Nothing compares to a penguin.

I have recently reconnected with some old friends on various Social Networking sites, and we have been catching up and reminding each other of various stories and escapades from the past. I will probably post a few of the more “safe” stories on here at some point.  Until then, and to counter the last post of mine which was political, here is a series of quotes that were recorded at the 1997 Birmingham Spod meet (See I told you I would Post them! I just needed to find the bit of paper)

Basically someone said something that sounded “dodgy” so a pen & paper was found and people started making a list of all the innocent things said that could be taken out of context and sound “iffy”. There was a running count being kept of who was winning.

(more…)

while (1) $head->brickwall(“BANG”);

This morning was quiet at the Insane Asylum, We were informed that due to work being done on trees growing through power lines, we would loose our power supply for a short while.  To prevent damage to servers/systems/coffee pots we shut down all electrical equipment at 9am (The time we were told the outage was due for).  at approximately 10:45am we were informed the power work had been done, and that we would not be affected after all. So everything was re-powered back up.

When FireFox starts up on my desktop and re-opens the session I had before the shutdown I notice something. A development site I have been working on is now displaying some errors. “ARRRGGGHHH! what did I do? was I in the code when my machine switched off?” So I quickly check the Live site, and that has the same errors on it. “errr OK. we work on the dev site, test any changes and only if they shown to work do they get copied over to the live site

Quick check of the file system shows files in both the live & dev areas with modification dates/times of 9:30 today. So they were played with during the Asylum was off-line, which means only one possible person with access. The freelance Phone developer who for his own protection we shall call PhoneBoy (PB). The following is a breakdown of the IM conversation that then occurred.

CN: “Hi, What you do to the site? Both Live & Dev are showing errors”

PB: “Nothing, not touched it, and not seeing errors here!”

CN: “You sure? try refreshing browser, I’m seeing the errors here on multiple machines”

PB: “No errors, and I checked IE and Firefox”

*Repeat the last few entries continually for about fifteen minutes*

CN: “Seriously every machine here is showing the errors, here look!” *iPhone photo & email*

PB: “No. still cant see any errors and I even checked with Linux. and I did not do anything, all I did was comment out some code to make the pages load faster”

CN: “You commented out code? what code.?”

PB: “See i removed what I did and the page loads slow now”

CN: “Yes but the errors gone. Please leave it alone. I’ll make the page load faster, you leave it be!”

I would not mind so much, only this happened every time he does anything. You have to fight for about half an hour to get him to admit he actually did anything. then another hour to find out exactly what he did, then ten minutes to actually fix the problem.

So as the post title says.

while (1)

$head->brickwall(“BANG”);

If we don’t all hang together, then surely, we shall all hang separately.

Greetings and Salutations Dear Readers.

I know you’re not supposed to discuss politics and religion in polite society, as it can lead to arguments, duels, wars, genocide, global annihilation “Oh! are the last few just me then?“.  This post is going to be about the forthcoming UK elections, and as such I apologise in advance..

The thing that’s got me thinking about this election more than any previous one is the multiple predictions of “a hung parliament“. A hung Parliament is when no party wins a overall majority, meaning if every other MP voted against them, they would loose any vote and as such be powerless.  A lot of people appear to to believe this will be a good thing, they seem to think that with no majority all the parties will hold hands and work together to make the world a better place.

Personally I disagree. I think that the two main parties will never agree on anything and always vote against each other, which will basically counter each other out. Leaving the deciding votes to the smaller parties. Which means parties like the BNP or such have final say on government policies. I’m sorry but I do not believe that the lives of the many should be ruled by the views of the minority.

For this reason I am not voting for a party. I’m voting for a “not hung parliament

I think we should all throw aside our political views, lets all pick a party and vote for them to make sure someone wins. Now I have no particular favourite. I always voted “Monster Raving Loony Party” until they stopped having a candidate in my area when I switched to one of the Welsh party’s. So from a pure logical point of view, I would like to suggest we all vote Conservatives. Before you Labour people get upset, give me a minute to explain my reasoning.

The country is in a bit of a mess at the minute. To quote some popular media, “its broken Britain”. and as such we need it fixing. Labour have been in power now for 13 years.  I’m not saying that the state of the country is their fault, but, If you saw a old established company going bankrupt would you blame the old owners for the collapse of the company, or the people who have been running it for the last thirteen years?

Change is always good. So maybe the Conservatives are no better than Labour. They are however change. They would be different, they could make the decisions that go against Labours core values. It can only make us stronger. Also if you look at how the Labour Party has been fighting off scandal, and bad press over the last few years, a break from power can only do them the power of good. It will give them a chance to lick their wounds, take stock of the country and their policies and come back fighting at the next election.

So both parties gain, the country can only gain, and more importantly we prevent fringe parties getting control of the country. There are no long term disadvantages to this plan. Please people, for the sake of our once great nation, place an X on your ballot paper for “No Hung Parliament

No matter your views, for the greater good vote Conservatives.

GN

When Development Goes MAD

It started off as just another day in the Asylum.

Well not just any old day, but a Friday. The countdown to the weekend had been started. The coffee brewed. and all was well!

Then IT happened.

And not a cool interesting intergalactic space spider who likes to disguise herself as a friendly clown called Pennywise. No not a good IT at all.

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

No this IT was getting called into a phone meeting, something that to date has tended to go the same way every time. I go into the meeting, i sit about for an hour listening to the marketing guys discuss what name to give things, then I have a ten minute contribution about the development, then another hour of pointless marketing drivel. (I think I fell asleep at one point in the last meeting I went to)

This was luckily just a 15 minute quick meeting to discuss what is the next area of development to concentrate on. You see the site in question is getting a major overhaul and is currently in a situation where the development site can be made live. There is just some final testing going on.  This testing will be finished today, so the site will be live by Monday.

Yet in the meeting, the Governor decided that we needed a development site for the development site. So that while the development site is being tested to go live, a development version of the development site can be worked on. Now, should any bugs be found in the development site they would have to be fixed there and the fix duplicated to the development, development site. while new work is done there. We now have three versions of a site, all for the sake of waiting a day.

I don’t know if any of you can see the sense in that, I know I can’t.

Ah well on with the multiple dev site creating.

Sisyphean Roadworks

On my way home last night I saw something that made me do a double take, and was such a bizarre concept that I felt I had to share it with you.

Part of my daily commute currently passes “Mobile Repairs“. And No before you ask, that does not mean they repair mobile phone. I stopped and asked, and the captain threw a hammer at my head.

Basically they are working their way along the road repairing the millions of potholes that are currently infecting the UK’s road system. To keep themselves safe while working that have temporary traffic lights and cones set up. (Health and Safety and all that)

So as I was driving home last night I happened to catch the strange creatures that actually set up and move these lights and cones. Now you are probably wondering how does Health & Safety cover the removal of Temporary lights and traffic cones on a busy road?

Well that’s simple, They had put up Temporary Lights slightly further out from the temporary lights to keep them safe as they packed away the first lot of lights.  So the question is, do they then have to put up more Temporary Lights to be able to remove the Temporary Lights they places to be able to remove the Original Lights? Also. if they keep placing the new lights slightly forward of the old lights will the eventually be so far apart they cover a whole country?