boreders

After all too long a delay, I have finally managed to put my ‘web design’ site back online… I’m admitting right now the site is basic, the content is off the cuff, and I fully intend to do more with it later. However, the site has been offline for months and I have more than one link to it hanging around online. Nothing worse than a dead link. Well, okay, there are a lot of things worse than a dead link… but, you know what I mean.

So, I consider the site being back considerable progress. I now have an aching back from leaning over the computer putting the site together, but it’s a positive pain. I hand-coded the whole thing and did the images myself, so all the principles of plain, simple web design remain intact. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d used someone else’s template to put my web site online. That would have just been embarrassing.

You can find the new website at backtobasicsweb.com or b2bw.boreders.com – keeping it simple.

In an ideal world, I think technology should be as flexible as possible, meeting myriad needs of the average user in a single compact package. For example, since I got a new computer a while back I have been searching for something that will allow me to blog without having to visit my blogs. I tried MarEdit and WordPress on the iPhone, and now I’m trying Flock, which is not only letting me post to my blogs, but keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter and the World Wide Web. I like that.

I have been plagued with a similar frustration for features around Twitter clients on the iPhone. Ultimately, if the app lets you tweet that should be enough, right? Nah. I’ve tried Twitfire, Tweetie, Echofan, NatsuLion, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, and Tweetie 2 – which is my current primary client. They all have something to offer, but Tweetie 2 has delivered landscape typing, which I’ve been hankering after for an age.

Now, it might not seem to fit into the bracket of technology, but I have been struggling to find a ‘pad’ for work. If I just wanted something with lined paper, I’d be fine, but that isn’t enough. I could pick up a pad from stationery if I wanted something so simplistic. I have seen Oxford notebooks that have hard covers, spiral binding, nooks for keeping loose papers in, and lined pages marked with points to allow you to draw vertical lines for improvised graphpaper, but… I’m at a loss to define exactly what it is that I’m after. I know I need something more, but I’m not entirely sure what that is. Perhaps, I’d like paper that was lined on the front and graphed on the back, with enough weight in the paper to mean I can use a marker on either side without suffering seepage. I undoubtedly would like tabbed page dividers to keep my notes in order, but I’d also quite like some kind of integrated indexing tab dispenser with those narrow colourful tabs that Post-It do. And maybe the card cover of the pad could double up as an impromptu wipeboard… Too far?

So, I find myself plagued by a need for features – might explain the number of hardly used apps on my iPhone. I hunger for functionality… and yet, I wonder whether having found my Holy Grail I won’t be left wanting for just a little bit more.

We have travelled to Oxford for the first stage of our short holiday. We have travelled for 3 hours from the north-west. I’d love to say it was without incident – except it wasn’t. At the head of the M5, a Mitsubishi Warrior threw up a piece of gravel the size of a Malteser and put a chip in my windscreen the size of a match head. I have owned a car for 11 years and never had anything more than minor chips. I got a car two days ago, and… well. That has really pissed me off.

So, we reached Oxford in the end and took the Park and Ride into town. We’re staying at Keble Bollege (you have ro know your Python to understand that one) and have has a quick wander into the centre (though we’ll do our exploring tomorrow). Now, we’re having dinner at The Eagle and Child – pretty much in the spot where the Inklings met. I may be sitting where Tolkien sat, or C S Lewis. Who knows?! Rather neat, huh?

I can manage without any more damage to my car though!

Stockport County are my local team – and through some rough history the ownership of the team and the ground fell into the hands of a consortium and outside of the hands of the fans. In 2005, the fans managed to buy back the team – and now they need a lot of money to reacquire the ground. You can do your bit raising £1 million by buying pixels at groundforapound.com – as I’ve already done. I’m about an inch and a half from the top left corner, a little down from the edge… in a dark patch above the trees.

I woke last night a little before 1AM and felt the rubble beneath me. The earthquake rippled past and a moment of sleepy conversation erupted over what had just happened. I haven’t felt a quake like that in years and then I experiened the ripple pass beneath me as I worked at my desk. The experts say we have around 200 quakes a year in the UK, but most of those only register on sensitive machinery designed specifically for the purpose. Having that many noticable quakes would certainly take the novelty value out of it.

Oddly, when I heard the quakes originated from near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, one of my first thoughts was whether Jim Broadbent still had family in the area who might be effected. A big fan of radio comedy, the series ‘Saturday Night Fry‘ (which you might just be able to track down on the Internet or BBC7) featured a skit where Stephen Fry probed Jim on his family background, which noted that there had been Broadbents in the Market Rasen area since the 60s (or something like that). The essence of the skit comes down to the fact that Hugh Laurie had spent the last week trying to forget something but he can’t remember what. Only when Stephen takes an interest in Jim’s family history do we discover Hugh had in fact spent the last week trying to forget Jim’s surname – an activity now rendered completely pointless.

Funny how these things come to mind entirely at odds with the sort of things you probably should be thinking about – like whether half your roof has come off during the night.

… Several Words Arranged To Confound preHension.

I currently suffer from a severe case of acronygnorance (see what I did there?) at work, where the TLA (three letter abbreviation ((Yes… abbreviation. An acronym forms a pronouncable word and since when has TLA been anything of the sort?)) ) rules supreme. I, as an upshot of this, find myself staring blankly at emails, notes and documentation bemused by the needless density of hidden meaning generated by a fascination with reducing everything to a minimal length.

When you text someone or post a classified advert in a newspaper, I can understand the need to abbreviate – letter count can cost money and time better spent elsewhere. However, anyone communicating thoughts, intentions or a new process should endeavour to do so with clarity. No one wins over anyone with confusion. Send me a document laced with acronyms and you can expect me to attend the next meeting none the wiser and far from convinced about the point and purpose of your initiative. Want feedback? Sure – stop using stupid acronyms.

Adding a glossary can help, but even that represents a degree of laziness. In theory, a piece of software like Word can actively replace a series of letters with something else – so if you know you intend to use a technical term that begs for an acronym, set it up for automatic replacement. HTML provides an alternative with the ACRONYM tag, which allows you to provide the meaning together with the acronym – revealed simply by hanging over the term in a supporting browser. Perhaps software could provide something similar for those reading documents via computer? That would considerably assist poor sods like myself who struggle to keep up…

Last night I attended a preview event at the new Krispy Kreme store at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. This store represents the doughnut manufacturers first venture in the north of the country (I believe), as until now you have had to travel south to enjoy one of these glazed treats.

I found a rather swanky affair in full swing upon arrival with my family, largely because traffic between work and the store had meant more than two hours stuck on the motorway. Lots of guests, smiling staff, free doughnuts, free drinks – both alcoholic and not… what more could you ask of a Wednesday evening in the north-west of England.

We enjoyed a guided tour around the kitchen area and got the chance to make our own chocolate-smeared sprinkle-smothered ring doughnuts. The tour took us from first principles, through raw ingredients, mixing, proving, shallow frying, glazing and packing. My wife and I got a little disturbed at the pre-glazing and packing stages, as it appeared a sort of baked eugenics program meant a sudden end for any doughnut failing to achieve a certain degree of agreeable ringedness. The conveyor at the end of process carried doughnuts before the packers who selected and boxed most, but left the remainder to reach the end and fall into a black bin. In these lean times with environmental concerns, this seemed like a monumental waste.

Plagued with doubts, we stood on a knife edge torn between the taste of doughnuts and this apparent wastefulness. The owner, however, set our mind at ease. A congenial host, keen to engage with the gathering of invite-only guests and VIPs, he explained that doughnuts rejected from the process would normally be packed up and handed over to charities, who could then distribute the mishapes amongst the hungry and the homeless. I certainly intend to keep an eye on this, as if a preview evening can generate a bin load of sub-standard doughnuts, who knows how many might go to waste on an average weekend of full opening.

I enjoyed a beer, a coffee, something fruity and non-alcoholic and… e-hem… three doughnuts, before we all decided to head home for the evening. Collecting our coats, we walked away with three-dozen free glazed doughnuts (with the offer of another box that would have made it a dozen each) and a good feeling about the store. The people had smiles throughout and I enjoyed the food, so I’m sure we’ll be back again in the future when the Trafford Centre has fewer cars and Christmas shoppers in it.

Recommended!