First off, I'd like to apologise for any rambling but I'm reconstructing memory off of my pocket pc after using handwriting recognition while under the influence of Grolsh.
I'd also like to apologise if I met you and forgot, or get details wrong or anything like that.
Now to the reportage...

A gathering of the great and the good in the Blogging world? In the middle of London? With Alcohol? How could it fail?

Quite simply it couldn't, and didn't.

Rather unfortunately I forgot that the location had a downstairs bar - so I spent the first half hour upstairs with a load of city types, eavesdropping on discussions about Anthony Worrel-Thompson until I saw some bloggy types heading downstairs.

Small, dark, hot and crowded immediately sprung to mind and I may well have turned and ran if I hadn't seen the friendly faces of Pix and Mark. So I spent sometime getting enough Grolsh (at £3.25 a bottle!) into me to combat my shyness. The first person to approach me was Steven quickly followed by Laurie (Who's blog I can't remember - sorry) and Simon. James who organised the whole thing came over (although I didn't recognise him as the mental picture I have of him is with blue hair). We had a nice chat, mainly about ambulancing and I forgot to ask him why his blog is called "imajes".
Annie Mole was very friendly although I was stunned that she wasn't 5ft tall with little brown glasses (which is how I pictured her - for some reason) unfortunately I was struck a bit dumb with hero worship there...
Gary Turner managed to escape my assassination attempt by leaving early, which was very sad as I really wanted to talk to him. Dave wondered why he was on my hit-list, although I think he understood by the end of the night. (I blogged a list of people I'd need to kill so that those of us who aren't the worlds best writers can stand a chance. A bit like a new author wanting to kill off Steven King, Clive Barker, Mary Gentle and Douglas Coupland).
I then found myself surrounded by Europe in the form of Loic and Gerard, Loic being taller than I imagined and both of them speaking better English than me. Once more there wasn't enough time to have a proper chat with them although photos were taken.
I also got to say hello to Anna and there was a resounding "happy birthday" (because it was her birthday). Josephine said "hello" although she wasn't wearing her contact lenses.

The evening thinned rather quickly, mainly due to people going to work the next day so I missed speaking to the following people.

Suw and Natalie (who I particularly wanted to congratulate on her latest post (Peace camps). But I have a phobia of talking to women in bars...
I also missed Tom Coates who seemed to be holding court in one area, I quite fancied chatting about Barbelith.
I also missed thanking Cory for the EFF work and his excellent books.
And then there were the people who I just didn't recognise/speak to/left before I could corner them.

It was midnight by the time the last of us left (the pleasures of shift work meant I wanted everyone to stay and play until I wanted to go home, but everyone else had work the next day). I managed to get to Tottenham Court Road, but missed the last Central line train - so I scrambled back to Trafalgar square where I got a night bus home. The night bus takes a route right through my "work patch" and was, for some reason full of Chinese people. I've never thought of Newham as having a large Chinese population but I suppose most of them must commute.

So serious kudos to James Cox for organising the whole thing and a big thanks for anyone who came over to talk to the terminally shy ambulance man.

When is the next one?

I've just got back from the second London Blogmeet this week. I'll post properly in the morning, as although I suspect you will all enjoy my alcohol-tinted ramblings it will ultimately be embarrassing to me later on in the day. I had a good time, and drank alcohol for the second of three times this month.
The next time I'll be drinking is when the Eurovision Song Contest is on - I'm looking forward to Saturday...

What a lot of parenthesises in that last post...

I've been coming off night-shifts and so have found myself laying in bed a bit more than I normally do - this has led to me thinking about stuff. What now follows is an attempt to be insightful, clever and all that stuff that successful bloggers are good at.

It seems that mobile computing has increased somewhat, but it hasn't become as ubiquitous as the tabletop PC. I suspect that this is because there isn't really a "killer app" for mobile computing. Sure it's nice to have calender/contacts - but for ease of use a pocket diary is cheaper, smaller and easier to use. The gradual convergence of mobile phone and pocket PC illustrates that perhaps communication is is way forward, look at how SMS texting has taken off (in Europe at least). Perhaps we need universal wifi, and make it easier to connect to it.
You don't need to configure a hundred and one settings for your mobile phone to work.
However SMS is a pain in the thumb, at least for anyone over the age of thirty. Likewise tapping out messages on a tiny screen/keyboard is tiresome and hardly an intuitive way to enter information.
The tabletop PC didn't really take off until the advent of Windows, and Windows is only popular because it is simple. I would suggest however that this simplicity is less a function of the software, as more a function of hardware - specifically the Mouse.
Give a child, or someone who has never used a computer before a mouse and within seconds they are able to control the cursor with very little teaching required. Move the mouse, the pointer moves - it's that simple, you don't need to "tab" between boxes, remember "-switches" or use a keyboard to enter command strings. Some folk are nervous if you put them in front of a keyboard, but a mouse is completely innocuous, hell even the name is "friendly"

So, for mobile computing to become more popular I suggest that a new way of controlling the hardware is needed. I don't know what, if I did I could become a millionaire. Will it involve Haptics or voice recognition (I suspect not, it'd be embarrassing to talk to a lump of plastic). I think it will be something completely new, something out of left-field that will take the world by storm. Then we will have the next computing revolution.

Personally I'm waiting for a bluetooth microwriter to show off what a gadget geek I am. Chord keyboards are in absolute opposition to what I have just written, but I'd use one.

I've got the second of the two Blogmeets to go to tomorrow. I'll be starting to fancy myself as an old hand at these things soon.

Last night we picked up an alcoholic who is HIV positive. I (still) have no real fear of HIV patients, even when they are bleeding a bit and this patient wasn’t (although they had wet themselves). The only problem is that I seem to have turned into one of Pavlov's dogs. When we found out the patient was HIV+ my stomach churned as if I were back on the PEP. It was really rather strange because it wasn't fear (I'll only have that when I'm due for my HIV test) but instead something more...biological.
The son of the patient was extremely embarrassed at the antics of his parent, and my crewmate spent some time making sure that he was alright.

One of the bizarre things about the Ambulance Service is that, in the eyes of the government, we are an "essential" service but not an "emergency" service. We are "essential" because the emergency services (Police, Fire Brigade, Coastguard) are run by the Home office - Ambulance services across the country are run by NHS trusts, and as such do not have access to the same resources as the true "emergency" services. The distinction is often slight, but can sometimes have quite important considerations for our safety.

Last night was a case in point - we were called to a patient with abdominal pain, however further information was given that the patient could be violent. There was something in this information that triggered my "spider-sense", so I was happy to wait for police assistance to arrive before approaching the house.
Four police turned up, normally only two are sent to assist us - and they told us that their computer system, and their personal experience with the householder showed him as a nasty piece of work. We followed the police to the patient and they told him that they were going to search him, and that they wanted to put him in handcuffs first. The patient had obviously been involved with the police before, as once he was handcuffed they checked to see if he had any new warrants out for his arrest...

Searching him they found a large stick, and a rather worrying looking (5") knife on his person.

All through this the "lady" of the house was shouting abuse, mainly at the patient, but occasionally at the police officers present. One quick examination later showed nothing life-threatening, so we offered a trip to hospital that the patient accepted. However as we left the house the woman shouted a few final obscenities at the patient and he told us he couldn't be bothered to go to hospital and stalked off into the night. (This was not a problem for either my crewmate or myself).

Police computers had information that he was dangerous (a number of rather vicious assaults) but our computers aren't allowed to have such data. A police dispatcher has told us that they have all sorts of information on addresses, from animal liberation protesters to members of Parliament. Again our computers don't have any information of that sort unless we enter it manually after an ambulance crew has been threatened/assaulted.

Needless to say, one such report has been sent to central office.

Tonight was exceptionally foggy, and while we were kept busy, the only job of any real note was when we stumbled across an RTA, where the driver had swerved into a fence at approx 40mph. He was rummaging in the wreckage when we found him, and refused to be assessed. The last we saw was him rapidly disappearing over the horizon. The police were not amused - but (surprisingly for our area) it looks like the car actually belongs to him. So now he'll be summoned for leaving the scene of an accident, as well as any other driving offences the police decide to throw at him.

Well, the first Blogmeet I've ever been too went well. Option #2 of my "how to spot a blogmeet" was used with good effect when I overheard someone say "Hello BastardMark".
I had some good chats with Hans, Ian and the others there. I managed to get the full story of his flirtation with spandex from Legomen, and rather shamefully monopolised Pixeldiva and Sharon. Discussions ranged from the awfulness of cheap London hotels to the concept of "comment envy".
Despite having only four hours sleep and drinking Grolsch from 2pm - I didn't get that drunk (perhaps a little tipsy) and even more surprisingly I didn't have a hangover.
It was interesting (in a Desmond Morris fashion) to watch the varying social groupings that were formed and broken over the course of the evening and how the group dynamics shifted as more alcohol was taken on-board.

Now I'm in work picking up people who think that walking down the central reservation of the A12 is a good idea, and taking a violent frequent flyer out of my area as she is banned from the local hospital.

Now I'm looking forward to Wednesday, where I will remember that the tube closes at a ridiculously early hour, that night busses are full of weirdos and a cab from Stratford to Barking costs £16.

...Nothing else until 6:00am when we get a "maternataxi" from a place our trip computer records as 0.4miles from the hospital. Still not to complain, as it's an easy job that gets us off on time.

Nighty night.

Man denies tunnel terror charges

A man arrested at the Channel Tunnel has denied five offences under the Terrorism Act, at the Old Bailey.
Andrew Rowe, 32, from Maida Vale in north-west London, was arrested in Dover in October after being detained as he entered the tunnel in France.

Mr Rowe, of Carlton Vale, pleaded not guilty to three offences of possessing articles for use in terrorism.

He also denied two charges of making a record of information for terrorist purposes and will face trial next year.

The charges against Mr Rowe refer to a pair of socks attached with a cord, instructions on how to use a mortar and a "substitution code".

He was remanded in custody until January 2005 when he is due to face trial.

Can someone please explain to me how "a pair of socks attatched with a cord" can be used in terrorism? If a "substitution code" is a terrorist article, then WHSmiths and its fine collection of puzzle books must be Al-Quaida central.

No sooner do I hope for a quiet hour or two than the activation phone goes; it's sending us 200 yards up the road to a "Collapsed Male". We are met by two police officers who tell us that the patient was walking along the street, saw the policemen and then collapsed.
We get to the patient and can't smell any alcohol on him, but he is coughing and spluttering like an Oscar winner. He complains of a headache, coughing, leg pain, back pain and an inability to walk. Other than that he is refusing to talk to us. Examination is normal and the patient is obviously play-acting.
He then does one of the things that I really hate (given the prevalance of TB in Newham); he coughs all over us and the vehicle without putting his hand over his mouth. Then he starts to spit on the floor of the ambulance, again something I take a dim view of - but I'm driving so I leave it to my crewmate to sort out.
Forty seconds later and we pull up outside the hospital, and our patient decides to roll around the floor - by now both our patience is wearing thin, so we haul him up and throw him in a wheelchair.
In the hospital he refuses to speak to the nurses, says he cannot stand and doesn't acknowledge any requests.

We leave him there and within thirty seconds are back on station.

While at the hospital I induldged in a little bit of teaching - the nurse who was assessing our patient was trying to check his pupil response (by shining a light in each eye and making sure that it reacts to light) but the eyes don't appear to be reacting. I then suggest turning off the ceiliing light that the patient is laying on his back staring at.

For some reason I don't seem to have much patience tonight, it started with the drunk panic attack and has continued to get worse over the course of the night. A friend of mine would suggest that I am having a "sense of humour failure"; could it be that everyone else is drinking and having a good time tonight while I'm working? Normally I enjoy Friday night shifts, but tonight I'm just grumpy - I'm attending on Sunday, so I better get over it quickly.

"W" is working tonight from our main station - He is always a good laugh and always seems to have a joke whenever he works. Tonight I met him outside the hospital and he told me about a deaf old woman he had just brought in.
It was raining as he started to wheel her out her house so he made the comment "It's raining, you picked a fine time to be ill".

"Eh?" was the reply.

"The rain...it mucks up my hair".

"Eh?"

"MY HAIR"

With this she took a long hard look at W's very short, and very receeding hair and asked him, "Is it because of cancer?"

It is now 3:00am and already every other patient we have picked up has been drinking - from the 38 year old male having a panic attack, who didn't want to talk to us; to the 50 year old female who slipped on some steps coming out from the pub and cut her head. This has so far ended with our last call being one of our smelly "frequent flyers" who thankfully decided not to hang around and wait for us to turn up.

Then there was the police car that managed to accidentally force another car into someones garden - one of those jobs where every passing car slows down to stare. Thankfully there were no injuries, apart from the houseowners disturbed sleep. (At least I assume it was the owner - he was dressed in no shoes and a dressing gown).

With a bit of luck people are now wrapped up nice and snug in bed, away from the rain - and the only calls we will get will be the 5:00am "I'm in labour" call that will result in a baby around 11:00am (long after I'm in bed).

I'm going to try and get a bit of a sleep so that I look vaguely human for tomorrows Blogmeet.

I'm going to a Blogmeet tomorrow and I don't know what any of these people look like. This is leaving me just a bit nervous - how will I know who is a blogger? Will I be standing around like an idiot? As I'll just be coming off a night shift I'll be a bit "fragile", so I find myself considering some strategies for meeting up with the right people...

In order to find the bloggers I shall,

1) Be listening out for talk about PHP,CSS,HTML or just about the Iraq war.

2) Listen out for someone saying "Hello BastardMark" - no chance of confusion there surely...

3) Just wander around looking at other people who are there solo and ask them if they are "Fluffy", "Frog" or "Legomen".

No chance of any embarrassing encounters there then...

You can tell I'm avoiding doing the laundry by the fiddling with the CSS so that I could have those little grey squares to the left of the date of a posting.

Don't they look nice - it only took me an hour, and much scrabbling around in my CSS book to work out how to do it.

Suppose I better load up the washing machine now...

I'm sitting here at home, with little to do all day (apart from laundry, ironing, reading blogs so I can be "prepped" for the first of the London Blogmeets) when my phone rings. I expect it to be my mum as she's told me she is going to ring today.
But the voice on the other end of the phone says.."Hello...Mr...Reynolds...You...May...Have...Won...A...Trip...To...Europe..." in a really stilted, stop/go fashion.

"I'm not interested" I say back.

"If...You...Wish...To...Take...Advantage" it continues.

"Oh I see, you are a computer" I reply - feeling smug that I've worked it out by myself.

Pause.

"I...Beg...Your Pardon?". The voice now picks up a hint of emotion.

Obviously not a computer.

"Sorry mate, you just sound like a computer to me".

"Oh...Of...This...Offer...Then...Just..." it continues without a pause.

"I'm not interested", but by now I'm wondering how they get a worker to ardently stick to his script - there is no stopping him now so I just hang up.

I've got a feeling he is one of those overseas telesales people - I normally get chatting to them, just to give them something else to do than dial and get hung up on all day - but this bloke was starting to worry me.

Maybe he was an artificial intelligence?

I've started an "About Me" page, I'll keep adding information as I think of stuff. I think some stuff might suggest itself via the blog.