I'm now officially the village geek :)

Posted on By admin 7 Comments on I'm now officially the village geek :)

See this shiny new website:

http://www.hinxtonvillage.co.uk/

The couple that runs the dead-tree-format newsletter wanted to go high-tech and make a website for the village but didn't really know how to go about doing it. I've been in touch with them because I wanted to set up a board game night at our local pub and, well, basically. I offered my services and they jumped at the offer. I looked into content management systems for them. That way, they just need to write content and happily ignore having to mess with any HTML. They're thrilled. The whole thing took maybe 30 minutes to install, an hour to get my head wrapped around their configuration logic and a whole of 5 minutes to hack together the graphics. And you know what? It kicks ass, especially compared to other village websites out there :P

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Not the way I'd planned to spend a long weekend

Posted on By admin 2 Comments on Not the way I'd planned to spend a long weekend

Feeling meh at the moment. Don't really know why. I think I need sleep. I've not been sleeping well these past few days: weird dreams† and I'm waking up at like 5am. Not cool. I blame the change in the weather I've also been having annoying low-grade headaches, which I've come to associate with sudden changes in air pressure. I used to laugh about the whole concept until it started happening to me. Gotta love Karma…

We were supposed to spend a quiet weekend this weekend, but those plans, in our usual idiom, went flying out the window when we decided to invite Katy's parents over at the last minute. Katy was in a redecorating mood. In the last two days, the living room has been touched up, all the woodwork and trim done, and that bloody alcove painted (which meant that I had to unplug and replug everything electrical – again. blergh). I wasn't in the mood at all to do it, but it's done and I have to say that it looks nice and also means that I don't have to bother with it for the next little while.

We spent way too much money at B&Q to get the stuff we needed for this weekend. A large chunk of that went into a lawnmower, which is not a frivolous expense and we need to start tackling the wild kingdom in our backyard. We spent just as much though for supplies to re-grout our bathroom and get a shower curtain and rod. Again, looks nice, but I think it could have waited until we were a bit more flush.

Still in the spending-money category, I bought a new phone. Not because I wanted to, but because my motorola V3 RAZR, the one I bought just a little more than a year ago, died. After I renewed my contract and passed up the phone upgrade. After the warranty expired. Orange were totally useless about it and I spent waaay too much time on the phone with peons until I asked to speak to a supervisor that answered my question in 5 minutes. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Anyway, I could either spend £90 in “insurance” (which is a more polite way to mean “protection racket”) and get a replacement handset or spend £60 and get a new pay-as-you-go phone, ditch the SIM card and voila, instant handset.

All in all, it hasn't been the bestest weekend ever. On the plus side though, I did make a really nice stuffed chicken yesterday and there has been booze and chocolate.

Still, I think I'd have preferred to visit the Fitzwilliam and just chill with a book…

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What a difference a day makes

Posted on By admin 2 Comments on What a difference a day makes

Liek, woah, dude!!!

Good news item #1: I have confirmation from my tax attorney that my taxes are done and on their way to my parents', who will post them to the government.

Great news item #1: I do not owe the government anything.

Great news item #2: I'm actually getting a refund from both the provincial and feredal.

Now it's not much, and in fact I'm almost certain that I'm going to be signing both cheques directly over to the tax attorney to cover his fees, but I'm thrilled nonetheless because I was expecting to have to pay a cubic assload of money in capital gain taxes.

And tonight, there will be beer.

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The universe is conspiring to piss me off today

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I am not a happy bunny.

I'm so out of it today that I didn't even realize that it's my least favourite day of the week: meeting day, aka thursday. I get clued in when I see everybody heading to the group meeting while I'm shuffling into work so I throw off all my stuff in the shed and I scramble to get a coffee before the meeting.

I then proceed to sit through the most boring presentation in the universe.

This is a website. If you click here, you see this information. If you click there, you get that information. This is how you edit the website. If you click here, you can edit this page. If you click there, you can edit that page, which is quite a nice feature indeed. If you click here, you can create a new page. If you click there, you can edit your previous page to link to the new page you're working on, which is quite a nice feature indeed.

For 30 fucking minutes.

Which means that the cafeteria stopped serving breakfast, to which I wanted to treat myself in the hopes of feeling less pissed off, while I was listening to some webhead prattle on about a piece of software I don't care about.

Also in the vein of pissing Richard off day, I've still yet to hear back from the tax attorney filing my taxes this year, nor how much the Federal government will be sucking out of me (money which I don't really have), nor how much the tax attorney will charge me to try and minimize the sucking-of-money-I-don't-really-have.

I still don't know for sure if the people I've asked to do our wedding invitations are willing to take the job or not, so I think I'll have to start working on them myself.

And now gmail is down.

Blergh.

I want to go back to bed.

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I fear for the next generation

Posted on By admin 9 Comments on I fear for the next generation

I've been browsing phone reviews for a phone I plan on getting to replace my old and busted one. People's grammar is atrocious. I'm not a grammar nazi but I know how to use a spell checker and can generally write a paragraph with nothing more than the odd typo.

http://www.mobile-phones-uk.org.uk/motorola-l6.htm

Some of those are just… well, have a look for yourself:

Reviewed by chris from england on 12th Mar 2006
its amazing ppl are sayig da vidio is short go on vidio setings and go on max its a wkd phone i had a sharp gx 15 b4 dis phone rocks

I can deal with the hAx0R 3L33T speak, but seriously…

Reviewed by charlie from england on 12th Mar 2006
I got this phone for me b-day and it is so lush so y r u dissing de phone i aint boverd doe its da buisness

BOVERD????

Reviewed by Louise from on 5th Mar 2006
this fone is amazing coz mine is PINK!! wooh its the best fone i've ever had not that i've had some great fones in the past…

Glad to see you recommend the phone because it's pink…

Reviewed by nadia from england on 18th Jan 2006
dis fone is rubbish u can only record for 20 secondz da v3 is much beta (even if it dont hav video recording itz more fashionable and mor popular expecialy da pink 1) if u want a new fone i recomend da nokia 6230i or da sony ericson k700i dey r worth buying trust me nd dnt buy motorola cuz u can only video for like 20 secondz da only good moto fonez r motorola ROKR and moto V3 BUT NOKIA SAMSUNG AND SONY ERIC IS WAYYYYY BETA byeeee

*cries*

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good news, bad news.

Posted on By admin 16 Comments on good news, bad news.

bad news: slept for shit last night, weird dreams and tossing and turning. Had a lot on my mind when I went to bed, which was most definitively not helped by the fact that I couldn't get that stupid Gay Dance song out of my head and was singing it all friggin night (which probably serves me right for downloading it in the first place). My phone is still pissing me off, as are my Canadian taxes.

good news:our kitten has been born last night:

We should be getting him in about 3 months.

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A year and a day…

Posted on By admin 3 Comments on A year and a day…

I am NOT amused.

My cell phone has decided to die, shortly after the manufacturer's warranty terminated. The battery won't keep a charge for more than 2 days (where before, it could last a good week without needing to be recharged) but what's worse is that now, I don't even have any reception. As in, sweet fuck all. I can't dial to my voicemail and if I try calling my own mobile from the house phone, I go directly to my voicemail (which I can't actually get into now).

Orange are being right prats about the whole situation as well. My contract has just been renewed for another year (as of a month ago, of course) and at the time, I had the possibility to get a new handset but since they didn't have the one I wanted and I couldn't really be bothered to get another phone because I actually liked the one I have, I declined. Which means, by Sod's law, it breaks down as soon as all the coverage and warranties expire.

I am not amused.

So, if you're trying to reach me by phone at the moment, either call at work or on the house line.

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PRIDE is currently a mess

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Phil and I have been working on cleaning up the PRIDE codebase. It's long overdue for a good overhauling because as we've been doing this exercise, we've found a cubic assload of code whose only apparent purpose is to be tested (meaning that it's only used in the unit tests, but nowhere else in actual production code and as such, is completely useless, really).

So for the last few weeks, I've been combing through 191 java classes (35562 lines of code), pruning out bits of junk, improving code structure and usability and generally going nuts.

It's tedious work because as soon as you fix something in one place, you need to cascade the changes to everywhere else that uses the bit of code you just re-wrote. It's the worst type of IT work: one that is boring as hell but requires a lot of concentration to figure out what stuff you wrote 6 months ago (or worse, was written by somebody else) is supposed to be doing and how it should use the improvements you're making as you go along.

At least I have the gay dance to keep me sane.

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