Steve McCabe: from island to island

In an effort to put a positive spin on the bin-gate scandal, the Labour Party are rumoured to be giving away the 2,700 bins that cost the people of Dominica US$100 each. And changing their election symbol...

In the tradition of naming any political scandal after Watergate, I'm hereby naming the great 2009 Bin Scandal 'Bin-gate'. Trevor Johnson is clearly our Woodward and Bernstein. But who is Tricky Dicky Nixon in our Bingate??? And are there any tapes?

The last time I queued in the National Bank of Dominica to get a bank draft, I asked: can I do this online? Order a bank draft, I meant, not queue. The cashier said 'Of course!' so that's what I did earlier this week. Went online and ordered the draft, being sure of course to check the 'pick up' option for the delivery method. So I go into the bank to pick up my draft. It can't be found. Did I specify to pick up the draft when I ordered it? 'Of course!', I replied, 'I don't even have the address of the recipient!' They'll call me, they said, when they found it. 'And what about the cash I also ordered online', I asked? More internal phone calls. Seemed it was available to pick up, but the person whom one picked it up from wasn't available. I left the bank empty-handed. But I did get a phone call from the bank. The draft had been mailed. After telling them to cancel it, I checked my copy of the order for the draft. Not only ...

I was in the High Court recently, testifying as an expert witness. This is what I learnt. 1) When testifying, always end an answer with "..., my lord". Avoid affecting an accent... 'me lud'. 2) If you're a defendent in a case, don't think leaving Dominica for England will get you off the hook. High Court judgments for damages in Dominica (and presumably other Caribbean islands) can be applied through the UK court system. 3) There are 3 types of damages that can be awarded: punitive, nominal, and compensatory. Together they can be substantial. You might want to come to a settlement (4 figures) rather than lose the case and get slapped with 6-figure damages. 4) As a witness, never leave the court house when you think you've finished testifying, unless you want to have to sprint across Roseau back to the Court... Leave when told. Don't go shopping. 5) If you're going to send a defamatory e-mail, don't send it from your own computer and/or e-mail ...

I finally sat down today and tackled an issue that's been bugging me for the longest while: how to make a copy of my DVDs. Of course, here I must emphasise that the process I'm about to describe is purely theoretical, and if I ever employed it, it would be for ' fair use ', personal backup copies of my own DVD collection. So, what is the process? 1. Rip the DVD to your hard disk . This not just saves the files, but removes the copy-protection. Tool: DVD Decrypter http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/ 2. Burn the ripped DVD to a blank DVD This is just copying the files (usually in a folder VIDEO_TS) to a blank DVD. You can burn it direct using something like ImgBurn http://www.imgburn.com/ However, Dual Layers DVDs (as most movies are) will need to be shrunk first. Dual Layer DVDs can hold up to 8.5gb; standard blank DVDs are Single Layer, storing just (!) 4.7gb. DVD Shrink http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd_rippers/dvd_shrink.cfm will shrink your DVD by...

...according to a report just out, Dominica is set to trigger a tsunami which may kills 30,000 in Guadeloupe (but no estimate was given of deaths in Dominica itself). The alarming alarmist study, conducted from the comfort of an armchair somewhere in the UK using Google Earth, reckons 'Devil's Peak' (where?) is set to collapse at any time, triggering a devastating tidal wave "...that would endanger residents and tourists on the island, a French territory." Possibly as soon as 'next week'. In particular, the sequence of events necessary to threaten poor Guadeloupe would be a magnitude 7 or 8 quake, occurring at the end of a hurricane season. Or Next Week. Having experienced our last 5.2 quake, I think the last thing we'll be worrying about after a 7 or 8 quake is any inconvenience we may cause poor Guadeloupe. I don't know which is worse: the armchair scientist painting a Hollywood-style scenario, or the reporter dramatically renaming our m...

"3.10 to Yuma" was delayed out of Antigua "Man In A Suitcase" might arrive the next day "Flight of the Condor"  couldn't take of because of a cow on the runway "Snakes on a plane" were pissed because they didn't get any in-flight snacks

Maybe it because we're an agricultural nation, but 'crying fowl' is a popular expression. But my new favourite Malapropism is: 'falling on death ears'...

I cancelled my land-line today. The customer service rep asked me why. I said I thought their multi-million dollar rebranding from C&W to Lime was an utter waste of my money. She said I wasn't the only person to say so. But she still just put 'Service no longer required' in the 'reason for cancelling' part of the form...

Sometimes we forget the whole point about using Firefox is that, with extensions, we can customise the surfing experience. The new Facebook 'design' is a good example; you can be sure that if others don't like it there will be an add-on to fix it. Facebook Purity and Facebook Fixer can both be used to fix design issues with the new Facebook. Both are Greasemonkey scripts, so you'll need to install this first. But you'll be able to: hide annoying friends and their pathetic quiz obsessions hide the annoying 'Highlights' column and much more.

Liam @ 3 months Originally uploaded by Steve_Mc Liam weighed in at 16lbs on his 3-month birthday.

It was purely coincidental, I'm sure, but at a time when Twitter is beginning to make serious inroads into the social networking sphere that Facebook had almost bumped MySpace out of, Facebook comes up with a 'redesign' that places more emphasis on the Twitter-like 140-character stream-of-consciousness, down to the twitteresque-image to the left of "what's on your mind?" I can take it or leave it personally, even think 160 characters is better than Twitter's 140-characters. And one's Friends Feeds is an important part of Facebook, however you present it. But it might take more than copying Twitter to beat Twitter.

The Maldives have just announced they plan to be the world's first carbon-neutral nation... within a decade. When I first heard this some time ago, I thought Dominica, 'Nature island', Green-globe nation etc etc, should be aiming for this. Well it should be easier for a population of 70,000 versus one of 400,000 to do so? Especially with our own geo-thermal power on the cards within the next few years. One can live in hope.

It wasn't really overheard, since the patrons were quite vocal about it. And it wasn't exactly the slow service that people were complaining about, it was that the bank wasn't showing the cricket on their TVs!

Port Elizabeth, Bequia Originally uploaded by Steve_Mc I spent a few hours in Bequia recently. To get there, one takes the Bequia Express from Kingstown (EC$35 return, trip time 1 hour).

Overheard near a street vendor in Roseau: "You think I don't know a Morne Prosper carrot when I see one?". I would have loved to have heard the entire conversation!

I'm after a good wall map of the Caribbean, so I head to the island's leading stationery shop. I look for maps but fear I'm out of luck, until the big Caribbean map on the wall screams at me "This is just what you want!" I find an assistant, three in fact, because multiple assistants flock together. "I'd like the map, how much is it?" A debate ensues amongst them. It's more like an reverse-auction, because the price comes down from $60 to $30 but stabilises at $35. "Great, I'll take one please". "We don't have any".

Why is it that (at least here) people like to write the number, then put the numeral in brackets after. For instance, I might write in this post that "It took just two (2) hours to get my car fixed today". But I wouldn't, because what would be the point? I understand the rule that small numbers are spelled out, while large numbers should be expressed in figures. But why on earth do both? Hedging one's grammatical bets? I heard once it was about catering for those unfortunate not to be able to read - at least they'd be able to see the numbers. Great, that's really helpful for the illiterate. To know how exactly many, but not of what. So if you see posters around town, defaced, with the numeral scratched out but the number word left intact, you might know who's responsible...