Author: Tom Coates

Don’t get tense, kids. If you are seeing some strangeness on the page, then it’s just because Meg and I are busy playing “push the envelope” with Blogger.

I give up. The weather is appalling (thunder and lightning – must turn off computer), it’s too late to actually get anything useful done. I’m not going to go to the cinema. So I’m off to see Meg and Luke to slob, watch the finalé of Big Brother and drink myself to death.

Strange messages on beebo.org’s ratings: “In one or two days, this will all be fixed, and better. –M.” Consider breath baited. Sad, but true.

Today was supposed to be my day of film with me watching The Cell, Shaft and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? in one long sitting. Ideally with people, but not necessarily. It’s 5pm and I haven’t got my shoes on yet.

Ha ha. There’s this really funny site all about writing unmaintainable code that I found via In the groove. It’s so funny. I love it. Particularly the bit about using ‘i’ for non-int variables. And that wonderful bit about global names:

“Declare a global array in module A, and a private one of the same name in the header filefor module B, so that it appears that it’s the global array you are using in module B, but it isn’t. Make no reference in the comments to this duplication.”

OK. I admit it. I didn’t understand a single word of the whole site. Not one word. They might just as well have been speaking with a Welsh accent for all the sense it made to me. I just wanted to be a proper geek – just for a moment… <Sigh>.

The post that should have been an e-mail:

I finally found >access afr through weblogs.com. Grant Cook, stand up and be counted!

1. Please no more 1Mb Flash files. Please god. No. They’re lovely, but my connection is a bit … wobbly.
2. Love the site. Start smoking again immediately. Lot’s of people tell you it’s bad for you. They are insane. Ignore them. They drink and take anti-psychotics (when they remember).
3. You need to change your listing on the blogger directory, because at the moment it doesn’t go to the right URL.

[To camera: Do you want to make a post that should really have been an e-mail? Just do it! And then tell me about it.]

Speaking of Blogger, does anyone want to try and explain to me how and why I went to this URL [http://www.froschi.blogger.com/] and what the hell it is for?

Blogger links to the Evening Standard article.

Refutations:

• Cocky Bastard and Mom Blog are not based in the UK.
• Many of the sites in the Evening Standard article have been around for ages, and are popular and well known. If you want to find out more about UK webloggers, then go to Jen’s GBlogs page.
• The Sun is a rampagingly right wing paper and should not be trusted to give a fair appraisal of the functioning of the government. The World Bank gave the government’s handling of the economy their equivalent of a gold star just a few months ago. Many things they may be, but unprofessional and incompetant with money they are not.
• If tax revenue goes down then public services have to have less money. That has to be obvious, right? The fact that other countries may spend less on public services, or get their tax revenues from different things does not undermine the fact that less money = less spending (unless you’re the US of course).
• “The British” didn’t decide to follow the French example in the fuel protests. Certain members of certain British industries followed the French example. Most of the people who support the protests haven’t yet stopped to consider why the most recent price rises have taken place (OPEC) or what would happen to income tax or public services (for example) if the duty was cut.
• S Club 7 release their most musically accomplished single to date? No comment
• Some people do not think that the criteria for winning awards should be financial success, but should be based upon criteria of quality. Can you imagine automatically giving the Best Picture Oscar to the film that did the most business at the box office? This is Child of Thatcher stuff!
• Copyrights, while being troubling at times, basically allow people to make money out of their ideas without having them stolen by other companies and or individuals. This allows people to make a living out of their creativity. It’s ironic. I’m much more for sharing money and keeping ideas.