My digital SLR camera broke the other week. I wore it out. 12.5k shots in 18 months tends to do that. At the time I went online and looked around for replacements before deciding to have mine repaired and save for an upgrade.

This morning I got an email from amazon with the subject "Amazon.co.uk: Digital SLR cameras from under £300"

I’m being stalked around the internet by a online book shop trying to sell me a camera!

But it does show the infiltration of marketing and advertising into our daily lives. Its scary if you stop and think about it. And it could be about to get worse. BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse have signed deals with a company called Phorm to provide it with detailed logs of your browsing history. Every website you visit will be recorded, analysed and stored. Phorm will build up a detailed profile that will allow them to target adverts at you which will be displayed on websites you visit.

The companies concerned say you are able to opt out of the scheme. What they don’t tell you is that you can opt out of the targeted adverts but not out of the data collections and monitoring. Even if you choose not to see the ads, Phorm are still watching, and recording.

Shame on you Nintendo and Microsoft!

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/toxics/electronics/how-the-companies-line-up

This is very true. when was the last time you saw anything about the depletion of the ozone layer? I guess things like this go in and out of ‘fashion’ just like anything else.

[Hippyshopper] Remember the Ozone Layer? How our environmental worries have changed

I’ve done very little today but I’m still really tired. No one’s bothering with MSN and I’ve read all my RSS feeds so I might as well go to bed.

So here it is! Another blog entry after how long?!

I actually had an email asking me if this blog was still alive which means it now is TBH I wasn’t sure how many readers I still had. The monthly page views are still fairly respectable considering I only get around to posting about once a month.

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I’ve just sat down and read Sustainable Peterborough: A new approach to waste management.  It’s a  eight page glossy colour brochure printed on high quality card that would look very much at home as the prospectus for a upmarket bank or estate agency. I’m not sure how it appeared in the house but I think it came with the latest edition of propaganda monthly (also known as YourPeterborough (Perhaps someone at the council is in need of a new keyboard or at least a new space-bar)) a publication that glorifies the council at every opportunity and glosses over or completely ignores its failures and blunders.

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Sitting watching Dr Alice Roberts: Don’t Die Young which is all about male reproductive organs. This has got to be a guy’s worse nightmare: An attractive woman giving sex education!

Although it has got some pretty cool images including a couple having sex in an MRI scanner. Romantic!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00cv2vd/

Its sunny. I have a pint in my hand. Im sitting outside a pub.
Bliss.

I spent a long time sitting in the district hospital today.

It gave me time to think. About life and my place in it. About the people in my life. And the people not in it.

There’s lot of people to watch in a hospital waiting room. Most looking a little nervous. But then who wouldn’t be. There’s the older looking guy with the glasses. Hes got a paper with a dirty magazine hidden behind it. I know because every time he goes to turn the page he goes through the motion but doesn’t actually do it. When he leaves he rolls it up tightly and I catch a glimpse of it before he tucks it inside his jacket. Then there’s the teenage girl waiting with her mum. She doing a good job of looking bored and uninterested but whenever she speaks her voice falters slightly. She keeps glancing at her watch as well. There’s also the young woman on the other side of the room whose face is covered in bruises and cuts. She has a concerned looking friend with her who looks even more uncomfortable than she does. What’s here story?

All waiting to be called in to see the doctor. You might have an idea of what they’re going to say or recommend but you can never be sure.

Who chooses what colour to paint a hospital? And why do they always choose pink or yellow. Or off-white. If the room was stripped out of all its fittings you could still tell exactly where you were. The low dirty ceiling tiles, the rubber bump strip around the wall at a height slightly too low to actually protect it and the yellowing fire detector in the middle of the ceiling. The posters on wall look like they’ve been there for years and warn against the risks of smoking, drugs use and missing appointments. Presumably  they lead to the say thing. The receptionist is constantly hacking away at her computer, occasionally turning round as the old style dot matrix printer screams into life and spews fourth a stream of paper which is neatly separated in to different treys.

Most of the staff at the hospital seem to wonder round as if nothing is urgent. Its only the odd few and patients on their way out that go anywhere at speed. People in smart uniforms and peaked caps come through while other do their rounds with trolleys laden with paperwork. There are very few people in wheelchairs. That surprises me for some reason.

GLENDA COOPER in The Daily Telegraph had “a fantasy that, come nine o’clock on a Sunday evening, as Top Gear finishes transmitting on BBC2, a curly-haired man wearing slightly too tight denim trousers leaves the studios, looks furtively around him, before hap¬pily cycling off into the night to recycle newspapers, cook a lentil bake and then settle down to sing his favourite Elton John songs. Surely even Jeremy Clarkson deserves an hour or two off a week from being Clarkson?”