When Firefox 3 came out, one of the things they trumpeted about was the ‘intelligent address bar’. In short, when you typed in a web address, it also checked through your history and bookmarks in order to save time typing – if you’d been there before (in the duration of the history) then the site name would come up.

Until recently, I found this quite annoying – if I wanted a site called (for example) the admin section of one of my sites, and started typing the first two characters of admin, I didn’t want to know that I could also go to D4D’s Add a post page, or Norfolk council’s Adult education page.

But I’m slowly coming round to the function, and seeing where it can be useful – well, so long as you set up the bookmarks correctly in the first place. For example, if I want to look at the news from one of our local papers, I don’t need to remember that it’s at the (fucking stupid) http://new.edp24.co.uk URL, I type in EDP and lo, Firefox has got it there, ready and waiting.

It’s not perfect – but I’m starting to see the use of it. Now if the bookmarks have been titled properly/usefully, I can type in a shortcode that actually works. (And of course I have to remember that, for example, my internet banking is done at RBS, not just by typing in banking, or internet banking – well, until I edit the bookmark, anyway)

One of the things that I hate about the onset of Autumn is the way it makes my scars hurt. I suppose it’s the same as with arthritis, or bunions (not that I suffer from either of those) – but the onset of colder damper weather just makes me hurt.

I’ve got two scars where this really takes effect – one in my right shoulder, and one in my left thumb. The shoulder is more debilitating, leaves me needing to stretch it on regular occasions – and stretch it in strange ways. The thumb is a lesser injury, but still makes the entire knuckle hurt.

The shoulder scar was caused by a big stick with a nail in, wielded one night when I used to run pubs. Burglar alarm went off, Muggins had to go and investigate, and I got a big stick with nails in it for a present. I was lucky really – it caught my shoulder rather than my head. But the nail went in deep enough to jam the joint, and the scar is now about the size of a 50p piece.

The thumb scar is more down to idiocy, and was a bone-deep cut back when I was in school. I won’t bother with the full details, because they’re just idiotic – and idiocy on the part of both myself and A.N.Other. Suffice it to say that I came within microns of cutting the tendon in my thumb, and doing permanent damage. More by luck than judgement I avoided that, but I do still have a permanent reminder of that stupidity.

So yes, when the weather changes I start to ache. And that’s another thing that started to happen over the weekend, as Autumn draws in.

Autumn’s definitely on the way. Both yesterday and today, the mornings have been foggy, and the dew is getting heavier.

And last night, we had the log burner going for the first time.

The nights are drawing in, it’s getting colder, and yes, the log-burner’s lovely again.

Last night’s drive home was – to be blunt – an utter fucker. I left the office at 4.30, and got home at 7.30. Three hours for a journey that usually takes an hour.

And why?

Because some bell-end Audi driver had screwed up in his judgement of time/space, pulled in from the outside lane to the middle carriageway of the A14, and collided with a truck. The damage? The rear bumper of the Audi had been pulled off.

But, because the Audi-driver was a bell-end, he and the truck driver decided to stop and exchange details. In the outer two lanes of the A14. Neither of them had the common fucking sense to pull over to the lay-by that was in clear view less than half a mile away, oh no. Instead, they had to block two lanes of high-speed rush-hour traffic by being – and let’s call a spade a fucking spade here – cunts. And stupid cunts at that.

The traffic jam that resulted from these two fuckwitted bastards went all the way back past Cambridge – if you look at this map, the accident happened where the red circle is (top right corner) and the queues eventually went back to Milton. (if not further) Impressive, isn’t it?

And all because two drivers are fuckwits. I seriously hope the police/courts take the licences off both of them – admittedly, no criminal offence was actually committed, so it’ll never happen, but sometimes, just sometimes, you really wish there was an offence of criminal fucking stupidity. These two would’ve earned it.

And, in a related(ish) post to this morning’s one, the BBC has a story about 10 ways to rediscover the joy of motoring.

It makes for interesting reading, and I can see that most of the points are quite smart and relevant. Then again, “Limit your commute to quarter of an hour” is pretty unfeasible for me at any time in the foreseeable future…

The drive in to work this morning was this year’s first instance of mist/fog on the road – and straight away there were the bell-ends out there with their fog-lights on all the way in.

Now, while I’d agree that the visibility wasn’t great, you could still see a good 100+ feet in front of you, and thus there was no real need for foglights. But of course as soon as there’s any form of mist, there are a number of people who slam on the foglights, and then don’t turn them off ’til they get to their destination, regardless of weather conditions.

In fact, I’ll lay money that there’ll be a few drivers with them still on this afternoon when it’s time to drive home again.

As always, I don’t mind people using the damn things when they’re actually necessary – and there were a couple of patches this morning where the visibility did come right down so you couldn’t see a fucking thing, at which point I put mine on too – but then when you can see again, turn the fucking things off!