Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of robbing bastards

And yes, Equitable Life are in the news again.

The story is another long one, so I won’t bother, but they’ve been a crowd of robbing fuckers for years, and all this latest stuff blew up just after I left them (for once there was no connection between the two events, much as I’d like there to have been). So I’ve sat back, watched the website and company go through three rebranding exercises in the last three years, and still come out of it looking like scumbags.

Which is a pretty fair representation, so far as I can tell…

Link and Think

Thanks to Gordon at SomeThing for drawing it more to my attention, and his unwitting reminders that I really should add it to this blog. December 1st is one of the few times I attend memorial services, particularly with certain people in mind, and you can be sure I’ll be there again this year.

And who are you again?

Fairly interesting piece on the BBC news site again today – this time about identity theft. OK, it’s not that big a deal, having your name hijacked on Friends Reunited (yes, I’m on there; yes, you’d have to work bloody hard to find me) but I suppose it’s a starting point. Now, while no-one would really be dull enough to nick my ID for Friends Reunited (see, there’s a bonus to being the school geek/git (depends on perspective, I suppose)) I have experienced ID theft, which involved applying for a passport. This means sending the keffwits a nice big envelope with birth certificate, photos, Application form etc., that the Passport Office then send back in normal post along with your nice new (unsigned) passport. Yes, you can get it done recorded delivery (if you’re likely to be at home on the day it arrives) for about £15 extra. Other than that, lose the info, it’s not the Passport Office’s problem, it’s the Royal Mail’s. But when you complain to Royal Mail, it’s the Passport Office’s fault, not Royal Mail’s. A nice little blame circle-jerk with no-one getting to pay compensation.

Anyway, 9 months later, I got a knock on the door, and opened it to see two hulking great policemen waiting for me. They confirmed who I was, then said they were arresting me for obtaining goods by deception in some bloody place I’d never been. Bizarrely, I’d actually got proof that I hadn’t been where they said I had to have been (which was useful).

In fairness, the police did believe my story (not necessarily a common event) and contacted the company that had made the complaint. Turned out, there was no way it could have been me, because the first thing they said about the person was “Well, he was black…” – the company had taken the passport as ID, and photocopied it, so there was evidence that the person in the photo was absolutely not me.

All the same, it’s a weird experience – over the next year, the person using my passport knocked up debts of about £45,000, all in my name. It took forever to sort out – thankfully, because it was recorded with the police that I was not the person connected to the debt, a lot of potential nastiness was avoided, but it was still no fun at all. Of course, no-one ever decided who was to blame – and when I applied again for a passport, it was all done recorded delivery. The stolen passport’s now expired, thank God, and blacklisted from here to Tibet, but all the same, I sometimes wonder if that person’s not stiull wibbling around, conning more people on false passports.

And of course I moved from that address pretty sharpish, which helped too…

Keffing bloody Nutscrape

One thing I’ve often wondered while using Nutscrape and it’s variants (i.e. Mozilla) is this – why is it that even when I’ve got it set to “blank page” as a home page when I start it, about 50-75% of the time, it still pisses off and drags a homepage from Netscape’s own site (or Mozilla’s, in the case of Mozilla).

It’s always been the thing that put me off Nutscrape in general (Avoiding IE is one of the few scruples I’ve still got left) and explains why I tend to stick with Opera. Pity really, because Nutscrape 7 seems to work pretty well except for that…

Yep, it’s definitely redesign season

Further to the bits a bit further down the page, Anna has just released her site’s redesign on the world, and a right stunner it is too. Truly impressed, I am.

And now I suppose I’m going to have to digit extractum on the stuff for the festering season, aren’t I?

Click that button

Yes, the main event for the day has been – wait for it – redoing the buttons on the site. More accurately, the rollovers. I think they’re a bit clearer now, and nicer to use. Of course, I could be wrong – it’s hardly unknown, after all. But between that and some minor redesign ideas for the forthcoming festering season, it’s kept me fairly busy…

And yes, the redesigned stuff will become evident over the next week or so, as we run headlong towards that joyous month of December, the one beloved of scrooges everywhere…

Air Maintenance

I know, it’s blatantly nicked from A Blogs Life but sod it, that’s the way things go sometimes…
After every flight, pilots complete a gripe sheet which conveys to the mechanics problems encountered with the aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction. The form is a piece of paper that the pilot completes and then the mechanics read and correct the problem. They then respond in writing on the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken and the pilot reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight.
Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems as submitted by Qantas pilots and the solution recorded by maintenance engineers.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

Quick Question

Shamelessly nicked from last week’s Guardian magazine – but it made me think for a while, so what the hell…

What brand/make of car can be spelled using only Roman numerals?

(And yes, I did work it out without looking at the answers)

Additions

Updated

Not much of one really, but a new photo on the public art page, a new piece in the insomnia section, and also a couple of additional photos for the manchester photos page. I’m sure there’ll be some other stuff when I think about it. However, I’m sorry to say (in deference to the eyeballs of regular readers) that I will not be participating in redesign season for a while yet. Sad to say, I like this layout.

Can you spell scam?

Mickey Mouse image found in cave. Yeah, right. Sorry, but this stinks worse than Hitler diaries, Spaghetti harvesting and Piltdown Man all rolled into one.

Give generously

Gah, bloody Children in Need day again yesterday. Thankfully, I can avoid most of the televised stuff that goes on (the joys of discovering this thing on the TV called the “Off Button”) but the BBC does go mad on the bloody topic every year. Being Woganophobic doesn’t really help on this. I don’t know what it is about the wittering Irish tit, but he really gets up my nose. OK, the BBC could probably have worse presenters (maybe Michael Barrymore, or Bob Monkhouse) but for the moment their favourite is still the bollockbrained bergasol-covered one. Thing is, it’s not even Wogan who is my main bug-bear with the entire thing. It’s the bleeding-heart simpering keffwits who go round collecting money in towns, citys, rail stations etc. – mainly dressed up (see right) in some form of “amusing” outfit (for amusing read “ego bruising, but might make people give money out of sympathy“) who are basically guilty of (fairly) legalised begging. Just saying “it’s for charity” doesn’t make it legitimate, you bastards. And trying to make people feel guilty if they first say “No, thanks“, “I’ve already given some to that knob over there” or (OK, this was me) “Fuck off and bother someone with more money and less IQ” by then saying <whine>”but it’s for Children In Need!“</whine> is not going to make me suddenly perform a complete 180, delve deep in my pocket, drag out a wad of tenners and say “Oh, I didn’t realise! I thought you were selling the Big Issue! Why didn’t you say! Here, have £100“. It’s going to make me wish for laxer gun controls. I think it’s the attempts at guilt trips that always bug me about these appeal things. Particularly when they’re annual events – just one more shot of a wimpering kid with one tear dripping down and a ragged bloody doll in one moppet-like arm is NOT going to make me suddenly want to donate. Instead, I just get apathetic earlier and earlier, until it’s almost a year-long feeling. Maybe it’s just me and my Scrooge-like nature, but I only give to a charity when I know the money is actually all going to the cause I’m donating it to. I refuse to pay for Terry bastard fucking Wogan’s changing room (Apparently, these are now his official middle names, having had them changed by deed poll by some worthy prankster), or the admin of a huge appeal, or whatever else – I’d rather go up to a childrens shelter or playscheme and hand the money over to them – cut out the middleman. (particularly if it’s that cackling cretin) I think next year I’m going to organise it so I can go on holiday around this time of year, and avoid the poxy event entirely. Sounds like a plan.

Must be redesign time in the world

Blimey, all of a sudden, it seems like it’s redesign city out there. Sarah over at Not you, the other one has redone the site for winter. (and very nice ’tis too *grin*)

Vicky VodkaBird has created a new design/site (so it’s not really a redesign, but what the fuck) at 4FS (For Fucks Sake).org.

Good to see Elayne‘s site back up – missed reading that one, so it’s good to see her back online.

There was another one that’d redone itself, but in typical fashion, I can’t remember what it was, so I’ll shut up, and possibly update this when I find it again…

Update – Oh yeah, that was it, Peter over at Naked Blog appears to have done some tweaking. Or it might be me looking at it in a different browser. You can never tell these things…

Here comes the…

Surprisingly, I’ve had a really fun afternoon. Not what I really expected at all.

The reason? Well, a friend of mine is getting married next April, and she was looking at dresses. Amazingly, I volunteered to go with her – I’ve never done the wedding dress thing before, I have absolutely zero expectations of being involved in a wedding of my own, so “by proxy” looks like the way to go. Besides, I thought it might be interesting. (I’m weird like that).

Even better though, it actually was fun and interesting. Unfortunately the places we were in won’t let you take pictures, which is a bitch. (Some garbage about the designers won’t let them, but it’s difficult when the brides mother is 250ish miles away (and before anyone in the US goes “that’s not far” – this is the UK, and for us, it is, OK?)) and would actually like to see what the dress will be like without having to keep slogging up and down the country. Other than that though, I have to admit to being really pretty impressed with Virgin Brides, another part of Richard Branson’s ever widening empire. OK, so he can’t run a train company but the bridal stuff is pretty spot on. (I’ll let them off on the “Menswear” sign above the bridesmaids stuff, as they’d just moved it all round.)

The range of designers is pretty good too, although my own immediate favourite has to be Rena Koh – real 40’s movie star stuff, looks beautiful without being overly meringue-like.

So in one afternoon we’ve looked at dresses, necklaces, shoes, been in five different shops (and a giant raspberry to Debenhams for being snotty, shit, and generally far crapper than the reputation they dream of.

What worries me is that I’m looking forward to going again. (And also to seeing the entire thing on the day.)

One down, one to go

In all honesty, I really can’t say I’m sorry to hear this news about Myra Hindley. I do find it amazing (in an odd way) that she’s been in jail since 5 years before I was born – and I mean amazing as in “how much the world has changed in that time”, I can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to be in prison for that length of time. But in conjunction with that, there’s a visceral gut response of “good, she died where she deserved to be”.
I don’t normally feel like that about anyone, and in fact I almost wish I had more compassion, but in some cases it just seems to leave me and walk down the road with it’s thumb out…

Update – Yes, the illustration I nicked from the BBC has been removed, following comments etc., and also the basic problem that it was, in a word, shit.

Coincidence?

1) You’ve got a nice big warehouse, still full of fireworks that haven’t sold over the preceding month.
2) You’ve got a fireman’s strike where the Army have stated several times that they value lives over property.

What do you do?

Have a nice little fire, perhaps? Sounds like a good reason to have insurance, doesn’t it?

Or maybe I’m just too cynical…

How not to do it

Thanks to Userfriendly, I’ve just been busted laughing out loud at work.

The reason? This site.

Someone rid me of this troublesome priest

Is it me, or do the words “Henry the Eighth” spring readily to mind when reading this from the Guardian? OK, it’s an interesting move, allowing the divorced to remarry in chruch (under exceptional circumstances, of course :¬P ), but one does wonder how much influence the next monarch and his troll beloved have had over the entire matter.

Bastard Busses and their Drivers

Bloody rotten sodding useless keffwitted monkey-shaving knob-rot tossers!
Ah, I feel better now. As regular readers of this or Vodkabird‘s site will know, there’s a war currently going on between Stagecoach Busdrivers and the public in general. Today was no exception – hardly a shock, but there we go.

The bus was crowded anyway (going with the regulation “Black Hole of Calcutta” mode of transport), which gives the drivers plenty of scope for what they call “fun“, and what the passengers call “being shaken about like a fart in a tornado“. And oh boy, this one used it to the best of his inability. Amazingly, I’d managed to get a seat. Well, not so amazingly, considering the person next to me was old, fast asleep, and snoring. Loudly. This wouldn’t have been so bad, except that two stops later, a man with the most serious odour problem it’s ever been my misfortune to suffer got on. And stood in the aisle next to me. Hanging on to the pole – yes, you’ve guessed it – with armpits that could double as Iraqi weapons factories. In fact, I’m not sure that the person three in front of him with a bright blue bobble hat wasn’t an undercover UN weapons inspector.

So, it’s not even 7.30am, I’ve got audio-concussion from the snoring behemoth to my left, and incipient nasal mutiny to my right. Life can’t get any better.

Of course, that’s when the bus driver decides to prove me wrong. I like to think it’s a special role they hold in life – to prove that no matter how shit you think life is, they can always make it worse. When the end of the world arrives, it won’t be the Four Horsemen, it’ll be the Four Stagecoach Drivers of the Apocalypse. Hell, my bus definitely had Pestilence on it. And very nearly War too.

Anyway, we’re trolling merrily on at Warp Factor Seven, and as we approach one stop, the driver realises there’s someone who (god forbid) wanted to get on the bus. There’s no way – no fecking way – we’re going to stop in time….

Have you ever seen a bus skid? I hadn’t. I have now. I think we stopped within the length of the bus. Every single standing passenger could have doubled as a skiing stunt double. And every person sat on a seat with one of the “passenger safety” poles (i.e. fuck off great pieces of steel tube from seat up to ceiling, so standing sufferers passengers have something to hang on to when being flung around corners transported from place to place.) now has concussion – that’s how quickly we stopped. It would have been comical, except one of those people was me…

Oh, how I’m looking forward to the journey home.

Internet Exploder

Because I try and avoid using Internet Explorer as much as possible, it’s been quite an eye-opener to use it today. It’s just so messy. I’m normally use browsers like Opera, Mozilla and Netscape 7, all of which have tabbed browsing. Basically, this just means you’ve got one browser window with several tabs inside it, rather than opening a new window for every time you look at a new site or whatever.

Of course, IE doesn’t do that, and I hadn’t realised quite how much I’d got used to tabbed browsing instead of bloody loads of windows…

Life Sentence

Looking back through the comments, I knew there was something I’d wanted to blether about. And of course, it was Green Fairy’s thing about Manchester people having a lower life expectancy than pretty much anywhere else in the UK.

Now, of course we all know that this is based on statistical analysis, and that (from the great cliche) there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I’m not sure how I feel about this – when I saw it on the TV news the other day, they seemed to be emphasising that it applied to people born in Manchester, rather than just people that lived there. But surely where you were born is pretty much irrelevant in this context? It’s the risks relevant to the place where you currently live that affect your life expectancy while living there. Of course, considering the number of times I’ve moved, and the number of places I’ve lived that have a decidedly deleterious effect on life expectancy, I should probably start making funeral plans now, as I’ll have pegged it within five years…

California Dreaming

Ah joy. Absolutely zero sleep, thanks to the random vagaries of insomnia (and just when I thought it was in remission, it’s come back to bite my arse again) and a brain that’s been going at about 15,000 rpm all night. And now I’m off to work, 7am, cold, grey, not quite raining, but only because the weather hasn’t woekn up yet. Oh, and four earth tremors during the night. I’m getting used to the fuckers now, which is a pretty weird state of affairs.Maybe I should move to San Francisco – my body clock’s there already…

This toaster should be locked away for it’s own good

I’m not quite sure of the threat mentioned here, but the Manchester Evening News has a headline today for this story about the fireman’s strike of :

Quick thought about Harry Potter 2

While I remember, even if you’re not keen on Harry Potter and the films (Looks in GF’s general direction) it’s worth seeing the second film just for the pure comedy and schadenfreude of Ron’s voice breaking all the way through the film.

Rollin’ Rollin’ Rollin’

Via le bird du Smirnoff, one of the funniest pics I’ve seen in quite a while…

About fecking time

According to this story in the Guardian, apparently the social workers involved in the death of Victoria Climbie. They’ve been suspended on full pay since the death happened, back in February 2000.

Amazingly, one of the two is appealing the decision to (finally) sack her.

What’s even worse though, is that (to my knowledge, and I may be wrong on this) there’s really nothing on their records, so in theory they could go and become social workers again in a different place – or even just a different borough of London…

I bet she doesn’t use Blogger

The world is a truly strange place, sometimes. Thanks go to David at SwishCottage for the revelation that Nancy Sinatra, yes, Nancy Sinatra has a blog.

Chillout

Which reminds me (about things being seen on TV). Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, i bring you The Celtic Chillout album. With tracks by Enya, Clannad, and – um, hang on – Celine Fucking Dion??? I can think of several words to describe her (including one that’s a mere typographical error away from Celt), but Celtic really isn’t one of them. OK, track listing : Martha’s Harbour (All About Eve, I can live with that in this context), Carrickfergus (yeah, yeah), Scarborough Fair (Simon & Garfunkel) ?!? Nope, can see the chillout, but not the Celtic. Again. Further down the list… murmur… mumble… murmur… Have I told you Lately? Eh? No way is that celtic. And finishing off with Titanic?!?

Sorry, I can agree with about 75-80% of these, that they’re celtic, chillouty (whatever), so forth, so fifth, but some are just so out there it’s unreal. I can’t imagine that the ones listed are the only celtic chillout ones available in the world, surely?

I should stop paying attention to TV ads.

Google, and other animals

Considering Gert‘s vitriol about them in the comments here and here, and also Anna‘s wrathful letter to Richard Branson, I do find it amusing that this site comes so high for a Google search on the phrase I hate Virgin Trains.

I am, however, less certain about the meaning/syntax of what means dresscode smart. And having a cached page for “blowjob birmingham” is pretty odd. (I haven’t linked to that one, for reasons not even really clear to myself) But coming in fourth for products advertised on TV is still kind of impressive, in a sad and geeky way.

Oh, and for anyone interested, the page impression count has already gone over 11,000. Not bad, considering 10,000 was only last Thursday.

The GMR bus

Rough quote (the words may be slightly different, but the context comes through loud and clear) from BBCs local TV news programme.

“The GMR bus is going around Greater Manchester from today. On it you can use the computers, assess your own computer skills, and try out the Internet.”
“For information on where the bus will be, log on to www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/“

Sleeping the weekend away

Well, I don’t know quite what happened, or why, but ye olde Insomnia appeared to go into remission for the weekend. No bad thing, in general – I’ve ended up getting something like 30 hours sleep in 3 days (which helps a lot).

Unfortunately, this sudden overdose of sleep has some nasty side-effects. 1) It makes my brain feel like someone’s attacked it with a sledgehammer wrapped in cotton-wool. 2) It means I can’t be arsed to write much of consequence here. (So, nothing new there, at least). 3) It leaves me grumpy and generally in an “I can’t be arsed” mood.

Which means that, while getting some sleep is no doubt good for my continued sanity (stop sniggering, you at the back there), it’s absolute bobbins for my productivity and general motivation. And all I can really say on that score is “Tough. Live with it.” So there.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as my body forgets how to sleep. Again.

Time to ditch that compass. Well, not quite yet.

There’s an interesting story in todays Observer about the Earth’s magnetic poles being “about to swap”. Of course, the title implies “in the next week or so”, but we’re still talking geological time here, so “any time now” equates to “in about 1,000 years or so – roughly” but it’s still an interesting story.

Curses!

I put Netscape 7 on my PC last night. (I’ve been using 6 for a while, and thought I’d best see if 7’s as good as people say it is) And I have to say, it’s pretty good. It works for me nicely (the icons in Blogger to make it easier to make things bold or italic still don’t appear in anything other than IE, but I can live with that, except when I keff the links up like I did earlier this week) except for one thing. The installation royally naffed my copy of RealPlayer (well, Real One, to be precise) which then had to be reinstalled. Complete bastard.

Yes, I know, most people will be going “Yick!” (and worse) at mention of Real One, but it’s the only MP3 player I’ve found that doesn’t go into a fit of hysteria at seeing 6000 MP3s, and that also lets me build playlists from those MP3s, so I can just set it to play an album, or everything I’ve got by one artist, or whatever. So I’ll keep on with Nutscrape 7 for the moment, see how I feel about it. But Opera’s still my default browser…

And of course the colour scheme needs some work…

Slogan Generation

Fun for all the family with the Advertising Slogan Generator.

Blinding Yellow affected my life

Following comments from Gert, and a few others, I’m considering getting corporate sponsorship for this site. What do you reckon? Specsavers, Boots Opticians, or Vision Express?

Oh, and as a laugh, I asked the RNIB to look at it as well, for their “See it Right” campaign. More news on that one as and when it happens. Of course, it would be amusing to receive an email in return that just went “Eeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!” but I think they might be more constructive than that…

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

I know Green Fairy will spit feathers about it (hell, she doesn’t have to read it, just go play with Sweary Simon in the post below *Grin*) but I did get to go and see Harry Potter 2 (I can’t be arsed to type the full title all the time) earlier today (well, yesterday technically), and yes, it was bloody good.

The first Harry Potter was good (and yes, saddo that I am, I watched it on Thursday on DVD too) and enjoyable, pretty close to the book, and so on. But the second one’s all that and more – the animation and effects in particular are about 1000% better in the new film. Dobby the house elf is simply stunning, and purely CGI – even the Quidditch match is orders of magnitude better. Unsurprising, considering ILM got the contract this time for the effects. (On a complete tangent, I’ve just noticed that ILM has details of an IMAX version of Star Wars II – I want to see that if it hits the UK *Grin*) It kind of shows (some of it is very similar to the pod racer race (um…) in Star Wars I) but still, it’s a world of difference from the cheesy footage in HP 1.

All the way through, this film is just better. I’m amazed that it got a PG, with both spiders and <avoid plot spoiler> other creatures </avoid plot spoiler> that are almost certainly quite scary for little ‘uns, but then again, would they be sitting through a 2.5 hour film anyway? (This is where previews are great – there wasn’t a little bastard darling anywhere in the screening.) Pretty much all the casting was spot on – Lucius Malfoy in particular is a total delight, and Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart is an absolute stunner of a choice. The shot where the picture of him turns and grins/winks at the “real” character just made me laugh.

In fact, my only real moment of minor disappointment in the film came at the end, the grand finale turns into a very American hug/sobfest, which unfortunately always makes me leave a film wanting to kick cute children and puppies. The mood of the rest of the film, while designed for children, is quite dark, and this sugary sweet conclusion, sobbing brats and all, is just pure Americana, almost the signature touch of Chris Columbus, the director.

It’s not a film of high art/ unexpected plot twists – I didn’t expect it to be. However, it is a bloody good conversion of book to screen, and anyone who likes the books will be pretty well pleased with the film. (Obviously, GF, this excludes your good self! *Grin*) Anyone who saw the first and isn’t sure about seeing the second – don’t worry, this one is an exception to the rule of “sequels are shitter than the first one”. It doesn’t have the problem of setting up characters, which was the problem the first had – but even in that it was similar to the book.

And I only really spotted one bug between films 1 and 2 – it’s never explained in 1 who owned the invisibility cloak, or who gave it to Harry, yet in the second one it’s referred to as “my dad’s cloak”. I wouldn’t have even noticed it, except for having watched the first one less than 24 hours previously. That one’s my bad, as pointed out in the comments – hence the strikethrough. I’m sure there are bugs, I just couldn’t be bothered to notice them for the most part – escapst film is like that. *grin*

Definitely a film to watch and just enjoy – so long as the book was liked, the film’s not going to piss you off.

NOT for the faint-hearted.

Many thanks, Ru for sweary simon – a glorious throwback to eighties toys, and uses for them in the ’00s. I’ve laughed my ass off (it’s a shockwave program, so may take a little while to load) and Iain, and GF? It’s right up your street. (Particularly the yellow quadrant – that’s all I’m saying)

Arse pt II – return of the cockup

Ooops. Sorry, in the post below I’d mistyped the link, and the entire thing went tits up. My apologies. (Particularly to Gert).

Apparently, if I use Blogger in IE, I get a funky little javascript to add in a link without keffing it up – but I never use IE, and the same functionality doesn’t appear with Nutscrape, Opera or Mozilla, so I’m stuck with handcoding the links – hence the occasional fuck up. They happen, and when I spot them I mend them.

Sponge wrapped in plain chocolate with a smashing orangey bit

Why is it that I only ever get cravings for jaffa cakes at about one in the morning when all the shops are shut?

I never keep the damned things in the house – they get eaten within an hour of purchase, and “eat by” dates are a joke – but still, I get cravings for them. Sad, isn’t it?

Have I got news for them

I wasn’t going to bother watching Have I got News For You tonight, with Anne “Bitch Troll” Robinson hosting it, but according to this Ananova story it might be worth it after all…

Google search phrases

Oh, and yes, Peter, this site does now come up (second on the list, bizarrely enough) for that phrase you warned me about a dogs age ago. Oops. Ah well. I’m not going to link to the phrase, anyone who doesn’t know what I’m blethering about can do some research.

<thought>Oh, no they can’t. Because I’ve changed to a (much improved) nice new comments provider instead of that other piece of shit, the old comments appear to have died the death. So tough luck. </thought>

7am

Yes, yes, Mr Postman, I know you’ve got a package from Amazon (and thanks, H *grin*) and that you want to get on your way, and that the weather outside is truly fucking horrible but please, do realise it’s bloody 7 in the morning, and not everyone has been awake as long as you.

In fact, some of us were still in bed, and thought it might be a better idea to put some fucking clothes on before coming downstairs to open the door and accept the package you’d spent the last five minutes leaning on the doorbell to get me to come down and accept.

I would have actually been malevolent and left you to it, so you could carry the bastard thing around for the rest of your route, had to take it back to the sorting office, from whence I would have collected it later, but for once I actually wanted to know what was in the package.

The five minutes on the bell while I decided to bung on some shorts and a T-Shirt and not scare the everloving piss out of you with my body coupled with a glare of pure homicide was NOT wasted time, and in fact you should get down on your knees and give thanks to the Almighty for ever more that I’m a benevolent kind of person, and wouldn’t want to scare you that much. It’s early in the morning, after all.

Queens

Is it just me that sees the humour in Michael Portillo being the person to tell us about a superb queen on “100 Greatest Britons“? (He’s going to be going on about Elizabeth I before anyone thinks it should be Quentin Crisp)

Big Grin

Woo-hoo! I’m off to see the new Harry Potter film previews tomorrow. So yes, I’ll bung something on here when I get back. But all the same, I’m as excited as a big kid should be, having watched the DVD of the first one today…

Woo-hoo! *Happy*

10,000

Well, as predicted here in the blog, the logfile report has gone past 10,000 page views. Not bad, 1000 views in a week. Well, I’m happy with it anyway. Considering that the blog only started three months ago ( 9th August, to be exact ) I think that’s a pretty good start.

And thanks go to the people who read it – that’s the main thing, after all.

Rapist efit shocker

In the BBC (and every other media thing today) one of the main stories is the e-fit picture of a serial rapist. However, it’s nice to know that e-fits aren’t much better than the old photofit style, considering this :

 

WWJD? He’d use this site as illumination for a room

“Thanks” to H for pointing out this site. For anyone out there who thought my colour scheme was vile, check this freak out. Totally scary.

Pink

Well – what a day to go and see Pink – not just the first night of her European tour, but her first ever non-US gig. And it was a total stunner. Support came from a bunch I’d never heard of, The Kennedy Soundtrack – very like Linkin Park, and that’s no bad thing, in my humble opinion. As for Pink herself, my main reaction seems to come back to “Wow”. I’m amazed by her voice, by it’s sheer range and strength. This is someone who can – and will – go far. Her style changed radically between albums, and that was even more evident in the concert, going from blasting off at the start with “Get the party started” (obvious but fun), covering “What’s Going On” by 4 non-blondes (a bit of a flashback that was well received by an audience who mainly seemed likely to have heard the original in history lessons), and then going even further back, to do a semi-medley of Janis Joplin stuff. And she’s got the voice to do it. I don’t know how to refer to her really – this isn’t just a pop singer, but nor is she a diva – I suppose “entertainer” would be the best word, if it hadn’t been made into a curse by too many pop stars and similar. Considering it was her first non-US gig, I hope Pink’s buzzing her bits off now, considering the rapturous reception she received at the Apollo tonight. Catch her if you can, particualrly at the medium sized venues she’s playing at the moment – this is one person who fully deserves to go on to the stadiums, and with more material, that’s exactly where she’ll be in a couple of years, filling them, selling them out, and charging twice what she does now. And I’d still pay it. Which has to be a good thing. Update In reference to one of the comments, I have to point out that according to her own site’s bio, Pink didn’t sing with 4 Non-Blondes, but did cover their songs at open mic nights. If I have to be proved wrong, I’m happy with that, but going by her own site, she only did covers of the stuff.

Bugger. Part 2.

OK, so I’m a knob sometimes. And on this occasion, I hadn’t tested the link to Pink’s site in the thingy below about her. <blush> Got it wrong again, didn’t I? </blush> Anyway, it’s been corrected now, so that’s OK.

Scribbling again

Just a quick welcome back to Scribblepad and some (hopefully) more regular updates.

A visit to Leyland

I would just like to say that Leyland in Lancashire, as well as having a pig-awful (and very pink) website, is now well in the running for “Village of the Damned ’02” in the newly announced d4d awards system.

I’ve seen more life in a dead tramp’s vest. Getting off the train was the first mistake. Expecting there to be taxis outside the station was the second. But the big, the really truly epic fuck-up, was asking the locals for directions to where I needed to go….

“Hi, I wonder if you can help – I need to get to xxx.”
“Oh right. Do you know Leyland at all?”
“No, I’ve never visited Midwich the place before”
“Oh right. OK, you need to turn right where the old rubber factory was.”

I ended up walking about a mile out of my way, thanks to following the instructions given. Twice. By two different fuckwits people.

And yet it looks like I may end up working there. But I won’t live there, oh no. Not unless the company pays for a lobotomy… (I think it’s an entrance requirement).

November 5th

Happy birthday to me.

And also to Ian at Blogadoon.

Bugger

My apologies to anyone who missed the image I’d bunged at the bottom of the trains rant. That’ll teach me to make sure I’ve uploaded everything…

I’ll keep quiet about keffing up the page title earlier too. That’s fixed now, so with luck no-one noticed anyway.

Interview Question

Out of interest, when you’re going for an interview as a Senior Developer at a company that does all of it’s business via the web, and you’ve seen the site they’re using at the moment, what do you say in an interview?

The site is exceptionally IE-centric, and thus looks fucking awful in Netscape, Mozilla and Opera – it’s only ASP, so it’s the HTML formatting that’s piss-poor for the most part.

I feel the temptation building already to say “Well, at least the code I write works with all browsers, rather than just one piece of Microsoft shite” but somehow I don’t think it would be all that appreciated.

We’ll see…

Cheaper tickets?

Just looked at the trainline.com website for a ticket from Manchester to Preston tomorrow – and got this:

Government websites are shite – survey.

The Number 10 site scored so badly “because its navigation is inept, because of a lack of attention to detail, because it is poorly maintained, because the coding of it is of a low standard, because whole sections of it are inappropriately named, because of its slow speed of loading, because it does not work properly with some browsers – and because it allows no provision for members of the public to contact either the Prime Minister or his office“. from this story on the Guardian website.

Obviously Tony managed to get Euan to do the website work on the cheap (probably a half-bottle of vodka would do it).

Update – it’s also worth looking at the page names on the links too – nice and informative “Page6467.asp“

Arse

Following on from last week’s “turning the clocks back” list, I knew I’d forgotten one.

Turns out, I’d forgotten (and I should remember really, it’s the one I forget every time) the clock on the central heating system, so it was getting cold an hour earlier, and firing up at some horrendous time in the morning, turning off just in time to freeze me as I got out of bed. Smart move…..

Work in Progress

Yes, I’m playing around with some ideas, mainly involving CSS styles on this page. So it may look different every so often – just have to see what works and what doesn’t.

Anything you like/don’t like, let me know – I can’t know what works for people unless they say…

Ooops

Knew I’d forgotten something when I left the house on Friday, not coming back til today. I’d forgotten to say on here “seeya on Sunday”.

Still, I had a good weekend, even without internet access. Or perhaps because of no internet access. Whatever. I’ll write more about it later, or tomorrow, although I did do a rant about bastard Virgin Trains…