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When we go to Old Trafford, we will take that banner down. This is the last year it will be displayed because we will win.

Roberto Mancini - 6 January 2010

This football club will be without doubt the biggest and best in the world. People dont like to hear it but Ill make no excuses for saying it, and I will never stop saying it because I truly believe it with the resources and capabilities that we have - and when, not if, we're at Wembley having beaten Man United yet again !'

Gary Cook - Mad Hatter Saloon, New York, 22 January 2010.

34 years.

Some of the varied and bizarre keyword searches leading visitors to this site merely confirm this blog is the ramblings of a confused madman. Here is a selection from the start of the year

• 'dyslexic blog' - curiously spelled correctly.
• 'crucifixion blog' - listen United are in debt and suffering a dip in form but don't do anything hasty now.
• 'why linux will never' - come on, you simply can't leave me dangling like that.
• 'breasts chessington' - hoping your mates didn't publish that photo of you, on the log flume, flashing your assets.
• 'brightside software enterprises friendorfoe' - stealth marketing finally starts to pay off.
• 'famous captive animals' - Skippy (the bush kangaroo) and Lassie.
• 'handsworth exoctic escort' - there's absolutely nothing exotic about Handsworth, trust me.
• 'hoax messages on friends reunited' - the ghost of the cruel, heartless Janet Oldsgate strikes again.
• 'how can i get back my lost virginity' - please send an international money order for £250 to PO Box 729.
• 'life has dealt me with a cruel card' - don't tell me, hang on. Was it the '8 of Diamonds' ?
• 'my car keeps cutting out and the bonnet is steaming' - stop blogging immediately and call The AA.
• 'pubsubhubbub is a lot easier than it sounds' - easy for you to say.
• 'the balls of allah explosive underpants' - priceless. What a superlative name for a blog/album/house/dog !
• 'what do you think is the most important decision in our life' - Will these underpants last another day ?
• 'fucking overlapping partitions when im installing linux' - language, Timothy. Nice assumption that the swear word would be included in relevant posts

Sometimes your faith in humanity is restored.

The DEC Haiti appeal has raised over £25 million just from the news coverage alone. This exceeds the £20 million raised by last year's Children in Need campaign which (while still a worthy cause) is mercilessly peddled and trailed by the BBC for two long weeks.

Don't forget to mark your donation as 'Gift Aid' which allows DEC to reclaim 28p for every pound given.

‘Make it look good! Thats not what we think design is. Its not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

So very true. Via a comment on an interesting blog post comparing Tumblr to Posterous.

Ironically, this short post would have been better suited to a one liner, throwaway post correctly labelled and nicely formatted as a quotation on a service like, well Posterous or err, Tumblr but I am trying to consolidate all my efforts into this blog.

This country is shit. The food is shit, the government is shit, the weather is shit, the transport system is shit, education is shit, life is shit, death is shit, I am shit.

As this country grinds to a halt yet again after a light dusting of snow, a timely and apt quote from Arthur Smith whose autobiography 'My Name is Daphne Fairfax' I can highly recommend.

Last year, I visited a customer in Swindon. When I arrived at the office, I noticed some water dripping from the underside at the front of my car. I didnt have time to investigate or get my hands dirty so I subconsciously hoped it was just condensation from the air conditioning unit and tried to forget all about it.

After work, I managed to navigate Swindon's world famous roundabout of roundabouts and finally locate my hotel. When I parked, I noticed the temperature gauge was reading high - very high. Sure enough, I got out of the car to see steam pouring out of the bonnet and was greeted by the familiar smell of anti-freeze.

I still didn't want to get my hands dirty so I opened the bonnet and just stared at the problem, hoping that would miraculously fix it. Then I checked in to my room and rang the AA. I introduced myself to the operator as 'Hi - my name is Norman and I'm an alcoholic.'

The AA man duly arrived before 'The One Show' had even finished. We both stood looking at the engine knowingly before he asked: 'Now, Sir, what seems to be the problem ?'

'Well, I think it's pretty minor and easy to fix. It's just the top hose has perished and needs replacing.'

'Oh I see, Sir. Why do you think that ?'

'Well, when the engine was running, steam was pouring out of the top corner of the radiator - right there where the water hose joins.'

'OK, Sir. Thanks for that. Please could you just turn the engine over for me so I can take a look myself ?'

Engine on. Water and steam billowing out. Smell of anti-freeze. Temperature gauge rising.

'Whoa ! That's fine, Sir. Engine off now, please. Well it's not your hose, Sir. The problem is over here. It's your bleed screw, Sir. Look (flips the screw from the middle of the radiator). This bleed screw has sheared off in half. Quite a common problem on this model. Seen it a couple of times now.'

I felt a little sheepish (but very relieved that a solution was in sight) and the man from the AA, James, filled the radiator with 13 pints of cold water and I followed him to a local garage where we parked and he kindly drove me back to the hotel so I could wash my hands.

The next morning, I walked into the customer's offices to be excitedly greeted with 'Oh good - glad you're here. We have got problems. Serious problems. Performance problems. On production.'

'Ah OK - what seems to be the problem ?' 'Well it's the database, you see. It's the hard disk - 99% busy. Partition 27b on logical volume 7 is overheating. Oh and another thing that might be relevant - the hit ratio is right down at 72.7%'

'OK - thanks for that. Do you think you could just start the system up for me and I'll take a look myself ?'

That was the year that was. Statistics for 2009 with the comparative numbers for 2008 in brackets.

Summary¶

• 29,901 visits (43,732)
• 39,545 page views (63,095)
• 1.32 pages per visit (1.44)
• Average time on site - 48 seconds (54 secs)
• 91.2% new visits (90.6%)

Search Engines¶

• Google - 22,627 (32,830)
• Yahoo - 381 (704)
• Bing - 168 (N/A)
• AOL - 128 (229)
• Ask - 115 (195)

Referrers¶

• identi.ca - 575 (229)
• avc.com - 222 (348) Disqus post linked by Fred Wilson
• google.com - 216 (primarily Reader)
• oracle-base.com - 169 (225)
• disqus.com - 101

Platform¶

• Windows - 81.4% (85.7%)
• Macintosh - 11.9% (10.3%)
• Linux - 5.1% (3.26%)
• iPhone - 0.6% (0.2%)
• iPod - 0.2%
• Symbian, Android, PS3 - < 1%

Browsers¶

• IE - 42.5% (56.5%)
• Firefox - 41.4% (33.6%)
• Safari - 7.2% (6.2%)
• Chrome - 5.4% (N/A)
• Opera - 1.6% (1.3%)

Content¶

• Blog - 3,990
• Review of Virgin Media V+ box - 4,666 (June 2007)
• Virgin Media V+ upgrade - 1,871 (March 2007)
• High Definition TV on Virgin Media V+ - 1,378 (December 2007)
• intelligent automatic follow/block script for Twitter - 1,303 (April 2008)
• pictures of a Virgin Media V+ box - 1,273 (June 2007)
• 25 reasons you should use Disqus - 1,270 (April 2008)
• how I ditched iTunes and started living with Foobar 2000 - 810 (October 2009)
• Beware of Dixons Tax Free shopping - 791 (October 2005)
• Posterous leveraging Tumblr themes - 729 (September 2009)

Posts¶

• 79 (94)

What a terrible holiday period for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

By the time, we had opened all our presents, stuffed ourselves with turkey, fallen out over charades and finally slumped in front of 'Gavin & Stacey', Umar should have been sitting at the right hand of Allah, surrounded by a variety of 57 vestal virgins, clad in white silk lingerie, feeding him grapes, tending to his every whim, straddling... - [That's enough vestal virgin fantasies - Ed].

Even worse, the young man does not have much to look forward to in the coming weeks of 2010.

• His girlfriend is unlikely to accept his perfectly reasonable explanation that the white, sticky stuff coating his boxer shorts and trousers is indeed PETN explosive residue and nothing more sinister after his 20 minute visit to the aircraft lavatory, clutching a copy of 'High Life' magazine.

• Umar Farouk will need nerves of steel and great mental strength to endure the endless questioning and sophisticated interrogation techniques used by the FBI and CIA. Overcoming sleep deprivation, maintaining stress positions for prolonged periods and surviving water boarding are child's play but heaven help him when the US authorities play Metallica, David Gray and Dire Straits 24 hours a day with the volume turned up to 11.

• Poor Umar is unlikely to be able to claim a refund on his underwear from Marks and Spencer. 'I'm sorry, Sir but with no receipt we can only offer you gift vouchers. In any case, these Y-fronts appear to be worn and, worse, slightly soiled.'

• If and when he should finally rediscover a place in his girlfriend's affections (after persuading her that he wasn't pleasuring himself when he placed the blanket over his waist), sexual intercourse is going to be very painful with charred bollocks and a red hot poker that is just like - well - a red hot poker with third degree burns.

People never ask me Hey Norman - where has your glamorous globe trotting lifestyle as a IT consultant taken you this year ?

• January - Bergen
• February - Berne, Blackpool
• March - Madrid, Cairo
• April - Slough, Macclesfield
• May - Lisbon
• June - Warsaw
• July - Brisbane, Perth, Broome, Darwin (holiday)
• August - Brentford
• September - Sunderland
• October - Swindon
• November - Dusseldorf
• December - Kitchen Table