Desmond Elliott

I found these photos in iPhoto at the weekend and realised I forgot to write about how bizarre an experience this was. The quality isn’t great because I wasn’t sure about how to take night-time photos.

Mike and I were walking back from Sainsbury’s one evening and we noticed a car with a very flat tire. (We could have been walking back from The Picturehouse, I cannot be sure of the details.)

Further down the same street we saw more cars with very flat tires and they seemed to have something in common.

Upon closer inspection (but not too close in-case somebody noticed us and thought we had slashed the cars) we saw a “calling card”.

Imagine how angry you would be if somebody left you with a flat tire just because they thought you made a poor vehicle choice.

(I’ve been sitting this post for a few of months now but I didn’t think my ideas were reasonable enough to stick. The New York Times posted this anonymous letter from a bank executive identifying that credit card debt will be the next big problem.)

Recently, I moved to a new flat in Edinburgh. I visited the Halifax Bank of Scotland to let them know my new address. After we changed my address, the cashier informed me that I was eligible for a credit card from the bank without a credit check. This was a “limited time offer” for “long-term customers” of the bank. The offer of credit without proof of my ability to repay it sounded remarkably similar to the sub-prime mortgage crisis so I decided to feign interest to learn a little more.

I was told to take a seat while and offered a cup of coffee while I waited for a Financial Advisor to discuss my application. The financial advisor asked about my occupation and salary and without any proof, proceeded to offer me a credit card with a £3,500 limit based on the system.

The next financial disaster could well be your problem because you might have accepted credit from your bank during the credit crunch. If a bank has 100,000 customers with credit-check free cards, that is an easier problem to deal with than 100,000 customers with an unsecured mortage. But the credit card debt is likely to be unsecured debt and how many banks will be able to afford to announce more write-offs due to poor decisions?

The Notwist performed at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow on 19th November 2008. I first heard of the band from a review on Pitchfork. I love Neon Golden and rather enjoy the recent The Devil, You + Me.

I started listening to their music in 2003 and had to wait about five years before I could see them perform live but it was worth the wait. It was a great collection of songs from both of the aforementioned albums. The tracks from Neon Golden were reinterpreted with more of a focus on rock music, instead of electronica, and a wild rendition of Pick Up The Phone was noteworthy. The Wii remotes and light box were peculiar additions and we couldn’t figure out what they were used for…

Finally, both support acts were fantastic and well suited to make the evening a great experience. Engine 7 was very calming and relaxing to listen to, Lukid’s IDM was delightful and a welcome change from intense is better electronica.

Apologies for the grainy photographs, I was using my iPhone.

The BBC News posted an article this morning describing British broadband usage limits imposed by ISPs. I was shocked to read that Virgin Media has a 2.7Gb (sic) limit per week because I was sure they had an unlimited downloads offering, subject to an acceptable usage policy.

We use the BBC iPlayer and Channe 4 on Demand services at home and I felt a little concerned that somehow I had overlooked this limit and that we would be in line for a hefty charge for additional bandwidth use.

The Virgin Media Acceptable Use Policy says nothing about an exact limit so I emailed the BBC to ask them to explain where the figure came from. They didn’t respond, but they updated the infobox in the article between 11:19 and 15:23.

Below you can see on the left, the original infobox, and on the right, the updated infobox.

There is no acknowledgement from the BBC in the article that the infobx has been updated and now might be more accurate. It looks like they made some factual errors with Sky and Plusnet too.

Since I graduated from university, I’ve read a couple of articles about the importance of how to write emails to colleagues. The articles told me emails were a reflection of myself and I thought everybody had read these articles too, but I was wrong.

When I was in the bank last weekend, the lady who was dealing with my question opened Outlook and composed the following email to a colleague:

hi, r u free to see a customer? x

Her colleague replied:

YIP

She finished the conversation with:

lady beside water cooler x

I can’t help but feel that these articles duped me into believing that people analyse every aspect of my professional life based on how I write an email.