Having decided to pause and reconsider on my XML-RPC thing, I’ve spent a bit of time implementing the Javascript CSS stylesheet switcher from A List Apart So if you want this page with the links on the right, there’s a box in the links strip that lets you move the links to either side. Simple but elegant…
So if anyone really doesn’t like the layout/colours of this page, let me know and I’ll add some other styles.
I’m working on a little script, my first useful one in PHP to allow easy addition of entries to a Movable Type blogroll/link blog. Most of the suggestions for running link lists and/or blogrolls in MT use a second blog for the list entries.
My script, should I get further with it, will use XML-RPC to post an entry to such a blog, but without the blogger having to do anything except give it the URL to add.
It’s a bit like the existing bookmarklet functionality but simpler.
Only really doing it as I’ve not written code in ages and want to have another go. I’m not saying it’ll be any good, but it’ll keep my brain active.
Finally got the last two Devo studio albums (Smooth Noodle Maps and Total Devo. As I feared, they’re not terribly good, no where near the level of Q: Are We Not Men? or Duty Now For The Future but I’ll give them a chance and see if they grow on me. I think I’ve got all the normal Devo albums now, and a few compilations, along with some very strange stuff like the E-Z Listening Disc which is an album of Devo songs recorded in the style of “muzak”.
For a few years now we’ve been using some of the online grocery stores offered by supermarkets. Not having a car means that it’s a major hassle to get all the shopping home, so the delivery services looked really useful, especially for heavy items.
We’ve tried Tesco Sainsbury and more recently Ocado the online service of Waitrose. We may have also used the Iceland online system, but they’ve dropped their service now.
Of those services, we’ve been using the Tesco service the longest, but now use it very rarely, if at all. Sainsbury has also recently fallen from favour too. Why have we stopped using them? Because they suck , big time.
Continue reading Online Groceries: Great & Sucky
Headed off for a spur-of-the-moment day out in Brighton yesterday. We didn’t have any particular plans, though we did want to pop into Jeremy Hoye to get our wedding rings re-polished. When we got there, their workshop was closed for the day so we had to skip that.
We wandered around Brighton for a little while, and then headed off to Kemp Town on a wild goose chase, looking for a running shop that Vic thought was over there (but had omitted to bring the name or address). After walking for a while, we gave up and headed down to Brighton seafront to watch the sun go down. By now we were starting to feel the cold and headed to Sidewinder for a drink. After a couple of pints of strong cider and a very good meal, we headed back home.
No, not a blog entry about Britney Spears.
Grimsby Town responded to me wishing them good luck against Port Vale by losing 5-1 They lost two players last week, but signed another on loan. They really need to sort things out as they’re yoyoing between good results against very good teams, and terrible results against mediocre/bad ones. I guess what they could really do with is something like the reported half a million quid that Fatboy Slim paid for a share in Brighton & Hove Albion.
Women’s football (or soccer for those of a US persuasion): Always struggling to get away from sterotypes, prejudice and pre-conceptions, and then Sepp Blatter, the head of the world football organisation, FIFA comes out and says Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball. “They could, for example, have tighter shorts. I’m sure that really helps!
On a footballing theme, some of you may know that I still follow Grimsby Town (The Mariners), as they’re my home town team. They’re having a bit of a rough season, following relegation from Division One last season. The excellent Cod Almighty site has a very entertaining diary of the trials and tribulations of the team and their fans. They also produce much-needed ‘Grimsby Is Not In Yorkshire’ t-shirts .
Here’s hoping Town do well against Port Vale today.
We watched the first two episodes of C4 new series, ‘Shameless’ last night. I wasn’t expecting much as a lot of recent UK comedy shows have been pretty poor, but this was really quite good.
Maxine Peake (probably best known for playing the part of Twinkle in dinnerladies was in it, along with a few other familiar faces.
Extremely funny, gutsy and full-on; so good, in fact, that we watched the 2nd episode on E4 straight after the first had been shown on C4.
Reading ScaryDuck memories of 2000AD got me thinking back to the comics I used to read when I was a boy. The two that I remember most clearly are Warlord and Action.
Warlord was published in 1974 (when I was 7 years old) and was a war comic for boys, featuring Lord Peter Flint, codename Warlord. It was definitely the comic you had to read if you were a boy in those days. Somehow, I don’t think a comic consisting solely of war stories would be allowed now. There were free gifts attached to the cover, though all I can remember about those is codebooks for sending secret messages. Jim Wilkinson, Andrew Payling and I were all members of the Fireball Club, a “secret agent” club that was run through Warlord comic.
Action came out in 1976 and was much more controversial. It had ultra-violent stories like Hookjaw, about a shark with a harpoon sticking through its jaw, and Deathgame 1999, which was about a rollerball-like game. These were obviously influenced by the films “Jaws”, “Deathrace 2000” and “Rollerball”, which were in the cinemas around that time, but which young boys would be unable to see due to their “X” rating. Hookjaw was printed with blood shown in red ink, which made it even more exciting (and gory). Fabulous! Action got into trouble with WH Smith and Menzies later in 1976, due to the violence in the stories and was banned/suspended for 6 weeks, returning with much less violence. I think I lost interest at that point.
Reading up on these comics on the net, it would seem that Action was the predecessor for 2000AD with many of the same editors, writers and artists. I wasn’t fanatical about 2000AD, but enjoyed some of the stories. 2000AD is now owned by Rebellion a UK computer games company.
So far today I have achieved the following:-
Now some of you might say that’s really only 4 things, but when you have done as little as I have today you have to pad things out, okay?
Shopping was a bit of a disaster as Vic had ordered it and Sainsbury, in their time-honoured fashion, decided that they’d make a few substitutions to make our lives more interesting. So, instead of a bottle of plain olive oil and a bottle of flax oil (no, I have no idea what that’s for… oiling flaxes, possibly?!), we received two bottles of Extra Virgin olive oil.. one organic, one full of bad chemicals (I presume, it didn’t say organic anyway). Now this is a bad thing . I wouldn’t know why, but someone tells me that we need several types of olive oil. When I lived alone here, I managed to survive for at least 5 years with no olive oil at all, let alone 3 different types. Still, lovely Vic does make exceedingly good food.
Todays task is to remove the bathroom sealant from the bath edge and replace it with new stuff. The old one, put on two years ago by some builders appears to have been infested with a mold which makes it all go black and grim.
Oh, just remembered something else I’ve done. I scanned an article from the May 1982 edition of The Face. That’ll be appearing on a site near you later in the week.
To the bathroom, slacker…