English Over The Sleeve

L’Anglais par-dessus la Manche

3 point turn

without comments

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

Written by macdo

January 11th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

Posted in General

Tagged with

Hey all ! / Salut tout le monde !

without comments

Bonjour amis de l’Anglais par dessus la manche!
Voici un petit lien français avec une joyeuse vidéo sur notre beau pays!
Et viv’el chicon
GF

Edited by macdo to embed the clip

Written by fny

January 6th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

Posted in Fun

ISO 3103

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

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

Written by macdo

January 6th, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Posted in Fun, General

No to 2008!

without comments

You may remember that there was, last year, a small buzz about the French anti-2007 resistance. Guess what? They’re coming to Paris!

Check out fonacon.net, and go to Montmartre this evening if you want to see them in action.

Written by macdo

December 31st, 2007 at 4:08 pm

The power of basename

with one comment

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.

Written by macdo

December 31st, 2007 at 6:18 am

Posted in General, Linux, Photos, Scripts, Site, Tech

The Paper Ticket Replacement

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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.

Written by macdo

December 29th, 2007 at 12:41 am

time

without comments

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

Blogged on bus 128.

Written by macdo

December 17th, 2007 at 11:59 am

Posted in General, Tech

Title? What title?

with 2 comments

  • 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?

Written by macdo

December 13th, 2007 at 10:48 am

Posted in Cars, Fun, General, Tech, Travail, Web 2.0

Be there or be square!

without comments

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!

Bag in Box Poster

Written by macdo

November 24th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Posted in Breaking news, General

this blog is going downhill

with one comment

I was blarchiving* this evening, when I stumbled across the “Blog Readability Test”. Obviously, I ran it on English Over The Sleeve / blog.ourcq, and I got this result:
cash advance

Then, as an experiment, I ran it on the English Over The Sleeve Archive from November 2006, and got this:
cash advance

Obviously, I was intrigued, so I ran it on November 2004:
cash advance

Then I realized that English Over The Sleeve didn’t exist in 2004 - so the page that test was running on was just a list of recent post titles. I would obviously have succeeded as a headline writer.

*According to the Dictionary of Eye-watering Words, as referenced in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!, to blarchive means to read through other people’s blog archives.

Written by macdo

November 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 am

Posted in Fun, General, Site