Ladies and Gentlemen
Please welcome, the latest addition to the effect family, the Doug Burns effect, which has increased traffic to this blog to new, world record highs and, even as you are reading this, is relentlessly propelling this humble blog towards 'Top WordPress.com blogs today'.
Joomla, Chumbawamba, Oompa Loompa
I really like the presentation of Howard Rogers site (and the integration of Forums, Blog and now an Oracle Wiki) and have followed, with interest, the evolution of the site in different formats, and enjoyed Howard's thoughts on various content management technologies over recent months before he finally settled on Joomla.
I am also very impressed by the new look of Niall Litchfield's orawin.info site which also uses Joomla and is a marked contrast (and improvement) from its predecessor. In fact, I just find myself gazing at the desert landscape for minutes on end.
I now find myself struggling to resist a very strong temptation to install Apache, PHP, mySQL and then Joomla on my PC at home just because it would be an interesting exercise.
This activity would also satisfy all the necessary pre-requisites for installing and playing with WordPress.org which is also very tempting.
However, I must be strong and resist. I know what will happen. I will encounter a few problems, solve them by reading the documentation, FAQ, finally get it all working and enjoy a brief period of satisfaction.
Then, knowing that I was able to do it and it worked, I will almost immediately lose interest and fail to really experiment with Joomla and WordPress at all.
I know this because last year, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to get all my vinyl records out of the loft, transfer them to digital format and then dispose of them.
I bought a cable from Tandy to hook up my record player to the PC. I connected it incorrectly and nearly blew my tiny, tinny PC speakers. I then investigated what software packages I would need to convert the large WAV files to MP3 format and label each individual track in ID3 format.
I settled on Audacity which did the job perfectly well and was another high quality, free, OpenSource software package.
Then I converted just one side of one LP - The Wonderful and Frightening World by The Fall. In fact, I didn't even do one side. I just did one song (Lay of the Land) which took a few iterations but finally, I had an MP3 version of the song.
Then, as soon as I knew it could be done, despite investing all this time, I almost instantly lost complete interest in the whole exercise.
I never even converted another song, let alone attacked the pile of singles and LP's. I am slightly worried that this indicates a personality trait that is a cause for concern (i.e. I am a perpetual starter but not a finisher).
The downloads are underway...
The Mayor of Liverpool announced that there would a extraordinary 5 minute silence held across the city tomorrow at 12 noon.
A special religious service will be held at the Anglican Cathedral and the two remaining Beatles will reunite and record a special version of '(Please) Let It Be (disallowed)'.
Robbie Fowler will indicate the start and end of the silence by holding up five fingers. This is the number of European Cups that Robbie Fowler has watched Liverpool win on TV.
Guests of honour at the service will be Boris Johnson, Phil Neville and his father, Neville Neville.
Counselling will be available in job centres across Liverpool for those affected by the tragic events at Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon.
Elsewhere in Manchester, people will not be bleating, moaning and endlessly complaining about being taunted by Robbie Fowler holding up various numbers of fingers to the away section in their recent 3-1 defeat at the Council House.
If you give it, be prepared to take it.