This is not some satirical comment on the ‘celebrity’ chef, but a rather wonderful book by someone of the same name, which I would highly recommend. I’ve just enjoyed every page, from cover to cover, over a couple of days. It’s a fantastic amusing romp through death, people’s opinions on it, stats relating to it, and the practicalities of what to do when someone dies.

Yes, I know that sounds depressing and weird. But it really is a good book, full of inspirational quotes and not depressing in the slightest. It also has masterful photography by Cristian Barnett, who’s name should really be up there on the front – without his contribution, this book wouldn’t really work (if you’re not familiar with him, check out his website).

Did you know, for example, that five times more people commit suicide in the UK than die in Road Traffic Accidents? And doesn’t that make you think that something, somewhere, is wrong with funding in this country? If you need a reminder of the current state of mental health funding in this country, look here.

But let’s not get me started on that particular rant. Buy this book. You can get hold of it very cheaply through Amazon, and it’s well worth it.

As soon as the title was announced, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows went on pre-order sale at Amazon.co.uk (Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows). And it’s already at Number One in their book chart.

A book, length unknown, content unknown, price unknown, and release date unknown reaches Number One in the chart. Surely this must be a first? Also interesting to see that Amazon are charging £13.99 – oh, how we’ll laugh if JK Rowling outdoes herself and comes out with some oh-so-weighty tome that will cost a good £15.99 at retail… Amazon could lose an awful lot of money!

And so, six months after it happened to everybody else, the West Wing has come to an end for me. A seven-year era over.

I was fifteen when I started watching the West Wing, and preparing for my GCSEs. The West Wing, always watched on DVD rather than TV, has been a constant source of entertainment through those exams, AS-Levels, A-Levels, and three-and-a-bit years of medical school. That seems a heck of a long time to have been entertained by a single series.

The West Wing was a series with everything: The drama of the assassination attempt and Ellie’s kidnap, the sadness of the deaths of Mrs Landingham and, of course, Leo, the joy of election victories and moral victories, the comedy of – well, too many moments to mention, the romance between Josh and Donna, CJ and Danny, the marital tension between Mr and Mrs Bartlet, not to mention the politics… It just had everything. It may not have been on top form for all of it’s life – the programme struggled somewhat following the departure of Aaron Sorkin – but it was always a good watch. And the final series was, in my opinion, fantastic.

I know there are those who say that the final series was overly dramatic and sentimental, but I liked it. Maybe I’m overly dramatic and sentimental. I said back in January that I wanted the West Wing to die with dignity, and I think it did.

But what am I going to watch for the next seven years? What show can possibly combine the fantastic production values, unparalleled writing, and unmissable drama of The West Wing?

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The Young’uns, a local folk music group, have a podcast.  A Stockton-based folk music group experimenting with podcasting.  It should be an absolute disaster.  Yet, somehow, even for someone with no interest in folk music, it just works.  I don’t understand.

The Times recently rated the Northern Sinfonia as the third-best orchestra in the country.  I went to see them perform some Mozart yesterday, at home in The Sage Gateshead, and I reckon they’re better than that.

I’m no authority on classical music performance, but then I’m not an authority on anything and that’s not stopped me writing the last 974 missives.  But my limited knowledge does allow me to say that I thought the Northern Sinfonia was fantastic – an amazing three hours, in an amazing location.

If you’re looking for a bit of a different night out, it’s highly recommended.

Iain Dale has just finished his latest book, Guide to Political Blogging in the UK (buy here, or download here). It’s a good read, with contributions from Francis Maude (Tory Chairman), Adam Boulton (Sky’s political editor), David Milliband (uber-loyal Blairite minister), and the political editor of the Daily Mail to name but a few. As well as being released to the general public, it’s also going to be distributed at the party conferences to raise awareness of blogs amongst politicians.

In one section of the guide, Iain rates the Top 100 Non-Aligned Political Blogs. As you’d expect, Guido quite rightly claims the number one spot. More surprisingly, I’ve somehow parked up at number 29.

Just to put that in context, ex-politician and author Jeffrey Archer is at 68, the Daily Mail’s star columnist Melanie Phillips is at 69, and The Times’ David Aaronovitch is at 80. I’m at 29. That’s five places down from the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson. How the heck did that happen?

As if that wasn’t enough, I feature at number 69 in the overall list of political blogs. The 69th best political blog in the country. I think that’s pretty impressive for a medical student with zero political experience writing on a blog where a high proportion of the posts are not remotely related to politics.

So thank you, Iain, for your support. 🙂

With all the negative stuff I’ve posted of late, I’m beginning to worry about Karma. So to balance it out, and titled in homage to The Guardian’s daily column, here’s some examples of really good customer service I’ve received recently.

Firstly, dabs.com. I’ve ordered from there quite a few times, and they’re always speedy and efficient. Last week, my order was somewhat complicated by some problems, but customer service people were on top of them in no time, with me waiting for less than a minute to talk to the most courteous people I’ve ever come across in the world of online retail. They’re great, their prices are great, and I thoroughly recommend them.

Secondly, Vodafone. I got a new phone from them a while back, and it’s broken. Not drastically broken, but it’s developed a couple of faults. I took it into the Vodafone shop, and they sent it away to be repaired for free, and on top of that gave me a free loan handset so I’m not left without. Unfortunately, they decided the phone was too difficult to repair – and so have agreed to supply me with a shiny new one, absolutely free, because it’s still under the manufacturer’s warranty. I’ve never experienced such good support from a retail outlet acting under a manufacturer warranty. Fantastic. In fact, I’ve been with Vodafone for over three years now, having tried various networks. I can honestly say that Vodafone have always given me an unbeatable deal, and on the odd occasions where things have gone wrong, they fix them quickly and efficiently. Easily the best mobile operator I’ve tried.

Thirdly, Tesco. I bought a couple of jumpers from there a few weeks back, priced at £14 each. They went through the till at £15 each. I queried this at the customer services desk, and was given both jumpers free by way of apology, and this too was processed very quickly and efficiently. What more could I ask for?

First Direct also provide consistenly excellent customer service, as do Smile. First Direct actually answer the phone as soon as you ring them, with no menus to navigate, and are always friendly. Smile have always done whatever I’ve asked of them with the minimum of fuss.

So there you go – there are good guys out there, and it’s probably true that I don’t post as much about good customer service as bad. Hopefully this does something to redress the balance.

This morning, having seen posts by Mark and Dwight, I’ve been playing with some of Windows Live’s new services, and I’ve been left distinctly underwhelmed.  I don’t mean to be rude, but I just don’t understand why they bothered with many of the products on offer, when they bring nothing new to the market, and really aren’t very good.

First off, I’m writing this in Windows Live Writer.  This is a program which allows me to post things on this blog: Something I’ve done quite successfully without the need for special software 925 time before.  What’s more, it doesn’t even seem to aid me in any way that WordPress doesn’t, and in fact in many ways is worse than WordPress.  For example, where WordPress gives me an exact representation of how my post will look on the blog at the touch of a button, Windows Live Writer helpfully provides an inaccurate estimate with half of the page cut off.  Great. 

There are some advantages: I can use Desktop style keyboard shortcuts, like Ctrl-I, instead of using Alt-I which I inevitably forget to do – but it doesn’t bother with standard Microsoft red-squiggle spell-checking, which is one feature which could actually prove useful.  Alright, it does allow for posting to multiple blogs, but very few people ever do that.  And it does include some handy options when inserting images, like adding shadows (see above) or watermarks, which could be useful for some sites.  

Then there’s Windows Live Messenger, which practically everyone on Earth will inevitably continue to refer to as MSN.  I’ve just upgraded from the latest MSN release, and can see virtually no difference other than a skin-change.  Microsoft is now co-operating with Yahoo, but since I have no-one I want to talk to using this interoperability, it does little more than warm the cockles of my heart with the spirit of friendship and co-operation.  What’s the point?

Next? Windows Live Mail.  This is a huge improvement on the standard Hotmail interface, but it’s still buggy, clunky, slow, and full of big flashy ad banners to drive you crazy.  Gmail’s done it first and done it better, and so have Yahoo with their latest Beta.  What’s the point in Microsoft trying to compete using an inferior product?

Then, tying in with that, Windows Live Mail Desktop, possibly the most cumbersomely named piece of software ever to leave Redmond.  It’s basically the now unsupported Outlook Express, stripped down a bit and given a God-awful skin which includes large flashy banner ads.

The Windows Live Safety Centre took the best part of three hours to assess my laptop, whilst running it reported that it found five viruses, but then the results page said it hadn’t.  So quite what happened there I cannot say.  It’s good to see Microsoft taking security seriously, but I did feel that this product wasn’t up to much, either.  Though for novice users, perhaps it’s better than nothing at all, and I guess it’s good to have everything in one place, but why on Earth choose a web-based place?

Other components, like the live.com personalised homepage, just seem like copies of things competitors have done, and have done better.  But, like with Google’s releases, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of an overall plan here.  It seems like a load of “Ooh, Google’s launching this, we better compete” releases cobbled together under the Windows Live brand.

Maybe if I was a Hotmail aficionado with a terrible MSN Spaces blog then I would be excited by these releases.  And there’s no doubt that they will be the next ‘big thing’, because Microsoft will ram them down our collective throats until we accept them.  But it seems disappointing that a pioneering company like Microsoft can’t produce something better, more worthwhile, and generally more useful, instead of seemingly copying everybody else’s ideas, and copying them badly.

Just came across this while YouTubing… It’s from the second season of Scrubs.

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What other TV comedy could include something quite like this and get away with it? Scrubs is comedy with depth, and it continues to be excellent. For the uninitiated (is anybody uninitiated?), Amazon have seasons 1-3 available on DVD, and season 4 available to preorder. Enjoy.

If the book was “450 pages of irritatingly gripping tosh”, then the movie accurately reflects the book – except the movie isn’t gripping.

The movie has been getting terrible reviews, and I so wanted to be positive, but it’s difficult. But then, to serve its purpose, the movie had to be bad. It was a chance for pop-lit readers to emulate more widely read individuals by coming out of the film complaining that “it wasn’t as good as the book”, and give them another chance to slip into conversation that they read, ergo they must be intelligent. Some even go to the trouble of slipping in how “Angels and Daemons is a much better book”, as if to emphasise how well-read they are, when in fact they’ve merely read a second novel by the same author following the same formula. And then, at the same time, it gets people like me going to see it, to see just how bad it really is.

I don’t intend to be all snooty here, but it’s hard to be nice about a terrible book being made into a terrible film. Much like the book, the film really has no point to it. There’s a whole world of the morality of faith to be explored, which is just ignored in favour of pseudoscience and revival of popular myth. It was the ultimate formulaic Hollywood blockbuster, just at the book was the ultimate formulaic best-seller.

In truth, the film isn’t all that bad. As with the book, it acheives everything it sets out to do and more. It’s just a shame that its objective appears to be to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and not to explore the real issues. But, heck – since everyone’s talking about it, it’s probably worth seeing anyway.

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