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Joomla, Chumbawamba, Oompa Loompa

I really like the presentation of Howard Rogers site (and the integration of Forums, Blog and now an Oracle Wiki) and have followed, with interest, the evolution of the site in different formats, and enjoyed Howard's thoughts on various content management technologies over recent months before he finally settled on Joomla.

I am also very impressed by the new look of Niall Litchfield's orawin.info site which also uses Joomla and is a marked contrast (and improvement) from its predecessor. In fact, I just find myself gazing at the desert landscape for minutes on end.

I now find myself struggling to resist a very strong temptation to install Apache, PHP, mySQL and then Joomla on my PC at home just because it would be an interesting exercise.

This activity would also satisfy all the necessary pre-requisites for installing and playing with WordPress.org which is also very tempting.

However, I must be strong and resist. I know what will happen. I will encounter a few problems, solve them by reading the documentation, FAQ, finally get it all working and enjoy a brief period of satisfaction.

Then, knowing that I was able to do it and it worked, I will almost immediately lose interest and fail to really experiment with Joomla and WordPress at all.

I know this because last year, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to get all my vinyl records out of the loft, transfer them to digital format and then dispose of them.

I bought a cable from Tandy to hook up my record player to the PC. I connected it incorrectly and nearly blew my tiny, tinny PC speakers. I then investigated what software packages I would need to convert the large WAV files to MP3 format and label each individual track in ID3 format.

I settled on Audacity which did the job perfectly well and was another high quality, free, OpenSource software package.

Then I converted just one side of one LP - The Wonderful and Frightening World by The Fall. In fact, I didn't even do one side. I just did one song (Lay of the Land) which took a few iterations but finally, I had an MP3 version of the song.

Then, as soon as I knew it could be done, despite investing all this time, I almost instantly lost complete interest in the whole exercise.

I never even converted another song, let alone attacked the pile of singles and LP's. I am slightly worried that this indicates a personality trait that is a cause for concern (i.e. I am a perpetual starter but not a finisher).

The downloads are underway...

The Mayor of Liverpool announced that there would a extraordinary 5 minute silence held across the city tomorrow at 12 noon.

A special religious service will be held at the Anglican Cathedral and the two remaining Beatles will reunite and record a special version of '(Please) Let It Be (disallowed)'.

Robbie Fowler will indicate the start and end of the silence by holding up five fingers. This is the number of European Cups that Robbie Fowler has watched Liverpool win on TV.

Guests of honour at the service will be Boris Johnson, Phil Neville and his father, Neville Neville.

Counselling will be available in job centres across Liverpool for those affected by the tragic events at Old Trafford on Sunday afternoon.

Elsewhere in Manchester, people will not be bleating, moaning and endlessly complaining about being taunted by Robbie Fowler holding up various numbers of fingers to the away section in their recent 3-1 defeat at the Council House.

If you give it, be prepared to take it.

Yesterday, I had a credit card transaction rejected which is always a little embarrassing. Thankfully, this was over the phone and not in a shop where embarrassed people would quickly avert their gaze, thinking Poor man, hes probably lost his job. Just look at his clothes.

Normally, such rejections happen because the card number or expiry date was incorrectly transcribed and are quickly resolved - 'No I said 6079 at the end'.

However, this wasn't the case on this occasion, so I called the credit card company to check my card hadn't been skimmed and someone was blowing my outrageously high credit limit (that I never asked for or wanted but was given to me by the credit card company, funnily enough) on holidays, fast cars, gambling, online retailers, weekend breaks in Prague and expensive gadgets.

Firstly, we have to dance the security dance where I am asked to confirm my full name, address, postcode, date of birth, my mother's maiden name, the names of all my tropical fish, favourite United player and my best album of all time.

Then I am asked for the fourth and seventh letters of my password 'without divulging the complete password'. For some reason, I find this incredibly difficult. I can type the password in seconds but, to satisfy this request, I always have to write the password out on paper and slowly identify the requested characters (or digits). Then I have to eat the paper which means I am unable to speak properly for 90 seconds.

So, let the straightforward enquiry begin. Hang on - wait a minute. The agent is sensing a cross-sell opportunity.

'Are you interested in transferring your balance to us, interest free for 6 months ?'

'No thanks. I only have one credit card'.

A schoolboy error. The agent has a scripted 'retort' ready for this very weak 'objection'.

'But the 6 months, interest free transfer needn't be from another credit card. You can transfer your ABC balance to your current account, interest free for 6 months'

'No. Thanks. I don't have a current account with ABC. Now about this rejected trans-'

Another fatal error. Again, I have said too much and the agent has another 'retort' ready.

'The current account doesn't have to held with ABC. Any bank account will do'

'No thanks. I do not want to use the 6 months interest free transfer offer for any credit card for any bank account now or at any time in the future.'

Finally. But wait. The agent (script) has something else to add.

'Is is all right to call you Norman today ?'

'Yes.'

Next time, I swear I will reply 'No. I really would prefer it if you called me Janet.'

And so, finally, to the rejected transaction. It transpires that a sophisticated, pattern matching computer program using the latest AI techniques detected that this transaction (Flowers for the wife) contravened the normal pattern of usage (No flowers for the wife. Ever.) and flagged it up as potentially suspect.

Alternatively, "Computer says 'No'."

The credit card company immediately tried to contact me on the phone to verify the validity of the transaction. However, as they were unable to reach me on the phone, they rejected the authorisation and placed a complete block on the credit card. I explained that I was probably on the phone at that time to the merchant desperately trying to explain why the transaction had been rejected.

So, everything was finally resolved, and the agent kindly unblocked the card, I thanked them for their vigilance in the ongoing fight against crime and everything was back to normal.

Well, almost everything. When I got home at night, I received a deeply disturbing telephone phone call from an AI automaton who announced

'This is a call from ABC credit cards about a transaction on your account today (normal female voice). MR NORMAN BRIGHTSIDE (abnormal, very scary, synthesized male robotic voice).

So, I duly input my date of birth in the wrong format twice and then get told off by a robot.

'Sorry - that is incorrect. Please call customer services for assistance'.

Mark Burgess once introduced Here Today with these words.

I just read on The Chameleons message board that Mancunian musician, Bryan Glancy, died at the weekend. I didn't know Bryan Glancy. I never met Bryan Glancy. I just happened to see him supporting The Chameleons in Camden back in November 2002. Just very sad for his friends and family to think of another young person gone before his time.

Elsewhere, four young people are convicted of manslaughter (not murder) for kicking a man to death in a random attack on London's South Bank.

A person isn't safe anywhere these days.

Amazing news - whales have feelings and can understand humans.

How a wave of human compassion will have comforted the whale in his final hours

'He'd have known we're trying to help but it couldn't save him'

But what was really amusing about the bottlenose whale stranded in the River Thames story was that a friend recently returned from a holiday in Canada where he went whale watching. He was unlucky and saw absolutely nothing apart in a whole day apart from the bobbing waves. He then returns home to London to find one sitting on his doorstep.

GreatNews, in fact. I just discovered this RSS reader which is a Windows desktop RSS reader but can synchronise with Bloglines for Web based access.

GreatNews is fast, has a clean logical interface, with an integrated browser, highly configurable (2 or 3 pane display), supports newspaper style for reading groups, drag'n'drop for organising folders, auto feed discovery and perhaps most importantly, displays as much content as possible (no ads), enabling you to quickly focus on what is of interest.

You can't display the feeds into your preferred order but there is a 'Most Visited' view which amounts to the same thing.

So, I have exported all my feeds from Newsgator and will be trying out GreatNews as my RSS reader now.

Tonights Money Programme ( The world according To Google) on BBC2 was about the history, the success and the possible future diversification of the popular search engine, Google.

Now I use Google a lot and to me it is an excellent, fast, free service. I can hardly ever recall clicking on an ad that was presented alongside a search (even if I am actually looking to buy something).

I use Google Groups for searching for technical information as someone, somewhere at sometime has probably encountered the same problem as me and better, someone, somewhere at sometime has probably, kindly, provided the solution.

I don't particularly care if they track all my searches ever, aggregate them or give them to the UK authorities.

I am quite interested in innovative developments like Google Earth. I have a Google Mail account which I don't currently use but might do in the near future to replace my spam ridden Yahoo! email account.

I can remember when AltaVista was the most powerful, standard choice for a search engine and they were discussing a flotation. I respect Google, being founded by two students, coming from nowhere? to a position of virtual monopoly, immense power and wealth.

I don't care if Google staff are all geeks with 5 million dollar houses and rocket lava lamps in the Google colours scattered everywhere.

What I do care about is people continually discussing 'Google O/S'.

Google have a suite of powerful software applications. Google may have (ambitious plans) for an operating system. Google does have links with other computer companies that develop operating systems (Sun Microsystems).

IBM develop operating systems (AIX). Hewlett-Packard develop operating systems. Microsoft develop operating systems. Linux in all its various flavours is an operating system.

However, the last time I looked, Google does not have an operating system.

The BBC have a program called Pay off your mortgage in 2 years. Tonights episode featured a couple from Cornwall with a mortgage of 90,000 GBP.

The program is moderately interesting for the various ideas people come up with to earn extra income (not for the scrimping, living off baked beans and giving up alcohol).

However, the program is spoiled by some very basic flaws.

Firstly, any extra income seems to be tax-free. If they did raise 45,000 GBP in one year, the Inland Revenue would demand a significant element. It's a shame but it's the law, you see.

The mentor repeatedly refers to his very clever 'accumulator principle' which involves simply multiplying a weekly income of 'X' by 104 to determine the additional income over two years. He (and the participants) seems to view this basic mathematics as some startling revelation.

Secondly, the mentor also dangles the thought of all the mortgage interest payments saved as an incentive to realise a livelong dream.

For example, he told tonight's couple that if (surely when) they eventually do achieve their goal and pay off their mortgage of 90,000 GBP, this would free them from the shackles of 22 years of interest payments totalling 76,000 GBP.

The couple could then use this 'money' to buy a large, light, airy studio for painting and a home office.

The couple looked genuinely astounded and delighted. They did not have the basic common sense to understand that the very intelligent mentor had neglected to point out one important fact; to obtain this dream studio, they will either have to raise a further 76,000 GBP (which might take a while) or take out another mortgage.

Oh, the del.icio.us irony of it all.

You spend 3 months watching your WordPress statistics bumbling along the horizontal axis close to zero.

Some traffic dribbles in. The graph accelerates into 10s of hits daily. You feel better. You will persist with this blogging experiment for a little longer.

At this rate, it may soon be time to consider a proper blog using WordPress.org and Adsense to make the millions that eluded me during the dot com boom.

Then those pesky developers from WordPress.com alter the Y-axis dynamically, on the fly without even asking so the statistics now start at 40 and the graph looks just the same.

Life is cruel.

You can save lots of time and get even more things done by checking in online for your flight at www.britishairways.com.

You can even change your allocated seat (sometimes) which is useful as BA will always allocate an aisle seat if your preference is window and vice-versa. Version 2.0 of the BA site (June 2006) will even include a brief description of your prospective neighbour in order to help you with this difficult choice.

You can also print out your boarding card on your 12 year old dot matrix printer. This means you can skip the short queue at the BA self service kiosks and immediately proceed to the lengthy queue for the curiously misnamed 'Fast Bag Drop'.

However, a word of caution to all you GTD'ers. Wait for the printout to fully emerge and carefully check the output before leaving the BA web site. Secondly, always, always click the 'Click here to print boarding card' icon to avoid potential embarrassment.

Do not be tempted to think that because you work in IT, you know better and it will be far quicker to simply right-click 'Print This Page' to save another 2.4 milliseconds in an effort to get things done.

Trust me. I did it and because I don't know what a 'frame' is, I found myself presenting a rather unusual boarding pass at the British Airways desk that simply said:

"Click the 'Print Boarding Pass' button (you idiot) to print"