[Well, my SEO professor said it was much better than ‘Sports Bars of Europe #7’] Feverishly scoured the Interweb looking for alternative sports bars in Copenhagen. Once I saw the address of my previous haunt, the marvellous ‘Irish Rover’, my mind was instantly made up. Tomorrow morning, when the customer politely asks me what I got up to last night, instead of ‘Caught up with my email and ordered room service’, I can now proffer ‘I spent a glorious, unforgettable night up ‘Jorcks Passage’. ...

Travel Administrator for overpaid and unbelievably stupid IT consultant must be capable of using a corporate travel service to book a flight to Copenhagen from London Heathrow must be capable of reading confirmation email to check flight is actually from LHR and not London City airport must be able to secure approvals for travel booked less than 7 days from departure must be able to verify a flexible ticket has indeed been issued as requested must be able to convince the lady at SAS ticket sales to change a fixed, non-refundable, non-changeable ticket to a different flight at no additional cost Salary - none. Bonus - none although you will receive my eternal thanks and defer my next nervous breakdown. ...

A couple of interesting papers discussing the portability issues and challenges involved when trying to port Drupal to the freely available versions of Oracle and DB2.

Dear Reader My cruel owner got very excited last night when he went to play with his rotating tagline. Instead of his precious blog, much to his surprise, he was presented with this. His reaction to this mundane error was startling. At last ! Look, blog, look at this. 18 months and I’ve finally done it. At last ! We’ve been dugg ! Why did it take them so long to catch on ? Look blog, look. Finally, we’ve been Slashdotted ! The poor old servers at Bluehost don’t know what’s hit them. Thousands of hits per second. Apache is on its knees begging for mercy and more swap space. Why, I bet Matt Eaton will be on the phone any second now. We’ve done it. Technorati Top 100. Blog, look, just look at that screen ! ...

Last night, I happened to catch my wife composing an email. I noticed that when she sent a personal email to her friends, she invariably typed ‘From Norma’ as the subject line. This just seemed really weird to me. I asked her what she thought of the ‘semantic web’ and whether she had given any thought to adding tags to her personal emails such as ‘Norma’ and ‘From’ to help build a valuable taxonomy for her friends. ...

I always smile whenever I receive an email that opens ‘I heard that Stephen Hawksworth Smithers-Jones in ABC division gets…’ Over the years I have heard the following myths about the delights of working in the completely fictional division ABC. Unlimited broadband paid for by the company. Mandatory business class flights on short-haul. Complimentary chauffeur service from your house to LHR/LGW. Expenses automatically paid via psychic medium with no need for receipts. No need for approvals for anything from anyone. Prawn volavons with a garlic and tomato sauce brought to their desks at 12 noon precisely (even when onsite). First shout on the airplane toilet when the seat-belts sign is extinguished. Free laundry and ironing service when onsite for more than one night New laptops every quarter (subject to stringent personal, divisional and corporate performance goals). Every month otherwise. Complimentary invites to the client’s Christmas bash and summer BBQ (free bar and partners included). Secret inclusion in the company car (‘Gold - Level 3’) scheme with access to a brand new model every 3 months. A massive incentive payment to not to desert to main rival during any (rumoured) takeover. 2.6 million shares, 1.2 million stock options and 876,542 FlexPoints. Index linked. Contributory pension scheme; Company contributes 24 times salary. Employee contributes nothing. It always reminds me of the advert: ‘Carlsberg don’t run an IT consultancy, but if they did, it would be like this…’ ...

Thankfully, Scoble has finally found the ‘Disable Snap’ button on his WP dashboard. Only another 641,000 WordPress blogs to go. If you don’t know what I am talking about, just explore Jonathan Lewis' excellent Wordpress blog and see how long you last before exploding. [Hint: hover over a hyperlink] If you can’t be bothered, look here although a screenshot can’t do justice to the mind numbing effect and irritation factor. Tom Raftery also notes the presence of the dreaded Snap preview and asks for opinions. In fact, this post started out as a comment on Tom’s blog but I think this now merits a full-blown rant. ...

Next week, I am bound for the wonderful city of Copenhagen, near Denmark. I normally aim to stay in a hotel close to the client offices. If my commute can be done on foot, I am absolutely delighted. However, on this one occasion, I have elected to stay on the other side of town which, unfortunately, will mean a very long taxi ride over a congested bridge, to cross the city in rush-hour. Once in the morning and again in the afternoon. ...

Despite occasionally enjoying this site and subscribing to this Oracle focused offshoot, I always laid awake at night, endlessly tossing and turning, wondering what this curious and cryptic acronym WTF stood for. I need wonder no more. Technorati have finally put me out of my misery. WTF actually stands for ‘Where’s The Fire ?’ My immediate reaction was ‘WTF ?’ No wonder Technorati killed that product at birth.

I was vaguely aware that NTL merged with Telewest last year but a glossy black/red envelope, announcing the brave new world of ‘Virgin Media’, took me a little off guard this morning. I sincerely hope that my existing Telewest service is not affected by NTL’s recent acquisition of Virgin Mobile. My Telewest broadband service works fine (apart from the occasional self-inflicted glitch with my wireless router). My Telewest email works fine (apart from a recent problem where the POP3 server times out on the first connection and works perfectly thereafter). ...