With the need for yet another driving test, I thought I should probably explain a little more about driving tests, and in doing so vent my rage and wrath upon the cruel world that hath such madness in it. For after 4 failures and £412 send into a fiery abyss*, I have to question whether this is due to my own monstrous ineptitude, the bitter idiocy of the examiners, the terrible insanity of the test itself, or an irresistible combination of all of these most melodramatic factors.
* With 4 failures I hold the dubious honour of the record number of failures from my instructor.
On the surface the test is a most simple thing. First, the examiner asks you to read a number plate about 20m distant. Next they ask you a very few hideously trivial questions about the workings and maintenance of the automobile (e.g., how do you test your breaks, how do you turn on your lights, how do you check your oil). Neither of these procedures makes any real sense. What happens if you fail the eyesight check ? Have you just lost your entire fee ? Surely this would be better done beforehand. At least there is a clear and obvious purpose to it - the selected questions asked could be included in the theory test.
Then commences a period of 30-40 minutes of driving, including the 10 minutes of "independent" driving and a single maneuver (it used to be 3 maneuvers, now it's just 1). It may also include an emergency stop. The vast majority of the time, however, is spent driving under instruction from the examiner - e.g., turn left at the end of the road, at the roundabout take the 2nd exit, that sort of thing. All of which will happen on a route you've already done with your instructor because the number of test routes is very limited.
The "independent driving" section is a new and quite pointless thing. The very name is a bona fide lie. If it was really independent the examiner would get out of the car and watch you drive off into the sunset, or, possibly, a tree*. Instead, what happens is that the examiner tells you where to go and draws a little diagram to show you. Since this consists of no more than 3-5 steps to remember, the point of this escapes me (map reading, maybe ?). But then you're also asked to follow road signs, which is more independent and at least seems vaguely relevant (also, it does not matter if you take a wrong turning or miss a turning provided your driving remains safe and legal).
* Not so unlikely. My instructor told me one student who started at the same time as me was back in the test center within 5 minutes, with their examiner mumbling something about "we'll have to leave the car up on the embankment."
The maneuvers are any of the 3 classics : reversing around a corner, turn in the road (you can call it a 3 point turn but this is inaccurate because it doesn't matter if you make it a 5 point turn or even more) or parallel park. And of course there might be an emergency stop, but the ability to slam on the brakes is hardly challenging.
Thus the test is not inherently difficult and contains many areas that are as trivial as the first round of questions on The Weakest Link. So then, why the repeated failures ? Let's review :
1) Mounting the kerb while reversing around a corner
Failing to properly reverse around a corner is not the most dangerous thing in the world to do, assuming you don't flatten any passing cats/hedgehogs/pedestrians. And under normal driving circumstances this is hardly a common procedure at all. Alas there are a few situations where not being able to reverse correctly could be dangerous, so I'm forced to strike this one up to my own monstrous ineptitude. Can't really prepare for unexpected mind farts.
2) Blocking a side road
Well, this one is bloody daft. Lots of people with licenses block side roads every single day. Absolutely no other driver's I've spoken to can understand why this constitutes a failure, particularly given gridlocked traffic on my side of the road and heavy traffic on the other. So I'm quite happy to chalk this one as the terrible insanity of the test itself. I'm afraid delays at junctions in heavy traffic are just a part of life.
3) Not turning enough
To summarise I wasn't turning enough on an empty country road and if I hadn't turned I'd have ended up in a field. The examiner reached for, but did not actually touch, the wheel. We'll never know if I'd have turned at the last moment so this too has to be ascribed to my own monstrous ineptitude. Having driven this route many times before, deliberately driving slower than strictly necessary, and there being no other cars visible, this one's a particularly sucky failure.
4) Pulling out in front of a bus...
... very, very slowy. I should emphasise that the bus too was moving very, very slowly. I mean, my grandmother could walk faster than that, and she's dead. The examiner didn't have to slam on the brakes or grab the wheel, the bus didn't have to slow down, beep or react in any visible way whatsoever. It may in fact be the least spectacular driving accident in history, one so boring that even the likes of Road Wars wouldn't take it. But, pulling out in front of buses isn't to be advised, so I'll generously put this one down to a combination of my own monstrous ineptitude and the bitter idiocy of the examiners. A nice examiner could have let this one go. And c'mon, it was Christmas, damnit !
What have we learned ? Well, nothing much, other than it is entirely possible to fail a very simple thing. By my count that gives a ratio of justified to unjustified rails of 60%. Real driving may be as far removed from GTA IV as Fox News is from intelligent left-wing reporting, but they do have two things in common : (1) they'd be much improved with a decent checkpoint system* and (2) if you fail something 4 times it's very hard to work up enough enthusiasm to try a 5th time... watch this space.
* Yes, I know this is impossible. I'm just sayin' is all.
The exiled life of an astrophysicist
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Why Arnie is a Giant Baby
I was watching a certain young relative of mine scurrying around the floor making a whole plethora of weird noises, when I realised why this should be. It's commonly assumed that they're unable to fully control their vocal chords and don't really know what they want to say anyway. This is in fact the case, but the fundamental reason behind it is not their lack of world experience, oh no. It's because they're trying to impersonate Arnold Schwarzenneger. I don't know why this collective hysteria takes hold of everyone under 3, but it does. And I can offer further evidence of this, so I will :
1) Both make similar noises
The above also illustrates point 2), which is their similar responses to being restrained
3) Both are prone to random acts of violence
4) Both are famous gropers, albeit for entirely different motivations
5) Both are seemingly unstoppable
6) Both demand that you PWT THAT COOOKIE DAOWHN ! immediately
7) Arnie is rich. Few babies are rich, but most get exactly what they want when they want it, which is basically the same thing.
8) Babies often have a strange interest in your clothes, your boots... and your tricycle.
9) Both have undeniably similar mental capacities.
10) Both are utterly useless but without them the world would quickly become a much worse place.
Without Arnie, we'd probably have "Get to the helicopter !" or even, "I'll be back soon". I don't want to live in that world.
1) Both make similar noises
The above also illustrates point 2), which is their similar responses to being restrained
3) Both are prone to random acts of violence
4) Both are famous gropers, albeit for entirely different motivations
5) Both are seemingly unstoppable
 |
| Oh sure, he's got a rocket launcher, but have you ever tried to change a baby's nappy ? |
6) Both demand that you PWT THAT COOOKIE DAOWHN ! immediately
7) Arnie is rich. Few babies are rich, but most get exactly what they want when they want it, which is basically the same thing.
8) Babies often have a strange interest in your clothes, your boots... and your tricycle.
9) Both have undeniably similar mental capacities.
10) Both are utterly useless but without them the world would quickly become a much worse place.
 |
| OK, it was a good film, but it wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs, was it ? |
Sunday, 2 January 2011
A blog about this blog
As I was routinely checking the statistics of this blog I noticed something so horrifically disturbing it's worth its own short post. Not the fact that virtually all visitors come from reddit, nor do I particularly care what browser said visitors use. No, much more interesting is the fact that you can see what search terms visitors use to access the site from a direct Google search. Apparently one such non-reddit viewer stumbled upon this site through the search words "naked duras sisters from star trek".
Whoever you are, mysterious visitor, you're wrong. No-one wants to see that. NO ONE. Not even people on the internet who don't actually exist in real life*. No, not even because it's funny. It's not as if there was a shortfall of - to quote Zapp Brannigan - "hot alien babes" on Star Trek. Good Lord, man, did you not even see Voyager ? Or Enterprise ? My only hope is that this apparently crazed individual is in fact a medical student seeking to write a book about Klingon anatomy. Yes, that must be it...
* This is probably underestimating the weirdness of people on the internet but I don't care.
In other news, I keep getting "priority offers" to buy the domain name rhysy.com, which it seems will soon be for sale. Now I own the website http://www.rhysy.net/, so this isn't so surprising. What's more confusing is that different corporations are trying to sell me the same domain, which seems impossible*. One company requires my phone number, so the hell with that. The other won't consider offers below $99. Gosh. I didn't know my name carried such value ! I'm sure glad I bought rhysy.net, which is a way cooler name and cost... well I can't actually remember, but it wasn't $99. No doubt its value must have increased a hundredfold by now. I is gonna be rich.
Whoever you are, mysterious visitor, you're wrong. No-one wants to see that. NO ONE. Not even people on the internet who don't actually exist in real life*. No, not even because it's funny. It's not as if there was a shortfall of - to quote Zapp Brannigan - "hot alien babes" on Star Trek. Good Lord, man, did you not even see Voyager ? Or Enterprise ? My only hope is that this apparently crazed individual is in fact a medical student seeking to write a book about Klingon anatomy. Yes, that must be it...
* This is probably underestimating the weirdness of people on the internet but I don't care.
In other news, I keep getting "priority offers" to buy the domain name rhysy.com, which it seems will soon be for sale. Now I own the website http://www.rhysy.net/, so this isn't so surprising. What's more confusing is that different corporations are trying to sell me the same domain, which seems impossible*. One company requires my phone number, so the hell with that. The other won't consider offers below $99. Gosh. I didn't know my name carried such value ! I'm sure glad I bought rhysy.net, which is a way cooler name and cost... well I can't actually remember, but it wasn't $99. No doubt its value must have increased a hundredfold by now. I is gonna be rich.
UPDATE : Another site has emailed me to tell me they accept offers as low as $97 ! Ooooh, that's sneaky. Not quite the reduction I had in mind though. Try $9.70, then we'll talk.
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Next Batman villains revealed !
In a shock move, Christopher Nolan announced today that the next Batman film will be a drama documentary. The unprecedented switch will see the film set entirely within the UK Houses of Parliament, where Batman will battle the corrupt forces of the Coalition government. Nolan explained that the casting is so obvious it would be pointless to bother any further with the fictional Gotham City. For example, Vince Cable has always borne a really quite frightening resemblance to Oswald Cobblepot, and his recent behaviour seems to indicate the Business Secretary may harbour similar ambitions to the fictional Penguin.
Peter Mandelson, though out of government, is rumoured to play Scarecrow, with Nolan stating that they're basically the same person anyway, so Mandelson won't need to act very much.
Both the Prime Minister and his idiot Deputy will also star, with David Cameron playing the Riddler ("because no-one knows what the f**k he's talking about" - Nolan) and the much-hated Robin being played by the now equally loathed Nick Clegg.
Critics have argued that Robin is Batman's sidekick, not the Riddler's, but Nolan dismissed such claims as pointless. "This is a movie about contemporary British politics", he said, "Self-consistency isn't really an issue."
The host of villains doesn't stop there. Given the recent spending review, Nolan decided that Chancellor George Osbourne would be perfect as the evil Mr Freeze. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne, who started U-turns on nuclear power many months before Clegg's more well-known change of heart on tuition fees, is to play Two Face, although Nolan admitted it was a tough call : "There are many Lib Dem MPs who could play this equally well" he said.
It isn't quite all bad news for the Lib Dems, however. Jenny Willot, MP Cardiff Central, resigned as a ministerial aide in protest at the rise in tuition fees. This combination of being part of an unpopular government but still being awesome has lead to rumours she may well take up the role of Catwoman*.
And happily for Joker fans, Heath Ledger's inconvenient passing is now no longer an issue, as MP Boris Johnson is infinitely more of a clown than the comparatively amateurish Ledger could ever hope to be.
* This has prompted many comments that Willot, while a fine MP, is hardly Michelle Pfeiffer or even Halle Berry. In response Nolan repeatedly told interviewers that he managed to cast David Bowie as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, so "I can bloody well do what I like, thank you so very much."
Peter Mandelson, though out of government, is rumoured to play Scarecrow, with Nolan stating that they're basically the same person anyway, so Mandelson won't need to act very much.
 |
| Riddle me this... just what the hell is a Big Society anyway ? |
 |
| Worst. Sidekick. Ever. |
The host of villains doesn't stop there. Given the recent spending review, Nolan decided that Chancellor George Osbourne would be perfect as the evil Mr Freeze. Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne, who started U-turns on nuclear power many months before Clegg's more well-known change of heart on tuition fees, is to play Two Face, although Nolan admitted it was a tough call : "There are many Lib Dem MPs who could play this equally well" he said.
It isn't quite all bad news for the Lib Dems, however. Jenny Willot, MP Cardiff Central, resigned as a ministerial aide in protest at the rise in tuition fees. This combination of being part of an unpopular government but still being awesome has lead to rumours she may well take up the role of Catwoman*.
And happily for Joker fans, Heath Ledger's inconvenient passing is now no longer an issue, as MP Boris Johnson is infinitely more of a clown than the comparatively amateurish Ledger could ever hope to be.
Nolan has stated that the only difficulty in filming in the UK is the shortage of hero characters. Menzies Campbell was briefly considered for the role of wise old butler Alfred, before it was revealed that he was so dull that it was impossible to measure a heartbeat. As leader of the opposition, Ed Milliband was in the runnings for Batman, but his mum said he was "grounded for not sharing". All-round nice guy Commissioner Gordon remains uncast, though the only transatlantic role may be filled by Barrack Obama who will play hard-pressed awesome science dude Lucius Fox.
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Off the Grid
Attentive readers - if there are any readers at all - will note a lack of posts for the last million years or so. This is not due to writer's block nor even to lack of inspiration, but in fact entirely due to Sky being a bunch of bloody nutters. Deciding that it's simply impossible to have two accounts in one house they decided to turn it off without anything as courteous as a warning. But enough of that. There are already enough cynical complaint letters on the interweb and I have not the time to write another.
Instead, let me turn to that age-old hippie dream of living a life free of the oppressions of technology, or at any rate the internet. How does a chronic net junkie survive when suddenly forced to exist in a world without email, on-demand pornography*, webcomics and lolcats ?
*Why is it called pornography anyway ? Because none of the pornography I've seen has ever featured a graph. None of the actors has ever paused to check their figures or plot tangents to curves. Not using any graph paper, anyway. Am I doing it wrong ?
Ordinarily I'd probably curl up into a ball and beat myself to death with a calculator, but this time fate decided to intervene. Not that it didn't come close in the first week or so. Forced to make my own entertainment, I was on the verge of hitting my head with different sized bricks to see which would be more effective before at last stuff began to happen to stop me testing my head systematically for weaknesses.
Instead, so much snow fell that planes fell out of the sky, the Thames froze over and polar bears destroyed London. At least, this is what I inferred from BBC News, a channel that has become adept at persuading us that shutting Heathrow for a few days constitutes the end of civilization as we know it (while at the same time telling us that flying causes irreversible amounts of global warming so we'd all better stop right away, or else).
Having survived the plummeting aircraft, I was able to frolick merrily in the snow for a few days. Although quite trapped in my mountain-top abode, there are many worse places to be stuck, provided you have television at least. OK, so I was without power for a few hours, so I just pretended I was in Canada and this made everything fine. Even lolcats become forgotten when there are people snowboarding down your road (I'm not exaggerating for comic effect - that actually happened). And then there was Christmas, and then a certain parent of mine decided to smash her ankle by falling over. Then and only then was the internet fixed.
What's the moral of this short but wearisome tale ? Simples : life without the net is not much fun. BBC News is pretty rubbish without the net to supplement it (both to check their "facts" and find out if anything important is actually happening). Email just doesn't work without the net, because training carrier pigeons just takes too long. Trying to make your own lolcats is damned hard, especially without a cat. And the less said about pornography the better. I've completely run out of graph paper.
Instead, let me turn to that age-old hippie dream of living a life free of the oppressions of technology, or at any rate the internet. How does a chronic net junkie survive when suddenly forced to exist in a world without email, on-demand pornography*, webcomics and lolcats ?
*Why is it called pornography anyway ? Because none of the pornography I've seen has ever featured a graph. None of the actors has ever paused to check their figures or plot tangents to curves. Not using any graph paper, anyway. Am I doing it wrong ?
Ordinarily I'd probably curl up into a ball and beat myself to death with a calculator, but this time fate decided to intervene. Not that it didn't come close in the first week or so. Forced to make my own entertainment, I was on the verge of hitting my head with different sized bricks to see which would be more effective before at last stuff began to happen to stop me testing my head systematically for weaknesses.
Instead, so much snow fell that planes fell out of the sky, the Thames froze over and polar bears destroyed London. At least, this is what I inferred from BBC News, a channel that has become adept at persuading us that shutting Heathrow for a few days constitutes the end of civilization as we know it (while at the same time telling us that flying causes irreversible amounts of global warming so we'd all better stop right away, or else).
Having survived the plummeting aircraft, I was able to frolick merrily in the snow for a few days. Although quite trapped in my mountain-top abode, there are many worse places to be stuck, provided you have television at least. OK, so I was without power for a few hours, so I just pretended I was in Canada and this made everything fine. Even lolcats become forgotten when there are people snowboarding down your road (I'm not exaggerating for comic effect - that actually happened). And then there was Christmas, and then a certain parent of mine decided to smash her ankle by falling over. Then and only then was the internet fixed.
What's the moral of this short but wearisome tale ? Simples : life without the net is not much fun. BBC News is pretty rubbish without the net to supplement it (both to check their "facts" and find out if anything important is actually happening). Email just doesn't work without the net, because training carrier pigeons just takes too long. Trying to make your own lolcats is damned hard, especially without a cat. And the less said about pornography the better. I've completely run out of graph paper.
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