German and we’d never met her and I jokingly said, in my best Basil Fawlty voice, whatever happens don’t mention the war. My wife warned me that if I said that phrase, even in jest when no one else was in earshot, I’d be for it, and not in a good way.

When we arrived we were given a glass of wine and started chatting to the other invited couple whom we also knew. When asked how they were they told us they’d been forced to move into a rented flat due to theirs suffering from major damage, the front needed to be removed from the building and rebuilt. When we inquired why we were told it had suffered much undetected damage many years ago which had finally surfaced. The reason for the damage? – recent investigations had shown it had been hit by a V2 during the war.

An Expensive Sneeze

Some pricing and ticket details have just been revealed for the 2012 Olympics. One thing I noticed was that the price of a ticket for the Men’s 100m finals was £725. This surely makes it one of the most expensive ever. People go on about paying £2000 for a Wimbledon final but at least that lasts a couple of hours or so. The men’s race lasts about ten seconds, scaling it to the time of a football match would mean a ticket for the World Cup final would be £391,500. Woe betide you if you happen to sneeze just as they leave the blocks.

Christmas Cheer

I’ve written before about Nominative Determinism, the phenomenon whereby people end up in professions that suit their name.

There was a lovely example in this morning’s paper when a certain Robin Hood-esque bank robber demanded £5000 from the cashier at Barclays Bank in Winchester. A fairly modest amount but he left with an even more paltry £1600, £350 of which he dropped on the way out. Our miscreant, more Mel Brooks than Errol Flynn, then went into a local pub and slapped the cash on the bar saying the drinks are on me.

His final act, after having literally one for the road was to lie down in the main street outside the bar and await the police. Unfortunately don’t expect a free Christmas drink at an inn near you any time soon, Christopher Allnut was detained under the mental health act.