28th May.

Commander Ian Lancaster Fleming – author, fantasist, banker, journalist, sailor and failed diplomat – would have been 100 today, had he kept off the gin and cigarettes.

The Register, along with a suitably tongue-in-cheek potted biography, reports of a commemorative exhibition at the Imperial War Museum entitled For Your Eyes Only. Hope to make it back to London before it closes.

In the meantime, I’ve been looking for an excuse to post this xkcd.com cartoon for ages.

Sorry, Sky, but this is sloppy.

Thousands Spent on iPods for Civil Servants

screams the tabloidesque link. Shock, horror! Those fat-cat civil servants getting yet another perk, eh? Bring on the revolutionaries.

Now hold on just a wee minute here.

Civil Servants Listen While They Learn

is the real story. The Home Office has bought a bunch of iPods for employees to watch training videos on – sensible and cost-effective, methinks. Not such an eyecatching headline, though, is it?

Just had this emailed to me. Cruel, very cruel.

It was a good game, though. And more than that, Moscow did itself proud, and so did the visiting fans. Walking around the city over the past few days there’s been a real carnival atmosphere, from the Champions’ Festival in Red Square to the various bars and restaurants around the city who have welcomed the fans with open arms.

I didn’t make it to the stadium itself, but from what I hear the story there was very much the same – enjoyable, warm (not the weather …) and friendly. More than that, though, everything worked – in Red Square, at the airports, at the stadium, everywhere seemed to be run with the same calm, well-planned efficiency.

My sympathies to the Chelsea fans – my daughter included. And to the (minority of) British tabloid journalists who came here looking for a negative story, and had to go home empty-handed.  Perhaps you can write about the dozen or so Chelsea fans who were arrested on Fulham Broadway on Wednesday night, instead.

NB I’ve not credited the image above because I don’t know whose it is. It’s all over various footy-related fora, and even Sky News have shown it. It it’s yours, let me know and I’ll happily provide a link.

Received an interesting Facebook event notification this morning, inviting me to vote for Rod in this year’s PA News awards. He’s up for ‘Public Affairs Personality of the Year’.

The profiles of the three shortlisted candidates make interesting reading. Rod’s, to my mind, doesn’t do him justice. I don’t know ‘Anne Longfield OBE‘, but despite an interesting enough write-up there’s no photo. This makes me nervous. Lionel Zetter’s entry, though, is well worth a read, if only because he comes up with a true Rod-ism if ever I saw one:

of course there is good lobbying and bad lobbying, just like there is good sex and bad sex – but let’s face, it most of us would rather have bad sex than no sex at all!

I voted for Rod, of course. And you should too. Maybe if he wins we can persuade him to start blogging.

In case it’s escaped anyone’s attention, Chelsea and Manchester United meet in Moscow on Wednesday for the Champions’ League Final. It’s going to be quite a week for Moscow.

Which is why I’m more than usually frustrated at my bleariness this morning – thanks to the cacophony of car horns and shouting in the wee small hours outside the bar across the road. Russia beat Canada last night to win the 2008 IIHF World Championship, you see – their first World Championship in fifteen years.

Well done, chaps. And a useful and timely reminder that, despite how it feels sometimes, there’s more to life than football.

This is fantastic. Making of a Brick

(Via Tom Watson.)

Graf that knocks you out! – some stunning imagery here.

(from Scraps of Moscow.)

aka The Terrifying Revenge of the Three-Chord Wonders

I didn’t mean to like this song, honest. But I heard it in New York last week and it’s in my head now.

The radio station called it ‘Kid Rock’s tribute to Sweet Home Alabama‘. But doesn’t Warren Zevon get a nod for that piano riff?

So I finally got my iPhone. After a few days of fruitless visits to Manhattan’s three Apple Stores, and AT&T ‘sales’ staff being downright rude, I figured a bit of ‘When in Rome’ was in order.

So I put an ad in Craigslist.

Quite a surprising response over the ensuing 12 hours. Most of them fell into two categories:

“Yeah, I got an iPhone, meet me in such-and-such a dark alley in Harlem and me and my buddies will relieve you of your wallet”

or

I have an iPhone, no box, no charger, no accessories just the phone, and I need to shift it in the next half-hour, it’s not stolen though, honest.

Amongst these, though, I found my shiny silver-and-black toy thanks to a very nice young lady called Katie. A few hours and a less-than-retail fistful of dollars later, and I had my ‘phone – swiftly unlocked thanks to ZiPhone. And you know what? I love it. The screen, the OS, the functionality – consider me converted. But I’m not quite ready to throw my N95 in the bin yet.

Why? I guess because, in its current form, the iPhone just isn’t quite there yet. My Nokia N95 shoots video, has GPS and a much better camera; the iPhone has a bigger screen, Google maps, various other frills but, more to the point, it has that interface which makes everything so much more useable – and makes the N95 feel so dated and clunky.

My timing’s lousy, of course (probably as lousy as the iPhone’s camera). The 8gb iPhone has, we think, been end-of-lined. The iphone rumour mill, in its many forms, talks of 3G, GPS, 32gb and all sorts of other possibilities as early as next week. There’s no 3G here, so that doesn’t really bother me. But GPS and a better camera would very probably tip the scales.

For now, though, I’m pretty chuffed with my new purchase – even as last week’s ‘phone, it’s still a pretty smart piece of kit.

I feel the need to test WordPress’s ‘Blog by Email’ feature. And what better way than to comment on the utter awfulness that is the Delta International Lounge at JFK?

Sure, bits of Heathrow are just as architecturally grim. And the security here’s pretty much par for the course.

No, it’s the music in the Starbucksy bit which it truly awful.

Perhaps whoever was responsible for choosing today’s tunes has just gone through a particularly traumatic breakup, in which case they have my sympathy. But do we honestly need track after track of 80′s angst-ridden chick rock?

A couple of songs ago we had ‘Live to Tell’ – hardly Madonna’s finest hour, for a ‘Lucky Star’ kid such as myself.

But now we’re being assaulted – yes, assaulted – by ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. Which, I’ve just concluded, has to be a pretty strong contender for the honour of  Worst Song … Evah.

Your nominations?

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Sent from my iPhone