Their clothes are truly shit. Do not under any circumstances buy their T-Shirts, after a few washes you’ll be lucky if they fit the gnomes in the garden.
Course Work
What is it with Course work. They tell you that if you don’t hand in tidy work then you’re screwed. I only wish this worked both ways.
So far I have had dealings with a lot of coursework in my time and trying to read the notes left by the tutors is like trying to decipher a doctors prescription. I know they may have a lot to mark but if they want us to hand in tidy work they could at least have the courtesy to do the same.
Odeon Website
This would be funny if it wans’t so bloody common. For those of you not using the latest and greatest IE browser point yourself at the following link,
http://www.odeon.co.uk/
I refuse to provide a clickable link to this site on grounds of gross incompetence on their part. This has got to be one of the worst large commercial sites I have seen.
Someone took so much offence to the site they have taken the time to provide their own version and it is very good. Alternative Odeon Website
I have absolutely no doubt that the techs that built the Odeon site are more than capable and could build a browsable website.
This then begs the questions:
Who! made the decision to prevent non IE browsers access to it?
and
Are they still working there and if so why?
Investigating WebGUI
I am currently investigating the WebGUI Content Management System at the moment. We want to cut down on the amount of editing that we need to do because we seem to have a lot of applications in the queue to develop and the editing is taking up too much time. There are various other reasons but I won’t go into those.
The website says that it is hard to install but this is nonsense it was fairly straight forward once I decided to use MySQL. I have only scratched the surface of it at the moment but it looks quite capable, I tried to get it into Postgres but had no success, there were various errors all reported as log files having the wrong permissions but a quick look in the logs showed me it was dodgy SQL.
Being a Postgres advocate/diehard I would have preferred to use it but considering its not a supported platform and we are not trying to run Amazon then MySQL will do the job.
If it turn out to be easy to use I might just use it on my own websites.
The Bear Necessities
Europeans are a strange bunch. This picture was taken at FOSDEM by a friend of mine.
Here me ROAR.
Started my HR-XML Resume
I managed to get FOP, XALAN, Java and everything else I need to start creating my resume in pdf. Thank god for apt.
I did a little bit of it tonight in HR-XML or at least in a miniature subset of it. The results can be found on my resume page near the top there should be some links to the HR-XML file and the XSLT I was using to generate the pdf. Do not take this stuff seriously it took me an hour of blurry eyed fiddling to do it so it is by no means looking good.
I do intend do the resume builder for the recruitment ratings website so watch this space. I should have this and everything else done in the next few years.
Resume Builder
Since I am spending a lot of time using FOP and XSLT at work at the moment I am going to resurect an old project that I started for my agency ratings site. I basically want to provide a tool that generates a CV in pdf format from an XML file. I know of the project on sourceforge and I tried to contact them but got no reply, they are not using HR-XML which is what I want to use because some other clever bugger will be doing all the hard work of looking after the standard. They are using their own XML Resume Library Standard. If you are interested in this sort of thing visit them, their project is mature and they are doing a good job.
I have several reasons for doing my own:
1. It is more practice for work.
2. It is a hook for my website.
3. I have put it off long enough.
Ideally I would like to build a nice Java Applet and I had actually started one but that all went pear shaped. Java GUI’s are a bit too involved for the amount of time I am able to devote to the project this time so it will be all Perl.
My intentions are to provide a basic page where you fill in your details and then generate the pdf in the style of your choice (there will only be one style to start with ;-). Due to lack of time it will be fairly basic and based on my own CV. Like all my other projects if I ever get the time I will finish it, Hah.
Another One
Not quite as funny as Dr Chopp but it made me smile.
Randy Bender
Curing Spam the HARD way
Take all this with a pinch of salt!
No one likes Spam, or should I say I have never met anyone who likes spam. I for one am not to fond of it in any of its forms. Whether it in bark or in binary I really don’t care, spam is spam is spam. Sometimes it makes me mad and sometimes, like today I get a bit philosophical.
I am sure that most of you agree, the people who are to blame are the ones who send it out in droves, I cannot really debate that. However, it does cause me some distress to know that the main reason we have spam is because there is a market for it. If there was no market then we would still get some but not in the proportions we are getting it today.
To have a market that pays for the equipment and bandwidth that is required to run operations like these then the market must be of a substantial size. This leads me to several conclusions about the state of our society and what could be done to reduce the problem. We need to remove the market!
I have come to the following conclusions on what could be done to reduce Spam.
Penis Enlargements and Vagina Reductions (PE and VR):
Since we live in a politically correct society I think it only fair that if men get PE’s for free women should be allowed VR’s for free as well, therefore.
Everyone qualifies for a PE/VR on their 18th birthday which can be deferred. When I mean everyone I really mean that. If a man has his penis enlarged and gets married his wife can then use her PE to increase her husbands to the required size. This works both ways, the man can also transfer his VR to his wife. For those men blessed with HUGE appendages then they can swap their enlargement option for an ensmallment one, this option is also open to their wives. So an exceptionally tight lady can have hers enlarged.
A Viagra a day helps you stand tall and play:
We should all receive one Viagra a day as well as receiving it in tap water the same way we get flouride. The tablet can be sold if you are single or have a broken arm or hand otherwise it must be taken.
Taking these two measures together we would effectively combat a lot of the spam in circulation today. Think about it!
Viagra is free — No more market
We all have huge cocks and tight fannies —- No more market
These two simple changes would have the following knock on affect.
If everyone was always at it then the last thing we would be wanting to do is go browse porn —- No more market.
Now all I need to do is to figure out how to stop the rest of the spam.
Dr Dick Chopp
This is mad. When someone is called Richard the name can sometimes be shortened to Dick. Can you imagine my ammusement when I found this site (On Dave Barry’s blog).
Dr Richard Chopp