I decided on a whim to upgrade to Movable Type 3.2. The reasons are to nudge me into activity and finish the redesign which I can never be arsed doing. As a part of this motivational move, I have selected a default blog template which will nag at my own personal sense of style by being not at all what I wanted.
Look at it. It just screams ‘default’ doesn’t it?
Uurgh. Must… redesign… urgently…
Add comment September 27th, 2005
Gordon has been a victim of a terrible attack of blatant sexism. I have to say, that this sort of thing really gets my goat and now that I’m twenty-nine years old I need to start practicing being a grumpy old bastard when faced with matters with that rile me. So…
My mum made a comment the other day that bugged me. I can’t remember the specifics of the comment, but it was something to do with how well I can change a nappy or something domestic of that nature. How incredible! A man who can change a nappy!
So I took her up on it.
Me: “Oh yeah, how bloody incredible that a man can change a nappy. How patronising is that??”
Mum: “Well you’d be quick to make jokes about female drivers, wouldn’t you?”
Me: “Two wrongs don’t make a right, I seem to remember my mother teaching me”
Mum: “Ok. You’ve got me there.”
And another thing that bugs me is adverts on TV. A particular target of my current hatred is the ones for some brand of crisps or other, ‘the gentleman’s crisp’ I think is the tagline, I’m sure you’ve seen them.
The formula of the ads seems to be a woman stumbling on her husband doing something domestic, such as using a washing machine. She then goes all glassy eyed and full of admiration for his feat. He turns to notice her with his slightly confused neandertal face not quite comprehending what he’s doing.
Just for once, I want to see an advert that features a man doing dishes or mopping a floor and it’s taken completely for granted as if it’s perfectly normal*. I’d like to see an advert that doesn’t paint all men as brutes with low expectations of women, and women as slyly grinning superiors who get all smug when they prove themselves more capable than the lazy blokes.
Anyway, just thought I’d offload that rant. Feel better now. Thanks. I’m off to watch the footie while it’s quiet with the wife out the road cleaning the kitchen.
* - There is the Flash cleaner adverts I suppose. I’ll give them that one. And the bounty kitchen-roll adverts don’t quite fit into the argument on either side.
Add comment September 22nd, 2005
to meeeee
Happy birthday to meeeee
Happy birthday to meee-eeeeeeee…
Happy biiii-iirthdaa-aay too-oooo meeeeeee.
29 today. For fucks sake.
Add comment September 21st, 2005
When Ben was born we bought a camcorder in order to capture his every waking moment no matter how insignificant. Being the 21st century, it was of course a digital one and until now we’ve had no means to play back our captured hours of gurgling baby-footage to enthralled family audiences. The VHS has long since expired, never to be replaced.
Until that is, we took a trip to PC World to buy a DVD writer which my research had told me could be bought for under £50. At the last moment though I realised that some kind of DVD authoring software might be needed so the budget was unexpectedly bumped up by £25 based on a quick search around the web.
On the way to PC World, you have to walk past Currys so we popped in there to look at DVD recorders just out of interest since it was in the rough area of what we were looking to buy.
“Ooh, there’s one for £100″
“Not bad, but can we put the camcorder stuff on a DVD with that?”
“Yep, it just plugs straight in and you record from the tape”
“Cool, would that be better?”
“We could record TV programs too”
“Let’s get that then. You can still edit things though, right?”
“No, you’d need to do that on the computer. You could copy it over from the PC, but there’d be a small loss in quality. That one there’s got a digital input, so you could do it better with that one, and it’s got time-slip and it’s only £180″
“What does timeslip do?”
“Well you leave a disc in and it records what you’re watching, so you can pause live TV, or start watching something before it’s finished recording it”
“Ah that’d be good for when Ben wakes up or cries in the middle of watching something”
“Yeah. This one here’s got a hard-disc for only £250. You can tape 100 hours of telly without a disc, e.g. tell it to tape a whole series of something, and put it onto DVD later if you want.”
“Ooh, that’d be good. Does the budget stretch that far?”
“Not sure. I’m not sure how it all works really. Maybe it doesn’t work with a cheapo freeview box from Asda”
“Why not?”
“I can’t work out how you’d tape something on one channel and watch another”
“That’s a bit useless then. What a con.”
“Hang on, this one’s got a built in freeview tuner and it’s only £280″
“Would that work?”
“I think so, it’s all kinda confusing, hang on we’ll find a sales person”
At this moment, there was a mighty smell accompanied by an (in)appropriate noise from Ben’s nappy. We departed swiftly to Burger King to have a cup of tea and abuse their baby changing area.
It was a good thing too, because the extra time allowed us to come to our senses and realise that all we actually wanted to do in the first place was put some edited camcorder footage onto DVD and, in fact, we didn’t watch much telly anyway.
Off we went to PC World where we found a nice budget friendly Sony DVD writer with lovely authoring software for a mere £54.
Thank God for baby diarrhea!
Of course by that stage the budget had been slackened and our mood was spend-happy, so we threw in a 19″ flat panel monitor and an internal flash card reader too, all of which was entirely necessary.
Add comment September 20th, 2005
We ran over a fox the other night. Just driving back home through country roads in the dark when there was a sudden orange fox-shaped flash caught in the headlights, followed by a small swerve and a dull thud.
Kinda freaked me out, epsecially when I thought up the image of a load of baby foxes wondering where their mum had got to.
Shudder.
Could have been worse though, I’ve swerved around a deer on that road before so the dull thud could have been my head on the steering wheel.
Add comment September 19th, 2005
Fraser at blogjam has posted an entry praising chippies that sell pukka pies, and advertise their wares through pukka pie posters.
It reminded me of a fantastic poster that I love to admire whenever I visit ‘Café Palazzo‘ in sunny Saltcoats whilst visiting the babysitters my folks.
It is a simple poster produced by the potato marketing board which shows a hand holding a perfectly fried portion of chips in a paper bag, glistening in a curiously cyan-yellow (due to fading in the sun) salt-encrusted glow. A second hand is depicted reaching for one of the chips and above this is the bold, happily rendered advice:
CHIPS GIVE YOU ENERGY
So it’s official. Chips are healthy and good for you.
Another remarkable thing to note about Café Palazzo is the extraordinary team of staff that they have. I can honestly say that I would have to train for months to be able to work in that place. If one person was to quit their job in that place it would fall apart, such is the delicate and remarkable level of teamwork that goes into putting your order together.
You can walk into the shop, seventh or eighth from the front of the queue and someone will take the orders for the entire shop and hold it all in their head. From this, the team sets about cooking and putting together everyone’s orders in the most fascinatingly cooperative manner.
If you’re ever in Saltcoats, do pay them a visit, making sure that you jave a large order and go in at a reasonably busy time for the best effect.
Add comment September 14th, 2005
Flash 8 is gonna be big, I tells you. It’s got a full Bitmap API and support for file uploads and…
No, no, wait.. don’t got to sleep yet. Here, install the beta of the flash 8 player, plug in your webcam, and play some games.
How cool is that?
Add comment September 9th, 2005
The more I look at Ajax, the more I love it. The temptation to Ajaxify this entire blog using CPaint just for the sake of it is just too strong.
All I need is a 35-40 hour day and an immunity to sleep depravation and I’ll perhaps be able to do it one day.
This place really needs a lick of paint, it really does. Or CPaint… a haha aaah. Didn’t mean that one 
Add comment September 9th, 2005
Reading over yesterday’s post, I realise that it sounds like I have no idea how I ended up with a piano. The sentence “I have no idea how this event has transpired” seems to play a major role in creating this impression. I wish to clarify that I do have some idea of how I ended up with a piano, but the suddenness of it all took me by surprise.
Here are the events leading up to me having a piano.
Event 1 was the delivery of a note through my parents’ door advertising piano lessons. The missus read it with fevered excitement since she has previously expressed an interest in playing the piano. She does have some trombone experience and obviously switching to piano would be a simple matter of learning where to blow.
Within the hour, lessons were booked.
Event 2 was after a few lessons and the music teacher used the phrases ‘are you sure you’ve not played the piano before?’ and ‘you should really have a piano at home to learn properly’ within 20 fatal minutes of each other.
Apparently this woman has no concept of money or headphone sockets.
Event 3 was when baby caught a cold. This seemed quite innocuous at the time.
Event 4 was on the way back from a shopping trip in Paisley where we had planned to look in a known piano shop’s window to ‘get an idea of prices’.
When we got to the shop, baby was fast asleep in the back of the car, so my missus went to see the prices by herself whilst I waited in the car with junior to save waking him up due to him needing rest thanks to the cold.
Married men everywhere will immediately see where this is going and be shaking their heads at my elemental mistake. I not only let my missus walk into a piano shop unsupervised to talk to a piano salesman, but I did so before any discussions about budget had been made.
And so, less than a week later, we were one piano better off. Let that be a lesson to you all.
Add comment September 7th, 2005
A new item has arrived today to fill the space recently made against the west wall of the living room.
Why did a piano arrive today? Don’t ask. Seriously. I have no idea how this event has transpired. All I know is that I have a piano now, and I didn’t before. I’m also slightly poorer. I suspect these two facts are linked.
Can I play it? No. Can the misus play it? No. Maybe this wee guy can help.
Guess I’d better start practicing or something.
Just… don’t ask.
Add comment September 6th, 2005
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