« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »
Go Away!
This is not directed at any particular person, nor just current users of these services, but please understand my annoyance if you are.
I HATE these websites that supposedly keep you in touch with your friends. A few of them are Friendster, Bebo, Ringo, NamesDatabase.
I keep getting invites from friends trying to keep their address lists current, the idea behind most of these sites is to add all of your friends/contacts, and the site will email an invitation to those people and try to get THEM to sign up too. The reason being that if you sign up and change your email address at sometime in the future, then it'll also be changed in your linked friends' lists too automatically.
Great idea in theory, but even after reading the Privacy Policy for each site where they state that your email address will only be used for good, how can you be 100% certain that it won't fall into the wrong hands? It's bad enough spammers can get hold of your email address, without it being confirmed as 100% working on some website.
Maybe it's rather hypocritical, I use my email address all over the place... since I order stuff online all the time, but at least then I have some sort of control of where my address is typed in. Ah well... I can still just ignore all the invites I receive, just like ordinary spam.
Posted in Rant at 12:57 |
Permalink
Bush Cost Me My Job...
Bush cost me my job, my kids and my houses
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak my mind. I lost my job this past year. When Clinton was president I was secure and prosperous, but in the last year, we had to close our operations. We simply could not compete with foreign labor. This foreign labor worked for low pay under very bad conditions.
They worked very long shifts, and many even died on the job.
This competition could hardly be called "fair." I was forced out of the place where I had worked for 34 years.
Not a single government program was there to help me.
Posted in Humour at 15:19 |
Permalink
Eat What You Want!
For those of you who watch what you eat... Here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting medical studies.
1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
3. The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
4. The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.
Posted in Humour at 15:07 |
Permalink
Budget Report 2005
Lewis' take on Gordon Brown's latest Budget Report, in a screenplay stylee. Bloody hilarious.
Posted in Humour at 16:24 |
Permalink
Firefox Extensions
Posted in Firefox at 11:59 |
Permalink
The IMDb Meme
The IDMb meme is where you post a copy of the top 250 films on IMDb and then highlight the ones you have seen. I saw this over on Neil Turner's blog so here's my list. The films I've seen are in bold, in italics are the ones I actually own on DVD or VHS.
Posted in Movies/TV at 00:03 |
Permalink
England vs Scotland @ Twickenham
My dad managed to get his hands on 3 tickets (with hospitality!) to Twickers to go see England vs Scotland today, so my dad, my brother and I all went up there to watch the English beat the crap out of the Scots... which they did. 43-22!!
The game was fantastic, England got an early lead but then scored 3 tries in a row and I thought they might just clinch it, but England held on and got us the result we wanted... and took the Calcutta Cup 2005.
Absolutely brilliant, the atmosphere was fantastic, and I had a blast.
I took a few pics on my camera while I was there, unfortunately none of the actual game came out very well... way too blurry but here are the ones that did come out fine.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Posted in Sport at 22:50 |
Permalink
When Life Hands You Lemons...
wookit's daughter won an award recently for this short story, about her mother and what she's taught her about life. Amanda thoroughly deserved her award, the story is very well written, and just shows how you can overcome (financial) adversity with a little imagination.
I was a little teary-eyed from reading the final paragraph. Just remember folks, "when life hands you lemons, make a coffee table".
Posted in Life at 15:20 |
Permalink
New Monitor!
Finally I got my new monitor. I had to cancel the original order as it was taking way too long and ordered from ebuyer.com instead - even paid extra for next day delivery and it was still £2 cheaper than the other place.
The thing is HUGE! Well at 22" it would be really. It's taking some getting used to, not just the size, but the picture quality and adjusting the brightness etc is proving to be difficult since I'm so used to the old one.
I'm sure I'll get it right in the end, maybe it just needs some use before it'll settle down, who knows.
UPDATE: Well I did get used to it, but there is one minor annoyance. When you first turn it on, there's a black bar down the right side of the screen, and after being on for a while the bar disappears and the picture is stretched to fill the entire screen.
I'm guessing that it just needs some time to warm up, but it is rather frustrating. Something I'm still not used to, unlike the brightness and picture quality.
Posted in Computers at 22:45 |
Permalink
Got My Haircut Today
.jpg)
Short hair is so much better! I hate having long hair, suits my brother more than it does me.
Posted in LifeBlog at 15:17 |
Permalink
Site Updates
Wow, it seems like forever ago that I implemented a PHP based search. I'm still amazed that it doesn't work like that by default.
Posted in Movable Type at 17:12 |
Permalink
Bye Bye T-Mobile, Hello Vodafone!
After 8 years T-Mobile have lost me as a customer. They don't do the phone I really wanted, and there was no way I was going to pay full price for it SIM-free. So I have decided to part ways and go with Vodafone instead.
I was really after a Nokia 7610, as it has every feature I was after, it's a Nokia and it's supported by Nokia's LifeBlog software (which thanks to a link I found yesterday and mentioned on my SideBlog is also Movable Type compatible).
My old phone is a Motorola V600, which for the first few months of ownership was great, till I realised it had a few major flaws. When using a bluetooth hands-free headset it didn't seem to turn the mic off on the phone itself so you'd be unable to put the phone in your pocket otherwise you'd have crackling noises come through from the material of your clothing rubbing against the mic. It would crash from time to time, leaving you with a black or white screen and none of the buttons working - removing the battery was the only way to rectify this annoyance. Another annoying thing was that it's a flip phone... started off great, till I realised it's almost impossible to hold between your neck and head if you can't use your hands.
So... after a year of having a Motorola I'm going back to good old reliable Nokia.
I wandered into the Vodafone shop yesterday and asked about the 7610, and was told that if I wanted to get one on the Anytime 100 plan I'd have to pay £250 for the phone! I was rather stunned, and walked out the shop. What was the most shocking was that I could get the same phone, on the same plan (Anytime 100 at £25/month) for only £30 from the Vodafone website - so why the HUGE difference??
Anyway... I ordered the phone off the website and got a confirmation of my new number this morning. I am not planning to keep the new number, I would much rather keep the number I've had for the past 8 years and have no desire to lose it just yet. I will probably wait a month or two (and keep paying T-Mobile in the meantime to make sure I've finished my last contract) then transfer it over. At least transferring numbers is pretty much a painless affair nowadays.
Posted in Life at 17:18 |
Permalink
Food For Thought
If you don't know, there was a rather big food scare over here in the UK (and in most of Europe too I would imagine) when an illegal food dye called Sudan 1 (which causes cancer in animals) was discovered to have been added to one brand of Worchestershire Sauce which was then added to over 390 different products as a flavouring. Whoops!
All the contaminated food had to be removed from shop shelves and destroyed... what a waste :/
Anyway... I found this joke on a blog today.
Enjoy!
UPDATE: The link is dead I'm afraid! :(
Posted in Humour at 11:10 |
Permalink
Commonly Confused Words Test
I just took the test mentioned in the title which I found over on Neil Turner's blog
My results were:
English Genius
You scored 93% Beginner, 86% Intermediate, 87% Advanced, and 88% Expert!
You can find the test over on OKCupid! It's free to take. :)
Posted in Life at 16:09 |
Permalink
