The New Wolfs Howl

He said, she said…

2009-06-28T20:19:46Z

He said: I don’t know why you wear a bra; you’ve got nothing to put in it.
She said: You wear pants don’t you?

He said: Shall we try swapping positions tonight?
She said: That’s a good idea. You stand by the ironing board while I sit on the sofa and fart!

He said: What have you been doing with all the grocery money I gave you?
She said: Turn sideways and look in the mirror!

He said: Why don’t women blink during foreplay?
She said: They don’t have time

He said: How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?
She said: We don’t know; it has never happened.

She said: Why is it difficult to find men who are sensitive, caring and good-looking?
He said: They already have boyfriends.

He said: What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night?
She said: A widow.

He said: Why are married women heavier than single women?
She said: Single women come home, see what’s in the fridge and go to bed. Married women come home, see what’s in bed and go to the fridge.

Brief notes

2009-06-26T19:07:05Z

After a long break, just a few things to comment on:

1. Apparently, Michael Jackson was somewhat in debt at the time of his death – perhaps as much as half a billion dollars – which makes me wonder if he’s done a John Stonehouse?

Perhaps he’s gone to live with Elvis….

2. Ok, so he was the King of Pop, but why does EVERYONE have to pay tribute to him? Watching the Wimbledon coverage today, the first thing Tim Henman and Tracy Austin had to do was to tell the world what a loss it was. Exactly what does it have to do with tennis coverage? Is the tennis so boring that you need to talk about something else?

3. After much (tedious) arguing, the Formula One Teams Association and the FIA have reached an accord. Despite everyone saying all the way through that it wasn’t about personalities, that accord includes Max Moseley’s retirement as chairman of the FIA when his current term expires in October. This is a Good Thing.

But, as he did once before, Max is now claiming that he doesn’t have to keep to the terms of the agreement because FOTA have already breached them. Basically, he’s wriggling out from under because he doesn’t want to give up control of the FIA. This is a Bad Thing, because it’s Max and his co-conspirator Bernie Ecclestone that have caused Formula One to become the sad joke that it currently is.

Poetry

2009-06-18T07:27:00Z

Just received this by email. There was no credit attached for the author of this classic, so if you know who wrote it let me know in the comments.

I want a floating duck house
I want to clear my moat
I need to mend my tennis court
That’s why I need your vote.

I have to build a portico
My swimming pool needs mending
My lovely plants need horse manure
And the Aga needs much tending

A chandelier is vital
Mock Tudor boards are great
My hanging baskets won awards
And I’ve earned a tax rebate.

I need a glitter toilet seat.
My piano so needs tuning
Maltesers help me stay awake
And my orchard must need pruning

I could have said the rules were wrong
And often thought I should,
But somehow it was easier
To profit all I could

The public really have to see
That the rules are there to test
And by defrauding taxpayers
We were just doing our best

The Speaker of the House has gone,
Our sacrificial beast,
But the public are still braying
For our corpses at the feast

What do the public want from us,
Those vote-wielding ingrates?
They really should be grateful
To be financing our estates.

The message is so very clear,
(we’re merely learning late)
That the British way of living well
Is to screw the bloody state.

In case you missed it, the Commons authorities have today published details of MPs expenses for the last four years. Apparently, because of the amount of information that’s been redacted it’s tricky to work out who has been gaming the system but it’s still clear that MPs are allowed to claim far too much on their expenses.

Safari whinge

2009-06-12T18:30:54Z

Poor Apple. They really can’t win; when they released the Beta version of Safari 4, everyone seemed to be moaning about the Tabs on Top feature (a la Google Chrome). Various websites carried Terminal hacks to get the tabs back to their rightful position. Now that the final release of Safari 4 has the tabs in the more usual place, everyone wants them back at the top.

Personally, I hated them at the top. It seemed counter-intuitive and was a pain when you wanted to click on a tab and ended up moving the whole window. I’m glad to see the back of the feature.

Another feature that I’d be happy to see the back of, but which appears to be here to stay, is the re-positioned reload / stop button. Up until now, its been a proper button by itself, nestled nicely with the homepage button but in Safari 4, Apple have moved it to the end of the URL bar and made it a wishy-washy little icon which often gets swamped by the RSS indicator.

This seems to be one of those design changes that are made just for the sake of it. In practice, it actually makes the browser worse to use. It’s surprisingly difficult to re-educate your mouse hand to go to the right of the screen rather than the left. And even worse is the fact that the Terminal hack that worked in the Beta, and re-enabled the reload / stop button in the customise toolbar window, no longer works. So until Apple come to their senses and re-instate the button, we’re left with the only marginally better option of Cmd-R instead.

And while I’m on the subject of things that bug people about Safari, the big one for me is the Bookmarks Toolbar. Specifically, the behaviour when you go from one folder to another. In Firefox, when you have one folder expanded and you mouse over another it too is expanded. In Safari, you have to click again to get the new one to expand. Again, it’s a small thing but when it comes to browsers, it’s the small things that make all the difference and this one is one that annoys the heck out of me. So much so that periodically I have to relegate Safari to tertiary browser and use Firefox again.

So, what do you think? What’s good – or bad – about Safari 4? What features have they got wrong? Where do the other browsers beat it? Drop a comment and let me know.

SOTD #187

2009-05-10T07:56:48Z

Today’s song is Heaven by Bryan Adams

Oh – thinking about all our younger years
There was only you and me
We were young and wild and free

Now nothing can take you away from me
We’ve been down that road before
But that’s over now
You keep me coming back for more

Baby you’re all that I want
When you’re lying here in my arms
I’m finding it hard to believe
We’re in heaven

And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn’t too hard to see
We’re in heaven

Oh – once in your life you find someone
Who will turn your world around
Bring you up when you’re feeling down

Ya – nothing could change what you mean to me
Oh there’s lots that I could say
But just hold me now
Cause our love will light the way

Baby you’re all that I want
When you’re lying here in my arms
I’m finding it hard to believe
We’re in heaven

And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn’t too hard to see
We’re in heaven

I’ve been waiting for so long
For something to arrive
For love to come along

Now our dreams are coming true
Through the good times and the bad
Ya – I’ll be standing there by you

Anyone watching BBC TV last night would have seen John Barrowman turning this Bryan Adams classic into just another piece of elevator muzak; while the words were still as meaningful as ever, the vocal emotion and power had gone. So I thought I’d post the original so you can find out how it’s supposed to sound.

[Amazon download]

SOTD #186

2009-05-03T08:12:26Z

Today’s song is My Old Man’s A Dustman by Lonnie Donegan

Now one day while in a hurry
He missed a lady’s bin
He hadn’t gone but a few yards
When she chased after him
“What game do you think you’re playing?”
She cried right from the heart
“You’ve missed me. Am I too late?”
“Nah, jump up on the cart!”

Oh, my old man’s a dustman
He wears a dustman’s hat
He wears cor blimey trousers
And he lives in a council flat

I say, I say, I say (Not you again!)
My dustbin’s absolutely full with toadstools
(How do you know it’s full?)
‘Cos there’s not mushroom inside!

This was always one of my favourite songs when I was growing up; it seems like it was on Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewarts Junior choice every week. And I was reminded of it today, reading about the shenanigans happening in Brighton. Oh, how things have changed since Lonnie’s day.

[Amazon download]

SOTD #185

2009-05-02T09:15:55Z

Today’s song is Mr Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra

Sun is shining in the sky
There ain’t a cloud in sight
Its stopped raining everybody’s in their play
And don’t you know
It’s a beautiful new day hey,hey

Running down the avenue
See how the sun shines brightly in the city
On the streets where once was pity
Mr Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey

Mr Blue Sky, please tell us why
You had to hide away for so long
Where did we go wrong?

Hey you, with the pretty face
Welcome to the human race
A celebration, Mr Blue Sky’s up there waiting
And today is the day we’ve waited for.

Just because it’s a really sunny day, and just because this is a real feelgood song that makes me happy, I’ve dusted down the Song Of The Day after a period of hibernation.

If it’s sunny where you are and you’re not already outside, then – to paraphrase kids TV from the 70s – why don’t you just switch off your computer screen and go out and do something less boring instead?

[Amazon download]

A budding photographer

2009-05-01T21:02:32Z

My partner and I joined the National Trust a little while ago and while that intially made be feel quite old (I’ve always had this image of NT members being old; don’t know why), I must admit that I’m really enjoying it.

One of the reasons I’m enjoying it so much is the chance that it’s giving me to get some use out of my camera. I’ve hardly ever used it despite having owned it for about six or seven years. We’ve used it a lot at work for taking product shots for catalogues and so on, but I’ve hardly ever used it for taking my own pictures. Happily, that is now starting to change.

What I’m finding I like best about taking photographs is the framing of the shot, to try and take something a little bit out of the ordinary. I’m trying not to just take snaps. I’m also using the macro lens a lot and taking close-up shots of various flora.

The tulips were at Scotney Castle, while the sunlight through the oak tree branches was from Batemans. If you ever get the chance to go to either, I’d recommend it because the gardens are magnificent.

Somebody’s watching me…

2009-04-17T17:56:29Z

You might have seen the news stories today (here and here) about the new restrictions that are to be introduced, to limit the use of surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

In case you’re not aware, RIPA allows councils, police and so on to use surveillance techniques to detect and prevent crime. It was introduced in an attempt to thwart terrorist activity and, according to what has been said in today’s media, should only be used for the investigation of serious crime.

However, because the Act is quite lax local councils have been using the powers it grants them to investigate serious crimes like littering, doug fouling and suspected school placement manipulation. Quite rightly, Jaqui Smith – our esteemed Home Secretary – has said this isn’t right and announced measures to stop misuse of the Act.

If, like me, you’d never heard of RIPA until now you might be feeling a little uneasy about it. Basically, it gives your local authority the right to spy on you for any reason that it sees fit. There is no requirement for councils to seek authorisation from a court or a judge and they appear not to have to justify their actions.

But I think the fact that the Act was introduced – and, it would seem, covertly introduced at that – at all is what is most disturbing. It may be 2009 rather than 1984, but we are living firmly in Orwell’s distopian Big Brother world. Everywhere we go, we’re monitored by CCTV. We leave an electronic trail a mile wide whenever we do anything. We have no privacy any more.

I’ve found it funny recently to read stories about people being up in arms about Google Street View taking pictures of their street. They’re worried about the invasion of their privacy – even though their privacy is invaded every day by the hundreds of CCTV cameras that line our streets. But, those cameras are there to protect them from crime so it’s OK. And they have the same argument with the ID card scheme; if you’ve got nothing to hide, why do you object to it?

I object to CCTV, and ID cards, and RIPA for a number of reasons. The first is that why should I be constantly monitored when I am going about my private, law-abiding business? My second objection is that this constant surveillance does not stop crime; it displaces it to areas that don’t have CCTV or it sits back and watches the crime be committed. Rather than spending however many millions of pounds it is that have been spent on cameras, why not employ some more police (proper police, not PCSOs), to actually walk the streets, get to know their community, keep order? You know, like they used to years ago.

But my biggest objection by far is that all of this surveillance, ID schemes, and so on, produces a huge amount of data on honest, law-abiding citizens which is then stored in local council, police and Government databases. Yet, as they have consistently shown over the last few years, none of these august bodies knows diddly squat about data security. So I sit here, protecting myself as much as possible from identity theft and fraud, and the Government goes and gives my data away willy nilly.

Mac Software

2009-03-16T18:33:18Z

Over the weekend, I came across two ‘must-have’ pieces of software for Mac users, so I thought I’d let you all in on the secret.

The first is Typinator, a little program that allows you to automate repetitive key strokes. For instance if, like me, you visit a lot of websites where you have to put in your email address to log-in, you could use Typinator to create a keyboard abbreviation to save you having to type it every time. Or you can use it to insert an image of your signature at the bottom of letters. It also acts as a correction service, too, with built in sets of commonly mis-typed words.

Basically, it’s the Auto Correct function from Microsoft Office, but applied on a system-wide scale. So far, I haven’t found any applications where it doesn’t work.

You can buy Typinator from their website or you can do what I did and get it free from MacHeist.

If you’ve spent a lot of time using Windows systems – like I have – you’ll have got used to your Home and End keys working in a certain way. And you’ll probably be quite annoyed by the fact that they don’t work like that in OS X. Previously, I’ve used KeyFixer to solve this issue, but it’s not perfect and doesn’t seem to work with every application. Which is why I’m so happy to have found Double Command, a donation-ware utility, that does.

I’ve been using Double Command for the last couple of hours and so far haven’t found any application where the remapping doesn’t work. As well as remapping Home and End, it also gives you freedom to make other changes, too.

If you’ve got any tips for ‘must-have’ Mac software, drop me a comment.