Diary of a Disordered Mind

The Sun's having quite a time of it recently. Having exploited a mother's grief to make a point about Gordon Brown and his inability to spell, they've come under increasing fire for what was an extremely insensitive piece.

Of course, they'd never spell Jacqui Janes's name wrong:

What, they did? Surely not! Having made such a fuss, they must have taken EXTRA care not to make such a rookie mistake.

It didn't stop their. Having called Ms Janes 'Jones' in a My Sun piece, they went on to miss-spell Wootton Bassett:

And included a picture of Chris Evans, grinning away, to accompany a headline about the death of another servicemen:

So epic fail for taking the moral high ground.

What, surely there isn't more?

A Sun columnist wrote about the over sexualisation of young girls in a print edition of the paper last week. As the Nadia Knows blog and Tabloid Watch point out, it's quite hypocritical for a newspaper who use 18 year-old girls on page 3 of their newspaper:

Though, further investigation suggests that Rosie may have been even younger on her (illegal) debut 16 months ago:

Oops...

Have you ever had the feeling that the Universe is conspiring against you? Me too. Specifically, my driving test experience this week has convinced me that the Universe wants me to remain a pedestrian.

Until fairly recently, I haven't had the need to learn to drive. I grew up just outside York and could easily get into the city without the need to drive. Then, I went to University in Liverpool and, even if I had a car, would probably never use it because, if I was going to spend money on anything, it'd be beer rather than petrol!

My wife, however, was sick of being my taxi service and bought me driving lessons. My last lesson was on Monday and my test was today. Unfortunately, on my way back from my final lesson, my instructors car went insane. Basically, the computer started sending out weird messages to different parts of the car and it started to apply the brakes at intervals. As you can imagine, it was taken to the garage for repairs where they found loose connectors and fourteen separate software faults. The garage said it'd take a day or so to be repaired.

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

In the end it was clear that the car wasn't going to be ready in time for my test, so my instructor spend a day finding another car and insuring it. So today I went for a lesson in the replacement car, a nine year old petrol Peugeot 206, rather than the car I'd had lessons in, a brand new diesel Peugeot 207.

The lesson went as well as expected, given I'd never driven the car before, and I went to my test.

It's been seven years since I took an exam and I'd forgot what it felt like to be waiting for the test to begin. I was ridiculously nervous; partly because it was a test but mostly because I'd had two hours of practice in the car I was about to drive.

The examiner collected me and we went out to the car. He instantly noticed that the car wasn't my instructors usual car and went back inside to talk to her about it. I was left outside to sweat and after a couple of minutes my instructor and examiner came out to the car.

It turns out that this particular model had been recalled because of a faulty break-line, a fault my instructor had, in 2001, had checked. Unfortunately, the paperwork wasn't in the car. Why would it be? The fault had been checked, the car had been used in test subsequently and had later been given to my instructors sister.

In the end, the examiner couldn't take me out because he couldn't be 100% sure that the fault had been fixed. I don't blame him because rules are, as they say, rules. It's just annoying that I'd worked myself up about it and in the end it was all for nothing.

The good news is that I'll get a free replacement test; I'm now waiting to see what the Universe decides to throw at me...

To add insult to injury, as we got to the test center, my instructor got a phone-call to say her car was ready to be picked up over an hour away.

SON OF A ....

OK, so the posterous API didn't handle the images or any of the gadgets I added. If you're interested, this is what they WOULD Have looked like!

Google Wave in progress

Some gadgets

Amazon are attempting to reduce packaging in an effort to be more environmentally and to reduce "wrap rage", whatever that is.

It's a shame they hadn't thought of this sooner; a jacket I bought for my wife arrived in a metre cube box when a large jiffy bag would have sufficed!