xset

Times tickin on

// April 30th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

All those of you who want to play in the Amzing eBay Challenge better get a wiggle on…

I’ve got my entry sorted and damn is it a good un!

Temporary temptation

// April 28th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

I succumbed to my bi-annual demon today.

Having popped into town to do some truly glamorous shopping* and get a hair cut, I was in need of sustenance and ran into an age old enemy when it comes to luncheon … indecision.

Well I could pop into one of the million sandwich shops that litter St Helier but I couldn’t decide which one, I fancied trying out the new(ish) SubWay but couldn’t find it***, I’d dismissed the slightly more upmarket bars due to the waiting period and the simple fact that they look at you like you’ve been rolling in manure when you step in and ask for a table for one, I walked passed McDonalds…

Except I didn’t.

When I came too it was to hear a voice ordering a large Big Mac meal with diet coke and realised with horror that the voice was my own.

But that’s it. I have lapsed for the first time in over 6 months and can now live until at least November before I even have to worry about consuming such muck again. The sad thing is that even though I know how bad McD’s food is I can’t help but like it.

Yeah I know that it’s all salt and sugar and flavourings and that the meat comes from parts of a cow you never want to see let alone eat but their food has one redeeming quality – it’s horrifically consistent. The Big Mac I had today tasted exactly the same as the first one I ever ate.

And at least I can still claim some credibility. At least I wasn’t tempted to try one of the new “Healthy” options… I’ve seen what these guys can do to a burger and chips, god knows what happens when they’re unleashed on a cæser salad.

*toothpaste, mouthwash, spray stuff to stop me stinking like a pigdograbbitelephant**
**Which I only do because our office is maintained at something like 30⁰C
***I swear shops get up and walk around in this town! It would be quite cool if they did it whilst I was in one…

6 – 0 … against

// April 28th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

Well last night was an unmitigated petanque disaster.

Some of you may recall my opinion of the Pierson Road Terrain. I tend to use words like “nightmare” and “geometrically impossible” when describing it. Well Pierson road was the scene of last night’s massacre.

6-0 against.

I suppose I can take some solace from the first doubles. We did take them to 12-12 before we lost (you play to 13) and likewise in the singles I managed a respectable 10 – 13 loss against a much better player than myself but it was all for naught. There are no prizes for coming second.

Still we only have 3 left to play before the end of the Winter League and then it shifts to Thursday night fun.

Too busy to type

// April 27th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

No really. You wouldn’t believe how busy life has become of late. It seems like every waking minute is spent working on some project or another and for every piece of work that drops of the radar another is waiting in the sidelines to jump on.

In fact I’m so busy that I didn’t notice ITV showing a programme called the Dark Side of Porn last night and so was unable to gross myself out by watching it.

I suppose I should really update you all on the weeks actions and successes. The Fleur de Lys (my petanque team) won our first match of the season on Saturday. We have another match tonight. It always seems that as the Winter League draws to a close more and more matches are re-organised to try and get everything finished sooner.

Actually that’s the only thing of note to happen this week … kept embaressing really.

I’ll be back with more breaking news later this evening

Can you tell what it is yet?

// April 25th, 2005 // No Comments » // Tech

All those observent people (and those you do more than just read the RSS feed) will have noticed that something has changed around here …

And that something is more fundamental than just a new template (it’s called Kubrick by the way and was designed by this guy).

Yup in my on-going quest to use as many pieces of bloggin software as possible I’ve migrated the site from Expression Engine into the up and coming WordPress.

I’m still getting to grips with the templating system and all the differences between this and MT / EE so you can expect me to break the site on a regular basis for the next few weeks.

I’ll explain the real reason for this change in a short while but right now I’ve got work to do… sorry.

No more trackbacks

// April 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Tech

Damn these spammers to hell and back.

I hadn’t realised that Trackbacks weren’t working last week due to a change in the config. So yesterday I fixed the config, tested the trackbacks and was content that everything was working…

It took 4 hours for the first wave of trackback spam to come through … 4 stinking hours!

So I’ve disabled them completely.

They will be replaced with a technorati thingy as soon as I can work out the API. In the mean time, if you link to me, leave a comment.

And to those who invented Trackbacks … I’m sorry, I reallly am but they have been turned into a monstrosity by evil spammers.

To those who develop EE please, please can we have a decent spam fighting solution for trackbacks? Please???

Adobe / Macromedia – my predictions

// April 19th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

Well it seems that every man and his dog has waded in on this one so I figure I should throw in my $0.2.

My initial reaction was one of shock and awe. The primary tools that I use on an hourly basis are Photoshop and Dreamweaver and the notion of increased interaction between the two seems very pleasing indeed. Then I started to think about the other areas in the Adobe / MM toolset and I have to wonder which will flourish and which will be put quietly out to pasture.

(more…)

The biggest and best just got bigger … and better?

// April 18th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

Via Matt comes this surprising anouncement.

Adobe are to aquire Macromedia …

for $3.4 beeelion

Wow!

The link to the Adobe site is hosed at the minute but there is more out there

Update

The official release from Adobe is in the extended entry…

(more…)

Because the world really needed a singing Egyptian crocodile from Germany …

// April 18th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

It never ceases to amaze me, the sheer quantity of pap music that comes out of Europe. By Europe I mean pretty much everywhere but the UK which is still hanging on (just about) to a proud musical heritage that brought the world The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, The Cliff Richard … erm … yeah ok

I cannot bring myself to believe that there are adults in this world who would knowingly listen to anything called the Schnappi Song but then I still can’t believe

Barby and Ken got into the top ten so there we go.

Perhaps it’s a good thing I don’t listen to popular radio…

OH MY GOOD GOD!

I just listened to the remixes … sickness.

Things I learnt this weekend

// April 18th, 2005 // No Comments » // Personal

• That I can mow the lawn in under 20 minutes if it looks like it will hiss down at any minute
• I don’t like loud people all of the time
• It is perfectly possible for two people to savage £30 worth of Chinese takeaway without even breaking a sweat
• Pak Choi in oyster sauce is the best veg ever!
• Shouting in Chinese at your mobile makes the takeaway arrive
• How to compile and install Apache 2 on Mac OS X
• How to recompile and install PHP 5 so that it talks to MySQL server
• How to build a full windows domain in virtual PC
• That my Mac needs another GB of ram before it will run the windows domain in virtual PC
• That I haven’t emptied my home in-tray for over 8 months!
• I think my older phone bills might be turning into coal
• That there is a load more work involved in running your own web server than I thought