Enrona
Parmalat is the main Italian food company. It’s also got slightly dodgy finances.
Yearly archives: 2003
Defeat from the jaws of Victory
I want to scream.
I managed to convince BT Yahoo to zero and close my old account because the disconnection fee was wrongly charged. Now I’ve just been out to post stuff and discovered that I’ve hit my overdraft limit again, mostly because the last cheque for my freelancing hasn’t arrived, so now the Direct Debit for the new account is going to bounce and the whole disaster is going to start again.
Plus I’m supposed to be going to see Return of the King tonight and I’m going to have to cadge the price of a ticket off someone.
Send me money by PayPal. You know you want to. Or buy something from the shop.
Name that avian
Are there any birdspotters out there who can tell me what this bird is-
It is freakily huge compared to the other, non magpie, birds that have been flittling around the garden recently. I’m used to seeing tiny things the size of its head.
(I nearly said I was used to seeing tiny tits, but I refrained…….
Doh!)
Semper Occultis
I’ve been trying to track down a picture I took of the MI6 headquarters to trace for a background shot in DEx, but, just in case, I’ve also been looking for pictures on the web. This site has a few, from various angles, and links to pieces on the history of the service.
(Semper Occultis translates as Always Secret, motto of the SIS/ MI6)
What ever happened to Dan Dare?
After running some searches on Dan Dare after reading Ian’s post I came across some real British rocketry projects from the 50’s and 60’s. This is the kind of site full of old abandoned experimental technology that I suspect Ian will like.
DEx- then break
Today’s edition of DEx is up. This is going to be the last one before a long Christmas break. It will probably return at the start of term (12th January) next year. By then it may also have changed venue. I’m not that happy with the comics manager I’m using, and I want to get more publicity for the project. Via BugPowder I found out about Webcomicsnation. The functions in the Professional account are just the sort of things I want. For instance, I have some naughtier sections/ stories planned for my second strip- Usual Time, Usual Place– that I’d be a bit dubious about posting on my rather uptight current ISP’s servers. Plus this way I can BitPass access to these stories as a barrier against younger viewers (not a huge barrier, admittedly, but it’s something.) I also like the look of the searchable character database because characters in the two strips are going to hop back and forth and appear in the background when least expected.
And of course, the increased profile might just mean I can make enough money off the strip to merit the day and a bit a week I spend on it.
Blame
Despite many an obstacle, an investigation into the September 11th attacks has concluded that they could have been avoided. No real surprise there. What is interesting is the list of people to be called to testify before the public part of the inquiry-
top officials in the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, National Security Agency and, maybe, President Bush and former President Clinton.
No doubt the two Prez’s, or their advisers, will take the opportunity to score points off each other. At least when Dubya says he knew nothing it’ll be convincing.
Photo Friday
This week’s theme is Desire. I don’t have any pictures of naked ladies (well, none that I took) so-
Click on the image to see the full size picture
FYI
Carling Premier draughtflow lager is evil. It doesn’t taste of anything, yet just one can has given me a really nasty hangover headache.
MTF
Support the Mute Tourettes Foundation.
Union (Jack) City Blues
I never actually announced it on this site, but Marvel’s Epic imprint, for which I did a Union Jack proposal, collapsed. I got a standard issue rejection letter back. As this is a Marvel owned character, there’s little chance of sprucing up the script and selling it on to another company, so here’s the script and rough series plan for your delectation.
Exchange
I’ll say this for Wubble U, the plummeting dollar (�1=$1.77 when I last checked) means it’s a great time for Brits to buy from the States. At that rate the Must Not Mention Sheep T Shirt is only �8.48. Buy it now folks, you know it makes sense. I’ll transfer the money to Britain when Bush gets kicked out and the dollar rebounds.
Scream if you want to go faster
Yesterday Scaled Composites became the first civilian organisation without government funding to break the sound barrier. It’s looking like they may be able to take a shot at the $10m prize next year. Also they did it on the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight. The official press release is here.
Bloggity Blog Blog Blog
Well, we didn’t win anything in the Grauniad’s weblog awards. I blame NatWest.
But at least team Spinneyhead is participating in an entirely new form of publishing. You don’t get to say that every day.
(Spinneyhead definitely falls into categories a, c, b (by proxy) and, sadly, d.)
Fakey
Even after the invasion of Iraq, it seems we’re relying on forged documents to justify it.
Technorati tag: Iraq
Protection racket
A whole unit of soldiers due to deploy to Iraq have had armour made for their soft skin vehicles at their own expense because the US military is taking so long to produce anything officially acceptable.
Technorati tag: Military
The road to Hell is paved with old paperbacks
The M6 Toll motorway has a secret ingredient- old Mills & Boon novels.
“We use copies of Mills and Boon books, not as a statement about what we think of the writing, but because it is so absorbent.
“They may be slushy to many people, but it’s their ‘no-slushiness’ that is their attraction as far as we are concerned.”
Thanks to Penny for the link
April Fool!
Well, there’s a surprise. The Telegraph had a story earlier this week where they claimed to have documents conclusively linking Al-Quaeda to Saddam. What they actually prove is that the Telegraph are ridiculously gullible, as the claims made in this article just scream ‘fake!’. The document turned up at too convenient a time, the claims they make are far too explicit and the ten year old who drew them up tries too hard to please by also ‘proving’ the Niger yellowcake claims from Dubya’s State of the Union speech.
There’s a booming trade in these wacky documents in Iraq at the moment, with forgers making hundreds of dollars at a time selling them to Western papers and intelligence agencies. In this case, the FBI has convincingly refuted any claims that Mohammed Atta could have been in Baghdad to meet Abu Nidal.
Dare to Dream
After watching an episode of the new Dan Dare cgi cartoon on Saturday I dragged out the biography of his creator. Most of the original strips have been reprinted, and now a group of enthusiasts has teamed up with members of the original art team to create new adventures to be printed in Spaceship Away.
Nemi
I could get to like the Metro’s Nemi cartoons. Imagine a grown up Emily The Strange with even bigger eyes and a screwed up sex life.