Goodness me!
Someone purporting to be the Abbey has kindly written to me to ask me to log into their site and sort my account out. Oddly their site is not at Abbey.com as you might expect
Unfortunately, we are unable to verify your online banking account successfully. To ensure your protection, we've now blocked access to your sensible part of your accounts.
I must say that I am a little upset about them having blocked access to my sensible part. I guess I'll just have to live with it. Ah me.
It’s another beautiful morning in Londontown, Englandland. The city looks lovely; our site looks lovely. Even the man in the Italian cafe looks lovely as indeed does his wife.
Talking of spouses (do you see what I did there?) Mrs von Neustadt was in Vicenza and Udine Sunday-Tuesday, doing some teaching and flying the flag, and was extremely miffed to find that we seemed to have swapped weathers – we were cavorting (well, up to a point) around in the sunshine while she was trudging through rainswept though beautiful streets in Italy with a brolly borrowed from the hotel. Life is just so unfair sometimes, he roared with laughter empathized.
I am going orienteering tomorrow – a little local event run by my own club at Mardley Heath (pdf). I am not sure what the weather is supposed to be doing but I really really hope it holds. I’ve been seeing bluebells in greater and greater numbers over the last week or two and the last time I was at Mardley it was spectacular – indeed it was breathtaking, and I don’t just mean because of my wheezing attempts to run. It’s the insane intensity of bluebells that gets to me so if it’s a good display tomorrow I will really be in floral heaven.
And now I must address issues of databases, scanned graphics, and linking charts in a web site. Hi ho, hi ho, etc.
Have a nice day now y’all!
There are already a good many definitions of a Jewish Mother, with close to 100% featuring Chicken Soup. And why not?
I would like to suggest, however, that a new subspecies of definition might be considered. This is not yet properly formulated but broadly speaking would propose that Jewish Mothers do not see autostereograms, either because they can’t, or because they won’t. (They do after all have Chicken Soup to prepare.)
Obviously this is just in the early planning and consultation stages but I may consider taking it to t’Committee with a view to refining it into a pithy witty aphorism (whatever one of those might be) for release in Q2 2011.
Thank you for reading. Pass the gefilte fish. Thank you. Mmm.
A pessimist is someone who accepts the offer of a loyalty card at the hospital coffee shop.
In other news: as you can see, I am installing SQL Server, well the client side of it anyway (if that is not too, ah, oxymoronic for you) on my office PC. Oddly, I find that I am enjoying myself…
I know people like to weeble on about the mighty river-spanning conurbation of, ahem, NewcastleGateshead as if it were Buda and Pest or Ankh and Morpork but I feel this is mostly a marketing term – I have yet to see an example of its use by a normal human being. And even so I might be smacking my head on my desk a little less if I were complaining about someone saying, or at least implying, that the Sage is in (akk!) NewcastleGateshead: but I am not.
Let’s get this right:
Thank you for your attention.
Nice one. I’d send them a yoghurt if I knew their address.
The Iarlles Loötës is 22 today. Hurrah! Half-holiday for the village schoolchildren and a commemorative plate for the peasants, if you please, Mr Thompson!
The Iarlles was originally scheduled to be 22 on or around the 4th July which you, observant and numerate reader, will note is about 12-and-a-bit weeks hence. It does not seem like 22 years since the most frightening 10 weeks of my life; in fact if I close my eyes I am right back there now. That I am a Sad Old Git™ – though we knew that already - is confirmed by the fact that I still cannot get through a complete hearing of the Athlete song Wires without crying. (Though in a very manly and dignified way, of course.)
Lottie is up to her eyes in it today due to Stringwise. Indeed, Lot, her Dear Muvver and – for the first time – her Beloved Sister of Youngernosity the Infanta Marfs – are all working on it, along with just about everyone I know except Becca and me, chiz and chiz and multiple rechiz on both accounts. I have messed up on the supply of birthday presents – a long and painful story, with which I shall not bore you just yet – but nevertheless the odd giftoid or two will change hands later today.
Tonight we are going to a delightful Italian restaurant in Norf London, into which I stumbled in my usual confused state a couple of weeks back. Ever since, I have been ranting at my family about how good/nice it was on this brief visit and how we must go there mobhanded sometime. They have now called my bluff and by this time tomorrow I will either be vindicated or (brace for side-splitting humorous food reference, brace brace brace) have egg on my face, aha. Watch this space. If we love it, I’ll tell you – OK? What I can say right now is that the signals – if you can trust the interwebnetsconnectatron at all – are very very positive.
More soon.
- please note the URL – and if you visit that page you see that its HTML <title> tag, which dictates what appears in the browser’s title bar, contains the same elements, as it reads:
The page source shows the passing nerd that the puffbox and hyperpuff bits appear elsewhere in the code too.
How about if we edit the URL down to what, by comparison with other News pages, it seems that it ought to be? That would give us:
- which works fine, but oddly still has the bad header. Hm.
Clearly this is some internal BBC system which was never meant for public display. It’s just a little slip on someone’s part and can, I hope, be quickly corrected. I wrote to them about it and I assume that 47,000 other people probably have too, and I confidently expect it all to be sorted out quickly.
Naffness
The Beeb’s News site is a wonderful place operating at an incredible level of size, complexity, currency and a whole load of other stuff: it is really something to be proud of. I respect entirely their right to make mistakes too, though I sometimes feel that a bit more checking or oversight or whatever might help reduce their effect. The only thing that does strike me here is, why use such naff names? That’s what seems to me to add a quite unnecessary level of childishness, or silliness, or embarrassment, or something, to the page. In this particular case I’m sure that someone somewhere would be clueless enough to say, because of the story content, that it is disrespectful (gah! nauseating cliche of the decade!) though you wouldn’t catch me being quite that stupid unless I was very, very drunk. But imagine if instead of puffbox and hyperpuff they’d just chosen level1 and level2 or medialinkA and medialinkB or even xkz99 and bbtq43 or whatever. For exposing some internal part of their system to the public eye they’d still look silly, but not bloody silly as they do right now and, I suspect, I wouldn’t be writing this. Ho hum. What’s the moral? Watch your variable names, I suppose …
Update
About 3.9 seconds after I emailed the Beeb about this I got a very nice reply from Ian J, an editorial type. It was, of course, a mistake, and he’s fixed it, molto quicko. At this point I really do just have to take my hat off, as I have before, at the speed and quality of the response from the BBC. I have written back thanking him and expounding my theory (which is mine) about the naff names. I bet he was, ahem, really thrilled to get this, but I don’t really expect him to restructure the entire BBC system over my gibbering (woody and tinny) concerns. I suppose I’m just one of those sad people who has to Have Their Say (gah! makes warding-off-evil gestures, etc).
Updated update (yes, I am a very sad person Tamsin, do please try to get over it)
A further courteous and tolerant reply from folkhero and martyr Ian J (who must by now be roundly sick of me) reveals that these are old terms, that when first used could simply not have escaped into the public gaze the way these did. Yup, I can see that. A quick Google on “+puffbox +hyperpuff” finds about 6000 pages. So it does seem to escape into the wild from the Beeb’s system, from time to time. Does this matter? Not sure, leave to wiser brains to ponder, go and make tea now. Vogel out.
Best.
Thing.
Ever.
This was an interesting conversation. They were very polite and pleasant but I have no idea at all as to whether we were actually communicating or not. For all I know, after we said a pleasant goodbye to each other, they may now have the lasting impression that I was trying urgently to enquire about the price of a new fanbelt for my Massey Ferguson MF 5460 tractor (4.4 litres, intercooled, you know the one?)
I hope I was some help but it's difficult to know whether this was a good use of bits of my lunchtime, telephone money, limited brain power or anything much else. And the site is still up, yes, and presumably still hoping to collect some juicy bank details from the naive reader of email. Hmmm.
I think I should probably not make a habit of this.
Oh alright, yes I must stop being such an old drama queen. No, it wasn't really a "weekend from hell", it was lovely - just a bit busy. And since I wanted it to be busy and chose to do these things I should not be moaning about it. Tsk.
The latter part of the working week was a bit difficult - I had an amazing, showstopping headache which manifested itself first on Wednesday and pretty much wrote off Thursday and much of Friday. I think it's just the very unfortunate fallout (aha) from a cold but late on the Wednesday night I was thinking, insofar as I was able to do so at all, rather more sinister thoughts than that. However I am back at work now and (almost) as bright as a new shiny 2p bit, or whatever. And people blogging about their health is possibly the most boring form of blogging there is, so enough already.
Friday night I went up to Cambridge to go to an important meeting, about which I should/may write separately. The Iarlles Loötës kindly accompanied me (a-one, a-two; a-one two three four) and was helpfully observant and inputful. We then went for a lovely dinner at the Free Press, a tiny pub tucked away in a small street a little away to the east from all the posh stuff - closer to Anglia Ruskin University with which (in its former guise of Anglia Polytechnic University) I had some nice dealings a few years back.
And now I have run out of time, and will have to finish this later ...
Outline:
On the other hand, the story to which the header referred, Fears for Army killings fall-out, does genuinely describe a concern about a possible domino effect or, perhaps better in this instance, chain reaction in which the shootings could lead eventually to the collapse of the Stormont government.
So the question really is whether it was a very stupid, tasteless attempt to be clever by pulling the Domino's name into it, or just a very stupid, clueless failure to think, by someone who had composed the line without knowing or remembering enough about the story to be safe in doing so. Either way, it seems a bit of a naff, tabloid-smelling performance from an organization which usually has much higher standards. 4/10 see me.
I should add that either lots of people (including me) moaned, or someone with more clue at the Beeb has had a look, as it has been changed. It now reads "Uncertain days" which is about ten million percent more acceptable, thank you Auntie.
What is this magical power that some people have? Most odd. I am not naming names but there are staff there who honestly do have the ability to brighten up your day by being, I don't know, calm, charming, friendly, nice. Something or other. It just works. It is an amazing gift.
(No. 73 in an Occasional Series of, er, 8,943)
