Recently in Personal Category

From: Opera applauds scepticism on MS browser pledge (on The Register).

The last paragraph:

"For the installed base of IE users, Windows updates and IE updates should come preloaded with other browsers and a ballot screen. The ballot screen with a choice of at least five browsers should also be provided to customers who buy Windows through the retail channel to upgrade their PCs."

Errr, whaaaat!? Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera. There, that's five browsers named, and the last 3 are marginal (at the moment). The only use I've ever found for Opera as a browser is on my mobile. On the PC it's unintuitive and crap. Yes, crap. I primarily use Firefox, followed by IE. Safari I wouldn't use if I was paid (unless it was a *lot* of money) thanks to the way Apple Update used to (and may still) treat it. All that non-withstanding, surely if Microsoft are going to be required to do this, surely Apple (as the monopoly O/S provider for Mac') should be required to do the same?

Not that it'll make the blindest bit of difference though; 99% of home computer users don't know a massive amount about computers, so they'll answer the question "How do I get on the internet?" with "I'll choose the thing called Internet Explorer". Business users will, for the most part, have their access to a browser decided by Corporate IT, who will inevitably choose IE to ensure compatibility with their web-based LOB applications that have been around for a decade and rely on IE6's odd layout behaviours, or other IE proprietary technologies like ActiveX.

Yet another wonderful waste of money perpetrated by the EU, thank you very much one and all for dumping money I've paid in taxes down the drain. *Le sigh*

There's an article on the Guardians website (The BNP represents Britain's workers? They don't even represent basic British craftsmanship) that gives a fantastic summation of the BNP.
Hopefully those bottom-dwellers won't do well in the upcoming elections!

BBC News: Mortgages of 100% 'were foolish'

I've got a 100% mortgage, taken out in early/mid 2006 and don't consider it foolish in any way, shape or form. If affordability measures are met by the borrower, why not?

Riffing on: My name is not Emma.

When writing my name, please refer to me as Robert, when it's in a formal document. When in an email/IM style message, Rob is fine. When speaking, again it's Rob. But please don't call me "Robert" verbally, I get an instant "arrrgh, arrrgh, I'm back at school" feeling going on.

What can I say, I'm complicated ;-)

Ultramaroon rises again

A truly interesting guy. At least he makes himself *sound* interesting. ;-)

The Cottage Smallholder

I found the website last night when looking for a recipe for slow roast belly of pork. I have to say, there are a lot of recipes I'm intending on trying and gven how prolific they are, it's going to take me a while!

After suffering the Ryanair jingles on a flight to Dublin recently (gagh! I'll pay the premium to fly with any other airline if I never have to listen to that jingle - flight price good, jingle evil) and discovering they're going to trial allowing mobile calls on flights, they add insult to injury with this.

Now, the poor manners exhibited by the random Ryanair staffer were bad enough, but the "official response", if that's what their PR people are like, that's not the sort of company I want to fly with. Signed and sealed, I'll be paying the premium all the way to fly with anyone other than Ryanair

BBC News: Synod votes in favour of BNP ban

What's better than that though is a response of sorts, on the BNP website. Part of which is, I quote:

"The Church of England tolerate gay clergy, clergy who support the far left, an Archbishop who is a Druid and clergy who doubt traditional Christian teaching on matters like the existence of God, the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ, the existence of Hell and the deity of Christ.

"They can tolerate all of this, but they cannot tolerate clergy who are members of the BNP?  Something is seriously wrong and the C of E needs to regain its perspective and moral compass.

My favourite bit is in bold. An organisation that promotes inclusion, as the writer of the above has pointed out in the first paragrah is excluding an organisation, surely that's wrong? Not if that second organisation is one that promotes exclusion. Like, hmm, the BNP?

Finally got round to actually updating the site, hurrah. Gone is the crappy old "404" page, it's now one that follows the same style as the homepage, and the about me page is up as well! (Although it doesn't say much, yet)

It would appear that in a couple of comments I posted on the IE blog, I've come across as a Microsoft fanboy! To summarise, the point I was responding to was one that basically said:

All other browsers have a public bug tracking system, so why doesn't IE?

That point is simply not true. Opera has a bug reporting page, Safari has a bug reporting page and Firefox does have a public bug tracking system. Thusly, all other browsers do not have public bug tracking systems. Yes, Webkit (the rendering engine that underlies Safari) does have a public bug tracking system (which I may have to acronym as PBTS before my fingers drop off!) but the rendering engine isn't the only part of a browser by any stretch of the imagination.

My main thrust was that the statement I paraphrased above is simply untrue. Many people have (and rightly so) accused Microsoft of using a FUD strategy, and false statements like that one are of a very similar ilk. Oh - and a re-reading of my comment would highlight the fact that I didn't state that I disagreed with the need for a public bug tracking system for IE, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Now, onto the "fanboy" accusation. Baseless. Utterly baseless. Yes, I use Microsoft technologies, but I'd be equally happy (well, not so much because the toolset simply isn't as grokkable as Visual Studio, even with all its foibles) to use JSP rather than ASP.net, after all, it's really all just syntax. A semicolon here, a curly bracket there, or, god forbid, a With/EndWith ;)

B. Cortez said:

Well, if you bothered to look into it even on a superficial level, you'd see that a Bugzilla system has the ability to search, as well as "sign-up" to be notified of changes to the bug report (via email notifications).  Also, you can, amazingly, VOTE for a bug.  This is the weight given to the bug by, imagine this, CONCERNED CUSTOMERS.

Bugzilla. Yes, I've used it before. The company I worked for until the end of November implemented it to replace Rational ClearQuest, what a breath of fresh air that was! The company I work for now uses a custom built defect tracking system, but I'm trying to sell them on Bugzilla. Nowhere did I say that I didn't know how Bugzilla worked, or what it does. In fact, I quite like it. (I especially like the Mozilla artwork that loads whilst searching and chomps bugs ;)

Also, "If you bothered to look, or be involved in cross-browser web development in any form", how does anyone know that I'm not? document.getElementById makes me squee, document.all makes me want to retch. The inconsistencies in the box model and having to use big dirty ClearFix-esque hacks make me angry.

Remember, don't assume, it'll make an "ASS out of U and", well that's where I break from the traditional version of the saying, because assuming only makes an ass out of one person. The person making the assumption.

I swear that the main cost of buying a place isn't the fees, it's getting all the things you want to make it home. Thankfully the place I'm buying is freshly painted, etc, etc, but I still need to kit it out with all the things I want, which is quite an exhaustive list:

1. Microwave
   
2. Kettle Got it: 27/05/2006
   
3. Toaster
   
4. Cutlery Set Got it: 17/06/2006
   
5. Crockery Set
   
6. Pots and Pans Set - including large frying pan (le Creuset I wish!)
   
7. Stock Pot Already got one!
   
8. Wok
   
9. Roasting Trays Got it: 17/06/2006
   
10. Knife Set Got it: 17/06/2006
    
11. Chopping Boards
    
12. Washing up bowl
    
13. Mug Tree
    
14. Tea/Coffee/Sugar Jars
    
15. Kitchen Roll Holder
    
16. Pyrex Stuff
    
    
    
    • Pyrex Jug Got it: 17/06/2006
      
    • Large Bowl
      
    • Small Bowl
      
    
    
17. Glassware
    
    
    
    • Pints
      
    • Halves
      
    • Tumblers
      
    • Red wine
      
    • White wine
      
    
    
18. Cloth Stuff
    
    
    
    • Oven Gloves Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Apron
      
    • Tea Towels Got it: 05/07/2006
      
    • 3M Fancy dish-cloth Got it: 17/06/2006
      
    
    
19. Cermaic Dish set (le Creuset I wish! -- again) Got it: 17/06/2006
    
20. Misc Stuff
    
    
    
    • Egg Cups Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Wooden Spoons Got it: 27/05/2006
      
    • Garlic Press Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Cheese Grater Got it: 05/07/2006
      
    • Vegetable Peeler Got it: 10/06/2006
      
    • Fish Slice Got it: 05/07/2006
      
    • Slotted Spoon Got it: 05/07/2006
      
    • Serving Spoon
      
    • Pizza cutter
      
    • Carving Fork
      
    • Tongs Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Can Opener Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Pan Stand Got it: 16/06/2006
      
    • Kitchen Scissors Got it: 17/06/2006
      
    • Corkscrew Got it: 17/06/2006
      
    • Potato Masher Got it: 05/07/2006
      
    
    
21. Smoothie Maker
    
22. Salt and Pepper Mills Got it: 27/05/2006
    
23. Coffee grinder Already got one!
    
24. Steamer Already got one!
    

And that's just the kitchen....

1. Iron Got it: 27/05/2006
   
2. Ironing Board and cover
   
3. Clothes drying rack
   
4. Bedside Light
   
5. Telephone Already got one!
   
6. Washing Machine
   
7. Fridge
   
8. Wireless Broadband Router Got it: 30/05/2006
   
9. Laundy Basket
   
10. Computer Table
    
11. Computer Chair
    
12. Sofa
    
13. Coffee Table Borrowing one!
    
14. Bed
    
15. Mattress
    
16. Duvet
    
17. Pillows
    

It's amazing what you can find just by googling the names of people you went to school with. Apparently someone I studied with went on to become a panto prince. This world just gets stranger!

I really do loathe flu. Especially when I get it. But on the upside, as one of my colleagues put it, "I haven't started clucking yet!" :)

Well, I've finally got tired of jumping through the hoops that LloydsTSB put in front of me. Hello, and welcome back, HSBC.

1. I have a credit card which LloydsTSB in their infinite wisdom have registered with Experian (a credit reference agency!) not once when it started, but twice. Once when it started and again a few weeks ago. This means that it's negatively impacted on my credit rating. And it's just plain wrong and not what I'd expect of a financial institution.


2. I wanted to transform the credit card into a loan. Now you'd think this is a good idea and the bank would support this, given that it's me managing my finances responsibly! (Fixed term loan rather than open ad-hoc credit) But no, apparently the CREDIT BUREAU says NO.

Now, this means (to me at least) that because they've fucked up my record with the CREDIT REFERENCE AGENCY (aka CREDIT BUREAU) their own systems won't give me a loan. There also didn't appear to be any option to say, yes, I know I have a credit card which might be negatively impacting my credit rating, but I WANT TO GET RID OF IT AT THE TIME OF GETTING THE LOAN. No one, but no one, seemed to be able to make a decision independtly of the computer.

At LloydsTSB, The computer says no

Totally and utterly bloody useless.

I came across the No2ID Pledge via theregister.co.uk, and signed it. I don't have any concrete reasons why, but I find the idea of an ID card scheme thoroughly objectionable. Having worked in the licensed trade, I can see situations where it would be beneficial, but am at a loss as to why the existing forms of identification would be any less sufficient.

Yay -- about time! Guildford and Godalming are covered in snow, and it looks more like a christmas time day now than it has done for any year I've been on the planet. On the downside, cigarette breaks may prove to be problematic due to the sheer coldness involved!

Upside - I had a lie in today so didn't get into work until half eight. Downside - All the stuff I normally get sorted out, like getting myself up to speed, and email clearing, will have to be done now. Grr! But yay.