Font Of All Knowledge

That nice Mr Andronov pointed me at typekit just now.

Bit of javascript in the of the template, pick a font (or two) and which tags you want to use it and blam! New look for blog (in compatible browsers, obviously, but if you're not using one you should be :) and you can tweak it - live - to your heart's content.

Love it.

Pressing Question

Looks like Blogger has got a bit bored with supporting externally-hosted blogs (like mine) over FTP. According to the press release:

"FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only 0.5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that."

Understandable I suppose, but which way forward? Probably a good opportunity to have a look at Wordpress publishing (I've also got a Tumblr thing running with a feed from here but that's a whole different kettle of ballgames).

However, Solveig's used to the Blogger way so I guess we will port hers to be a Google-hosted 'Custom Domain' - she'll also then get access to the fancy sidebar widgets which might be a boon.

Anyway, between now and mid-March, expect to see some changes around here, not least with the RSS feed, the commenting system and probably the design.

Ah well, any excuse for a tinker :)

Something To Say

This morning, I was reading a load of reviews of last night's Arsenal -v- Celtic match, in particular the furore around the Eduardo dive* which led to the penalty. The Telegraph, the Times and the Mail all had articles which asked for Your Comments but then required you to 1) register your details, 2) wait an unspecified time for an email from them with a confirmation link, 3) click the link, 4) re-enter your now approved login, 5) continue back to the original page to add your comment, 5) wait an unspecified time for it to be moderated and then eventually 6) see it posted -- by which time someone else has probably already made all the salient points you were so keen to express.

I didn't bother.

Now I fully realise the need to moderate comments on a national newspaper site. I also understand about comment spam and email address confirmation. But it doesn't feel much like the 'conversation' they so desperately claim to crave with their readers. It just feels slooooooooow.

1-0 to Twitter (at least)

UPDATE: I have since signed up for the Times to test how long it actually takes to get a comment published, more later...

UPDATE 2: It took three hours from start (clicking the Register button) to finish (seeing the comment at the bottom of the article). Sheesh.

* yes, he dived and yes, I am disappointed in that from such an apparently genuine guy.

Full Chrome

The dev channel of Google Chrome now has F11 fullscreen support, with a neat 'floating' bookmarks bar when you open a new tab. I'd still like to see top-of-screen mouseover pull down all the menu bars, not just the fullscreen toggle tab, but it's much improved:

Oh look, they've also fixed the Blogger picture posting issue (Chrome wasn't sending the BlogID correctly) - bonus!

RSS is FUBAR

One thing after another!

Blogger RSS/Atom feeds are being published with 0 bytes

*twiddles thumbs*

Blogroll, Schmogroll

It was pointed out to me recently that the 'blogroll' in my sidebar is currently not working. This is a direct feed from my Google Reader of other blogs which I mark as worth sharing with (both) the people who happen to read my website. So I looked into it and it turns out that if just one of the feeds in the list is not working for some reason, or has moved, or is malformed then the whole feed 'just fails'. Can't quite believe Google has let that bug slip through the net! So now I have to go and work out which one it is and de-list it.

Sorry about that.

No Co.mment

Shame, this was one of the better thought out blog comment tracking systems:

co.mments - No more

I guess I shall have to look around for an alternative. Not coComment, tried that and didn't like it. YackTrack and BackType seem to be OK from a quick Google, will try them. Or has anyone used Commentful, seems to be part of BlugFlux? Suggestions, people?

Have A Wordle

This is just beautiful.

"Wordle is for generating 'word clouds' from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, alpha priority and color schemes. It will work from any text, blog or other web page that has an RSS feed."

And this is mine from here (click to enlarge, obviously):
It also has a randomise button which is mesmerising.

Let It Snow

Yeah, silly innit. Never leave me alone with someone else's Javascript and a bottle of Chianti.

Oh, if you are reading this on RSS, that will mean nothing. Try clicking here and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow :)

Overheard #59

Not technically an overheard, as I read it. Overread? Anyway, it's too good not to share (and my blog so my rules :)

"Don't flatter youself that munching chicken salad in the Ivy with the cast of Holby City makes you St Francis of Assisi."

Horizontal Blogging

Theo + Me + Bed + Eee = horizontal blogging!!

You just can't beat a cup of tea and a bit of a lie-in on a Saturday morning...

A Bit Of A Push To Get Through In One Sitting*

One for Antonia's bookshelf. The reviews are, er, insightful:

Amazon Reviews for 'Penetrating Wagner's Ring' (Da Capo Paperback)

* yes, that was mine; I'm very very sorry...

On The Move

I am in the process of moving our photos to Flickr. We will go by the unremarkably factual screen name of London Lightly.

Many thanks to Doug for hosting our galleries all these years (and keeping an eye on the comment spam!) but ~2,000 snaps of Freyja later and another one the way (offspring, not photo...) we're going to try hanging out with the Web2.0 community. So for the moment, there will be two links in the sidebar for the little madam until I sort out moving the archive across (requires all sorts of exciting/hacky Gallery1.5 -> Gallery2.0 -> Flickr action).

Enjoy.

37

Two of things for you to ponder today:

a) Apparently, experts increasingly agree that I am middle-aged.
b) Charlie Brooker is (just) younger than me!

Charlie Brooker: Happy Birthday

The Bacon Cup

I have posted this mainly to make Antonia snigger, but also because you simply cannot have too much bacon:

Neatorama: The Bacon Cup
Obviously it should really have been bacon bowls (and then it's only a short step to pastrami plates, chorizo cups, salami saucers and mortadella mugs). You can stop sniggering now. No, you can.

UPDATE: It has just dawned on me that, over the pond, a 'cup' is the name they give to an 'abdominal protector' which, over here, we who play cricket call a 'box'. So it is in fact a Bacon Box. That's just awesome. And soon to be an officially-endorsed G.R.A.C.C. product, if I have my way...

Comentarios

I have had a little tweak of the comments system on this here blog of mine. Now, when you click the Comments link, they will magically appear on the very same page, through the power of The Dark Side (AKA: JavaScript). And click the link again to hide them.

Should you decide you then wish to inject your consensus challenging opinions into the ongoing diatribe (and please do) then just head for the "Post A Comment" link underneath them (if there are any, which, if I'm honest, there usually aren't.)

Also, due to the emergence of a certain amount of comment spam, I am toying with the idea of word verification; I'll try to avoid it if possible because it's a pain in the a$$.

Anyway, come on in and speak your brains...

Max Out

Oh dear.

Guardian travel writer blags a freebie for his son to write a travel blog. Ripped to shreds in the comments:

Max, 19, hits the road
There's even already a parody blog:

Wayne Type, 19, hits the road
Not sure what they're angrier about - the fact that his Dad wangled him the trip, that a national newspaper is paying for what is essentially his gap year or that he comes across as the living embodiment of Nathan Barley.

Of course, the flip side is that it would seem he's young, good looking, connected, cool and about to go on a year of partying at someone else's expense - teensy bit jealous at all, chaps?

Lurvecast

Heh, someone who snubs Valentine's Day nearly as much as me:

The Lurvecast @ Song, by Toad
Great track list:

01. Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night? (00.23)
02. The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale (08.06)
03. The Raveonettes - Little Animal (10.57)
04. R.E.M. - The One I Love (13.57)
05. Half-Man Half-Biscuit - Paintball’s Coming Home (20.54)
06. The Pierces - Boring (25.43)
07. (The Real) Tuesday Weld - Terminally Ambivalent Over You (31.03)
08. Shane MacGowan & the Popes - Her Father Didn’t Like Me Anyway (34.41)
09. The Wave Pictures - When I Leave You For Somebody Else (38.30)
10. Pulp - Pink Glove (45.33)
11. The Raincoats - Don’t Be Mean (50.15)
12. Rufus Wainright - One Man Guy (59.34)
13. William Shatner - Ideal Woman (66.34)
14. The Sequins - Nobody Dreams About Me (71.45)
15. The Smiths - Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want (77.31)
16. The Walkmen - Don’t Forget Me (82.58)

Blue And Green Should Ne'er Be Seen...

...except on a Premiership goalkeeper's third change away kit :)

Thirty Arsenal Kits

So 95/96 Away has to win for sheer audacity ("We shall strike like lightning through your defence!"), followed by 92/93 Away ("I can't see the ball, my eyes have started bleeding.") and 05/06 Goalkeeper a close(t) third ("Oooh, has anyone seen my man-bag; I'm sure I put it by the corner flag?").

Sheesh.

(big thanks to The Cannon)

Snot What You Think

Excuse me, you two. Remember this? Well, I saw this and also thought of you. No, I insist. You're welcome.

Gormanuary?

Casually (and if truth be told, somewhat foggily) perusing my many and varied RSS feeds this morning, I stumbled on this:

01/01/08 - Dave Gorman: Problem Solving

Which suddenly reminded me rather a lot of this:

01/01/07 - Gamboling: So the pope hasn't called me back

Coincidence? Alex, fancy giving Dave a call...

Giving Palm The Finger?

Astonishing account of Palm 'customer service' (impersonating the CEO, anyone?)

Could Tech Support Undo Palm?

(via daring fireball)

Christmas Eve At The Coalface

It's been a busy old morning.



So anyway, this is me wishing a very Merry Christmas to all my fellow bloggers and (both) my readers. Have a good one, whatever you are doing. And here's to a fruitful 2008...

Bad Apple?

Looks like Apple has decided that the season of goodwill is the perfect time to go on the offensive against commentators and bloggers who deign to publish leaks/reviews/criticism of its products.

And now, in an astonishing move (and in my clearly worthless opinion, a proper PR shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-disaster) they have suggested to the daddy of the genre, Fake Steve Jobs, that he cease and desist in return for a 'settlement' / update#1: as long as he shuts up about it / update#2: or worse / update#3: lawyer time

Anyone else think the most media-savvy company in the world just started to make itself look ridiculous? But hey - what do I know. Hang on, there's someone knocking at the d...

(And of course it's all a subtle Yuletide gag from the very amusing Daniel Lyons and his Forbes crew...or maybe not...but perhaps it is...or not...could be...looks like it isn't...or is...*applause*)

Appa Days

Afternoon. Just testing the new embedded flash player. Have a listen if you like, it's 'Appa' by Badmarsh & Shri (one of Freyja's favourites):


Yep, that seems to work. Now to try and change the default colours (although I'm a fan of grey, luckily).

EDIT: colours changed! Thanks, Alex...

Like, The Colours, Man

If you don't subscribe to strangemaps, do so at once. This one is brilliant:

The Colourful Side of the Moon

"This map is of the dark side of the moon, which here looks more like a Jackson Pollock action painting, its riotous colours corresponding to geological materials and phenomena. Many of the colour spots are circular in nature, reflecting the large number of meteorites that have impacted on the lunar surface, unprotected by an atmosphere, over many, many centuries. The map is one of a series produced by NASA and the US Geological Survey between 1971 and 1998."

Mesmerising.

From .ad To .za

Another gem via strange maps; the world 'sliced and diced' by ccTLDs.

WWWorld Map

Geeky? Yep. But cool? Hell yeah, I want the poster :)

Fry On Fame

Yes, he's at it again. You could subscribe to the feed but frankly I am almost certainly going to post in awe of his (and I quote) 'blessays' whenever they are posted, so you may as well just follow it here:

Stephen Fry: Let Fame

I did particularly enjoy, on being asked the question, "What is it like?":

‘Being famous is like wearing blue pyjamas at the opera. It’s like kissing Neil Young, but only on Wednesdays. It’s like a silver disc gummed to the ear of a wolverine. It’s like licking crumbs from the belly of a waitress called Eileen. It’s like lemon polenta cake but slightly wider. It’s like moonrise on the planet Posker.’

Very good. Of course.

Sunday Morning Fry Up

The FryPhone

Well said.

(11:43pm? Was I really up that late watching Arsenal's demolition job on Derby County? Ah well...)

I'm Just A Lush

OMFG - this could absolutely 1000% so easily be me:

Because Midway Still Aren't Coming Back

"...is about indie bands. Proper indie bands from the later 1980s and early 1990s. When indie bands were real indie bands, and when they released their music on big lumps of vinyl; like God intended."

Of the 27 bands currently on the site, I own 9 CDs, 12 vinyl LPs, 17 12" vinyl EPs and 4 limited edition coloured vinyl 7"s. I have also seen live gigs from Dr Phibes (forgettable), World Of Twist (mental), Teenage Fanclub (amazing), Jesus Jones (overrated), Ride (noisy), New FADs (moody) and Ned's Atomic Dustbin (silly) as well as the wonderful Lush, from whom lead-singer Miki signed my T-shirt (much to the chagrin of my friends on the night, who had to wait for me hanging round the side of the Newcastle Mayfair stage like a lovesick puppy until the diminutive Japanese/Hungarian beauty found her magic marker...)

Now, bring on The Wedding Present, please...

Cat Sheet?

From the always intriguing strange maps comes:

Number 164 - A Cat’s Map of the Bed

(for Antonia, mostly)

Feed Me

Right, listen up you lot.

For those of you getting busy with the RSS reader-type things, I am intending to move the feed for this site to:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ForkHandles

Please forcibly redirect your 2.0 sprocket here via the overhead cam flange and hopefully the 'excitement' will continue unabated. If not, drop me a line/comment and I'll hit it with a spanner. And at some as yet indeterminate point the old Atom.xml thing will cease to be. Message ends. Over and out. Chocks away.

Where Do You Want To Go Today?

xkcd hits the nail on the head again:

Quite.

Meet And Two Pints

I went to my first ever Lewisham Bloggers Meetup last Friday night, handily enough held at our excellent local, The Honor Oak.

I had no idea what to expect; the internet all-too-easily removes any kind of geographical points of reference, What could we possibly all have in common other than sticking our random and seemingly unrelated thoughts up online once a day/week/roughly-whenever-the-hell-they-feel-like-it? It stemmed from the London Bloggers idea which I joined a while back, soon after which a couple of people made contact via the comments on fork handles...

...fast forward to Friday night at The Honor Oak, everyone was very welcoming, absolutely engrossing and a great pity I couldn't stay for longer than a couple of beers. Still, if they'll have me back, I'd very much like to continue some of the conversations I had with Andrew, Henry, Neil and Robert (who was responsible for organising the evening -> *applause*) and also meet those who I missed when they arrived later on!

Yep, count me in for the next one. Now, what on earth was that thing about underground waterways??

Onoz! Teh Spaartanz!!!111

Excellent! Your favourite worst films condensed into half a kilo of words and fully l33T h4X0r'd up for the youth by b3ta regular (and 2002 winner of some Grauniad award or something), Scaryduck:

Scaryduck: Condensed Filmz

"Princess Leia: You'll never take me alive! Oh. You have."

"Foreign: Ah hahahaha! I have got away from J. Bond with my camera-friendly l33t running-and-jumping-about sk1llz and by hiding in my country's embassy, where I am supposedly safe. ROFFLE!"

"Hooper: I'll help! I hav l33t shrk kllng sk1llz! LMAO"

Six so far, hopefully more to come - how about "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being"...

Le Stumping

The Corridor, esteemed cricket-type blog, sent me off in the direction of this - a poster explaining the rules of cricket in French (not French cricket which is an entirely different animal). I am obviously very keen for our Gallic chums to discover the delights of the noble game so we can go on a GRACC tour to the Lot region, stay in the house in Cahors, drink excellent wine and if we can find the time to fit in a match, utterly thrash them.*

* yeah, right!

Snap It Off

In response to offmessage (because he STILL hasn't got commenting on his blog sorted out...) who proclaimed thusly:

"I can't be the only person that's starting to get really pissed off with all these popups leaping up all over every page I visit, can I? At least give me the option to turn it off, please. It is the marquee tag of 2007. Snap must die."

may I humbly suggest this:

How can I turn Snap Shots on or off?
No, no, mate, you're welcome. Don't mention it. My pleasure :P

Topgun Simmons

So I discovered the Kissing Suzy Kolber blog when it lost Best Sports Blog to Arseblog in the 2007 Bloggies awards*. Anyway, they're pretty funny, for merkins, so I bookmarked it. And now, their excellent, if somewhat near-the-knuckle, predictions for:

100 Future NFL Player Names

Particular highlights for me? Wutang Clanton, Scooter Cooter and Megatron Vampira (presumably a cross-dressing hard-running bomb-throwing base-stealing-oh-no-that's-the-other-ball-game quarterback). Pick your favourite.

* hmm, rather a lot of 'blog' in that sentence, I fear...

London Bloggers Do It On The Tube (But Mostly Standing Up)

I think this is a great idea. London-based blogs arranged by stations on the Underground and Rail network:

I now know that I share the Honor Oak Park blogosphere with the thoughtful BobFromBrockley, a self-confessed confused 22-year-old medical student and the writer of an as-yet-unpublished book about a fictional Victorian landscape gardener.

Bravo, everyone. Why not join us...

Five of things

OK, if you insist - five things you may not know about me:

1. I used to be on an elite panel of chocolate tasters for Rowntrees (now Nestlé) in York.
2. From 1974-1976, my family lived in a house on stilts in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.
3. I am allergic to nickel (and therefore also anti-single EU currency).
4. Aged 11, I unknowingly played in goal for the first half of a football match with a broken arm.
5. I once had a girlfriend who dumped me for Hunter from 'Gladiators'.

Comments welcome! And with that, I hereby tag Alex, Ian and Helena:

(Seems it is also the done thing to reference the originator of the meme)

You're it...

...yes, the craze that's sweeping the nation (no, that would be Highway Cleansing Operatives) - it's blog-tagging. And, amongst others, I'm "it" (thanks, Andy).

Apparently, I have to post "five things that you probably don't know about me". Given that the readership of this blog is (a) rather small but (b) almost certainly includes both my parents and Social Services, I shall be giving this some further thought before passing the 'tag' on :)

Pop back soon...

Tempus fugit

Good lord, how time flies. Over a month since I last posted. Admittedly, it was a fairly quiet month - or so I thought until I started writing this.

• There was the work curry night at Bengal Village in Brick Lane which was great fun and ended somewhat drunkenly in the Big Chill Bar (the suits looking somewhat incongruous amongst the asymmetric hair and day-glo legwarmers)
• There was Antonia's mini baby shower followed by Antonia's mini baby arriving. Woot. Well done you (and Ian, of course - welcome to sad Dad land...)
• There was my knee going pop* (again) which meant an MRI scan and a jolly nice BUPA consultant advising keyhole surgery on the flappy bit of cartilage causing all the trouble
• There was a quantity of beer with Doug in a splendid little bar tucked away near King's Cross (no, not that type of bar)
• There was my first visit to the fantastic Emirates Stadium for the disappointing 0-0 draw with CSKA Moscow where, despite an astonishing 24 (twenty four!) shots at goal, we failed to hit the target. Cow, arse & banjo...
• There was a 70s party at Alex & Kat's excellent new house in the WestCrystalGipsyNorwoodHillPalace area where despite wearing that shirt, I was trumped in the fashion stakes by Alex's brother Pete (or is it Nick :)

And suddenly it's November...

* in fact it was more of a craaaskeeeuurrrgle sound but you get the idea...

performancing

Despite sounding like some dreadful middle-management-speak ("We need to revisit our blue-sky performancing dichotomy...") this is great:

performancing

"Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox...easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs."

Nice.

Update : You can also bookmark to del.icio.us from it - double whammy!