A Big Shahhhht Ahhhhht

That's "shout", not "shat" as it may at first appear. A big shat out isn't something I would ordinarily blog about. But that's enough of that. I'd like to put out a big shout out to MC James [JC] and his girlfriend whose name I don't know but who, I am told, is an avid reader of my blog. Hell, I didn't even know I had any avid readers these days.

Here's a Simpson's quote to make this blog a little less pointless:

Lolzors.

RIP Bungle

We lost another pet last night: One of our mice, Bungle. He lived to a good age for a mouse, especially considering his size... he was always the runt of the litter. When we found him he appeared to have died peacefully. He'll be sorely missed. As it was rather late when we found he had died we couldn't bury him, so he shall be buried tonight after work.

Drivers These Days

I saw an Audi in the inside lane on the motorway the other day veer into the hard shoulder. As I passed them I glanced over my shoulder to see what they were doing that had nearly cost them their car and - potentially - their life. I'd expected to see him faffing with the stereo. But no. He was reading a book. Not even a map book, a sodding novel. The things you see...

Bill Bailey Must Be Proud

Apparently, my Dad wrote the BBC News theme tune. That's news to me... If you're a good citizen you will, no doubt, have watched Bill Bailey's Part Troll show, and will therefore know that he does a remix of the BBC News theme tune. Well the BBC have actually made the song available for download, and asked people to make a remix: BBC News, Have your say - Remix the BBC News 24 countdown.

There are some bloody good entries on there :) Might give it a go myself at some point, if I find the time to start my laptop up.

It's / Its

Sometimes I feel like it was a complete waste of time bothering to learn any grammar at school, I can't help but feel that it would be nicer to simply not know the difference between it's and its so that it didn't get on my sodding nerves so much when I read web pages which are strewn with examples of incorrect usage of the two. The amazing thing is that some people consistently get it wrong by using "it's" when they mean "its" and then, later on the same page, using "its" when they mean "it's". Here's the rule (for any of you who don't know): "It's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it has". "Its" is a possessive pronoun, like his. You wouldn't write "hi's", would you?

It's not even as if I learnt a great deal of grammar at school, the place was terrible when it came to teaching English, but even with that handicap I can still see the difference between the two. It's bloody obvious.

And it's not "could of" either, that's another bloody annoying one. It's "could have". "Could of" presumably started popping up because people hear "could've" and mistakenly think they're hearing "could of", when it is in fact a contraction of "could have". The same goes for "would of", it's "would have".

Last but not least, of course, is "there", "their" and "they're":

I could go on but why bother when I can just refer the world to this article on WikiPedia? I do however know that I am preaching to the converted... It just gets on my tits, that's all.

A Minor Celeb in my DB

As part of my last role in Fujitsu I was asked to build an online database system to help manage staff and applications going through the packaging system. This grew beyond the one building I had been told to expect it to service, and was then used at 3 sites: The 3 main packaging sites in Fujitsu, Warrington being the biggest of all. At that site there was a character known as Michael Dalton who, I am told, has now quit his job at Fujitsu and is appearing on Big Brother. Sure enough, here he is:

Michael "Mikey" Dalton - Profile | Photos

When I was told it instantly ocurred to me that his details would therefore be in my management software. One quick SQL statement later and sure enough, there were his details.

Counting With Bruce Willis

While looking at the cinema listings last night I noticed something rather odd. Rather a lot of Bruce Willis' films have numbers in the title, and I don't mean films that are numbered sequels like "Die Hard 4.0", I mean as an integral part of the title. From IMDB, in ascending numerical order:

- The First Deadly Sin

- Four Rooms

- The Fifth Element

- The Sixth Sense

- Lucky Number Slevin (not an actual number, but 7 is intentionally implied)

- The Whole Nine Yards

- The Whole Ten Yards

- Twelve Monkeys

- Ocean's Twelve

- Sixteen Blocks

Dunno about anyone else but that strikes me as a bit odd.

Bye Bye Blue Frog :-(

Thus ends an important era of the Internet: Blue Frog is no more. The fuck-wit spammers will, no doubt, be rejoicing. This isn't really the end though, BlueSecurity has proved that spam can be tackled; with a bigger organisation fighting the spam we can - and will - win.

Personally I'd like to see a community-driven approach, whereby volunteers analyse spam messages and submit opt-out scripts across a distributed network of sites, which propogate out to an army of "frogs" across the 'net, and where spam reports filter back the same way. With no single point of failure the spammers would be forced to comply.

I also hope that PharmaMaster (the spammer who took responsibility for the DDoS) is caught and has the book thrown at him/her: An example needs to be made, and [s]he's stuck his/her neck out.

BBC News 24 Interviews The Wrong Guy

Guy Kewney, an IT expert, was due to be interviewed by BBC News 24 regarding the recent court case of Apple Computers v Apple Media (the record label). On the day of the interview, Guy Goma was due to be interviewed for a "data support cleanser" role. There was a bit of a mix-up and, well, the rest is history. Just watch the clip on the BBC News website and watch his face when he realises the camera is on him, and he is to be interviewed on a subject he clearly knows nothing about. Poor bastard.

We shouldn't laugh, but we all love a truly excellent cock-up. Especially considering that he doesn't just say "Sorry, my name is Guy Goma, not Guy Kewney. I'm here for a job interview, I think there has been a mistake!" The very fact that he tries to answer the questions is what makes this pure gold.

Original Article

Javascript DOM Reference

I've just spent *ages* searching for a reference I used to use rather a lot, back when I was doing lots of web-dev. This really is the best Javascript DOM I've ever seen, as it's laid out using the wonderfully familiar and comfortable layout used by the Java API and JavaDoc'ed Java. I'm linking to it for several reasons:

1. You might like to use it,

2. I'm sick of losing the link and not being able to find it again,

3. The site deserves recognition.

Anyway, here it is: JavaScript DOM