On a one night holiday

I’m in Milton Keynes tonight. OU assessment tomorrow.

Work & tech funnies

I’m on holiday at the moment.  Not actually on holiday but not at work (as opposed to doing work, which I am).

Through a link from a link I found this brill cartoon site that just tickled me.  Here’s a small selection of my favourites

Maybe I see something of my self here…

We’ve just had a team building day at work.  While I didn’t feel like murdering the facilitator I could have damaged some of my colleagues!

This last one just amused me.  Have a read at the commentary that goes with it from the site.

Who could possibly design a phone that can’t be tethered?  Possibly the company that designed a phone that didn’t do 3G when it had been pretty much the standard for the last 4 years.  Could this be the same company that created a phone that can’t do more than one thing at once?  I did read somewhere that it can actually multi-task but it just does it differently, one task at a time.

The author does have a point thought.  Ever tried to use free wifi in a coffee shop or pub or any of the other places where wifi is supposed to be available?  It is certainly not reliable, or easy to connect to in a great many cases.  It takes patience, skill and a knowledge of the operating system’s more advanced features (that’s the iPhone out then ).

That’s all for now.  I’m off to delete all the gmail people that register to post comments on this blog.  I know they are all spam bots because none of them have websites of their own!

Tags: Images, work

Safety campaign launched

I just read on the BBC page that some Scottish Sheriff has asked for all looped blind cords to be banned after a little girl accidentally hung herself on one. Tragic and my heart goes out to her parents. ROSPA are leafleting all houses about the danger of these cords. What might be more cost effective in these times of austerity is a different type of campaign - Common sense for parents. Instead of all the tax payers funding a variety of different nanny ways of making our lives supposedly safer, and more inconvenient, there could be just one campaign directed at parents. The rest of us can get on with our lives in peace.

Thank goodness this government has noticed that funding people to have copious amounts of children is not a good way to balance the books. It is those of us who don’t have children who are contributing most in tax so it is about time we got the benefit in return.  After the budget yesterday I’ll be £46.47 better off a year!

Sent from my HTC HD2

A new way to waste some time

I just found this typeometer on the NaNoWriNo website.  It calculates how fast you can type.  My first go was 55 words per minute but my second was even better.  I can do:
64 words

Speed Typing test

This gives me 251 points (no idea what this means or how it is calculated) and position 79,056 of 558,845 in the ranking list.  That means my typing is in the top 15%.

Tags: words

HTC HD2

Wow!  My new phone is so cool!!  It is a heck of a lot better than an iphone.  Does an iphone act as a wireless router?  No, you can’t even tether the thing.  The iphone is for children, this is a proper phone/pda/computer/life device.  Who cares if it doesn’t have an app for locating the best gay cruising sites?  I don’t need to know.  I want email, calendar and a cool looking device.

Blogging by email… again

Now I’ve actually uploaded the wp-mail.php file this should post at exactly midnight. Another funny thing was that the server time was out. Not by an hour due to BST/GMT/CET but by about 8 minutes. You know I thought it was strange that it was possible to reply to an email before it had actually arrived. Sorted that too. You’d think that it was the easiest thing in the world to keep a computer at the correct time, but it isn’t.

Tags: Technical, Wordpress

Blogging by email

I did have this working before that upgrade to Word Press 7.1 but since then
it is only posting emails to the magic account as “pending”. Nick was
having trouble with this in Thailand too. Anyway, I did a bit of research
this evening (should have been writing up blasted VERT report) and think I
have sorted it. It is all to do with a little addition in the new
wp-mail.php file. Once I edited that file it worked. Further details are
in the final post by Steve Rother here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/229936

Image experimentation

I’ve been having problems posting images in WP.  They when I insert them the dialogue box says “crunching” and then not much else happens.  Today however I did manage to upload an image.  By pure coincidence it was only 69.7 kB in size.  I did think deep down that this was the problem.  I have previously searched everywhere but no one is saying what the maximum file size for upload in a post is.  I’ve done a bit of experimentation and here are my results.

72 pxi, Photoshop Save for Web high (60%) 70.8 kB jpg

300pxi Photoshop save for web High (60%) 201 KB jpg width 1000 px

300 pxi Photoshop save for web High (60%) 327 kB jpg width 1500 px

300pxi Photoshop save for web High (60%) 485 kB jpg width 2000 pi

All these have uploaded without any problems.  The last one I tried was 896 KB so I wonder if the max is 500 KB.  One last go to check…

300 pxi Photoshop save for web High (60%) 578 KB jpg

Nope, I guess it is not 500 KB.  This is probably getting a little large anyway and 500 KB is probably a good size to aim for.  Now, wonder if I can set up some sort of image macro to do this automoatically?

Tags: Images, Wordpress

A Greener Norwich

Well.  The good folk of Norwich certainly showed the “traditional” parties what we thought of them.  Although the Conservatives kept hold of Norfolk which was a foregone conclusion since most of the rural areas are inhabited by London City folk who have retired up here for a quiet life.  The Greens however got most of the seats in Norwich.  Ther are a couple of Lib Dems in Eaton and Lakenham and a couple of Labour in Crome and University.  The Conservatives got Bowethorpe and Catton Grove but the other 7 districts are a decididly green colour on the map.  Well done the Greens and make sure you give ‘em hell.

Map of Norwich council seats for county council

The map and stats above come from the Norfolk County Council website.  It holds the stats for all divisions.

How to do my democratic duty when the choice is so slim

Who do I vote for on Thursday?  I am a typical floating voter.  I vote for whoever will do me some good.  Problem is I’m employed, married and don’t have any children so there is not much chance of any of the main parties doing anything but making me poorer.  There is really not much choice in Mile Cross where I stay.  It’s (in no particular order) Conservative, Labour, Lib. Dem. and Greens.  The only ones that haven’t had any scandal round here are the Greens!  I certainly won’t go for Labour.  If they can’t keep their MPs in line then there is no hope of them keeping the councillors in line.  (Ian Gibson has been deselected, shame… NOT!)

Now for the European elections.  Now, the difficulty here is figuring out who will appear on the voting slip.  I did a bit of a Google and found UK Polling Report.  No idea if it is a legit site but it says that 69.2% of the Norwich North population are Christian.  That’ll be the reason for the queues outside the churches every Sunday.  The site wasn’t much help in my quest to find out who was standing.  Next stop Norwich City Council.  I’m definitely on the right track here.  They provide a helpful PDF document with all the Eastern Region candidates on.  There are 92 candidates on the list and some are from London!  How do I know who is actually standing in my area?  I’m good on the internet, I should be able to find out.

Right, turns out Eastern region gets 7 MEPs.  I’ve found the current bunch’s mug shots.  All very similar - male, over 55 and used to wearing a tie.  I also found out that each of the 7 represents all constituents.  So I can contact any one of them and if I don’t like his answer to my question I can go on and contact the other 6 until I get the answer I want.  Cool!

More info, this time from the people who should know, the UK Office of the European Parlament.  It is proportional representation for these elections.  I knew that, honest.  It makes me sound so dim not to have known that, or remembered that.  Now, proportional representation means things get complicated.  I don’t need to know my alphabet to make an X, I need to know my numbers because I have to rank them in order.  With 92 candidates I could be there all day!  Good explanation on this site, shame about the link that says it will take me to how the votes are counted - it doesn’t, it takes me to info about Northern Ireland.

Finally!  I’ve got it.  I have to vote for a party (or independent), not a candidate.  Glad I checked.  Now I can narrow down the 92 to just 15.  Much more manageable.  Those 15 are, in alphabetical order complete with my sarcastic comment:

1. Animals Count - Yes they do, but can they raise my income?
2. British National Party - Bunch of racist w*****s
3. Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship” - Should be a dead cert. in Mile Cross if 60+% of the population are Christian
4. Conservative Party - Bunch of corrupt w*****s.  Did you see that guy on Have I Got News for You?  Alan Duncan.  After watching that I could never vote Tory.  If you missed it there is a recap at the bottom of the list.
5. English Democrats Party - Sound a bit anti European which is not much good in the European parliament.  I get the feeling that they might get together with UKIP and just not turn up on the grounds that it is against their party policy.
6. Jury Team - Now, here’s an interesting bunch.  This is a party made up of independents.  Might be worth a mention.
7. Liberal Democrats - Very pro-Europe.  Maybe a bit too much?
8. No2EU: Yes To Democracy - You what?  I can’t vote for a party that can’t spell!  No idea what they are campaigning about
9. Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu - Got a leaflet through the door from this lot.  The BBC says they are well funded (so it must be true).  They want to stop that silly moving the EU parliament round Europe every month.  Got to consider them just because they have some common sense.
10. Socialist Labour Party - Socialist Worker!  Get your Socialist Worker!  So many memories of Edinburgh in the early ’90s.  They all looked like they didn’t have jobs.  Says a lot for their policies
11. The Green Party - Seemingly there is a green amalgamation in Europe of all the pro-green parties, either that or it is a huge algal bloom.
12. The Labour Party - Are you kidding?  If the UK lot are conning the tax payer with their expenses claim what do you think the European bunch are doing?
13. United Kingdom First - Yes, first, but they probably think the UK stops at Newcastle.
14. United Kingdom Independence Party - I know Kilroy has gone , but he’s not forgotten
15. Independent - If he puts a leaflet through my door I’ll consider him.  Yes, he is a him.

So, who am I going to vote for?  I’ll narrow it down to those who have made the effort to contact me to tell me about their policies, with the exception of the BNP (who are a bunch of racist w*****s) then vote for whichever party is fielding the most women.

That last statement was a joke by the way.  Women fought an died for my right to vote.  People all over the world are still fighting and dying for their right to vote.  The least I can do is do it properly.

Tags: Politics