Office blog

[freedom]

Friday 29th September 2006

I have ported enough stuff onto my new secondhand PC to be able to start
doing useful stuff, or so I thought...


Red Squirrel is a test/evaluation version of the full Virtual Acorn package,
and it is flaky in places. The RISC OS is fine, the emulator is flaky, the XP
it runs on top of is incredibly rickety; this is the opposite of a firm
foundation from the ground up.

I thought using an advanced OS emulated on a rickety one would at least give me
access to a good text editor, but, in practice, this produced several
problems:

The keyboard is American, which mean's the caps lock and ctrl keys
are transposed, as well as the quotes and at-sign, there is no "Print" key,
you have to press shift for the Pound sign, etc.

This keyboard has physical problems; the spacebar stick's, and one of
the arrow keys doesn't work at all.

Fortunately, I can reassign keys in !Zap, but keeping having to think about
which keys I'm tapping slow's me down. Okay, so I have full undo/redo in all
applications, but it's a pain having to use them ALL the time.

If I lapse into the wrong keyboard/machine routine, disaster. For example,
alt-F-S in XP save's the file, but under the emulator, select's
"File"-"Select Model", then any key other than ESC reset's the virtual
machine.

Using the arrow keys is natural, using the numeric pad substitutes mean's I
have to keep looking at the keyboard, which doesn't help when I'm trying to
move around a document.

Oh, and the shift/alt/ctrl keys on the right-hand side behave differently to
their cousins on the left, for some reason.


Clearly, I need a new keyboard BADLY, and the full version of the emulator as
a close second.


A little while ago, XP corrupted some bits of the emulator, and the whole
thing fell apart. I fixed this by re-copying from my archives, then moving
over the rom image and hostfs, so I didn't lose any work. But that
necessitated a trip home and ten minutes of downtime when I got back.

This also mean's that XP spend's it's time fiddling with your harddisc. (As
if you didn't know that already.)


As for XP-native applications, I found that I quite like the quick
manipulation of blocks of text and TABLEs in FrontPage, but all the
menu-driven functions suck.

One of The Others frowned at me when I compared XP/RO boot times:
XP: Boot-up (with password), 2 minutes; shutdown 10 seconds.
RO: Boot-up, 2 seconds; shutdown instantaneous.

Microsoft's programming department must consist of an infinite number of
monkeys or something...

Running RO 3.1, I slow it down (unnoticeably) by putting a skin on it so it
look's like 3.5: Textured window borders and outline fonts on the desktop. I
use !NewLook (with backdrop textures off) and !FinalLook (with iconbar
textures off), for this. I have found, with the enlarged pixels, that subtle
dithering isn't, and so the marbled background textures look grainy when
emulated.



Meanwhile, on the streets, he types, hitting TAB instead of the spacebar
because he's assigned space to it, then trying to jump to the start of the
line with the wrong arrow key, then finding that the working arrow keys can't
be combined with ctrl... back on the streets, the original Hut by the brothel
that I was trying to rent to run Betterware out of, three months ago, has
been squatted.

I thought they were vandals when I accosted them, but it turn's out they're a
local couple temporarily homeless and reversing the damage the vandals did.

I'll have to let the Cinema (neighbours on the other side) know the good
news. -And, er, update my webpages on the subject.


This may complicate the slicing of the overgrown trees/bushes that I have to
get done.


Saturday 30th September 2006

I put up the Daily Mail's free "British Small Mammals" wallchart
in the downstairs common area at my offices, with this note next
to it:

I thought this would be helpful identifying the vermin we find in here.
So far, in and around town centre buildings, I have found the house
and harvest mice, grey squirrel, mole, brown rat, bank vole, rabbit,
hedgehog, and pipistrelle (9).
Collect all 25 and win a free air-freshener.

[Ben]

I want more computers! I definitely need more memory. As was predicted, I have filled up my hard disks with podcasts. They seem to come flying off the internet into my hard disks faster than I can move them onto CDs.

I like your air freshener competition. Unfortunately, I don't like air fresheners. Give me a badger to sniff, any day.

[freedom]

What you need is a second (and big) HDD, possibly secondhand, or maybe a flash disk, which you get can new for �12 now (Staples).

How are you using these podcasts? You have to listen to them sometime; do you generally delete them afterwards? Can you re-download past ones if you want them back? Perhaps you should listen and routinely delete afterwards, re-downloading as necessary.

If they all stack up to the point where you can't listen to all of them, what's the point of getting them in the first place?

- * -

Thursday 5th October 2006

Passing by Hut 1, I looked in, and it seem's the squatters are untidying the place rather than tidying it, and remember, it was vandalised before they moved in.

After a quickly-shouted conversation with some teenagers loitering without intent (or any sort of plan really) under the footbridge next to the office [building], I quickly felt like a performing monkey at the zoo, when they started peering
through the security grill and net curtains at me.

One of The Others arrived at this point, and we took down the net curtain and replaced it with some spare, more opaque, material he happened to have in the storeroom. We checked from outside, and found this worked well.


Friday 6th October 2006

Arriving at the office this afternoon, I was attacked by a swarm of houseflies.
It was like something out a cheap horror movie: The sort that can't afford exciting monsters.
And, like a cheap horror movie, they were easy to deal with in real life. I hoovered them up. There were hundreds of the damn things, like a crawling carpet of flies, but I cornered them between the window and the new curtains we put up yesterday.

One of The Others arrived after all the excitement was over and mentioned that they called the squat hoover I had been using "R2D2, and the tall one C3PO."
And I had been referring to it all along as "the darlek". How silly of me.

Then we discovered two more flies hiding upstairs. So it was off with R2D2, hoovering around the strip lights. Or rather, trying to. The one of The Others who was there remarked the scene looked like "something out of Ghostbusters". As in, the scenes where they suck the monsters into a little smoking box-device they carry around with them.


Saturday 7th October 2006

Feeling pleased with having dispatched 200 files the previous day, I was a bit put out to be confronted with 200 more today. I had put yesterday's hoover bag in an external bin, so it couldn't be the same ones back again.

This time I decided on a different tack: Insecticide. As most of the flies were cornered again in the same place as the previous day's bunch, I got most of them in one go, spraying between the window and the curtain. They all fell
to the windowsill in a second or two, and as they lay there, wiggling their legs in the air and beating their wings against the sill, they made a loud hissing sound at me.

I have come to the conclusion that this must have been 1200 feet and 800 wings kicking and beating simultaneously. A pan of boiling liquid will hiss at you in a similar way, and, although you will not hear a small bubble bursting,
you perceive it as a hissing noise when there are hundreds of them.

One thing's clear: I certainly recommend "Raid" insecticide if you have problem flies.


Monday 9th October 2006

'So, so, tired after putting extra work in not-getting-fired, which is always handy in a job. 'Gave my boss several presents, just to make sure, including some leaflets promoting the new (currently) internal forum I am trying to set up.

I wasn't in the office until late on Sunday, but The Others tell me 200 more flies were, and they used the insecticide/hoover solution on them. One of them also messed around hovering-up his colleagues' drink with R2D2, bursting
the fresh bag I had put in.

This also answer's the question I put on the noticeboard: "Why is the inside of 'R2D2' wet?"


Tuesday 10th October 2006

I am trying to add an article about Betterware to Wikipedia, after not finding one on there, but noticing that Kleeneze is covered.

[Ben]

Your suggestions are very valid re the podcasts. But there are a lot that I just want to keep. I have moved quite a lot to CDs but think that I should really be looking at getting loads more disk space. And when that happens, I'll move some of them back. It takes too long to download them twice.

I'm really into the podcasts that come out of the TWiT network (www.twit.tv). Most of them seem to be hosted by someone called Leo Laporte (I'd never heard of him before Wowser recommended TWiT to me). There is also PRI's The World Technology podcast which is rather good.

One of the reasons I have got such a backlog is that I have downloaded all of the archives. Leo Laporte actually addressed my very problem in one of his shows. Someone rang him up asking about which MP3 players would play files speeded up so that they could clear their backlog of unlistened-to podcasts sooner. Leo was enthusiastic about the idea of listening to the podcasts speeded up because he seemed to think that a study had been done which indicated that people absorbed rapid speech more easily than slow speech.

I had a look at my old MPIO FL100 (now held together by elastic bands, but loved still due to its ability to play MP3s off SD cards - which is great since you can get 1GB cards for little over �10 now off Amazon) and it does play the files at up to double speed. Or rather it plays PRIsTWT at up to double speed, others it won't. Perhaps it's something like PRIsTWT uses constant rate encoding. Maybe.

I listened to some double speed PRIsTWT in the supermarket today. It was a weird experience. I thought I was taking it in - but can't for the life of me remember any of what was about just now. (I'm listening to another one while I write this)

Anyway, I think I am actually making some headway. I have unsubscribed from some shows. I listen to other shows but am not so bothered about deleting them unlistened-to if I don't think I'll have enough time to listen. Then there are the other shows which I want to keep, and maybe listen to some episodes more than once...

As for your flies. Don't hurt them! They're only little. Having said that - we had a wasps' nest in one of our wall vents a couple of years ago. I was against destroying it. Every evening we had the ritual of me clearing the house of wasps (by collecting them carefully in a plastic box and then releasing them outside) before my girlfriend would come into the house. Of course, my girlfriend didn't get stung once but one of the little bastards crawled up my trouser leg and stung me while I was watching television one evening.

[freedom]

Friday 13th October 2006

Attacked by tiny little muggers. Held them there until police arrived. No further details, as considering options for prosecution.

Monday 16h October 2006

Slow on finding News references for Betterware, and my wiki editor has gone on holiday, but I am pleased to see that Kleeneze has been booted off Wikipedia, so that's something.

Tuesday 17th October 2006

Minor fix to my own forums; got Icelandic icons displaying correctly instead of their Arabix equivalents. It seems that some of the Icelandic language directories were corrupted, and Arabic was the first in the list (alphabetically) that the filer/server defaulted to. The Hosting company is Icelandic, and I'm sure they will find this interesting. I have renamed the Icelandic option as Iceland, and that will stay so until I can get the directory fixed.

I also found a minor bug in phpBB2: You cannot have a language ending in a numeral, or the Profile FORM give's an incorrect error message, telling you to fill in all fields. (So no Icelandic2.)

- * -

Files are rats carry disease. That's why I took them out.
If the rats left and the flies could work out how to fly out of an open window, there would be no problem. I tried anyway, and persuaded 4-5 flies to leave by the door, and nil by the window, out of 615.

I didn't hurt them unecessarily; those I had to eliminate I killed as quickly as possible. I'm not ceratin flies can feel pain in the same way we do anyway.
Do you have any objection to me killing bacteria?

[freedom]

Wednesday 18th October

Hoovered the remaining gravel off the (metal) driveway. was interrupted when one of The Others drove over where I had just hoovered, although the hoover needed emptying around then anyway; it was getting rather rather, being full of gravel and washers by this time.
A passing international expert in weighbridges saied he had never seen anyone using a hoover to clean one, anywhere in the World. He suggested, since it is the last one in town, that we consider renting it out.

Thursday 19th October

Violent attack using improvised weapons, by muggers whilst pruning. Uninjured. 'Have decided to systematically pick off the local muggers, since they are the same individuals responsible for the vandalism.

Still haven't got round to making a statement about the first attack; rather busy not-getting-fired. My boss says she will not accept getting mugged as an excuse for any drop in sales performance.

[freedom]

Monday 30th October

One day of rapid working, cramming 'em in before the insanity of trick-or-trick day, and people are out celebrating a day early.
Very few in horror fancy dress; most are out as bunny girls. Huh?

As I was out on my rounds tonight, I met a Romanian artist selling
his wares door-to-door. He wondered what I was doing, and I showed him.
"Ah; how... in-teres-tinn." he said. This and how he said it will become
relevant shortly. In the meantime, it is also interesting how much the
difficulty of doing what they do is overlooked for such people.

Some people say, illegal immigrants; begging; state handouts, etc.
Never mind the assumptions and contradictions there, remember here is
someone who has travelled a long distance, separated from his friends
and colleagues, learnt another language and extra artistry, and now
has to carry on a trade, maybe start a business, in an alien culture
that look's down on him. And the climate suck's.

Tuesday 31st October 2006

Tonight, I watched a film, an American film, about vampires.
Americans have an obsession with "nice teeth". In other words, cut square
and flat and useless for that other American obsession, eating lots of
rare beef.

So, I was watching this film, and I couldn't help noticing that the
leading lady had smaller canines than I do. Between us, me and the
Romanian wouldn't have got any business at all tonight.

Infact, I haven't met anybody with distinct canines like me. Maybe this
is why orthodontists are so fascinated with me, and why so many people
suddenly run the other way in dark alleyways. The police once suggested
that I avoid dark alleyways on (my(?)) health & safety grounds, but this
is Chippenham, and the place is full of them.

You see some interesting things in very dark alleyways, like two small
orange lights floating in the air. Aliens? UFOs? No, two constables
having a crafty fag where they think no-one will see them. How do they
think people get around in this town? Tsk.

I did make one call this evening: To hand over a big bag of cash to my
boss. Even though her partner is armed, and I could tell they were in,
neither of them would open the door. Grumble.

Friday 3rd November

Slept all through yesterday, as went to bed first thing in the morning, then woke up last thing at night.
So I decided to have an early night, thus fixing my lousy sleeping pattern.

As puishment for this behaviour, fate has awarded me �10 from the National Lottery.

I have been rather busy posting to the unfairpak forum, recently, at:
http://freedom.is/unfair

Edit: Added 30/11 and inserted 31/11 data.

[Ben]

That farepak collapse was a lousy business alright.

[freedom]

Tuesday 7th November 2006

The Farepak scandal went right to the top this morning: It was the subject
of an emergency debate in Parliament. No actual results yet, apart from the
launch of a short-timescale charity to help the victims recoup their losses.
Most bits of the DTi are now investigating the collapse: The SFO, Trading
Standards, the CIB, and the OFT. There is a lot to investigate, and this is
clearly going to take time. The Administrators have a lot of work to get
through as well.

They (Ministers) are talking of banning the directors from practising, and
stripping the CEO of his knighthood (for services to business), but bizarrely,
Kleeneze is still a member of the DSA (with OFT approval), and only stopped
being approved by neighbourhood watch in the summer. (The National
Neighbourhood Watch Association went bust, which is the wrong way round on
several levels.)

Wednesday 8th November 2006

Today I brought some new whiteboard markers.
Our shared noticeboard has one worn-out red marker left, and that will not
make us look sharp and efficient on the office open day (why, why?),
which is looming.

I re-wrote the whiteboard diary content in thin crisp black lines, and the less
important content in new red, so as not to have too much change in one go.
people like cleanliness and newness, but not change, and least not too much change.

Friday 10th November 2006

On the side of the office building we occasionally have canvas signs.
Currently there is one saying "Chippenham Festival", meaning the arts one,
rather than the folk one.
The cable-tie on the upper righthand corner snapped and now it hangs forlornly.
At least passing commuters are not reminded that they are in Chippenham.
I know that always depresses me.
Nonetheless, I decided to do something about it, perhaps even fix the thing.
One of The Others went up a ladder I found, with a stronger cable tie I also
found, and did this.

All this, of course, blow's the cover of where the office building is: We're
inside (and technically speaking, part of,) Chippenham railway station.
It would be impossible to continue to relate event-specific, er, events,
without reference to location, without laborious language otherwise.
And anyway, the muggers (most of whom happen to live just across the street)
have now sussed this anyway. They're sharper than I thought: It only took
them FOUR MONTHS!

Saturday 11th November 2006

The other (upper) side of the sign fell off sometime this afternoon, now all
the strain was on it.
I was up the ladder this time, after finding someone to hold the bottom end.

Sunday 12th November 2006

I picked up a Kleeneze catalogue (of an agent who's just gone bust (I phoned
him), so he won't mind), and on the back of the new Christmas edition, the
trading address is Farepak House, Westmead, Swindon. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Tonight, I feel wide awake, for some reason, so I have decided to update my neglected
blog, offline, and keep it going offline, to copy online as and when practical.
This, probably, will stop it going stale and infrequent.

Decided to clean and dismantle the keyboard attached to my secondhand PC.
Did that, then swapped the key innards for non-functioning and redundant keys.
This worked well, apart from fixing two keys and knocking out another.
One more swap, and the problem was solved.

That's saved me the hassle of buying a new keyboard, which is handy because
I can't afford one right now.

The original problem keys were arrowpad-left and the spacebar.
The redundant keys swapped with were f11 and scroll lock.
All the keys now work, although I have not worked out a method of testing f11 yet...
ah, okay, that's fine too (alt-f11 in MsWord call's up a script editor).

Earlier, I also fixed a problem with my kettle at home, in which the safety overheat
cutout tripped before the boil-sensor did: I just banged it down hard onto the powerbase
thingy, and the impact knocked the cutout back.
I can't afford a new kettle, either.

Friday 17th November 2006

Contacted the freeholder of Hut1, the northern portion of the triple site I am
caretakering at Dallas Road in Chippenham. Updated him on the squatting, drugs,
and flytippers, in return for current plans. He was aware of some of this,
and has a buyer waiting (to put a house there), but is being obstructed by the
council.

The council are also obstructing the freeholders of the main site. It is all
very irritating; developing brownfield sites is very trendy AND responsible,
but bureaucracy dog's you at every step. There are buyers and developers waiting
for the land, and housebuyers & tenants in great need, as well as the environmental
benefits and pressure from the neighbours to DO SOMETHING, but still the council,
who's job it is to help, are the main obstacle.

[freedom]

Saturday 18th November 2006

In the wee small hours between 0200-0400, I was, for reasons too tedious to
elaborate, pruning the overgrown bushes on the brothel site. Essentially, I
had run out of time, and nobody else was going to do it.

About a dozen people, include two lots of police, passed by. All of them
couldn't tell the difference between pruning and vandalism. Or between bushes
and trees, for that matter. Now, I'm no gardening expert, infact I regard it
as tidying rather than gardening, but even I know this stuff.

- * -

Later on, essentially the next day, although I stayed up so late in the
morning that I woke up the same day, I passed by the brothel site.
Dave's people had been and indeed fenced off his part of the triple site (at
the other end from the brothel's front garden where I had been last). They
had used building contractor's wire-panel fencing, the sort that rest's in
rubber blocks. This is logical, since dave is a building contractor,
afterall. He earlier said something about either boarding-up or fencing-off;
whichever is easier, and there would have been a hell of alot of boarding to
do, so fencing continue's to be the logical choice.

At least this accidentally-coordinated action has stopped the police stopping
me to check whether or not I am authorised to do what I do. One of the ways I
put pressure on (all) the freeholders was to encourage the commercial
neighbours to talk to them through the police, so it look's like I may have
to put up with this sort of thing again in the future. A necessary evil.

I got to the office just as they were packing-up the giant ride-on toy train
sets from the car park. Between the tiny toy-scale models indoors, and the
real trains, all inside the same railway station: Identity crisis, anyone?

I suppose I ought to mention the festival website, which run's until the 2nd
December:
http://www.chipparts.org.uk

I'm worried I'll say "farts" accidentally when saying "Chippenham arts
festival" or "festival arts" or something, probably precisely the wrong time,
next to the mayoress or someone. The landlord is organising all this. He
shouldn't have put those two words together. It's all his fault: That's my
contingency excuse: That won't go down well, either, will it?

- * -

I spoke to my local (James Gray) MP's secretary a few days ago, and she told
me he wouldn't be holding any surgeries for two weeks.

Then on the lunchtime news yesterday, it revealed he was in my local boozer
Thursday night. How unlikely is that?

The media were squeezed in there, too. Did everyone apart from me know
this?


Monday 20th November 2006

My MP's main secretary in rang me back from his London number. She thought
that the best way of contacting him quickly, since the matter was (now)
urgent, would be to send a fax, instead of meeting with him.

Okay, so I re-wrote my notes into a fax, dashed across the (railway (bridge))
lines to print it, ran back to get paper for the printer, and zoomed around
again to get to a fax bureau.

She asked me at the time what I wanted him to do about the situation. Now, I
don't know entirely what MPs do or how they do it, and in his column in the
local paper, he himself remarked that he isn't sure himself.
So what am I supposed to say?
Before I could ask this, she prompted, "like ask him to write a letter to the
appropriate Minister?" What an efficient secretary! (She couldn't be more
helpful than the local one, who doesn't even know when his next public
appearance is, even though the media seem to.)
So I bunged that in as a suggestion, highlighted the essential info on the
first page (two more pages of background information and notes), and the
letter tied together nicely.

Since all this is coincidentally against a rival company (although I try to
put my interests aside in my actions), my boss let me drop the work preparing
for her that afternoon.

Faxing three pages was just �1.18 at the bureau; a pleasant surprise, and one
that mean's I can afford to fax a Chief Exec who wouldn't reply to my email:
So few people fax (commercial offices) these days, that it get's attention.
or is that just in America?

Incidentally, the MP's secretary is the only person who asked me to keep my
phone on AND rang me back, apart from my boss of course. Here is a list of
bodies that have insisted I leave my phone on for them, but never call: Bits
of Interpol, the local police, the Manx police, bits of the Manx Government,
bits of the UK/NI Government, ITN, the Daily Mail, the local paper, the local
Magistrates Courts throughout Wiltshire, most of the prisons and bail hostels
in the UK, my friends, my debtors, and a drug testing clinic in south London.
They all contacted me again, but not by phone. Er, not all those today of
course, but those are the ones that annoyed me in this manner over 2006.

Or at least, I don't think they rang: My favourite button is the 'off' button
on my mobile. Bad habits all round, then.

Enough typing for now. (Perhaps too much.)

[freedom]

Saturday 25th November 2006

Today went to see my local MP, travelling to Malmebury to do so.
I am not a morning person, so it's amazingthe meeting went okay.
I can't go into too many details publically right now, apart from
that it involve's Farepak's "missing link", and all hell is set
to break loose early next week.

I just hope it help's; that's all.

Now it is evening, and I am a walking zombie on the alertness angle.

[freedom]

Monday 27th November 2006

Now I can strike ITN off the list of two posts ago.
They phoned me today, but not about what I had been expected, and consequently I may have let several cats out of some bags. But damage none too serious done, though.

Monday 4th December 2006

Another morning blend's from the night before, and before the hour is out I hope to have updated much of my work and test forum sites.

[freedom]

8th December 2006

The alleyway I use the most was blocked by a fallen tree. It is possible to squeeze past, but it is most inconvinent. I will set off with a tenon saw, to deal with this problem, or I may possibly try out the machete again, since it is difficult to saw through wet wood.

9th-10th December 2006

I have decided to start an awareness campaign against a particular pyramid scheme.
No-one appear's to have complained about this before, which is insane, given the time it's been around and the amount it's stolen.
I know there are tens of thousands of people up and down the country that've been scammed by this company, and I think it would help to provide a framework so they know they're not on their own. Then people power and protest can do the rest.

I am also starting a Squidoo lense on Betterware.

I have decided to apply for tax credits, and to put in a back-claim, if I can, on Monday.


There was a tree fallen over, blocking the alleyway I use the most to get between home and the office.
Nobody was doing anything about it, apart from crawling under it, so I chopped it through at the bottom end, and unplugged it from the fence it had crushed.

I was surprised at how light the tree was.

First I hacked away with the machete, removing obstructing vines, then a (slow) 4cm wedge in the mian trunk.
I reached the each limit of this, and used a tenon saw to cut another 4cm (12cm overall diameter). The trunk craked alittle, and closed the gap I had just sawn.
So I sawed aother one, at an angle, and just before I met the first cut, the trunk cracked again and closed that bloody one as well.

I levered out bits of the wedge with the machete, then bounced the trunk up and down on the already-knackered fence. It gave more little sharp cracking noises, then a big one, and there I was, holding half a tree.

The tree was too long, even with the (rotten) branches snapped off, to manover out of the alleyway or through the side-path, so I shoved it parallel with the main path, hard against the inclined verge, and that was that.

11th December 2006

Slept in the office last night, and got a little too hot, for a strange change.
-Too knackered to get home. NOT a habit I want to cultivate.

[freedom]

(Probably) Tuesday 19th December 2006

Cleaned the sink (again).
Instead of scrubbing the stainless-steel cleaner immediately,
like mildly-abrasive detergent-filled cream cleaner, I let it stew for ten minutes, then scrubbed it away.
Result: The acidic cleaner reacted with the alkaline stains, and now we have a gleaming sink.


(Probably) Wednesday 20th December 2006

Uncorked the drainholes in the actual weighbridge part of The Weighbridge.
This will be good to stop ice forming, because we park on it, and to stop dirt washing around on it, because I clean it.


(Probably) Thursday 21st December 2006
(Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve)

Cleaned and re-wrote the internal noticeboard.
More usage of black ink, now.
Included decorations, and an Event Calendar,
where you cross off an "eve" for each day closer to Christmas.


Monday 25th December 2006
(Christmas Day (Christmas Night, actually))

Here are some things it took a while to get scanned:


Here is the bottom left-hand corner of a seemingly-respectable poster from the festival. It bill's "The Olde Tyme Players proudly present a professional OLDE TYME MUSIC HALL 'Authentic & Uniquely British'". What is that long green thing? Is it a marrow, a cucumber, a stick of rock, or something else? Why has the lady beside him have that particular expression? Is it accident the photo to the left has been placed to the left of where he's pointing it? Who are these "Olde Tyme Players", anyway? We're in the festival office, and even we don't know.


I spotted this in the Daily Mail of SATd9/12/2006.
It remind's me of the office, except here we've inside a railway station, rather than having a railway station inside us.


Friday 29th December 2006

You can tell a lot about a place from the fridge.

Here's what's in our office fridge tonight:

Four cans of Guinness,
Three 2-Litre bottles of Coke (various brands),
1.5 loaves of sliced white bread,
a bottle of ketchup,
a bottle of water,
a jug-that-came-the-fridge, with water in it,
and an almost-empty pint of semi-skimmed milk.

Nobody's touched the water or the ketchup for months, all the other stuff get's replaced twice a week.

And on the draining board is:

Two (allegedly) washed mugs,
Two unwashed mugs,
a fairly-fresh rectangular dishwashing sponge,
and a large, wet, paintbrush.


And so this is Christmas, and the fourth day of it by my reckoning.
Working back from Twelfth Day (6th January), First Day is
Boxing Day. This strike's me as odd: I thought the first day of
Christmas was Christmas Day. So does this mean that Christmas doesn't
begin on Christmas Day?
Where's a priest when you need one?

This blog won't be updated online until the 2nd January, probably, because I can't
get free access until then, and I've run out of money, or more precisely, out of income.
Fortunately, the Job Centre is open over the holiday, which surprise's me.


Getting quite tired while using excel I selected the autosum menu (to see what was there),
and pressed the "More functions..." button.
Excel said "Insert Function: Type a brief description of what you want to do and then click Go"
I put "Go down the pub"
Excel help popped back with "CONFIDENCE: Returns the confidence interval for a population mean."

... Or the Confidence interval for a mean population? Yup, that's down the pub.
Near enough, anyway.

It's now 0818, and the end is in sight for the templates for my forum.
I've been rewriting subSilver so it conform's to WAI, and tweaking it alittle to chuck out
the smilies and signatures seamlessly. I've also fixed all the silly annoying things that
vex me on other people's forums (No, NOT the other people themselves).

The mod team will be pleased.
Soon I can turn my attention to the purely-programmatic side, or I can once I get my pesky mid-Christmas
Holiday Betterware work done. What am I, in competition with Santa Claus? I'm supposed to be on holiday
from all that, and I need it. Holiday mean's an uninterrupted break, instead I have an interrupted one.
And there's no sane double time calculations on Commission. Grumble.



Monday 1st January 2007 (early morning)

Ah, January: The month where "crossed cheque" mean's the date.
And, more importantly, the month in which my birthday live's. Not that I celebrate it anymore.

Today, is the hottest day of the year!
(So far)
No kittens in my mittens today. (A very silly phrase, for a very silly time of the day, 0450.)

Tomorrow I go back to work, and there'll be a small amount of work this morning, so I can tell
my boss I worked over the holiday, whereas I had to avoid doing that (hence the word, "holiday").
Threatened with being fired if I didn't give up food as well as sleep, and work through my holiday,
however if I did work as much as demanded through the holiday, I would be in no fit state to carry
on my job in the new year, or indeed to stay conscious generally.

The major work of the templates has been done, I have left the admin templates alone entirely though;
only a handful of people will see them, afterall. I'm fiddling about standardising my archives and
classifying and lining-up my MODs ready for upload/email day, Tuesday morning.

I haven't been able to connect (for free) since the 21st, nearly two weeks.


Monday 1st January 2007 (evening)

As I was shopping in the local Tesco's, I noticed they've started selling cr�me eggs.
It's the seventh day of Christmas and they're starting the Easter promotions.
Just to rub it in, across the isle from them are mince pies, reduced to clear.

I'll dare them to put tinsel around the eggs.

"Goddamit, time flies faster than ever: We'll be putting tinsel around the Easter Eggs next."
-Victor Meldrew


Tuesday 2nd January 2007 (early morning)

And so here it is: Back to work soon. And then, three weeks hence, payday. Or rather,
Benefit-pay day.

Time to start filling in the forms, and preparing for the morning's work (and uploads),
before I get too tired. (Infact, I should have done it yesterday evening, but I got
too tired.)

I was tweaking the XHTML compatibility of the javascript yesterday, and I found that
while the XHTML standard require's replacing the comments inside the STYLE and SCRIPT
elements, MsIE only accept's that with STYLE, not SCRIPT. Which explain's why all the
javascript suddenly stopped working. I shall have to substitute -- and & strings, then
knock out the commenting and CDATA sequences altogether inside SCRIPTing elements.

Pyramus (see other post) and unfarepak are gonna have to wait for the moment: I don't
have enough cash for phone calls and faxing.
I expect there will be dozens of emails waiting for me complaining that I haven't replied
to them or something, at 0945.

[freedom]

Wednesday 3rd January 2007

Passing the sealed-off surround of Hut1, I noticed the fencing has been shoved in,
as to permit discreet access to junkies, vandals, fly-tippers, and all the other "guests" I have to put up with entertaining.

On wedging it back, the nearest residential neighbour ran into me, me was embarrassing, because I had to walk partway up his driveway
to reach enough of the fencing to lever it back into place.

After exchanging explanations, he also explained the history of the Huts.
Apparently, originally Hut1 was an extension of an architect's office, not a summerhouse,
which explain's why it is so luxuriously-built.
It was built before WW-II. I knew it was old, but not that old.
I'll put the detailed history ontop my subsite, when I get some spare-ish time.


Thursday 4th January 2007

I cleaned the (light-coloured) rubbish and some of the dark sludge of autumn,
off the weighbridge and the rest of the driveway.

Less litter has been dropped, I hope as a result of me keeping the place pristine.
Litter beget's litter, and all that.


Friday 5th January 2007 (early morning)

New year, new calendars.

The Others have put up a new wallplanner, as usual given away free with a local rag.
This one has lots of adverts concerning horses, all over it.

Horse stables, stud farms, equine dentists; you name it.

Here's a very dubious one for an abattoir:
- Professional service.
- Discrete collection service from any UK mainland address.
- On-site passport office.
http://www.pottersabattoir.co.uk

"... And I imagine, we'll be fed to the pigs." (Snatch)
That, or a nice spot in a French restaurant.


Often, when running under the emulator (or on native RISC OS hardware),
I might open the 46 template files for searching/editing, and think nothing of it.
I tried a similar operation under Windoze, and this came up:


Are you sure you want to go anywhere today?

Warning: You have just switched your computer on.
This may seriously damage your computer and any work saved on it.
Are you sure you want to continue?

It can't be long now before the next generation of PCs crash before they
finish booting-up.

Why do people still buy this junk?