Oh yes, we (meaning the weavers’ team, “Looming Lovelies”, plus ringers such as myself) won. Our ringers were better than their ringers?

Five rounds of ten questions each. TV and Film: 9/10. Fashion and Textiles: 6/10. Music: 9/10. True or False: 6/10. Picture round on famous dogs: 7/10.

(Oh, and yes the numbers on a roulette wheel do add up to 666, and yes the easy way to work that out if you don’t know it as trivia is that it’s 37×18. And if anyone who reads this needs that explaining I will, but really I shouldn’t need to.)

Then there was getting home which involved cajoling a drunk weasel onto a bus and into a kebab shop for surprisingly good chips (but was she too drunk to remember that kebab shop two doors down from us also had pubpbyngr rpynvef on its menu? Could be dangerous…). Drinking is now banned in the Weaseldome for the immediate future - this applies to me as well for reasons of solidarity and beer gut reduction.

It’s Friday. Thank the mythological deity figure.

Very True Mood:  jubilant

Four posts in one day and it’s only two o’clock - can you tell that I don’t have a lot to do at work today? Mostly because I don’t really dare touch anything until the java boys (like java man but less hairy) have stopped beating the database with large sticks.

Anyway, want to see one of my favourite web sites? Dino Directory at the NHM is a very neat little site. A database of dinosaurs with a nice web front end that allows users to search and sort the data by a wide range of criteria - the large graphics lead novice users into a simple search by body shape function, whilst more advanced functions such as grouping by geographic and chronological proximity are readily available for more adventurous users. And then the results link through to the NHM’s picture library which is another hidden gem in itself.

It’s a shame that the front end coding isn’t as nice as the information architecture. Looking at the code it seems that the header and footer were created by someone who knows what they’re doing - CSS layout, accessible, etc. Whilst the actual Dino Directory code in the middle is tables based and full of errors. Shame.

There’s also an RSS feed to keep user up to date with the latest dinos to be added. This week saw the addition of the very cute sounding Wannanosaurus. Oddly, this seems to be the only RSS feed on the whole NHM site.

Anyway, here’s a lovely site based on a great idea and well implemented (just needs a little work to make it standards compliant and accessible), but… it’s very Web 1.0 isn’t it? How could one jazz this up to make it Web 2.0? Define a dinosaur microformat and provide an API to allow dino data to be reused on other sites? Allow users to drag and drop dinosaurs into a personal folder and then play top trumps with other users? Or, if it ain’t broken, don’t try to make it buzzword compliant?

Very True Mood:  contemplative

There are no good mother’s day cards. They are all either revolting twee, or sickeningly soppy, or resoundingly unfunny.

Very True Mood:  frustrated

… that creationists couldn’t get their feet any further down their throats, they come up with a real gem. Via Pharyngula, we learn that the according to the big brains at Answers in Genesis, only creatures with red blood are alive. Good one guys.

Very True Mood:  giggly

Best headline in this morning’s Metro was “Man Killed by Gimp Suit”. I suspect Auton involvement but the newspaper gave some mundane explanation instead - UNIT misinformation in full swing.

According to the SFSFW Awards I’m in a minority these days for preferring Wargames Illustrated to Miniatures Wargames. I subscribe to the former but only pick up occasional issues of the latter. Yesterday, I bought the latest issue for the article on the conquest of the Canary Islands - Conquistadors versus Cavemen. I’m a bit miffed that the article (billed as part one) was just two pages long and did nothing more than give the geographical description of the islands.

There’s a new wargames mag - Battlegames - but its not being distributed to newsagents and whilst I can subscribe or order a sample issue online, there’s nothing like being able to flick through a copy to help decide whether it’s a worthwhile read (which clearly I should have done in WHSmiths yesterday prior to buying Miniatures Wargames). With luck, someone will be selling copies at Salute.

Apart from WI, and with Harbinger having folded the magazines I either subscribe to or buy every issue of are:

• Prehistoric Times
• Warpstone
• Ragnarok
• SFX
• Doctor Who magazine
• TV Zone

That doesn’t seem like too many (especially as some of them are published rather infrequently), so why do I never seem to have time to read them properly?

Very True Mood:  complacent

So yesterday pink_weasel went to a car show and took lots of pictures of her flowery dress reflected in shiny chrome bits, and then brought the lovely and glamourous puddingcat home.

In the evening there was miss_newham’s birthday party at which I met several people in the flesh instead of online for the first time. Oh, and there was booze, which explains this and this and this morning the council are digging up the road right outside our window, which is not that good for the whole hangover thing.

And I wish I had something interesting and though provoking to say but that would clearly be far too much to hope for.

Very True Mood:  drained

Got an interesting bit of junk mail this morning (okay, not really interesting, but the only thing in the letter box of any sort). And after checking the small print to make sure it wasn’t sponsored by anyone I work for…

Discover Norwood

Norwood is one of South London’s better kept secrets. It is a pleasant blend of the leafy ease of Dulwich to the east and the multi-cultural vibrancy of Brixton to the north, yet with its own very distinctive character

This being a Lambeth Council production Norwood really means West Norwood (and Tulse Hill) ‘cos most of Upper Norwood (aka Crystal Palace) and all of South Norwood (aka a dump) are part of Croydon not Lambeth.

Best bit for me is this write up –

We are the newest ‘IT Thing’ thing to hit London. Included in our first London outlet is the ‘Internet Hub’. As well as this, we sell and service all manner of IT and computing products.

Um, no you don’t, ‘cos you still haven’t finished refitting the shop downstairs (for yes, these are our neighbours) and actually opened for business yet.

Ah, poor old West Norwood, I love you really but I just can’t stop taking the piss.

Very True Mood:  cynical

Back to work today, not sure I should have. I was feeling fine this morning but by the time I came home I was coughing non-stop and this evening has been no fun at all. Tried to get an appointment with my GP but they only offer (a) appointments two-three weeks in advance or (b) appointments on the same day if you manage to actually get through at 8:30am. Thank you Tony Blair with your stupid promises for breaking an already creaky system. So tomorrow I’m phoning at 8:30am and then seeing what happens.

Very True Mood:  exhausted

( it's real big... )

Very True Mood:  lethargic