Archive for June, 2004

nigeria pingback

Two things:

1. I have had more Nigerian nuttiness submitted (third and fourth comments down). And two more here. I may start up a team.

2. Blogging question: can anyone explain, in terms that a four year-old child might understand, the difference betweeen trackback and pingback? I’m too lazy/stupid (delete where appropriate) to figure it out myself.

tired

I’m back, and I’m knackered. I won’t go into too much detail, so here are some key phrases that may give you an idea of some of the highlights: sanding, proving, preparing, water-proofing, emulsion, satin, gloss, anti-damp paint, hammerite, wire-brush, four-metre roller, mulching machine, vegetable garden, twelve-hour working days in close-to forty degree heat, Joey the dog, two cats, four books, a dozen bottles of Cava, the best food ever, aerial photography of Laura’s cleavage, a bar run by lovely lesbian ladies, ants, flies, mosquitos, a scorpion, several wolf spiders, many many goats, thousands of snails, a hippy nudist colony, me getting my hair cut short for the first time in almost exactly 22 years. Good night.

las almendras

Bollocks to this, I’m off on holiday. It’s likely there won’t be any posting round these parts for the next week and a bit, as I’ll be busying myself painting a farmhouse (it’s not all pleasure) and lazing about in a genuine spring-water swimming pool.

Needless to say, I booked this trip before I discovered the existance of Devon’s premiere tourist attraction, The Big Sheep, but that can wait for next year, Ewe-topia and all.

For anyone despairing at the absence of blogjam updates from your screens (and there will be thousands of you, surely), I’ve set up a useful service counting down the hours until I return to Blightey’s fair soil. Hasta la vista, my friends.

i hate horses

I sent an e-mail complaint a couple of weeks back.

Hello,

I just purchased an ‘I Love Horses’ polyphonic ringtone from
www.deagostini.co.uk, and was dismayed to discover that the tone I received was completely different to the preview version on the website, which at least adhered to the correct tune. The version downloaded to my phone features the wrong notes used twice at pivotal moments in the melody, and my listening pleasure is greatly reduced as a result.

Please let me know what can be done to resolve this matter.

Kind regards,

Fraser

Needless to say, I have not received any response from Deagostini. I now hate horses.

pork pies

The Flash™ course I’ve been taking finally finishes tomorrow, with a show and tell evening where the projects we’ve been working on are seen by the entire class and graded by the tutor. I’ve made two things – the first being the A to Z of animals extravaganza I unleashed a couple of weeks back – but the second is the one I’m really looking forward to sharing. It’s a tribute to Pork Pies.

I like Pork Pies.

immovable type

Boring blog interlude: many in the so-called ‘blogosphere’ are moaning about having to fork over vast amounts of cash to upgrade to the spangly new version of Movable Type (the publishing tool that powers this very weblog).

I’ve done the math, and I’m not happy either. I’ve donated $45 to Ben & Mena in the past, which entitles me to to a generous reduction of precisely that amount from the retail price, and I’m also entitled to a 50% discount as one of their registered beta software testers. So here we go:

+ Retail Price: $69.95
– Donor discount: $45.00
– Tester discount: $34.96

Total: – $10.01

So when you ask, Mena, precisely how I’m using the software, I can only answer that I won’t be downloading the bastard upgrade until you’ve paid up.

While I’m on the subject, it does actually seem impossible to claim both discounts during the purchase process, which means that MT’s most ardent supporters don’t get the discount they’ve been promised, while someone who volunteered for beta testing but didn’t actually contribute (either to the testing or in monetary terms) – and there were plenty – receives a larger discount than someone who handed over $30 to keep the cottage industry version of Movable Type afloat before it became an International conglomerate.

On a slightly more serious note, incidentally, I found Mena’s post pretty distateful, using trackback entries (why not comments?) to boost blogdex and technorati ranking for a page which extols the virtues of a product but none of the problems (“I’m going to delete TrackBacks that are detracting or commentaries on Six Apart“), at the very time they’re trying to sell that product for the first time. That’s a pretty professional job of rank spamming they’ve just had hundreds of their loyal users partake in. Nice work.

Rant over. Sorry about that. Here’s some pictures of a man having fun with his tracheostomy hole. Ahhh, that’s better.