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Very True Mood: 
exhausted
exhaustedArchive for March, 2007
May the for…, oh.
Posted on in Films, The World.But why is it opening a day late?
Very True Mood: 
curious
curiousGetting social
Posted on in My Life, WWW.I joined Facebook yesterday, feel free to look me up on there. I liked that it was very easy to import this blog’s RSS feed, I disliked the fact that there’s no “this is what your profile looks like to other people” option.
It got me to thinking about what other social networks I was on. This was easy because LibraryThing has a nifty “Also in” feature where you can add links to your profiles on other networking sites. So, with a bit of cut and paste, here they all are: LiveJournal, Last.fm, MySpace (the shame, the shame), LinkedIn, Flickr, Squirl.
There you go, discover just how bad my taste in books/music/whatever is, add me as a friend, stalk me to your heart’s content.
So, are there any others that are worth joining? You’ll notice that I’m not on any social bookmarking sites. I made a del.icio.us account but couldn’t be bothered to use it (the buggy nature of the tools available for integration with Opera was one factor, not really seeing the benefit of it was another).
I remember, and was even a part of SixDegrees.com which was a social networking site before there were social networking sites. It was rubbish and folded in 2001. Oddly enough being rubbish hasn’t prevented many of the current crop from being highly successful.
Very True Mood: 
thoughtful
thoughtfulAre they trying to make me angry?
Posted on in My Life.Update to the last post.
So after a while, and with it rapidly approaching the time their customer services department go home, I call again. I get the automated welcome message, then I get through, I hear background office noises and someone typing nearby, then I hear the receiever being picked up and put down, click. I try again, same thing. And a third time. On the fourth attempt I get a recorded message telling me that the office is now closed.
Then half an hour later the consignment tracking web page is updated to tell me that the driver called at 12:18pm and as no one was there to take delivery left a card.
So let’s get this straight – I’m waiting in all day from 9am to 5:45pm, no delivery is made, and even if one was attempted no card is left. So this alleged delevery was either made to the wrong address, or not made at all. When I call customer services they can’t get through to the delivery department and so can’t do anything. When I call shortly before the close of work I get cut off three times so that customer services don’t have to speak to me and possibly work a little beyond home time. The web page for tracking my order isn’t updated until seven hours after the delievery was allegedly attempted.
Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to insist on the delivery being made at a time convenient to me – an evening or weekend, and that I don’t care if a manager has to delivery it himself in his own car to make that possible. I will inform the company that I bought the computer from that I will never buy anything from them again because of the quality of service from their couriers. In the future I will inform any other company who use these couriers that I won’t do business with them because of the courier service they use. I will write to the MD of the courier company informing him of the poor service I have received and informing him that I will never use his company and will never buy from any company that uses his company as couriers.
City Link – don’t use them, don’t buy from anyone who uses them.
Very True Mood: restless
restlessI want my new computer…
Posted on in My Life.Me: I was expecting a delivery today by 5:45 and it’s now gone six o’clock.
Customer Services: [takes post code and tracking number] Can you hold for a moment.
[... really bad holding music mixed in with plugs for the company ...]
Customer Services: I’m sorry but I can’t get through to the delivery department at the moment.
Me: Right. [pause] So what can you do for me?
Customer Services: …
Me: Have you been having problems with deliveries in this area today?
Customer Services: I won’t know that until I can speak with the delivery department.
Me: Can you call me back?
Customer Services: [sounding relieved] Yes please. [takes number, hangs up]
WTF? I really hope the delivery depot has blown up, ‘cos otherwise there’s no excuse for missing a 9:00am to 5:45 pm window and then not answering the phone when customer services call on behalf of an irate customer.
Very True Mood: 
irate
irateGo tell the Spartans
Posted on in Films.
I saw 300 yesterday. Is it historically inaccurate? Yes. Does it illogically put modern notions of freedom and democracy into the mouths of the Spartans? Yes. Does it look like a montage from Braveheart, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings? Yes. Does any of that really matter? No, ‘cos it’s just a damn good heroic action movie in its own right.
Everyone seems to want to read some sort of modern political message into this film. As the heroic Spartans are shown both supporting “modern western” values against an eastern religious tyranny and as supporting native defenders against overwhelming foreign invaders, it is hence seen as both supporting the US against Islamic fundamentalism, and as supporting the Iraqi insurgents against the US occupation. Considering these contradictory interpretations it seems that if the makes intended it as a comment on the war against terror/war in Iraq then they didn’t do a very good job of getting their message across.
Screw all that, this is a movie about violence, heroism and warriors. It’s visually stunning and full of blood and guts and thrills. The first battle scene, with the two forces pushing and shoving, shield-to-shield, stabbing and slashing, is one of the best depictions of pre-gunpowder warfare that I’ve ever seen. After that things stray into heroic fantasy territory, rather like a big budget Xena with lots (really, lots) of blood splatter.
Not going to be everyone’s taste, but if you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably love this one.
Very True Mood: 
relaxed
relaxedResult
Posted on in Sport.Wales 27-18 England
This is what happens when I go out and don’t watch the match.
And there I was doing a Google Images search for “wooden spoon” and “whitewash” in order to express myself in the medium of pictures.
Very True Mood: cheerful
cheerfulHTML tables for the post-CSS generation
Posted on in WWW.Recently I had a conversation with a web developer who had never used HTML tables. They’d come into the business after the web standards movement had established itself and had never learnt to use tables. As a consequence they were using divs and CSS floats, etc. to lay out things that could (or even should) have been done with tables and running into the sort of issues you might expect when you use a generic tool to do a specialised job.
So I was wondering if there were other people like this out there, and if so would they benefit from a short tutorial explaining HTML tables from a CSS perspective? Such a tutorial might prove useful for others as well – it might provide an alternative way of approaching the tables-to-CSS transition that some people are still struggling with, and it might help explain just how CSS and tables interact. After all the table elements have their own layout model in the CSS specification and it’s not the easiest thing to grasp.
If I were to write such a tutorial I guess it would fall into two halves. The first half would look at the “simple” table model (table, tr, td and th elements) used for simple data tables and *gasp* layout tables and how their default behaviour compares with the standard CSS box model; whilst the second half would look at the “advanced” table model (caption, col/colgroup and thead/tbody/tfoot plus the accessibility enhancing attributes) and how to build complex data tables.
Anyone interested in seeing this?
Very True Mood: contemplative
contemplativeVery True Music: Tired of Hanging Around - The Zutons
Top 10 (meme redux)
Posted on in Memes, Music.![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
linniekin tagged me to tell you my top 10 songs of all time. Here goes, complete with very naughty links for a few of them.
- And I Think Of You – E Penso A Te – Tanita Tikaram
Slightly odd that from my favouritre singer songwriter I pick a song she didn’t write herself. - Antmusic – Adam & The Ants
- Born Depressed – Drill Queen
Playing this Thursday, I may try to be there depending on this and that. - Ever Fallen In Love? – Buzzcocks
- Londinium – Catatonia
Considering my current job, this is a slightly subversive choice, especially when played with Storm The Palace. - Mis-Shapes – Pulp
- Misterioso – Thelonious Monk
- My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors – Moxy Früvous
- Seed Song – Cerys Matthews
Yes, it’s twee but it’s my favourite song of last year. - Tweeter and the Monkey Man – The Traveling Wilburys
A top ten consisting entirely of Wilburys tracks was a serious possibility.
Post a comment with “top ten” or “top five” and I’ll give you a subject to base your list around.
Very True Mood: chipper
chipperEverything about me(me)
Posted on in Memes, My Life.( That big 'Everything Meme' that everyone's doing this week )
Some definite US-bias in the questions and clearly something is borked with the Socioeconmic section unless everyone taking the test is a lot richer than the the US average.
Very True Mood: cheerful
cheerful