I’ll say that again, Grand Slam.

Very True Mood: jubilant

Well, how about that then?

Very True Mood: jubilant

I met Jeremy Beadle once. He was hosting a charity quiz night that WW sent a team along to.

No one had him on their lists for this year’s Deadpool game.

This morning we launched a revised version of the Visit London home page. Along with a tie up with Trip Advisor, a new Japanese site and a site for the China in London season, as well as lots of behind the scenes improvements, it’s been a really packed January.

One thing that crosses over from behind the scenes to public is the addition of microformats to the site. hCard, hCalendar and hReview are all in use. Whilst hCard was straightforward to implement I found the hCalendar and hReview formats a little tricky to apply to our data. Anyway, install Operator and take Firefox for a whirl on the site and see what you find.

Rugby tomorrow. Oh yes, it’s Six Nations time again.

England beat Australia and France beat New Zealand?

Have I slipped into a parallel universe?

Very True Mood: shocked

Dreadful first half. Much more promising in the second half.

Why is the South Africa match on ITV1 and the Wales and Scotland matches on ITV4? I don’t think I’ve ever watched ITv4 before, the reception is, predictably, only adequate. (I live very close to the Crystal Palace transmitter, is my dreadful digital reception due to interference from analogue signals? In other words will things get better or worse when they switch the analogue signal off?)

Oh, and itv.com need to get a clue. System requirements to watch the match online are:

• Windows
• Internet Explorer
• Flash 8
• Windows Media Player 9

I have all that, but why should I need to use IE and WMP when I have far superior alternatives? This is 2007 and insisting that people use a precise combination of four proprietary technologies is so last century…

Do ITV actually want anyone to watch the Rugby?

Very True Mood: restless

So I’ve managed to have two weeks off work and not make a single blog post. Okay I was out of the country and off the www for three days but still, it’s shocking.

Have I turned into one of those bloggers who only posts to talk about how they’re not posting? Oh dear.

Things I’d like to write

• A collection of the things I discovered during the site redesign project - mostly new (to me) IE bugs and Ajax gotchas and XSLT moans. This is started and every so often I open up the draft and a stare at it a bit.
• The tutorial on HTML tables in the CSS age that I mentioned mumble months back.
• All about my holidays - Lettice and I have managed long weekends in Dublin, Dover (don’t mock, the castle is amazing) and Amsterdam (see below) this summer but I’ve hardly said a word about what we got up to.
• My continuing investigation of social networking sites. I’ve reviewed Bebo and Friendster and have Orkut, Yahoo 360 and probably a few others to come. (I’m not doing MySpace and FaceBook beacuse I was already members there and it wouldn’t be a like-for-like comparison). Also something about Rapleaf/Upscoop.
• Um ….
• … the rest of this list…

Some quickies

The world cup starts today. Wales don’t really stand a chance. Fingers crossed that they don’t fuck up the group matches and finish second behind Australia. Then it’s England or more likely South Africa and that’s probably that.

I’m not sure about the new White Stripes album.

I fixed the broken shower. This makes me feel all manly and capable and productive.

Amsterdam has a ridiculous number of shoe shops - be aware of this fact if you plan to take your wife or girlfriend there. Also, as everyone speaks English there are a number of English language bookshops and even the Dutch ones have English sections, and apart from Waterstones (which presumably is supplied and priced like a UK branch) the prices are good.

Speaking of books, I attended the launch for Stuffed and Starved by my old university mate Raj.

A war between an authoritarian government and a set of independent planets. The central government wins. Our heroes were amongst the fighters on the independent side. Meanwhile a remote planet is devastated by a chemical that causes the population to become wildly violent. Not actually a summary of the background to Serenity but actually the background to the old roleplaying game Living Steel that I picked up from eBay recently.

Oh, I’m flogging some stuff on eBay. Only Star Wars miniatures at the moment but I hope to list a few books and vids plus some other miniatures over the weekend.

Very True Mood: pensive

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

Argh, Croydon was too full of children and chavs and chav children today. I bought a cheap pair of jeans, a cheap t-shirt, a Hellblazer spin-off graphic novel and one of the About Time volumes.

pink_weasel went into a yarn department and walked out empty handed.

Then round to the in-laws for silliness and thai food. Feeling well stuffed right now.

Oh, and let’s not talk about the rugby, okay?

Six Nations time again, so this blog suddenly starts talking about sport.

Most people, including myself, predicted a close match and that’s certainly the case, it’s just not a hugely exciting match so far.

Wales are relying on strength and perserverence whilst Ireland are showing some genuine flair. Which is why Ireland are scoring tries and Wales are scoring penalties.

Fingers crossed for the second half.

[Update] - Second half was certainly more exciting and some very nice bits of play from Wales, but luck, Irish defending and a bit of dodgy refereeing meant they came to nothing. Can’t fault the Irish tries - all the result of thinking fast in the heat of the moment, which is really what Rugby is all about.

Very True Mood: hopeful

This weekend the Frankenstein’s Fumblers played four matches. How many do you think we won? None. Not a single one. One draw and three losses. Touchdowns scored: one. Touchdowns conceeded: seven. Oh dear.

Very True Mood: depressed