Battlestar Galactica

Star Wars

The Simpsons

The Sopranos

The Muppets!

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I have a tagline in my emails below my signature that reads,

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t

It’s one of those fnarr things that other programmers understand straight away and others take a few reads to ‘get’. I can’t remember when I put it in my signature but it’s been there ages.

anyway, I got a reply this morning to an email I sent..

LOL! a funny accountant!

I got me trying to think of more fnarr business one liners, what funny one liners have you got in your industry?

Hot on the heels of me bigging up Chrome in a previous post I got a bit of a shock when I tried to visit Google adsense from Google Analytics

yes, I know it’s because of the ‘s’

I was stumbling today and I found this really great post about 101 Writing tips.

It has gems like,

#9 Don’t use commas, to separate text unnecessarily.

#10 It can be shown that you shouldn’t miss out too many details.

#46 To qualify is to weaken, in most cases.

#74 Sporting analogies won’t even get you to first base.

It was hilarious, I must have been guilty of most of them since I started blogging, especially, commas, how about you?

The post is 101 Writing Tips

oh, btw… I just finished coding the WordPress version of CommentLuv 2.0b and it’s working! The commentluv site will be finished soon too and beta testers will be needed…..

Here it is, proof that the failing economy has nothing to do with the credit crunch. Check out this picture, correct me if I’m wrong but, aren’t copper coins supposed to be non-magnetic?

I tried it with every coin I could find, not every one is magnetic. Some of the shiny new looking ones are, most of the old ones aren’t.

That’s it, irrefutable proof that someone is introducing fake small denomination coins into the UK economy thereby making our money worth just a little bit less. It could be the Chinese or Russians, or BOTH!!

Imagine adding a thousand pounds worth of ‘coppers’ (1p and 2p) every week into the British monetary system… wikipedia states that there are around three and a half billion pounds worth of coinage in circulation, of which, about 2 billion is in 1′s and 2 pound coins. According to this BBC news article, there are 10.13 billion 1p coins and 6.2 billion 2p coins in circulation.

That’s 225 Million 300 thousand pounds in coppers, the oldest 1p’s and 2p’s in circulation are from 1971.

Put an extra 1000 pounds worth of coppers, say 50,000 1ps and 25,000 2ps, into the economy each week since 1971 and that would be around another 1 Million 965 thousand pounds worth of extra coppers coming in. So all coinage is worth around a half a percent less! No wonder fuel costs so much! Petrol stations were the only places that would show prices to the 3rd decimal place, now I know why they don’t do that anymore.

It’s a conspiracy I tells ya!

Mathematical calculations on this post were made using the Google search box so may in fact be wrong

<a href=”"><img class=”imgleft” src=”" title=”" alt=”"/>Rhys from GospelRhys.co.uk made some really interesting points about a recent report that the North of England was beyond repair and they should all just come down here to London where everything is smashing (windows) all the time!

A couple of weeks ago, my missus said she needed to visit her brother up north for a week to help out with his shop.

She was dreading it! She’s lived in London for yearsnyearsnyears and couldn’t possibly imagine that anything outside of London exists, our conversations would go like this…

her: “it’s so farrrr”

me (jokingly) :“um, only if you don’t live there. Your brother lives there and it’s not far for him!”

her (not laughing) :“but what if I need to buy something?”

me:“well, they have shops, buildings and some towns even have banks in them. I’m sure you’ll be okay”

It’s like this with her daughter too. The look of abject horror on her face when I once suggested we could all move somewhere outside of London was historic!

Ok, so this isn’t what she looked like but it’s close!

I grew up in Devon so I’m not chained to London like most people that live here. London is not England, it’s a country of it’s own (and should be conquered). Londoners think they can get away with anything because “it’s Lundin”, it pisses me off….

me: hey! those two bendy buses are blocking the entire yellow box junction

Londoner: ‘dats Lundin mate. busy

me: but, that other one went through a red light and now all the cars can’t get through

Londoner: s’alright, they can use the pavement

me:

or

me: this traffic is horrible! I’ve been stuck for an hour leading up to this junction

Londoner: it’s a busy road

me: BUT ITS 4 AM!!!

Londoner: ‘dats Lundin mate. busy.

Rhys made some bullet points about how to recognize a northerner coming to London, things like

# If we suddenly make noises to you on the train, it does not mean we’re a terrorist about to blow it up, nor are we a paedophile, nor are we asking for your wallet. It’s called a “conversation”.

So, here’s a list of things that those oop north can use to recognize Londoners..

• if there are two cashiers and one long orderly queue, they will be blind to the people standing in line and assume that the other register is for Londoners. If anyone objects, they’ll be subject to a big argument (but no one will because they’re too polite)
• two lanes leading to the round-a-bout? They will use the lane with the least cars ALWAYS (even if it means going around the ’bout once)
• It’s perfectly okay to put their washing machine on at 11pm and then the dryer at 2am if they’re staying in a flat because everyone’s awake all the time in London and the traffic drowns out the sound of everything else
• The louder the stereo in a car, the harder the man driving it
• It’s perfectly acceptable for a Londoner to swear loudly anywhere
• Due to their belief that anything outside the M25 and Essex isn’t London so therefore must be a ghost town from 1970, they will ask things like
• “Do you accept credit cards here?”
• “Do you open on Sundays?”
• “Is there anywhere to park?”
• “Why is that river water see-through?”
• They drive on the outside lane of the motorway AT ALL TIMES
• If you give them too much change in a transaction, then that’s your fault. There is no chance they’ll point it out and give it back
• Litter must never be placed in a bin. Bins are a security risk. Someone’ll eventually pick it up from wherever they throw it so don’t worry
• If a parked car is within 20ft of their parking space, it’s okay if they happen to just slightly bump it with their car to get it in the space. No need to leave a note for the owner of the scratched car.
• Hazard lights to them mean “I can do whatever I want with this vehicle even if it means driving on the pavement or through the childrens park”
• They can consider themselves better than others if they choose the baked beans that cost five quid a packet
• They will complain if they have to wait longer than 2 minutes for the next bus
• They look confused when they get paper money in their change at the pub
• Driving 30 miles to anywhere is too far
• A grunt is polite conversation

LOL! there’s many more things I’ve noticed Londoners do that can only be attributed to being resident in a high-crime, low-policing, dense benefit, expensive, dirty and deluded city.

Anywayyyys, back to the missus.. I took her and the mother-in-law up to Lancaster, left them there to stay a week and drove back. It took 3 hours to get from Lancaster to the end of the M1 (a distance of 215 miles) in NW London and then another 2.5 hours to get from there to my house (a distance of 5.7 miles) (oh, and I had to pay an 8 quid congestion charge to do the last 0.5 miles to my house)

I phoned her every day and it went like this..

Day 1: “it’s so boooorrring!”

Day 2: “I can’t sleep at night, it’s too dark”

Day 3: “I still can’t sleep, it’s too quiet”

and it soon changed…

Day 4: “We drove to BlackPool and had a meal for 4 for twenty quid!”

Day 5: “We drove to Manchester and had a great time, it only took 45 minutes to get there!”

It takes us longer to drive from our house to Oxford street and park (a distance of 1.5 miles)

Day 6: “Oh the scenery is so beautiful here, we went for a walk!

Day 7: “do you think we could get a house here?”

By the time I picked her up she was like a new woman, she looked like she’d managed to get some decent nights sleep. She had her head held up and was smiling, until at least 10 miles away from our house, at which point she reverted to the “omg it’s so hard to live” attitude that pervades through London.

Within a day she’d forgotten all that outside of London could offer and could be heard to say things like ,” wow, these eggs are cheap at 50 quid a dozen!” or “lets just pop into Oxford street.. put your wallet in your zipped pocket and be sure to lock the car 5 times and pass me my stab vest”

I don’t think London is the be-all and end-all of a city in the UK, it sucks, it’s expensive, it’s crime ridden, it’s dangerous after dark, it is wasteful, it’s full of chavs who claim benefit and don’t vote but expect the “gavamant” to do something about the crime that their own kids are causing.

I swear, as soon as all my work can be done remotely. I’m goin oop north!

..from the WordPress Ideas site.. lol

More here

hurray! since getting my o2 broadband, my download speed has to be displayed as Mb/s instead of Kb/s.

I was getting 1.6Mb/s on a download the other day and everyone who I told about it, either didn’t care or didn’t know just how awesome being able to download at over a meg per second is.

the infidels!

It got me thinking about those other times where I was raving about something cool and the people I’m talking to get that glassed over look in their eyes that means they’re humouring me because I might be able to fix their computer later…:-)

I had 6 computers to fix yesterday, here are some of the things I heard..

1. “it wasn’t like that before”
   if you say so… (thinking…hah! don’t make me laugh, you don’t even know what it is like now, you probably don’t even know what it is in the first place)
2. “OMG it’s showing all my personal data”
   well, yes, you just signed in with a username and password. You’re probably registered on their site
3. “but I’ve got a virus scanner”
   a virus scanner wont protect you if you open that msn file send request from someone you don’t know
4. “it came free with my broadband”
   yes but you still need to scan regularly with up to date definitions
5. “up to date whatinifitions?”
   [sigh]
6. “that other computer has a virus scanner, can I just take it from there and put it on this one?”
   [loooong sigh]
7. “but it’s connected at 100Mb/s, how come it’s so slow?”
   that’s the speed of your network card connection, not your internet speed
8. “oh, but my internet speed is 8meg”
   It’s up to eight meg sure, you’ll probably get around 3/4 of a meg in actual download speed
9. “can I access this router from my home?”
   where do you live?
   “it’s just down the road…”
   [@!??]

sometimes I feel like the man with one eye in the kingdom of the blind

This is my new album cover! Well, actually it’s a cool thing I saw on a blog while stumble-ing today. It involves visiting sites and using what you get in Photoshop or similar paint program. The game goes like this…
(you may want to middle click these to open them in new tabs)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first article title on this page will be the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four words of the last quote on the page will be the name of your album
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
   The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. http://www.livejournal.com/random.bml
   Click on the users info link and look for the italic subtitle below the bold blog name. That will be your first hit single.
5. Use a graphics program to put them all together like I did above and share it here..

For completeness, here are all the urls that came up for me..
1 2 3 4

Lets see what you get….

Here’s a couple more that I made (no refreshes allowed, you have to choose whatever comes up (even russian tag lines!) )