Chatting with a good friend over dinner last night, he recounted how his son ambushed him late one Sunday night with some economics homework that he’d somehow manage to overlook and which simply had to be submitted the following morning. Annoyed, and after dispensing a severe bollocking, he reluctantly sat down and gave his son some lengthy help with the complex and thorny topic of ‘How does monetary policy affect the economy ?’ ...
These are indeed exciting times in the Brightside household: Norma Jeane will be taking part in the 125th Lawn Tennis Championships to be held at Wimbledon between 20 June and 3 July. Her precise role isn’t known yet but may include ‘Waiting On (Silver Service)’ - fawning over loud, overbearing sales people out on a corporate jolly, ‘Bar staff’ (serving jugs of Pimms to middle aged Daily Mail readers) or tantalisingly, ‘Courtesy car driver’ (ferrying a morose Andy Murray around). This represents a rapid promotion from her initial placement two years ago, where she started out on ‘Litter collection surrounding courts 10 and 11’ before being promoted to ‘Housekeeping duties’ or, as she so eloquently put it - ‘Cleaning the bogs’. Norma will be visiting Holloway prison in April. She claims this is part of her District Nursing course but I have my doubts. She seems to be watching a lot of those legal dramas recently and taking copious notes. Norman Junior III is recuperating from fracturing his right arm for the second time. Note to self - any activity containing the word ‘roller’ that takes place on a concrete road is potentially hazardous. He is soldiering on quite well and only needs assistance with his socks. He has subsequently changed his XBox nickname to ‘OneArmedBandit’ and is experimenting using his toes to manipulate the controller. I had a brush with West Midlands traffic police last week in Solihull after daring to consult a old fashioned map while driving. After 15 minutes of being patronised by a fascist pig and being forced to beg and scrape on bended knee, I managed to escape with a verbal warning instead of the threatened ‘6 point penalty for careless driving’. However, I am still puzzling over the ‘correct’ answer to the copper’s deep, probing question: ‘Sir, please could you tell me why were you travelling at 25 miles per hour in a 30 zone ?’
When I heard that Arsenal were busy making plans for their injured and oh so inspirational captain, Cesc Fabregas, to hoist the trophy aloft and end 6 barren years without a sniff of a trophy, I had a horrible feeling it might end that way. Can you imagine the suspended United captain, a grey suited Roy Keane, doing that back in 1999 ? Can you even imagine Ferguson even contemplating that option for just a second ? No. Neither can I. ...
Sarah Baskerville is a civil servant who works for the Department of Transport in London. Back in November, there was a minor storm in a teacup when the Daily Mail caught Sarah caught posting the shocking revelation to Twitter that she ‘Had a hangover’ whilst at work. In addition, she occasionally had the temerity to dare to question Government policy. Unless you are a Daily Mail reader, none of this is very newsworthy. I suspect the vast majority of people with a Twitter account have posted inane drivel along the lines of ‘At work. Hungover. Need coffee’. ...
Dear Fat Controller Occasionally, I use South West Trains to commute from my home in sunny Norbiton into the City of London. However before you say anything, don’t worry, I am not a merchant banker despite what my friends say. Today, in an attempt to secure a seat, I delayed my departure slightly and caught the legendary 08:36 service from Norbiton. Unfortunately, I narrowly missed a highly prized seat when a rather forceful gentleman, who boarded after me, miraculously managed to reach the last vacant seat 0.74 seconds before me. Bastard. ...
This blog and the handful of modules I use has been upgraded to the final version of Drupal 7.0 which was released today. I was quite pleased that I used Drupal 7 from the early beta versions and then tracked the D7 release candidates as this gave me valuable experience in upgrading Drupal 7 relatively quickly while preserving my additional modules without losing all my data which always helps. It’s worth noting that although I barely scratch the surface of Drupal 7’s wide range of functionality, the quality, reliability and performance of Drupal 7 was perfectly fine for this blog. ...
Steve Rubel has resolved to return to feed reading in 2011. However, I have been using Google Reader since 2007 and use it daily to catch up with the tech and sports news in addition to my favourite blogs. I honestly can’t imagine life without it. I was also interested by a recent article (prompted by the demise of delicio.us) that described the use of Google Reader as a bookmarking service.
Steve Rubel sings the praises of Markdown and good old fashioned text editors. I agree and for a long time have dithered over whether to write all of my blog posts in Markdown. This makes sense as it simplifies the syntax and theoretically should make writing content easier and quicker. I was particularly struck by Caius Durling’s use of Markdown on his Habari blog and the use of the plaintext plugin to reveal the raw Markdown. ...
Manchester, near England - Wednesday 5 January 2011 The footballing world was left reeling yesterday at shock news emanating from Manchester City’s training facility at Carrington. A local man, Frank Booth explains: ‘I always pass the City training ground on my way to work so I always check out the players going through their drills. Yesterday I was quite shocked to see all the players smiling and laughing. I couldn’t believe my eyes so I stopped for a closer look. ...
Before Christmas, my friendly postman tried to deliver a parcel when no-one was home. Instead of leaving the parcel propped up by the front door to be buried under the falling snow, inviting passers-by to steal the potentially valuable item or slinging it into our dustbin, this time he helpfully left a note asking me to collect the package from the local sorting office or ‘request a redelivery’ on a subsequent date using a form on the Royal Mail web site. ...