Posts from 2006

My mailbox is bulging with letters from recent and occasional visitors worried that they may have missed some WordPress themes in the recent blitzkrieg of posts during the ongoing and exciting Theme rotation policy.

Worry ye not. I am meticulously capturing screen dumps of each theme in a Flickr photoset so the poll will be absolutely fair and equitable (and Regulus will win).

The current theme is Banana Smoothie. I wonder if coffee enthusiast and cocktail maker, Jon Emmons, might be voting for this one.

1. Describing your state of mind. I really dont care whether you are happy, sad, somewhere in between or suicidal because your girlfriend dumped you.

2. Describing your state of health. I really don't want to read about your flu like symptoms, your hangover, your runny nose or your migraine headache. Otherwise you will give me one.

3. Telling me what music you are listening to. You like your music. I like my music. We may share some common interests but it really doesn't matter.

4. Playing me your music. It is more likely that we won't share musical tastes so please don't force your music onto me. Particularly, if it is your own work with your mates.

5. Crazy, colourful Flash animations. I may have a headache too. This may make it worse.

6. Dull, boring tedious lists of (del.icio.us) links. At least, annotate them with why they are interesting to you.

7. Pleading and begging for 'Comments' by asking a question at the end of the article. For example, 'So what you all think about Google Operating System ?' or 'So what 4 blogging tools would you pack up and take to a desert island ?'.

Apologies to all you Oracle Bloggers.

Excessive traffic levels to my new Web journal on Blogger appears to have breached the 'tipping point' and tipped it right over the edge.

Blogger is unavailable (again). Two nights running. Hmm.

I continue to be intrigued by this article (I have now read it 67 times and still can't make any sense of it whatsoever). I simply love the title so I thought I would blatantly plagiarise it. I also adore the Anonymous comments of 'Not bad' and 'Nice job'. Damned with faint praise.

Anyway, my shiny new blog in question is over here. Before you gleefully note that I have finally seen the light and have reverted to Blogger, this is simply an experiment to look at the Google Analytics dashboard and various detailed traffic reports. [GA requires Javascript which precludes its use on WordPress.com]. Inevitably, after a separation of six months, Blogger was sulking and unavailable last night.

Q: What is the significance of the name 'Factory51' ? Answers on a postcard to /dev/null.

Another in this occasional but very popular series:

I am doing this in the best interests of Rooney, the England team and 40 million England fans' - Sven Goran Eriksson

...and Alex Ferguson and Manchester United fans can just cross their fingers and hope.

Still, I am looking forward to this TV program tonight.

Theres nowt as queer as folk. I could maintain a blog purely on search terms leading to this dark recess of the blogsphere.

For example: 'Urinals With a View at Stockholm Airport'

Worryingly, Stockholm is precisely where I am heading next week. Thankfully this time, I will be leaving the confines of the airport complex. I think I will abstain from all fluid intake prior to the flight, cross my legs and wait until I get to the hotel.

Not to mention this rather odd blog entry which the author claims I have inspired in some way.

Recently, I give rise to a Andy C going on for fighting jetplane in directive to added increase my own know-how and to disclose some of my acquired experience to others. Women are just as capable of remarkable scientific realization as men, and I am determined to help refute gender stereotypes through my example...

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice ?

Well I can think of one thing. Going on a lovely, romantic weekend city break and getting lost (and wet) in the narrow backstreets of Venice. Then I eventually find an Internet cafe but am horrified to discover that the computer is locked down and I can't install Google Browser Sync. My wife would be absolutely livid.

Google have some innovative products but I honestly can't see this one being 'disruptive'. Blinklist, anyone ?

My humble blog got a mention on the Google front page. Well, my History of Oracle entry appeared in the Blogs section of the Oracle page on Google Finance.

Next stop - Top WordPress.com blogs.

A modern, standards compliant RSS feed. Whatever next. Lets hope people take this opportunity to switch to a full feed.

Odd to compare Google's relative inactivity with all the features, languages, statistics, themes and functionality added to WordPress in the last six months.

Inevitably, Google enters the online spreadsheet market to provide competition for ThinkFree. No charts (yet) and limited invite only but it's coming.

As an aside, I don't use Excel much. My kids are much more proficient at producing pretty, colourful pie charts and histograms than me.

However, I also find it quite staggering that many sensible, intelligent adults spend their lives in Microsoft Excel. A gentleman once emailed me a spreadsheet and I hunted high and low across all tabs for any relevant table data, pretty charts and forumlae.

Finally, I had to admit defeat and called him rather sheepishly. It turned out the 'data' was simply plain, good, old fashioned text (words) in various cells (paragraphs).