• http://twitpic.com/16wria – My cholla bread seems to have gone a bit to #cock #
• last cast member now arrived on set – now we can start on rehearsals ! #filmdash #
• cast & production meeting over – setting up the first shot #flimdash #
• first shot – in the can ! #filmdash #
• one of our special guest stars is now in the green room with the rest of the cast #filmdash #
• just the final scene to shoot, plus a retake tomorrow of the penultimate scene (due to lighting issues) #filmdash #
• royal bank of scotland offices in #brindleyplace in total darkness – power cut, or have they not paid their lecky bill ? #
• rough cut done – plenty of time tomorrow to reshoot the penultimate scene & re-edit ! a big thank you to all our cast members #filmdash #

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• Those nice cuddly folk at #apple seem to think they pwn the concept of touchscreen mobile phones – http://tcrn.ch/cGyF1Z #
• RT @birminghampost: Major roads closed after accident at Bromford Lane island Birmingham http://tinyurl.com/yfealam #
• RT @marcreeves: Just a reminder: time running out to apply for the reporter vacancies at @thebusinessdesk http://bit.ly/9YrHLX #
• may have a long week end in wales during #twoweeksinmarch – any cheapish recommendations ? ( @grovesmedia @rachelcreative ) #
• met office to scrap seasonal forecasts – http://bit.ly/afusXA – well, they've always been rubbish anyway… #
• RT @libraryofbham: New post: March 5, 2010 http://bit.ly/aWaWaw #
• the office has just been vacated by @pigsonthewing – i'm going to unplug his trackball & swap his tellies over for when he gets back. hehehe #

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Dear Dean Davies (Customer Services, British Waterways West Midlands),

I’m writing to complain to you in the strongest possible terms about the lack of gritting along the towpath of the Farmer’s Bridge lock flight, Birmingham City Centre.

This morning, between the top lock and lock number seven (where I disembark) walking along it to work I slipped and fell over not once but four times; I was reduced to descending the lock ramps by squatting & sliding myself down with my hands behind me for balance. You can imagine I’m sure the dangers inherent in slipping on the ice next to a lock, especially if one fell into the frozen lock itself.

I appreciate that British Waterways can control neither the weather nor the temperature, and that there’s little you can do to ensure passage for boats when the canal itself freezes over. However, you can control the pedestrian environment, with the application of salt / grit to ensure key strategic pedestrian routes such as this are safe for the people who use them regularly; the nature of that section of towpath route is such that once one has started going that way you are pretty much committed, as leaving the towpath to take a different route isn’t so simple. Once I reached the normal pavement – which the council is responsible for – my passage was completely fine, so if the council manages to grit the pavement, how can British Waterways not manage to grit the city centre towpath ?

Fortunately neither myself nor my laptop and phone were damaged in my four falls due to British Waterways’ negligence in failing to make the towpath safe, however be assured that had anything been damaged, I would be holding you liable. In this age of no-win-no-fee personal accident law firms advertising on television, I urge you to arrange for the key strategic pedestrian routes in Birmingham to be gritted and made safe as soon as possible, before another member of the public has a more serious accident, and my British Waterways licence money has to be used to pay out on a hefty compensation claim rather than its proper use of paying for the maintenance of the network.

in Friendship,

In the greenwash department, this carton of Sainsbury’s apple juice speaks for itself, really.

Over the last few days I’ve watched this skip, on King Edwards Drive near where I live, gradually fill up.

Not your usual house clearance though – the skip contains a brand new futon, brand new bed, brand new clothes, brand new microwave oven, brand new designer chairs, even a brand new washing machine (though I noted that was liberated – not by me – within just a few hours of being deposited).

I can’t help wondering about the story behind the skip; it seems unusual for so much new stuff to be chucked out.

The obvious prediction is an eviction of some kind – the tenant couldn’t keep up with the rent, so was chucked out by the landlord at short notice. Or worse still, the tenant was keeping up with their rent perfectly fine, but the landlord themself weren’t keeping up their mortgage payments – leaving the tenant, immorally unprotected in these instances, put out on the street with nowhere to go.

Perhaps there was foul play involved? Maybe a drug deal went wrong, and the tenant found themselves having to skip the country at short notice?

Or perhaps it is for a nice reason – the tenant has just inherited a wopping legacy, or had a substantial payrise, and is having a total clearout, a replacement of new stuff. Perhaps they’ve moved out because they’ve just embarked on a new phase of a relationship and moved in with a partner, who has better and even newer (or perhaps older, pricelessly antique) stuff?

Whatever the story, what a criminal waste, chucking out all these perfectly good household items, especially in an area where just a few hundred yards away lies some of the worst deprivation in the country. Freecycle, the Ladywood Furniture Project, eBay, the British Heart Foundation shop in Northfield, or even friends would make much better use of these items than the council tip.

“It just seems that Email as a medium is broken. For me to actually read and respond to every email that I receive would actually mean that I would be spending all of my time on email and none of my time on doing the things that the emails are about. That’s silly. But if I don’t respond to the emails then I just end up with urgent things going awry. It’s catch 22″.

Go read the rest of Stef’s article, and see if you think he’s not the only one in that situation…