Month: February 2025

Avatar Trouble at the Winston

It’s finally happening. You know that venerable old videoconferencing system Microsoft has produced for years? You know the one that changed the world of video chat. No? The one EVERYONE used to use… right up until the point that the world went to shit and everyone needed to video call people? No not Zoom… Skype! Yes Skype, the underappreciated grand master of video calling. Well not for much longer…

As reported by ARS Technica skype is going to be put to sleep on 5th May after 21 years serving the VPC (Virtual Pub Community). Sad times.

It seems like we are going to be able to move to teams with personal accounts, which is nice, but what are we going to do without the incessant ‘tech titting’ or the random interjections of an animated prawn? I’ve tried it and I can sign in to Teams with my outlook.com account, although it hasn’t brought across any of the old chats, which the article suggested it should.

It truly will be the end of an era. How do you feel about the death of an icon (even if it is a pretty crappy one)?

Avatar It has begun

At what point are you officially old?

I think we’ve all been content to think of ourselves as young all these years, even as our years advance and our hairlines recede. But I think today I crossed the boundary.

This week I’ve been laid low by some kind of winter virus that I can only describe as an absolute bastard. Today, finally well enough to leave the house, I tottered unsteadily to the chemist a few minutes’ walk down the road to get another box of uplifting medicine.

The pharmacist asked me the usual things – are these for you? Have you taken them before? And then she looked at me and asked a new one. Are you over 40?

I am 40, I said, wondering what bearing this could have on some over the counter tablets containing paracetamol and caffeine.

Ah, she said, in that case you’re eligible for a free blood pressure check. These tablets can raise your blood pressure so they can do a check now, or indeed at any time I happen to be passing and wonder what my blood pressure is, since I’m now 40.

I’m used to the idea that old people get extra free services on the NHS. Flu jabs and that sort of thing. It was an interesting experience to find that I am now eligible for the first of them.

I thought about it and I’m OK with it. Bring on the freebies. When I’ve been back for my free test I’ll let you know what my blood pressure is.

Avatar Ian’s holiday snaps – #3

Do you feel like a mystery today? I think you’re looking for a mystery and I’ve got exactly what you need.

As I wandered the barren desolate wasteland of Florida, in the hopes of finding something worthy of my time (tad over dramatic, I know) I kept noticing these signs dotted around the place. I saw some on a highway as we drove to a mall one morning and there were also some lurking around the massive McDonalds.

Who keeps leaving these signs? What kind of website are they proposing? Why are there no details or pictures? Who would be insane enough to give money to a random stranger advertising on the corner of a McDonalds?

I kept imagining some sort of lummox on the other end of the phone and he would spin a wheel for every customer. Whatever the wheel would land on, that’s the website you got. You didn’t have a say in the matter and if you tried to he would send the “website boys” round for a little “chat”.

I’ll never get answers to my questions and, settling into my chair at home, thousands of miles away from website man / woman and their shady empire, I’m quite content to leave it that way.

Avatar Ian’s holiday snaps – #2

And so it continues.

In Florida there are a lot of gift shops. A LOT. They want all of your disposable income and they will do whatever it takes to get you in their store. A lot of them advertise ridiculous statements such as “gifts as low as $1.99” or “five t-shirts for $9.99” and it’s all lies. You’ll go in to be greeted by five kids t-shirts for $9.99 or the kinds of cheap mugs that not even an auntie with bad eyesight would pick up and consider. All lies.

Initially I ignored these places because I knew what would be inside. Later on I relented for a laugh and, you know what? I was right. Laden with plastics of all shapes and sizes, pirated Disney goods, the kind of nonsense every gift shop has. It was a treasure trove of bobbins.

What made me sit up and notice though were the buildings themselves. Nothing in Florida looks new, in fact everything has this worn out faded murky visage which you get used to after a while.

This shop made me laugh because you notice it straight away and every time I walked past I would think, “mwear!” to myself. The best mwear in all of town. Ladies love top of the line mwear; purchase one today for your gal, fellas!

I also keep saying it in a Matt Berry voice for maximum effect.

Avatar Pet Peeves: Soap and Towel

We did an episode of A Breath of Fresh Beans a while back about pet peeves. You know, things that wind you up beyond all reason that other people probably don’t know or care about. In the podcast I think mine was to do with people putting those metal letters back to front in cast iron gates, and Phil at work tangling up all the phone cords.

Anyway, another one occurred to me the other day – one that’s annoyed me to an admittedly ridiculous degree for several years now – and I thought I’d share it here so that you can be certain exactly how skewed my priorities really are.

A few years back some of the toilets at work were refurbished. There’s now a big mirror above all the sinks, underneath which is concealed soap and paper towel dispensers. You know the sort of thing. To help you find all the hidden bathroom accessories there are little labels on the mirror to show you where they are.

Here’s what they look like.

There are only these two labels, and they each appear about three times across the width of the mirror. I mean, come on, you’ve spotted the first problem already, right? The “soap” one is in Helvetica and the “Towel” one is in Futura. Bloody hell, guys, you’re only making two labels, can you try to pick the same font for both of them?

Then there’s the word “Towel”. For some reason they’ve made the T and the L bold, but not the rest. Look at the thicker the stroke width on those letters compared to the others. Why would you do that?

It would surely be easier to get it right than to get it this wrong. When you open your graphic design software to make two grey circles with a word inside each, it would surely be easier to get the font the same across both of them, instead of three different fonts mixed up in two words. How do you even manage that level of ineptitude?

Anyway, I know you don’t care, and I know it doesn’t matter, but it absolutely boils my piss, and I thought you should know.

Avatar The best home owner job

We talk a lot about what it’s like owning a house. Kev has been renovating and expanding his vast property empire for many years now, of course, while I have been steadily improving our premises with the aid of a toolbox large enough to use as a double garage. Now that Ian has joined the home owner club we have been doing our best to gently and constructively guide him in his new duties.

But I sometimes think that all too often we discuss the downsides: the amount of maintenance work, the unexpected costs, the speed with which nature will reclaim your carefully tended garden as wilderness. So I thought it might be nice to talk about the good bits of owning a house, because some of the things an Englishman has to do to look after his castle are actually very satisfying.

I will open the bidding with pressure washing.

Pressure washing is brilliant.

I love my pressure washer, but for whatever reason I hadn’t taken it out for a spin for about 18 months. Then, the other day, we’d had a drain unblocked and the drainage gully running through the paving down the side of the house needed clearing of all the crap that had built up, so I got the Kärcher out of the garage and fired it up. And once it was out, that was me set for the afternoon. Everything got jet washed.

The best part was discovering that the paving stones around the front and side of the house actually have a colour, as pictured above. I spent a very happy hour effectively colouring them in.