I just wanted to make some things clear. While I do blog about cats occasionally I am by no means a cat person to be truthful I couldn't actually stand the little critters. However my wife was crazy about cats and even before we got married she convinced me that she had to get 2 cats. After some constant nagging and looking very depressed on her part I finally gave in and said we could get two kittens from one of my friends Owen who's cat Cuddles had just had a litter. The funny thing about cats is if you don't like them or show any interest in them they seem to want to be around you more.

One of the cats we called Willow (the grey one in the picture above) decided she was going to adopt me as her main human. This included sitting on top of me or near me at any opportunity, constantly mewing when I wasn't home before 7pm and occasionally using the carpet as a cat litter when I was even later. I had never had any animal attach itself like this to me and I hadn't even shown any interest in her. I suppose Willow started to grow on me and while I am watching TV she will quite often jump on my lap if I am not on my laptop and commence pummeling at which point I give in and start stroking her.

At the moment we now have 4 cats and every morning is filled with cats playing, they have this morning ritual which involves chasing one of the cats through the patio door around the garden, through the cat flap and around again. This appears to happen until the cat being chased is tackled to the ground then the one that attacked it becomes "it" and the whole games starts again filled with constant "meowing" excited grunts and jumping into the air every now and again. At about 11am they calm down and commence sleeping until about 2pm when a new games of "I hide in the box wait for you to come by and jump on you". Occasionally when they are in their frenzied play time they'll run over you in this game of "You're it!" sometimes claws dig in and you jump up chasing them all outside and locking them outside to play their game. In most cases they all hide away from you when one of them has done something bad and venture out later when they think you've forgotten.   

Okay I'll admit the little guys have grown on me, that doesn't mean I like them....does it?

This film has been around for some time now however I can remember the first time my wife and I watched this film it was on a plane back from Zante where we had just had our honeymoon. I did something silly I broke the first rule about animals films, I actually watched it and what was worst I watched it in public.

And yes the story is about 8 dogs that had to be left behind when a huge snow storm starts in the arctic and there's not enough space to evacuate them on the evacuation plane. How the dogs survive by themselves and how their owner (Paul Walker) who was forced to leave them behind tries everything to get back and rescue them when everyone says they would have died by now.

There will be laughter there will be that strange feeling in your throat at the end and that stupid moment when you get some dust in your eyes and it makes your eyes water.

I was in the shop the other day when I heard a little girl say to her mother in the queue behind me.

"Why the f*ck can't I have that Jay's got one!"

I was quite shocked and waiting to hear the mothers response which was

"Well he's f*ckin older than you isn't he!"

At which point I raised by eyebrows and realized why the child actually spoke the way she did, it was believe it or not the parents fault. Its strange now a days I'm not saying I was never a kid that swore when I was younger but if I was ever caught by my parents I would either get a smack in the mouth or my mouth literally washed out with soap by my teachers. Swearing has become such a common part of life in some areas that its just part of regular conversation. Its shocking but it only takes one generation to introduce it as part of everyday conversation and its gets passed on. I suppose swearing which used to be something used when someone was very annoyed or angry doesn't seem to have that same effect anymore.

I've just trying out a new blog writing tool by Microsoft called Windows Live Writer. I usually use Qumana however it doesn't allow you to add new categories to your blog however Windows Live Writer does. My only gripe with both products is the American English dictionary with no option for choosing any other type of dictionary. I am guessing these blogging tools are an American conspiracy to take over the world with their version of English :)

All in all nice tool guys just give us a choice of dictionaries please!

Its been quite a hot topic of debate which appears to have angered most people. Where it is taking place local councils are announcing what a success it has become, while the people served by these local councils are struggling with extra waste one couple in Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire have gone and setup their own refuse collection for the weeks the council doesn't collect it to get rid of the extra waste.

What I find incredibly funny is Richmondshire District Councils response to the scheme. Stating what a success fortnightly collections have been and how residents have paid for waste collection to the council and don't need to pay extra for it. One thing I don't think Richmondshire Council  realizes is that people are doing this because they are not content, because there is a problem.

If councils are going to do fortnightly collections they should at least cut our waste collection bills in half surely if they are only providing half the service they should only charge us half the price? Or unless local councils have suddenly realized that they are struggling to pay for their recycling schemes and need to pay for it by reducing normal waste collections?

I would love to know what wise ar*se at the mobile phone companies, thought it would be a great idea to enable mobile phones to play music on a loud speaker, so that irritating little teenagers and Japanese tourists, could share their lovely taste in music with whole train or bus loads of passengers. I mean why wouldn't you want to hear "Baby hit me one more time" on the pesky little loud speaker of a Motorola Razor phone 20 times. The whole idea of the word personal stereo system or personal music system, means just that...its personal! It means you listen to it through headphones so that nobody else has to. It doesn't mean I'll share what I'm listening to with everyone around me because they just love what I listen to. We know you think your choice in music is just the best in the world and we will take your word for it! 

I finally got around to using the Joost invite my friend Owen sent me a while ago. To be honest I couldn't understand what all the fuss was until I finally signed up and saw what TV was on offer.

Its not half bad for an IPTV platform, in fact its bloody amazing. All the channels are delivered incredibly fast and it allows you to watch shows when you want to watch them. This platform is literally quite awesome and I only hope it really takes off in a far bigger way with much larger titles. I spent my time watching past episodes of Lexx and browsing through a few music videos stations. If this is the way for IPTV then I am fully onboard for the revolution! I have seen other IPTV providers such as BT Vision and was not too impressed they seemed to be lacking the content while at least Joost does have some nice content although slightly older content its still makes good viewing.

It would be nice if you could now pickup a dedicated IPTV box for Joost to plug into your TV. At the moment I plug it into my TV via my laptops RGB port. I am looking forward to some more content and wonder what the payment structure for Joost will be once its out of beta. Will you need to subscribe to it for a monthly fee or will the content be paid for using the small and not too long adverts they had during the shows?

Its about time government became more accountable to the people, so often government has made decisions with out consulting the local population with some often tragic consequences. Government ministers getaway with so much now a days and we the British public seem to do nothing to stop it or have had any method of doing anything about it removed.

Take a simple issue such as only emptying our bins once every 2 weeks. Who in their right mind thought that, that was going to reduce the amount of rubbish? All they've gone and done is delay the amount of time it will take for the rubbish to get to the tip, its almost like saying well if we don't collect the rubbish the problem will go away. Its still there! What you will probably find happening is more illegal dumping will take place than ever before, their will be an increase in the rodent population and eventually disease. In countries such as Spain they collect the rubbish more than once a week to stop such a problem taking place, as our climate gets warmer we will start to suffer the same problems with stinking bins outside our homes. No matter how much you recycle you are still going to get dreadful smells from rubbish left more than a week, its a fact of life.

Join the localist revolution started by Daniel Hannan of the Daily Mail, start making local councils responsible to the people again, they are here to serve us not the other way around.

Wow I am still having a hard time believing this is not a photograph!

Have a look here to see how it was done

When I first heard of BT Vision I thought to myself what a good idea! You can finally get TV over your broadband from one of the top broadband providers in the country right?

Well not quite exactly. BT Vision advertises that you can get all the free view channels over their set top box plus TV on demand. Ok sounds good, but when you look into it further you actually need to be in an area that can receive Freeview by aerial so basically the BT Vision box has a built in free view decoder and you don't get these channels over broadband. However the box does allow you to record, pause and rewind live TV a bit like the Sky Plus box does except this is for Freeview channels fare enough its a worth while service (they're not the first). So I decided to look at what  was available from the on demand bit of it, the main reason you are basically getting this box and why you need a broadband connection for it to work.

Now if the website is anything to go by you get precious little in variety in comparison to the likes of  Tiscali's newly acquired service which used to be called Home Choice which offers 1000's of movies to watch on demand. Maybe BT Vision has a lot of content to choose from but if they do, they don't advertise it very well. Tiscali are also offering a service called Sky By Wire which gives you access to Sky Movies and Sports Channels it doesn't however give you access to Sky One which appears to get hold of all those top shows such as Battle Star Galactica, Star Gate, Nip Tuck and 24. What I find the most amusing is what a monopoly Sky has on content, they don't have the best delivery mechanism for their content but they pull people into their platform because of what a hold they have on people who want to watch their channels. Sky One used to be available over other services such as Virgin Digital (formerly NTL Telewest) but I am gathering that Sky wants to keep this little gem of a channel very close to its chest. Virgin Digital also offers a great delivery mechanism with loads of channels available to watch on demand, Sky are only just catching up with on demand TV and if you've got a Sky Plus box you may have noticed the Sky Anytime option available on your set top box now. Its a paltry selection of on demand TV delivered to your set top box at night, which doesn't begin to compare to what's available from the other providers out there such as Tiscali and Virgin Digital.

I have found it so heart warming how so many organizations, celebrities and every day people have gone out of their way to help find this little girl. Even huge organizations like Microsoft have made an appeal on their web site to help find her. Even when I went on holiday to Ireland all the check in desks had pictures of Madeleine.

With the amount of publicity out there right now someone must know something and I really hope that they come forward with information to help find her.

Having watched a BBC 1 documentary on Whistle blower about undercover reporters getting themselves jobs at Tesco and Sainsburys meat, deli and fish counters I was literally quite shocked by what they uncovered. All of a sudden I saw these counters in my super market in a whole different light. At the stores they uncovered  the selling of meat and fish products past their sell by dates, cutting off of bad sections of meat and placing them back on the counter, mincing cooked and uncooked meat and selling it as fresh mince and the list goes on...

What I think was more shocking is that not much more has been made about this documentary and that these large super markets will probably get away with it. All of this was caused by super markets cutting corners to make greater profits, but no matter how evident the documentary was none of the super markets will suffer for it. People will still blindly shop at these super markets because it is what we have always done, others will not even have heard about it and some will not even be bothered.

I think what is the most shocking is that a lot of food poisoning people could have suffered may not have been their own fault, but that of their local super market.