Chris Thompson   Chris Thompson on the internet

I think it is about time I write a little about my work, and about my office. It’s only fair really, considering I had the cheek to moan about it a few weeks back; about the moving around, about the cleaning up, and the updating. I wrote about how I hoped it would be nicer, when it was all done; I hope things would be able to run a bit more smoothly. And thankfully they do! The mission was a success. Things have been updated, and they work – and they work very well.

On the work front, a lot of this new smoothness can be chalked up to the business broadband. We had initially been worried that, with quite limited business sdsl availability in our area, we wouldn’t be able to go for the ideal internet connection, but in the end it worked out. The new internet is not only a lot faster than our previous one, but it doesn’t seem to disconnect as much either. There were times before where you could be working, and out of nowhere, and apparently for no real reason, you would get cut off. As long as I haven’t just jinxed it, it seems to be the case no longer.

Our telephones were also updated, which was almost as needed as the internet fix. Mostly this is because our phones were the most out of date things in the office. Probably even more out of date than Jack’s Tottenham shirt, which is yellow and very, very dated. Now our phones can do all sorts of fancy stuff. It is a little bit like these voip phone systems that you can get, and can do a lot more than just serve as a telephone. Fancy stuff.

Tomorrow is the big day. Wembley. The NFL, over here in England. So there is a lot to look forward to, and I’m growing more and more excited by the minute.

We have SDSL at work, which, in short, means things are more peachy there than it is at home, when it comes to the internet. Unfortunately, we have exceeded our bandwidth limit, and are now limited to what is quite a sedate pace. For browsing websites and things, it’s okay, but it takes forever to load up a video on You Tube, and watching anything on iPlayer is currently impossible.

And it’s not just iPlayer – it’s TV Catchup, too, so in our present state we can wave goodbye to television over the internet.

When you consider that you don’t need excessive speeds for IPTV to work in the first place, it’s a bit of a shame. You just need some speed, and I suppose at the moment, our punishment is that we do not have any.

Things like BBC’s iPlayer are very handy when you’ve missed something on television, and you want to catch up. You could watch the whole of the world athletics championships again, for instance – which I have been doing, from time to time, at work, when I want to break up a particularly boring task. It helps to keep me sane. It helps the days go by that little bit quicker.

But it would certainly help to be able to watch it at home if I wanted to, too.

Graphic design is something that I thoroughly enjoy dabbling in. I’ve loved it for a long time – right back to when I was about fifteen. Although saying that, when I first started, calling it “graphic design” would not do. The first images seemed to consist of dragging a few pictures together, slapping a bit of text on and calling it finished.

That first program was old, and pretty rubbish. When I got my hands on a copy of Photoshop, I found that using it was so much fun that I practised, and fiddled, and messed around nearly every day. After a while I was producing things that were actually pretty good. And over the years, I’ve continued to work with the program – even if it is just messing around, or producing background images for my desktop, or profile pictures for my friends. But it has paid off. Because now, rather suddenly, I’ve got a chance to really call myself a graphic designer.

Now I could potentially be producing a magazine for my friends business – a business that seems to be going quite well. He’s set up an office, it’s starting to get rolling quite nicely, and it’s really quite exciting. I’ve been to check out the office, and had a play on the computers, and it’s pretty cool stuff. With leased line providers, there is nice, fast internet available already, and it all feels so professional. I told him as much.

Business SDSL availability can sometimes be more lacking than you might like, apparently, which makes it quite difficult sorting it all out. So it wasn’t as simple as just rolling into the office and ordering any old internet. He had to research into all the available broadband companies to make sure that he didn’t get ripped off, and was ordering a package that could actually be of use to us if this thing snowballed – which hopefully it will.

To wrap up the day, here are a couple of interesting stories. First of all is something potentially very frightening: a possible outbreak of the bubonic plague in Libya, not far from the Egyptian border. Specialists have been called in, because they don’t know for certain what it is; but it’s certainly something to keep an eye on. Illness and disease has been such a prominent feature in the news recently, it’s almost like the god of illness has got bored, and sent a few playthings into the world:

“I am bird flu!”

“Pah! I am swine flu!”

“Puny illnesses! I am the BUBONIC PLAGUE!”

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Here is an interesting (and random) (and slightly more upbeat) piece of news for you. Although it is more of a fact, than a piece of news: earwigs have two penises. I found the line about favouring their right penis quite amusing. It must be quite wonderful just to be able to say to your earwig girlfriend, I’m sorry, I tend to prefer my right penis, thank you.

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If you’ve been following my blogs in the past, you’ll know that we (my flatmates and I) have been struggling with slow internet for a while now, and were wondering whether or not to get rid of it and go for one of the more business oriented, speedy SDSL providers.

Because there are ten of us between the two flats, the cost wouldn’t have been too huge for us. The more we researched all this kilostream circuiting stuff, though, the more confusing it became. And, at the end of the day, it’s easier to live with a little bit of slowdown and pay £5 each a month, than try out a completely new thing and have to pay £30 each.

And so, after weeks of deliberating, e’ve finally decided against it, it seems.