Bombay Blues indian buffet for lunch = not a very productive afternoon.
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bookmark_borderWoof Woof
Friends of ours stay on a private road, so private that it’s little more than an earthy, gravel track that winds through some trees before you are suddenly confronted with two ‘new build’ houses which have recently sprung up, a few metres on you turn in to get to our friend’s house.
The entrance to this track, and the first 100 metres or so of it, are visible from the road you turn off, and then it veers right behind some trees and at that corner is the first ‘new build’ house.
Presumably the couple who stopped their car in the middle of the track thought it was just a gravel track that led nowhere. I say presumably because I would’ve thought privacy would’ve been the main concern in this situation. Obviously privacy was the last thing on their minds.
Shagging was, evidently, the first.
Having left our friend’s house, and driven down the track to find a car blocking our way, it did take us a few secs to realise that the car hadn’t actually been abandoned but was indeed rocking back and forth in a very obvious (and rhythmic) way.
I dipped the headlights and watched the silhouette of someone fumbling to put a jumper back on before clambering into the driver’s seat and moving the car. The long haired second person popped her head up long enough to register that, yes there WAS a car sitting behind them, before disappearing again.
We didn’t look at them as we drove past, and I wasn’t even allowed to peep the horn.
bookmark_borderShut up
I’m not a morning person. I thought everyone knew this? Well everyone except Little Miss Loudgob and her mates who get on at Newton and yak at high volume the whole way to Glasgow Central. OK, it’s only 20 minutes or so but… SHUT UP!!
In other news – very busy. New author (re)joining us today. Much to do. TTFN.
bookmark_borderRubber
Anyone know where I can get a sheet of rubber, about half an inch thick should do it…
It’s our washing machine you see (I know what you were thinking, perverts…) I’ve tried wedging it with bits of woods and all sorts but ultimately it ends up shaking them clear. It’s set to spin at 1100 rpm which isn’t that high I don’t think, and we Louise is very careful not to overload it…
It’s driving me nuts to be honest, I’m hoping to deaden the vibrations by standing it on some rubber, because at the moment it’s spinning away and I can feel the vibrations through my seat in the next room (ohh for goodness sake, stop snickering).
So, any suggestions?
This reminds of a conversation my mates and I had in the pub a few years ago.. something about washing machines anyway … we all paused at the same moment, knowing that we’d finally hit ‘middle-age’ – we were having a conversation about washing machines!
bookmark_borderConnected
So the nice Telewest man came out, did something outside and now my phone works.
He also checked the digibox (TV) and my cable modem. Good idea that, I’d have hated it if he’d buggered them up whilst fixing the phone.
However he did something to the cable modem, not sure exactly what, something to do with the incoming voltage I think (“attenuated it”) so I’m off to figure out what he did… better not affect my connection speed.
Ohh and whilst I remember, thanks to Brian and Richard for their previous comments. It’s always good to know that there are people out there who know more about things than I do… ehhh… I think that’s a good thing…
bookmark_borderJack of all Trades
If you’re eating enough fruits and vegetables, you must not give a damn about protein is Jeffrey Zeldman’s response to (amongst others) Standard Angst by Greg Storey.
Zeldman’s point is one I can empathise with. It’s very similar to my professional job in approach, as these days, designing for the web encompasses a myriad of distinct skills. A site must be visually appealing (graphic design), must follow various usability rules (user interface design), must be unique (creativity), must load quickly (technical understanding), must be easy to navigate (information design), must… the list goes on.
Add to this list the ‘standards’ argument and you then need to be able to understand and code CSS layouts, and your code should meet with W3 compliance. These days coding a website is rapidly approaching the state where you could class yourself as a programmer.
My job is the same. As a Technical Author you need to be able to write to a high standard, understand technical information, design documents to meet differing audience knowledge levels, create diagrams that remain simple whilst conveying complex concepts, understand HOW the software is structured which invariably requires some degree of knowledge of the underlying coding structure… and so on.
In essence I agree with Zeldman’s point, just because you are focussing on one area doesn’t mean you are letting your knowledge of another area slip. However Greg does have some valid points, and I guess it was only time before this happened.
As with any idea which is thrown into the (main)stream many people latch onto it and are quite happy to float away, still clinging to that idea. Other people will swim over, check out the idea, maybe tag along for a while and the head off to find something a bit large, a bit more stable.
I guess this is my way of explaining why I’m not THAT bothered if my coding doesn’t pass CSS and XHTML validation. I believe the use of standards is important, but until such times as the BROWSERS support the standard, it’s always going to be a fudge to make your site appear the same everywhere. My response is that I don’t bother. My site looks similar in IE 5.5/6, Opera, and Firefox. If anything was seriously wrong in another browser I’m sure someone would tell me.
Hmmm, that was a bit more than I’d planned to say on this topic. Suffice to say that I’ve done a little tweaking and will hopefully update things here later today – as I said previously “Ask and ye shall receive”.