Its seems that every single house around us is being gutted at present and the noise is terrible! We live in a back to back terrace house and there is work going on in the two houses to the right, the house behind and two houses along to the left (although the two houses next to us on the left are thankfully quiet.

What makes the noise so noticable and thus so annoying is the fact that all the major house walls are connected, so bang on them with any great force (for example to rip out an old kitchen) and you can be heard down the whole street. When this is happening in a load of houses at once it makes you want to stay out of the house as much as possible. Thankfully because I’m working I can do that most of the time, but it doesn’t make a pleasant wake up call in the mornings.

I was speaking to Heather last night and she told me that she’d found a really cool website called 43 Things. I was amazed because I discovered 43 Things ages ago and just figured that everyone knew about it by now but actually it turns out very few people do.

For those not in the know, 43 Things is a site that allows you to set goals to achieve in your life, comment on them, share them with other people, find out who else has the same goal and get support from people who have acheived it. In the past I have found it to be a big inspiration and confidence boost. The funny thing was I hadn’t registered on the site myself and last night I realised I didn’t know why so this morning I remedied that and set up my account.

For those interested, here is a link to my profile on 43 Things. There’s not much on it yet but I’ve added a few things I saw on the site that I’d like to do and will add more soon. If you have a 43 Things profile, why not share it in comments.

Its has just been brought to my attention that Gareth Remblance has had his facebook account deleted, supposedly because he was found to have uploaded one or more images of highly questionable moral standards. As far as social networks go, facebook is probably the worst one to be kicked off as it is what most student organised events are publicised on and commented on afterwards. Known for his brash remarks and indiscriminant insults perhaps even Gaz might admit to having shot himself in the foot this time around by taking things just a little too far

I’ve always known that Maplin electronics is not the cheapest place around when it comes to electrical components but I hadn’t fully realised till I popped in there today to pick up a few bits how grossly over-priced compared with other leading stores it really is. In some cases the same product is twice as expensive in Maplin compared with elsewhere. Its good for the one off essential but for anything else, steer clear - its a rip off.

On my way into work this morning I cut through campus as I do almost every day and noticed a huge number of people about due to a university open day. What was so crazy about this was the attitudes of those arriving in cars and taxis. People were trying to drive as close as possible to the union building and due to the small roads and roadworks at the main junction on the outside of campus were getting hopelessly stuck and then angry with each other, honking horns and screeching out of turnings at stupid speeds when they saw an opening.

I really don’t understand this mentality. On open days signs some distance from campus clearly show the directions to spacious car parks from where the campus is only a short walk away. What is wrong with peoples bodies these days that they can’t walk for a few minutes to get to a destination? As for disabled people they wouldn’t have had any way of getting to the open day on the east side of campus because of how congested the entrances to the disabled parking bays were.

In my humble opinion people need to re-assess their priorities with respect to when they jump in their cars. I walk everywhere and only take a bus or train when I have to. One the occasion a car would be preferable I can usually manage without anyway or if I really need one, get a lift from a friend. There is no reason why a lot more people can’t do the same and make life easier and healthier for yourselves.

If you look at it another way we’re killing our planet with our way of life so the least you can do is give mother nature a chance by leaving your car at home and enjoying the world and the outdoors while we can by walking to where we want to go. We’ve got legs for a reason.

Recently we have had some quite severe rain storms. I’m not a fan of rain but when you dress right and carry a large umbrella there is usually little harm in increased levels of water falling from the sky. At least you would have thought so.

Last week on my way to work one morning I was walking down a pavement made up of slabs when I took one step forward and was instantly sprayed with a large quantity of cold, muddy rainwater. What had happened was the paving slab in front of me was loose and set on uneven ground such that when it rained water collected underneath it, just waiting for someone (me) to step on it and release its nasty stored payload. No umbrella could have saved me. I ended up being stuck in wet clothes for pretty much the rest of the day.

What bugs me is how the council can get away with such shoddy paving practices. If maintaining a good pavement with slabs is too hard then surely they could just lay tarmac and have done with it? One thing is for sure the residents of Leeds don’t deserve to get soaked on a rainy day when they remembered to bring an umbrella.

On a similar note; poor curbside drainage. Leeds is a big city and thus has a fair few large buses. If the curbside isn’t water free at all times then the passing of one of these large vehicles will spray, no wait, SOAK, any poor unsuspecting pedestrian who happens to be walking by at the time. There is no need for this. Tarmac at the correct angles and an adequate number of unblocked storm drains permits only a mere film of rainwater to remain on the road, an amount even the largest and most badly driven Leeds bus cannot spray at pedestrians.

I for one am sick and tired of walking everywhere and looking after my health and the environment in the process only to have my efforts rewarded with a face full of water and a day in wet clothes. This is one of those things where a little would go a very long way. If you regularly walk places around town and have soaking experiences to share, feel free to post in comments.

Quite frankly I’m appalled. Thousands of pounds and months of inspirational thinking time leads to something not even a primary school child would be proud of. The logo for the 2012 Olympic games is a shambles. For those who haven’t yet seen this monstrosity here is a link to a copy on the BBC

My problem with this logo is quite simple; It says nothing about sport and absolutely nothing about London hosting the games. It doesn’t even look like the numbers 20 and 12 like the desingers say it should. Even if it did, it wouldn’t really do the games hosted anywhere in the world great justice.

London winning the games was a proud moment for us and we go and show that pride to the world by displaying a completely non-related logo to represent our contribution to the games. Typical. Just Typical.

All who have been keeping up with the news lately can’t have helped but notice that yet again we have stuff moving towards the doors of parliament that involve a trade-off between our civil liberties and the “fight against terrorism”. I’m commenting on this because I don’t see enough debate on this in the blogosphere and as such I want to get peoples views and voice a few of my own.

In order to determine what is legitimate in order to fight terrorism we first of all have to decide exactly what terrorism is. The dictionary defines terrorism as [the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes]. It should therefore seem reasonable that only actions which fit this definition should be deemed a terrorist action and therefore only measures which prevent such an action should be considered valid counter-terrorism measure.

There is a problem here however. We already have a number of acts passed through parliament that mention counter terrorism but what they appear to address is not in fact terrorism but other issues entirely, and yet according to these acts anyone caught doing these actions should be treated as a terrorist when their actions do not actually correlate with the dictionary definition of terrorism.

That is practically an aside though (although it is certainly something that should be addressed). The problem is the methods employed by the counter-terrorism measures - they almost always involve us giving up certain rights that we have enjoyed for a good number of years and indeed should continue to be enjoyed. Furthermore you have to consider what terrorists aim to achieve; they want to affect our lives, make us scared, make us change our ways. In the act of giving up our civil liberties are we not in fact affecting our own lives, scaring ourselves and changing our ways before a terrorist has even been born?

It seems to me that we are doing this all wrong. When I woke up to news of explosions in in summer 2005 my first thoughts were to my friends who work in the city. Later my thoughts were of defiance; these people are not going to make me scared to go to London, to ride the tube, to live my life. Assuming I am correct in this action and not a mere fool, giving up our rights in the name of preventing terrorism is akin to waking a week after those attacks and being too scared to take the tube to work.

I don’t believe we should allow our government to pass laws and acts that force us to let the terrorists win by giving up our rights. They want us to change our lives for them. We need to make sure we don’t and show them we’re not afraid by living our lives with the freedoms we have always done. Only then can we truly beat the machine of terrorism which at present, by its mere mention, threatens to undermine every facet of freedom in our everyday lives that we should be able to take for granted.

I never thought I’d be saying this considering I’ve previously praised the high quality of internet connectivity from this ISP, but I’ve completely had my fill with Bulldog customer services and billing. They are total crap.

This morning Matt received a letter from them asking for money stating we hadn’t payed for this month and threatened to cut us off (remember my last nightmare in this regard?). What is so annoying is two-fold. Firstly they were supposed to sort out the payment issues which prevented money going through last time we had issues with them (see link) but this letter clearly indicates they didn’t. Secondly after the last bout of problems (again, see link) they promised us a month of free service because of the trouble their crapped out billing system had caused us, but clearly we aren’t going to get our free month because if we were then the fact this months payment had failed wouldn’t be a problem.

Bulldog, you suck. I rely on my connectivity for personal and business reasons and although it pains me to say it, you are the only company that when the wire is connected can provide the level and quality of connection that I require. Its just a shame that your billing system believes it should pull the plug on my connection all the time because you screw it up.

Bottom line is that if you pull the plug on us again I’m going to get a leased line for my needs instead and bad-mouth you in every moment of free time that I have. Sure it won’t make a difference to you, sure you won’t care, but I’ll save my friends and colleagues from signing up to the grief associated with your crap billing and customer services and in so doing it’ll make me feel a whole lot better.

Normally I’m quite glad of bank holidays; work is less intense on my websites, there are no lectures so I can catch up on my reading and generally my friends and I are able to go out on one more night than we do in an average week. This time around though its not so great.

I’ve just finished my exams and so I have a huge amount of non-exam stuff to be getting on with. Most of it is code and business stuff but there is also calls to be made, letters to be sent, I need to go to the bank, arrange a few meetings and other things like that. Problem is no sooner have my exams finished thus providing me with the time to do these things, we are slap bang in the middle of a bank holiday which is made worse by the fact the University closes on the Tuesday as well meaning I’m not able to use these few days to do half of the things I need to do because they rely on the presence of another person who won’t be present due to the holiday.

I’m all for taking a break but because I start full time work on Wednesday I really need these 4 days to be as productive as possible and it would help oh so very much if everyone wasn’t out of the office. To be honest I don’t quite know how I’m going to fit everything in I need to do.