Monday, 15th May, 2006

Commenting Block

blogs comments funny

Dunno about you, but sometimes I read something online and my brain starts to froth with a desire to add something in recognition of how brilliant/inspired/funny/trite the post is — but my ability to retort leaves me.

I was just leafing through my little 'open in tabs' list of blogs, when I read Jane's post about Squash. Apart from one of the most beautiful lines I've read in a long time...

Bright orange in the container [...] once diluted to homeopathic concentrations by my mum they were the palest, most translucent of tangerines.

...one particular sentence stuck out as wit-comment-worthy:

the organic préssés (you pay extra for the accents above the é's you know)

There has got to be something funny to write about that, in relation to Jane's 'other half', but for the life of me I can't come up with anything.

A Passing Resemblance

cybermen doctorwho funny

I have, perhaps unsurprisingly, had a bit of a flood of visitors these past couple of days, all having a look at this page. It's been posted in a few forums, and seems to be favoured by Google's image search. I knew that it was one of the few that turn up when you search for "scarey cybermen", but earlier on when I was checking my referrer logs, I spotted that it was on the front page of "new cybermen'

But another result on that page — a seemingly unrelated result — made me do a double-take, and think...

Separated At Birth?

The Iron Giant		A Cyberman

I think we should be told.

once the comment box is open all the words dry up

Aye. And sometimes, it's not just through lack of the right words — sometimes it's not wanting to drift off the topic. Tom has a photograph at the top of his 'Human-point-two' parody thing that I really want to make some reference to looking like a publicity shot for a boy-band gone wrong, but it doesn't fit with the flow of the other comments.

Having said that, I've got this strange, inbuilt paranoid phobia about leaving comments on plasticbag.org — as I believe I might have mentioned in the past

Ah, yes, see, sometimes I forget that some people who read this aren't familiar with British humour

Special Guest Appearance

sparkle out

Leaving things to the last minute seems to be a part of my own particular idiom, and booking a room for Sparkle has been no exception. Part of my procrastination was based around me not actually having anyone I could share a room with, but I've finally solved that problem and have got myself an apartment in The Place

I'm going to keep the person I'm sharing with a secret (because I like creating an air of mystery), but I'm really rather chuffed about who it is.

Speculation welcome

AirPort Express Firmware Update 6.3 for Mac OS X

link apple airport itunes

OMG. You can now stream to several speakers at once, and it seems to be perfectly synced — (via macosxhints.com)

This is so bloody brilliant. I can have music throughout the house (although, as some might like to point out, my house is small enough to be filled with music from one speaker )

I'm really intrigued how they managed to get it to work properly — how do they measure the delay that must (?) be caused over the wireless link?

"why dont you just run around them?", I was shouting at the screen

I'm also thinking that seeing how chavvy Rose is, she's bound to have some gold on her...

You know what I don't quite understand? These Cybermen are from Earth, yet the originals were from Mondas weren't they? I know this is an 'alternate' London and all that, I'm just really confused how they could end up being exactly like Cybermen, but have a completely different origin.

Or am I missing something?

I should have posted the address that has the Windows update as well BTW

eh?

it inserts the comment where I'm expecting it to be, not after things that have been said since i loaded this page, if you get me.

Aye, that's a good one — I'll look into that.

My instinctive reastion was "but that would destroy the flow", but it wouldn't would it? It would actually preserve the flow...

(I know what I mean)

What I thought would be the tricky part of that — having some kind of 'marker' within the text that let Erin know where to insert the comment — would actually be really easy wouldn't it? I just need to count the newlines¹ and have that as the hidden field

¹ Taking into account the \n and \r\w malarky issue

But what would insert the HTML comment? Considering I use plain text files, and many different tools — some web-based, some from the command line — to get text into those files, something would have to make sure it was there. If this was a purely web-based CMS then that would be OK — I'd just get it to append anything I write with a 'you are here' comment.

A newline based approach would work perfectly with the way I do things. All I'd need is a hidden field in the form that said how many lines there were when the comment was written, then I could explode() the existing text and rebuild it with the comment inserted where it was supposed to go.

Not that I'm about to do this any time soon, naturally. And I might need (a) reminding, and (b) reconvincing that it would be a good idea at a later date.

Shit! No way?! Sorry hon — I didn't hear you.

Weird, because I was just thinking to myself on the way to Sainsburys that it really pisses me off that people don't recognise me in the street

Say 'hello' louder next time

Aye, it was really busy wasn't it? I deliberately took ages wandering around the ailes until it died down, then rejoiced that Pete was on the 10-items-or-less till.

And BTW, can I say this often enough? It's pronounced Shi-vawn

And for a while, Becky pronounced it "Rose", but I think that was intentional and an attempt to mess with my head

Pronouncing it "Siasinsimonoban", now that would be stoopid

Changed? In what way?

That sounds like the CSS hadn't downloaded or something

"Quick Rose! Are you wearing any gold?"

"Yes! I got this chain from Elizabeth Duke!"

"Oh Ratners!"

On Why Things Take The Time That They Take

web work procrastination

(And other alliterations)

There is a running joke where I work, where people ask me to do something, then expect me to tell them it'll take a month to do. Sorta like this:

"Siobhan, can you add a new picture to the Course Website?"

"Sure, gimme a few moments"

"So next week then?"

A few days ago, a colleague rang me to ask me to make some very tiny changes to the Art Journal we publish — teeny tiny changes, just adding a date to the front page so that we can get ourselves as ISBN number.

"I'm sure it won't take you too long", he said.

"No, not at all"

Truth is, it took me a maximum of fifteen seconds to do — but a further three days to get around to it. Now, you might think this is incredibly bad of me, and that I'm some kind of lazy, procrastinating wotsit, but, in my defence, the 'getting around to it' is as important to me as the actual doing it.

Does that make any sense at all?

I find that I need to be in a particular headspace to achieve things. I can't just throw myself into a task there and then. For most of this weekend, for example, I've been with my family, and on the day that he called, I wasn't in a particularly good mood.

(As an aside, I've been a bit down recently — despite my "Life Is Good!" postings. Today, for example, it probably was a Good Thing™ that I didn't hear Neil saying "hello" in Sainsburys, as I was feeling a bit small and rubbish. I ended up — not as I previously said, "deliberately" — aimlessly wandering the aisles, not feeling able to make a decision about what I wanted to eat tonight. AS it turns out, I bought Lamb and veg, but decided on the way home that all I actually wanted was cheese-on-toast)

When I am in the right frame of mind, fuck I can work. I lose track of what's going on around me, and my fingers fly across the keyboard spinning (admittedly borky) pieces of code, until I emerge from the end of it with a fully functioning (admittedly borky) piece of genius.

All this is why you (if it's the kind of thing that you do) should never hire me to do a job for you.

...

I was going to do this as a seperate post, but it kinda blends into all that, so I won't...

On Sunday, my brother and his wife spent a good bit of time trying to convince me that I must move to London. They, being international jet-setters and the like, are well used to the idea of upping sticks and hoiking yourself to a completely different place.

In their case, New York.

But I'm not like that, I tried to explain. I'm happy in my little comfort zone.

Here, in Lancaster, I have the most perfect little space — a retreat from the hustle and bustle. Its also a place that I can live quite comfortably on the pittance that I earn, me being a part-timer.

But it's exactly that part-time existence that lets me live the way I want to. Without the pressures of a full-time job, I can devote time to piddling around with things, developing little snippets of stuff all over the place.

I need those four or five days a week to assert myself on my life.

(If that makes sense)

Talking to them, they both seemed to be in agreement that I would have to earn a lot more money if I was to move down there. And it's not like I couldn't — there's enough people down there I know who are crying out for some freelance help.

But I like the way things are at the moment. I like that I have the time to get myself into the right frame of mind to do things, and that that time might be a day or two.

Recently, I seem to recall bemoaning things a little. I was saying stuff like "Lancaster is my retreat — I just need something to retreat from every once in a while", and to be perfectly honest, it's all working out OK on that front.

London is being a lure and an opportunity to party, Leeds is being (just at the moment) a frantic seat of business.

Lancaster is giving me a bit of space — a bit of my own space. So I'm not moving. Not yet anyway.

No, I think you're probably right

Talk Like A Policeman

quip random

There's a certain language that you always hear policemen and women talk in whenever they're giving statements in court or to the press. Instead of saying "I followed the car down the street, then nabbed the twokker", they'll say something like:

"I followed the vehicle along Barton Way, where I proceeded to apprehend the assailant"

Now, I'm sure there is a Good And Proper™ reason for this — something most likely to do with accepted communication, and clarity of meaning.

But

Have you ever noticed that when a member of the public is shoved in front of a TV camera for a quick vox pop on the news or something, they adopt the very same PoliceSpeak?

"I saw the Sugarbabes coming out of the club, so I procured their autograph and proceeded to sell it for £50 on Ebay"

No?

OK, just me then

You know, that's actually the kind of thing this Doctor would say...

Incidentally, I thought of another piece of PoliceSpeak:

"After the club, we proceeded to make our way home, not arriving to our residence until after 2330"

You know, I've never actually seen Reservoir Dogs. Or The Crying Game. Or Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Or other stuff that I think people assume I've seen