Destroy All Onions!

Today I went on a day trip to Hiroshima, the first place where an atomic bomb was used in anger. This is the Hiroshima Peace Dome, one of the very few buildings that survived the blast, and the resulting temperatures of 3000° C.

As expected, it’s a slightly scary place. The pictures of the city before show a typical Japanese city of the period, except for the fire breaks that had been specifically created to protect the city from bombing. Needless to say, when the atomic bomb came, it wasn’t what they were expecting.

The pictures of the city afterwards just show a wasteland, with a handful of remaining buildings. A lot of people died horribly. We actually met one of the survivors, who talked us through what happened.

Walking back through the city to the station, it was odd to think that the streets we were walking through had been that wasteland. I’m glad that they have kept the peace dome as a memorial. A terrible thing was done, and I hope it never happens again.

It doesn’t take much for gadgetry to impress me, as I always like a new toy. But I was completely stunned when I found noise-cancelling headphones on the plane to Japan yesterday. They always make a difference to the entertainment experience on the plane, so I usually carry a pair. But I’ve never found them supplied by the airline. Well done ANA!

Oh and thanks for not going bankrupt before we got to travel too.

A couple of weeks ago I finally got myself a new mobile phone, after much pondering. It’s taken me a little while to get into it, but today clinched it, and I’ve decided that I definitely like it.

It’s a Sony Ericsson C702. For me, it has two key features – it’s a Sony Ericsson, which means it works pretty much the same way as my previous phone (a Sony Ericsson K800), except that it’s got a built-in GPS.

I’ve been tempted to buy a sat-nav for ages, but I’ve been resisting because I don’t often drive to unknown places; however I’ve always remained very keen on the technology. Now that GPS is available in phones (some of the new Nokias, and of course the devil’s own iPhone), it’s even more attractive.

Of course, multi-purpose devices can never work as well as a dedicated single-purpose one. Sat-navs work out where they are very quickly, whereas this one can take quite a while to pick up the satellite signal (a few minutes sometimes). For the first few days, the performance was very poor, but it has improved as it has downloaded more info from the satellites (something called an almanac, apparently). And once it does get locked on, it’s pretty reliable, and works fine inside a car.

I’ve been experimenting with it on my bike, with some success, but today it managed to guide me reliably from Manchester Airport to a meeting in Doncaster, and back again (over 2 and a half hours of driving) with the voice telling me every turn of the way. And since it was just my mobile phone sitting in the car, and not a GPS stuck on the windscreen, I am very impressed. It also still had enough charge to make phone calls, which is also useful for a phone.

I know the camera isn’t as good as the old one was, and in time I’ll probably miss that, but for now, I really like my new phone. 🙂

Earlier today, I watched the street outside my house fill up with water, as it rained all day. Then the rain eased a bit, and the flooding went away, and I went out. That was a bit of a mistake.

Trying to get home tonight was mental. Every road I took ended with roads closed by flooding. I saw houses with water at the front door, I saw a road with a bulge like a volcano because of the pressure of water under it, I saw water running down roads like rivers. In the end, after much driving around, I managed to get to my street, but I couldn’t get down as far as my house. I abandoned the car on a dry footpath a few doors up, and waded home.

I reckon there was over a foot of water on the footpath, so it was even deeper on the road. The jury’s out on whether I’ll be wearing those trainers again. The water flooded my garden, and was well up the drive, but stopped short of my house.

It’s a scary feeling to drive round your own town and see so much chaos. Its even scarier when you realise you might not be able to get home. But I’m very thankful that my home was safe when I got here.

Despite this blog being called “Destroy All Onions”, I’ve  gone fairly easy on the subject of the onion, and its unspeakable evil.

But I was out for tea a week or two ago and saw this in arestaurant, and felt I had to warn you all.

Do you see it?

Do you see what they are trying to do to poor simple coffee drinkers??

Look at it again upside-down if you have any doubts!

You see it now don’t you – a big horrible onion drawn on the top of the coffee. It can only mean coffee with some kind of vile onion syrup!

Beware the onion, gentle readers! They can be hiding anywhere!

Wow. What a great movie!

I don’t think I need to say much more than that.

One of the few new CDs I’ve bought was Version, an album of celebrity covers all produced and arranged by Mark Ronson, the man behind Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen. I love the Ronson sound, which I always think is a bit retro, with a big brassy sound.

So when I saw a flyer for a live concert in Belfast’s St. George’s Market in my barbers, I was interested. So my sister (also a fan) and myself got some tickets and went along last night.

The market is quite a nice venue -not too big, and with a very down to earth feel (that’ll be the smell of fish, especially at the back). But the sound was really a bit woeful – vocals sometimes just got lost among the heavy instrumentation (strings and horns), and the whole sound was just a bit muddied. It was a bit hard to make out anything that you didn’t already know.

It’s a shame the sound wasn’t better, but a good night out.

You can’t have missed all the talk about the big kids’ movie of the summer. Being a big kid myself, I couldn’t resist going along.

I thought it was really good. As has been widely reported, it starts with a fairly long section with no human beings, and hence no dialogue, since neither Wall-E nor Eve speaks. But despite there being no narrative, I think the story starts very strongly, with the film showing us Wall-E’s lonely life, rather than just telling us about it. I thought this part of the movie was brilliant, and very touching, as we see him going about his mission to clean up a ruined earth singlehandedly.

It then all changes once Wall-E meets Eve, and together they go to the Axiom, where we see what has become of the human race. As you’d expect, it’s not a pretty picture, as humanity has had nothing to do for 700 years – not even having to stand up (living in hover chairs), or having to chew (since everything comes in a cup). But the movie, while damning of our throwaway culture and increasing obesity, doesn’t lecture too much. Indeed, at the end it shows the triumph of the human spirit, as the captain takes on the challenge of returning to earth, and to a long slow rebuilding, which is shown in the closing titles.

Unexpectedly, this film manages to be a touching love story, an object lesson in how to treat our world and its resources, and a cartoon comedy. I think it’s a great combination.
But be warned that other people I’ve spoken to think that the lack of dialogue makes the film boring, and they didn’t like it much at all. Philistines…

I went to have a play with the new iphone 3G on Friday afternoon. It really is a very impressive piece of kit.

It’s got a big, clear, beautiful screen. It’s got the cutest user interface ever, which makes that screen literally strokable. The zooming is really clever (you just put two fingers on the screen and move them apart, or together, and the application resizes with your fingers). Google maps is impressive on any machine, but on that screen, and with a GPS to tell you where you are, it’s fantastic.

But it’s got one horrible flaw – you won’t write many text messages with it. The keyboard is one application which doesn’t flip round when you turn the phone from portrait to landscape, which means that the keyboard is just too small. If it had real buttons, it would be easy enough to use, but because it has a touch screen, it’s basically unusable, and I typed nothing but jibberish (yeah, I know, no change there).

When you add in the fact that it is a 3G phone from O2, the network which has the worst 3G coverage, it’s got some really big negatives against it.

So I managed to resist buying one, and so saved myself a fortune.

I set out on my bike today with high hopes! I was doing to have a really long cycle, round interesting places, on my day off work.

I was going to cycle out via the Comber Greenway, (a really nice new, smooth path), then from Comber to Newtownards, Newtownards to Donaghadee, then along the coast road to Bangor, along the coastal path to Helen’s Bay, then back home along the main Bangor Road. I reckoned it might be about 40 miles, which would be a new distance record for me.

But when I set out I discovered that my trip computer thingy has kicked the bucket, and wasn’t registering the fact that I was moving at all. So as a result, I have no idea how far I actually went. But that was okay – I could cope with that. Then I realised how noisy my bike had become – the chain definitely needs oiled, and possibly the gears need some work again. But it was still moving, so I could cope with that too.

I made it through most of my route (even against a bit of a headwind along the coastal bits). But then the real problems started on the coastal path between Bangor and Crawfordsburn, where I felt my left pedal a bit wobbly. I stopped and discovered it was actually loose. Using the two tools at my disposal, my foot (to kick it with) and my cycling spanner (from Tokyo), I was able to tighten it up a bit. But it loosened again pretty quickly. After a few such repairs, it finally fell off on the Bangor-Belfast road, about 8 miles from Belfast. Another repair, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to nurse it all the way home (cycling with just one leg is very difficult, it turns out). So when I saw a taxi at a petrol station (one of the big black cabs), I asked him if he could take me and my bike home. The bike fitted perfectly, so I made it home without any further drama.

But my bike won’t be going any further than the repair shop for the foreseeable future 🙁