Random links of interest

Here are a things I've been looking at recently:

Favicon generator:
http://www.dagondesign.com/tools/favicon-generator-tool/

The Daily Mash - satirical news, similar to the Onion, only ruder:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/

Statistics on the UK's armed forces:
http://www.dasa.mod.uk/

Statistics on many aspects of British life:
http://www.fti.communities.gov.uk/

Voodoo Sabotage, a Kleptones video mashup:
http://www.vimeo.com/7663931

The temples of Damanhur, the 8th wonder of the World:
http://www.thetemples.org/

CMOS batteries ate my email

Maybe it's the cold weather, maybe it's a batch of duff CMOS batteries, but I'd advise all you PC-repair nerds to grab a spare CR2032 battery, on the off-chance that you get asked to investigate odd Firefox behaviour. I've had two call-outs in the last week, both from people who use webmail through Firefox, and were getting "This site's SSL certificate has expired" warnings. In both cases, the user's CMOS battery was weakening, meaning their PCs thought we were living either in the past, or in the future, which affected Firefox's ability to guess whether an SSL certificate is valid or not. Maybe Firefox uses the system time to check, and maybe if it does, it should use a web service to an atomic clock! Anyway, a new CMOS battery solved the problem, but it took a while to figure out that this was the root cause.

iPhone heading for Orange... at last

I read with great interest that O2 (or "Oh Poo" as I like to call them) are about to lose their exclusivity for the iPhone in the UK. Hurrah! Deep joy all round! Despite being a very satisfied Vodafone customer, I'd be prepared to jump ship to Orange, purely to have an iPhone. My old Samsung Steel, while working perfectly well and having a battery life of about 5 days, just doesn't cut it compared to the blinged-up iPhone.
In case you're wondering, I was an O2 customer for seven years, and manfully endured their horrendous customer service, which saw me be disconnected twice for no apparent reason, overcharged by £120 six times, and suffer an endless stream of lies from their incompetent staff. I twice received grovelling apologies from their managing director, and referred them to the regulator. Their service is the WORST that I have ever encountered, and believe me, I've dealt with some shoddy companies. Let's hope that Orange are as good as Vodafone.

Comedy gold

I'm probably a late-comer to the genius of Armstrong and Miller, but I just had to share this compilation of their RAF sketches.

Murder on the Gatwick Express

I took the train from Haywards Heath to London last Monday, to attend a ColdFusion training day at "Scotch on the Road". As there's a variety of ways I could get from Victoria station to Gt Queen Street, I bought a one-day travelcard, at the outrageous price of £34. That's £34 - which once upon a time, I didn't earn in a day (thinking back to my student employment). A friend from Brighton was on the train, and he texted to say he was in the front carriage.

"Nice train" I thought as it rolled into the platform, so I got on, found my friend, and sat merrily chatting away. That is until the ticket inspector came round - a surly, jobsworth of a woman, who stared long and hard at my ticket, and announced that "you shouldn't be on this train". Oh! Why is that? I enquiried... "because this is the Gatwick Express" she replied.

Silence.

Erm.... okay... logic seems to have disappeared all of a sudden... "but it goes to Victoria" I replied. "Yes, but it goes via Gatwick" came her retort. "But so do all the other trains...".

Puzzled, I became even more confused as she tried to explain that the Gatwick Express is really just for holiday makers and business types, and the fact that it travels onto Brighton, and calls at other stations inbetween, is just an inconvenient embarrassment that they'd rather overlook.

This woolly-minded bimbling reminded me of the old service announcements you used to get, saying things like "Thankyou for travelling with Connex today". It's not a deliberate choice - or at least it never was in my case - it's just a train that turns up, going to wherever you want to go - so you get on it. I very much doubt that you get people who sit patiently at a platform, ignoring Thameslink trains, in order to wait for a Connex alternative. It's not as though there's a different line that you could take...

Unswayed by my suggestion that her argument held no water, she proceeded to announce that if she ever "caught me" on that train again, she'd charge me double the fare - no less than £68, to travel between Haywards Heath and Victoria, a journey of less than one hour. I just smiled back and said nothing, not wishing to goad the uniformed fascist into carrying out her threat.

The truth of the matter is, of course, that the Gatwick Express only used to run between the London stations and Gatwick, and that the only reason it ventures south of Gatwick now, is in order to meet the government target for the number of available seats on the London-Brighton line. It was a spectacularly stupid idea, compounded by the fact that the class 442 trains used for the Gatwick Express didn't actually fit the curved platforms at Brighton station, which turned the new 2008 winter timetable into an utter farce.

Ho hum... stupidity abounds... my friend who was already on the train had bought his ticket the previous day, which meant that he could legitimately travel on the train... I sometimes wonder if we're becoming so caught up in red tape, that the Italians will become jealous for our lack of efficiency.

I can only point to Top Gear's episode from May 24th 2004, where they proved that it's cheaper to buy a second-hand car, tax the car, insure the car, put petrol in the car, and drive from London to Manchester and back, than it is to take the train.

Something for Gordon Brown to sort out in his last days in office? One can only hope.

Upper-class Tweet of the year

I've started using Twitter (as you can probably guess from the "tweet feed" on the right-hand side). It's just like the Facebook status update, but better. You can follow what people are doing - and there's a LOT of people using it. I'm currently following Stephen Fry in his travels, he posts just a tad too frequently, but that's better than the alternative. There seems to be a fine balance between those who post almost every tedious daily event ("I'm brushing my teeth!"), and those who post interesting, topical, or entertaining messages. Hopefully I can strike the right balance - apologies if I bore anyone with my bowls-related "tweets" :) If you'd like to become a follower, my username is "pfcc". At my brother's suggestion, I'm using "TweetDeck", a natty bit of software which updates you every minute or so, and lets you post replies / direct messages. Don't be put off by that slightly naff shade of black - you can customise the colours to your heart's content.

Managing madness

I remember reading a "Project from Hell" blog at Epic a couple of years ago, which was written by a programmer who was working on an impossibly daft project with timescales to match. Unfortunately, I'm now working on something similar, which features 3 months of development work, and a princely £50k budget. I quote from the project plan:

Monday: Set up development server
Tuesday: Design application
Wednesday: Design database
Thursday: Get sign-off from clients and third-party suppliers
Friday: Create (and finish) site login and user management

The plan goes on in a similar vein, all the way through to the project's deadline. Throw in four other projects that are running concurrently, and our office might as well start issuing straight-jackets. Abandon hope all ye who enter here...

Wikipedia: Deming and Whuffie

Wikipedia's great. Here's two really interesting things I found today:

Mr Deming, the man who put Japanese industry on the map after WW2

Whuffie - like Karma, but more practical!

Who needs money, when you're funny?

A very Happy New Year to you all (albeit a tad late). I don't have time for a lengthy blog post, but in these gloomy times (my company was "credit crunched" just before Christmas), I thought I'd just share a song that never fails to cheer me up if I'm feeling depressed: