They were working on the power supply in our office over the weeekend.
Which means the heating has been offf all weekend.
Which means the office is verry cold. I have hat and scarf on and finding it hard to tyype wearing glovess.
Month: March 2006
bookmark_borderWeekender
A quick jaunt through to Dumbarton on Saturday, lunch with parents, and home just after three. Disappointed by the rugby but still proud.
We locked the door, opened a bottle of wine, to go with the pie, chips, and beans we had for dinner, we’re nothing if not classy, and settled down to watch Man on Fire. Not bad, I quite like Denzel playing a ‘bad’ guy.
Today Louise has been working and I’ve watched the first F1 Grand Prix of the season. How good was Alonso coming out of the pitlane after his last stop?! Picture me screaming at the TV for him not to yield to Michael! DO NOT YIELD!!! Louise shaking her head in the background. I’m just delighted that someone with a personality is winning, loved the way he checked his hair in the camera before marching on to the top step of the podium.
It’s just as well we didn’t plan on going out today anyway, 6 inches of snow overnight, and most of it still lying around.
And so, with a couple of hours before Planet Earth and 24, to work.
I won’t mention the France vs England game though…
bookmark_borderSwitching Vista?
I love apples. Crunchy, sweet and delicious.
I love Apples too. Whilst not crunchy or sweet they certainly, usually, look delicious and to all extents and purposes I’m certain that, if I were to buy an Apple Mac computer, it would do everything I need it to do and it may even be easier to do certain things.
I have considered, like others, switching to the “Apple camp”. I’ve been impressed by iTunes and the iPods, and with firsthand experience of an iBook or two, but there is so much more to the decision than that. Apple thinks there are ten reasons you should switch but I’m not convinced.
bookmark_borderGoogle Cache
Peter recently fell foul of some Blogger shenanigans and managed to lose a post that had already been published. Seems to be happening to quite a few people, so I thought I’d post the “secret” I used to help him out in the hope that someone else finds it useful.
Now this is very time dependent so may not always work and you most certainly shouldn’t rely on this method of recovering posts so, with that caveat in place, I’ll reveal the simple sorcery I used.
Basically it’s called Google Cache. Every time the Google “bots” find a post not only do they index it for use by the search engine, they also create a ‘temporary copy’ of your page… OK, technically this isn’t true but you really don’t need to know HOW they do it, just that they do it.
So, run a search on Google and look out for those ‘cached’ links (usually under the description of the main search result). Et voila. If you are lucky you can recover any lost posts.
Remember, this will only work within a short timescale. Once your site is re-visited by the Google bots, the cache will be updated.
bookmark_borderFriday This and That
I watch BBC News in the morning and I’m getting increasingly annoyed by the “plug an upcoming BBC show” section. This morning it was about school reports as, apparently (I wasn’t really paying that much attention) the BBC will be a broadcasting a programme about this tonight.
So, instead of catching up on world events and, you know, news, instead I got to sit through random excerpts from peoples school reports, emailed in by viewers, including the HILARIOUS revelation that one report card stated the pupil “didn’t excel at geography” and, guess what… go on guess… bet you can’t… yes, that’s right, they are now a geography teacher. WOW!
I wish there was some way to convey just how far back into my head I’m rolling my eyes at the moment.. put it this way, it’s so far back that it really REALLY hurts. Actually, it’s a bit like an ice cream headache. Odd.
Really should stop doing it though. Hurts.
Zeldman has started using WordPress. Not such a big deal to many, but considering that up until now he still hand-coded his site it’s a fairly big step for one of the early web design “pioneers”. I’ve been reading his site for over six years ya know (and still prefer the old orange to the current ‘organic’ colours).
Billionaires are on the rise, which proves the old adage that the rich keep getting richer. Well, it’s not so much an adage as a “power-law distribution” and the same type of reasoning (the popular keeping getting more popular) can be applied to blogging as well.
The latter article is a mildly interesting read. Probably one for those who are continually pondering on WHY the “A-listers” are so deemed. Turns out it’s all our fault. Funny that.
Profumo dies (great photo of him partway down the page). This was, I’m told, a BIG THING back in the day. It was around the time of the Cold War, a period where everyone left their fridge doors open with last person to close it declared the winner (there are still some fridge doors lying ajar in deepest darkest Siberia. Allegedly)
My knowledge of the Profumo affair is solely based around the Queen song Scandal which was used for a movie based on the events. I’ve not seen the movie.
This means my knowledge of this incident includes the name Christine Keeler and that famous photo of her, a copy of which was stolen and published in the Sunday Mirror.
I’m just too young I guess.
*ducks*
Top Blogging Tip #23152: Post more often.
I’m basing that tip solely on the fact that my stats seem to be rising in the past couple of weeks, especially this week, when I’m finding myself posting more than once a day.
Of course this is typical. I’m far too busy, shouldn’t be blogging or reading blogs at all but with my current workload comes an increased requirement to focus on tasks at hand and that’s then turned into more posts rather than less. I’m sure smarter people than I have a term for this.
And no, it’s not task avoidance… well not completely…
Afternoon proverb: Chilli and Guinness for lunch do not a productive afternoon make. Roll on 5pm.
bookmark_borderDon't stop complaining
The immediacy of the internet still catches me off-guard, as does my tendency to generalise at too high a level. With those thoughts in mind, I’ll start out by saying that Podz is correct when he responds to my “Stop your complaining” post with his own well stated post “Do not stop complaining“.
I’ve commented on what he had to say on his site, but want to expand a little on this theme.
I’ve said it before, and no doubt I’ll say it again (I’m nothing if not repetitive) but life isn’t black and white. My post was, like Podz’s, a direct and immediate reaction. I posted it without fore-thought, and with little regard for how it may be read, bucking a trend I’ve tried to develop of giving what I’ve written at least one read through before posting.
Now, whilst I agree that at some level blogging is raw, I do think that, depending on your situation, some level of self-censorship/editing is required.
And here we enter the murky grey tones of life.
Some people approach this hobby we all enjoy with a “blog and be damned” approach and I enjoy reading posts with that carefree spirit, even if sometimes they are painful or insulting, or deliberately provocative (yes, I read posts of that nature even though it’s a pet hate), and some people approach this hobby in a more considered fashion, for a variety of equally valid reasons I’m not going to comment on as I refuse to judge anything I don’t know (kinda).
So, when Podz says “It’s your life, your thoughts and your blog. Say it as you see it.” I have to agree with the sentiment, but question the view that everyone has that option. Say it as you see it is a very liberating thing to say, but like many things, it’s far harder to achieve.
One of the main reasons blogging is so popular is the people behind the blogs and how their emotions and values seep through into their writing. When I called for people to stop complaining I was capturing the direct reaction to my own emotions, and specifically my own guilt at being healthy yet continuing to moan about workloads and people on my commute to work.
No I’m not retracting my statement as whilst “our ability to see things from our own unique perspective” can sometimes mean we seem self-centred and narrow-minded, it is also the very reason why you should have a damn good moan when you need one as it can be very therapeutic. Your problems are, rightly, a major focus in your life and I hope that you all continue to deal with them in the method that suits you best and everyone else be damned! Yes, it’s a contradiction. Let’s shade it dark grey and be done with it.
Re-reading my post, and with the inside knowledge of the author that I have, I can see a lot of anger and vitriol simmering under the surface, coupled with a healthy “fuck being nice” attitude which I think a lot of you will have missed. All of this is because of my perceived guilt, after all, Susan didn’t berate me for being healthy nor did her husband, so why did I feel guilty? I had no reason to be feeling anything approaching guilt and I put it down to the same basic traits that make me preface and caveat my opinion at every turn. Hey, I’m just a nice guy…
Ultimately, and I learned this lesson the hard way, freeing yourself from shackles of perceived guilt, by realising that it isn’t something you need to have or that you can control, is just as liberating as saying things as you see them.
And it’s just as hard to do.