US sandwich shop promotes critical blogger

A nice example of how businesses and bloggers can help each other: a US blogger decided to review all 51 sandwiches offered by the Which Wich chain, and when the firm got wind of it they put his URL on their packaging.

As Marketing Monster says:

This is absolutely fantastic and gutsy. Why gutsy? Because Chris gives an honest critique and says that some of their sandwiches are just plain bad. Why fantastic? Because the sandwich chain increased its popularity by embracing Chris’s efforts.

Embarrassed by your passport photo? This’d be a good time to change it

If your passport is due for renewal in the next wee while, it’s worth doing it sooner rather than later: prices are going up again, and they’ll go up even more over the next few years if the ID card system isn’t thrown into the skip where it belongs.

Looking on the bright side, the Passport Office – sorry, I mean the not-Orwellian-at-all Identity & Passport Service – seems to be on top of its game just now, because the whole process from online submission to receiving my shiny new passport took just over a week. And for now at least, you don’t need to give the government your DNA or get yourself microchipped.

This old mouse

As a former NME reader, I love bad puns in headlines – so the more song titles or appalling plays on words I can get into a headline, the happier I am (and the more obvious and groan-inducing, the better). So today a news piece was just begging for either “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, or “Running To Stand Still”. And then it hit me. Both songs came out exactly 20 years ago, give or take a few months. So not only are there people out there who weren’t born when those songs were in the charts, but there are *parents* out there who weren’t born when those songs were in the charts. In terms of cultural relevancy I might as well do a pun based on a Lonnie Donegan song, or a controversial cave painting.

Put it this way: I’m rapidly approaching the point where Creationists will tell me that Husker Du never existed, because the world simply hasn’t been around that long.
Don’t believe me? The title of this post is a play on a Shakin Stevens track from 1981. Nooooooo!

It’s not just punning headlines. Like most blokes I go without shaving for a few days and then find myself wondering if I should just have a beard, but where previously it’d be a “cool/uncool” question, now it’s purely a question of whether the lack of maintenance justifies having an itchy face and a big ginger beard. Cool doesn’t come into it.

I stopped buying NME a long time ago because I had no idea who most of the bands in it were, but now I’ve stopped buying Q too, for the same reason. It’s surely just a matter of time before I start liking Uncut, because I sure as hell don’t see the appeal of the Arctic Monkeys and I couldn’t care less what My Chemical Romance or Bowling For Soup or whoever has to say. And it can’t be long before I can’t even name the bands I don’t get.

And it’s happening online too. Instant messaging was the first – to me, it’s just a major time-waster, and I don’t launch IM software because if I do, people will talk to me. Sod that. Then, Second Life. And Twitter. And MySpace. And… you get the idea. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people use ‘em, and I understand how they work.  But what I don’t have is any connection with these things, because I’m on the wrong side of the generation gap.

I’m wearing slippers as I write this.

The amusingly named Mazda

I’ve been obsessed with the Mazda Bongo Friendee for ages, because I think it’s the best car name ever – and today I saw one. In real life!

It’s a piece of crap, of course, but it’s got a great name. Although I suspect it won’t help you pull. “Hey, why don’t we take a ride in my… BONGO FRIENDEE!”

You’re sleeping alone, my friend.

Is The Sun pockling its page views?

I meant to blog about this ages ago, and now I’ve forgotten where I first saw it mentioned. Never mind: is The Sun pockling its page views? Yes. Is it doing it deliberately? Don’t know, but it’s really annoying: when you click a headline on the front page, it takes you to the appropriate section rather than the story you’ve clicked on – which means the server records an extra page view thanks to the unnecessary intermediary page. It’s extremely irritating.

My Wi-Fi is a menace

No, not because it’s frying my brain or making my testicles grow to mammoth proportions; it’s just rubbish. I’m typing this on a laptop that’s about 20 feet away from my wireless router (the router’s upstairs in the office, I’m downstairs on the sofa), and after about 20 attempts at turning airport off and on again I’ve finally got a one-bar signal. It’s the same with my Xbox, which is about ten feet away: sometimes I can get a signal, most of the time I can’t.

I suspect the problem is a combination of my house’s construction – it’s a 1940s job, built in solid brick – and more recent changes such as the two extremely big reinforced steel joists that hold the roof up. But whatever the reason, my Netgear 108Mbps router simply isn’t delivering a decent wireless signal downstairs.

Can anybody recommend a Wi-Fi router that (a) works with Airport and (b) doesn’t lose its signal when faced with a couple of brick walls? Or a way to add a wireless repeater so I can get a decent signal in all of my house?

In the war on booze, let’s attack Luxembourg

An interesting graphic in The Economist shows different countries’ average alcohol consumption – and we’re not at the top of the list. No, it seems Luxembourg is the land of the piss-heads, and we’ve fallen behind Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Moldova and the Czech Republic. None of these countries, as far as I’m aware, has the same level of drink-fuelled disorder as our sceptred isles. Hmmm, maybe it’s not the level of consumption that’s the problem…

[Via Fark]

Expecting too much from Apple

Financiers and fanboys alike seemed to find this year’s WWDC keynote rather disappointing, and I’ve written a piece over at Tech.co.uk about their reaction. Do we expect too much from Apple? I think so.

…Steve Jobs failed to announce new Macs, a teleport or a giant robot army. The Mac massive wanted something new and shiny on the scale of the iPod, but essentially got the iPod hi-fi instead.

Da (gay) bomb

Brilliant:

Newly released documents have shown that the US military was considering the development of a chemical weapon to turn enemy soldiers gay.

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio and passed it to CBS 5.

According to the document the Air Force requested $7.5m for the development of such a weapon, but the proposal was rejected.

“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another,” Hammond told the TV station.

Ow

Sorry if anyone’s waiting on emails, really exciting blog posts etc – a slipped disc means I can’t spend much time in front of the computer, so I’m spending most of my time lying on the floor feeling sorry for myself. And munching drugs, of course.