English Over The Sleeve

I can’t log into gmail. Waaaaaa waaaaaa waaaaa!

The number three most popular article on Reuters today is “More Americans turning to Web for news”.

In other news, bears have been shitting in the woods - and there is a persistent rumour flying round the web : the Pope is actually a Catholic.

I studied English at uni. And I know that I am not alone. So let’s be honest here: Doesn’t this sum it up rather nicely?

With thanks to bunny.frozenreality.co.uk; image under this CC license.

While at my stop this morning, I watched a full bus (not mine) turn into a side road, realise that he had made a mistake, do a perfect 3 point turn in the road and resume his normal run. And there was me thinking that ratp drivers were infallible…

Blogged from the 195

It’s the very official international standard for brewing tea.

I can’t comment on this.  Anything I’d say would be superfluous…

I have been (very intermittently) trying to make a script add a prefix to a filename for about 18 months now. With very little success.

But today, I can finally say “All your basename are belong to us!” Or is that “All your `basename` are belong to us”?

So here’s jpgshrink3 - the logical continuation of my previous efforts. jpgshrink3  actually does a bit more than just shrink jpg files - it also moves them to a user-specified folder and creates a thumbnail in a thumbnail folder for each jpg. Very useful for phpwebgallery, that I use here.

The Script page.

For various reasons, I have to go to Vienna, Austria, in April 2008, and in a spirit of economy, I chose to fly with Niki. Niki being low-cost, they don’t give you a paper ticket - you just get an email.

Imagine therefore my surprise when I received a large envelope from Austria this morning - when I opened it, there was, without a word of explanation, a rather large Niki-branded blow-up aeroplane.

My question is, do I have to present it at check-in? And if so, does it have to be blown up?

The only use for it that I could see was if the plane had to land on water - I could float away to safety. There are just two problems with that: one, the thing specifies that it is not a safety device, and two, there isn’t really much water between Paris and Vienna anyway.

Anyway, I’ll put some photos up here if/when I get someone to blow it up round to blowing it up.

Interested parties may like to note that my tickets cost me less than €100.00 return.

That’s what I need. Shopping time. Also a longer bus trip if I want to blog…

Blogged on bus 128.

• For some time now, I’ve been looking (in my professional capacity) for a chess set supplier who doesn’t actually demand the payment of an arm and a leg for 32 pieces of injected plastic (and your first-born for an industrially printed vinyl ‘board’). I think I’ve found one. If I have, I’ll let you know. If you are a chess set supplier and want to do business with me, let me know in the comments!
• Warehouses are complicated to build and furnish. This, in conjunction with a heavy workload, gastro-enteritis and the discovery of facebook (I know, only a few years late!) may explain the recent absence of posts here. So sue me.
• Who does quite small (less than a hundred) runs of thermomoulded plastic parts, working from a model (and preferably in Europe)? Answers in comments, please. (Please note that 42 is not an accepted answer to this question.)
• I rented a Renault Clio the other day, for a week. But when I got to the agency, they apologised and gave me a Ford S-Max. You probably don’t care - but hey! I’m telling everyone!
• I’ve got a new phone, of the sort that would theoretically allow me to BoB - Blog on the Bus (TM). Don’t hold your breath for that… but the phone itself is pretty cool.
• Christmas leave is coming up waaaaay too fast. When can I find the time to go christmas shopping?

This is a web exclusive, brought to you by ourcq.org! A scoop!

The famous French band, Bag in Box, will be performing live in Pontchateau on the 14th of December! Get your skates on!