Recent Posts

London - 5 November 2007

The football world was left reeling after Norman Brightside was fired last night. The long serving manager of Whiteside Wanderers was summarily dismissed when the club released a terse statement on their website.

'36 points. That's rubbish. You're fired.'

After a pre-season of great promise, big money transfers and high expectations from fans, Whiteside Wanderers have endured a poor start to the season and are positioned second from bottom after a string of inconsistent performances and bad results.

Brightside defended his record: 'Don't look at me. Look at the players. They just haven't performed. The team has continually been wracked by injuries (Scholes, Rooney), suspensions (Ronaldo, Carsson) and loss of form (Berbatov).'

The Chairman offered a slightly different view: 'The manager's lost it. He has made some bizarre selections (Noble, McShefferey). His stubborn refusal to even contemplate the purchase of a Liverpool or Manchester City player was the last straw. I negotiated a deal with Liverpool to get Gerrard for £56 million but he refused. The man is a stubborn idiot and is living in a fantasy world.'

Brightside was left fuming at claims he had 'lost the dressing room'. 'That's absolutely absurd. The dressing room is on the right just after the toilets. I can find it with my eyes shut.'

Brightside was coy about his plans for the future and refused to confirm or deny rumours of a £7.50 pay-off. The tabloid press are convinced he will team up with Sammy Lee and take over at managerless Stevenage, a Subbuteo team languishing in the Ryman Premier League.

'Some think Stevenage would be a retrograde step but there's great potential there. Besides, Sammy wants to go somewhere where the players look up to him.'

Q: Who on earth could manage to screw up a Cup draw involving just four teams ?

A: The Scottish FA.

Reminds me of a funny 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' sketch where the draw is made for the FA Cup Final.

'Number 2 - Arsenal ...will play

Number 1 - Liverpool and that completes the draw for the FA Cup Final. '

Tumblr update is imminent. First impressions are excellent.

Timestamps. Archives. Tags. Channels. Markdown. No comments though.

I was rather hoping Disqus would be a 100% plug-in replacement for the woefully inadequate coComment so I could simply track all the comments I leave on assorted blogs and easily monitor other comment threads of interest.

An RSS feed of such comment activity would be an ideal element to feed into the Tumble dryer.

Disqus launched yesterday and as it was written in Django, looks OK and isn't too invasive or distracting (c.f BlogRush), I have enabled the WordPress plugin on this blog.

Comments can now be threaded (just like serendipity) and (thankfully) you don't need to register with Disqus to leave a comment.

Comments can be rated and the comments are hosted on Disqus forums.

Paul Stamatiou wrote a excellent review about the features in Disqus and Techcrunch also reviewed the software.

I have some minor concerns:

• I currently use Spam Karma to handle comment spam on this blog. SK2 is unbelievably efficient and far superior than Akismet. I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of comments and trackback spam that got past SK2 so I have some concerns about reverting to an inferior spam filtering solution.
• Until every blog in the world integrates Disqus, I still won't be able to track all of my comments. Still, I am still waiting for the world to universally adopt Emacs and Supercite so email works properly so I guess I can live with that.
• Although you are supposed to be able to quickly and easily import Disqus comments back into WordPress, I need to check how this is implemented.
• It is not clear whether Disqus will currently work on hosted WordPress.

Obviously, the 'Recent Comments' widget is now defunct so I replaced that with a RSS widget for the new Disqus Comments RSS feed. I'll try Disqus out for a while as an experiment but I guess the most important and valuable feedback will be from readers of this blog. Without you, I am nothing, a lone voice in the darkness, a blog in isolation.

So if you have any thoughts, just leave a comment.

On May 21 2007, this newspaper published an article that was somehow misconstrued by some idiotic readers to imply that the funds raised to assist with the search for the missing girl, Madeleine McCann, were being misused by Gerry and Kate McCann to fund baby sitting services and countless bottles of Rioja (Gran Reserve 1987 vintage) for British holidaymakers (aka Tapas Bar 7) in sunny Portugal.

In the light of several hundred complaints from outraged readers and the threat of legal action from the McCann's Press Office (which is absolutely not funded from the Find Madeleine fund whatsoever), this newspaper is pleased to offer a full and unequivocal apology to Gerry and Kate McCann on today's front page.

After clarifying the original story with the unnamed sources, this esteemed organ will now restate the facts of the matter once and for all.

Not one penny of the funds raised (currently standing at over 1 million pounds) have been misused in any way, shape or form by the McCanns.

We know this for a fact because the money in question has, in fact, been used to make mortgage payments on the McCann's 5 bedroom detached property in Leicester, near Rothley.

Sadly, the worlds first and most prolific blogger, the Reverend Robert Shields has passed away in America aged 89. Shields was the author of the worlds longest diary consisting of a staggering 37 million words.

Shields was truly the world's first blogger with his first recorded entry in April 1927 beating Dave Winer by 3 months. Nor was Robert Shields afraid of including trivia and useless information in his journals. For example, how many blogs (or Tumblelogs for that matter) record blood pressure readings (Shields despised silly mood emoticons), make any effort to fastidiously record every single visit to the lavatory (Shields had dozens of imaginative ways to describe the act of urination) or have the thoughtfulness to detail every single piece of junk mail ever received.

Lazy, modern bloggers (with the possible exception of Robert Scoble who, coincidentally, was named after Shields) everywhere should hang their heads in shame when they learn of Shield's commitment to the blogging cause; Shields never slept for more than 2 hours to ensure he could capture his dreams.

Here is just one example of his exceptional writing:

'9.35-9.40 I cleaned the cerumen from both my ears and from both hearing aids.'

Unfortunately, although Shields has left the 91 boxes containing his life's work to a university, he has stipulated that the full contents can not be published until 2049.

I will leave the final words to the great man himself.

'It is an uninhibited diary, It is spontaneous. I type it as it comes, I don't correct it and I don't edit it.'

Successfully upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 in four clicks using the excellent WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

Note to self: Dust off CV and apply for this job on Monday morning.

Any client who is interested in people running projects from cradle to grave' intrigues me.

I am bored of tormenting myself, conjuring up full blown blog posts, pouring over non-existent Adsense revenues and analyzing traffic statistics so I have started a Tumblelog.

There is something very appealing about Kottke's definition of a Tumblelog as 'a quick and dirty stream of consciousness.'

A Tumblelog can be a short, snappy blog and can also aggregate different RSS feeds (Google Shared Stuff and Items, del.icio.us, last.fm, Flickr and even this blog). Why, Tumblr even has built-in support for quotes.

However, undoubtedly the best feature is the endless scope for puns in the non rotating taglines:

• Rowche Tumble
• Are you ready to Tumble ?
• Tumble Dryer
• Tumble in the jungle
• A bit of rough and Tumble
• Don't mumble, Tumble !

I have already contacted Davidville to enquire about any openings in sales and marketing.

Another in this award winning and ever popular series.

'Hello John. Can I ask you a quick question ?'

'Well I'm onsite at a Red account in deepest Kazbakistan about to go into a crisis meeting. But, as it's you (again). Go on. Fire away.'

'Well I have a really strange problem. I'm currently at Asda and I can't get...'

'Yeah. Hurry up. What's the actual problem ? Installation, performance, database, network, security, clustering, defect, LDAP - what is it ?'

'Well it's an unusual one. It's the milk.'

'The milk. What on earth are you talking about ? Did you really say milk ?'

'Well, as I said, I'm currently in Asda and there is no milk.'

'For Christ's sake, you're calling to ask me a question about your grocery shopping.'

'Yeah. I really need milk and there isn't any.'

'Well obviously all the milk is sold out. Get fully skimmed or get 2 pints from the newsagent or the Total garage.'

'But the milk isn't actually sold out. That's the weird thing.'

'Well if it isn't sold out, why is there no milk there ?'

'That's why I am calling you. Although there's no milk, there is a sign on the refrigerator where the milk should be and the sign mentions you.'

'Mentions me. What do you mean - the sign mentions me ?'

'Shut up and listen'

'Due to circumstances beyond our control, the milk chiller is currently out of service. We hope to have the unit working again as soon as poss-'

'Look - can you hurry up ? The council of war is starting'

'Well just shut up and listen then.'

'We hope to have the unit working again as soon as possible. We sincerely apologise to all our loyal customers for the inconvenience caused. Until then, may we suggest you ask a colleague for advice.'