I’m ill and I’m grumpy, so this site hits my current mood nicely. It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who hates to hear restaurant staff and customers singing “Happy Birthday” to some hapless soul sitting in their midst. The people who run Unhappy Birthday also dislike this as much as I… Continue reading Unhappy Birthday
Author: Dave Cross
Government Web Sites
The UK Government have launched a new web site to inform people about IT security issues. The links page on the site contains an image which proudly identifies the site as being built of valid XHTML 1.0. Sadly, clicking on that image runs the W3C validator tool which then demonstrates that the page is not… Continue reading Government Web Sites
Brian Sedgemore
Brian Sedgemore was my MP for a couple of years when I lived in Hackney in the mid-80s. He’s one of a small number of Labour MPs who still seem to understand what the Labour Party is supposed to stand for. He’s retiring at the end of this Parliament and last week he made what… Continue reading Brian Sedgemore
FOSDEM
Off to Brussels in a couple of hours to go to the FOSDEM conference. I’ll be running the Perl Developers’ Room. Hope it’s warmer there than it is here.
Newspaper RSS
I wrote last month about the irony of the Sunday Times praising RSS but not having RSS feeds available on their site. This got me wondering which UK papers currently offer RSS feeds of their stories. I’m planning to put a page up at some point that lists all the the feeds available from each… Continue reading Newspaper RSS
Rick Wakeman
See, even the title of this entry has sent my street cred plummenting. Now watch me completely destroy what’s left of it. I’ve never really enjoyed the “classic” Rick Wakeman albums like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or The Myths and Legends of King Arthur. They’ve always seemed like they are trying to… Continue reading Rick Wakeman
Greasemonkey and Ajax
Lloyd just pointed me at Greasemonkey which looks very interesting. Throw it together with something built using Ajax and suddenly the potential is enormous. Update: Here’s another nice piece about Greasemonkey.
We Cannot Vote Labour
Gary Younge in today’s Guardian being as astute as ever. As the election approaches it is time for those of us who identify with Labour but find ourselves somewhere between disillusionment and disgust with the party to weigh strategy and morality and hopefully get our sums right. If the polls are right, the Labour party’s… Continue reading We Cannot Vote Labour
Advice for HSBC Customers
I just had a bit of an adventure with the HSBC Bank and I’ve discovered a couple of things that might be of interest to other customers. On Monday I paid a rather large cheque into the Holborn Circus branch of the HSBC. For various reasons it was important that this cheque cleared as quickly… Continue reading Advice for HSBC Customers
Ken vs the Olympics
It’s great having the new Daily Mail RSS feeds. I get huge amounts of illogical bigoted nonsense direct into my RSS reader. The latest headline asks Could Ken’s Nazi jibe scupper Olympic bid? Let’s hope so :) Update: Now they’re saying that Tony Blair has ordered Livingstone to apologise. Not sure what the point of… Continue reading Ken vs the Olympics