There is a wonderful story in the news today (many sources BBC, Metro, IOL etc) about a company in South Africa who used a pigeon to  carry a small memory card of data from one location to another while at the same time they tried sending the data over ADSL to the same location.

They wanted to show Telkom how slow their broadband connection was.

In total, it took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds for Winston the pigeon to fly to Hillcrest and to upload the data from the card onto the call centre system.

By that time, the ADSL transmission of the same data size was around four percent complete.

What a clever pigeon – Not only did Winston fly there in record breaking time, he also uploaded the data onto the system.

Winston sets off to work for UPigeonS!

This story got me thinking why the mad scientists of the world are trying to clone sheep or grow ears on hands or silly stuff like that?

Instead why don’t they genetically enhance a racing pigeon and make it like a hawk or an eagle with excellent eye sight, a powerful body strong enough to fend off predators, bad weather and equally strong enough to carry a few carefully constructed waterproof boxes or satchels on it’s back or legs, which can hold memory cards, mini hard drives or small documents. It’s incredible to think that the pea size brain of a pigeon is intelligent enough to remember great distances and locations of departure and destionation, so the scientists would not have to make major changes in the brain department.

Once the super pigeon has been developed, train them up, and give them good strong names such as Winston, George, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, and Barack-Obama and then sell them to some small choice companies who are willing to compete with the likes of Royal Mail, TNT, Fedex, UPS and all the ISP’s of the world.

I am sure there are many people, companies, small developing countries around the world who have poor mail services and equally poor broadband services. Take the UK for example (since I live here), the Royal Mail are striking at the moment (yet again). Our ISP’s sell us broadband packages and promise us speeds of 8MB or more, yet one is very lucky to get more than 2MB. There are plenty of surveys to prove this statement.

Look out for the following global brand names in the future (Royal Pigeon, UPigeonS, FedPigeon, FastPigeon, Pipigeon, T-Pigeon, PigeonBolt). I can definitely see them taking off. (excuse the pun).

What an idea hey?

My day was today. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time tonight at 19h45. As I made my illegal right turn up Mount Road, we spotted a police car about to turn into the the same road. They had probably just finished eating a few MacDonald’s donuts and were probably on a sugar high. So Jo and I were both cursing as we passed by them knowing we were about to be pulled over. We only managed to get around the corner before the blue lights were reflecting off our back windows.

If I was in my Turbo Diesel Skoda VRS I could have definitely out driven them, but I didn’t feel like being on Kent’s Police Inteceptors on Channel 4 next weekend. (ha ha ha).

Luckily the fine was only £30 and no points off my licence.

I fully support the law and if you break it, you should suffer the consequences. Theses guys are only doing their jobs, so fair dues to them. They were friendly enough and I was happy to answer their questions (all one of them – Do you know you broke the law?).

But (there is always a but),

One of the officers explained to me that that the lane where I turned from was meant for busses only and that the traffic light sensor on the road automatically activates when the bus drives over it and allows them right of way without delay. Well that is nonsense, because almost every single time I have “turned right” at this junction I would drive up to the line, and wait for about 10 seconds for the light to change. While you sit there you can see the oncoming traffic slowing for the orange / red light. They stop, the light for me turns Orange / Green and we turn right cross the traffic.

The officer tells me it should not work for a car. Well it has always worked for a car and not just mine and it is no more dangerous turning there than turning at a 4 way intersection.  One would have to be pretty stupid to just turn regardless of the colour of the traffic light into oncoming traffic. We have also NEVER seen a bus turning up this road.

So typically it is one of those grey areas. I am tempted to waste the courts time and choose option ii) on the above ticket (Request that the matter be dealt with by a Court), because these silly traffic laws should be challenged, but I couldn’t be bothered. I am quite happy to pay £30 and forget about and hope the next time I turn right there that the Police are not sitting nearby.

Arriva runs this bus service called Fastrack in Kent. Since we dont live near the station, the only choice is walking down a disgusting road full of air pollution or risking life or limb around all the works that litter the pavements.

The service Its is not exactly FAST either, as their name suggests. We often wait an extra 10 to 15 minutes because the bus either missed its slot or didnt bother to turn up.

They recently put up the price of their tickets and for a local bus service outside of London, their prices are ridiculously expensive. £1.60 for a single and £2.60 for a return. It is daylight robbery.

The most obvious thing that Arriva or Fastrack have failed to notice, is that their fancy large bus is not full. If they reduced the prices perhaps more local folk would use the service.

Posted by Wordmobi

What a test match? At half time the Lions were 18 – 6 up, and if they could have kept the momentum they “might” have beaten our boys, but there were too many injuries for the Lions. There were two dodgy incidents in the game, the first being by Schalk Burger who by the looks of it delibrately fingered in the eye the Irish winger Luke Fitzgerald. Burger was lucky to get a yellow card. Personally I think he should have been sent off.

The second incident was in the 2nd half when Brian O’Driscoll took out Danie Rossouw with a dangerous tackle. O’Driscoll was lucky not to be sent for off. The silly Ref didn’t even give a penalty, which was equally dumb.

There were tries by JP Pietersen, Bryan Habana and Jaque Fourie flew over in the last ten minutes. With the score on 25 -25 and less than two minutes of playing time it all came down to a tackle in the air, which gave South Africa a penalty and Morne Steyn kicked the ball perfectly straight and over the poles for a brilliant finish and win. It was an excellent match.

EDIT [29/06/2009]: It is good to see Schalk Burger being banned for 8 weeks for the eye-gouging incident with Luke Fitzgerald. That was extremely dirty play and there is no place for that sort of behaviour in rugby. He got what he deserved and I am not ashamed to say that. Read about in on Sky News.

It’s been a while since the last post, and that is because there has been a lot going on in the Bowen household for the past couple of weeks. My brother Peter was here for a week from South Africa, and last week was extremely busy with work and various client upgrades including one in Paris on Thursday and Friday.

Of course we also had all that snow which brought London and the rest of the country to it’s knees (so much for a 1st world country we live in and they can’t even cope with a little snow). The snow was so bad (chuckle chuckle) that it stopped the entire rail and bus network in London. In fact all the roads around our area were totally snowed up because the council didn’t think that it was necessary to grit the roads. Anyway it was a good week of snow. We built two big snowmen in our garden, which was good fun. Apparently the most snow in 18 years, so it was good to see it.

That is not to say I have not being updating this web site. I recently replaced my Nokia N95 for a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic touch phone. Yes, I finally took the leap and ditched my Nokia N95 for a touch screen phone and as I have promised to my many fans, it would NOT be a crappy iPhone. So that bet of £1000 to whoever saw me with an iPhone is quite safe.

The phone is pretty awesome and I am slowly coming to terms with it’s functions. I have devoted an entire page to this phone and you can find it at the top under the heading 5800.

We have also been very busy planning our next holiday (a snowboarding week in Samoens, France). We have decided to drive there, a 630 mile trip, so we can see France, rather than fly over it and see just clouds. It’s quite a mammoth road trip, which we are going to do in two parts. We have arranged almost everything online (snowboards, accomadation, ski passes, ferry etc). Driving there means we will have to adhere to the French rules of the road and in France they insist that if the roads are covered in snow then one must snow chains for the wheels, so we have had to purchase some. I never driven with snow chains so this is going to be quite exciting.

Sky news obviously do not proof read their main headlines on their website or the editor of the below line clearly doesn’t know their grammar.

One should only use an in place of a when it precedes a vowel. There are obvious exceptions to the rule namely; Use an in place of a when it precedes a vowel sound, not just a vowel. That means it’s “an honor” (the h is silent), but “a UFO” (because it’s pronounced yoo eff oh).

The actual mistake with the above sentence is a missing word (injured). It should have read: “A British yachtswoman says the “spirit of ocean racing” led to her briefly scrapping a round-the-world race to help rescue an injured rival”.

At last something the British are good at.

FIGHTING FOR A FAIR DEAL FOR NORTH KENT COMMUTERS
Sign the petition at: campaigns.libdems.org.uk/northkentcommuters

That is what the Liberal Democrats are doing for our community and for once I support their cause. At least someone is standing up to Southeastern Railways (our crappy train company) who are putting up the rail fares by 10.7% in 2009, which is totally ridiculous considering their service is SHIT!

Our station, which was replaced with a brand new building is incomplete. It doesn’t have any facilities such as toilets, chairs along the platform. It has been poorly designed with little or no protection from the wind, cold or rain. There are meant to be lifts, but they are blocked up. They keep making promises that things will be sorted out, but they are way past their deadline. The station has been a disaster area for over six months and there is no sign of a completion date.  The trains are always late or cancelled for no apparent reasons. Most times there is little or no communication. The service is just dire and South Eastern Railways have a massive cheek to put up the fares, especially when everything is rocketing in price around us.

KentNews.co.uk – Train passengers to face massive price increases.

Our English Twenty20 team are almost as bad if not worse that our useless football players. They are paid a fortune to embarress us and this latest match that lasted less than 3 hours must be the cherry on the top.

They had the chance of winning twenty million pounds if they won against the Standford Superstars, but they failed miserably and were all out for less than a 100 runs. I don’t quite see the point of this whole massive prize money for one game.

The entire English Twenty20 team should be sacked. None of them deserve to stay on.

The Stanford Superstars celebrate their victory with their Twenty Million Cheque.

Have you bought your Euro Million Lottery ticket? If you haven’t then head over to the National Lottery website and buy it now!There is an estimated £95 million pounds up for grabs.

92 million pound jackpot tonight on Euro Millions Lottery.

It must be a sign of maturity when you drive across the countryside to photograph a few pretty looking flowers….. or a sign of complete madness. You decide!

Anyway who cares. As mentioned in the previous post, the lovely Mrs Bowen and I went to Cornwall for a couple of days. Of course you can’t go to Cornwall without going to "The Eden Project". This great big weird semi dome like golf ball dug into a old dis-used clay mine. The use of the space is very clever, much like the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. The whole project is an educational charity where their aim is remind people what nature gives to us and to help people to learn how to look after it in return.

They have some stunning gardens, rain forests, crops and landscapes and plant species from around the world, with each emulating a natural biome. Some parts in the dome were so humid, that it was impossible to take a photograph without the camera lense fogging up. The different species of flowers were amazing. As you can see above and below it takes a lot of care and dedication to get plants and flowers to look this good.
 
Now all of this would be equally impressive if I could tell you the Latin names of theses flowers, but I can’t. There would have been no time to take photos if I was remembering the names. So just savour the beautiful colours.