British Airways, shocked at missing out last year’s trophy, have launched a superlative campaign for 2008. Agency: Itchy & Scraatchi. Cost: £25,000 found in a digger after the completion of T5. Gate 3 - Newcastle airport. Together we can work wonders Off to a gentle modest start. Together we can get people talking about T5 That is certainly true. Together we can make T5 world famous Some wag has added a prefix of ‘in’. ...

Five months ago, I experimented with Disqus powered comments when this blog was running on WordPress. The trial was rather short-lived because I was disappointed that Disqus wasn’t able to fully integrate with all the existing blog comments. Importing comments still isn’t possible but Disqus says this feature is being worked on. However, I have decided to reinstate Disqus for the following reasons: Disqus recently added integration with FriendFeed so any contributions I make on Disqus powered blogs will also be visible in my FriendFeed stream. I am encountering an ever increasing number of blogs using Disqus. I am hoping Disqus will help to trigger more comments, interest and interaction on the blog. Disqus provide a nice combination widget providing ‘Popular’, ‘Recent Comments’ and ‘People’. The most recent release of Disqus included a raft of changes including support for Open ID. Disqus is being actively developed and, more importantly, listen to their users. I still have some reservations that the couple of articles with decent comment threads included replies to earlier comments (which are no longer visible) so we are literally starting from zero. However, hopefully some comments will appear soon and the tabs will actually display something ! ...

It’s no good. I simply can’t go on. I can no longer summon up the enthusiasm for blogging. All the warnings from the blogging 101 courses over the years have proven to be very true. I foolishly dipped my toe into Twitter and then FriendFeed but it’s no good I simply can’t go on with this any longer. I can’t bear to miss my children growing up just because ‘Facebook is so last year, Dad.’ ...

Oracle Corporation - Redwood Shores, near California. Oracle today announced the release of a major maintenance release of version 11g of the companies flagship database server product. Charles Phillips took the world by surprise by making a major announcement a full six months ahead of Oracle Open World as he addressed the media (including 17 carefully selected representatives from the blogging community): ‘This release is the culmination of years of engineering effort aimed at delivering deterministic and reliable performance with the very highest levels of throughput. Oracle 11gR7 offers proven scalability for all Oracle applications including universal support for third party (aka legacy) applications while simultaneously reducing the cost of ownership and maximising the return on investment for all our customers.’ ...

‘We were the best team. People say over a season you finish where you deserve to, but we didn’t deserve to finish behind Manchester United. We were everyone’s second team.’ Terry McDermott on Newcastle’s near miss in 1996. Just a reminder of the final League positions for the 1995-1996 season. Team P W D L F A Pts Manchester United 38 25 7 6 73 35 82 Newcastle United 38 24 6 8 66 37 78

The Fall - Hazel Grove Youth Club (1979) - ‘We are The Fall. Rule One: no-one gets on stage. Rule Two: no spitting. Rule Three: no requests.’ The Chameleons - Salford University (1984) - The Manchester gigs just seemed so much more manic. The Fall - Stockport College (1979) - Not so much a stage as a large step. Standing three feet away from a snarling Mark E. Smith and his carrier bag. The Chameleons - Gallery (1982) - Notable for a gigantic leap by skinhead from the gallery onto the dance floor. When we left, we found him lying semi-conscious on the pavement outside. The Fall - Manchester Poly (1980) - Compered by the late John Peel. Smith waded into the crowd to sort out a brave individual who doused him in lager. The Smiths - Brixton Academy (1986) - Little did we know it but turned out to be the final Smiths show. Morrissey walking on wielding ‘The Queen is dead’ placard. Pure theatre. The Smiths, The Fall and New Order - G-Mex (1986) - If The Chameleons had been present, my life would have been complete. The Fall - Walthamstow (1986) - ‘Bend Sinister’ tour with Brix and two drummers. So fantastic we went to Woolwich the next night. U2 - Warwick University Arts Centre (1981) - U2 blown away by an unknown support band; ‘Hi - We’re The Chameleons and we’re from Manchester.’ The Chameleons - Shepherd’s Bush Empire (2001) - Reunion gig - After 14 long years, as if they had never been away. The Fall - Lyceum Ballroom (1984) - sad to say, I went on my own and taped this show with a cheap Saisho walkman from Dixons.

London, near England - 28 February 2008 Arsenal Football Club were left reeling following another hammer blow to their chances of winning the Premiership. Last night, the French international defender and club captain, William Gallas was sectioned under the mental health act. A spokesman commented: ‘This is an unusual step but the action was necessary for the safety of the individual and those around him.’ Investigations revealed that William Gallas’ mental fragility was long standing and deep rooted. Our intrepid reporter tracked down his parents in Asnières-sur-Seine: ...

The forthcoming release of WordPress 2.5 was one reason I was hesitant to move to Habari. However, having seen a demo of the revised dashboard in WordPress 2.5, all I can say is I am glad I made the move and didn’t wait. While I am merely an end user (not a UI designer), Michael Heilemann articulates many of my views on the deficiencies and usability of the Wordpress dashboard in this detailed analysis. ...

‘Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it.’ The migration of this blog from WordPress to Habari is mostly complete. I had a few unexpected problems with a significant number of comments and a handful of posts that contained mismatched HTML tags and didn’t display the corresponding page at all. So I had to painstakingly review every single post with comments and correct the HTML by hand. ...

I simply couldn’t resist the temptation any longer so this blog is now running on Habari because: The Habari Administration screens look like they have been designed rather than evolved. The WordPress import utility works brilliantly. Michael C. Harris created a TinyMCE plugin for Habari - literally minutes after my initial enquiry. Most of the required functionality (Google Analytics, Feedburner, Akismet, Sitemap) is available as plugins for Habari. Michael Harris also helped me configure rewrite rules so my existing WordPress permalink structure is retained. A gentleman called Harry from London developed this attractive Habari theme.