Cooked in a creamy sauce and mildly spiced in a special way

From our local takeaway menu. File under ‘not quite right’.

There’s a pro-creationism, anti-science movie called Expelled, in which a number of prominent scientists were conned into providing interviews by the producers describing a very different and more balanced movie. One of these scientists, PZ Myers, tried to attend a screening and was turned away on instructions from the producers, but there’s a twist. To see why this was as about a perfect own goal as can be, read his account of the evening.

Very True Mood: chipper

Lettice and I went down to Brighton yesterday to enjoy a bit of sunshine and sea air. That all went according to plan - some photos are on Flickr. Also, a fabulous lunch at AlFresco and a very good haul from the second hand bookshops and comic shops (including the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier). Can all weekends be like this, please?

Very True Mood: content

‘Darkest ever’ material created.

Goths rejoice. Except being Goths, they don’t.

85% Dennis Kucinich
82% Chris Dodd
82% Barack Obama
81% Mike Gravel
80% Joe Biden
79% Hillary Clinton
79% Bill Richardson
78% John Edwards
38% Rudy Giuliani
29% John McCain
25% Ron Paul
25% Mitt Romney
21% Mike Huckabee
16% Tom Tancredo
11% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

The past couple of columns extolling the virtues of Firefox were enough to tell that he was ‘one of us’, but this week Stephen Fry is blogging about the W3C and WHATWG. In fact, this makes a lot of sense, if the W3C’s efforts were to be compared to a gameshow then one, like Mr Fry’s QI, where the contestants regularly end up with a negative points total would be an appropriate analogy.

Recently: Opera takes Microsoft to court, which leads to calls for the CSS Working Group to be disbanded, which is, unsurprisingly, shrugged off by the working group itself, and then Microsoft announces that IE8 passes Acid2.

And as you’d expect there’s been a lot of froth and nonsense across the interested blogs.

My thoughts are that progress is being made, both by people like the the IE team (the current versions of Opera and Safari already pass Acid2 and Firefox 3 will pass it as well) and by the W3C which has made some good efforts this year to be more open and transparent.

It’s good to question the way things are, and Andy Clarke’s post about the working group has certainly made people take a good look at the status quo. But I feel that his proposed alternative would take us back to the time where the W3C created specifications that bore no relation at all to what the browsers were actually doing or planning to do.

As far as Opera and Microsoft goes, this is more about commerical advantage and business models than it is about web standards per se. Opera’s current business model aligns itself with web standards. Microsoft’s business model is so large and complex that it can be both for and against web standards and as the Acid2 result shows the team building IE8 are for them. I think the lawsuit is a sideshow and shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the standards discussion.

For many of us the shenanigans of the CSS working group hold a strange fascination, but I think that Mr Fry is right to point out that it’s in the areas of video and audio that the next big battle will be fought. As such Microsoft aren’t the main bad guys, Apple and Adobe probably are. Going back to business models, these companies are both secretive and fond of closed proprietary solutions. I’m not saying that either of them are evil through and through, but I’d love to see a lot more openness and cooperation from them in 2008.

Anyway, Stephen Fry is blogging about W3C working groups and open source video formats. He’s so one of us.

Very True Mood: rushed

Yesterday I went to see the Tutankhamun exhibition at the O₂. First time I’d ever visited the dome in either of its incarnations. In many ways it’s a pity that it didn’t get turned into a casino-resort beacuse there’s already a lot about that reminds me of the casinos I saw in Las Vegas.

Anyway, the exhibition itself was extremely well presented and managed the important job of putting into context both stories - that of Tutankhamun himself¹ and that of the discover of his tomb by Howard Carter. The level of preservation of three thousand year artifacts is incredible - not just the metal and pottery but wood, even showing the original paint colours.

Being the geek I am, I also enjoyed spotting all the Stargate references. Um, I think I may have that backwards.

1. Relatively speaking. Egypt has a lot of history² and there was no way it could all be related here, but if you don’t come away knowing a lot more about the Eighteenth dynasty then you must have your eyes closed.

2. Only tangentially related to Tutankhamun himself, my favourite ancient Egypt fact (you may have heard this before). Cleopatra, the famous one, also the last Pharaoh of Egypt, is closer in time to us in the twenty-first century than she is to the builders of the great pyramids.

Very True Mood: contemplative

Hi [ContactFirstName],

I have a web designer role based in Surrey.

My client is looking for somebody who can work self-sufficient and turn projects round quickly, while maintaining high standards both visually and technically.

…

If you have any of the following this will be useful.
AJAX, BACK-END BUILT WEBSITE AND Action script.

What is a “BACK-END BUILT WEBSITE”? And does “[ContactFirstName]” know how to build one?

Oh, and of course they can’t tell the difference between a designer and a developer (nor the difference between an adjective and an adverb).

“Your planet is going to be eaten because you gave it a stupid name.”

Haven’t we moved beyond this?

Very True Mood: disappointed