Plant Exchange

Last weekend we went to our friends, Philippe & Christine Egalité, near Villebois Lavalette for their annual plant exchange. They've been doing this for thast 4 years, friends arrive with seeds and cuttings and cake. Everyone takes home new plants. It is such a fine plan.
Philippe & Christine are well whacky. He plays a pile of instruments and makes a living hosting workshops and going around schools showing kids how to make instruments ouit of anything, vegetables, junk, old tins, pipes.
His alter ego is "Père Cucu" who is a malignant forest gnome. As Père Cucu he puts on a pixie hat, a green beard and french blues, and clogs strapped to his knees as he kneels in front of the audience. So he appears dwarf height. It's horrible. His shows are excellent. he has produced a few cds which he has sold to friends. For you I have uploaded L'Oiseau Migrateur and Petit Cougna. It has an African sound because of the marimba.

L'Oiseau Migrateur
Petit Cougna
Mousse


In this pic unfortunately Phillippe has his back to us. You can see Fiona and our snake gourds over on the right.

Some textures

From around the house and garden

Photos by Fi.

"I would like to withdraw 5 million Euros in cash please"
"Yes, can I have 27 proofs of identity please?"

So there's this french block who's got The Fear because of the financial crisis, and he goes into his local branch of Credit Agricol to withdraw all his money. All five million.

As the article points out, there are logistical problems with his request: using 200 Euro notes, 1 million Euros weighs 10 kilos, so his haul would weigh 50 kilos. But then there's insurance. Brinks Mat are only insured up to 2 million per truck.

He could try taking it out of the cash machine, but with a limit of 200 Euros per day it would take him 68 years.

Incroyable, impensable, inimaginable mais vrai! En tout cas, de mémoire d'employé de banque, c'est du jamais vu au guichet d'une agence. Et pourtant, cela s'est passé en Charente il y a quelques jours. A Angoulême, dans une agence du Crédit agricole, un très gros client paniqué par la situation financière mondiale est venu exiger dans les plus brefs délais et en liquide tous ses avoirs et placements.

Rien de très exceptionnel en soi, si ce n'est le montant de la somme que représente ce retrait: 5 millions d'euros. Or ni le Crédit agricole, ni la Banque de France d'Angoulême ne disposent d'une telle somme. «C'est légal et possible techniquement. Nous avons les liquidités pour une telle opération, assure-t-on à la direction de l'antenne régionale de la Banque de France de Poitiers prête à effectuer l'opération. En revanche, il est hors de question que nous prenions les frais de ce transport exceptionnel à notre compte.»

C'est à l'établissement bancaire concerné de banquer. Et c'est là que le bât blesse dans l'histoire. Si un virement à un autre établissement ou un chèque remis en main propre ne pose pas de problème, le réaliser en liquide nécessite une logistique qui à un coût et non des moindres.

«En dix ans dans le transport de fonds, c'est la première fois que j'entends un pareil retrait pour un particulier», glisse-t-on au siège social parisien de la Brinks, la société spécialisée dans le transport de fonds. Pour autant, les responsables refusent de communiquer les conditions ultrasensibles d'un tel transfert. Il faudrait monter une véritable opération commando estiment des spécialistes.

Cinquante kilos de billets

dans trois camions

Cinq millions d'euros, ce n'est pas très volumineux. En coupure de 200 euros, il faut compter environ deux kilos pour 200 000 euros, dix kilos pour un million d'euros. Cinq millions, cela ferait donc 50 kilos de billets. La difficulté vient plus des assurances. En effet, les camions de la Brinks ne sont assurés qu'à une hauteur maximale de 2 millions d'euros transportés par camion. Il faudrait donc affréter trois camions avec au minimum quatre transporteurs par camion. Ou prévoir trois navettes, discrètes.

Du coup la banque, qui ne désespère pas de parvenir à raisonner son client afin qu'il renonce à son projet, négocie toutefois avec lui l'organisation et les conditions de ce transfert de fonds. D'autant qu'il faut peut-être envisager une escorte policière. On imagine mal un tel convoi traverser la région pour rallier Poitiers au domicile du particulier. Car, sauf à ce que le client fasse la navette tous les jours à sa banque pour retirer des petits montants, comment lui remettre autrement une telle somme en liquide?

L'histoire, aussi cocasse qu'elle apparaisse, n'amuse pas la direction du Crédit agricole. Pour des raisons de sécurité, de confidentialité et d'image, elle se refuse au moindre commentaire. Les responsables de la caisse régionale Charente-Périgord se bornent à dire «qu'il n'y a aucun mouvement de panique de masse enregistré à ses guichets». De masse peut-être pas, mais à cinq millions d'euros c'est au moins un coup de bambou!

Hate Speech

This is cross posted at my other blog.

Follow the link and be apalled.

And maybe go to the lady's blog and use the "flag blog" option to alert google to the nastiness.

Whoops

The annual report for Birmingham International Airport (Report and Accounts 2007-2008) is available online as a pdf.

On page 11 on Security there is a photomontage running accross the page and incluided is an x-ray of a case.

I presume it is a woman's case and I presume she was travelling alone.


Did the designers of the annual report do that on purpose? I hope so. Good humour.

I'm on a roll!

After the gate, I'm now progressing nicely with the trailer. It's ridiculous how expensive a new trailer is. I little one will cost 500Euros.
My little blue trailer (you can see the carcass beside me) was made of wood. Because I had been given it, I was a bit careless with it, left it outside too often. So it got rotten, and one day recently, when the guy at the sawmill was lowering a charge of wood into it with his forklift it cracked underneath.
The wooden one also had the axle bolted to the blue box and the towbar bolted to the box, so it was possible for the towbar to come away, and leave the trailer careering down the road.
The new version I've welded up has the towbar integral with the frame. I've also welded on four nifty threaded chain links on the sides that can be used to attach ropes or chains.
Today I must finish decking the floor of the trailer so I ca at least use it to fetch more wood.
Then I must work out a cunning way to build the trailer box, and I want the hinged tailgate to be removeable, so I need to find a plug that can take the 5 wires for the lights/indicators.

The trailer's first job will be to cart the old blue box down to the tip.

In other news, France is in a panic over Tunisian supporters whistling during "The Marseillaise" during the International friendly the other day. This lack of respect for the national anthem is causing angst because it is evident that the Tunisian supporters are in fact French born, children of immigrants.
The locals are full of "send them all home". When I point out that they ARE home the response is "send the whole family home".
The government's response is to abandon any future match where such whistling takes place. the difficulty is that matches are played under FIFA rules. Only the ref has the authority to cancel a match and whistling during the national anthems is not one of FIFA's criterea for abandonment of a match.
There is an added difficulty of trying to get thousands of dissapointed and angry fans out of a stadium after the game they have paid to see has been abandoned because of te actions of a few hundred.

It is EXACTLY like the cricket crisis in the UK a dozen years ago. English people were appalled to discover that the children of immigrants were supporting Pakistan or India during Test matches against England.

Amateur Archeology

I mentioned in this post that I had to build a gate to replace a temporary fence thing that we had put in place 5 years ago.

Well, the gate got built OK, and even got hung OK, but because of the slope of the ground between the pillars I knew I'd have to level the ground under the gate.
The gate of course had to be hung level. If you hang the gate to follow the ground, it won't open.
And I didn't want the black bitch digging under the gate. So I bought some cement blocks (parpang in french) and started digging a wee trench to bed them in.

Only to discover hidden stone paving slabs between the pillars.

Un fortunately they ran with the ground too, plus they are about 6 centimetres below the current lawn surface so I couldn't expose them without creating a swimming pool.
But what an example of how stuff gets buried and disappears. Only to be dug out by archeologists years later. And in 200 years if someone digs again, they'll find my stuff laid on top.


I decided to lay the blocks on top of the stone flags, simply bedded on sand to take up the difference in level. Behind me is the village church.


Hey! It looks like a grown up did that. You can see our little garden and garage and a runaway laurel hedge that I will shortly cut right down to ground level and allow it to regro, but at a manageable hight.

Today's project is rebuilding my little blue trailer that has rotted away.

The Day of the Triffids

Earlier in the year Fiona and the kids planted some Snake Gourds. The pack of seeds showed some nice twisty gourds painted all zigg zag and pretty like snakes. That'll be fun.

Our neighbour Jean-Marie called us to show us the gourds.

We hadn't noticed them because they had grown over the wall and were hanging down in his garden.

What the hell is going on? Snake gourds? Bloody Python gourds, Anaconda gourds more like. They've taken over his wall and there's tons of these beasts.

The Minister for phallic references was unavailable for comment.

Hyper Inflation

Inflation in Zimbabwe is rising so rapidly that a new means of measuring it has had to be invented.

Steve Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, and an expert in exchange rates and inflation, has developed the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe (HHIZ).

Given the non-existence of government statistics for the money supply and the unreliability of its inflation statistics, it uses market-based price data instead to calculate the figure. As of this week, the HHIZ showed inflation in Zimbabwe was 2 trillion per cent a year.

Two trillion percent. I can't write that as a number because I'm not sure how many zeros to use. Because I read this in The Telegraph I'm assuming they are using the non-American definition of trillion which has 18 zeros after the figure and is known in the US as a quintillion. A US trillion is known in the rest of the world as a billion.

The highest inflation in the world, ever, was post-war Hungary, where it reached 4.19 quintillion per cent.

In August last year the Zimbabwe government knocked 10 zeros off its currency.

Some Criminal Activity

First the good news - Sad Sack is gone. What a pleasure! Someone from another team requested transfer into ours. he's been with the firm longer than I have and he has worked on the press before, so it was goodbye Sad Sack. The new guy, Stéphan is a really nice bloke. He's also slow, but it's slow like a big bear, rather than slow because he's shiftless and can't be arsed to pick up his feet. Always smiling, always happy.
Plus, the press was well adjusted and it was a real pleasure to turn a shift without having to nursemaid someone.

Now to the scandal. I post a news article from Charente Libre dated 27/09/2008. You'd better bloody read it because I paid 1 euro to download the article from their web site

L'ouvrier vendait ses ordinateurs pour arrondir ses fins de mois

Il est quadragénaire et ouvrier d'usine. Son hobby, c'est les ordinateurs et l'homme semble avoir un véritable talent en la matière. Au point qu'il s'était fait spécialité d'approvisionner le secteur en ordinateurs assemblés maison. Il avait pris l'habitude d'acheter des composants sur internet, de les assembler, puis de revendre ses machines. Dans la foulée, il installait les logiciels adéquats et proposait un produit prêt à l'utilisation contre un petit millier d'euros. Un business d'appoint qui n'a pas fait que des heureux. En mai dernier, l'un de ses «clients» est venu se plaindre à la gendarmerie. L'enquête s'est poursuivie jusqu'à lundi passé et l'interpellation de l'informaticien amateur.
Au cours de leurs recherches, les gendarmes se sont rendu compte que l'affaire était juteuse. En 2007, l'homme aurait ainsi fourni clés en main dix-sept machines. Pour les enquêteurs, la notion de travail dissimulé s'est vite imposée. L'homme posait même quelques affiches de pub sur son lieu de travail ou dans les colis livrés pour inciter le bouche à oreille. Et son activité n'était bien évidemment pas déclarée.
Surtout, les logiciels installés n'étaient en fait que la copie de l'unique exemplaire que l'homme avait acheté. Tous ses «clients» avaient donc le même numéro de licence, ce qui leur interdisait les mises à jour. Mieux, il téléchargeait sur internet des logiciels de jeux gratuits qu'il facturait néanmoins aux acheteurs. Et les machines ne bénéficiaient bien sûr d'aucune garantie. Les gendarmes n'ont pas tardé à traduire tout cela par abus de confiance. Lundi, ils sont allés interpeller l'homme. Placé en garde à vue, il a reconnu les faits. Il a été laissé libre mais sera convoqué en justice. Avec un adversaire de poids: Microsoft s'est constitué partie civile.

Here's a quick and dirty translation:

A labourer sells computers to make ends meet
He's in his 40s and a labourer in a factory. His hobby is computers and he seems to have a real talent in the trade. To the extent that he sepecialises in providing the neighbourhood with home built computers. He would normally buy the parts on the internet, then assemble and resell them. He would also install the required software and offered a product, ready to use for about 1000 euros. A business that could only make everyone happy. Last May, one of his complained to the police. Their enquiries led to the arrest last Monday of the amateur technician.
During their investigation, the police realised they had got a juicy one. During 2007 the man must have supplied 17 machines. For the investigators this led immidiately to charges of undeclared earnings. The man had even posted adverts at his place of work to encourage word of mouth. And his activities were obviously not declared for tax.
But above all, the software installed was made from the single copy that the man had bought. All his therefore had the same license number, whiche prevented them from getting updates. Better still, he had downloaded free games from the internet and charged for them. And the machines, of course, had no guarantee. The police didn't delay in seeing all of that as abuse of trust. On Monday they went to arrest the man. detained at the station, he admitted his guilt. He was released but will be brought to trial, against a heavyweight opponent. Microsoft is the civil party bringing suit.

It turns out to be one of the shift bosses. I had seen the ads, they were a regular feature on the noticeboard of the canteens.
Nothing wrong with supplying homebuild PCs but using a single copy of the operating system was silly and charging for free games was just greedy. It only took one disgruntled customer to bring the whole thing down.
He'll probably get a suspended jail term, but an ENORMOUS fine between the tax man and Microsoft. he'll be paying it off for life.

Building a gate

There never was a gate into our garden. Two big stone pillars, but no gate.
Four years ago I strung up a fence, a temporary fix that in typical Paterson fashion became permanent.
Because the grass got too long for our mower, a nearby farmer with a ride-on mowed it for us, but I had to cut down my fence to let him in.
So a gate had to go up in its place.
I initially thougt of welding up a fate in steel, to save some money, but finally decided even more money could be saved with a wooden, picket type gate. And since our neighbour has a gate similar it would look OK.
Well in typical french country style, nothing is easy. The stone pillars which are over 200 years old if they are the same as the house are not straight, either with respect to the ground, or each other. the ground between the gates is not level, so the left gate is nearly touching the ground while the right gate is higher up.
the problem is that black bitch Bella, highly strung poodle/whippet/rat who will dig under the gate given half the chance.
So now I have to go to BatiLeclerc to pic up some "parpang" which will go in a trench under the gate to both make the ground more level and give some resistance to dog claws.

Tomorrow morning it's a 4:00am start at the factory for another 6 day cycle. I hope to not see Sad Sack, because the planning showed a week of shit tiles and I don't need it to be made any shitter.

On the other hand there is some juicy gossip of a colleague taken away in handcuffs after being caught working on the black and defrauding a major global enterprise.
More details tomorrow....

France - not very internet savvy.

The latest trends in web traffic have been released and I find it very revealing about french internet habits.

Comscore lists the sites most visited by french internauts for the months of July and August 2008.

It's not merely the NATURE of the sites visited that is revealing, but also the number of hits.

This pic shows the sites that have had the most improvement in traffic.



So the most popular sites are sports, music download, social networking, TV listings, music lyrics and an online bank. The high score for the sports websites is down to the Olymic Games

Most visited sites by French net users?

Google, Microsoft, Orange, yahoo, Yellow Pages
Where's the porn?

DailyMotion is like YouTube

Sad Sack

The guys I get to work with in the factory ....

the press I work at is the oldest press in the place. The last press where a human being has to get his hands in the way and touch a tile. Touch - catch actually. The press runs at 14 tiles per minute and I have to grab these tiles as they fall and do a quarter turn and place them on the wodden pallets behind me.
2500 times per shift. And the heaviest tiles weigh over 7 kilos (15 lbs)
It's a shit job, nobody else wants to do it.
As a result I have a steady stream of gophers to partner me.

The latest is Sad Sack.
God what a useless, shiftless, idle slacker.

every time I look at him I think of this character from Asterix


He's been with me for a few months now and he is still useless. He can't catch the tiles and because he drops them, they end up going round the clay feed and overloading the mill, or causing a blockage on the conveyor belt in the cellar.
We've changed the mill head together umpteen times and he still can't do it on his own, gets things in the wrong sequence and does things half arsed.

He's about 18 or 20 and in good enough shape so I don't understand why he's so crap. The french would describe him as "mou" which means soft or floppy, like Kevin the Teenager. Last week I told him to go tidy up under the grappins while I cleaned the press. he wandered off and a few minutes later whne it hadn't been done he said he couldn't find a shovel. Which means he couldn't be arsed to walk 50 yards to go find one. I've taken to sending him on errands to fetch things to get him the hell out of my way while I get things done. If I hassle him he'll do stuff, but why should I hassle him? I'm not his boss.

With a bit of luck he might be leaving us soon. I can't wait to see who the next gumby is.

In case anyone missed it, this is my beloved press: