I'm On Witter
Mar. 3rd, 2011 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksA pleasant lunch with Mr Aardvark, aka Doubleday (P) yesterday. There was a queue at Le Relais, so we went to the The Gallery in Austin Friars instead (triple sausage and creamy mash with caramelized onions for me, confit of pork belly for Pete D). Clearly you have to get to Le Relais before 12.15pm if you want to sit down straight away. But the Gallery was perfectly pleasant, and it does offer the plus of high ceilings.
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I've been picking up a sequence of PD James novels for three quid each at Bargain Books. I should have bought the lot as soon as they appeared, rather than just the first in the Dalgleish series. When I returned, numbers two and three in the series had vanished. I've picked up another six in the past couple of days, although when I shall get round to reading them I do not.
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My Broadband has been getting worse and worse, to the extent that I seriously considered booking Virgin to come round to fit a system. However, I have an idea that the problem lies in my decision a few weeks ago to sign up for BT Fon (the 'sharing' system for BT Broadband customers). I strongly suspect that the software update required is causing the conflict with my (non BT Home Hub) router, although there is no mention of the possibility of this on the BT Fon web site. I've now opted back out of BT Fon. With luck this might cause the problem to go away. An engineer is coming round next Friday in any case.
This morning at home (I went to bed at about 8pm and so I was up at 4am) I played for 45 minutes on Full Tilt via my Vodafone Mobile 3G, and it cost the grand total of 15p. In a sense, even given my "heavy" use of Broadband, I probably don't actually download that much data. The only drawback of the Mobile dongle is that I can only use it for one machine at a time (and of course it's useless for the Dell Streak).
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Portugal sold off €1bn of debt on Tuesday, at 4.06% for one-year bonds. We don't know how much the ECB had to step in. Barclays Capital estimated that the ECB bought €19.5bn worth of Portuguese debt last year out of €21.7bn of issuance.
But the ECB and Germany are, effectively, still at each other's throats over this, and the standard political response to such an impasse, "kick it into touch and hope it goes away" won't work here. Germany doesn't want a system that effectively creates a hybrid super-level of bond guarantees. That was the idea when the euro was created in the first place (that the Deutschmark's strength would miraculously transfer itself to the whole euro zone) and look where that got us. If this currency position is extended to the euro-bond position, you get one step closer to federalism, but you are also one step closer to pan-European euro-bonds. One can understand a German government not being keen on effectively signing a blank cheque for other countries' debt issuances.
But the alternative -- that if you want a euro guarantee, then you have to go through some super-body before you can issue debt -- would presumably be unacceptable to any eurozone government bar, er, Germany.
The OTHER alternative, the one which we've been happily predicting, is default, in one form or another. It probably will be called a "restructuring" and, I hope, it is being worked out now. The trouble is, the price of it when it comes to Spain might be selling off half the country's real estate and debt to the Chinese. How ironic. Over 20 years after Reagan's dream of "outspending communism to death" appeared to have come true, the Chinese have come up with another non-military weapon -- they've outworked the west to death.
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++++++++++++++++++++
I've been picking up a sequence of PD James novels for three quid each at Bargain Books. I should have bought the lot as soon as they appeared, rather than just the first in the Dalgleish series. When I returned, numbers two and three in the series had vanished. I've picked up another six in the past couple of days, although when I shall get round to reading them I do not.
+++++++++
My Broadband has been getting worse and worse, to the extent that I seriously considered booking Virgin to come round to fit a system. However, I have an idea that the problem lies in my decision a few weeks ago to sign up for BT Fon (the 'sharing' system for BT Broadband customers). I strongly suspect that the software update required is causing the conflict with my (non BT Home Hub) router, although there is no mention of the possibility of this on the BT Fon web site. I've now opted back out of BT Fon. With luck this might cause the problem to go away. An engineer is coming round next Friday in any case.
This morning at home (I went to bed at about 8pm and so I was up at 4am) I played for 45 minutes on Full Tilt via my Vodafone Mobile 3G, and it cost the grand total of 15p. In a sense, even given my "heavy" use of Broadband, I probably don't actually download that much data. The only drawback of the Mobile dongle is that I can only use it for one machine at a time (and of course it's useless for the Dell Streak).
++++++
Portugal sold off €1bn of debt on Tuesday, at 4.06% for one-year bonds. We don't know how much the ECB had to step in. Barclays Capital estimated that the ECB bought €19.5bn worth of Portuguese debt last year out of €21.7bn of issuance.
But the ECB and Germany are, effectively, still at each other's throats over this, and the standard political response to such an impasse, "kick it into touch and hope it goes away" won't work here. Germany doesn't want a system that effectively creates a hybrid super-level of bond guarantees. That was the idea when the euro was created in the first place (that the Deutschmark's strength would miraculously transfer itself to the whole euro zone) and look where that got us. If this currency position is extended to the euro-bond position, you get one step closer to federalism, but you are also one step closer to pan-European euro-bonds. One can understand a German government not being keen on effectively signing a blank cheque for other countries' debt issuances.
But the alternative -- that if you want a euro guarantee, then you have to go through some super-body before you can issue debt -- would presumably be unacceptable to any eurozone government bar, er, Germany.
The OTHER alternative, the one which we've been happily predicting, is default, in one form or another. It probably will be called a "restructuring" and, I hope, it is being worked out now. The trouble is, the price of it when it comes to Spain might be selling off half the country's real estate and debt to the Chinese. How ironic. Over 20 years after Reagan's dream of "outspending communism to death" appeared to have come true, the Chinese have come up with another non-military weapon -- they've outworked the west to death.
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The Shoes, The Shoes
Date: 2011-03-05 10:05 am (UTC)Re: The Shoes, The Shoes
Date: 2011-03-06 08:42 am (UTC)Re: The Shoes, The Shoes
Date: 2011-03-06 06:22 pm (UTC)Care to elucidate, for those of us who care about the intimate details of your private life?
Bless.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-06 12:38 am (UTC)On balance, I'd recommend the sausages over the pork belly. Hell, if I can cook pork belly to a gelatinous herb-infused perfection, I'd expect a decent restaurant to do better than something that magically appears fresh from the hot-plate or the insta-grill.
As I mentioned at the time, the fresh fish on display was a good sign. Unfortunately, neither one of us went for the fish.
You should take some time to expand on what I remember as the "perceived value" thing, btw (although you threw another v in there, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was.) I've been enthusing about it since to everyone who will listen, which is presumably nobody, but it's a pretty neat encapsulation of how to do things right and yet, somehow, miss the point.
It was jolly good nosh. To be repeated, say, in a couple of months (Nice/Vegas permitting), when I feel less bankrupt?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-06 08:45 am (UTC)I had the fish last time I went there and, yes, it was fine, without being sensational. The sausages, though, absolutely hit the spot. I put this down to depriving myself of virtually anything potato-based for four weeks. So the mash was seventh heaven.
Yep, let me know when you are available. I want to make it to that Le Relais place sooner rather than later, so I may be able to report back fairly soon.
PJ
Eye B4 Eeh!
Date: 2011-03-06 06:39 pm (UTC)To jog your memory, I was talking about the immense amount of Python script I have to write to do something as simple as saying "This is Politics and This is World and This is Business/Economics" ... that last one being a bit of a giveaway in itself ... and you mentioned the redesign of your Web front page and the disparity between what your "team" (none of the relevant ones of whom work with the same bit that you work with) think they want, and what the IT guys deduce that they want, and you've been through this exact same process three times, and you finally went back to (in your words) O-Level mathematics and tried to explain Set Theory to these supposedly clued-up loonies, and ...
... well, that wasn't it, really. Worth jogging your memory anyhoo.
The example you provided was the bloke who asked for (if I remember the number correctly, and I do not) the Top Ten Insurance Companies in Europe. The bit of this that you missed out, which I would think is probably crucial, is that you didn't at any point ask "by which criteria?" But then again, I am not too confident that the correspondent in question would understand Latin words of more than two syllables ...
I can sense I'm losing the thread. Your example was "Yup, I can give you that list. It will cost you £5000." His answer was "But I only want the top ten. I don't care about the other 4,990." And your answer was that you do, because you have to trawl through the relevant records of the other 4,990: and otherwise you are not giving an honest answer.
Which is correct. And is a big part of the "perceived value" thing (which you came up at the end on the way to Liverpool St), because this is precisely the barrier that actual professionals have, in any field I can think of.
Heart surgery? No problem. I've got a sharp knife at home. I've been dicing pork practically since pork was invented.
Writing fifteen lines of software (which I think was your referent)? No problem. Why spend six months writing ten thousand lines? All I wanted was the fifteen lines that do it right.
Christ, man, how long does it take to write fifteen lines of Python and get it right?
It's all down to T.S.Eliot and the Hollow Men again.
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PS I was rather miffed about Le Relais, but obviously the timing doesn't work. I've heard about it, I deeply wish to try it (particularly after a semi-ghastly Nouvelle Cuisine gastro-pub experience in Hertfordshire this weekend), and I'm up for it. I'll try and negotiate my way out of the stupid and pointless "scrum stand-up" meeting that occurs at 11:45am for the day. No worries -- everybody else does it.
What, precisely, is the dish to die for at Le Relais?